I AM YOURS

Newbie Norwegian filmmaker Iram Haq's new drama is based on her own life and her struggle as a woman caught between two cultures.  Struggling actress Mina, a second-generation immigrant, is an attractive 27 year old divorcee who shares custody of her 6 year old son with her ex-husband, a successful architect, and his new wife who can barely contain their disapproval of Mina and her rather flighty life.

Even her hypocritical mother, the matriarch in their traditional Pakistani family, cannot stop criticising her daughter every time they meet.  'What a fine man, imagine if he were still a member of this family' she intones about her ex son in law.  Mina's only joy, asides from her son, comes from her all her sexual liaisons with a slew of unsuitable men.  When they sense her neediness, they all use this an excuse to manipulate and abuse her.

This comes to a head when she meets Jesper a Swedish filmmaker visiting Oslo. He is quite the charmer and so Mina chooses to overlook that he is both self-centred and extremely passive/aggressive when it comes to the relationship that they fall into too quickly.  She goes to great lengths to please Jesper in whom she has invested all her hope even to the point that doing so may jeopardise the one stable thing in her life i.e. her relationship with her son. 

The same time that Mina eventually appreciates that Jesper cannot/will not make any commitment to a relationship especially when he realises he has to compete with a 6 year old child for her attention, her mother comes to visit cap in hand to admit that her own perfect marriage is not what it seemed after all.

It's an impressive first feature from 38 year old Haq and was selected to be Norways' Official Submission for a Best Foreign Picture Oscar Nomination. She cast the movie very well with convincing performances from her two leads: Amrita Acharia a Norwegian/Ukranian/Nepalese actress best known for playing Irri in the 'Game of Thrones' and Ola Rapace who was in 'Skyfall' but is better known for being the ex-husband of Noomi Rapace.

★★★★★★★

BEYOND THE LIGHTS

This rag to riches music industry drama starts off in a grubby Town Hall in Brixton one of London's rougher areas where Nona a frizzy-haired schoolgirl is stunning the audience at this Talent Show with her capella rendition of Nina Simone's classic song Blackbird. She wins second place which immediately enrages her potty-mouthed pushy stage mother who insists that Nona should never ever settle for anything less than being a winner and that she should smash the trophy up.

The action then flashes forward to the present time and a grown-up Noni has been transformed into looking every part an MTV star complete with a purple weave and wearing skimpy revealing clothes that any stripper would revel in.  Noni's debut album is still yet to be released but she has already had several hits with her white hip-hop star boyfriend and they are about to perform together live on the latest Awards Show.

It looks like Noni has everything going for her, but the moment she is alone in her palatial penthouse hotel suite, Noni heads for the balcony and precarious dangles on the edge.  Fortunately Kaz a young earnest policeman who has been assigned to guard her room, intervenes and pulls her back to safety.  Their eyes meet for the briefest of moments before Mother quickly moves in to handle the damage control as word has leaked out of Noni's behaviour.  Kaz is therefore pressured into towing the official line that the young singer had merely slipped and that all is right with the world.

Noni's mother is in denial about her daughters unhappiness and still pulls all the strings and wants her to keep dating the totally unsuitable hip-hop boyfriend even when it becomes clear that hot handsome Kaz has taken a shine to the young singer too. The policeman on the other hand is being groomed by his father to pursue a career in local politics where having a scantly clad pop singer on his arm just wouldn't be a good fit.

When Noni and Kaz manage to give her handlers and the paparazzi the slip, they dine out on fast-food fried chicken on a very chaste date but its obvious that they have both got the hots for each other. When on a later date she seduces the blindfold cop who has a fear of flying on a private plane you realise that these two are not kids after all.

Full of foot tapping very raucous hit-sounding music this entertaining but very slight romance is lifted to a higher level than one would normally expect because of the outstanding breakthrough powerhouse performance of Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Noni.  We knew from her starring role in 'Belle' that this beautiful woman is a very talented actress, but little did we expect that she could out Rhianna Rhianna.

Credit also to Nat Parker who played Kaz, and also in what I initially thought was bizarre casting, but by the final scene, I actually thought that Minnie Driver made a perfect mother.

If MTV is your favorite channel then you will love this movie, but even if it's not, you can still appreciate that you are witnessing a rising star in the making.

