The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

It's the beginning of our new season, we needed a crowd-pleaser to start with and pull in the members so I suggested this film. Fortunately it seemed to work as the film went down well and we actually secured a few new members. I'd seen the film at the cinema, and watching it again made me appreciate how well it was structured, although I don't think I'd rush out to buy the source novel.

Here are my notes:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

UK 2018          123 minutes

Director:          Mike Newell

Starring:            Lily James, Michel Huisman, Glen Powell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Katherine Parkinson, Matthew Goode, Tom Courtenay and Penelope Wilton

“Buoyed by a reliably appealing star turn from [Lily] James, this handsome tearjerker mostly sidesteps the tweeness of its title to become, somehow, both an old-fashioned romance and a detective story trumpeting gender equality.”

Harry Windsor, The Hollywood Reporter

In 1946 author Juliet Ashton (Lily James) decides to visit the island of Guernsey after Dawsey Adams (Michel Huisman), a local man with whom she has been in correspondence, tells her about The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which had been established during the Nazi occupation of the island. Juliet plans to write just about the Society but gradually she begins to be drawn into island life as she learns what happened there during the war.

The film is an adaptation of the epistolary novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows: Shaffer had been fascinated by the Nazi occupation of Guernsey and had spent years researching the subject before beginning to write the novel but then became too ill to finish it. Annie Burrows is Shaffer’s niece and, as a successful author in her own right, was able to take over the novel and complete it ready for publication after which it became a global best-seller.

Kate Winslet had initially been cast in the role of Juliet but had to drop out when production of the film was delayed. Subsequently both Michelle Dockery and Rosamund Pike were approached to take on the leading role before Lily Jams was finally cast. Lily James made her name in Downton Abbey which also included Jessica Brown Findlay, Matthew Goode and Penelope Wilton, all of whom already had impressive stage and screen credits to their name, as regular cast members. However since her role in Downton Abbey Lily James has significantly extended her own list of credits with a series of major roles: she played the lead in the recent BBC adaptation of War and Peace, and after playing title role lead in Kenneth Branagh’s live action film of Cinderella (2015) she also appeared in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), Darkest Hour (2017) and, most recently, as young Donna in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).

Mike Newell started his career in television where his early work includes Dance with a Stranger (1985) Enchanted April (1992) and Into the West (1992). He came to international prominence in the cinema with Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), and since then his eclectic career has included literary adaptations such as An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), Love in the Time of Cholera (2007) and Great Expectations (2012) as well as blockbusters such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010). His future projects include an untitled film about the death of Alexander Litvinenko as well as a new version of The Day of the Triffids.

UK 2018          123 minutes

Director:          Mike Newell

Starring:            Lily James, Michel Huisman, Glen Powell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Katherine Parkinson, Matthew Goode, Tom Courtenay and Penelope Wilton

“Buoyed by a reliably appealing star turn from [Lily] James, this handsome tearjerker mostly sidesteps the tweeness of its title to become, somehow, both an old-fashioned romance and a detective story trumpeting gender equality.”

Harry Windsor, The Hollywood Reporter

In 1946 author Juliet Ashton (Lily James) decides to visit the island of Guernsey after Dawsey Adams (Michel Huisman), a local man with whom she has been in correspondence, tells her about The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which had been established during the Nazi occupation of the island. Juliet plans to write just about the Society but gradually she begins to be drawn into island life as she learns what happened there during the war.

The film is an adaptation of the epistolary novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows: Shaffer had been fascinated by the Nazi occupation of Guernsey and had spent years researching the subject before beginning to write the novel but then became too ill to finish it. Annie Burrows is Shaffer’s niece and, as a successful author in her own right, was able to take over the novel and complete it ready for publication after which it became a global best-seller.

Kate Winslet had initially been cast in the role of Juliet but had to drop out when production of the film was delayed. Subsequently both Michelle Dockery and Rosamund Pike were approached to take on the leading role before Lily Jams was finally cast. Lily James made her name in Downton Abbey which also included Jessica Brown Findlay, Matthew Goode and Penelope Wilton, all of whom already had impressive stage and screen credits to their name, as regular cast members. However since her role in Downton Abbey Lily James has significantly extended her own list of credits with a series of major roles: she played the lead in the recent BBC adaptation of War and Peace, and after playing title role lead in Kenneth Branagh’s live action film of Cinderella (2015) she also appeared in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), Darkest Hour (2017) and, most recently, as young Donna in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).

