Fine McKellen looks right at Holmes in latest incarnation
that. If anything, Mr Holmes is proof of what every good detective – and writer – has to know: that you can find the truth anywhere, even in something as arid and unpromising as ‘‘the facts’’.
Mr Holmes is a rumination on age, on memory and – at the end of Holmes’ life – on what love might have been.
It’s literate, thoughtful, reflective and eventually quite moving. Quietly recommended. tension, without ever fizzling into tedium or exploding into unlikely action.
Two people are dead. Two other people are free to be together. In the confines of a magistrate’s office, the truth about who did what, and why, to whom, is slowly winkled out.
In flashback, in a room of a small hotel, two lovers plot and cajole each other into betrayal and the possibility of murder.
Director Mathieu Amalric is better known as an actor, but he does have the terrific On Tour on his director’s CV. That film was stuffed full of life and character.
In complete contrast, The Blue Room is too bloodless and controlled to really convey the darkness and cruelty at play in Georges Simenon’s short novel. But when it does briefly flare, as the characters lose control of their own dishonesty, The Blue Room provides its share of dread and shocks.
Reviewed by James Croot
DIVING into the back catalogue of the Nicholas Sparks-of-Young Adult writers John Green, this coming of age tale will have more appeal to a wider audience than last year’s cloying, claustrophobic The Fault in Our Stars.
A mix of Superbad, Sex Drive and Scott Pilgrim vs the World, but played with more John Hughesesque (Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink) sensibilities, Paper Towns is the tale of Orlando neighbours Quentin (Nat Wolff) and Margot (Cara Delevingne).
Close as young children, the pair drifted apart as their social groups and interests diversified. Quentin still holds more than a torch for her though and thinks all his prayers may have been answered when, in the final weeks of their senior year, she crawls through his window promising him ‘‘the night of his life’’.
All he has to do is provide and drive ‘‘the getaway car’’ while she ‘‘rights wrongs and then wrongs some rights’’ amongst her current peers.
While worried that this might affect his plans and goals, ‘‘none of which involve jail or dying’’, he’s, in the words of Daft Punk, ‘‘up all night to get lucky’’, even if the capers involve red bull, a catfish and saran wrap. Next morning though, Margot has disappeared.
However, Quentin is convinced she’s left him clues as to her whereabouts and is just waiting for him to solve them.
While fans of Green’s 2008 book may take issue with some of the changes, and the Moby-Dick allusions and carpe diem exhortations are a little too on the nose, there’s something immensely likeable about director Jake Schreier’s (Robot and Frank) tale.
While former model Delevingne (Anna Karenina) and her lush eyebrows are the undoubted scene-stealer, the film actually works best when it’s in road movie mode, as Quentin and his mates head east in search of the ‘‘paper town’’ of the title.
Like their under-rated, indie teen movie The Spectacular Now, writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber have some interesting and relevant things to say about modern relationships and growing up, from fear driving relationships to ‘‘grand gestures’’.
Young women may be the target market (there’s even a special cameo for Fault in Our Stars fans), but young (and those still young enough to remember their teenage years) men will likely identify most with the story.