QUEEN & COUNTRY

Veteran British Director John Boorman returns to his roots with this new movie .....his first for several years ...picking up the story line from his  masterful Oscar multi-nominated semi-autobiographical 'Hope & Glory' about a nine year old boy living through the London Blitz . Now a decade later young Bill Rohan (aka Boorman) is 18 and is conscripted to do his two year National Service in the Army. WW2 may be over but now there is the Korean War. However instead of being drafted to fight in the Far East after their training is over, Bill and his best buddy Percy end up with Sergeant stripes on their uniforms and teaching typing and map reading to the next set of new recruits.

Their lives on the Base are not that cozy though as they are answerable to a martinet Sergeant Major whose fastidious instance of enforcing every minute rule of Army Law makes their lives hell. It doesn't actually please the Commanding Officer neither.  Percy however decides that the Sergeant Major needs to be stopped at all coats and gets involved with a rather sly Private to get his revenge once and for all. 

When the two teenage soldiers are off-duty they head to the nearby town looking for love. It looks like that this may be in the form of two local nurses, but then one night Bill spots a rather mysterious beauty and he is immediately smitten. She allows him to call her Ophelia as she is obviously a troubled and somewhat tragic figure and it is only when he accidentally discovers her real identity does he realise that this aloof aristocratic young woman is completely out of his league.

He seeks solace in the arms of Percy's nurse girlfriend and finally loses his virginity which is something that brash mouthy Percy is still shy about. He will eventually, and keeping it in the family too, as he hooks up with  Bill's older sister who has just left her husband back in Canada.

This dramedy shows a perfect slice of a idyllic middle-class life in post-war Britain culminating with the Coronation of the new Queen. Bill's family live on a picturesque fairy-tale private island in the middle of the River Thames which seems to be untouched by the ravages of the recent war or even a hint of the hardships of food/clothes rationing that was still in existence at that time.  Even as the plot unfurls to a finale and there are hints that Bill (aka Boorman) is about to venture into a life of motion pictures, it all seems a little too easy for words.

It's a very pleasant and enjoyable memoir but a tad disappointing after its excellent prequel which is still one of very best wartime dramas  from a child's prospective. It is less compelling partly due to a weaker cast with Callum Turner as Bill who bears an uncanny resemblance to Eddie Redmayne but sadly lacks his charisma, and a very quirky Caleb Landry Jones as Percy whose humor was totally misplaced and fell very flat.  However David Thewlis's rather magnificent turn as the bully Sergeant Major does make up for this in part.

Queen and Country will most definitely appeal to Anglophiles who love period dramas that the Brits excel at, and may be a small sop to those still bruising with the recent news that Downton Abbey will soon be no more.

★★★★★★★

SET FIRE TO THE STARS

'Do not go gentle into that good night' wrote the celebrated Welsh poet Dylan Thomas who took his own words literally as he drank himself to death aged just 39. Despite acquiring a reputation, which he encouraged, as a 'roistering, drunken and doomed poet' he was still invited by a young literary critic and aspiring poet John Brinnin to America in 1946 for a lucrative Ivy League campus reading tour, beginning in New York City.

Brinnin thought that the honor of hosting such a literary giant was worth any  trouble the alcoholic Welshman may possibly get into, but he soon discovered that he had seriously under-estimated him.  When he fails to keep Thomas remotely sober even for his Readings he hauls him off to  a remote log cabin in Connecticut so that he can dry out and prepare for his next speaking engagement at Harvard.

This very-low budget biopic stylised in black and white is an affectionate tribute of this larger-than-life man in what turned out to be a dress rehearsal for early his death.  (He died touring America again just seven years later).  Thomas is played withe great aplomb by Welsh TV actor Celyn Jones who uncannily looked like the great man. As however the producers had somehow snared Hollywood star Elijah Wood to play Brinnin the focus of the movie was also very much about how Thomas's outrageous behavior affected him.