★★★★★★

BIG EYES

In a rather radical departure from his last few very edgy movies acclaimed director Tim Burton has opted to make a biopic about Walter Keane the infamous plagiarist who in the 1950's claimed that his wife's populist art was his own work. It's a colorful lightweight drama that never gets dark even when Keane's trickery is exposed, thanks mainly to the entertaining performances of its stars Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams.

The movie opens with a blond-wigged Margaret Ulbrich leaving her unseen husband and taking just Jane her young daughter, a suitcase and a handful of her artwork.  Her destination is San Francisco's new trendy hotspot North Beach but getting a job as a newly single mother is not easy and so she supplements her income at the furniture factory where she works by setting up shop at an outdoor art fair.  Her signature style of painting forlorn looking children with enormous soulful eyes doesn't attract many sales but it does attract the attention of the garrulous older man in the next booth who is pitching his pictures of street scenes of Paris.

A compulsive womaniser, Walter Keane turns on the charm for Margaret and she, still feeling vulnerable and lonely after her recent separation, agrees to go out on a date with him.  The couple hardly know other when Margaret receives a letter from her husband's lawyer threatening to sue for custody of their child, and so she accepts Walter's spontaneous marriage proposal to safeguard her chances of holding onto Jane.

After they return from a romantic wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii, Walter starts hawking their art around town and despite the fact he is a sharp fast-talking salesman, the best deal he can come up with is renting a couple of walls in a Jazz club to display their work.  His Montmartre street scenes are totally overlooked but when the club patrons spot Margaret's soulful eyed children and want to buy them all, he claims that they are all his own work too.

Margaret is somewhat infatuated with her new husband who she credits with giving her a new lease of life, so when she discovers the lie she goes along it. She is persuaded by Walter that having a man as the artist is the only way to successful sell the art. He also manages to charm everyone into helping him make this new venture so successful including the San Francisco Examiner reporter Dick Nolan who plants stories about Walter and the art in his newspapers society pages.

As their success explodes all Margaret has to do is stay at home and churn out more paintings in complete secrecy as even Jane, now a teenager, must not be allowed to know the truth. When Walter hits on the notion of printing cheap poster copies of Margaret's kitsch art the public cannot enough of them, and one of the very few dissenting voices is that of the New York Times Art Critic John Canady who denounces them to the world.

When his sheer greed turns Walter into a real menace, then Margaret finally packs up her suitcases once again and flees with her daughter, but this time to Hawaii.  It takes Walter a year to track her down and when he calls her bluff about exposing him as a fraud, she finally goes public with the fact that she is the real artist. A supremely over-confident Walter immediately denounces these claims in the Examiner, but for once he has mis-read Margaret who is no-longer frightened of him, and so she promptly sues him and the newspaper for slander.

The judge clears the newspaper of any liability at the Trial but when the rest of the proceedings degenerate into a public squabble between the couple, he deems the only way to resolve the true authorship of the Art is that both of the Keanes paint a picture there and then.

The chemistry between Waltz as the obnoxiously charming con-man and Adams as the pretty put-upon vulnerable Margaret with her fine Christian morals is what makes this story seem so believably even when it's hard to even begin to conceive that all this appalling art could have resulted in amassing such a fortune.  Burton makes this adaption of this true story an incisive commentary of how early 1960's society even in a consumer-driven California still had these impenetrable expectations of what women could do.

This easy going  movie will hardly rank as one of director Burton's best but it is reasonably entertaining and easy on the eye and to that end we should give credit to the design team for the locations, the sets and costumes that were all so perfect down to the last detail.

★★★★★★★

UNBROKEN

For her third time behind the camera actress/ superstar, UN Special Ambassador, Honorary Dame of the British Empire, and mother of countless children, Angelina Jolie plumped for a rather old-fashioned WW2 drama. With a script from Oscar winners Ethan and Joel Cohen (who rarely write for other directors) adapted from Laura Hillenbrand's best-selling biography, 'Unbroken' is the inspiring story of the Italian/American Olympic Athlete Louis Zamperini who became a War Hero.

Jolie starts her overly long movie with an exciting aerial gun battle somewhere in the Far East with Zamperini as the Bombardier helping t0 get his crew's partially destroyed plane safely back to base after they have successfully bombed their target. The next time they are flying on a mission, they are not so lucky and end up floating in the middle of the ocean after their plane totally disintegrates.

