Set in Germany and France in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, (1914-1918), Frantz recalls the mourning period that follows great national tragedies as seen through the eyes of the war’s “lost generation”: Anna (21 year-old Paula Beer in a breakthrough performance), a bereft young German woman whose fiancé, Frantz, was killed during trench warfare, and Adrien (Pierre Niney, Yves Saint Laurent), a French veteran of the war who shows up mysteriously in her town, placing flowers on Frantz’s grave. Adrien’s presence is met with resistance by the small community still reeling from Germany’s
Review: Mindhorn
Richard Thorncroft is a has-been British TV actor who used to be famous in the late 1980’s for playing the titular and charismatic lead role in the Isle of Man detective show Mindhorn, a character with a Robotic eye that can literally “see the truth”. Unfortunately, after becoming a little too pompous and arrogant, Richard ends up insulting both the Isle of Man and his fellow cast members on the Wogan chat-show, including his on-screen and real life love interest Patricia DeVille, his Stuntman, and bit-part co-star Peter Easterman. He decides to leave to try and make it big in Hollywood, but 25 years later and he’s balding in a flat in North London and has recently been replaced for an orthopaedic sock advert by John Nettles, much to his chagrin. He is even more jealous that Easterman now fronts a long running spin-off show which has far eclipsed the success of Mindhorn. Richard has an unexpected opportunity to reignite his career
Review: Lion
Pawar plays Saroo, a little Indian kid who roams the streets with his brother; they get split up at the railway station as night falls; not knowing his way back, Saroo decides to get some sleep on a stationary train. He wakes up to find to his horror the train has started up and is now thousands of miles away in Calcutta, where he cannot speak the language and cannot remember the official grownup name for his village. He is placed with kindly adoptive parents in Tasmania (Kidman and David Wenham) but is haunted by the need to find his mother, and finally discovers that his laptop can help him. This big-hearted film does full justice to the horror, the pathos and the drama of his postmodern odyssey.