Co-written by Jones with  director Andy Goddard they not only managed to shoot the whole thing in 18 days but never stirred from Swansea throughout the whole time.  Who knew it could ever be made to look like mid-century New York!

Its a delightful art-house film filled with some beautiful readings of Thomas's work which never fail to delight.  The movie may not set fire to anything at all and it may want you to stop drinking for a stanza or two, but its still quite a compelling view.

P.S. 'Do not go gentle into that good night' was used as the text for the 1954 In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (Dirge-Canons and Song)  by Igor Stravinsky.

★★★★★★★ 

DOPE

Poor Malcolm seems like he should have been born in a different place and a different skin.  He and his two best friends Jib and Diggy live in Bottoms the worst part of Los Angeles’s Inglewood where most of the population are either poor African/American or Latino.  They however are fixated on BMX biking, classic ‘90s hip-hop culture, getting good grades at school, playing in their own punk band, and being all-round geeks: all activities that everyone else in their rough neighborhood consider as the traits that belong to just white people.

It makes going to school somewhat haphazard as every day they get picked on for looking so ‘weird’. One of their tormentors is Dom who insists that Malcolm acts a go-between with Nakia the object of his affection who has been giving him short-change, as he thinks she may just respond more positively if someone as innocent looking as Malcolm was his messenger.  He’s right she does, but the problem is that she and Malcolm also take a shine to each other instead. 

They both get invited to Dom’s birthday bash at a Club that night and when the backroom drug deal that is going down turns into a gun battle between rival gangs, Malcolm quickly ushers Nakia to safety.  What he doesn’t know is that just before he escapes, Dom has stuck a big stash of Ecstasy tablets into his backpack.

Next morning Dom is behind bars and Malcolm wakes up to the fact that he is now in possession of drugs that various desperate groups of armed thugs are anxious to retrieve claiming that they in fact are the rightful owners.  As this is all going down and Malcolm and his mates are being hotly pursued when in fact he should be making tracks to an interview that will all but guarantee him a place at Harvard. He is now however in danger of losing everything: drugs, a college education, and in another comic twist of fate, maybe his virginity at long last.

This wonderful fast and furious teenage caper opens with these big laugh-out loud moments from its very first frame and never once eases up.  Like a wonderful breath of fresh air it beautifully captures the vital energy of a whole new generation of street-wise urban kids who incorporate all the tools of social media when they become very reluctant drug dealers.  Writer/director Rick Famuyiwa gathered together a relatively unknown multi-colored cast of actors, rappers, dancers and models to give us this compelling glimpse of an edgier underground online life that most of us are unaware even exists and a slice of life of a neighborhood that we would probably never visit. An important element too of this tale is the really stunning soundtrack, which includes the two tracks that Malcolm’s punk group allegedly wrote.

Despite its brush with drugs and crime this very tongue-in-cheek drama is one of the most exhilarating feel-good comedies that has burst out of Sundance for years and is destined to be a major crossover hit with both mainstream and indie audiences.  Especially ones that love some politically incorrect humor too.

★★★★★★★★★★

LOVE ROSIE

When boy-girl best friends get really as close as they can, then it’s always when sex rears its head that things get messy. Alex and Rosie are two bright middle class kinds who do everything together through the years, but by the time it comes to choosing partners for their high school Prom they misread the signs and ask different people to be their dates.  Rosie ends up pregnant, news she keeps from Alex who is about to leave the UK suburbs to take up a scholarship at Harvard. 

Through the next decade Rosie struggles with being a single mum taking on jobs cleaning Hotels that she once dreamed of managing whilst Alex shines at his new life in the US that follows his Ivy League education. Each of them get through different partners and even marry them: Rosie to the hunky football jock who had got her pregnant all those years ago, and Alex to the his ex cheerleader blond bombshell girlfriend who he had only dated her as he thought she was out of his league.