In a series of flashbacks Jolie fills in Zamperini's young life up to that point, where as a troubled teenager constantly picked on for being an immigrant in small town California, and so his older brother persuades him to join him in his school's track team. Zamperini shows such real talent at running that he is soon winning enough races to actually qualify to represent the USA in the 1936 Olympics in Munich. The next Olympics however in 1940 were due to be held in Tokyo, but little did Zamperini know at the time he would end up being in that city then, but for entirely different reasons.

Zamperini and two other men, include Phil the pilot, survive the crash and floating aimless on a life raft have to deal with hunger, the relentless heat, dehydration, sharks and the occasional storm for 47 days adrift in the middle of the ocean. Zamperini who never stops praying, vows that if he ever gets home again he will devote his life to God. 

He and Phil are the only two survivors who are eventually picked up by the Japanese and held prisoner in the most horrific conditions and forced into hard labor.  When they are transferred to a larger camp the two of them get separated and Zamperini gets singled out regularly for unprovoked and merciless beatings by a young sadistic Japanese guard nicknamed 'The Bird' who appears to have some fixation with breaking this American soldier who he obviously somehow feels threatened by.

When the war looks like it is ending, the Japanese retreat taking all the Allied prisoners with them to an even more remote island, and the men fear that they will all be killed before they can rescued.  The impending defeat encourages 'The Bird' to even increase his brutality of Zamperini to the point where he has the beaten young soldier holding up a heavy railway sleeper over his head which eerily looks like a cross at a crucifixion.

The movie ends with the war and with Zamperoni being hailed as a hero as he finally arrives back home to his family in California. In real life he evidently became a Born Again Christian and tutored by the evangelist Billy Graham, he went back to Japan to spread the Gospel and forgive his captors.  He died at the age of 91 years old earlier in 2014. 

Just like in the current 'The Imitation Game' Ms Jolie and Roger Deakins her multi Oscar nominated her cinematographer makes her wartime setting a tad too picturesque a la Hollywood (Australia was used for locations).  Despite the very detailed graphic scenes of the horrific violence that we expect these days, it was hard not to escape the notion that I expected Clark Gable or Errol Flynn or any other 40's heartthrob to burst onto the screen at any moment. If I could pinpoint a particular reason why this very entertaining movie was not nearly as good as the hype, it would be the fact that Ms Jolie allowed the Coen Brothers to spend too much time on the historical facts of Zamperini's true story than focusing more on the characters that are a vital part of it.

However there is one element that raises this movie to a much higher level, and it is the presence of its leading man Jack O'Connell.  The camera simply loves this exceptionally talented young English actor who, with his matinee idol looks, is proving to be the most exciting new actor that the movies ...... and now Hollywood .... have discovered this year. In 'Unbroken' we feel every moment of his pain in this raw and very natural performance which is nothing less than a sheer joy to watch. Having seen him in action three times in as many months (his second movie '71 is still to be released in the US) I can only keep repeating my earlier claims that O'Connell is deservedly destined for major stardom.

The movie itself may have been a tad disappointing, but O'Connell is anything but that.

★★★★★★★★

THE INTERVIEW

If the North Korean Government hadn't insisted on making this the most talked about movie this Christmas there is little doubt that this off-colour sophomoric comedy would have quickly passed through movie theaters practically unnoticed by most of us.  It's crude and smutty humor that, like most movies that the actor James Franco is connected with these days, is overly obsessed with being 'gay' and is also relies heavily on his and the writers obvious fascination with anal matters too.

If you have been anywhere near a newspaper this past week you will know that this comedy is about an fictionalized attempt to assassinate  Kim Jong-Un the Supreme Leader of North Korea.  Mr Jong-Un felt so miffed at the idea that he had his people hack Sony's computers and issue threats of dire consequences if the movie was shown. If only he had bothered to watch the film himself then I think if he would be outraged at anything, it would been much more about how the plot totally disintegrates towards the end and just sinks into a rather pathetic bloody battle giving the film a very unfunny finale.

Essentially its the story of a lightweight TV presenter Dave Skylark who fills his nightly talk show with ridiculous reality items but then one night the singer Emimen accidentally comes out as 'gay' and for once the show's ratings soar.  It whets the appetite of Adam the show's producer who is desperate for more serious content which they suddenly think is possible when they discover in a magazine that the North Korean Leader is a big fan of the show.  He has refused interviews with the world's press to date but agrees to grant one to his hero Dave Skylark.  A fact that attracts the attention of the CIA who recruit both Dave and Adam with a request that they seize this unique opportunity to take the Leader out.

