The Sheep Detectives (4 Stars)

As soon as I saw the trailers I knew this would be a special film.

Hugh Jackman plays George Hardy, a shepherd who's dedicated to his sheep. He lives in a caravan in the middle of his flock, and every night he reads detective novels to his sheep. They sit spellbound around him, and he assumes that they're only enjoying the sound of his voice, not the content of the novels, but he's wrong. They understand every word, and they discuss the stories with one another after he goes to bed at night.

One day George is found dead outside his caravan. The local policeman says it's a heart attack, but the sheep are convinced that he was murdered. If the police fail, it's up to the sheep to solve the crime.

It's a beautiful story, admittedly silly, but delightfully cute. The sheep aren't just a random flock, the main characters are all named and shown with distinct personalities. Maybe four stars isn't enough. I'll think it over next time I watch the film. Yes, there has to be a next time!

Stranger Than Fiction (4½ Stars)

I'm returning to this film only nine days after I last watched it. Do I have an excuse? More to the point, do I need an excuse? It's an incredible film. I first saw it at a friend's house. I knew straight away that I had to see it again, so I ordered it on Ebay before I went to bed. It took a week to arrive because the seller was in England. Now I have the Blu-ray in my hands.

Even more than the first time I watched "Stranger Than Fiction", I've been thinking about the philosophical implications of the film. What if my life were being scripted not by a master being (God) on another plane of existence, but by a neurotic writer who lives just a few miles away? Would I even want to know? It seems like a freak of nature that allows Harold Crick to hear Karen Eiffel's voice narrating his life. It's a book she's been writing, on and off, for ten years, so she's been watching over his life for a long time, long before he became conscious of it.

I know Emma Thompson, of course, but this is the first film in which I've ever really paid attention to her. Her performance as the writer Karen Eiffel is outstanding. She's unaware of the power she has over life and death. She's already written eleven novels, and in each book the main character died. Were all of them real people whose deaths she unwittingly caused? That's suggested, but not followed up. If that happened to me, I would be traumatised. I wouldn't be able to live with the knowledge that I've caused one person's death, let alone eleven. On the other hand, being the victim of an all-powerful novelist wouldn't bother me. I'd just ask her to give me a good death.

Harold Crick has to die. The whole novel has been leading up to his death. It's too late to change it, without spoiling the ending. How can he spend the last few days of his life? He can learn to play the guitar, or he can fall in love. He should forget the guitar. That's not something he can do in a few days. Falling in love only takes a moment.

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Stranger Than Fiction (4½ Stars)

I've known about this film for years, but I never bothered watching it. It stars Will Ferrell, so it must be a comedy, and I've never liked his type of comedy. Putting it simply, I don't find him funny.

Today the film was presented in a group where we watch films together once a month, and my friend Anna called it one of her favourite films. So I watched it, and I realised that I'd got it all wrong. It's not a comedy at all. I'm not sure what genre it belongs to. Could it be deemed a supernatural fantasy? I'm not sure. It depends on the way the film is interpreted.

Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, an aloof but highly disciplined IRS auditor. His life follows a strict schedule, for instance he goes to bed at 11:13 pm every night. He lives alone, and he doesn't have any friends, apart from people he talks to at work.

One day he starts to hear a voice narrating his life. The voice isn't talking to him, it's talking about him, telling unknown listeners what he's doing. It's unsettling, so he visits a psychiatrist, who tells him he's suffering from schizophrenia. Harold isn't happy with this diagnosis, so he asks if any other specialists could help him. After putting the psychiatrist under pressure, she finally advises him to visit a literary expert. He seeks help from Jules Hilbert, a literature professor. Based on the formulation of the narration he takes Harold seriously and says he's a character in a book. It's now up to him to find out what type of story he's in, a comedy or a tragedy.

Finally he meets the author Karen Eiffel, who's writing a novel about Harold and is unwittingly controlling his life. In her book Harold has to die, but she can't decide how he should die.

I'll stop the description there. It's a powerful film with deep philosophical ramifications. If we accept the premise that it's possible for someone to control the life of another person with his typewriter, how should the author and the character deal with it? How would I personally deal with it if it happened to me? My tendency would be to sit down with the author to discuss how I want to die, but that's not what happens in the film.

This is an amazing film that I want to see again. Soon.