What makes this very likable and funny romantic comedy one of the better contemporary examples of this genre are the performances of its two young very attractive stars Lily Collins (Snow White in 'Mirror Mirror') who could comfortable dislodge Keira Knightley as the actress-to-go-for in parts like this, and Sam Claflin (Alistair Ryle in 'The Riot Club') who could easily be this generation’s Hugh Grant. They effortless transition from teenagers at school to being in their early thirties and have such a remarkable on-screen chemistry that you know whatever dramas they have to live through (and there are a lot) that they are destined to be together. Shout out too for Jaime Winstone (daughter of Ray) for her impressive turn as Rosie’s world-wise edgy best friend Ruby.

Directed by German filmmaker Christian Ditter (his first English speaking film) and adapted from the best selling novel 'Where Rainbows End’ by Cecelia Ahern (who also wrote PS I Love You) and filmed in Ireland and Canada, this engaging British chick-lit movie will delight romantics everywhere : hopeless or otherwise.

★★★★★★★★

EFFIE GRAY

The failed marriage of John Ruskin one of England’s celebrated Art Critic was one of biggest sex scandals of the Victorian era. Although in this instance the public embarrassment was for a change actually about the lack of sex!  Effie Gray his very young virgin bride took the unprecedented step of suing her husband for divorce on the grounds of the marriage being non consummated.  ‘He never laid a finger on me’ claimed the naïve 19 year old, a point backed up be a couple of rather shocked frock-coated old male doctors.

This true story has been adapted into a Victorian Soap Opera, complete with pretty period costumes and shot on location in unspoilt parts of London, by Oscar winning actor/scribe Emma Thompson.  She also gets to play Lady Eastlake the wife of the all-important President of the Royal Academy and an older unlikely ally for the blushing bride. Ms. Thompson’s own husband actor Greg Wise gets to play the cold-fish of a spoilt mummy’s boy Ruskin who starts tormenting his neglected wife with passive/aggressive psychological abuse once she starts to question his complete avoidance of his husbandly duties.

When the Ruskins marry they move in with his parents, both of who dote on and indulge their only son whose fame and reputation was really growing now.  They considered their new daughter-in-law a necessity of life, but made little effort to get to know her or develop any sort of relationship. In fact when they disapproved of any aspect of her behavior they considered detriment to their dear son’s happiness in any way, they came down on her like a ton of bricks. Ma-In-Law (brilliantly played by perpetual scene stealer Julie Walters) actually had their Maid give Effie a daily tonic, which as she suspected turned out be some mild sort of poison.

It was never clear why Ruskin found his teenage bride so repulsive or why he went out of his way to literally throw her in to the arms of his protégé the handsome young artist Everett Millais but according to history, or Ms. Thompson’s take on it, this is indeed what happened.

Directed by television director Richard Lawson it had a very impressive star-studded cast lead by a pretty Dakota Fanning. It really was an extravagance to gather such an array of talent as aside from the key players. nearly all of them were so terribly underused. Having actors of the magnitude such as Claudia Cardinale, Derek Jacobi, James Fox, Robbie Coltrane, Linda Basset and Russell Tovey and then giving them each barely more than a few lines each, seemed such an extraordinary waste.

Ruskin was a great supporter of the landscape artist J W Turner’s work and so if you saw the recent excellent bio-pic on him, then you may be interested this melodrama which is otherwise is sadly a lot about nothing.  The two men had been great friends on real life and shared a passion for art, but obviously not for women.  JW just couldn’t keep his pants on, whilst Mr. Ruskin never ever married again so he obviously preferred to keep his trousers well and truly buttoned up.

★★★★★

A SECOND CHANCE

It’s only the ‘goodies’ that get a second chance in this new rather overwrought melodrama from Danish Oscar winning director Susanne Bier as the ‘baddies’ evidently do not deserve to dig themselves out of the hell holes of lives they have ended up with.  The action starts with Police Detective Andreas and his partner Simon bursting into a squalid apartment to arrest Tristan on drug charges when they discover a distraught crying baby lying in his own excrement. A horrified Andreas tries to get the Authorities involved, but Social Services claim that is still not enough cause to have him taken into care.

