Saoirse Ronan Appreciation Week

Saoirse Ronan is one of my favourite actors and I decided to have my very own Saiorse Ronan appreciation week, watching six five of her movies. Two of them I had seen before and four were new ones. I was also planning to watch On Chesil Beach but I thought I had borrowed it on DVD from the library but actually had planned to watch it from the library’s streaming service and managed to use up all my loans for the month before watching it.

I also wanted to write about them because I enjoy reading other people’s posts and remarks about movies and discovering new films. Human curation at its best. But then I started writing and I have such a hard time figuring out what to write about them.

I don’t want it to be just plot recaps and I want to avoid any kind of major spoilers for sure. I’m not any kind of expert on filmmaking, so I don’t have big insights on how brilliantly some films are edited or colour graded. I can barely identify subtle larger than life undertones from the stories.

I’m just a normal, innocent man who enjoys watching movies and experience great stories. With that said, here are the movies I watched during my week-long Saoirse Ronan Appreciation Week.

Monday: Hanna

Hanna (2011)

6.7/10

3.4/5

66%

Directed by Joe Wright

Starring Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana

A sixteen-year-old girl who was raised by her father to be the perfect assassin is dispatched on a mission across Europe, tracked by a ruthless intelligence agent and her operatives.

Hanna is a movie I’ve seen a couple of times before. Since it’s the first movie of her that I’ve seen, I figured it’s only appropriate to start this week with this movie. Hanna is a CIA agent adventure that hits all the classic beats. It runs a lot of parallels with Bourne movies: an agent gone rogue, the agency hunting them down, the main character not knowing where they come from and a lot of turns and twists.

At the same time, it’s a story of young Hanna who for the first time in her life explores what it would be like to have a normal life as she spends part of the movie with a family with a couple of young children.

The story doesn’t cut quite as deep into its potential and at times, it feels there’s bit too many parallel things going on so that there’s not enough time to go even deeper into the most interesting bits. Regardless, it’s a solid action movie.

Tuesday: Brooklyn

Brooklyn (2015)

7.5/10

3.8/5

73%

Directed by John Crowley

Starring Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson

An Irish immigrant lands in 1950s Brooklyn, where she quickly falls into a romance with a local. When her past catches up with her, however, she must choose between two countries and the lives that exist within.

Brooklyn tells the story of Eilis, an Irish girl who moves to Brooklyn, New York to chase a better life. It’s a lovely story about growth, finding yourself, love, adjusting to other people’s expectations and how living abroad changes you and your relationship with your home town and people there.

While moving across the Atlantic must have been so wildly different in the 1950s than it was in 2010s, I found some interesting parallels in the story to my own journey moving to San Francisco and especially when coming home.

Saoirse Ronan showcases once again how expressive she is in portraying different types of person and how Eilis’ personal growth turns her from a shy girl to a confident young woman.

Wednesday: Lady Bird

Lady Bird (2017)

7.4/10

3.8/5

73%

Directed by Greta Gerwig

Starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts

A fiercely independent teenager tries to make her own way in the world while wanting to get out of her hometown of Sacramento, California, and to get away from her complicated mother and recently-unemployed father.

This movie was DARK. Not in tone or story but in lack of lighting. I’m not sure if that was my DVD copy’s problem or if every copy of the movie suffers from it. So many scenes that had no reason to be dark were so dark I had to focus really hard to see what was happening.

This is the first movie of Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet. They have such wonderful chemistry together both on and off screen.

Thursday: The Outrun

The Outrun (2024)

6.9/10

3.7/5

68%

Directed by Nora Fingscheidt

Starring Saoirse Ronan, Paapa Essiedu, Nabil Elouahabi

After living life on the edge in London, Rona attempts to come to terms with her troubled past. Hoping to heal, she returns to the wild beauty of Scotland's Orkney Islands where she grew up.

The Outrun is the movie that gave me the idea for this week. I saw it had come available in a streaming service I subscribed to so I decided to not only watch it but also a bunch of other movies of Ronan’s.

The Outrun is a great movie. It tells a heavy story of alcoholism and the pain it creates. The movie strikes a brilliant balance oscillating between contrasting tough moments with joy and recovery. All of that is magnified by Saoirse Ronan’s great performance as the main character Rona.

Friday: Little Women

Little Women (2019)

7.8/10

4.2/5

79%

Directed by Greta Gerwig

Starring Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen

In 19th century Massachusetts, the March sisters--Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy--on the threshold of womanhood, go through many ups and downs in life and endeavor to make important decisions about their futures.

I’m not usually a big fan of period drama but Little Women has such a stacked cast that it’s hard not to love. Saiorse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Timothée Chalamet and Meryl Streep are all such amazing actors and superstars.

The movie manages to stay on story even with its wide array of main characters and plot points.