Calvary

So I saw Calvary and it was a pretty interesting movie. It's sort of a cross between a Whodunit murder mystery (technically a "Who will do it" but whatever) and one of those slightly wacky "colorful characters in a small English village" movies like Waking Ned Devine or Calendar Girls, but instead it's in Ireland so while there are still lovely rolling misty green hills, everyone is really cynical and sarcastic.

That's sort of my problem with the movie honestly, to me it seems like everyone in the town decided to have a contest to see who could be the most cynical and world-weary, and everyone's interactions sort of sag underneath it. Probably the best example: Early in the film a character arrives to the town, both of her wrists are heavily bandaged. Every character who sees them says some variation of "Ah, you made the classic mistake, you cut down not across." After the third time it stops being gallows humor and it's just like "what's wrong with these people?"

If you can get past that though there are some very good performances here, Brendan Gleeson's Father James is very compelling as a conflicted, possibly doomed priest and Chris O'Dowd is slightly more serious than he usually is which is an interesting turn for him. All in all a serious, sad movie, but one that I thought was worth seeing.