This weekend was, by any measure, ridiciously jam-packed but I still found time to finally see Garth Jennings' entirely delightful Son Of Rambow which, as many UK reviewers have pointed out, is the best British school comedy since Gregory's Girl. Exquisitely crafted, with a fine attention to 80s detail and two wonderful central performances from Bill Milner and Will Poulter, two schoolkids who make their own film inspired by First Blood, it was everything I'd hoped, and more besides. The fact that Jennings and his producing partner Nick Goldsmith had to find their entire financing outside of the UK — the film was originally developed by a previous incarnation of FilmFour — astounds me. It was something of an intrinisically British movie weekend, since I had to review the DVD release of Lindsay Anderson's follow up to If... O Lucky Man! which required watching the film twice (once with the commentary from Malcolm McDowell, screenwriter David Sherwin and composer Alan Price), plus the feature-length documentary on McDowell.
Add in another documentary, Rob Stewart's excellent Sharkwater and, all in all, it wasn't a bad weekend's viewing.
No comments:
Post a Comment