The Banshees Of Inisherin (2022) - Movie Review

 

So, back in high school, I had this friend. We’ll call him… Jay. Around when we started school, me and him were put into a special morning roll call group with a few others, all of whom were neurodivergent in one form or another. We hung around a lot during class breaks, and they were pretty much the only friends I had back then. Sure, I got along okay with the rest of my classmates, more or less, but they were more acquaintances than anything else. These guys, though? Proper mates.

Then Jay decided that that wasn’t happening anymore. One day, he just up and told me to piss off. To not hang out with him and the others during lunch like we usually did. Knowing my often-violent mood swings at the time, I’m not saying that he probably didn’t have his reasons for doing so; just that it came out all of a sudden.

And this wasn’t a one-off thing either; every so often, he would just suddenly decide that I shouldn’t be there anymore, after however many days of us kinda-sorta being cool with each other again. On a random whim, I would get cut off from the only friends I had for however long he felt like. It finally came to an end a little while before we graduated, when he made nice because, and I quote, he “found someone worse” than me. Not exactly the most welcoming apology, but I didn’t hold it against him then or now; at least the merry-go-round ended, and we were able to part on good terms.

Ron's Gone Wrong (2021) - Movie Review

A new contender has entered the ring for family-friendly animated films… kind of. This is the first feature release from UK-based Locksmith Animation, although the actual animation is courtesy of Double Negative, the rendering wizards behind a lot of Christopher Nolan’s bendiest works like Inception and Interstellar. They don’t usually dip into full-on animated works, usually just accompanying live-action films, but this shows them in pretty solid territory as far as visuals go. The animation quality is up to the mainstream standard as far as lighting and the like, the character designs are just goofy enough to work on the kiddie level without being distractingly stylistic, and the design for the titular robot is simplified in a way an actual tech company would engineer, and he's quite adorable the longer he stays in-frame.