Having traversed L.A., Bruges and Ebbing, Missouri, in his first three films, Martin McDonagh’s fourth finds him on greener soil and can’t help but wear the intimate feel of a homecoming. The Banshees of Inisherin sees the London-born, Galloway-bred director return to at long lost Ireland. Or, rather, to lush island metaphor just off the coastal mainland. Inisherin’s literal meaning is ‘the Ireland island’. This is a desperately sad film, blackly comical and surprisingly tough. With so much to say, McDonaugh’s refusal to rush is a marvel. That his cast excel within the woe is but a bonus.
One can only imagine the gallows humour that was banded around the set of Allelujah. The film adapts Alan Bennett’s eponymous play and comes directed by Notes on a Scandal’s Richard Eyre. It creams the upper crop of Britain’s most beloved veteran thespians and devotes just shy of a hundred minutes to reminding each that they’re nearer death than birth. Charming. A good job all involved boast a well honed sense of humour. Certainly, a cast so glittering can’t help but warm the cockles. And yet, an excess of worthy point-making can’t help but weigh down the film’s featherlight flurries.
It’s been well over a decade since Shekhar Kapur last featured on the British cinema scene. That was 2007’s risible Elizabeth sequel: The Golden Age. The less said the better. And yet, feels is fitting that Kapur’s return to the main stage plays rather like a callback to a bygone era. What’s Love Got to do With It? revives not Britain’s love affair with lavish period drama but the lush rom coms Richard Curtis made profitable in the nineties. Curtis hasn’t a hand in this one but with the leafy London setting, middle class sensibilities and über-familiar narrative, he’s the only plummy cliché missing.
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