The plan almost fails before it begins when nice-but-dim Dave decides to do things his way when they arrive in Korea, and then he changes his mind completely anyway after a day of male bonding with his new 'best friend' the 'Kate Perry' loving Kim. Adam meanwhile does some 'bonding' of his own with their ferocious female guide Sook and afterwards together they plot to sabotage the rather innocuous interview that Leader's handlers are insisting on.

The movie is a reuniting of Seth Rogan (who also is a co-director and co-writer with Evan Goldberg) and James Franco after their first, and much superior comedy 'This Is The End' in 2013.  The two have a great screen chemistry together but the lion share of the laughs is left to Rogan who is much more at home in these frat-boy comedies than his co-star. The one thing Franco is good at however is over-acting which suits him to a tee in his role of the eager-to-please tabloid TV presenter.

There are a few good laughs .... mainly at the Korean's expense in this silly uneven comedy .... and compared to something that is really offensive like 'Borat' this is very tame stuff that will very soon be forgotten, and in the end we are much more likely to remember the drama surrounding it instead.

★★★★★★

THE DROP

This wonderful new crime thriller written by Denis Lehane ('Mystic River','Gone Baby Gone') set in Boston his hometown, is the story of Bob a solitary loner who is a bartender is his cousin Marv's bar. Well the name over the door is still Marv's but after he got heavily into debt gambling, he was forced to sell the place to a bunch of Chechen mobsters who kept him on as the manager.

Now the Bar is just one of many seedy watering holes in the city that, on any given night, is designated as the temporary bank for the gang's illicit cash.  When it's the turn of Marv's Bar to be 'the drop' envelopes stuffed full of cash are discreetly slipped across the counter throughout the night and go into a time release safe.  In the early hours of the morning the mobsters come around to the empty bar to remove the safe's entire contents.

Marv is still in debt, but this time not from gambling, but unpaid bills from the expensive nursing home where his elderly father resides, and so he decides that he will stage a hold-up of his own bar on 'the drop' night.  First he goes for a 'dry run' and gets a couple of inexperienced and petty criminals to rob the cash register one night.  This really annoys the Chechen boss who suspect foul play and turn the heat up on both Marv and Bob, who also attracts the attention of the investigating detective who recognises as the strange loner who attends Mass every morning.

Whatever Bob thinks may be going on here, he keeps to himself and focuses his attention on an abused pup he discovers, and on Nadia the pretty neighbor who offers to help him care for his new charge. Bob's charity quickly goes awry when he is visited by a menacing stranger called Eric Deeds who demands the return of the dog. and who also threatens Nadia turns out to be his ex-girlfriend who he also physically abused.

Deeds is recruited by Marv to replace the incompetent robbers who the Chechan's had tracked down and 'eliminated'.  Now as he enters Marv's Bar with a reluctant Nadia on his arm on a designated 'drop' night that Marv has mysteriously called in 'sick' Bob knows that something is about to go down and will not end well for maybe all of them.

This rather bloody and violent movie ended up being the late great James Gandolfini's last role. and in which as Marv he turns in his usual wonderful performance as the gruff big man who is clearly out of his depth with the new regime of mobsters that now reign in his town.  It is however the singularly impressive and ultra-sensitive performance of Tom Hardy as the quiet, intensely private bartender Bob that unquestionably steals this movie. The man seemingly gets better in every film he makes, but this will surely go down as one of his very best. Lehane had based the script on his short story 'Animal Rescue' and deliberately didn't pad out the tale, giving the actors perfect opportunities to help us try and figure out all the unspoken and implied sub-plots that were going on too.

Directed by Belgian Michaël R. Roskam ('Bullhead') who also cast one of his regular actors Matthias Schoenaerts as Deeds, and Swedish actress Noomi Rapace to complete this truly international cast.  'The Drop' is one of those 'small' movies that may never ever appear on people's radar, which is such a pity as the combination on Hardy and Gandolfini alone so deserves as audience. 

★★★★★★★★

FOXCATCHER

John Eleuthère du Pont the spoilt heir to the vast Dupont chemical fortune was a dangerous paranoid psychopath who ended up destroying lives when he didn't get his own way. The fact that he was also a deeply disturbed closeted homosexual is also very obvious in this new chilling true crime drama based on his life, yet it is a fact that nearly all the critics, without exception, have chosen to ignore.

du Pont lived in the shadows of his dominant elderly aristocratic mother on their vast estate in Pennsylvania which he had renamed Foxcatcher Farm.  His mother's one obsession was her herd of thoroughbred horses and the Trophy Room that housed all their awards was the most important place in their Mansion. du Pont deeply resented his Mother's preference to her stallions over him, and so he built a gym in the grounds to focus on his one big addiction to the sport of wrestling, well wrestlers in particular.

