Movie Forums Top 100 of the 2010s - Group Watch

Putting it on now

I'll check it out tomorrow.

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Also I’m just now realizing that @Takoma11 recommended this movie to me in my thread and I totally misread the title as Cavalry and put a totally different movie on my watch list.

LOL.

Last year I went to watch a movie called something kind of generic like "The Last Girl" and ended up watching this movie and I was like "This is awful!". Yeah, the film I was supposed to watch was from 2012 or something and the one I watched was like 2016.

The funniest instance I remember of what you guys are talking about happened on a podcast I listen to. One of the three hosts watched the wrong movie. He was so confused for a few minutes. Wish I could remember which movie. Cracked me up.

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Watching the wrong movie happened to me once in the SciFi/Horror HoF hosted by TeeterG...I was suppose to watch The Host (2006) but instead watched this:
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...27#post1416127

That review made me laugh. Why do I enjoy other people tripping? Am I a monster

I didn’t watch the wrong movie, just put the wrong one on my watchlist. I figured it out because I misread the title again and couldn’t seem to find a movie called Cavalry with that poster on IMDb.

I did watch the wrong movie for a HOF once though. Someone nominated Gaslight (1944). So I requested the dvd from my library. The title was right. The cover matched the image that the host had posted in the thread. So I took it home, watched it and went to write it up only to notice that the images other people used in their write-ups didn’t match what I had just watched. That’s when I found out that there was a movie called Gaslight with the same basic story that came out in 1940. The library copy had both versions on it, one on each side of the disc, and I happened to put it in the player on the side with the 1940 version. I ended up liking both versions about the same.

Anyway, I just finished Calvary. I need to collect my thoughts and will post something a bit later.

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I went to IMDb to see if there were any movies called "Cavalry" and only one from the 1930s popped up. So at least you didn't watch a wrong movie!

I quite like both versions of Gaslight. I think that the '44 version gets more love because it has bigger names in the lead roles (and Angela Landsbury as the sexy/saucy maid!).

...I thought it was actually funny too when I did that.

What's funny is my actual watchlist is on Letterboxd and when I searched Cavalry there, a film from 2019 comes up in the results. I didn't look at any details at the time, just added it to my list. Turns out it's some super obscure short from somewhere in the Middle East and the only review on it is from someone who mistook it for Calvary.

I'll probably be in the minority, but this was a miss for me.

Just finished Calvary. It was fine, but like Vicky, I was a bit too detached from its story to get into it. Still though, it's technically well-made and the acting is good.

The only idea I had about what this movie was came from what Takoma said a few posts ago. I'm not at all saying she's wrong, but based on those words it was not what I expected at all. I wasn't moved, more like sickened, but more than that I thought it was wickedly funny. I was not expecting humor and that for me was the co-highlight to go along with the performance of the great Brendan Gleeson. I was sickened because of how awful the people were or how awful what had happened to them was, and that's what made the humor so effective for me. I was starting to think the whole town was in on a plot to take out the priest, they were just nasty, and it was disturbing to watch the lack of humanity from what appeared to be fairly normal people. I'm not spiritual, but I was able to take in the spiritual aspect, and yes it looked great.

Calvary, 2014

James (Brendan Gleeson) is a Catholic priest tending to a cynical, detached group of parishioners. One day, an unknown man in the confessional warns James that he will kill him in a week, and that he should take the next few days to prepare himself. With this threat hanging over him, James goes about his business, at times connecting with and other times clashing with the locals. Part of his week is spent reconnecting with his daughter (Kelly Reilly) from whom he has been alienated.

Director John McDonagh and his brother, Martin, have made their fair share of films (and they sure do love Brendan Gleeson!). Both of them seem to trade in a particular blend of heavy topic matter and dark comedy, and for me this is the most successful marrying of those two elements.

One of the reasons I love Calvary is simply the presence, and solid performances from, a lot of actors I really love. Gleeson is great, naturally, and so is Reilly. But I'm also a fan of Chris O'Dowd, Dylan Moran, Isaach De Bankolé, M. Emmet Walsh, and Domhnall Gleeson. The latter's presence in the film is particularly interesting, as we get a long, intense sequence of the two generations of Gleesons facing down over a table.

I also responded very positively to its themes of forgiveness and goodness, and how that is embodied in James. The movie does not take the easy route of making James a perfect person. Instead it shows how frustration, tolerance, and moral struggle are a part of the way that he tries to help his community. It also highlights the cruel but interesting point of view of his would-be killer: James is actually a good person, and thus it is more of a blow to the Church to kill him in retribution for the way that the Church enabled child abuse.

Something that the film drives home, in both a serious and also a darkly comic way, is that there are so many people in the town who might be the potential killer. It's like a grittier version of an Agatha Christie mystery. It speaks, ironically, to the killer's point: so many people could have potentially been harmed by the Church that figuring out who has a score to settle is nearly impossible. James cannot separate his faith and his identity from that of the Church, and yet it is as a symbol of the Church's wrongdoing that he is put in danger.

I am not a religious person, but I strongly resonated with the way that James slowly but steadily goes about his business of trying to do the right thing for those he serves. It is not always easy to do the right thing, or to even know for sure what the right thing is. The struggle we see in James is one that is very human. There's even something very moving about the way that he is honest, even when it is to his own detriment or endangerment. This extends to offering closure to someone who may harm or even kill him, an act that itself requires a kind of forehand forgiveness.

I think that the question of forgiveness is an incredibly hard one. On the one hand, telling people who have experienced horrible traumas to just "move on" is callous and unrealistic. Certain things will have profound impact on people, no matter how much they might want to be able to put them up on a high shelf and get on with life. But anger can also be a destructive force--destructive to others and self-destructive. Even in the end of the film, there are no easy answers.

As others have said, this is a movie that looks really excellent. There is beauty and foreboding in the landscape, something that really hits its peak in the climax of the film.

I also have to give a nod to the fact that (MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!!!)

Yeah, everything about this film just works for me. Far and away my favorite McDonagh film. (Though I also really liked The Guard). There's something special about movies that linger in your memories and thoughts after you see them, and this one has really done that for me.

I don't usually like religious movies, so I hadn't planned on watching Calvary (2014) even though it was recommended to me in my 2010s recommendation thread, but I decided to watch it when it was nominated in this group watch thread.

Unfortunately, this movie just didn't work for me at all. And it didn't help that this movie had a bunch of unlikable characters, and I didn't find the humor in the movie to be funny.

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So I think it's significant that the film .

Now, whether that actually works for you as a plot point or a character decision is a whole other kettle of fish. But I think it's an interesting way of looking at the intersection of doing what's in one's own interest versus living out an honest version of your values.

I also think that, in a way, he does

I picked up on some of the parallels, but it still didn't work for me. Sorry.

That's fair.

I think that the character choices make strong sense thematically and would defend them on that front, but it's up to you as a viewer if you buy into it or not.

I picked up on the parallel as well. Part of the reason why I kept misreading the title is that I hadn’t previously encountered the word Calvary so I googled it. I get how it fits the themes but don’t buy it. I also found it really irritating that we spent so much time on his reconciliation with his daughter after the first time he abandoned her for the church only to have him do it a second time by sacrificing himself this way.