Pride (2014) ***1/4

In theory, a good story is a good story, and whether it really happened shouldn’t affect whether it’s a good movie. But if you’d thought first-time screenwriter Stephen Beresford had simply invented a tale about a group of gay-rights activists who, all on their own, decided to raise money for striking rural miners, it’d have seemed rather unlikely and strange. The 1984 National Union of Mineworkers strike is well-remembered in Britain and were a marker of the changes that came to the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.  But this Pride, which shares its title with a 2007 film about a Philadelphia swim team, is more likely to remind you of working-class underdog stories like The Full Monty and Billy Elliot than of a more overtly political film.

Beresford and director Matthew Warchus stick to the personal, showing the unlikely path by which a small group of London-based activists wound up in an out-of-the-way town in Wales. At first, it seems like the main character might be young, closeted Joe (George MacKay), but the other characters, especially loud-and-proud Mark (Ben Schnetzer), and spiky-haired Steph, the sole lesbian (Faye Marsay), get about equal attention. Despite plenty of humorous moments, the accent is on the personalities, not fish-out-of-water stereotypes. The men and women of the town exhibit the range of reactions you might expect, from deep hostility to unmitigated gratitude toward their unexpected benefactors. The ubiquitous Bill Nighy stands out as a man who seems deeply uncomfortable with all of this, yet remains unfailingly polite.

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viewed 8/29/14 10 am at Ritz 5; posted 10/9/14

How I Live Now (***)

This has all the hallmarks of a teen coming-of-age movie. Sixteen-year-old Daisy (Saoirse Ronan)—don’t use her given name, Elizabeth—is a New Yorker sent to summer with relatives in Wales. With mild-self-loathing (we hear this as whispered injunctions) buried under an obnoxious exterior, she’s the perfect candidate for a big learning experience under the guidance of her country-living relations, consisting of a mother and her three kids, and how convenient that the oldest is handsome, age-appropriate, and not actually biologically related to her. But wait, what’s this about a bombing in Paris, and the mother being an expert in World War III planning?

I didn’t mind at all the combination of sci-fi adventure story and teen romance. Do threats of martial law quash desire? Not at all. What was jarring was the way the story requires fresh Daisy to transform from snotty girl who can barely sit in a messy car to lovelorn teen to plucky self-starter in about a week. Perhaps Ronan is channeling her role as another Daisy, this one a teen assassin, in Violet & Daisy. I suspect, however, that the effects of compressing a novel (by Meg Rosoff) into feature-length movie account for the whiplash transformation, as well as the too-brief appearance of the mother character, whose job sounds rather interesting. Alas, we never learn what she was working on, or exactly why Britain may cease to exist. We do learn that the UK government will be pretty darn efficient at organizing things if the shit ever hits the fan. An intriguing premise, aided by director Kevin Macdonald’s great use of rural landscapes. At the end, we get the usual lessons-learned voiceover I was expecting.

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viewed 11/14/13 7:05 at Ritz Bourse and posted 11/14/13

Submarine (***1/2)

An affecting coming-of-age story set in Wales. The hero is teenage Oliver Tate, who like many an unpopular boy imagines himself the hero of his own movies. His object of affection (Yasmin Paige) is chosen, he tells us, for her own modest unpopularity, which makes her possibly attainable. She’s not the nerdy kind kind of unpopular but the edgy kind. They have a charmingly odd romance that involves lighting small fires and such, but, in the manner of many a teenage boy, it barely occurs to Oliver that there may be tender feelings behind her cool exterior. And so he hides his, which prominently involve worrying about his parents’ low-functioning marriage. The quiet, odd father is played by Noah Taylor, who long ago starred as the same character in a pair of equally good coming-of-age stories, The Year My Voice Broke and Flirting. The mother is always-good Sally Hawkins.

While maintaining humor throughout, director Richard Ayoade (adapting a Joe Dunthorne novel) evokes the drama of teenage existence with particularity as to character and setting (although the time, probably in the near past, is vague) and universality as to the feelings.

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viewed 6/6/11 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 6/17/11