Film Reviews by NA

Several characters navigate their day of rest while gossiping about an escaped convict who is being concealed in a bedroom by his ex. An early example of the kitchen sink film, with crime elements somewhere between Brighton Rock and The Blue Lamp. It concerns crime like those two (even having the lead copper played by Dixon of Dock Green) but falls much more into the drizzly, dreary side of the sink than the grittiness of the aforementioned.

So it's not quite as exciting, despite a stunning looking last act chase, but it does get a bit saucy, rooting around the bored housewife's bedroom and suggesting the more permissive times to come for the ladies...which is interesting. Perhaps it's that willingness to break taboo and show the psychological realism of everyday life choices that has made its legacy. Anyway, interesting social realist/noir cross-over which could have had a little more bite, but makes up for it with the tickle. 8/10

Better Things follows the lives of a group of teenagers in a depressed seaside town as they struggle through life after a close friend dies.

I loved how the actors here all fitted the setting. They aren't the pretty hollywood types, they're real people. But that is also the problem with its performances. They are at times believable, but at others odd and lifeless. Put that alongside the greys, and blues and generally cold atmosphere and you get a very cold film which even in its most intimate moments still feels distant, passive and fabricated.

After a while, it becomes clear that this is all intentional, but the reasons why never emerge from the sea of passive grim...it's just another sub-Haneke film doling out an emotional glaciation that it doesn't care to examine or comment on.

Grim, grim, grim and unhelpful. Hopkins seemed to please the critics with his debut and tout it as the future of social realism but I much preferred his follow up; which did actually go deeper and give us something new and insightful in those terms.

This, nah.

6/10

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