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Reviews
High Flight (1957)
Not a great plot but still worth watching for nostalgia and good acting.
The downside of this film is that the plot is formulaic. A group of young men go through their pilot training at Cranwell, the RAF's version of Sandhurst, and of course you've got the rebel, Tony Winchester (Kenneth Haigh), the class clown, Roger Endicott (Anthony Newley), the stern but paternal flight sergeant (Bernard Lee) and the wing commander (Ray Milland), a man with dark things in his past. Things get rather silly at times and the one punch-up is possibly the least convincing fight scene I've ever witnessed in a movie. That said, the quality of the cast shines through. Milland was a film star with a highly impressive track record on both sides of the Atlantic, Kenneth Haigh was Jimmy Porter in the original stage production of the ground-breaking "Look Back in Anger" and the multi- talented Newley was also a pop singer and songwriter (he composed the song which the cadets sing in this film). For us oldies there are quite a few familiar faces in the supporting cast, notably Leslie Phillips and John Le Mesurier. Also worth watching are the aerial shots, especially of the Hawker Hunter fighter and the de Havilland Vampire jet trainer.
How I Live Now (2013)
Ignore the book nerds or the pretentious idiots who talk about genres. Watch it.
Of all the movies I've seen, this is up there with the best. It's perfect in its variations of tone, from the lyrical to the grisly, and paced so that I never failed to be engaged with it. It avoids being over-elaborate or over-clever.
We are drawn in by comedy. Stroppy American teenager Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) flies in to stay with her English cousins and so far as she's concerned, she's landed in Hicksville. They live a carefree, mostly adult-free existence in a ramshackle farmhouse with animals all over the place, unwashed crockery and a casual approach to eating. Just what you want when you've got OCD, food fads and medication.
Determined to sulk in her room, she is eventually drawn out and succumbs to the warmth of her cousins, 14-year-old Isaac (Tom Holland), younger sister Piper (Harley Bird) and older brother Edmond (George MacKay}.
But in the background there are rumblings, particularly of a nuclear bomb which has been detonated in London. In the foreground, Daisy's and Edmond's hormones are rumbling.
The sex scene, when it comes, is how it should be done: lovely without being too explicit, too long or salacious.
That's followed by soldiers arriving, guns blazing, to impose martial law. Boys and girls are split up to be taken to separate camps, but Edmond and Daisy vow to be reunited.
Daisy's escape is a grim survival scenario in which she has to practically force-march Piper to exhaustion through a landscape beset with dangers, particularly for vulnerable females of any age. Who will survive?
The acting? Well, there's acting, good acting and acting so good that you forget that it's acting, and Ronan's and Bird's acting both come into this last category. I was totally absorbed in their journey. It's very, very rare for me to lose my sense of detachment when I'm watching a film but I did here.
Few people have doubted Ronan's ability since her impressive performance as the 13-year-old Briony Tallis in Atonement. However, I've sometimes felt that she has been the victim of a misguided director (Peter Jackson in The Lovely Bones) or a substandard screenplay (The Host). I've often wondered when she would get more material worthy of her talent. Well, boy, has she hit the jackpot this time.
Director Kevin Macdonald did everything he had to do to get the story across without any of those irritating "look what a wonderful director I am" flourishes.
People will inevitably draw comparisons with Meg Rosoff's novel, which I haven't read, or other films in this "genre". How I detest the pretentious overuse of that word. This film was enough for me and if you don't think it measures up to your precious novel or your precious genre that's your problem, not mine.