Meanwhile at Andreas own rather idyllic lakeside house that seems like something right out of the pages of Elle Décor, his wife Anne who is suffering from a serious strain of post-partum depression and is trying to cope with their own baby who seems to never stop crying.  On yet another restless night Andreas wakes up to the sound of Anne screaming her head off as she cannot get baby Alexander to wake up.  She refuses to accept that he is dead and in her hysterical state tells Andreas that if he takes the baby away, then she will kill herself.  After he gets her sedated and back to bed he drives off with the baby’s body to the hospital to do the right thing.  However somewhere along the way he comes up with the crazy idea of breaking into Tristan’s apartment and swapping Sofus his baby with dead Alexander.

Just when you are taken in and thinking that as unorthodox and immoral as this is, it maybe the best chance for poor neglected Sofus as obviously his drug-addled mother is not a fit person to be a mother, there is a sharp twist in the plot that surprises us …. and Andreas  …. as after all, nice middle-class Anne is even worse. It’s inevitable that Andreas is not going to get away with this audacious far-fetched scheme but he is relying on the fact that his Police partner Simon is a serious alcoholic and his judgment is befuddled when he is under the influence.  Also he believes that Tristan and his girlfriend Sanne have such little regard for baby Sofus that they will not even notice that he has been swapped.

Ms. Bier forsakes any hint of subtlety and lays on the drama very heavy handedly, and milks it even further with eerie nighttime shots of the mist over the lake accompanied by doom-laden music that tips you off that more tragedy is just around the corner.  The movie’s saving grace is its cast led by the rather dashing Nikolaj Coster-Waldau ( Jaime Lannister in ‘Game of Thrones’) back to his Danish roots as Andreas the father too perfect for his own good, and Nikolaj Lie Kaas as the lowlife Tristan.

The only one who comes out well from all this is Sofus who lives happily ever after with his mother who in the end, turned out to be the one who really did warrant that second chance.

★★★★★

IRIS

Photograph by Bruce Weber

'I don't like pretty' says the 93 year old idiosyncratic fashion maven Iris Apfel in an enchanting new documentary by Albert Maysles. Iris acknowledges that she was never a conventional beauty but that has hardly stopped her pursuing her passion for style and becoming one of most original and daring dressed women in New York.  As Maysles films her on and off for the past four years he captures not just her remarkable talent for putting the most unexpected and stunning outfits together for her daily ensembles, but he also reveals a captivating quick-witted charmer with a wicked sense of humor and most importantly, an insatiable appetite for living life to the full.

Iris, married to her centenarian husband Carl for the past 66 years, lives in her late mother's Park Avenue apartment crammed with racks and racks of clothes. These she explains were bought to be worn and not simply to be collected. They include pieces from vintage stores, items purchased direct from many of the leading designers she now considers her friends, and favorite treasures she has picked up at flea markets or small ethnic stores in Harlem.  She mixes chic with cheap and the results are always fabulous.

She and Carl ran a very successful interior design business for years and their clients include many of the occupants of The White House over the years.  In fact one of the most charming scenes in the movie is when she quickly stops Carl spilling the beans about (how difficult) Jacqueline Kennedy was.  Once they sold this business and their high-end fabric business and their globe trotting days were over, Iris focused on her real passion.

She was already well-known by New York's fashion insiders but when in 2005 the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted what they thought was a small exhibition of Iris's clothing and jewelry which turned out to be an unexpected phenomenal success, the world started to sit up and take note of her enormous talent.  Many doors were suddenly opened to her including commissions to do collections for the Home Shopping Network and becoming a Visiting Professor of Fashion for the University of Texas.

She was now ...... in her own words ..... an octogenarian starlet and she put some of this down to the fact the Exhibition had provided the world with much needed fantasy and some glamour. Iris never does anything petite : everything must be big and bold. 'Color is so important: it can raise the dead' is just one of the statements that just trip off her tongue as she spouts forth about her beliefs.  What Maysles is quick to spot though is that despite the seemingly incessant flow of opinions is that Iris refuses to take any of it seriously or even remotely intellectualise her stance on fashion.

