The Banshees of Inisherin, See How They Run, and more Twitter thoughts
It's Irish time, plus additional tweety bird blah blah blahs
Hello!
On this week’s episode of Criticism Is Dead, we discuss The Banshees of Inisherin and See How They Run, two films that raise the question of the importance of art over lives lived.
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03:28 The Banshees of Inisherin, playing in theaters, finds equal parts comedy, tragedy, and emotional resonance in the dissolution of a friendship.
What a delight! Officially one of Pelin’s favorite films of the year, this new Martin McDonagh feature explores the tenuous bonds of male friendship and what happens when that connection is forcibly (and gruesomely) severed, despite the protests of half the parties involved. What do we owe to ourselves, and to each other? It’s a thorny question, one to which there is no single right answer — but The Banshees of Inisherin dances around it deftly, wielding hardness and tenderness in alternating strokes, both as painful as a wallop to the chest. Excellent performances by Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, and especially Colin Farrell here.
24:49 See How They Run, streaming on HBO Max, is a tight parcel of a self-aware whodunit that’s carried by its cast.
A genre spoof that draws from Agatha Christie and is predicated on The Mousetrap, See How They Run is a perfectly fine movie. Like many of its contemporary parodic murder mysteries, it is winking; it knows the conventions, the film announces, only to then kind of still follow those conventions. But still — again — perfectly fine. If there is one thing that elevates the movie to be a decent option for holiday family time viewing, it’s the presence of Saoirse Ronan, who is characteristically excellent. Warm and funny, she makes a real person out of what could have been a stock type. Our Irish queen!
39:24 Plus, culture notes about Twitter, part 2 (please kill us).
Here’s all you have to know:
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Bonus links
The ousting of CEO Bob Chapek in favor of his predecessor Bob Iger over at Disney is honestly fascinating — here’s a smart analysis by Alison Herman at the Ringer.
The White Lotus:
For a change in pace, Malcolm Harris on the rise of influencer capital.
The best stuff I’ve read about Twitter and the future and the media is from Max Read here and here.
Sorry to plug stories from my place of work but some nice articles recently:
That’s it for now. Thank you and see you next week!
— Jenny
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Some credits:
Music: REEKAH
Artwork and design: Sara Macias and Andrew Liu