Success Rate:  - 0.2

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In the Name of the Father (5 Stars)

True Stories #2

Name: Gerry Conlon

Lived: 1 March 1954 – 21 June 2014

Film shows: June 1974 – 19 October 1989

Film made in 1993

This is the second in my series of true stories that I'll be reviewing over the next two months. I gave a lot of thought to the ordering of the films. Should they be chronological, based on the birth date of the people? Should they be alphabetical, based on their names? Should I alternate between men and women? In the end I decided that the order should just be random. The trouble with any order I choose is that if I add a film at the end of the series it will be out of order. At present I have a list of 40 films, but it's possible that I'll add a film or remove one during the month. Actually, it's not a list; I have a box containing all the films I intend to watch in my room. In the cellar I have a small pile of the films that didn't make the list, and every time I look at it I wonder if it was right to omit them.

My regular readers know that I'm English. Some of you might know that I'm a patriotic Englishman, and my patriotism has been strengthened by living most of my adult life abroad. (I currently live in Germany). However, "In the Name of the Father" shows events that make me feel ashamed to be English. I don't deny what happened. I'm not naive enough to say it could never happen again. They were events which I speak about with deep shame.

Gerry Conlon was a young man who lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The 1970's were a time euphemistically called the Troubles. The Roman Catholic minority of Northern Ireland was seeking to become independent of the United Kingdom and become a part of the Irish Republic. The Protestant majority of Northern Ireland wanted to remain in the United Kingdom. A year earlier, in 1973, there was a referendum about whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom. An overwhelming majority of 98.9% voted to remain in the UK, but the people of Belfast, mostly Catholic, rejected the result.

Why would Belfast's citizens reject democracy? I have Irish Catholic friends who all say the same thing. They claim that in the 17th Century Scottish settlers arrived in Ireland. They were Protestants. The Irish Catholics claim that the Protestants in Northern Ireland aren't Irish, so they shouldn't be allowed to vote. Today, 300 years later, they don't consider themselves to be Scottish. They call themselves Irish. All I can say about this is that the Scottish were never sent to Ireland by the government, and Ireland wasn't forced to accept them. They were people who moved voluntarily. Immigration has always happened, often in large numbers. For instance, last century large numbers of Pakistanis settled in English cities like Birmingham and Bradford. Their children and grandchildren were born in England and have British citizenship, even if they still feel culturally connected to Pakistan. Is that a reason to exclude them from voting? Only the most extreme racists would answer Yes.

While I lived in America I discovered that the Americans don't understand the Irish conflict. They see the Catholic protesters on television and assume that all of Ireland is being oppressed by the British conquerors. Curiously, Protestant Irish who live in America also support the unification of Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic. I don't understand this. Maybe as second and third generation immigrants in America they feel more linked to their fellow countrymen than to their religion.

Now let's get back to the film again. Gerry Conlon was a young man who lived in Belfast. He was a petty thief, stealing lead from rooftops to sell it as scrap metal. While he was on a roof the British army mistook him for a sniper and fired at him. This started a riot. The IRA threatened to shoot him, so his father sent him to London for his own safety. He should have gone to live with his aunt, but on the ferry he bumped into a friend, Paul Hill, and went with him to stay with a hippy commune.

Things didn't go well in the commune. Some of them were prejudiced against the Irish. As a result, he and Paul were soon back on the streets. Gerry broke into a prostitute's apartment and stole her money. This enabled them to stay in a hotel. After this he returned to Belfast, while Paul remained in London. The night when Gerry stole the prostitute's money was 5th October 1974, the night of a pub bombing in Guildford. Gerry's arrival in England before the bombing and his departure soon afterwards was considered suspicious enough for him to be arrested. Gerry was taken to London in a military plane to be interrogated. His father travelled to London to support him, where he was also arrested, along with Gerry's aunt and her whole family. Paul Hill and two other members of the commune were also arrested.

Gerry and Paul were tortured by the police. Paul signed a blank piece of paper after a gun was put in his mouth. Gerry also signed a blank piece of paper after a policeman threatened to shoot his father. These statements were valid evidence in court, so they were both sentenced to life imprisonment. Gerry was eligible for parole after 30 years, Paul wasn't. The film doesn't explain why Paul Hill was considered the more serious criminal.

The rest of the film deals with Gerry's years in prison. We see him sharing a cell with his father. We don't see Paul Hill or his family members again until the end of the film.

The torture is bad enough, but there were other injustices. A homeless man in the park was interviewed and informed the police that Gerry was with him at the time of the bombing. This evidence was hidden in the police records with a note saying "Do not show to the defence". I could almost have forgiven the police for making a mistake and arresting the wrong man. That happens often enough. What I can't forgive is that the police knew he was innocent, but they put him on trial anyway. It wasn't until 15 years later that he was finally released after the critical interview was found.

