Just For Lookin' Thru

Imagine if you could be taken back, to re-enact your most special memory? Could surrendering to your fantasy be dangerous? Two couples; one middle-aged, with love gone sour, and the other young and creative, who are tormenting each other with the intensity of their passion. All of them are on personal journeys. Fanny Ardant plays Marianne, a career woman enthusiastic about the present and future, with depressed husband Victor (Daniel Auteuil) who is alienated by digi-tech, and a constant irritant to his wife.   Actress Margot (Doria Tiller) and Antoine (Guillaume Canet) are also driving each other crazy. Antoine is a brilliant entrepreneur, directing a historical reconstruction company, selling clients the chance to live their dreams. Victor accepts his invitation to re-live the evening in 1974 when he met his wife, to a simpler time when ‘people talked to each other.’ This is a clever, charming, and very funny film, well-crafted with excellent writing an...

Astonishing true story of early freedom fighter, Harriet Tubman, enslaved in the Southern states of America. Despite her marriage to a freeborn African-American, she was unable to protect any of their hoped-for children from being born into that same slavery, and being owned by the farm proprietor. Her overpowering sense of injustice compelled her to act. She escapes, and eventually becomes one of America’s great heroes. Her audacity is astonishing, the level of courage she sustained, her extraordinary tenacity and physical endurance, not to mention cunning and excellent planning. One of those qualities would be worthy of high praise but she is exceptional for having all of them, created by her determination to rescue her family and then other captives. She was responsible for the escape of almost 300 slaves Her religious faith was absolute and she felt guided by God to help others, aided by Abolitionists and free African-Americans. Filmed in glorious colour, with deft...

The proliferation of news items and articles stating that ‘baby boomers’ have it all is misleading, and has created conflict and resentment between generations. We all need to work together and to learn from one another. It is not helpful to blame particular generations of British people for some of the woes we face today.   Blaming consumers is a smokescreen. Decisions have been made on behalf of the general public without adequate thought of the consequences. Consumers respond to economic situations created by unethical business leaders and short-sighted decision makers in Government. The UK will always therefore do better being served by a government that takes the long view, which removes their focus from pleasing businessmen, and stops prioritising profit above people and the planet. The generation referred to as the baby-boomers were born between 1944 and 1964 when the UK was recovering from the catastrophic financial and human costs of two world wars. The mood was ...

Watching Styx is an uncomfortable experience throughout, and a film that raises many questions. The film outline has told us exactly what to expect so there’s no surprise when Rike spots the stricken vessel overloaded with refugees, after she has been happily sailing, reading, enjoying her solitude, and anticipating reaching the scientifically created paradise. Rike (Susanne Wolff) is an emergency doctor working in Gibraltar who has set sail on a solo voyage to Ascension Island, part of the British Overseas Territory. Previously barren land, the British introduced trees and non-indigenous planting; now there is lush bamboo and the Green Mountain (cloud) Forest, and she is intrigued by the idea of this fully functioning artificial ecosystem created by Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker (explorer and botanist) and the Royal Navy from around 1843. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution describes the process of natural selection and survival of the fittest yet, in creating the self-sustaining and ...

In this story of transgression and loss, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Lisa, a dedicated, kindly teacher of 5 year olds. She yearns for creative expression and attends a poetry evening class but is frustrated with her writing. One of the children in her class, Jimmy, begins to pace back and forth across the classroom speaking lines whilst in an apparent trance, as though he is channelling words of an experienced wisdom beyond his years. His poetic nature excites her as he speaks from feeling rather than from thinking, or over thinking, as she does with her own attempts at poetry. Lisa fixates on his words, racing to scribble down every utterance, to capture his lines before they are lost forever. However, it is troubling that, at her evening class, she presents one of his poems as her own work. It is well received, and she repeats this theft of creative copyright and intellectual property the following week. The film suggests that her own latent talent was crushed by the everyday,...

