New movies to stream this week: 'Wild Mountain Thyme,' 'The Stand In' and more
Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post
Dec. 10, 2020
FacebookTwitterEmail
1of5Sienna Miller, left, and Diego Luna in "Wander Darkly."LionsgateShow MoreShow Less
2of5From left, Nogi Sumiko, Atsushi Matsuda, Hiroshi Hasegawa, Gengoroh Tagame, Akira the Hustler and Tomato Hatakeno in "Queer Japan."Altered InnocenceShow MoreShow Less
3of5
4of5Jamie Dornan, left, and Emily Blunt in "Wild Mountain Thyme."Kerry Brown/Bleecker StreetShow MoreShow Less
5of5
If you can believe Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan as plain Irish farm folk - living on side-by-side parcels of land and both too shy and/or tetched to realize that they (and each other) are Hollywood-hot under all that dung-stained flannel and denim - then "Wild Mountain Thyme" has something to sell you. What it's selling is a slightly gloomy, slightly swoony Hibernian rom-com by John Patrick Shanley, based on his 2014 play "Outside Mullingar." It's not terrible. It's just, like its main characters, somewhat odd. Dornan's Anthony refers to himself as having a "tiny-ness" in his head. And you'll wait the whole movie to find out what that silly thing means. Just as you'll wait the whole movie for him to realize that he and Blunt's besotted Rosemary are meant for each other. (Meanwhile, she briefly gets so fed up with waiting for Anthony to kiss her, faith and begorrah, that she toys with running off with Anthony's crass American cousin, played by Jon Hamm.) I've seen a million romantic comedies with this exact same setup, and they all work the same way. But this one is so frustrating. That said, Shanley's screenplay is kind of funny, in a dismal, doomed Irish way. (There are several deaths in it: more than you typically find in your American romantic comedy, but probably less than you'd see in the average Irish drama.) It has a peaty lyricism to it; it's poetry, to be sure, but smelling of barn muck, not, as the title suggests, flowering herbs. PG-13. Available on various streaming platforms; also showing at the Cinema Arts Theatre. Contains some mature thematic elements and suggestive comments. 102 minutes.