Film Shapes

The films I've seen about The Troubles in Northern Ireland have pretty much been of a type. Odd Man Out , The Crying Game , In the Name of the Father , '71 - very good films, but all essentially bleak. Kenneth Branagh's Belfast is something different. The film is a charming paean to the city, and specifically Branagh's time growing up there. It opens during the August 1969 riots, generally regarded as the start of the conflict, and shows a group of Protestants attacking Catholic houses in the street where the young Ken surrogate, Buddy (Jude Hill) lives with his parents and brother. This shock is seen through Buddy's eyes, but rather than trauma, a creeping curiosity seeps out. Scenes of strife and looting on TV; politicians fannying about; English soldiers on the streets, these things all happen in the background for Buddy, leave that stuff to the adults. The perplexing notion of the 'two roads' sermon, given by a grotesque, Ian Paisley-like preacher, is ...

Dodging newspaper and podcast reviews as well as YouTube trailers is fairly easy but it's more difficult to avoid spoilers when a preview is shown ONE MINUTE BEFORE THE FILM STARTS. Twats. Anyway, onto the film itself. Skyfall is Daniel Craig's third Bond effort but not his best - Casino Royale still holds that mantle. It's hard to talk about this movie without bringing the previous two in as comparisons, but I'll try. I enjoyed Skyfall but rather less than I had imagined I would. I think one of the reasons was the storyline, which seemed a bit old hat. Without giving too much away, the villain (a brilliantly camp Javier Bardem) seems based on Sean Bean's character in Goldeneye. Bondies will get the reference. The M-centric part of the plot worked in a kind of oedipal, 'mummies boys' sort of way, with both Bond and Bardem's Silva hovering around Judi Dench, albeit with different motives. But the MacGuffin that begins the film buggers off halfway...