That’s just the way it is and if you don’t like it, well, too bad (say that in an Irish lilt!). Poor Pádraic (Colin Farrell) shows up one day at his old friend, Colm’s (Brendan Gleeson) house, to go to the local pub for a pint, as they’ve always done. Except Colm has made a decision: ”I just don’t like you no more.” Pádraic, he says, is “dull” and, with Colm getting on in years, wants to spend more time on things that really matter, like thinking about the world and his place in it. Pádraic, admittedly a bit of a simpleton, is devastated, and continues to pursue the friendship in Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, Inisherin being a small island off the Irish coast, the kind of place where everyone knows everybody’s business before they do. Colm will have none of it, threatening to cut off one of his fingers each time Pádraic approaches. One by one those fingers come off in this sublime black comedy that sends up Celtic and smalltown superstitions, and that will have you constantly chortling at the ridiculousness of it all......In Bertrand Bonellos’ Coma, Patricia Coma hosts an an-purpose advice video channel, where a viewer "may not be immortal but you will live better." From blending vegetables to dispensing German lessons and philosophical tidbits - "everything from your behaviour is compatible with determinism" - sometimes at the same time - Coma (Julia Faure) is discovered by a despondent teen (Louise Labèque), who becomes absorbed and obsessed. Meanwhile the teen's bedroom world, during Covid lockdown, transforms into one of fantasy. Her dollhouse of Barbie and Ken dolls act out romantic soap operas full of emotional weight. The film’s disparate storylines nevertheless work in this probe into the often hyper disconnected and traumatized world in which we live.....Charlotte Wells's Aftersun is a memoir, probably personal, about a trip she took with her divorced dad when she was 11 years old. It’s a sweet perceptive story about a smart kid - she asks why he still says “I love you" to his ex-wife - bordering on precociousness but who generally clicks with her father, who is trying to regroup in his own life. The scenes are very prosaic – a resort frequented by Brits in Turkey - but the acting by the two principal characters, Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio as daughter Sophie, wins the day. My only complaint is the close-up hand-held camera shots - with sometimes screeching audio – that are just too disorienting and annoying. (Aftersun will screen this fall at the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF).)
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