Something to watch tonight: Thursday 9 November

In Bruges (McDonagh, 2008)

I saw a wee noti­fic­a­tion on social media yes­ter­day that it is a year ago this week that Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin was released.

In the U.S. that is. As is always the way of things, New Zealand wouldn’t see it until Boxing Day.

But anoth­er film fea­tur­ing McDonagh’s dir­ec­tion, as well as the act­ing tal­ents of Brendan Gleason and Colin Farrell, does have an anniversary this week – In Bruges arrived in loc­al theatres on November 6 back in 2008.

From my at-the-time review:

Two hit­men (Gleeson and the excel­lent Colin Farrell) have been sent to the sleepy Belgian town of Bruges to lie low after a job has gone wrong. Once there, they are sup­posed to enjoy the many his­tor­ic and cul­tur­al treats of the beau­ti­fully pre­served walled medi­ev­al city while wait­ing for fur­ther instruc­tions. This suits Gleeson (older, wiser, worldly) but Farrell, frac­tious after the ter­rible stuff-up, wants booze, birds, drugs and trouble. And even in Bruges he finds some of all of it.

Martin McDonagh has a great sense of tim­ing – most obvi­ously dis­played via Jon Stevens edit­ing – and his dia­logue is rich, funny and emin­ently speak-able. In Bruges is thor­oughly enter­tain­ing and has unveiled McDonagh as a great tal­ent for the future and the last time I thought that about a con­ver­ted play­wright was after watch­ing David Mamet’s House of Games in 1987.

Also fea­tur­ing that week were Jason Statham in Death Race, the Richard Gere/Diane Lane romance Nights in Rodanthe, the Don Cheadle thrill­er Terror, Chow Yun-Fat and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in the good but for­got­ten The Children of the Silk Road, Florian Habicht’s por­trait of New Zealand theatre maker Warwick Broadhead, Rubbings From a Live Man, and Clark Gregg’s adapt­a­tion of the Chuck Palahniuk nov­el Choke star­ring Sam Rockwell.

Where to find In Bruges

Aotearoa and Australia: Streaming on Netflix

USA: Streaming on Starz

UK: Digital rental

Further reading

For RNZ, I’ve writ­ten a piece won­der­ing wheth­er big brand TV is pay­ing too much atten­tion to the fans and not enough to the gen­er­al audi­ence. This is through the prism of the Star Wars series Ahsoka, the Star Trek spinoff Picard and Marvel’s Moon Knight.