This comedy with plenty of dark moments did not always promise to sustain the early scenes when in the whole of the middle part, the heroine (an excellent composition by Zoe Kazan
) is in a coma. Nevertheless, Michael Showalter is able to bring things around and produce a highly satisfying work which starts with cross-cultural relationships (Kumail is Pakistani), stand up comedy
and strange conditions. Very much a film of its time. Based on a real story with Kumail Nanjiani playing himself effectively, many of the supporting parts are gems, especially Holly Hunter and Ray Romano as Emily’s parents
and Anupam Kher and Zenobia Shroff as the traditionalist Pakistanis.
The screenplay has plenty of laugh out loud moments as you would expect but also some very poignant bits and at one point it began to drag. I think most people will find situations to identify with in the story 
and in the film which in hindsight gives the impression of being a very well-crafted movie.
★★★★+
and an ongoing battle with her mother 
who sees Lady Bird as being unrealistic and idealistic. Her experience (Laurie Metcalf, very credible)
is less sanguine as she has to hold down two jobs to support the family, a husband losing his and Lady bird’s brother and his girlfriend also under the same roof and working as packers in the local supermarket. The year is 2002 and in Sacramento things were tough. And there is also the question of best friends which come and go with this year of transition.
totally credible as this slightly way-out girl with the pink hair. A host of young up and comers play her supports: Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet,
Odeya Rush. Great to see so much talent together.
and Gran (excellent Gemma Jones)
are hardly supportive. John is gay and repressing it largely with alcohol and some violent flings with passing trade. He is rage personified,
an ugly character who inhabits a victim role. Along comes Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu),
a Romanian farm hand paid for a week’s lambing duties. 
After some bumps and scraps and after Gheorghe shows he knows what he is doing, John starts to open up to the loving tenderness of the other man. Theirs is not any easy relationship – the dour northerners and the silent Balkan but thanks to the excellent acting you feel every bump on the road to John’s transformation to a more open, humble and loving person. 
Josh O’Connor is fine in the lead and it is a great debut from Yorkshireman Francis Lee.
with apricot and peach orchards all around, swimming holes and young horny people.
James Ivory has done a spectacular job of adapting André Aciman’s novel and managed to keep all the internal thoughts and feelings, largely due also to the magnificent performance of Timothée Chalamet in the lead role of Elio.
The pacing of the movie is languid but natural, as Elio and Oliver (Armie Hammer), his father’s student assistant begin to realise that they have feelings for each other,
at a time in the early 80´s when this was not so easy to admit to openly. Luca Guadagnino, the director, chose a mansion to film it in near his town and the choice takes us back to Bertolucci and other Italian directors who have set films in the idyllic doldrum days of midsummer.
And the last scene is so tender and heartbreaking but so true with the added bonus of Sufjan Stevens beautiful song. 
What is also nice is that this is not a film of people fighting each other, but rather a film of discovery, challenges and learning to flow with what life brings to us.
Highly recommended.
and finding it very hard to decide anything. I had no idea things were so leaderless. Churchill, it seems, won through because of his better oratory although many quite rightly found it empty of content and because of his alliance with the equally dithery King George.
Halifax comes out of it as a petulant schemer
who first turns down the premiership and then does everything he can to sink the Churchill administration. I wonder. I was not very convinced by Anthony McCarten’s screenplay, even if he is a Kiwi. The artifice of Churchill relying on his secretary,
barely out of school seems pretty ridiculous. We could have seen more of his relationship with wife Clemmie, played by the ever-reliable and interesting Kristin Scott-Thomas.
And the scene when Churchill goes down into the tube for the first time ever is just so clichéd, it is barely watchable.
