Category: Cinema Film Review

Staring – Toby Jones, Bill Nighy, Tom Courtney, Blake Harrison, Michael Gambon, Daniel May’s, Bill Patterson and Catherine Zeta Jones

This comedy is based on the TV series and is probably easiest to understand if you are familiar with the series as there are a lot of in jokes and not much of an introduction to the characters, their backgrounds or catchphrases.

It includes all the regular characters and most of the supporting ones too, including Mrs Pike, Mrs Fox, the Miss Godfrey’s and a first time appearance for the infamous Mrs Mainering.  It also has cameos from the 2 surviving actors Ian Lavender and Frank Williams.

The platoon are told to be on the lookout for a Nazi spy hiding in Warmington on Sea at the same time most of the men are distracted by a female reporter who is keen to learn more about their work.

It is better than some of the other reviews suggest.  It is different to the TV series as the cast are different and they have different locations and sets (although Jones’s van looks very similar – possibly identical) it is still funny and fans of the show will get a lot of the in jokes, some extra information about the characters and suspicions confirmed about some them too.

8/10

Starring  Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci.

Spotlight is the powerful true story of the Spotlight investigative team of journalists at the Boston Globe who investigate the story of local Catholic priest who is accused of molesting a child and discover the problem of abusive Catholic Priests to is much wider than they  thought.

The film tells the story from the journalists points of view and shows the difficulties they and the victims had to face when trying to bring the story to the public’s attention.

10/10

Director – Lenny Abrahamson

Writer – Emma O’Donoghue

Staring – Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, Sean Bridges, William H Macy.

The story is told through the eyes of a 5 year old boy Jack who lives with his mother “MA” in “Room”.  Jack has never experienced life outside of room and doesn’t even know there is and outside.  After his 5th birthday Ma tells Jack the truth about why they live in Room – she is called Joy and was abducted and raped and is trapped in a shed in her captors back yard.  She plots to help Jack escape so that he can get help. Although he is very scared of an unknown world he is very brave and manages to get help to Ma. The film then shows how they meet up with Joy’s family and start to get on with their lives.

This is a very thought provoking drama with especially good performances from Brie Larson and young Jacob Tremblay.

10/10

Director – Tom Hooper

Staring – Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Amber Heard

The Danish Girl is inspired around the true story of married Danish Artists Einer and Gerder Wegener in the 1920s.  Following Einer standing in as a female model for his wife, he begins to live his life as a woman Lili Elbe and eventually undergoing one of the first attempts of male to female gender reassignment surgery.

7/10

Director – David O Russell

Staring – Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper.

Joy is based on a true story of a divorce mother who was determined to realise her dreams of seeing her inventions becoming successful.  It is a domestic family drama with 4 generations of a family living together, in any spare bit of space in a small house.  As a child Joy was always inventing things but initially in adulthood she spends her time looking after her family.  During this time she sees a problem with normal mops and invents a better type of mop.  The story then follow how she gets funding, through to selling them on QVC and how she progresses in the future.

It was an interesting story and I wasn’t familiar with the story of Joy Mangano before and it made me want to find out more about the story behind the film.

7/10