Small Things Like These

What I appreciate most about this is how it could have been filled with bombastic outbursts, and yet it chose a different route. We watch Murphy's Bill struggle quietly with a difficult decision for an entire movie. This hyper specific approach is somber and meaningful, even for someone unfamiliar with the source material. It does a good enough job showing us how menacing the situation was, without spelling it all out every second. Great ending. Great performance from Murphy.

This is a very well made movie. Cillian Murphy gives a fantastic performance, and a lot of the cinematography is very well done. It's just as an American I think it lacks a lot of context. It seems like a deeply personal film for Irish and UK audiences, but as an American it seemed much more ambiguous than what was intended. This unfortunately made an already slow movie slower. So, if you're not already familiar with Magdalene Laundries it's just going to feel depressing and kinda pointless.

I'm quite fond of this, a worthy adaptation of a great novel. In a movie that is the portrayal of the working of conscience, Mielants does a great job of allowing the audience to sit with the silences that inevitably come. Answers and courses of action are not immediately apparent, but become so as one reflects on "past, present, and future" as young Bill reads from Dickens early in the film. This is such a great portrait of justice wrought by regular people, a worthy subject for sure.

Small scale story that tackles big themes with an incredible performance by Cillian Murphy-a truthful and worthy adaptation of the novel.

Beautiful movie!

Impossible to do better casting than this- Murphy is laughably perfect for this role in his awkward sulkiness. This true story is another big L for The Church, causing harm and trauma everywhere its horny acolytes go.

What? No car chases? No CGI? no staged fight scenes? No clever-clever dialogue? No... just a perfectly simple story of a man forced to weigh up how to handle a situation he has encountered, knowing that whatever he does it will come at immense cost to either himself or his family. This is my sort of film; believable and engrossing, beautifully acted, with an ending that is really just the beginning. This may only be a huge success this side of the pond, due to the content, but it deserves more.

Fell in love with Cilian Murphy's character in about an hour. Beautiful, quiet, contemplative movie.