Mike Newell started his career in television where his early work includes Dance with a Stranger (1985) Enchanted April (1992) and Into the West (1992). He came to international prominence in the cinema with Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), and since then his eclectic career has included literary adaptations such as An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), Love in the Time of Cholera (2007) and Great Expectations (2012) as well as blockbusters such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010). His future projects include an untitled film about the death of Alexander Litvinenko as well as a new version of The Day of the Triffids.

Here's a link to the trailer:

Call Me By Your Name

This was our final film: the result of a quick committee discussion after we discovered that it was impossible to find a sing-along version of Beauty and the Beast.

After the reviews of the film I'd read I was keen to see it and was not disappointed, although some members did not attend as they did not approve of the subject matter. I can quite understand why the film topped the  poll of the Guardian Best Films of 2017 in both the UK and USA, and James Ivory's awards for the screenplay are a tribute to grey power everywhere: it certainly did not come across as an old man's film.

Here are my notes:

Call Me by Your Name

USA 2017        132 minutes

Director:          Luca Guadagnino

Starring:            Arnie Hammer, Timothee Chalamet and Michael Stuhlbarg

Awards and Nominations

• Won Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (James Ivory) and Oscar nominations for Best Actor (Timothee Chalamet), Best Film and Best Original Song
• Won BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay (James Ivory) and BAFTA nominations for Best Actor (Timothee Chalamet), Best Film and Best Director
• A further 80 wins and 189 nominations

“This priority is often overlooked, but pure sensual pleasure is an important part of cinema. So it’s a thrill to see a really outstanding film which provides it, as well as being itself about sensual pleasure – about the desire that precedes it, about an ecstatic submission to love, about the intelligent cultivation of all these things. It is a story of a passionate affair between an older and younger man and reaches out to anyone with a pulse.”

Peter Bradshaw

In the summer of 1983 in Italy Elio (Timothee Chalamet), the son of an ex-pat American academic, spends his time playing classical music, reading and flirting with his friend Marzia. When Oliver (Arnie Hammer) an American graduate student arrives in Italy to take up an internship he begins a relationship with Elio that soon goes beyond friendship.

This multi-award winning film is the end product of a fascinating combination of US and European film-making talent after initial attempts to make it ended in development hell. The film rights to Andre Aciman’s novel had been sold before publication but the producers then spent several years trying to find an appropriate screenwriter and director for the project. Eventually they approached Luca Guadagnino to direct the film but he declined due to pre-existing commitments although he agreed to act as location consultant as the film was to be shot on location in Northern Italy. Guadagnino subsequently suggested that he co-direct the film with James Ivory and Ivory then worked with him on a screenplay before standing down as co-director, a decision which he said resulted from the unwillingness of the financiers to have two directors. Thus Guadagnino directed the film and Ivory became the sole credited screenwriter, and at the age of 89 became the oldest winner of a competitive Oscar.

Guadagnino saw the film as the final instalment of his thematic Desire trilogy following on from I Am Love (2009) (BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Language Film) and A Bigger Splash (2015). He described the film as an “homage to fathers”, referring both to his own father and the directors Jean Renoir, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and Bernardo Bertolucci, all of whose films have inspired him.

At its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival the film received a standing ovation followed by a ten minute ovation after its screening at the New York Film Festival. By March 2018 the film had grossed US$ 38.0 million against a production budget of US$3.5 million thus making it the third highest grossing release in 2017 for Sony Pictures Classics. The film also topped The Guardian’s lists of the best films of 2017 both in the UK and the USA.

 Here's the trailer:

 

Paddington 2

The choice of this film was a unanimous decision by the Committee bolstered by requests from several of our regulars.

We had screened the original Paddington film and that had gone down well.  i had enjoyed it very much but after the reviews for the new film I saw it at the cinema last year and really enjoyed seeing it again: on a second viewing you get a chance to pick up on the incidental detail that passes you by first time around.

It was a good evening - and also very well attended.

