The Last Station

I love James McAvoy. LOVE him. Admittedly Wanted was a bit shit, but even in that, he managed to be utterly delightful. Similarly in The Last Station, he's about as good as the film gets. It's based on Tolstoy's final year, and, well, it's just a bit boring. There's nothing wrong with it as such, the acting is mostly lovely (Anne-Marie Duff, Helen Mirren, yes, Kerry Condon, no), but the script is just a bit weak. I came out of it thinking what to think, which is never a good sign. A worse one is that the only thing I could come up with was 'meh'. It's not the worst film I've ever seen this year, but it's certainly the most average.

Everybody's Fine

I'm almost loathed to put this trailer up here, because the film it shows is absolutely not the film I watched. The plot implies shitty rom com. The music implies shitty rom com. The reviews online so far imply shitty rom com. But what I watched was absolutely nowhere near a rom com, let alone a shitty one. It is instead the incredibly touching tale of a man's loneliness and the struggle of a family trying to cope after the loss of its matriarch. Robert De Niro is brilliant. The small gestures, the tiny glances and the way he portrays the pride and love of a father for his children are all so utterly believable that it had me, a resolute non film cryer, weeping and snotting into my sleeve in a most unseemly and surprising fashion. While it doesn't seem to be pleasing all the critics, to me, it was gorgeous. Not flawless, but the most moved I've been by a film in a long time. Bad title, bad trailer, great film.