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Rate five things you know, from any shelf. Your archetype shows up in about a minute, and gets sharper with every log.
Drama 99 min PG-13
Rotten Tomatoes94%Metacritic82IMDb
If you want to get on in life, there’s things you have to ignore so you can keep on.
In 1985, while working as a coal merchant to support his family, Bill Furlong discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent and uncovers truths of his own; forcing him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church.
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Contemplative, prestige, bleak and character-led.
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When it comes to minimalism in filmmaking, there’s deftly deliberate understatement, which can be a decidedly valuable asset, and then there’s cryptic obfuscation, which frequently leaves viewers scratching their heads. And, when it comes to this fourth feature outing from director Tim Mielants, the line between the two is undeniably and confusingly razor thin, a tale that’s so exceedingly nuanced and purposely restrained that one often wonders exactly what it’s trying to say. Set in 1985, the film tells the story of Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), a hard-working Irish coal merchant struggling to make ends meet for his wife (Eileen Walsh) and five daughters. As a soft-spoken, kind-hearted soul, he readily helps others in need, a compassionate streak he developed in childhood when his younger self (Louis Kirwan) and unwed mother, Sara (Agnes O’Casey), were graciously taken in by a wealthy benefactor (Michelle Fairley) when they were summarily ostracized by Sara’s family, a story thread depicted in a series of flashbacks. That quality comes to define Bill’s nature, resurfacing recurringly years later. But its impact becomes most apparent when he makes a coal delivery to the local conv
Read the whole review on TMDBA friend of mine used to own a big gay bar in Dublin, and I recall being in it the day that marriage was legalised in Eire. One of the women celebrating was telling us of her childhood at the hands of the nuns in the 1970s. It was a ghastly story of women who hadn't an ounce of compassion between them all, and this film picks up that cudgel and swings it squarely at what it is little better than a religious equivalent of a Dickensian workhouse. The story is told from the perspective of local coal merchant "Bill" (Cillian Murphy) who lives with his wife and five daughters in a small town in Co. Wexford. Nobody has much money and some are reduced to gathering wood from the forest floor to heat their homes. By comparison, his family are quite well off and with Christmas looming all are anticipating a good family time. He supplies the local convent-cum-orphanage where the unwed girls of the community are deposited when they get in the family way, and it's here that he encounters a young lass locked in the coal shed. Freezing and terrified, he wonders how she got herself trapped in there - and that's where the story starts to focus on not just the inhumanity that prevailed, but on the i
Read the whole review on TMDB<em>'Small Things Like These'</em> is absorbing. I basically got exactly what I expected from this one. It's a slow burn, quiet film featuring a stellar, if somewhat understated, Cillian Murphy performance. The pacing is spot on and the story is undoubtedly engrossing, it's one that holds plenty of emotion behind it. It does conclude rather abruptly, I in fact overheard someone nearby remark "that can't be it" when the cut to black happens. That isn't, for me anyway, a bad thing though. Again, I kinda anticipated it being a movie that would simply tell its tale and end, which is certainly what it does. It is very much Murphy that stands out from these 98 minutes, but credit is still due for the likes of Eileen Walsh, Emily Watson and Zara Devlin in their respective supporting roles. No-one onscreen puts a foot wrong. All in all, it's evidently a supremely well made picture - one I'd recommend!
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