Towards the closing scenes of this delightful docu-portrait of this woman that Bergdof Goodman called 'the rare bird of fashion' Iris claims that her two best traits are curiosity and having a good sense of humor. 'I could never be a friend of anyone who wasn't either' she added.

Frankly it's hard not to like someone as engaging as Iris who comes out with such plums as 'my mother worshipped at the altar of the accessory.'  By the end of the movie you may not want to actually worship at the altar of Apfel, but you will be very sorely tempted.

P.S. This sadly was the last work of the great documentarian Albert Maysles who died just days before the movie was screened at the Miami International Film Festival, and its even more poignant to see him on the screen too with Iris fussing over him like a concerned mother like she does with everyone.

★★★★★★★★★

GETT: THE TRIAL OF VIVIANE AMSALEM

There are no such things as civil weddings or divorces in Israel so if a marriage fails then its all up to the male dominated Rabbinical Courts to decide the fate of any estranged couple and if they warrant a 'Gett' i.e. a Jewish divorce.  In this new movie, the third in a trilogy of a frigid marriage which seemed doomed before it started some twenty years ago, Viviane the wife is finally applying to get her freedom.

Her quest starts off on a wrong foot when her husband Elisha simply refuses to appear in Court. Little does she know now that she is destined to be in and out of that same Courtroom for the next five frustrating years.  When Elisha is forced to attend some months later he refuses to talk, and so the Rabbis have no alternative than to order the first of a great many adjournments.  Even at a later hearing when he is represented by his older brother Shimon, Elisha still refuses to co-operate because he claims that he will take Viviane back to make a go of their marriage even though she completely loathes him.

The camera rarely strays out of the courtroom as the months fly and little progress is made. At one point Viviane reluctantly agrees to the Rabbi's condition of moving back into the marital home to give the marriage another shot, but as Elisha simply shuns her again, she soon totally gives up on the foolhardy notion of a reconciliation.

The crux of the matter is that a divorce can only be granted with the husband's approval and this is something that Elisha refuses to give even though it is very apparent he despises his wife.  Viviane's hotheaded lawyer Carmel tries to prove incompatibility as grounds for divorce, but as this is not a legally recognized reason, the Rabbis refuse to listen.

The hearings are occasionally interrupted over the years with some hilarious contributions from witnesses called to testify on the state of their marriage.  There is Viviane's pushy rather hysterical sister-in-law Rachel who clearly despises Elisha and on the other hand there is dour Simon their control-freak neighbor who believes that wives should be totally subservient to all their husband's demands and wishes.

Each side has its share of dramatic histrionics with the passive/aggressive husband still maintaining his veto until he is sure that he can continue to control Viviane's future. Despite all the bitter disappointments she is however unswayed from her determination to be legally rid of her husband and out of her unhappy marriage, and so frustrated at times by the impasse she shows her defiance in Court by letting her hair down which the old Rabbis see as a great personal affront to them.

It's a powerful piece that has you fully engaged until the very bitter end thanks mainly to an expertly written script Ronit Elkabetz and her brother Shlomi, who both directed the movie too.  Credit also to some rather brilliant performances including one from Ronit herself who played the patient and determined Viviane.

Divorce is never easy and never without pain or cost, but when you have to deal with a loaded patriarchal system that gives women like Viviane very little hope, it is extremely depressing.

★★★★★★★★★

MOMMY

When Diana 'Die' Despres reacts quite violently after she crashes her car on the way to collect Steve her troubled teenage son from the special care facility after he set fire to the cafeteria, its initially not clear who is the craziest one out of the pair of them. However life with Steve will be no picnic for his widowed mother after the two of them traipse back on the bus to the latest rental apartment in the suburbs that they now call home. 

