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Wild Rose (2018)
Wild Rose (2018)
2018 | Drama, Music
This is a delightful movie that shows us just how much dreams and reality need to be balanced to never give up on either, with a stunning performance from Jessie Buckley.
  
Wild Rose (2018)
Wild Rose (2018)
2018 | Drama, Music
A pretty okay musical film elevated by the outstanding performances of Jessie Buckley and Julie Walters to be more than it otherwise should have been:

  
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Raj Rudolph (4 KP) created a post

May 7, 2018  
Phil Marriott and Raj Rudolph aka Boys On Film review "Beast", a gripping drama directed by Michael Pearce and starring Jessie Buckley, Johnny Flynn and Geraldine James.

A troubled woman living in an isolated community finds herself pulled between the control of her oppressive family and the allure of a secretive outsider suspected of a series of brutal murders.

     
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Blazing Minds (92 KP) rated Wild Rose (2018) in Movies

Nov 1, 2021 (Updated Nov 3, 2021)  
Wild Rose (2018)
Wild Rose (2018)
2018 | Drama, Music
Right from the very start of Wild Rose I had the same feeling that I had for the brilliant A Star is Born with Lady GaGa and Bradley Cooper, the opening music for Wild Rose just has you ready for a film that you know is going to be a well made and produced British made movie and it is.

Julie Walters is brilliant as Rose’s mother her Scottish accent is nicely done and you can see from her performance why she is one the best British actresses that we have around at the moment, her on-screen presence with Jessie Buckley certainly brings across the rocky mother and daughter relationship.

Jessie Buckley comes across very well as the down-trodden mother that only wants her dream to come true and head over to Nashville to sing Country, she puts on a great performance as Rose-Lynn, at first you get the feeling that you aren’t going to like the foul-mouthed “Wild Rose“, but as the mother progresses and you see that there is so much more to just wanting to sing.
  
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Lenard (726 KP) rated Beast (2017) in Movies

Nov 30, 2020  
Beast (2017)
Beast (2017)
2017 | Thriller
8
6.8 (5 Ratings)
Movie Rating
One could view this as one of the best Goth romance movies. On a small island, a young winery guide, Moll, meets and falls for the dangerous stranger who may or may not be murdering young women on the island. It is a sexual awakening for the outsider. Moll unearths untold power and strength. Recently, I have been watching a lot of Jessie Buckley performances. I have noticed that she has a huge tic where when she speaks she upturns the right side of her lips. It is far noticeable when she plays American, like in "Fargo" and "I'm Thinking of Ending Things." But she also uses it here to twist herself as she spirals toward an inevitable clash.
  
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Watchman (19 KP) rated Beast (2017) in Movies

Jan 9, 2019 (Updated Feb 15, 2019)  
Beast (2017)
Beast (2017)
2017 | Thriller
8
6.8 (5 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Outstanding acting (1 more)
Unpredictable
May be too bleak for some (0 more)
A chilling fairytale
A girl with a dark past, the black sheep of the family with a perfect sister, a strict, overbearing mother and an ill father, starts a red-blooded affair with a local boy, an enigma with history of run ins with the law.... and now a suspect in the worst of crimes.
Set in the gorgeously filmed isle of Jersey, Michael Pearce has directed on his debut a real nail biter. This take on the search for a serial killer of young girls, intertwined with a forbidden love story is an uncomfortable, disturbing watch at times.... but hypnotic. And newcomer Jessie Buckley is mesmerising, its hard to take your eyes off her.
Brilliant script, plot, pacing and ominous soundtrack.
A must watch for any fan of dark psychological thrillers.
  
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Awix (3310 KP) rated Wild Rose (2018) in Movies

Apr 16, 2019 (Updated Apr 16, 2019)  
Wild Rose (2018)
Wild Rose (2018)
2018 | Drama, Music
A Star is Paroled, More Like
Scottish-set take on the same kind of material as A Star is Born features a terrific performance (both acting and musical) from Jessie Buckley, and much less material about people falling in love or weeing themselves on stage. Talented but off-the-rails young woman comes out of prison, tries to reconnect with her mother and children, plans (not very realistically) to go to Nashville and become a country star. (The point is repeatedly made that country music is not the same as country and western music, but this is possibly not the venue to be pedantic in.) Features a cameo by Whispering Bob Harris, who gives an oddly unconvincing performance even though he's playing himself.

