January film watching
I've tidied up my notes on some of the films I saw in January. Bird: Strange,and pretty brutal fantasy/realism coming of age film with Barry Keoghan as an apparently deadbeat dad to Bailey who is 12, views the world through a phone camera and doesn’t want to wear a bridesmaids outfit to their dads wedding. Set in Gravesend, with a scruffy urban landscape but also capturing the wild beauty of the marshes too where Bailey spends a lot of time watching and photographing the birds, and where they also meet a man called Bird looking for his family. Bailey's mum and siblings are living with a pretty unpleasant man, and there are some gruelling scenes, but there is also kindness and community amongst the brutality. I really enjoyed Keoghan's layered performance, and I did chuckle at what did appear to be a reference to Saltburn in the middle there. This isn't at all flashy, a quietly classy film despite the bravado we see throughout, and has a good heart which sh...