Eleanor Reviews

**** DVD Release/Currently available on BBC iPlayer In 1960s Los Angeles, Professor George Falconer mourns the death of his long term partner. Over the course of a single day, we follow his movements and visit his past through flashbacks. At the start of the film, George (Colin Firth) tells us that ‘today will be different’ and this is because today is the day that he plans to commit suicide. It has been nearly a year since his partner, Jim (Matthew Goode) died in a tragic car accident and George has still not recovered – his world is a largely grey place, punctuated every now and again with happiness and passing encounters. To represent this, the film depicts George’s life in grey-scale, whilst the happier moments are shown in colour. The colour in these moments is often heavily saturated so they look as strange as the sections shown in grey, such as the scene where George meets a male prostitute in the car park. As a narrative devise, this works very well and is remini

  **** DVD Release/Currently available on BBC iPlayer In the early 1980s, a group of working class boys are singled out by their headmaster as being potential Oxbridge candidates. Newcomer Mr Irwin is assigned to educate them in the ways of the university selection system whilst old favourite Hector continues to inspire them in his eccentric way. This is the original cast that performed Alan Bennett’s West End play, and Bennett is back again here to write the screenplay. As a translation from stage to screen it works very well as it still retains the intimacy you get when someone is performing in the same room as you. All the actors, who have obviously worked together before, have undeniable chemistry and the banter they have with their various teachers and each other is wholly believable and utterly charming. All the boys get enough screen time for the audience to become acquainted with them individually, although some characters do get more attention than others such. S

  **** The premise of Ron Howard’s latest film is very simple – it tracks the course of two drivers, James Hunt and Niki Lauda, through the world of 1970s Formula 1, reaching its peak in the 1976 competition. One of the major credits of the film is making the audience care about two rather unlikeable characters. James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) is the epitome of a play-boy, and enjoys drinking, drugs and driving fast with very little preparation. Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) is the opposite – he scrutinizes every aspect of the car and the race, and seems entirely emotionally detached, saying that the death of another driver must have been his fault. Both are self-centred and unafraid to speak their minds, and you get the feeling they would be the worst dinner guests. However, as the film goes on, you cannot help but care for them - both are depicted as being vulnerable beneath the surface and you end up celebrating in their victories and mourning their injuries and losses along

  ***** DVD Release During World War Two, a disillusioned group of high-ranking Nazi officers and politicians come together in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Using their powers in government, they aim to undermine the regime from the inside by altering the plan ‘Valkyrie’ so that when Hitler was assassinated they would be able to end the war. However, the attempt performed on 20 th July 1944 came up against some severe complications. Everyone knows how the assassination attempt ends, and yet that doesn’t seem to matter as we are wholly on the side of the protagonists and their aim. The empathy we feel for their cause is huge and throughout the film we’re willing for them to succeed, and your heart breaks when the inevitable happens. The tension is literally unbearable at times, but there are also touches of humour and lots of genuine human emotion on display. The cast list is astonishing and, as you’d expect from such an ensemble, the acting is top quality

* DVD Release Modern day Los Angeles is under attack from extra-terrestrials. A squad of U.S. Marines is sent to retrieve an unknown number of civilians from a police station within an area already destroyed under heavy fire. The team have three hours to clear the area before the location is levelled by the U.S. Military. The film is poor on pretty much every level: the plot is unoriginal; the characters are boring and undeveloped; the script is clunky; and there is a distinct lack of tension or emotional engagement. Aaron Eckhart heads the squad as the war veteran who just wants to retire, and adopts a very gruff and breathy speaking technique – he sounds like someone doing a bad imitation of Clint Eastwood. All the other characters are fairly interchangeable – one has some black war paint on his face, one was seen in therapy at the start of the film, and one is female, and the rest don’t amount to much. There is a shockingly bad speech in which Eckhart tries to rally h

**/*** (2.5 stars) Richard B. Riddick (yes, that is his name) is back for a third outing and back on familiar territory. After being betrayed and robbed of his Necromonger crown, Riddick is abandoned on a sun-scorched planet where there are venomous aliens lurking in the mud, and various other carnivorous species who want to eat him. Realising that the planet isn’t as safe as first thought, Riddick advertises his whereabouts and two teams of bounty hunters turn up just in time for rainy season. If you’ve seen ‘Pitch Black’, then you’ve seen this film too – the premise is exactly the same and the outcome pretty similar as well. The film, however, starts out quite well and seems to be quite promising. For the first twenty minutes or so, Riddick (Vin Diesel) is the only human on screen and he pulls it off fairly well. In this section, we get to see a more vulnerable version of the Furyan that we haven’t really experienced before. We watch as he hones his skills after living t

***** Before we begin, I should make it clear that I do not do rom-coms; I don’t enjoy all that slushy ‘love at first sight’ stuff and I find most comedy extremely grating – give me a war film with lots of death and destruction any day! So when I found myself laughing and weeping in equal measure at Richard Curtis’ latest film I was rather surprised. Shortly after turning 21, Tim is called into his father’s office to be told that the men in his family have the ability to time travel (only backwards, and in his own time line). From then on, Tim decides that he will do whatever he can to obtain a girlfriend and meets Mary shortly after moving to London. What follows are a series of escapades involving the two young lovers, with a bit of time travel thrown in. However, this supernatural gift cannot solve everything and soon Tim must come face to face with the inevitable facts of life. The first thing to say is that Domhnall Gleeson (Tim) and Bill Nighy (his dad) are an abso