Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams is a peach of a picture. At once miniaturist yet epic, it’s an exquisite film that touches on every human emotion – agony, ecstasy, discovery, surprise, togetherness, loneliness – without contrivance or strain.
A risible attempt to modernise classic science-fiction by adding WhatsApp and political chicanery. This thin, frenetic, soulless adaptation is misguided moviemaking cubed.
Like Talk To Her, it doesn’t completely satisfy when it comes time to resolve its intrigue. But, as with their debut, the Philippou brothers show a real skill for creating believable teen characters, Barratt and Wong create a tender, affecting chemistry that make the chills all the more affecting.
It’s not doing much daring or different but this delivers a fun, well-made summer theme-park ride, with fast highs and slow lows. Pleasurable, though it doesn’t linger.
The Ballad Of Wallis Island is a big-hearted, consoling hug of a movie. It might not reinvent the wheel, but it’s the low-(Tim)-key crowd-pleaser of the year so far.
It leans too heavily into ham-fisted cliché but Jack Huston’s debut gets by on a striking look and a clutch of strong performances led by an excellent Michael C. Pitt.
Understated performances and unflashy filmmaking coalesce into an absorbing mixture of the personal and the political. It may take its time but, given the circumstances of its making, this is an extraordinary achievement.
