AgentLouisa

Absolute classic.

Wonderfully darkly comedic, brilliant characters. Fantastic acting, directing, cinematography. The lucky shamrock of Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Martin McDonagh. Moments of concentrated silence where viewers, seated in the dark cinema, tried to stifle their tears, and failed, moments after laughter. An island so beautiful that when we left the cinema we immediately wanted to go live there...or maybe visit. And please, please, see it at the cinema.

An interesting 20th century time period - I did not know that the Republic of Ireland was still governed by the British then, so I learned something historic on top of learning something about myself.

It's an-anti buddy movie of sorts. Why does Colm now hate Padraic? Colm must hate him, because of the extremes he goes too with his fiddling fingers. Literally as I'm writing this, a couple of weeks later, I'm musing on these two former friends, Pad's sister Siobhan and donkey, the pub; Dominic, Pad's young friend, grown up like the psychological version of rickets from the island-isolation from his own age (covid-lockdown, anyone?) cemented in by an abusive father-son relationship which everyone ignores, and his dazzlingly awkward precursive monologue with Siobhan. And island life - the beauty but how beauty is not enough, not even in the sea and the cliffs and the hills. So much but I won't say anymore because, please see it and let it talk to you, quietly.

What I loved about Star Trek was the utopian future it embodied - a wonderful hope that one day we'd have world peace and hunger, homelessness, bigotry, etc, etc would be a thing resigned to their history and our present.

Previous series of Star Trek, and Picard, if I'm honest seemed to have forgotten that the threat to the Federation comes not from within - if society's problems have been solved why would it? - but from the clash with other cultures who haven't got this yet sorted out. But we always reach out with the hand of friendship with the Prime Directive in mind. Blowing stuff up is not the way, but that doesn't mean you can't have the threat of blowing stuff up!

So, yay, this series and this ending is right back to that. And they've gone to lengths to show us the beauty of the team and family, friendships, communication, no lone heroes. Embracing emotion. The hard way not the easy way. I was glad to get to know more of the crew. The series wasn't perfect but it made me very emotional, as you'd want from great drama.

Awesome stuff. I nearly didn't watch this season but I'm so glad I did now. Looking forward to the next one.

'I don't like talking to her. I don't like spending time with her. But I love her. I don't want to lose her.' Robin is losing her mum to dementia. I lost my mum to cancer. Feelings are complicated and this gets it exactly right.