I understand what happened. A bomb in a pub a few miles from London enraged the public. They demanded justice. The police needed to punish someone to calm the public anger. They arrested the first suspects they could find. The police inspector Richard Dixon was under pressure to put someone on trial. In the final scenes we see him conferring with an unnamed elderly man. A politician? A senior civil servant? It's not explained, but it suggests that he was acting on the orders of someone important.

I'd like to say something about historical inaccuracies in this film and in true stories in general. There are three different reasons for inaccuracies:

1. Mistakes

I'm not aware of any mistakes in this film. It was made in 1993, only four years after the events in the final scenes took place, so I assume that the director knew what he was doing.

2. Dramatization

There's one big inaccuracy in this film. Gerry didn't share a prison cell with his father. They weren't even in the same prison. The director says that the change was deliberate. He wanted to show the relationship between Gerry and his father. He also wanted to show that his father was a good non-violent man. The IRA were planting bombs, and the British army was driving tanks through the streets of Belfast, but Giuseppe Conlon was a quiet, hard working man who wanted his children to lead a good life. It's remarkable that he was angry with his son for stealing from a prostitute, despite the much bigger charges facing him.

Apart from this, the second half of the film would have been boring if we'd only seen Gerry sitting alone in his cell. That's what dramatization is about. It makes a film more interesting.

3. Protection of individuals

Police Inspector Richard Dixon doesn't exist. I'm sure that he's based on a real police officer who interviewed Gerry Conlon, but his name has been changed. This police officer performed terrible crimes, but he was never put on trial for his offences. We all know the saying "Innocent until proven guilty". If the film had named the police officer, he could have sued the director and possibly the film studios for slander. Personally, I wish he'd been named and shamed, but I understand why he wasn't.

"In the Name of the Father" is a stunning film. It's chilling to see how disgraceful the British legal system acted in the 1970's. Let it be a lesson to us all. May it never happen again. I hope not, but there's one thing that worries me. The film is available on disc in America, Germany and many other countries, but not in the UK, the country where it's most relevant. It's been brushed under the carpet. Does someone somewhere want the events in this film to be forgotten? It's unclear who first said "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it", but it's a true statement. I strongly recommend this film to everyone, especially to patriotic Englishmen like me.

Success Rate:  + 3.1

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The Boat that Rocked (4 Stars)

Bill Nighy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Nick Frost and Rhys Ifans walk the plank? Say it ain't so!

This is a cute little comedy that amuses me every time I watch it. It's not just the excellent actors, including a small appearance by Gemma Arterton. It's the whole 1960's atmosphere. Pirate radio ships were a part of British culture. They were a phenomenon unique to the UK, so I need to explain what they were to my readers from other countries. In the early 1960's British radio broadcasting was in a state of chaos. It was a time of musical revolution, sparked by groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but the BBC never played their music. In the absence of the Internet, people who weren't hip knew that a group called the Rolling Stones existed, but they'd never heard their music.

The BBC had a broadcasting monopoly in the United Kingdom. Private radio stations weren't allowed to broadcast. This led to the creation of pirate radio stations. They anchored boats in international waters, just outside of the British territorial waters, and broadcast pop music 24 hours a day. It's estimated that more than half of the British population, mostly younger people, listened to pirate radio stations regularly. This was a thorn in the eye to the BBC and the UK government in general, so they spent years trying to find ways to make them illegal.

The most popular pirate radio station was Radio Caroline. The radio station in the film, Radio Rock, is clearly based on Radio Caroline. Several of the film's DJs are clearly based on famous Radio Caroline DJs like Tony Blackburn, Terry Wogan and Emperor Rosco. Maybe they all are. I really must listen to the director's commentary to hear what Richard Curtis has to say about the cast.

"The Boat that Rocked" isn't just a film about the 1960's, it's a film in the style of the 1960's comedies. Rather than telling a single story, there are multiple situations taking place side by side. Government ministers are struggling to make new laws. The nephew of the boat owner is trying to find out who his father is. A DJ is heartbroken when a woman marries him only to get close to another DJ. Girls visit the boat every second Saturday to have sex with the DJs, because no women are allowed to live on the boat. The only exception to this rule is Felicity, the ship's cook. She's a lesbian, which means that she's not a real woman. The others on the ship call her lesbionic. Nice word. I'd use it myself, if I were sure that women didn't find it offensive

This is a film that desperately needs a Director's Cut. The Blu-ray contains 44 minutes of deleted scenes that were only removed because the film was too long. That's tragic. Unfortunately, the film was a financial failure, so it's unlikely that the studios would approve a Director's Cut. Maybe the topic is too obscure for cinema audiences outside of the UK. It's worth watching by anyone who loves music, 1960's or later.

