This recent film has been lauded by critics as the best British film of the year if not of recent times and was a hit at Sundance. Audience response has been a bit less effusive understandably. While it is a very well-crafted piece
and will hold up well to an analysis of its direction, acting, photography, etc., it is surely not everyone’s cup of tea. Nevertheless, director Joanna Hogg is a name to be remembered.
This, her 4thfilm, is partly autobiographical and is set in the 1980’s in London. The heroine, Julie, is from a comfortably off farming family,
old money and breeding. She is an innocent creature, despite using the family’s Knightsbridge flat, and is fast confronting the codes and behaviour of real people. Most of the time she seems very aloof from them. The film is about her growth when she embarks on a relationship with an older man, a sort of dandy who is full of lies and deceit and his own tragic secrets.
At first, flattered by the attention, then horrified when truth comes out, she first breaks up with him, then, makes up and the story goes on. Thanks to very good nuanced acting by Honor Swinton Byrne
in her first main role and Tom Burke as Anthony, the story is credibly portrayed and authentic.
The story is a universal one but here it is depicted in the bosom of the well-to-do and their dull lives, despite the extra disposable income they have. Honor’s mother, Tilda Swinton,
plays the mother here, aged and gentrified but equally as compelling as she usually is on screen.
So, an intelligent script like The Party, some moving scenes
but not too many as much of the real drama occurs off screen, some smart directorial choices and a timeless story about getting involved with the wrong person,
but its rather languid pace and classist setting are an anchor for me that prevents total lift off.
♦♦♦♦
to Israel in the 70s and 80s and the difficulty of this flight given the violence and poverty in their home country and in Sudan through which many travelled. In this tale, based on a true story, smugglers were aided to get refugees to Israel by boat
and plane from a deserted beach resort in Sudan
, which American agents and the Israelis leased from Sudan and operated undercover with real tourists providing a cover.
, Greg Kinnear, Alessandro Nivola and others and the hero is Chris Evans
in a swashbuckling role as the crazy guy who dreams it all up. Israeli writer-director Gideon Raff takes us through all the moves
but despite the cast it is all rather predictable and pedestrian and one feels that opportunities for humour and the absurd were lost.
Which would have lightened and lifted the movie substantially. The general chaos and corruption in Sudan
is about the most convincing thing.
, the daughter of a rabbi who is estranged from him and the flock, living in New York as a photographer. She is a liberal and strong-minded individual played with considerable subtleness by Rachel Weisz. She returns to London to pay her respects to her now deceased father and comes up against the cold shoulders of the locals who remember a scandal that took place and caused her ostracism. She stays with Dovid (excellent Alessandro Nivola)
who is being groomed to be the new rabbi and his wife Esti (Rachel McAdams).
And there’s the rub. Ronit and Esti had a relationship when Esti was single and now it threatens to be rekindled.
The fraught relationships are handled in a very discreet and touching way
with no great judgement by Lelio. As one suspects from the book that this film is adapted from, the focus is on the quest for freedom within a structure that you might wish to belong to or feel you have to but which precisely fetters that freedom.
It is a good look at a contemporary orthodox Jewish community but the lessons are universal. Great acting and good direction although the film loses a little momentum towards the end.
and when a period of belt tightening comes and the Minister wants to reduce staff by offering them a handsome redundancy cheque Checco refuses to take it. He gets transferred
to different places which are less and less hospitable, always working the system in his favour. In the Arctic he meets an Italian research scientist
, liberal and resident in Norway with various children from different Dads.
Checco and Valeria fall in love and living in Bergen, he begins to change his attitude to life becoming much more considerate of the rest
. To the shock of his family who follow the old classist and sexist traditions
. The lure of Italy sees him back in Italy trying to keep his relationship afloat and battling the Ministry’s chief hangwoman (Sonia Bergamasco)
who for her own purposes of promotion has been trying to get rid of him for years.
and what it lacks in reality it makes up for in a pacy direction and a bright and breezy mood. No classic but I have seen a lot worse.
One of them was Pepe Mujica, future President of the country and all three subsequently served in public office. The film is one I would classify as a historic necessity,
a story that needed to be told and a period of shame for Uruguay, however much milder their dictatorship was compared to many others in that hemisphere. The prison scenes are pretty unpleasant
and what director Alvaro Brechner has done is spin them out in a rather monotonous way to give us the sensation of the 12 years passing very slowly. There are a very few moments of hope and humour because basically these guys were held incommunicado for years in poor conditions
– often not jails but silos and dungeons. We also get some flashbacks to illuminate us as to why they were being held. The acting is good by the trio: Alfonso Tort, Antonio de la Torre and Chino Darin
and Mirella Pascual as Mujica’s mother
has a couple of excellent scenes. Photography was good, incidental music by Federico Jusid likewise but I did not like Silvia Perez Cruz’s grating version of The Sounds of Silence. Her inclusion may have been part of the production requirements, the film being funded from 5 different countries.
in that it seems to be a faithful recreation of the events with some artistic creativity thrown in, namely the “sound effects” Mujica hears as a result of his psychosis.
