Reviews

A good story that unfolds well with a few mild surprises, but nothing very dramatic. Fits together well when all is revealed. Acting and production values are top class. The opening scene is important but its relevance only becomes clear as the story unfolds. An interesting character study of a woman struggling with mixed emotions and loyalty and of her relationship with those with whom she is involved. She does things that seem irrational and watching it we feel we would do things differently, but that doesn't make it not believable. Many of the other characters don't seem to understand her dilemma, while we do. Recommended.

Words fail me at describing how bad this is. Totally unbelievable story: I know it was meant to be. Terrible acting. Poor casting: Daniel Craig with a bad southern U. S. accent, really? Were those sets or CGI? In either case it was a complete waste of resource. Location would have been far far better. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy over the top spoof movies, if they are clever and stylish. This was none of that. Slapstick (non) humour. Agathe Christie style whodunnit all combined to create two hours plus of pure tedium. Confession: I abandoned it after just over an hour in disbelief as to how awful it is. Only movie I have ever given a zero.

Jane Lapotaire give a tour de force performance as an angry lesbian who disrupts everyone around her in her life. But it's not as simple as that with difficult topics such as mixed sexuality, and child abuse issues. Even today, 2022, this material would be considered courageous.

It is billed as a love triangle but that is a gross oversimplification of the complex relationships between all of the characters. The three main characters are a man and two women with a brief appearance of two other women. All five lives are tangled by this strong, feisty, troubled lesbian main character. Add to all of that there are religious and political issues discussed which are just as relevant today as they were in 1975/1976 when it was made and shown. There is also the British class system interfering in their lives. Television drama is rarely as good as this. Acting by everyone, including two children, is superb.

The movie seemed to consist of Oldam (Mank) ranting on, offending just about everyone around him, and showing no human sensitivity. It was difficult to follow it chronologically despite descriptions between scenes. Maybe it was accurate but it was neither riveting drama nor entertaining. At times it had the oratory of a stage play but never achieved the rich language nor dramatic intensity such a play would have needed. It was more of a one man alcoholic rant than what the story could have achieved, given how brilliant the Citizen Kane script was.

Disappointing.

I gave up after the first half hour. It seemed bereft of direction, plot or story, just a rambling group of people saying not much.

Loosely based on a true story but had it not been so, it would been not quite believable. American widow, Keaton, still unfortunately playing a much older Annie Hall, almost even wearing the same clothes, meets a man living in a shack on Hampstead Heath. An unlikely bond borne out of two very different needs. Heartwarming, light, beautifully photographed. Brendan Gleeson's acting is superb but fail to lift this movie out of mediocre.

An Oscar worthy performance by Renee Zellweger. She totally gets into the character of Judy Garland. You will feel Judy's pain in this performance. Tells the story, a brief chapter in Judy's life, her brief comeback in London. A stunning, emotional tour de force. Slow at times but necessarily so for the impact of the pain and emotions. Highly recommended.

Both leading actors were superb, as was the direction and cinematography. Being a true biopic gave it value and depth. Unfortunately it was a painfully slow movie, the story could have been equally effectively told in a shorter movie.

A quiet and unassuming film that tells in simple beauty and detail the poignant story of a man who has suffered tragic loss, who takes a job as a teacher in a Montreal school. He relates to his class and they to him, the class dealing with a recent tragedy of their own. A totally believable telling. Reminiscences of the British film "To sir with Love", but subtler and with feeling. The acting by all characters, including many children is outstanding. Emotionally powerful and rewarding. Highly recommended.

This is a slow moving totally believable and compelling story of a relationship between two writers. Both leading actors give outstanding performances but it is the character played by Glenn Close who owns the story and she tells it brilliantly. It unfolds slowly and meticulously with the feel of a drama written for the stage, which it is not. Highly recommended.

Nothing happens in this movie that can be considered of the slightest interest to an audience. All of the characters are basically neither interesting nor likeable. They seem to wander around aimlessly looking tor whatever. The few attempts at humour fell flat. I could not finish it.

Shocking, brilliant, unforgettable. The most brilliant indictment of the idiocy of war. Don't be discouraged by the title or the fact that it is a musical.

It contrasts the propaganda and misinformation with the real horror and cost in lives of the war. It does it with music and song and with readings. All based on fact.

A film that you will remember for ever.

Having been brought up in working class Britain in the 40s, 50s and 60s I can say that this film is totally inaccurate. Britain was much grimmer than this. According to this movie, John Lennon had a comfortable middle class upbringing. John would have been 15 in 1955. At that time citizens of working class Liverpool experienced real hardship and poverty. They would have lived in small, cold, damp, terraced (row) houses, many of them with no bathroom, quite different from the comfort that everyone in this movie seemed to enjoy. Granted Lennon was brought up in a comfortable middle class home, as accurately portrayed in this movie, his friends, values and social contacts were working class.

Other inaccuracies: the records he stole were 7 inch 45 rpm. These were almost unheard of in Britain until around 1960. In 1955 records were invariably 10 inch 78 rpm. Fashions were "Teddy Boy" meaning very narrow tight trousers and long jackets. The fashions shown in the film came much later. The language was quite wrong: the F word was almost unheard in those days, even in working class culture.

The movie says nothing except that he was a boy who sulked because he was abandoned by his mother. His substitute mother was portrayed as a loving, devoted mother providing a comfortable supportive home, convincingly played by Kristin Scott Thomas. Anne Marie Duff, playing his real mother, was too young for the part and therefore unconvincing.

Rather than feel sympathy for the main character I found him ungrateful. The movie showed little of the Lennon who developed deep human values which he later brought to his music. It is difficult to correlate the child portrayed in this movie, with his comfortable (yes, that was comfortable for the era) upbringing, with the writer of sensitive songs like "Imagine", "Give Peace a Chance" and similar music.

I watched the movie and thought, so what? It neither grabbed nor captivated. Listen to Lennon's song "Working Class Hero". That is the story of his life, not this glossy, unrealistic fiction.