Category: Films
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Rocks, 2019 - ★★★★
Great, moving film about a teenaged girl whose mother leaves — it’s never stated why, but most likely because of mental health problems — who tries to keep life going normally for herself and her little brother. Inevitably there are problems, with school, with social workers.
It’s set and filmed in and around Hackney, so I feel like these could be people I see on the streets, people my kids went to school with.
Refreshingly, many clichés are avoided: the problems are not about drugs or gangs, or even race.
A top piece of work.
Walker, 1987 - ★★★½
I really thought I’d seen this before, but remembered nothing about it. Having watched it now, I doubt that I ever actually did see it, because none of it was familiar.
I have the soundtrack album, of course, cos the music was written by Joe Strummer.
It’s a weird film, but it may actually be Alex Cox’s best apart from Repo Man, given that Sid & Nancy wasn’t as good as I remembered, and Straight To Hell is... its own thing.
Arrival, 2016 - ★★★★ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers.
This is glorious. I'd give it five stars if it wasn't for the fact that I don't think they had to have Hannah die. They could have misdirected us at the start a different way.
Plus, that first few minutes means we start off feeling sad. It's a serious film, but it doesn't have to be sad.
Not that there's anything automatically wrong with sadness ("Happiness for deep people." -- Sally Sparrow). Still, I think effectively fridging a little girl -- or not, but that's how it appears at first -- weakens the whole piece.
Great to see a complex problem resolved with communication and compromise though.
And! Sequel, please: I want to see what the heptapods need from humanity on 3000 years.