Steve may look like an angel with his blond hair and blue eyes but he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder which gives him extreme mood swings. They include many violent angry outbursts which then, without warning, suddenly change into some almost inappropriate 'kiss and make up' sessions with his mother. Die seems to spend most of her time pleading and cajoling with her son who she is obviously very afraid of, but then again she too can be pretty frightening in her own right.   Despite their traumatic daily life together she clings to her son even though she craves her freedom and so when a neighbour flirts with her she is reluctant to take it one step further in case it antagonises Steve more.

They do however let someone else into their lives in the shape of their rather mousy neighbor Kyle. She has plenty of her own issues to deal, with most of which manifest in her rather mysterious stutter that greatly inhibits her ability to express herself.  Kyle, an ex school teacher, takes on the thankless task of trying to tutor Steve, and both he and his mother are desperate to make her their only friend which at first is something that she seems to welcome too.

With one unpredictable scene after another, it soon becomes clear that no matter how strong and fiercely independent Die is, she is simply overwhelmed with trying to deal with this petulant head-strong unbalanced teenager. Love is just simply not enough.

This remarkable and deeply disturbing film is the fifth from 25 year old Canadian Wunderkind filmmaker Xavier Dolan and in a way he is revisiting a theme of his debut movie 'I Killed My Mother' . This time however instead of it being about a son who felt completely misunderstood by his mother, the lack of misunderstanding seems to go both ways.  It's extremely raw, very heartbreaking, completely original and deeply personal as it simply has to be another of Dolan's semi-autobiographical stories. What is especially effective is that despite all the melodrama he infuses it with some brilliant touches of humor which don't just lighten the pace but make it really quite funny at times.

It reunites him with his movie mother the dynamic Canadian actress Anne Dorval who, as the lynch pin for this intense drama, is manically mesmerizing. She like Suzanne Clement who plays Kyle are stellar regulars of Dolan's films and their performances (like the movies themselves) keep getting better every time around. Young Antoine-Olivier Pilon inhabits the often uncomfortable skin of the deeply disturbed Steve quite brilliantly too.

The consummate Dolan's hands as usual are not just restricted to writing and directing but are all over the movie from the editing to the soundtrack. He truly is a renaissance filmmaker and one that is seemingly maturing along with his movies which frankly get better and better.  Multi-award winners ....this one picked up a Jury Award at The Cannes Film Festival and then a César Award (French Oscar) for Best Foreign Film, but despite all this acclaim, Dolan's movies have yet to make any significant breakthrough at the Box Office.  This however, may just be the one to give him the success that his movies so deserve.

★★★★★★★★★

MAPS TO THE STARS

When the  Hollywood limo driver asks his mysterious disfigured young passenger where she has come from she answers 'Jupiter' meaning the small town in Florida. It could however easily been the planet though as the girl is obviously extremely odd, and this is a David Cronenberg movie after all.

Agatha is back in California after being incarcerated after trying to kill her kid brother in a house fire. Now a young adult she is out to find Benjie her brother an obnoxious 13 year old successful movie star in the vein of Justin Bieber, who has just spent the summer in rehab trying to kick his habits. Their father is a celebrity self-help guru who mixes massage with lashings of Freud, and their highly-strung mother is trying to keep herself and the family together by acting as Benjie's manager, and at the same time praying that their well-kept secret about the mentally unstable Agatha never leaks out.

Meanwhile elsewhere in this tale about the narcissistic and greed of movieland, Havana a fading middle aged star is desperate for a role in a remake of a film that originally starred her abusive mother. When she fires the latest in a long line of personal assistant, or 'chore whores' as she calls them, her good friend Carrie Fisher hooks her up with a weird new girl in town who she had met online.  When Havana learns of Agatha's burns she sees that as good omen having lost her own mother in a fire, and gives her the job. Eventually Havana is offered the film role, albeit by default, and when she is back in the studio it gives Agatha access to hook up with her brother and prey on his insecurities to worm her way back into his life.

