Eleanor Reviews

**** Eddie has always dreamed of going to the Olympics, but when he is dropped from the skiing team, it looks as though his ambition will never be. Determined to go to Calgary and be Great Britain's first ski jumper in nearly sixty years, he sets about teaching himself the tricks of the trade.   When was the last time you smiled a big, goofy smile in the cinema? A proper grin? If it is a cinematic masterpiece you're looking for,  Eddie the Eagle is not the film for you, but if you're looking for something heart-warming, good-natured and unashamedly feel good, you'd be hard pressed to find a better alternative to Dexter Fletcher's latest. As proven by his last film, Sunshine on Leith , Fletcher is someone who looks for hope and joy, even when the odds might be stacked against you, and never were the odds more against anyone than Michael 'Eddie' Edwards, a plasterer's son who wanted to be an Olympian. Taking on the eponymous character is Taron Eg

**** On the run from the authorities and the pseudo-cultish community they used to call home, father Roy Tomlin and his sickening son, Alton, are in a race against time to reach a mysterious location in the heartland of the United States. For Alton is no ordinary boy; gifted with unexplainable capabilities that have made him a target.   How refreshing it is to see a sci-fi film that doesn't have a single superhero or alien in it. How refreshing it is to have a film that doesn't conclude with a city being decimated as comic book characters punch seven bells out of one another whilst civilians run screaming from the carnage. The antidote to all these tropes is Jeff Nichols' latest, Midnight Special , a film that is less about the powers that the child possesses, but more about the close relationship between the father and son.   The film opens with Roy Tomlin (Michael Shannon) and Alton (Jaeden Lieberher) already on the run from The Ranch, a cult-like community

***** Shortly after moving into a new high-rise building on the edge of town, Dr. Robert Laing finds that his fellow residents are at war with each other, the world and, most importantly, the building itself.   I wonder if 'High-Rise' is not so much a film, but an art installation - a towering, feature-length exhibition, but an art installation nonetheless. Powered by Ben Wheatley's dynamic vision and Amy Jump's brilliant screenplay of a book that was meant to be 'unfilmable', we have here a piece of art that is truly excellent. Each shot is framed like a painting, beautifully indicative of the madness to follow, with characters often being shunted to the side of the shot so that the audience can gain sight of the space of the building. Each character is an enigma - there is very little expression of feeling in this cold world - and yet utterly beguiling and transfixing. So strange are the people in the high-rise that even when all is grim and depra