Success Rate:  - 1.4

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Men In Black: International (4 Stars)

The first three films in the Men In Black series centred around the organisation's headquarters in New York City. After all, 70% of the aliens living on Earth are in lower Manhattan. This film reveals that it's an international organisation. There's an office in London which is responsible for monitoring alien activity in Europe.

Molly Wright was a young child who witnessed an operation by the Men In Black in 1996. They were hunting for a young runaway alien. Molly witnessed her parents being neuralysed, but she retained her memory, because everyone thought she was asleep. Ever since this time she wanted to know who the Men In Black were. 20 years later she finally sees them in operation and follows them to their headquarters. She makes a good impression on Agent O, so she's made an MIB agent on probation. She becomes Agent M.

She's sent to London to learn how the organisation works. (There's actually another reason, but we don't find that out until later). She assists Agent H (Chris Hemsworth) in looking after an alien leader who's having a good time in a sleazy London nightclub. Aliens just wanna have fun. He's assassinated by two other aliens, and the fun begins.

This is a good film, though it doesn't quite live up to the original trilogy. Some of my friends say that this is because the new film doesn't have Will Smith. I disagree. Tessa Thompson is an adequate replacement for Will Smith as a rookie within the organisation. It's good to see that a woman can do everything a man can. I think that the film suffers by not having such a strong plot. The overuse of the neuralyser has turned into a parody. The agents are fast to use it on civilians, even before they've seen anything they shouldn't.

I hope this is the start of a new trilogy. I want to see Tessa Thompson in action again.

Men In Black 3 (5 Stars)

I've always liked girls with big guns. Unfortunately, Lilly Poison doesn't get very far. She's betrayed by the man she loves after freeing him from prison. There must be a motto to that. It's worth watching the film twice in one week just to see the brief appearance of Nicole Scherzinger in her only film role so far. I hope there will be many more.

Last time I watched the film I neglected to mention Griffin, a five-dimensional alien being who can see all possible futures. He's a cool character who wears a woolly hat whatever the temperature. He doesn't wear a black suit, but he still does his bit to save the world.

There's a scene which briefly shows a newspaper with an article about the launch of Apollo 11 on 16th June 1969. Supposedly. The headline is about the mission, and it's a photo of Buzz Aldrin, but what's the article about. You can click on the picture to enlarge it, but here's a transcript to help you.

(Paragraph 1) Future plans will, of necessity, have great bearing on the situation as it now stands. Decisions will have to be made of the actual planning of the project will take considerable time but it is felt that these steps are very important.

(Paragraph 2) The facts regarding the situation remain the same, state the authorities. Details concerning the action have been given a preliminary investigation but it is felt that only by a more detailed study will the true facts become known.

(Paragraph 3) Thus at this conference all our governments found themselves in unanimous agreement regarding this undertaking. Arrangements for dealing with questions and disputes between the republics were further improved.

(Paragraph 2 repeated)

(Paragraph 3 repeated)

(Paragraph 4) Of no less importance was the common recognition shown of the fact that any menace from without to the peace of our continents concerns all of us and therefore property is a subject for consultation and cooperation. This was reflected in the instruments adopted by the conference.

(Paragraph 5) A suggestion that public hearings on applications be limited to one every six months was taken under advisement by the commission.

(Paragraph 2 repeated)

(Paragraph 6) Many persons feel at this stage that some legal action is forthcoming but it now becomes common knowledge that there is pressure from the inside which will materially change the aspect of the case.

(Paragraph 3 repeated)

(Paragraph 4 repeated)

(Paragraph 5 repeated)

(Paragraph 2 repeated)

(Paragraph 6 repeated)

(Paragraph 4 repeated)

(Paragraph 7) An immediate investigation is assured and indications are that some new light will be shed on the situation in the near future. Available facts seem vague but authorities feel that time will disclose some means of arriving at a solution.

(Paragraph 1 repeated)

---

To sum up: the article has nothing to do with Apollo 11, and even the incorrect text is repeated ad nauseam. That's sloppy.

Success Rate:  + 0.9

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Men In Black 3 (5 Stars)

This is only the second time I've watched this film. The first time was six years ago, and after reading my old review I'm puzzled. I don't understand why I wrote some of the things I did. I felt tempted to delete my old review, or at least change it, but I don't do that. I only edit old reviews if I find spelling or grammatical mistakes, and I never ever delete old reviews. The only thing I can do is write new reviews in which I put things right.