The year is 1987, and three years prior Mark Shultz and his brother Dave had won Gold Medals for wrestling at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Whilst Dave has settled down in Colorado and got married, had children and has a job coaching, Mark has a sad solitary life where his main daily function is to train for the next World Games.  When he gets a phone call out of the blue from multi-millionaire du Pont inviting him to fly to Pennsylvania as his guest for a meeting, having nothing to lose, he accepts the free plane ticket and goes.

du Pont tells Mark that he wants not just to underwrite all his expenses but for him to establish a team of wrestlers under the Foxcatcher banner that he would like to help train for the World Games.  If they all live on campus, he will also pay them generous wages too.  It's an offer that loner Mark cannot refuse and without even questioning du Pont's possible motives, throws his few worldly possessions in a Uhaul truck and drives across country to his new rather lush quarters on the Estate.

du Pont had wanted both of the Shultz brothers to lead his new team, but when Mark failed to persuade Dave to join him, du Pont lavished all his attention on just Mark. The new training facilities pay off, and three months later Mark won a Gold Medal at the World Games and schizophrenic du Pont started to treat the young athlete more like a son whenever he was in a good mood. Up to this point Shultz had kept to his highly disciplined routine which excluded things like alcohol but pressured by du Pont he tried and liked recreational drugs which would eventually lead to the decline in the two men's relationships.

Director Bennett Miller shows that du Pont clearly gets off on physical contact with Shultz when the two men attempt to wrestle (du Pont misguidedly thinks he also has a talent for the sport too) and leaves the implication that this may have satisfied the effete older man's homosexual desires.  However when du Pont doesn't get what he wants and it seems that Shultz's new unhealthy addictions render him unable to win matches, he throws a heap of money at Dave to persuade him to come and train the Team after all.

The vain du Pont who is now underwriting the US Wrestling Team for the Seoul Olympics insists on being recognised as the official coach even though Dave Shultz is actually doing the work.  Dave accepts this to a point but a now sober Mark is deeply resentful of du Pont and his power, and although he is still prepared to accept his money, he refuses to have anything do with the man who he once allowed to fawn over him. After he fails to win a Gold Medal at the Olympics, Mark finally moves out of the Foxcatcher Estate leaving his brother to face a fate that no-one could have predicted.

Miller, working with a script by E. Max Frye & Dan Futterman, allows this excellent creepy tale to unravel at a pace that is a little too slow at times. It's a great 'vehicle' for the talented comic actor Steve Carrell to show his remarkable range playing the thoroughly unpleasant du Pont, but as good as he is I don't think he will join the list of actors who wore prosthetic noses and won an Oscar for their efforts. He was joined on screen by the great Vanessa Redgrave who had a very tiny lame role as the mother; Channing Tatum as Mark which was at least a role that suited his expressionless style of acting; and Mark Ruffalo who was totally superb as a beefed up Dave.

P.S. Back to the question of du Pont's sexuality that Miller throws us so many clues about,  from him waking up a near-naked Shultz after midnight to give him a book (!), to his insistence on demonstrating intimate crutch grabbing wrestling moves that he wasn't trained to do, to the sight of his horrified mother watching her effeminate son getting 'low' on the mat etc. To a gay audience this will undoubtedly appear as a classic case of a rich older effete man chasing a big dumb blond sports jock : known as a 'chicken hawk' : not too dissimilar to 'foxcatcher'. 

★★★★★★★★

INTO THE WOODS

Hollywood has a knack of bungling the adaption of hit Broadway musicals when it tries to capture the same magic for the silver screen. Just think of the turgid 'Les Miserables' in 2012, or the excruciatingly painful 'Nine' in 2009.  However when they get it right as with Tim Burton's take on 'Sweeney Todd', or discovering Jennifer Hudson in Bill Condon version of 'Dreamgirls', then the results are wonderfully entertaining. Of the two musical movies vying for our attention this Christmas, one at least is as good as it can get, and something that its original writer and composer Stephen Sondheim can be relieved and even happy about.

