Eleanor Reviews

***** Determined to woo the mysterious girl he sees loitering outside his new school, a young boy decides to create a band with his fellow classmates.   A little way into John Carney's latest, one of the boys suggests that the band's newest song should be 'happy-sad', and indeed there is no greater way to describe Sing Street than 'happy-sad'. Heartfelt, packed with laughs but also undercut with realist bittersweet tones, this 'coming of age' story of a teenager growing up in economically deprived 1980s Ireland will tug at your heart string as much as it will make you laugh.   The central premise of a 'down on his luck' teenager attempting to woo the 'girl next door' has undoubtedly been done before, and yet writer and director John Carney manages to bring something new and fun to the proceedings. By choosing a cast of mainly new young actors, Carney creates a film that captures the difficult, yet often funny, period of bein

***/**** (3.5 stars) In the spring of 1914, four young people spent their holidays in the scenic landscape of Derbyshire: Vera Brittain, her brother, Edward, and his two friends, Victor Richardson and Roland Leighton. Mere months later their lives would be torn apart by the First World War...   It's not often you get a war story shown from a woman's perspective, let alone a First World War tale, so saturated is that period by brilliant male writers. However, when Vera Brittain's novel Testament of Youth was published, it became the voice of a generation. Detailing the plights of the women who had to stay at home, waiting for news of loved ones, whilst also examining how women became involved in the war effort, it highlighted a side of war that hadn't been seen before.   In terms of translating Brittain's text from book to screen, director James Kent does a solid job, capturing the despair of women who could only look on from the side lines as their br

***** After a mission in Lagos goes wrong, the Avengers are faced with political intervention from the UN, who want to put restraints on their actions. The Anti-Hero Registration Act drives a rift between Captain America and Iron Man, meaning the other Avengers are forced to pick sides...   After the damp squib that was Captain America: The First Avenger , it was a massive surprise when the successor, The Winter Soldier turned out not only to be a great Marvel film, but a great addition to the spy-thriller genre as a whole. Whilst The Avengers: Age of Ultron failed to live up to hype, it is with great pleasure that I can say that Civil War takes us back to the quality writing and filmmaking of The Winter Soldier and Iron Man 3 . Indeed, this is something of a masterclass in how to write such a multi-strand script. With so many characters now vying for screen time, you would imagine that some would become sidelined and made almost irrelevant, and yet that doesn't happen -