Film Review: All Is True

All Is True. Meh. Pleasant enough, I suppose - certainly quite pleasant to look at - but not very interesting and struck me as being a big old dollop of self-indulgence on Brannagh's part, with a portion of mawkish nonsense regarding Hamnet. Nice scenery, though.

Film Review: Green Book

An engaging story that skates across the thin ice of America's 'Jim Crow' era. Whilst the subject matter certainly has room for more weighty treatment than this, 'Green Book' nevertheless delivers in spite of its simplistic 'broad-brush stroke' portrayal of the rampant prejudice of the 1960's.

The redemptive nature of the relationship between the two leads is obvious from the outset but the film contains enough twists to upset the most obvious of expectations.  But it is the performances from both Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen that lift it above what might otherwise have been leaning too far towards the 'Jim Crow LIte'.

Mortensen's appears the bigger role: he more obviously to fill the screen with his portrayal of the overweight, uncooth, mouthy Italian American thug Tony Lip (he put on over 3 stone for the role!). But it's Ali whose portrayal of tightly controlled emotion - often in the face of brutality on many levels - who steals the film. Highly recommended.

Film Review: If Beale Street Could Talk

At it's heart, a story as old as time - deep, unbreakable bonds of love - but viewed through the prism of an African American experience that has been replayed a thousand million times: racially motivated police brutality and a system stacked so far against them as to be impossible not to fall foul of.

Exquisitely sensual - at times almost overpoweringly so - there is a sense of the unreal, the mythological, about Beale Street. It relies, largely, on delicately nuanced body language and subtle facial expressions, rather than physical action, to portray emotion. Long takes allow the viewers to immerse themselves in each scene, to soak up the atmosphere - the clothes, the details of the interiors, the colours - and every shot is carefully composed down to the smallest detail. The cinematography is exquisite and the score elevates the visuals to something almost ethereal. Key scenes relieve what might otherwise be an almost suffocating, lotus eater-like experience and whilst here and there a jarring note might sound, overall Beale Street is achingly beautiful. Sublime. Heartbreaking.

The Wrestling Poet

I'm back to pub titles as post titles!  Not that I wrestle on any kind of professional or amateur basis, you understand.  Well, not often anyway.

No, it's just that I've at last managed to finish a piece of work that I've been wrestling with since NaPoWriMo back in April.  It's been through five different drafts, plus a lot of editorial 'fiddling' to reach something approaching a finished version.  I ended up cutting the two lines I loved the most about it, in order to achieve a finished product.  Funny how that goes.  And it does hurt to do it - cut out something you personally think is really great.  But then I've still got the lines to use in something else.