Here are my notes

Paddington 2

UK 2017          104 minutes

Director:          Paul King

Starring:            Ben Whishaw, Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins and Hugh Grant

 

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for three BAFTAs – Best Supporting Actor (Hugh Grant), Best Film and Best Adapted Screenplay
• A further three wins and five nominations

“This is the follow-up to the first Paddington movie of 2014 and it’s a tremendously sweet-natured, charming, unassuming and above all funny film with a story that just rattles along, powered by a nonstop succession of Grade-A gags conjured up by screenwriters Paul King (who also directs), Simon Farnaby and Jon Croker. Their screenplay perfectly catches the tone of the great master himself, Michael Bond, author of the original books, who sadly died in June this year at the age of 91, creative and productive to the end.”

 

Peter Bradshaw

Paddington is now happily settled in Windsor Gardens with the Brown family. While searching for a present for his Aunt Lucy’s 100^th birthday he finds a unique pop-up book in Mr Gruber’s antique shop, and undertakes a series of jobs to earn money to buy it. However when the book is stolen Paddington and the Brown family have to unmask the thief.

The global success of Paddington (2014) made it inevitable that a sequel would follow and the film reunites the same director and principal cast members, with the addition of newcomer Hugh Grant in a scene-stealing role as Phoenix Buchanan, an ageing actor now reduced to appearing in commercials for dog food. The main characters have come from the books that Michael Bond wrote, and thus the film qualifies for nominations as a “best adapted screenplay”  but, just as in the first film, the screenwriters have produced an original screenplay that nonetheless manages to retain the spirit of the published stories: Michael Bond was partly inspired to create Paddington by his memory of seeing child evacuees with labels around their necks and carrying suitcases as they left London at the beginning of the Second World War, both Paddington and his best friend Mr Gruber (Jim Broadbent) are immigrants and the area of London where the Browns live is, with the exception of Mr Curry (Peter Capaldi), most definitely multi-cultural. It is impossible in the current environment to escape entirely from the long shadow of politics, even in what is ostensibly a children’s film, and thus Sight & Sound was able to lead its rave review of the film with the memorable headline “Brexit, pursued by a bear”.

From an audience approval perspective the film has an approval rating of 100% on the aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes and thus joins an elite and eclectic list which includes established classics such as Bride of Frankenstein (1931), Mary Poppins (1964) and Day for Night (1973). The film also appeared in 18^th place in The Guardian’s list of the best films of 2017.  As a result of the global success of the film the CEO of StudioCanal has confirmed that the studio is committed to making a third Paddington film, although no details have yet been released.
 

The film is dedicated to the memory of Michael Bond, who died at the age of 91 while the film was in production.

Here's the trailer:

 

 

My Cousin Rachel

The reviews for this film were excellent and I was looking forward to seeing it at the cinema, but unfortunately it disappeared from general release pretty quickly.

I finally saw it on DVD over the Christmas holidays and suggested we screen it, but the curse of the best films that you didn't see seems to have struck again: our screening clashed with the arrival of the Beast from the East and we had an audience of just seven - and three of us were committee members.


My Cousin Rachel

UK 2017          106 minutes

Director:          Roger Michell

Starring:            Rachel Weisz, Sam Clafin, Iain Glen and Holliday Grainger

Awards and Nominations

• Nomination for Best Actress (Rachel Weisz) at the Evening Standard British Film Awards
• One win and three further nominations

“My Cousin Rachel is a highly enjoyable mystery thriller of the sort that modern communication and the internet have made impossible to set in the present day. Based on the 1951 novel by Daphne du Maurier and adapted and directed by Roger Michell, it is a fantastically preposterous psychological drama featuring a lush score from Rael Jones and a tremendous lead performance from Rachel Weisz – who is mean, minxy and manipulative. Her sheer charisma persuades you to overlook one or two plot glitches. I can only describe this film as the roistering missing link between The Talented Mr Ripley and Far from the Madding Crowd.”

Peter Bradshaw

Philip (Sam Clafin) plots revenge against his late cousin’s mysterious wife Rachel (Rachel Weisz), as he feels that she is responsible for his death while he is recuperating in Italy after an illness. However when Rachel returns to the family estate in Cornwall Philip finds himself falling for her charms.

