Thoughts on Shirley Valentine and The Sisters Brothers

I really liked a couple of movies I watched on Hulu this week, Shirley Valentine and The Sisters Brothers.

Shirley Valentine is a 1989 British film that was nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Actress and Best Original Song). It’s a fun movie about a frustrated Liverpool housewife who talks to the audience a lot about her no-good husband, her obnoxious adult children, her stifling and boring life, and feeling underestimated by everyone and losing her sense of self. So she ends up going on a vacation to Greece with her friend, has a fling with a local guy, and is actually able to breathe and be herself outside of her identity as wife and mother.

I found the movie to be really funny, with a witty heroine that had a charming personality, and was right along with her wanting a more fulfilling life, especially wanting her to get away from her childish lout of a husband. I also especially liked Joanna Lumley’s cameo as an old schoolmate living the fabulous life that Shirley wants, and the revelation about how she affords such glamour was a pretty funny truth bomb. So this was a pleasure to watch.

The Sisters Brothers is a Western that came out last year, that I missed in theaters, and bombed hard, despite good critical reviews. It was directed by Jacques Audiard, who did the excellent French crime thrillers Read My Lips and The Prophet, and is a beautifully-shot film to watch. Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly are Charlie and Eli Sisters, hunting down a gold prospector (Riz Ahmed, who plays his role with this creepy quiet calm) who stole from their boss, and are basically notorious outlaws to boot. Ahmed’s character meets up with Jake Gyllenhaal’s character along the way, and it’s basically a manhunt story in 1851 Oregon, but that goes in some weird and unconventional directions.

The movie took a while to get going, but once it did, I was really into it, and enjoyed the moments of gallows humor with violence. The cast were excellent in this, though I felt like I never really connected with Gyllenhaal’s character, I never really got his purpose in the story aside from being a random confidant to Ahmed’s guy. But I thought John C. Reilly was great, he just plays his roles with so much sympathetic heart, you just can’t help but want him to turn out OK. So the film was pretty good, but just came and went in theaters last year. Well, at least it’s on Hulu now to enjoy.