Love and Mercy (2015), directed by Bill Pohlad

In quite a departure from the usual biopic, Love and Mercy snaps back and forth in time, quite a risk given that Brian Wilson is played by two very different actors in Paul Dano and Jon Cusack. The technique is annoying at first, but ends up working quite well, comparing and contrasting the tortured musical genius pre and post breakdown. The director’s style is elliptical, sometimes to the detriment of the story. It is good not to be spoon-fed and the audience gets a clear enough picture of Wilson’s horrible childhood without needing to see every awful detail. However his first marriage could have been given a little more attention, with his wife barely named let alone fleshed out as a character. Likewise his relationship with his brothers and fellow Beach Boys; we only know which one is cousin Mike Love because of the fights. Paul Dano is convincingly weird as the younger Brian, showing how his anxiety and developing mental health issues were compounded by drug abuse and a sense of alienation. Jon Cusack is engagingly vague as older Brian, who has been rescued from his complete breakdown by a manipulative psychotherapist, in a frypan to fire situation. In a scenery-chewing performance, Paul Giamatti has the thankless role of the dastardly doctor and Elizabeth Banks is warm, sweet and credible as the woman who rescues Wilson from his clutches. The film benefits greatly from using the actual Beach Boys music on the soundtrack and a nice cameo from the man himself on the closing credits perfectly punctuates it.

Peaky Blinders series 1

Birmingham in 1919, the Peaky Blinders are a half gypsy criminal gang run by the Shelby family, known for keeping razor blades in their caps for assaulting opponents. Illegal bookmaking, race fixing, protection rackets - you name it, they do it. Immediately after WWI the times are changing. Men have returned with untold damage and women are reluctant to return to their pre-war restricted lives. The authorities are cracking down against revolutionary ideas from Russia and seem more worried about strikes and communists than fighting crime. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the cops and the criminals, so similar are their methods and their morals. Cillian Murphy is absolutely mesmerising as gang leader Tommy Shelby, who has a vision for the future and the ruthlessness to make it happen. The strong supporting cast includes Helen McClory as Aunt Polly and Sam McNeill as Inspector Campbell. The first episode is a little confusing, trying to work out what the relationships are and the modern music is literally discordant. This lessens as the series progresses, with the music increasingly well-matching the action, although the relative ages of the Shelby siblings is never quite satisfactorily resolved or explained. Youngest brother Finn is around 10-12; while second youngest John has four children. The tension builds throughout the six episodes, culminating in a breathtaking cliffhanger to series 2.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

Jacob Porter’s grandpa has always been a bit odd; his fantastical and sometime nightmarish tales became harder to believe as Jacob grew older. But when Jacob hits 16 tragedy strikes and the tales have suddenly become all too real. Jacob sets off on a quest for the truth behind his grandpa’s extraordinary stories and discovers that he is not so ordinary himself. Some plot elements don’t quite hang together, particularly those concerning time loops, and it’s a little hard to swallow that a group of children could requisition boats on a fishing island in wartime Wales. However it’s best not to think too hard about the anomalies and let the action sweep you along into the intriguing world of peculiar children, the birds that protect them and the monsters that hunt them. The use of period photographs to illustrate the text is an interesting quirk and adds an element of depth. The ending sets up for the inevitable sequel, apparently mandatory in modern YA fantasy.

Rogue One (2016), directed by Gareth Edwards

This Star Wars story is set immediately prior to A New Hope, the very first Star Wars movie, and leads into that film very nicely for fans, although it also stands alone. It contains all the usual Star Wars tropes – lots of space fighter pilot action; explosions; strange creatures; and heroes up against it. The very good cast is somewhat wasted as there is not much of a script; dialogue and plot are sacrificed to action every time and actors of the calibre of Mads Mikkelson and Ben Daniels don’t get enough to do. Nevertheless Felicity Jones carries the film as reluctant rebel Jyn Erso; Diego Luna is appealing as her counterpoint Cassian; and Ben Mendelsohn makes a good villain. The sound is a problem – quite often words and sentences are hard to make out as they are swallowed or obscured. And the music is terrible, noticeably unsubtle and overdone. It’s apparently the first of the franchise’s soundtracks not composed by John Williams and it shows. There is not a lot of humour; the little there is supplied as usual by the robots, with a notable contribution from the awesome blind Jedi. It could have done with some extra lighter moments to provide some balance. The Star Wars glamour disguises what is actually a rather grim war story – the rebels keeping hope alive against overwhelming odds and losing almost everything along the way. Not one for the kids.