'Into The Woods' is a wonderful mix of classic light and dark fairy tales that Sondheim uses to weave around an original story of his own.  It's the tale of a Baker and his childless wife who have been cursed by a witch after the Baker's late father had stolen her magic beans.  To enable them to break the spell so that they can conceive a baby, the witch sets them a list of things they must acquire for her before the 3rd midnight.  It includes a cloak as red as blood, that they 'relieve' Red Riding Hood of; a cow that is milky white which they barter with Jack of Jack & the Beanstalk; the slipper as pure as gold that they get from Cinderella as she is running from the Prince; and the hair as yellow as corn which is snipped off Rapunzel after she lowers it out of the window of the tower she is imprisoned in .

As the Baker and his wife go about encountering all these characters we get a slice of each of their stories.  Jack egged on by his mother steals from the Giant who lives at the top of the Beanstalk, and when he is pursued, kills him only to have the rage of the Giant's wife inflicted on the whole village. Cinderella gets to go to the Kings Festival thanks to her Fairy Godmother, but when she is eventually tracked down by the Prince, she discovers he is not quite as wonderful as we thought. He quips in defense 'I'm meant to be charming, not sincere!' Rapunzel is pursued by the Prince's younger brother but when her mother (the witch) discovers the lovers she blinds him.  Luckily Rapunzel's tears give him back his sight.

The real magic though is in Sondheim's outstanding music in what is probably one of his best ever scores. Director Rob Marshall opens the movie with a long take of the sing 'I Wish' which cleverly introduces all the major characters and sets the storyline up from the start. It establishes a pattern for really making the extraordinary songs a much more integral part of the story than usual.  What Marshall has added to some pieces is a campy touch of humor that may offend real Sondheim elitists, but in most instances, as in the case of the two Princes so brilliantly mugging their way through the song 'Agony', it will surely provoke a spontaneous round of applause from the audience as it did last night when I saw it.

The stage musical has been revived many times on Broadway and on London's West End and the role of the Witch has been played by a whole slew of the cream of musical theater.  In the movie however, The Witch is played by Meryl Streep who really adds much more dimension to the part in what is one of her best performances for years.  She is both funny and scary and proves that she can really deliver a song with more nuance and power than most.  

In fact Marshall could not have selected a more perfect ensemble cast than he did.  Brits James Corden and Emily Blunt had remarkable chemistry together playing the central characters of The Baker and his wife; Anna Kendrick was sublime as Cinderella, as was the ever-fabulous Christine Barenski as her Wicked Stepmother; a welcome return  to the screen for Tracey Ullman as Jack's mother; Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen played the handsome Princes; and in two scene-stealing roles wonderfully talented Lilla Crawford was Little Red Hood and young Daniel Huddlestone was Jack. Plus lest I forget a brief cameo from Johnny Depp as The Wolf.

Using the line from one of the best songs ('Children Will Listen') the adverts for the movie warn 'Be careful what you wish for'. If you are a Sondheim fan or just like musicals, then you'll learn too that after you see this movie that wishes do come true though, and in many ways.

★★★★★★★★★

WILD

After her cancer-ridden mother died just aged 45, Cheryl Strayed fell to pieces.  Heavily in debt and with her marriage disintegrating she developed an obsession for sleeping with countless strangers and an addiction to heroin.  Her solution to finding a path to recovery and do some major soul-searching was deciding to hike alone the entire Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) that stretches some 2663 miles from California right up into Canada.

The stunning scenic route takes in some extreme terrain such as the unforgiving heat of Mojave Desert and the deep snowdrifts of the Sierra Nevada. Even though the rigours of the PCT has defeated many experienced hikers, completely green newbie Cheryl was convinced that she nevertheless would succeed. However on day one she could barely lift her heavy back-pack that she had stuffed it with too many things that she would eventually realize were unnecessary for this arduous journey.

As she starts the long hike northward Cheryl discovers that as she can barely manage 5 miles per day, she will never walk anything like the whole distance in the 3 months she had estimated.  She also quickly discovers that she has the wrong gas for her primus stove so her diet now has to consist of cold mushy oatmeal and dried fruit.  Racked with pain and a body full of red sores and a pair of bloody feet, Cheryl has to fight hard not to give into her inner voice that keeps telling her she can quit anytime.

