brockfal

The director of The Greatest Showman takes on a biopic of Robbie Williams, erstwhile 'bad boy of pop' and lately a great showman in his own right. It's flashy, often spectacular, witty, but in many ways it's also a very conventional story of rags to riches, fame, failure, disaster, redemption, triumph, except of course for the odd, even crazy idea, of portraying Robbie Williams a CGI monkey!

The odd thing is, the portrayal works. Without it though , and the clever visually stunning CGI heavy musical and concert numbers, I think the film might have been fairly pedestrian and unremarkable. The CGI monkey figure, once you get used to it, actually does look and act like Williams, who of course also does the voice and the singing, and there are some other great casting choices too, the film is well worth a look. In the end I really enjoyed and was even moved by this skilful, unusual, rather gloriously mad entertainment.

Another crime drama about a warring gang and family, it's gritty, realistic, superbly well acted, and mostly very gripping. It's also just a little bit derivative, self consciously 'laddish' and supposedly 'street aware'. It's another drama featuring deeply unpleasant people doing deeply unpleasant things, so do we need it, and should the BBC do it? On the other hand, I kept watching....

The dialogue is pure authentic Liverpudlian and so are the characterisations, so I have to admit (as a southerner) I needed subtitles, without which I wouldn't have had a clue about what was going on! With those, I certainly appreciated this yarn, which is full of cliffhanger surprises (and plot holes...), with emotional angles you don't always find in such dramas, and even some attempts to examine moral dilemmas, though that's a stretch, given the circumstances. Ultimately, for this type of drama it is is well worth a watch.

War in all of its stark reality is shown in this intensely honest thorough and profoundly affecting drama, set during recent wartime , the early 00's and Iraq, based on the actual and recorded experiences of US servicemen.

If you are expecting bland heroics, do not look here. The experience of warfare is shown as often boring, where nothing happens except tension and anxiety building. It's a situation where tiny decision's matter hugely and survival is the only objective. Suddenly all hell can let loose.

The film is immersive and profoundly affecting, and it doesn't hold its punches either. Brilliantly put together, the focus is from the soldiers point of view, opponents are not portrayed directly, a mechanism that draws you in and which exactly achieves its aim, to show the terrible consequences and personal costs of war. Bravery, terror, confusion, and essentially reality, it's a film that deserves to be seen.