Brooklyn (2015), directed by John Crowley

Adapted by Nick Hornby from a book by Colm Toibin, this delicate and slow-moving film is not for action freaks who can’t sit still and watch a story gradually unfold. A coming of age tale, told through the immigrant experience, it is in many ways a small film about love and family and finding a home. Eilis starts as a shy and reserved young woman with a limited future in country Ireland, who allows others to direct her. She gradually grows into a confident young woman who must choose between two men, two countries and two futures. Beautifully shot, the period looks and sounds authentic; the contrasting look and feel of 1950s Ireland and 1950s New York clearly demonstrating the difficult choices Eilis must make about her life. Saoirse Ronan carries the film, her expressive face taking the viewer inside Eilis’s head so that you feel all her emotions along with her. She is well supported by Emory Cohen and Domhnall Gleeson as the rivals for Eilis’s affection and future, as well as a solid extended cast of mostly Irish and British actors. The road not taken always provides an interesting story. Would making different decisions make us happier, or just happy in a different way? There is no way of knowing the answer, but this thoughtful film gently poses a question worth considering.

Between a Wolf and a Dog, by Georgia Blain

What does the title mean? The obscure metaphor initially seems to refer to the unloved family pooch, but he quickly disappears from the narrative, making it difficult to see the point of him at all. Is it the wild wolf of creativity versus the dog of domestic reality? Is it as base as sister beast versus sister bitch? It never becomes apparent. Sisters Ester and April are estranged, largely because of Ester’s ex-husband, perpetual man-child Lawrence. Their mother Hilary lays an enormous responsibility on him, which she hopes will trigger forgiveness and reconciliation, and he rises to the occasion in an unlikely denouement. The writing is clear and beautiful, the story less so. Despite her distractingly annoying missing H, Ester is the most believable and relatable character. Her motivations, behaviours and reactions strike a chord of recognition. By contrast, April and Lawrence are unconvincing and Hilary is a little insubstantial. The result is a novel of style and promise that does not quite deliver on substance. It is nevertheless a great pity it will be Blain’s last novel as she sadly died last week, at the age of 51.

Promise, by Sarah Armstrong

The gut-wrenching topic of child abuse is made slightly more palatable by looking at it from the point of view of someone who is trying to help. Anna is put in the position of not being able to ignore the abuse when her new next-door neighbours loudly thrust it in her face. And faced with the same situation – of a small child asking for your help and a child protection system seemingly ignoring the problem – what would you do? This novel cuts through the bullshit to pose that question to all of us. Fearing for the child’s safety, Anna takes drastic action and inevitably must face the consequences. The clear, direct writing avoids clichés and caricatures. The developing relationship between Anna and the child, Charlie, is believable and moving. As we learn more about Anna’s history the reader better understands her motivations and where this might lead, as does she. The action moves around between Sydney, country New South Wales and the Gold Coast and the geography is slightly confusing to anyone unfamiliar with the terrain, but this is only a minor distraction from the plot. The book would probably make a good film. You often hear the phrase, “until you’re a parent you can’t understand” but assured tale indicates that just maybe you can.

The Theoretical Foot, by MFK Fisher

Renowned as a food writer, who also wrote autobiographically, MFK Fisher’s only novel was published long after her death, which begs the question did she want it published at all? It’s an odd book, allegedly drawn from her own life, containing a story within a story. Set in Switzerland just prior to WWII it depicts an interesting slice of a very particular life of American ex-pats. Sarah and Tim are madly in love and living in sin outside Geneva. They would marry if they could and are presumably awaiting a divorce to be able to – it is never made entirely clear. Their idyll is beset by visiting family and friends, some welcome some not, all difficult to deal with in their own way. All the visitors are in love with the wrong people and torture themselves and/or each other because of it. Some of the characters are supremely slappable, some are overly complicated, others impenetrably enigmatic. The writing teeters between lyrical and tedious, with some mesmerising descriptions of landscape, food and clothes and some excruciating pseudo-psychological analysis of feelings and motivations. If it is true that the enveloping story of illness, pain and death is taken from life then it must have been extraordinarily difficult to write and it is no wonder the novel was not published in Fisher’s lifetime. The setting is beautiful, the situation and timing interesting and the characters have promise. It probably needed a fair bit more work, particularly from an independent editor, to make it worth publishing.

Dancing on the Edge, directed by Stephen Poliakoff

In 1930s London, Stanley Mitchell is chief writer at the fledgling magazine Music Express. He discovers and promotes the Louis Lester band, a troupe of black jazz musicians, to fame and fortune. Some of the band members were born in Britain, but others have immigration difficulties. Favour from high society, including royalty, both helps and hinders Louis and the band’s progress as they battle for musical change, deal with racism and the fallout of the behaviour of mysterious American millionaire Masterson. The murder of a band member turns the gloriously soapy costume drama darker. It flags a bit in the middle, as the story is drawn out possibly longer than necessary, but picks up again towards the end, as justice of a sort is done in the fifth and final episode. Chiwetal Ejiofor is outstanding as Louis, with Matthew Goode his usual appealing self as Sydney. A strong supporting cast features many familiar faces, with strong performances from John Goodman, Jacqueline Bisset and Joanna Vanderham. But the real star of the show is the music, which perfectly illustrates the rapidly changing era between the two world wars and covers some of the flaws in the writing.