The film appeared at number fifty in The Guardian’s list of the Best Films of 2017 as well as featuring in its list of the Best Films of 2017 That You Didn’t See.  In this latter list Benjamin Lee was particularly impressed by Rachel Weisz’s performance:

“If this were a just world, and 2017 has proved that it most definitely is not, then Rachel Weisz’s name would be frequently heard throughout this year’s awards season. Her performance in Roger Michell’s curiously ignored My Cousin Rachel, the second adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1951 novel, is one of her best: a compelling, fiery take on a spell-bindingly unknowable literary femme fatale, disarming and enigmatic, charming and bewitching.”

Daphne du Maurier’s novel was published in 1951 although the story is set in a Hardy-esque nineteenth century. The novel was an international success and this led in 1952 to a film adaptation directed by Henry Koster and starring Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton, his first role in a US film. George Cukor had originally intended to direct the film but both he and du Maurier found the screenplay unfaithful to the novel, although on its release critics felt it was a worthy adaptation. Many of du Maurier’s other novels and short stories have also adapted well to the cinema: Hitchcock filmed Jamaica Inn (1939) and, far more successfully, Rebecca (1940) as well as the short story The Birds (1963), while Nicholas Roeg adapted another short story for his classic Don’t Look Now (1973).

Roger Michell began his career as a stage director working at the Royal Court and the Royal Shakespeare Company. His first work for TV was an adaptation Hanif Kureishi’s autobiographical novel The Buddha of Suburbia. His first film as director for cinema was Notting Hill (1999), and his cinema films since then have included The Mother (2003) written by Hanif Kureishi and starring Daniel Craig, Enduring Love (2004) and Venus (2006) once again from a script by Hanif Kureishi. In 2006 Michell was in negotiations in 2006 to direct Daniel Craig as James Bond in A Quantum of Solace, but the talks fell through.

Here's a link to the trailer:

Victoria and Abdul

We knew that we'd need to screen this film even before it was released and the reviews were in: the combination of Judi Dench and period drama meant that we were bound to get a good audience.

I'd seen the film at the cinema and enjoyed it: it was genuinely good but did not have the story or impact of the same team's Philomena. It was a good evening and, as they say, a good time was had by all.

Here are my notes:


Victoria and Abdul

UK 2017          111 minutes

Director:          Stephen Frears

Starring:            Judi Dench, Ali Fazal, Tim Piggott-Smith, Eddie Izzard and Adeel Akhtar

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for two Oscars (Makeup and Hairstyling, and Costume Design)
• Nominated for Best Actress - Musical or Comedy (Judi Dench) at the Golden Globes
• A further two wins and 10 nominations

“Victoria & Abdul is worth seeing for Dench's magisterial performance and for Frears's light but sure directorial touch. Just don't mistake it for actual history.”

Christopher Orr

Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal) travels from India to participate in Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. When he meets the Queen (Judi Dench) they strike up an unlikely alliance. As their friendship develops the Prince of Wales (Eddie Izzard), Sir Henry Ponsonby (Tim Piggott-Smith) and members of her household do their best to destroy it.

It is possible to see the film as an unofficial sequel to Mrs Brown (1997) in which Dench’s portrayal of the widowed Queen Victoria won her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and launched her Hollywood career. The main characters of the film were real people, but the opening credits (“based on true events… mostly”) confirm that what follows is a historical fantasy.

The subject of the film is quintessentially English, and the production involves a creative team that developed their careers at the BBC before moving into cinema where they have been involved in a significant number of the best British films over the past few decades while subsequently garnering an international reputation for their work in Hollywood. The screenplay is by Lee Hall whose early work included plays for BBC Radio before making his name with Billy Elliot (2000) and later writing the screenplay for Stephen Spielberg’s War Horse (2011). Stephen Frears’s early TV work included A Day Out (1972), Alan Bennett’s debut play for TV, and My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), made for TV but released cinematically, before he moved to Hollywood where his films included Dangerous Liaisons (1988), The Grifters (1990) and High Fidelity (2000).

Meanwhile Judi Dench followed an illustrious stage career with a numerous TV roles with the BBC before being cast as Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown. She first worked with Stephen Frears in the TV movie Saigon - Year of the Cat (1983) and subsequently starred in his films of Mrs Henderson Presents (2005) and the Oscar nominated Philomena (2015). Since completing this film she has also starred in Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and has recently completed filming Red Joan, with Trevor Nunn as director.

