Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to tie a bowtie! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the family drama “The Piano Lesson,” the creeptastic “Heretic” and the Cillian Murphy in “Small Things Like These.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with hosts Jim Richards and Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about the family drama “The Piano Lesson,” the creeptastic “Heretic” and the Cillian Murphy in “Small Things Like These.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 27:29)
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Steph Vivier to have a look at movies in theatres and streaming including the family drama “The Piano Lesson,” the creeptastic “Heretic” and the Cillian Murphy in “Small Things Like These.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: The morality play “Small Things like These” is Cillian Murphy’s follow-up to his Oscar winning work in “Oppenheimer.” Lowkey though it may be, this study of religious morality and individual responsibility allows him space to hand in a quietly powerful performance that speaks volumes.
CAST: Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Emily Watson, Clare Dunne, and Helen Behan. Directed by Tim Mielants.
REVIEW: Adapted from the novella by Claire Keegan, “Small Things Like These” is a story of courage in an era of complicity.
Set in 1985, Murphy plays Bill Furlong, a taciturn coalman in a small, conservative Irish town, where he lives with wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) and five daughters. As Christmas, his busiest season, approaches he has a chilling encounter with Sarah (Zara Devlin), a young, unmarried and pregnant woman, cold and afraid, in the coal shed of the local Catholic run Magdalene Laundry.
As she begs for help, Bill is haunted by memories of his youth as an orphan, the son of an unmarried mother who passed when he was a child. In a community held in sway by the church, Bill is torn between offering aid and the potential blowback from Mother Mary (Emily Watson), head of the convent and a powerful figure in the town. “You better watch what you say about what’s there,” he’s told. “People can make things difficult for you.”
Poetically paced, “Small Things Like These” is a serious film that showcases not only the abuses of the Magdalene institutions, but the moral complicity of those who knew about it and did nothing. “If you want to get on in this life,” says Eileen, “there are things you have to ignore.”
As Bill, Murphy is quietly restrained, observant and empathetic but it is the inner torrent of torment that bubbles just beneath the surface that makes him so compelling. There are long stretches spent in silent close-up of Murphy’s face that speak volumes about Bill’s
moral conundrum and feelings of indecisiveness in the face of injustice. The film’s real action happens inside his head and Murphy’s gift is the ability to externalize the character’s interior mechanisms.
“Small Things like These” is a powerful study of quiet heroism in the face of self-interest, buoyed by Murphy, and his committed cast’s, deeply felt, rich performances.
