The Sense of an Ending, Logan Lucky and American Made

The auditorium was packed at Senior Screen or whatever they call it now. But for £3 and a free cup of coffee, I wasn't surprised. I loved the book of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes and the adaptation Nick Payne is fine. Tony, the central character played superbly well by Jim Broadbent, is roughly my age, and when the story went back in time to his youth and early twenties, I was right back to the gloom of the hardly lit rooms of a party in the sixties. The music was the same. I had the same cavalry twill trousers. Yuk! Tony was the same shy person I can remember, it was scary. I much preferred the scenes from the present day, Tony learns late in life that he doesn't have to be that cantankerous character he thought he was. Que the postman. The acting is top drawer throughout. A brilliant cameo from Charlotte Rampling and solid turns from Harriet Walter, Michelle Dockery and Emily Mortimer. The direction by Ritesh Batra could have done with a little more dynamism, but all in all, a fine movie.

There's not much to say about Logan Lucky except that it is a thoroughly enjoyable heist movie set in the deep south of North Carolina. Stephen Soderbergh writes and directs with his usual panache. Well, the screenplay is by someone called Rebecca Blunt but that is a fiction so I'm guessing it's all down to Soderbergh. The acting is all good, and the performance from Daniel Craig is amazing. Great fun.

It's the time of year that good films start to put in an appearance after the school holidays, three out this week. American Made sees the best of  Tom Cruise for many a year. He is perfect as Barry Seal, involved with the CIA and the drug kings of central America in the early eighties. The true story has been turned on it's head, and that makes for a lively and enjoyable plot. It is all quite frantic, crazy, colourful  and off the wall, but director Doug Liman has used a decent budget well. Cruise is ably supported by Sarah Wright and Domhnall Gleeson. It did get slightly repetitive towards the end, but I found it all surprisingly entertaining. And Tom might just get an acting nomination somewhere? He would deserve it, and that's something you don't hear every day.