To be honest, I'd totally forgotten the film. I had no idea what happened, and when I watched it today I felt like I was seeing it for the first time. I didn't write anything about the plot in my first review, so there was nothing I wrote to remind me. That's nothing unusual in itself. I often don't describe the plot, especially if it's a film I see in the cinema. It depends on my mood. Today I'm in the mood to write about the plot, at least briefly.

After being deneuralysed in the second film, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) has decided to remain an active member of the Men In Black. It's better than working in a post office. Once more his past catches up with him. An alien called Boris the Animal escapes from a high security prison on the Moon. He returns to Earth to get revenge on Agent K for shooting off his arm 40 years ago. More than that, he wants his arm back. To do this he travels back in time to 16th July 1969, the day when K stopped him. This changes time, and when Agent J (Will Smith) wakes up the next day he finds out that K died 40 years ago.

The fact that J can remember K when nobody else can makes the new head of the Men In Black, Agent O, suspect that time has been altered, so she sends J back to 15th July 1969, a day earlier, to prepare K for Boris returning.

The younger Agent K is played by Josh Brolin. So 40 years is all it took to morph him into Tommy Lee Jones. Amazing!

The film is full of temporal paradoxes which are dealt with in a humorous manner, and yet it all makes sense. I like films with mind-bending temporal paradoxes, which makes it all the stranger that I forgot what happened.

"Men In Black 3" was the least successful film in the series, but it's arguably the best film. Apart from the time travelling, there are also emotional scenes which are more moving than anything in the previous two films.

Now I can hardly wait to see "Men In Black: International" in the cinema next week.

Success Rate:  + 0.9

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The Boat that Rocked (4 Stars)

I've watched this film a few times, but I've missed out until now. My Blu-ray disc has 44 minutes of deleted scenes. They're not like the fuzzy raw footage that we see on other discs, they're at a reasonable 540p resolution. As the director Richard Curtis explains, they were all scenes that should have been in the film, and it broke his heart to remove them, but it was a painful necessity, because nobody wants to see a three-hour film about a big boat.

There are 14 deleted scenes (actually 13 deleted scenes and one extended scene), and I have to say that I enjoyed all of them. I regret that they're not in the film itself. Isn't there a demand for a director's cut? I would buy it. If anything, Rhys Ifans suffers most from the cuts. His character is built up in the deleted scenes better than in the film itself.

The film is set in 1966-1967. It's about a fictional pirate radio station broadcasting from the North Sea, but it's based heavily on Radio Caroline. Some of the disc jockeys are recognisable to me, or at least I can see who they are based on, whatever their names in the film are. This is a film where I need to listen to the director's commentary. I only remember the big disc jockeys from the 1960's, like Emperor Rosco, John Peel, Terry Wogan and Tony Blackburn. In the commentary the director might state who the others are based on.

The film has several plots running side by side. They fit together very well. There's the government opposition to pirate radio stations, the coming of age of Carl, the 17-year-old godson of the station's owner, and the friendly rivalry between the top DJ's. Other smaller plots are found only in the deleted scenes.

The film is memorable for the meeting of Nick Frost and Gemma Arterton. It's love at first sight.

Gemma can't keep her hands off him. Lucky Nick.

Maybe he has something I don't. This photo might give me a clue.

I lived through the age of pirate radio. I owned a small radio, smaller than the one in this photo but probably better quality, that I kept next to my bed. I was less interested in the actual pirate radio stations. I spent more time listening to Radio Luxembourg, which provided a similar selection of pop songs, also presented by English DJ's like Noel Edmonds, Kenny Everett and Johnny Walker. Incidentally, I consider Noel Edmonds to have been a brilliant DJ. It's sad that he's a television host now. He should have remained with what he did best.

More than anything, the film is about the music. Most of the musical selection is accurate, the songs being picked from 1961 to 1967. A couple of later songs have slipped in, such as "Fire" (1968) and "Won't get fooled again" (1971), but they still fit the style of the two years when the film takes place. During the final credits more recent songs are played, as examples of songs that are influenced by the pop music of the 1960's.

Here is the full list of the songs used in the film:

At the end of the film Gemma Arterton has left, but Nick Frost finds himself an armful of schoolgirls to comfort him. I hope they're all over 16, for his sake. Nowadays the law frowns on the antics of radio DJ's.

Tom Wisdom finds himself 33 girls to play with. Is he crazy? No man could survive a night like that. Come to think of it, I wouldn't even survive Nick's three schoolgirls.

