Sing Street

John Carney, 2016

IMDB

4/5

I have to confess that Sing Street was one of those movies that I watched the trailer for the first time and felt a little annoyed. It was clearly the headspace that I was in at the time. Because the movie surfaced one night through a brief Netflix browsing session with my wife who was looking for something with some heart and not blood. Sing Street would prove to be one of the better 2016 films to watch with my wife.

One of the redeeming qualities about Sing Street is the fact that when the group of high school strangers assemble, their first attempts of making music don't actually suck much. In fact even their first tune that they make is actually pretty catchy. By doing this it eliminates a lot of technical build up like in School of Rock where students literally have to learn from the ground up in terms of form. A device used is to sort of skip over the rudimentary obstacles is to plug in character Eamon (Mark McKenna) who not only is a multi-instrumentalist but he is even able to provide practice space because his father is in a cover band. School of Rock is a fitting movie to bring into this conversation because there are obvious parallels. Young school kids making music together, all bringing their own life experiences and using music as a form of expression. But the differences between the two are stark. Admittedly a lot of it is cultural. With Sing Street being an Irish production, the story is set in the rigid and strict confines of the UK educational system in the 1980's. The landscape is gloomy. There is an obvious sense of authoritarian rule. Bullying is rampant. School of Rock was more about a wild teacher finding a way to connect with a classroom. Sing Street is more about a young man dealing with all of the normal angst-ridden things that teenagers have to deal with and finding a way to deal with it. While a lot of what lead character Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) are common teenage problems, they are all illustrated in a way that makes it compelling on screen.

Perhaps the only negative that exists with Sing Street is the fact that its filled with the conventional teenage movie tropes. Frustration toward your parents. Not having a lot of friends. Not liking your teachers. The crush on the unattainable girl. Escape through music. But Carney finds a way to put blend these elements on screen that make it feel fresh and charming. This is likely to do with it with being an Irish production and having fresh faces on screen. It speaks well for international film, telling stories that might not be completely unique but telling the story in a place that doesn't get as much attention as it probably should. Its obvious that Sing Street would be a much different movie if it were set in New York City with American actors. But it wasn't. Instead it's a sweet little Irish film that will have "Drive it like you stole it" in your head for a few days after viewing.

Spotlight

Tom McCarthy, 2015

IMDB

4/5

There are some films that have a sole purpose. A sole purpose to highlight a particular moment in time, a notable event of sequence of events. Spotlight is one of these films, fulfilling a duty to highlight the Catholic sex abuse scandal of the (year) that was uncovered by the Boston Globe. When new editor Marty Baron is hired from Miami, he immediately starts to put pressure on the staff to maintain core readership. He urges the Spotlight investigative team to focus on some accusations of local priests abusing boys. When they start to realize that there is some validity to the accusations, he urges them to follow it higher and higher - not really concerned about which powerful figures he angers along the way. The fact that this is going on in the city of Boston adds even more weight to the scandal, as half of the city is Irish Catholic and holds their Priest's in very high regard. 

The Spotlight team itself is a showcase of solid acting by Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, John Slattery and Brian D'Arcy James. There is such balanced chemistry between them all, it's just alluring to watch them all just work their craft. Perfect casting decisions in that regard. Stanley Tucci is also remarkable as attorney Mitchell Garabedian. They are all laser focused on the task. Some of them working longer hours than others. Some of them having families to go home to, some of them choosing career over family. But they are all thorough. 

They manage to maintain their journalistic professionalism while also taking the abuse claims to heart. When Matt Carroll's (D'Arcy James) character is scouring through the pages of the Catholic directory and discovers that one of the "treatment centers" is around the corner from his house, he realizes how close to home this problem really is. It is not wrong to draw comparisons of Spotlight to All the President's Men. They are both serious films, impactful in nature, covering scandals that everyone was already knowledgeable of. Both films feel academic to a certain extent. They both remind us of the importance of whistle-blowers in American culture. But sometimes its a film's duty to simply highlight a negative event in history. This way it will have it's place in cinematic history. And as the Spotlight staff realizes, some things should not go unnoticed. No matter how big the cages are that are about to get rattled. Spotlight isn't a movie filled with stylistic flair. It's a movie, completely serious in tone, with a job to do. And just like the Spotlight team, it maintains that steady pace until the job is done. 

Calvary

John Michael McDonagh, 2014

Can I Stream it?

4/5

Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is taking confessions at his small-town church when a voice tells him that he plans on killing him in a week, revenge for the sexual abuse that the mysterious man was subjected to as a child.

The small-town Irish setting is gloomy, lonely. The visual aesthetic spills over to the overall tone of the film. The town consists of quiet encounters of it’s inhabitants during the day, and the consumption of spirits at the local bar come nighttime. Father James lost his wife years before he entered the priesthood, and you get a sense that it’s a grief that he carries with him through his daily life. He’s surrounded by many morally compromised people in his small Irish community. Adulterers, abusers, drunks, sex addicts, the greedy. They all float around him as if he’s some kind of central force that they can descend upon every Sunday to clear their conscience. When his daughter comes to visit him, it’s a reminder of his past life and his inability to completely escape the memories. After all Father is an enduring figure. Willing to drink a beer with his congregation members, but reluctant to consume whiskey (for an unspoken reason, presumably justified). When he hears the familiar voice through the grated window of the confession booth, he struggles to understand why he would be chosen to be the human sacrifice for some unknown priest’s sins. He has put in good time becoming a good man. But he is forced to spend the following week reflecting on his life, on humanity in general. He ultimately realizes that he is no different than the people of his community. They all breathe the same air, have the same blood in their veins. It’s all taken into consideration when deciding whether or not to show up on that beach the following week.