Missing, Polite Society and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

 

Not nearly as good as Searching, the film that prompted the makers to try something similar. Missing has just too many twists and turns to be at all credible. The one big advantage is that it has Joaquin de Almeida as the private detective in Columbia where June Allen's mother has gone .....you've got it. Joaquin has a huge list of film and tv credits to his name and it shows. He just makes everyone else seem rubbish. 

I didn't realise Polite Society would be so much fun. The script was very good and the interaction between the two sisters and their school friends was excellent. It was supposed to be set in Shepherds Bush (where I changed buses on my way to school and picked up a lift to cricket matches) but we only saw the market. Not to be taken seriously, the film was entertaining and fast paced thanks to director Nida Manzoor. Despite the silliness, the film has a big heart. It was only during the end credits that I realised this was a Working Title picture so credit again to Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner. It was in 1985 that they released My Beautiful Laundrette but found real success with Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994. I stayed at the end to hear "Identity", a wonderful punk song from X-ray Spex. More please.

Sometimes the film adaptation of a favourite book is a big let down. But not in this case. Rachel Joyce has written the screenplay from her popular novel and it has all the humour and pathos of the original. And particularly the emotion. Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton are, of course, excellent as an older couple still suffering from events that gradually unfold. That is what is so good. That and the English landscape in all it's majesty and it's urban mix. From the countryside of the Cotswolds to Exeter Cathedral and Sheffield's disastrous planning. Director Hettie Macdonald has let us recapture the emotion of the book. Of all the people Harold meets along the way, my favourite was Monika Gossman as the east European doctor relegated to cleaning jobs as her partner left a year before. She should have her own book and film.