Tag: Billy Elliot

Turkey dreams and the descent of humankind

From the outset, ‘Great Yarmouth: Provisional Figures’ directed by Marco Martins is an intense, astounding and difficult film to watch. It is beautifully edited and supremely well cast and performed, but the underlying moral degradation central to the grand narrative here is punishing to stomach. And even harder to watch.

Three chords and the truth

THE INCENTIVE TO follow the wild road that your dreams may offer you, regardless of your commitments or bank balance, is the stuff that ignites the passion of many a youngster. It’s also the stuff that makes the hero myth such a compelling one, for everyone. Tom Harper’s […]

Not only the piano player

MUSICAL BIOPICS ARE always complicated and oft dangerous affairs. They may be about not letting the facts get in the way of a good yarn, as they may find themselves compromised by a quest to find actors who look the part rather than have the skills or the […]

Never forget to smell the roses

LOVE, LOSS AND growing old are inescapably part of the human condition. Put these three elements in a children’s cancer ward, and you might expect to yield a narrative which is hackneyed and clichéd. Indeed, you already know how the story ends. But in the loving hands of […]

Too much pretty in Boychoir

It’s odd to think that a director could get some parts of a film so right, but enable an ending for a film that so profoundly negates all its explored values in one foul swoop. While François Girard’s Boychoir probes the preciously transient phenomenon of the soprano boys’ […]