This is a highly entertaining film. It doesn't tell all the history of what happened in these fateful years. That's not its purpose. If you don't already know the story of pirate radio in the 1960's I advise that you read about it. Pirate radios actually operated from 1964 to 1990, but they were less important after the founding of BBC Radio One on 30th September 1967. For all its faults, Radio One gave the public what it wanted. "If you can't beat them, buy them". The top DJ's of the pirate radio stations were hired by the BBC, and the radio listeners followed them.

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Beauty and the Beast (4 Stars)

This is a fairy tale that can warm the hearts of young and old alike. A beautiful young woman is held captive by an ugly looking beast, but she sees the tenderness in his heart and learns to love him. While not strictly a romantic comedy, it follows the rules of romantic comedies. There's no suspense in the film. Everything is predictable, we know from the beginning that there will be a happy ending, but does it matter? Of course not. In the magical world of fairy tales we always know that the heroes will live happily ever after.

Maybe I have a twisted sense of aesthetics, but I didn't find the beast ugly at all. He might have been non-human with an animal-like face, but to me he wass a very handsome looking beast with a lovable expressive face. In contrast, when he finally assumed his human form at the end of the film I found he looked silly and unattractive. There was laughter in the mostly female audience when he was transformed. Did they think the same as me?

This is the must-see film of 2017. It's the year's most successful film so far, and it will be difficult for other films to out-perform it at the box office. It's considered a women's film because of the romantic elements, but that's unfair. Any man who doesn't enjoy it must have a heart of stone.

Alone in Berlin (4½ Stars)

Otto and Anna Quangel are a middle-aged couple who live in Berlin in 1940. They both support Adolf Hitler, not because of any political convictions, but because they're patriotic Germans. Otto is the shift leader in a factory that makes coffins. Anna belongs to a women's group that visits unemployed women to encourage them to find work that's useful for the war effort, such as manufacturing weapons. They're both good Germans, in their own way.

One day the news comes that their son, their only child, was killed during the invasion of France. This makes them question whether their loyalty to Hitler is misplaced. Otto begins to write messages on postcards criticising Hitler and drops them in public places throughout the city. Most of the postcards are handed in to the authorities, so the young police inspector Escherich is assigned to find the person who wrote them.

The film is based on the lives of Otto and Elise Hempel, about whom a novel was written in 1947, entitled "Everyone dies alone". The novel was filmed twice in Germany, in 1962 and 1975, as well as two television mini-series about their lives being made in 1970 and 2004. The novel was finally translated into English in 2009, which has led to this English language film. Something about the story fascinates people. It shows how a simple person was able to resist Hitler in his own small way.

This is a magnificent film with powerful acting by the lead characters. Brendan Gleeson is quiet, almost stoic in his resistance, expecting to be captured and executed as a traitor at any time, but having no fear of death. Emma Thompson is emotional, afraid that her husband will lose his life. For me personally the most intense person in the film is Daniel Brühl as Inspector Eschinger. He isn't a Nazi, but he takes his job as a policeman seriously. His motivation is to catch criminals, and whoever is writing the postcards is guilty of inciting disorder. His job is made more difficult by the Gestapo, who want to turn it into a political case.

Saving Mr. Banks (5 Stars)

This is one of the most delightful films made in recent years. It's hard to recommend on the basis of the plot alone. What I mean is, the plot doesn't sound interesting. Nobody would be convinced to buy it merely by reading the text on the back of the DVD box. If you like the film – as I do – you need to force it on your friends, tell them that they must watch it, and they won't be disappointed.

The film's strength is in the quality of the acting. Tom Hanks was born to play Walt Disney. Not only does he look similar, he projects an outgoing jovial style that immediately wins over everyone around him. Emma Thompson puts on the performance of a lifetime as Pamela Travers, the grumpy old lady who wrote the Mary Poppins books. It's amazing how an author can be totally different to the image portrayed by her books. Not least are Colin Farrell and the child actress Annie Rose Buckley, the affectionate father and daughter living in poor circumstances in Australia.

The story is told in two threads interwoven through the film, the present day in Los Angeles (1961) and Pamela's childhood in Australia (1906). As Walt Disney struggles to understand the author's stubbornness to accept any changes to her story we're shown scenes from her early life that offer clues. As we see, the Mary Poppins story is an idealised auto-biography in which things succeeded that failed in real life.

This is one of those films that makes me cry when I watch it. It will have the same effect on you, unless you're totally cold-hearted.

Pamela Travers (1924).

One significant but understandable deviation from the true story is Pamela Travers' reaction to "Mary Poppins" when it was released. "Saving Mr. Banks" shows her emotionally enjoying it at the premiere. In actual fact she hated the film and remained angry with Walt Disney until her death in 1996.

