Sharkwater Extinction ANDY’S RATING:★★★★
Five Feet Apart (12A) The White Crow (12A) Sharkwater Extinction (12A) THIS beautiful but disturbing documentary is a sequel no-one wanted to make.
In 2006’s Sharkwater, director Rob Stewart wanted to change our perception of the creatures and stop the barbaric trade in fins.
Laws were passed in response, but business is booming again for the criminal gangs who put them on Chinese plates.
In the follow-up, Stewart and his intrepid team risk their lives to catch the gangs in action.
He highlights the illegal trade in toxic shark meat (poisons accumulate up the food chain), which goes into everything from pet food to cosmetics.
We also see him going undercover on the boat of one preening Yank who organises trophy hunts for morons.
Sharks hauled on deck to suffocate while photos are taken are then thrown overboard to die.
There are also moments of beauty as Stewart dives in the Bahamas among the endangered whitetips.
But it all ends on a sad note, with Stewart’s tragic death at the age of 37 in a diving accident.
He never saw his second and final film. Hopefully others will now take up his fight. dictable but the excellent Richardson keeps us hooked.
After smouldering in opposite corners of the big screen for the first hour, Stella decides to rewrite the rules by knocking a foot off the official guideline keeping them apart.
“After all that CF has stolen from me, I don’t mind stealing something back,” Stella says in her blog.
There are quietly touching scenes and some wildly melodramatic ones, but the plot holes don’t get in the way of the emotional journey.
The six-feet rule is an American guideline, Britain’s Cystic Fibrosis Trust offers different advice (head online to cysticfibrosis.org.uk to learn more about it).
With the UK government in talks with a major pharmaceuticals firm over the price of a new treatment for the condition, this movie could not have arrived in our cinemas at a better time.