Throughout the film all manner of ghosts appear with disquieting regularity adding to both Benje's and Havana's already troubled psyches and undermind their attempts at trying to keep a grasp on their sanity.  It's one of the perverse elements of this intriguing very odd drama that seems morbidly obsessed with the past.

It's the first movie that Cronenberg, a Canadian, has made in the USA and it is beautifully shot in a very sunny and glamorous California which somehow makes the heart-rending tragedy at the end seem even darker.  Written over 20 years by Bruce Wagner a limo driver turned screenwriter (like the one in the movie) who obviously has something of inside track on the seamier side of Tinseltown.

It gave Julianne Moore her second big role of 2014 and her sublime performance as Havana always on the edge of totally losing it won her the Best Actress Award at Cannes Film Festival in the summer.  It also reunites her with the immensely talented Mia Wasikowska (they played mother and daughter in 'The Kids Are Alright') and this time she is superbly creepy as the deranged Agatha. Cronenberg reunites with Robert Pattinson who starred as the executive being driven round Manhattan all day in 'Cosmopolis', and this time it is he who plays the limo driver that Agatha all but forces into a relationship. 

The cast was rounded out by Olivia Wilde as the mother, John Cusack as the father, and a remarkable young TV actor called Evan Bird who was pitch perfect as Benjie the spoilt child star.

Like all Cronenberg's work, this is a fascinating movie and even though it is hard to actually like, it is well worth seeing just for Ms Moore's exquisite performance alone.

★★★★★★★

THE SECOND BEST MARIGOLD HOTEL

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in Jaipur is doing such good business these days that there is only one unoccupied room which causes a problem when two new guests arrive at the same time to claim it . It's ladies first but before Lavinia Beech can check into the Hotel's best room the key is swiped out of her hands and is given to Guy Chambers as Sonny the Hotel's over exuberant young owner believes he is a Hotel Inspector. Sonny has just returned from the USA to seek investors to help him expand and buy a second premises and before they will give him a decision they have promised to send someone undercover to check out the Hotel to see if it is really as good as the picture he has painted.

What started out as run-down refuge for an eccentric group of British retirees who couldn't afford to eke out an existence on their reduced circumstances and had been lured by the idea of a cheap life in the sun has turned into a vibrant hotel, albeit still run with more than a touch of chaos. Now almost a year later far from being retired all of them are now fully employed and very busy; Douglas gives tours of sites he knows precious little off, Evelyn has become a textile sourcer, Madge and Norman tend Bar at the ex-Pats club, Carol is a travel agent and Muriel is the Hotel's co-manager.

They are more than ever one big almost happy family and this sequel leading on from the unexpected box office hit of 2012 now focuses on giving them all a love interest to share their lives with. Or in the case of Douglas and Evelyn, trying to finally get them to first base at least.  The movie re-unites this stellar cast of British veterans that include Maggie Smith and Judi Dench both touching 80 years, and who coast through this amiable lightweight movie with such charm and great ease leaving all the hard physical work to young Dev Patel who as Sonny frenetically flaps around them rather manically for the entire two hours.

Director John Madden reunited with writer Ol Parker insures that the story has more than its fair share of great one-liners most of which are delivered by Maggie Smith so that she can maintain her reputation as the queen of put downs. She is equally as  sharp with her eyes as she is with tongue as she is the one who has a handle on what's really going down in the Hotel. We are also never far behind as the outcome of all the plot lines are extremely easily foreseen. Except by Sonny.

Adding the silver fox Richard Gere into the mix this time was a clever touch and gave Madge (played by the brilliant Celie Imrie) the perfect opportunity to make some wicked sexist remarks.  The whole movie is quite a delight and there is nothing not to like in this entertaining piece of make believe. Even the India it is set in is colorful and idyllically romanticized that it bears no resemblance to reality.

Despite the presence of these acting greats who can mesmerize by simply reading the telephone directory out loud, there were however times when the lightweight plot was stretched too thin and we were just left hanging waiting for something to happen. After all compared to the original film this really was The Second Best.

★★★★★★★