Pamela Travers in 1964 with Julie Andrews and Walt Disney.

Beautiful Creatures (2 Stars)

Ethan Wate is a high school junior in the small town Gatlin, South Carolina. Everyone around him is highly religious. Ethan has nothing against Christianity, he just doesn't like it being pushed in his face all the time. I can relate to him. Even his ex-girlfriend Emily tells him she prays every night that he won't go to Hell. Poor Ethan.

The owners of Ravenwood estate, a mansion that's been abandoned for years, return to town. 15-year-old Lena joins Ethan's class. Everyone else rejects Lena because her family is supposed to be devil worshippers, but Ethan immediately falls for her. This makes him an outcast in the town.

Lena loves Ethan in return, but she warns him to stay away from her. The Ravenwood family aren't human, they belong to a race of casters, who look identical to humans, but they can perform powerful magic spells. On a caster's 16th birthday he either becomes good or evil. Lena warns Ethan that she might change completely and kill him. The change to good or evil can be random, but it can also be influenced by grief or happiness. There is a prophecy that Lena will be the most powerful caster of all, so Lena's mother, a dark caster, wants her to become evil and destroy all humans on Earth. To make sure this happens she wants to kill Ethan the day before Lena's 16th birthday. Lena's uncle is a good caster and wants to prevent this happening.

I like teenage supernatural romance stories. I always have, but this film is a great disappointment. Somehow it lacks the magic touch to make it interesting. I found myself yawning with boredom throughout. The supporting cast put on good performances, but the two main characters are exceedingly dull. By the middle of the film I was thinking "Go on and kill, Ethan. So what?" Maybe the novel that inspired the film is good. The film isn't.

Burnt (4 Stars)

This is a film that's difficult to recommend. If you describe the plot to someone it sounds utterly boring. It's about the struggle of a two-star rated cook to achieve a three-star rating (the highest) in the Michelin food guide. This is a rare honour. According to the Wikipedia page, only three restaurants in England (and 14 in the USA) currently have the top rating.

Bradley Cooper stars as Adam Jones, a two-star cook recovering from drug addiction, who has moved from Paris to London to begin a new life. Nobody trusts him in London because he's well known as a wash out, although many people have respect for him as a great cook. Adam persuades his friend Tony (Daniel Brühl), a hotel owner, to let him take over as head chef in his restaurant. Adam is a tough person to work for. He creates new recipes, the cooks in his kitchen make them for him, and he runs round tasting the results, throwing plates of food at the wall if he doesn't consider them to be perfect. Yes, perfect. Anything less than perfect isn't good enough for him.

If that sounds like "Whiplash", yes, it is. Adam Jones is like a man directing an orchestra in the kitchen. He's brilliant but obsessive. But I walked out of the cinema today comparing it with "Rocky" (the first film) more than anything else. They're both films about someone who was at the top of his game, then fell flat on his face because of his own faults and had to work hard to get back to the top.

The film is impressive, but I find it extremely hard to relate to. In the case of "Rocky" I understand what boxing is about, but cooking? Is it really such a cut-throat industry where competitors either respect or despise one another? It's like another world. Unless someone appears on a daytime TV show, nobody could name the top cook in his town, but the characters in this film all know the names of rival cooks throughout Europe. I've never eaten in a restaurant remotely like the ones shown.

My home town, Birmingham, doesn't have any three-star restaurants or even two-star restaurants, but it does have five one-star restaurants. I checked out one of the restaurants -- online, of course -- and discovered that it only has three dishes on the menu. That seems to be typical for the top restaurants. Rather than having a large menu that remains the same for months, maybe years, they only offer a few dishes, changing the menu every time the head chef has a new creation he wants to show off.

Interestingly, the film has a scene where Adam Jones is eating in Burger King. The junior cook accompanying him refuses to eat anything out of principle because it's junk food, but Adam defends it. He says it's the food of the working class, for the people who don't want to pay 50 times as much in a top restaurant. He praises Burger King for making consistently good food, but he says that consistency is also Burger King's greatest weakness. Discerning diners don't want to eat the same food all the time, they want new food every time they eat.

I'm working class. It's Burger King for me. But I don't want ice in my Coke.

In the Name of the Father (5 Stars)

Gerry Conlon died on June 21st 2014 at the age of 60. He spent 15 years of his life in prison for a crime he didn't commit. That's 25% of his life, a big chunk for anyone to lose. The film tells the story of his time in prison and the events that led up to it. In my opinion, this was Daniel Day-Lewis' greatest role. He brings Gerry Conlon to life and makes him deeply sympathetic to the viewers.