Good film for history teachers but a point down for me in that respect.
After the initial celebrations fitting back into civilian life proves to be a major challenge.
One guy Nimrode (Yoram Toledano)
seems best equipped with a loving wife and family but his boy Hatzav is an unknown to him. His wife Talia (the excellent Yael Abecassis)
also finds that her hitherto ability to keep going and make the right decisions is severely tested. Uri (Ishai Golan) is unsure and feels betrayed as his girlfriend Nurit (Mili Avital)
ended up marrying his brother and having a son. And the third Amiel is supposedly dead but keeps appearing in the life of his bereaving sister Yael.
Meanwhile the Israeli secret service headed by Haim and Iris
keep a watch over the men as they believe that the men know something that they are not telling or could even have been brainwashed by the Arabs. While it is principally a series about adapting to changes in life
and the effects of lengthy captivity there is enough suspense and mystery to keep the tension.
I felt the series written and directed by Gideon Raff got better as it went on with some excellent scenes and observations about life, some very touching moments
and also an insight into the Israeli character given that the country has lived in a sort of state of siege throughout its existence. Definitely watchable and will be looking forward to series 2 filmed three years later.
Well? The most interesting feature, a cosmic blackout that wipes evidence of certain things from Earth like The Beatles and Coca Cola is not explored at all and we are left with the main story of Jack Malik, a struggling musician who decides to reinvent himself as a singer songwriter of all the Beatles hits.
There are moments of delight in that as we recognize the parts of songs used and for me that is pretty much it. The “romance” with childhood friend and first manager Ellie (a capable Lily James)
is pretty unbelievable
and gets tired quickly, we have the dumb friend helping and hindering life Rhys Ifans in Notting Hill and Kate McKinnon as the American star manager – cliched but at energetic.
Himesh Patel
as the lead is satisfactorily confused and not so bright and there is a vaguely humorous subplot with his parents. And then we have Ed Sheeran as himself, no actor but generous in playing the fool.
For me, the music and Sarah Lancashire in a small part were by far the highlights.
around Chicago haunts in summer 1989: an art gallery, a park, the cinema, a meeting in the Projects,
the couple get to know each other all the time insisting it is not a date. An intelligent script and direction by Richard Tanne and correct and believable performances by Parker Sawyers
and Tika Sumpter
bring the film to life and achieve a decent production especially given the subject matter. We want the couple to like each other and get together.
A nice gentle feelgood romance.
who worms his way into a family (aunt and overly controlled spinster niece) with the aim of securing some papers related to a famous poet who died many years previously and may have been the lover of the aunt.
The fairly thin plot revolves around his insistent attempts to achieve his goal by fair means or foul and the nature of the mystery that the old lady does not wish to see revealed. The message which is one of criticism towards obsessive fans and prying bodies seeking to discover what they can about famous people is a relevant and interesting one that seems almost impossible to sustain in our social media driven present. 
as the niece Miss Tina. Both give depth and credibility to their characters and to a rather awkward script. Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Vint gives one of the most wooden performances seen in a long time and shows up the equally leaden script. And Director Julien Landais invents some glam flashbacks that seem right out of place,
homoeroticism included together with some more contemporary society commentaries which seem totally 21stcentury and not the 1885 of the original. Casting Roman Polanski’s daughter and Cara Delevigne’s sister just seems like further artistic snobbery.
He desperately wants to fit in to his peer group and with his good looks and strength is a natural to be invited to parties, etc. His home life is in tatters with constant fights with his mother and an ineffectual father who refuses to follow a hard line of discipline. The fights lead his mother to put him into a sort of reformatory boarding school
during the week, which is not the best decision as it is a den of thugs and the tutors and heads of the school are powerless in the face of this violence. 
The only solution seems to be to call the police and that too is a repeated act of pointlessness. Andre
j decides to avoid being bullied by standing his ground and joining the main bully band in the place, led by a charming thug called Zele and he starts doing favours for Zele by calling in debts and threatening other boys. He also escapes to the city as much as he can to join Zele and his group in coke-fueled parties.
The nihilism is evident again here. Things come to a head when Zele asks him to do a job that he renegues on with the result that the other boy takes revenge on Andrej. All this is complicated by the fact that Andrej is keen on Zele and they have slept together.
Zele is clearly bi, he has a girlfriend but he enjoys the power game with Andrej and the latter is just a bit too young and innocent to see what is happening until it is too late.
and Timon Sturbej are thoroughly convincing. A very competent small film.
passionfilm 