Again what saves this movie is an extraordinary performance by Gary Oldman, unrecognisable in the role and full of tics and gestures that are both exaggerated and credible. Somehow he manages to play a part that is screaming out virtuoso and prima donna and yet makes it accessible and humble at the same time. I would have liked to have seen more than just this episode of the war. So, a great performance rescues a film with some dubious historical interpretations and facts (apparently the type of tube train didn’t exist on that line in that era).
and social commentary. Sally Hawkins in superb form plays Elisa a cleaner in a military lab in the early 60’s. She is mute – there is a Pygmalion story here too with Eliza Doolittle in mind. She has two friends, fellow cleaner Zelda, a sympathetic practical woman played by Octavia Spencer (always the help)
and Giles (Richard Jenkins), her gay cartoonist neighbour.
She and Zelda discover that the lab is harbouring an amphibious creature from the Amazon,
which is being mistreated by the zealous Strickland (a mean Michael Shannon)
and they resolve with the help of a scientist to release him. In the middle of all this Elisa falls in love with him. The plot also includes a cold war element with the Russians
and various references to the time period through the use of films
and TV shows of the era.
and somewhat magical whole, which for its originality may end up being Best Film in many awards ceremonies.
takes him south to LA for a job in a private boy’s school where they will attempt to restart their lives. Despite the head being a sympathetic man and despite having counselling and medicine, Dad doesn’t seem to manage to make headway.
French teacher, Carine (Julie Delpy)
is keen to start something with him but is largely rebuffed. Meanwhile, Wes is given the job of homework partner to a girl named Lacy (Odeya Rush),
whose family is breaking apart and who can do know better than mutilate herself and run with the wild boys in town. Wes has a crush on her but how to get closer?
He is also last in the school’s cross country running team to add to his woes. By the end of the film, most of the problems are starting to turn around and the treatment of the father’s depression has been well-handled, in part due to Simmons’s excellent performance and the very clear shrink (Harold Perrineau).
I liked the movie. It is nothing very new but considering it could have been really mawkish, it is quite smoothly handled by director and writer Kurt Voelker.
Isabelle Huppert, who is always excellent, surpasses herself in the role of Michele Leblanc, a well-off owner of a video game company who has a messy life to start with and one that has become more complicated with a stranger attacking and raping her in her home.
Not keen to involve the police, she just continues with her life, playing a wait and see game with the assailant who returns. At some point we discover who he is and how Michele turns it into a cat and mouse game.
As the film continues we also get to see that Michele is a difficult character with a load of baggage and a hardness and cruelty towards those around her, perhaps as a result of being the daughter of a mass-murderer.
Only her best friend (Anne Consigny) seems to escape but even so Michele cheats on her with Anne’s husband. Her mother, her ex-husband, her son (Jonas Bloquet), her neighbour (Laurent Lafitte)
and her staff are all the butt of her comments so it is no surprise she has enemies. What is incredible is that Huppert makes us feel a degree of sympathy towards her. She is a single woman defending herself and refusing to be taken as a victim.
What Christopher Radcliff and Lauren Wolkstein manage is to create a tremendous atmosphere helped by Todd Banhazi’s camerawork. We are not sure what the two are doing together and it seems that the younger one, Sam (calling himself Jeremiah) either lies or has an active imagination.
The directors reveal clues as to what has happened throughout the movie via odd glimpses or flashbacks: we know there has been a fire, a murder, abuse and a black cat and there are other things going down we don’t know about. Even when we get closer to the truth near the end, we see how other people (like the classmate who takes Sam in) distort the truth as well.
This look at our social conventions, together with the trauma going on within the boy make for an intriguing film rather than the emptiness the criticisms suggest. James Freedson-Jackson is fine as Sam, with a blank face
hiding a million thoughts. Alex Pettyfer does well as Nick, the older guy.
An acceptable first film.
is both shocking and verging on hilarious as Mildred Hayes (excellent Frances McDormand)
wages her campaign against the local sheriff, a charismatic cancer victim played to a tee by Woody Harrelson
and his deputy, the impulsive and brainless mother’s boy Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell, superb).
The film works on many levels: apart from being a microcosm of many societies today, we see the power of synchronicity, the strength and ultimate weakness of beliefs, the flowing power of love and the need for understanding of others. Supporting cast is great too
and this film which fits into the Coen country is definitely a breath of fresh air
despite all the violence and hate in it.
passionfilm 