Here's a link to the trailer:

About Time

As we were due to screen a film the day after Valentine's day we decided to select a rom com. there do not seem to have been too many recent such films, certainly none that would appeal to our audiences, so we went back in time to choose this one.

I had missed it at the cinema and remembered the positive reviews, and the combination of director and stars promised an enjoyable film. I enjoyed it, although it was not in the same league as the films that Curtis had written for Hugh Grant, but any film with a ginger-haired hero called Tim has to be worth watching.

Here are my notes:

About Time

UK 2013          123 minutes

Director:          Richard Curtis

Starring:            Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy

Awards and Nominations

• Three wins and ten nominations

“As far as we know, Richard Curtis cannot travel through time. But the kingpin of the Britcom can get a huge movie off the ground. And, along with the possible, Curtis has managed to achieve the impossible. Specifically: he has gone back to 1993 and remade Groundhog Day with a ginger Hugh Grant.”

Catherine Shoard

At the age of 21 Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) learns from his father (Bill Nighy) that the adult men in his family have the ability to travel back in time: they cannot change history, but they can change what has happened in their own lives. When Tim falls in love with Mary (Rachel McAdams) he uses his powers to woo her successfully, but inevitably the subsequent use of his powers has other unforeseen consequences for their future lives together.

In the immortal words of the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) in Blink time is “a big ball of wibbly, wobbly, timey wimey stuff”; as such stories about time travel are popular with scriptwriters as it gives them so much flexibility with their plots. About Time is Richard Curtis’s first foray into what could be called science fantasy rom com and follows in the tracks of the classic Groundhog Day (1993) as well as Sliding Doors (1998) and more recently The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009) (which also starred Rachel McAdams). However Curtis manages to infuse the concept with his own brand of a particularly English type of rom com that produced the classic screenplays for Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999) and Love Actually (2003), and the film builds on these thematic links by the casting of Bill Nighy, who was a member of the large ensemble cast for Love Actually, and Domhnall Gleeson, described by one critic as a ginger replicant Hugh Grant, the star of the earlier films that Curtis had written.

The film was well reviewed despite several gaping plot holes relating to the rules governing time travel: Doctor Who always manages to skirt such inconsistencies by allowing the Doctor to claim, depending on the exigencies of the plot, either that time can be rewritten or that a particular event is a fixed point in time that cannot under any circumstances be changed. Nonetheless the film was a commercial success, especially in South Korea where it became a surprise hit.

Richard Curtis announced that this film, his third that he has directed, is likely to be his last as director, although he would continue to work in the film industry. He is currently working on the story for the film to Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, which will be released later in 2018. In parallel with his film work Curtis has worked extensively for television where he has written scripts for Blackadder, Mr Bean, The Vicar of Dibley and The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Somewhat unexpectedly, although in the circumstances quite relevant for this film, in 2010 he even wrote a story for Doctor Who, which ended with the Doctor bringing Vincent van Gogh to present day Paris to see his work in the Musée d'Orsay (with Bill Nighy playing an uncredited role as a bowtie-wearing art curator).

Here's a link to the trailer:

A United Kigdom

We screened Belle towards the end of last year and I thought that it was superb, so I was really looking forward to seeing A United Kingdom as I'd missed it in the cinema.

I was not in the least disappointed: it was just as good as I'd hoped and truly epic in its scope without losing focus on the loving relationship at its core.

Here are my notes:

A United Kingdom

UK 2016          111 minutes

Director:          Amma Asante

Starring:            David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Terry Pheto, Jack Davenport and Tom Felton

Awards and Nominations

• Best Supporting Actress nomination for Terry Pheto at the British Independent Film Awards
• A further four nominations

“With terrific warmth and idealism – and irresistible storytelling relish – director Amma Asante gives us a romantic true story from our dowdy postwar past. And with some style and wit, she even revives the spirit and showmanship of Richard Attenborough, who I think would have really enjoyed this gutsy movie.”

Peter Bradshaw

Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) is studying law in London after the Second World War when he meets and falls in love with Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), whom he marries despite the protests of both families. Khama is the heir to the throne of Bechuanaland and their return to his home country plunges the kingdom into political and diplomatic turmoil.

