This is a first film by Nils-Erik Ekblom and team from Finland
and is a nice coming of age summer romance with a touch of wacky Finnish humour that works better regarding the lead pair and the zany sister than with Miku’s mother who is a bit too over-the-top. Other than that, it is a wry look at trying to find a summer romance
in the Finnish lakes area especially when you are trying to come out as gay and your brother and parents keep wanting to pair you off with a local girl. Loads of alcohol consumption, distracted parents and sunlight! Mikko Kauppila
and Valtteri Lehtinen
are both convincing as Miku and Elias, 
the former awkward and at times impetuous and the second one daring, sociable and moody. Amanda Virolainen does a good couple of scenes as Elias’s mad sister. Quite short and quite sweet all around.
♦♦♦
and take those inside hostage for weeks while they negotiate with the government (Japanese origin President a la Fujimori). The film is basically about how the hostages adjust to life in captivity and how slowly the bonds with the largely young guerrillas strengthen during that time.
The ending is not an entirely happy one. If you can set aside the improbabilities, it is a watchable film, Moore, carrying it as usual. Ken Watanabe
is pretty wooden as the Japanese businessman smitten with her and it is Christophe Lambert,
Ryo Kase and Maria Mercedes Coroy
in supporting roles who are more interesting. Sebastian Koch
as a Swiss Red Cross envoy shuttles between guerrillas and government unfruitfully and Tenoch Huerta does all right as the guerrilla leader. Smatterings of opera
appear to provide some relief. Wet Sunday afternoon fare.
to break up over a period of 17 years with the film basically organized into 4 chapters. One has a son and the boy
becomes part of their family in picturesque Thuringia for a long time
. Most of the rest of the film revolves around difficult economic and work moments and health issues.
all of which have the audience begging them to get on with it.
which are pretty sombre as well. Some lightness in all the gloom is clearly needed. As a consequence of that, although we understand much of the character of the two men and they are not bad people, they are not very likeable either so when you have protagonists you don’t care about, the film gets harder to follow. There was also a notable absence of secondary characters or support.
When most humans go through bad times, friends rally round especially if the problem is a fight within the couple. No wonder one of them had a nervous breakdown here as he had no one to turn to.
and taking place over about three days, this is the story of Collin, a young black guy who is finishing a two-year probation. He has to stay out of trouble for this time and then will be able to move back home and out of the type of hostel he is in. Trouble is that his best friend Myles (Rafael Casal)
is a hot-headed white who thinks he’s a black and has a knack of creating trouble wherever he goes.
The two are removal van guys and rappers so the film has plenty of music and rapping poetry. In a style reminiscent of Do the Right Thing we follow the guys around and see what life is like for them: constant near brushes with the law, a sense of victimization, the role of women,
the presence of guns and drugs, the gentrification of parts of the area.
After a slowish start, the film gets more interesting and includes a couple of good twists towards the end. Daveed Diggs is excellent in the lead.
It’s hard to say if this will be the prototype of another series of similar movies about life on the lean side
but this one has plenty to offer, and in particular a good script written by the co-stars.
This is the underside of society, people who fall down and then pick themselves up struggling to make the end of the month.
Charlie (Charlie Plummer) finds more containment in the trainer Del (Steve Buscemi, good) and jockey (Chloe Sevigny)
than in his own drunk womanizing father (Travis Fimmel)
and soon he finds himself without father who is killed in a fight. Upon learning that the racehorse, Lean on Pete is to be sent to the knackers in Mexico, Charlie takes off with the racehorse across country
to find his only living relative, an aunt living in Wyoming. This part of the film is a road movie through the down and outs of American society and shows acts of aggression and acts of kindness in equal measure.
Charlie Plummer is a find in the lead role and conveys the pain and stress of his search for a safe home, matched with a determination
and a sense of goodness and decency. This lack of a safe home is something that I sense more and more people are lacking in this world today. Lean on Pete is a sobering film,
perhaps not quite a classic but one that has a rare beauty, sadness and authenticity. And though the horse has a key role, it is really the story of a boy.
Her son goes to school with the son
of a PR executive Emily, (Blake Lively) who befriends Stephanie, ostensibly it seems to have someone to babysit her son when she is too busy at work. The two women become friends in spite of their differences.
Kendrick has the goody two-shoes nerd down to a tee even though her character here has got the odd skeleton. Lively plays Emily like a Sharon Stone vamp
and dominates the screen in her scenes. Emily is married to Sean, a British writer whose main personality trait seems to be an active libido.
He’s played by personable Henry Golding from Crazy Rich Asians.
The film really gets going when Emily disappears, claiming a business crisis and Stephanie decides to do some detective work and employ her vlog viewers to help. Soon, she realizes that nothing is what it seems.
who comes from an odd religious family with skeletons in the cupboard. She herself has special powers that come to light as a sort of epilepsy
and, seemingly are triggered by extreme feelings including love, which she is experiencing for the first time at university. Her love interest
is a girl, Anja, who originally seems straight but ends up under Thelma’s spell. Her parents
try to support her and father Trond,
a doctor, has her on medication that we soon learn is too strong. There are many interesting low-key clues and plenty of more gothic symbols: crows, snakes and self-combusting fire.
Trier lulls us into moments of calm and then quietly delivers one surprise after another. Excellent photography,
appealing music and a terrific lead performance by Eili Harboe,
make this a pleasant reminder of how to make a horror movie
without expensive special effects and how religion and sexual awakening can add important ingredients. Definitely recommended.
which is now all the norm in reality show Trumpland. Hart is seen as shocked that this could happen, but now? 
gets it right some of the time but is not altogether convincing. Vera Farmiga
has a smaller role but nails it in a couple of scenes and J K Simmons
kicks off well but runs out of steam. Sara Paxton
as the lover, Donna Rice, comes off about best of all in her brief intervention.
with an absent father and a difficult mother, through to his early days composing with Bernie Taupin
and then the liftoff in the US thanks to a success at the Troubadour in LA.
Then follow the glam years which inevitably end in coke, alcoholism, etc, etc and breakdowns
as Elton struggles with his own identity and his sensation that no one around him is trustworthy.
A failed marriage denying his own homosexuality and then a sense of recovery complete the movie which has a group therapy session triggering memories as the narrative thread
and songs sung by whoever is appropriate illustrating the moments.
and well produced, the acting is fine and the recreation of each era suitably glitzy
or dull and seemingly authentic. I wouldn’t say it is a great film but it is certainly satisfying and will have you humming Elton’s songs in your head for hours after.
Jamie Bell brings great empathy to the role of Taupin and Bryce Dallas Howard as the victimising mother and Gemma Jones as the quietly supportive gran work well.
tries to push the boundaries of her cage a little and Andrew,
the younger brother has discovered the theatre and Madonna to the father’s chagrin.
has buried six friends in a year including his lover and is HIV positive. None of which he can tell his family.
The first half of the film recreates the tension of this silence and the awkward playing by social conventions. It is only after he finally plucks up the courage to tell a girl friend that things start to move.
There are moving scenes with both his parents although nothing is directly brought to the surface. He leaves his brother an emotional final message.
and while there is nothing very new about any of it, Cory Michael Stewart leads a sensitive cast in what is essentially a sad movie. A little light and uplift would have been good.
passionfilm 