Eleanor Reviews

**** In the summer of 1940, France surrendered to the invading German forces. Deep in the country, the small farming town of Bussey is soon inundated with German troops. With an officer billeted in their house, Lucille and her overbearing mother-in-law try to continue with their day to day lives, whilst waiting for news of Lucille’s husband, away fighting at the Front. We all know the story: a handsome man and a pretty woman meet and fall in love, but their chances at happiness are scuppered by an irreconcilable division, and in this case, the division is that he is German and she is French. Conveniently, however, this is the only thing in their way as his wife doesn’t love him, and her husband is a cheating bastard – that could’ve been tricky! Suite Française doesn’t add anything to this age-old Romeo and Juliet story, and yet it is a joy to behold a story acted, filmed and directed with as much care as this. Michelle Williams, ever reliable, plays Lucille, a rather unl

*** DVD Release Under imminent threat from a German invasion, the RAF double their efforts to defeat the enemy in the skies over Britain. Over-saturated with stars (Lawrence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Ian McShane, Michael Caine and Robert Shaw, to name but a few), all vying for screen time and receiving an inadequate amount, the film stumbles from explosion to explosion without any real plot. The characters are indistinguishable from each other – there’s a man with a white roll neck, there’s Christopher Plummer and his annoying relationship, and two curly-haired men, one of whom does victory-rolls over the airfield, and Michael Caine with his dog… and that’s about it. Oh, yes, there’s also Lawrence Olivier sitting behind a desk… and Ian McShane not giving a damn when his family gets bombed. The script is unreliable and wholly basic, although there are a couple of amusing scenes involving communication breakdowns with the newly recruited Polish flyers. The saving g

***** DVD Release France, 1916. Having been stuck in a stalemate for nearly a year, the French are eager to reclaim land, including a vantage point known as the Ant Hill. In what can only be described as a suicide mission, General Paul Mireau orders the 701 st battalion, led by Colonel Dax, to reclaim the Ant Hill for France. When the mission proves unsuccessful, Mireau is desperate to set an example to his men, through whatever means necessary. A damning indictment of power and corruption, Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory is as enraging as it is distressing – if this fails to make you angry, then surely nothing ever will. Heart-breaking and filled with terrible injustice, the story is unfortunately based on real life events, which just makes it all the more harrowing – how could anyone ever do this to another human being? Determined to make sure his men never retreat in the face of the enemy, Mireau decides to court-martial some of his battalion. After being persuaded

*** Hoping to expand his hotel chain, Sonny takes Muriel to America with the hopes of securing the funds to purchase another building. Back in Jaipur, the lives of the long-term inmates are as tumultuous as ever. On the back of the unprecedented success of the first, John Madden has now decided to wing it and go ahead with a sequel despite having no source text to fall back on, and it, unfortunately, shows. Whilst the predecessor told the story of a group old pensioners moving to India and adapting to their new environment, The Second … Hotel has no real plot to speak of, rather a series of different plot lines, all of which involve the main cast acting like indecisive teenagers when it comes to matters of the heart. Indeed, there are so many different pairings going on that some characters inevitably get more screen-time than others, whilst some of the threads are obviously stronger and more endearing than others. To enliven the old formula, Richard Gere is added to the c