With only the occasional rattlesnake and her well-worn poetry books to keep her company and relieve the tedium and the agony, she can hardly contain herself when she finally encounters a fellow hiker en route even though the advice he imparts to her both encourages and scares her rigid at the same time. By now it has really dawned on her that she is woefully unprepared for such a massive undertaking.  The only thing that seems to sustain her besides her sheer stubbornness, is a real need to 'find' herself again.

Director Jean-Marc Vallee armed with a  script by Nick Hornby fills the journey based on Cheryl Strayed's own memoir with flashbacks of her tumultuous and troubled past which help us understand her determination to make this trip work. Bobbi her working class mother had suffered at the hands of a physically abusive husband which somehow never dented her sheer optimism and just before her untimely death she had gone back to college to get the education she had missed out on as a child. The bond between Bobbi and Cheryl, who was just 22 years old when her mother died, was the most important thing in both these women's lives and the reason why the death propelled Cheryl so quickly into a downward spiral.

When Cheryl reaches the first town along the PCT which is a resting place for all hikers, she retrieves a care package that her ex-husband has mailed c/o the local Post Office.  She also discovers that word has got out about her and her over sized backpack has been nick-named 'The Monster' but it also elicits advice on how to discard half its contents to make it more practical.

As a lone woman on the Trail, Cheryl feels very susceptible and she views every man as a potential predator.  One is a harmless roving reporter for the 'Hobo Times' who riles Cheryl up for insisting on calling her a hobo.  Another is a kind farm worker who offers her a hot meal and a shower, and she even comes across a male hiker dipping naked in a stream who cannot get his clothes on quick enough when she appears. Her encounter with two hunters is however quite scary, but with quick thinking on her part Cheryl soon scrambles for safety.

The stunning setting makes this heartbreaking journey such a visual treat, and the story of self-preservation of this doggedly determined troubled soul is one that will resound with so many people on so many levels.  Reese Witherspoon, the movie's star and producer optioned Cheryl Strayed's book even before it was published and topped the NY Times Bestseller List as a vehicle for herself and to kickstart her career that has been in the doldrums since her Oscar win in 2005.  It paid off big time as she totally immersed herself in the role and gave an impressive career-best performance as Strayed (even though she was 12 years older than her, and even odder still, just 9 years younger than Laura Dern who was electrifying as Bobbi her mother).

The movie is bound to do more than just make us appreciate what a talented actress Ms Witherspoon really is, as it is also bound to inspire lots of other lost souls to buy themselves a pair of hiking boots and attempt this near-impossible journey, and maybe cause a 'traffic jam' or two along the P.C.T.in the future.

★★★★★★★★

MADE IN DAGENHAM

This movie from 2010 is the true a group of some 180 women machinists in the Ford Factory in Dagenham, a London suburb, who in 1968 defied the fiercely male entrenched society at the time and did the unheard of thing by going out on strike and demanding equal pay. Lined up against them were Trade Union Officials that cozied up to Management, and Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson who was not wanting to alienate a big corporate employer, plus the powerful might of Ford itself, and worse of all, the women’s own husbands who, like most of the town, were also Ford employees.  However thanks to an unlikely naïve but passionate heroine forced into the limelight as their shop steward who even managed to sway the formidable Barbara Castle the UK's first female Employment Minister,  they won their case.

This delightful period piece tells of a historic breakthrough in women’s rights but in a thoroughly enchanting and entertaining manner thanks in no small part to director Nigel Cole (‘The Calendar Girls’ & ‘Saving Grace’) who seems to excel at portraying plucky women.  Most for this goes to Sally Hawkins who so superbly underplays the role of Rita the women’s leader and proves what a dynamic actress she really is (and maybe how wrong I was in dismissing her so quickly after Mike Leigh's 'Happy Go Lucky' when her somewhat misplaced performance did not play well) . Plus I loved Miranda Richardson as the fiery red-headed Mrs. Castle who verbally beat up her male Civil Servants at every opportunity.

Brit filmmakers particularly excel at producing two genres of movies very well viz. Period Pieces and Blue Collar (working-class) Dramas.  This one is a superb example of both.

PS In 197O the UK went on to introduce the Equal Pay Act and Ford and all the other corporations had to change their working practices.  BUT that was then, and this is now.  Last month a Republican filibuster in the Senate prevented the success of the Paycheck Families Act which would have strengthen equal pay right, but some things never change.

PPS In 2014 the movie was adapted into a stage musical by David Arnold and is currently playing in London's West End.

★★★★★★★