Many women born in the 1950s have seen their incomes dive because they expected to receive their state pension at age 60 and were astonished to discover, without adequate notice for any preparation, that their pension age was to be increased to 65. 3.4 million women have been affected by the lack of notice of the 1995 and 2011 Pensions Acts and t he Government did not observe an appropriate timeframe for this change. Worse, the state pension was further increased, to 66 for some and 67 for others. Women affected by these changes are advised to write to the DWP where over 700 complaints are being investigated in October 2017. The WASPI (Women Against Pensions Inequality) campaign provides guidance on how to complain. See http://www.waspi.co.uk/action The cancellation of these pension payments at the April 2017 state pension rate of £155.65 per week means a loss to each of these women of £8,093 per year, totalling £40,469 for the 5 years, £48,563 for 6 years, and £56,657 for 7 ...

What moment would you pick as the standout moment in a weekend of adventure travel films, workshops and presentations camping and bush craft, organised by Lois Pryce and Austin Vince ? It’s a tough call. You may have been baffled by Tim Cope and Chris Hatherley’s fourteen month trip from Russia, across Serbia and Mongolia, to Beijing, enduring cold, hunger, exhaustion and frostbite. The two twenty year old guys from Australia shared a tent, their sleeping and waking hours, and the arduous journey in ‘ Off The Rails’ (2001). Maybe you were impressed by the nomadic Bakhtiari people in the 1976 film ‘ People of the Wind ,’ filmed by Anthony Howarth, making the annual migration across the Iranian mountains, leading their flock from Summer to Winter pasture.  With speaking much, without visible signs of communication or affection, the families are individually focussed on their roles: small children carry their younger siblings, lambs or puppies, colts or calves, along haza...

According to Emma Graham Harrison and Rory Carroll’s news feature in The Guardian (2 June 2014), Bowe Bergdahl sounds like an unusual young man. Raised and home schooled in a book filled cabin, without a telephone, but with the Idaho countryside as his playground, he is described as ‘thoughtful and quiet.’ A well read thinker who joined the US army, Bergdahl is quoted in Rolling Stone as emailing home to say that he felt ashamed to be American because: “These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live. “We don’t even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armoured trucks … We make fun of them in front of their faces, and laugh at them for not understanding we are insulting them.” His father, Bob, spoke of Bowe’s apparent disillusionment prior to his capture, the exact details of whi...

Tonight is the final episode of Sally Wainwright’s unmissable Happy Valley . The whole sorry mess of a kidnap instigated by a local businessman’s weak and resentful accountant has become more violent episode by episode. There have been criticisms of the shocking violence, and questions as to whether it’s necessary. It’s only necessary to the casual rapist and throat slitter Tommy Lee Royce (played by James Norton), as his method of shutting people up; if they can’t be relied upon to keep quiet they have to die. The kidnapped young woman, Ann, (played by Charlie Murphy) was roughly handled, then raped, then injected with heroin, and raped again (neither rape filmed). Not a classic weeping victim, her character is refreshingly tough; she resisted, yelled and struggled and, when discovered in the cellar by Sgt. Cawood, wrestled herself free, wrenched some dumbbells from the floor and swung them at her captor, dealing him a decisive blow. The plucky lass dragged and heaved the badly...

Paulina will be awarded her doctorate in July. In the UK from Poland for a holiday in Somerset, she’s bored sitting about in her family’s home so she’s signed up with an agency for some temporary work. I met her and Nora before a charity function where I’m waiting to interview some of the guests. Paulina’s PhD is in chemical engineering and she tells me there will be work for her, in some country, but maybe not in Poland where her fiancé is living. She is rueful, “Germany perhaps, but then I won’t see him.” She is resigned to living where she finds work, and missing her loved ones. A guy dressed in kitchen wear comes out and says, “There are Russian jets in our air space, and they’ve got ships in our territorial waters, off Scotland .. and they won’t leave." When he gets no response from this cheery piece of news, he disappears back through the swing doors. The barmaid leans forward and yells into the room, to no-one in particular, “We’re going to war, and I don’t give a sh...