Buckley is tremendous, as noted, but Julie Walters is equally good as her disapproving mum (no singing from Walters, though); the film plays engagingly with audience expectations and - to its credit - resists the temptation to suggest there are easy answers to life's questions. It works really hard to earn its moments of triumph and joy: there is some real heartbreak along the way, and the film suggests that while being dedicated to your dreams is all very well, it can also make you a horrible person to be around. Cheats a bit at the very end, but has earned the right to by that point, I would say.
  
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Awix (3310 KP) rated Beast (2017) in Movies

May 18, 2018  
Beast (2017)
Beast (2017)
2017 | Thriller
8
6.8 (5 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Impressive debut film from Michael Pearce with an outstanding performance from Jessie Buckley at its centre. The setting is Jersey, but this is more like Cracker than Bergerac: a young woman trapped in a smothering relationship with her controlling mother starts a relationship with a drifter almost as an act of rebellion, but having committed to this what is she supposed to do when she learns he is a suspect in a string of local murders?

The thriller element is really kind of an afterthought, and the manner in which the did-he-or-didn't-do-it plotline is resolved would be unlikely to satisfy anyone if it were the sole focus of the film. But the film is built around characterisation and atmosphere much more than genre conventions, and is very strong here: as it continues it shades more into psychological horror than anything else, with a genuinely intense and impossible-to-predict denouement. An accomplished film in every department.
  
The Courier (2020)
The Courier (2020)
2020 |
7
8.0 (4 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Cumberbatch is brilliant. (1 more)
Great real life history lesson
Buckley is good, but miscast. (0 more)
A peerless Cumberbatch and a miscast Buckley.
It's not to be confused with the Olga Kurylenko / Gary Oldman 2019 movie of the same title. But with a fresh Berlin current-day Russian spy scandal in the news this week, seeing the cold war spy drama "The Courier" is a timely thing to do.

Positives:
- Benedict Cumberbatch is outstandingly good in this. He could have been born to play the slightly bemused English gentlemen of the time. All golf, tweed suits and gentlemen's clubs. No spoilers, but there is a physical transformation as well that's impressive to observe. The film would have been decidedly so-so I think without that core central performance.
- The film is based on a true story. As someone who was born in 1961, it's a good reminder to count our blessings that you, me and everyone else are still around to live our lives at all. The world was on the brink of a precipice and learning the story of Wynne's part in this was insightful history.
- There's a nice catchy Russian-themed score by Abel Korzeniowski.

Negatives:
- I'm a big fan of Jessie Buckley. Really, I am. And to be fair to her, her performance is really good. I particularly liked a scene where she dismissed on the doorstep a local busybody. But I just didn't see her as Wynne's pearl-neckless-wearing wife in this part. Perhaps the problem is that although there's a 13 year age gap between the leads, I always imagine Buckley as being much younger that her 31 years. For whatever reason, the casting didn't work for me.

Summary Thoughts on "The Courier": As a true-life spy story, the movie is interesting and Cumberbatch's performance is brilliant. But I can't say that I was 100% grabbed by it. While having a few moments of high drama and tension - particularly one on a plane - I never felt that to be maintained for enough of the movie. Director Dominic Cooke has a limited filmography (with the Saoirse Ronan movie "On Chesil Beach" being his only other feature) and writer Tom O'Connor is the guy behind the more flippant "Hitman's Bodyguard" films. Perhaps a more experienced writer/director team would have elevated this to a higher level.

So it's eminently watchable but not memorable. Just a marginal hit in my book.

(For the full graphical review, please check out onemannsmovies on the web, Facebook and Tiktok. Thanks.)
  
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Blazing Minds (92 KP) rated Beast (2017) in Movies

Nov 1, 2021 (Updated Nov 3, 2021)  
Beast (2017)
Beast (2017)
2017 | Thriller
8
6.8 (5 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Beast is the story of a troubled woman (played by Jessie Buckley) living in an isolated community who finds herself pulled between the control of her oppressive family and the allure of a secretive outsider (played by Johnny Flynn) who is suspected of a series of brutal murders. As the relationship grows between them, the movie takes us on an uneasy journey as she breaks away from her family and movies in with Pascal, after he is suspected of the murders, Moll stands by him against her families wishes and the suspicions of the town-folk where she lives.

Directed and written by Michael Pearce, Beast, which is his first full-length feature is a stunning movie, he takes his time to build up the points in the film that have your jaw dropping and treats the production as something that you don’t just watch, you get sucked into and feel as if you have become part of the community watching from afar an still being shocked by the outcomes.