The film is a true story based on the book Colour Bar by Susan Williams, and is a co-production with David Oyelowo’s independent production company which he set up to produce films for him to star in.  Although he is now based in the USA he was born in the UK to Nigerian parents and began his screen career with a leading role in the TV series Spooks (2002-2004); prior to this he was an established stage actor and played numerous major roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company where his roles included the king in Henry VI, the first time a black actor had played an English king in a major Shakespeare production. In cinema he has played supporting roles in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Lincoln (2013), The Butler (2013) and Queen of Katwe (2016) Before his starring role in this film his most acclaimed cinema performance was as Martin Luther King in Selma (2014); he received many nominations and awards for this performance, although controversially not an Oscar nomination.

Amma Asante trained as an actress and dancer where her early appearances include a role as a regular character in Grange Hill. She made her name as a director with the acclaimed Belle (2013), her second feature film, which Mark Kermode named as his fourth favourite film of 2014. A United Kingdom received its premier when it opened the London Film Festival in October 2016 and was also linked to the BFI’s Black Star season, a programme “celebrating the range, versatility and power of black actors”.

Here's a link to the trailer:

Dunkirk

We started the New Year with Dunkirk: not really a seasonal film, but it is new to DVD and we attracted a reasonable audience.

I'd seen the film at the cinema and had been impressed and was looking forward to seeing it again. The structure is complex but it looks very simple: as ever the art is in concealing the art.

One of my main recollections from the first film was Mark Rylance's superb performance, and I was equally impressed on this second viewing. I assume that his character would have been old enough to have taken part in WW1: he does not mention this but you can sense it from his heroic weariness as he decides to take his boat to Dunkirk rather than merely handing it over to the Navy.

Here are my notes:

Dunkirk

UK 2017          106 minutes

Director:          Christopher Nolan

Starring:            Fionn Whitehead, Barry Keoghan, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy and Kenneth Branagh

Awards and Nominations to date

• Number 13 in The Guardian’s list of the Best Films of 2017
• Nominated for Golden Globe for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Score
• Nominated by the London Critics Circle Film Awards for Best Film, Best British/Irish Film, Best Director and three other categories
• A further 18 wins and 86 nominations

“This is a powerful, superbly crafted film with a story to tell, avoiding war porn in favour of something desolate and apocalyptic, a beachscape of shame, littered with soldiers zombified by defeat, a grimly male world with hardly any women on screen. It is Nolan’s best film so far. It also has Hans Zimmer’s best musical score: an eerie, keening, groaning accompaniment to a nightmare, switching finally to quasi-Elgar variations for the deliverance itself.”

Peter Bradshaw

 During the fall of France in the Spring of 1940 Allied soldiers have retreated to the coast at Dunkirk. As the troops wait for evacuation the Royal Navy requisitions small civilian vessels that can sail in the shallow waters close to the beaches, while in the air Spitfires try to save British ships from attack by Nazi planes.

Nolan directed the film from his own script which tells the story of the evacuation from the perspectives of land, sea and air. Each story develops over different timescales so that although they are edited together it is only towards the climax of the film that the different narratives coincide. He had initially conceived the idea for the film in the mid-1990s but had postponed the project until he had enough experience of directing large scale action films. His aim was to tell the story solely from the perspective of the soldiers on the beaches: thus the invading Nazi forces do not appear. Additionally Nolan avoided any scenes with Churchill who had become Prime Minister only on10^th May 1940 in order to prevent the complexity of the domestic political situation undermining the story of the evacuation. The circumstances of Churchill’s assumption of power and subsequent wartime premiership are a major story themselves and are the subject of Joe Wright’s forthcoming film Darkest Hour (2017) with Gary Oldman starring as Churchill.

The major events in the film are based on the historical record and Nolan worked closely with a historical consultant to ensure the accuracy of the film; similarly although the characters are all fictional some of them are based in part on Dunkirk veterans whose stories Nolan encountered during his research. The evacuation at Dunkirk itself was a major turning point in the Second World War and appeared on screen as early as 1942 as part of the plot of Mrs Miniver. In 1958 Leslie Norman, father of Barry, directed Dunkirk which starred John Mills, Richard Attenborough and Bernard Lee; the film became the second most popular production of the year in the UK. The evacuation also featured in a key sequence in Joe Wright’s Atonement (2007) and more recently Their Finest (2016) depicted the making of a wartime propaganda film about Dunkirk to raise morale in a war-ravaged Britain. 

