Film Reviews by JH

A young woman (Kendrick) returns to the family farm after many years, due to tragedy -- her lone brother's apparent suicide -- and grapples with a difficult situation and a combative relationship with her father.

A very British film to me: fine performances from both Kendrick and Troughton both controlled and realistically playing their parts, moody well-shot rural scenes providing some atmosphere to the bleak world: yet also one exhaustively dour, thin on plot, drama.

It's clearly sincere in the portrayal of the realities of modern farming and rural life, which may well be it's main drive alongside the similar-yet-different father\daughter relationship, but this left me cold.

Not your average war film, there's not much on dialogue, narrative or heroics to be found here but what I did find was a portrayal of endurance, and one hell of a well crafted piece of cinema.

Rarely do I believe in the 'needs to be seen on the big screen' espousal thrown at many big budget efforts, but in this case I really wish I'd seen this on IMAX rather than the small screen.

The only real script note in play here is the intentionally mind-fuddling overlapping time narratives, a bit Inception-like and not, where the 3 main areas of interest: the initial group of soldiers from the beach, Tom Hardy in the skies, and Mark Rylance in his little boat, slowly conflate together in their own little time bubbles, it is I suppose meant to parallel how confused that event really was even if it could be described as a little too on the nose.

The technical aspects here, the scale and practical effects are sheer wonderment. How anyone could find this 'dull' with that pulsating score keeping the tension up whenever it wants (more often than not) kept my attention.

Superior film-making.

Wartime-set drama (during the Blitz), that's part cap-tip to working women, part acclamation to the power of cinema.

Arterton as the lead, Catrin, is hired early on as the sole woman on a small script writing team for the Ministry of Information, looking to the inspire the many at home and Americans abroad into joining the war in one swoop.

Arterton is solid enough in her portrayal, and the script nuanced enough to push the stories & plight of women in general with tact -- no grandstanding here -- and she's an entertaining, bright foil to Sam Claflin's lead-writer Buckley.

The romantic sub-plots here are a little to predictable, as is the denouement, thought Catrin is interesting enough for these to be passed off as forgivable.

The film clearly takes some delight in it's portrayal of old-timey film-making, and the actors working on them (Bill Nighy a deft-hand here as usual).

Entertaining, charming stuff here with a nice trim running time and engaging performances. Nothing especially stellar.

On the face of it this is a standard cops-and-robbers bank heist tale, with a chalk/cheese pair of protagonists and a cliche edge-of-retirement lawman to give chase.

The script here though is sharper than your average. Jeff Bridges (on form) as the lawman, pulls out zingers a-plenty and there's generally plenty of black humour to go around. A deft melding of the ol' Slow West (gun) stock with a modern layering of dead-end ghost towns and bank foreclosures: the huge Texan landscapes & skies, both entirely empty, the camera snaps up whenever the opportunity arises, the moody score (when not dipping into Country-Rock) and dialogue all contributing to the very definite feel of a moody mourning, like something in this world is lost or broken.

Old fashioned American film-making, albeit from a Scottish director, I found this is a little lethargic to get going but by the end I was completely sold.

A teacher begins a group on the concept of Autocracy and goes about (innocently) getting his students to conform.

Things get out of hand, in a very predictable fashion.

Essentially belonging to a group can be delightful, yet castigating and ignoring outsiders has it's drawbacks. Well done indeed.

The fact that this is German lends some credence but this feels like it relies far too much on the subjects (and possibly the audience too) being teenagers, as it really feels like a lot of teenagers acting like teenagers -- one of the initial group drops out simply because the 'uniform' doesn't suit her -- and the many expected graffiti and partying scenes get annoying very quickly.

The concept is still largely unbelievable in a modern world, and the script does little to convince otherwise.

Here you have a character that lives a routine, un-ornamented life, yet breaks away from the average by the way he observes things, the small details of his life.

He writes about these things, and the film overlays his poetry to play this up but for me I found just watching Adam Driver watch people, pick-up objects and generally observe: I couldn't help but start looking at things the way he does. Gave the film a nice, slightly melancholic, moody feel which I really enjoyed.

He lives in an apparently care-free world with his girlfriend, whom is almost of the flip of him: she constantly searches and chases her dreams, spends her days learning the guitar, re-styling their house (rather 'interestingly'), engaging in 'potluck' cooking; while he watches on, slightly amused but never bothered by her foibles, if anything entirely contented and in love.

Only when he temporarily cannot write does the character seem to disappear, even in the face of a breathtaking vista, it's the written word that lights him up.

A really pleasantly paced film.