I don't want to make a political statement about the imprisonment of Gerry Conlon and the rest of the Guildford Four. If a crime is committed the guilty ones should be punished. In my naive way of looking at things it's as simple as that. The police failed in their responsibility by arresting the wrong people, and the courts failed by finding them guilty. The police who arrested the Guildford Four were certainly heavy-handed. They used beatings and threats to force the suspects to confess. Gerry claims that he signed a blank piece of paper and told the police to write whatever they wanted. If his claims are true, the police officers should have been sent to prison, but they were found innocent of perverting the course of justice. Something seems wrong somewhere.

It's a very good film. Pete Postlethwaite also excels as Gerry's father Giuseppe.

Saving Mr. Banks (5 Stars)

Today was my last chance to see "Saving Mr. Banks" in the cinema. I'm glad I took the opportunity while I still had it. Evidently others thought the same as me, because the cinema was packed. This will be a short review, but I have to give away spoilers to explain what makes the film so wonderful.

The film tells the true story of the making of "Mary Poppins", one of Disney's most successful films, based on a children's book with the same name. In 1938 Walt Disney first approached the author, Pamela Travers, for the rights to make the film, but she turned him down. Over the next 20 years he regularly wrote to her, but she always refused. In 1961 she finally went to Los Angeles to meet him. She said she would only sign the contract if Walt agreed to her conditions, for instance that it shouldn't be a musical and there should be no animation included. Walt was unable to win her over until he realised that the book contained biographical elements. She was writing about her father who she had been unable to save as a child.

I don't know who to praise most when it comes to the actors. Tom Hanks is a good actor, but he's never impressed me as much as in this film, playing Walt Disney. Emma Thompson manages to make Pamela Travers look like a grumpy old lady, while letting her hidden pain seep through as understated hints. Colin Farrell is perfect as Pamela's loving father, tainted by his alcohol addiction. Paul Giamatti is usually an unassuming background character that we hardly notice in his films, but in his relatively small role as Pamela's chauffeur Ralph in Los Angeles his acting ability dazzles. This is a very beautiful film. It's all about relationships: Pamela's relationship with her father, with Walt Disney, with Ralph.

The Boat that Rocked (4 Stars)

It's 1966. The greatest era for British rock & roll. But BBC radio plays less than 45 minutes of pop music a day.

Fortunately pirate radio stations are anchored in the North Sea. They play rock and pop 24 hours a day. And 25 million people, half the population of Britain, listen to the pirates every single day.

The 1960's were a weird time for music in Great Britain. A new music had emerged, independent of what was happening in the USA. Most notable were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but there were also underground bands playing blues-influenced music such as Cream and the Yardbirds. But if you sat and listened to the radio at the time you wouldn't know that it existed. The BBC, which had a monopoly of legal radio stations in Britain, only played classical music, easy listening or pop music acceptable to grannies (Tom Jones, Lonnie Donigan, Paul Anka).

The first and most famous pirate radio station was Radio Caroline, which began broadcasting in 1964. It broadcast music from a ship which was moored in international waters, so it didn't come under British law. Over the next few years many other ships copied the pattern. This was a great annoyance to the BBC, when they realised that half of the population listened to the pirates. The only way the BBC could survive was by changing to meet the challenge. On September 30th 1967 the BBC started a new radio station,  which they called Radio One, that played pop music 24 hours a day. More than half of the DJs hired for the new station were pirate DJs, lured away from the cold north sea waters by big salaries. The most famous of the ex-pirate DJs now working for the BBC were Tony Blackburn and John Peel.

Radio One was greeted with great optimism, but it didn't mean the death of pirate radio. An official top 40 playlist was imposed for all weekday daytime broadcasts, so during the day only the current hits were played. This secured a large audience, but it wasn't enough to make everyone happy. To make things worse, there were soon holes in the Radio One broadcasts, mainly in the mid afternoon, when there were no Radio One broadcasts, supposedly because there was no interest in pop music at those times. The holes were filled by broadcasts from one of the BBC's other stations, Radio Two, which played easy listening and big band music. At these times the pop fans had to turn their dials back to the pirate stations.

I admit that I watched "The Boat that Rocked" today as a tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died from a drug overdose yesterday. In the film he plays a DJ called The Count, presumably based on Radio Caroline's Emperor Rosko. This is a terrific film with a great cast of actors, but the ones who stand out are Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rhys Ifans. I won't say anything about the film here, except that it takes place in 1966. Watch it! You won't regret it.

P.S. For some reason the film has been renamed "Pirate Radio" in America.

Philp and Rhys, friends forever

Rock and roll will never die!