On its release in 2017 Dunkirk received praise for its screenplay, direction, soundtrack and photography, with some critics acclaiming it as one of the greatest war films ever made. Somewhat inevitably Nigel Farage attempted to use the film to promote his own blinkered perspective of history by circulating a photograph of himself in front of a poster for the film with the patronising exhortation: “I urge every youngster to go out and watch #Dunkirk”. Clearly he had forgotten that Britain did not stand alone against Nazi Germany and that Churchill himself, a lifelong patriot, amateur historian and arguably the greatest British Prime Minister of the twentieth century, had actually favoured an “indissoluble” union with a France. In an era of fake news it is vital to remember the following words of wisdom: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts”.

Here is a link to the trailer:

Sully: Miracle on the Hudson

Somehow this film had passed me by, and when we decided to screen it I was interested to see it but did not expect anything special: I was wrong...

When I started researching the film for my notes I realised who the director was, and then I read the full details of the landing (not a crash) and, more importantly, the subsequent events.

I enjoyed the film very much, and even though you know right from the beginning that the plane will land safely, the script is structured in such a way as to keep you on the edge of your seat all the way through. Needless to say the performances are excellent, with Tom Hanks in particular deserving all the credit for what could have been seen as a two dimensional character.

Here are my notes:

USA 2016        96 minutes

Director:          Clint Eastwood

Starring:            Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart and Laura Linney

Awards and Nominations

• Oscar Nomination for Sound Editing
• A further 12 wins and 32 nominations

“Sully is a beautifully balanced, classily nuanced and hugely engaging film that avoids all the clichéd pitfalls it could have slipped into. Tom Hanks gives one of the best performances of his career and Clint Eastwood's direction is beautiful and rich. It's not just a great movie, Sully is one of the best pieces of cinema that a major Hollywood studio has released this year.”

Simon Thompson

When his Airbus A320 strikes a flock of birds Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) loses power in both engines. He judges that it will be impossible to reach nearby airports safely and so ditches the aircraft in the Hudson River. The passengers and crew are evacuated without casualty and a subsequent enquiry by the National Transportation Safety Board finally confirms that Sully’s decision to ditch in the river was the best option open to him.

The film is based on Sully’s autobiography Highest Duty which the producers of the film purchased and then developed a screenplay with Todd Komarnicki. Sullenberger’s stated desire was the film should incorporate “that sense of our common humanity” and noted that the event had occurred shortly after the 2008 Recession. He explained:

“People were wondering if everything was about self-interest and greed. They were doubting human nature. Then all these people acted together, selflessly, to get something really important done. In a way, I think it gave everyone a chance to have hope, at a time when we all needed it.”

For Kormanicki the main challenge faced in writing his screenplay was not the known outcome of the actual landing, but rather the investigation that followed:

“It wasn't really a challenge of what to do with the event since that is the thing everyone knows about, it was more about how you parse out the information about the man slowly falling apart and becoming a hero in the eyes of the world when internally and with the investigators it was actually seemingly going the other way.”

The film received its premier at the 2016 Telluride Film Festival and then went on general release on 9^th September. Warner Bros. had initially been hesitant about releasing the film on the fifteenth Anniversary of the September 11 attacks, but nonetheless went ahead with this release date and explained its reasoning on the grounds that “Sully is a story of hope and a real hero who did his job.”

The film was well reviewed on its release, with both Hanks and Eastwood being singled out for their work. Peter Debruge gave the film a positive review as well as specifically praising Hanks:

 "This is Hanks' show, and he delivers a typically strong performance, quickly allowing us to forget that we're watching an actor. With his snowy white hair and moustache to match, Hanks conveys a man confident in his abilities, yet humble in his actions, which could also be said of Eastwood as a director."

The American Film Institute selected Sully as one of its ten Movies of the Year.

Several major airlines decided not to include the film within their on-board entertainment systems, although Virgin has shown the film.

Here is the trailer: