Lionsgate have acquired the US distribution rights to FilmNation’s All is Lost at the European Film Market in Berlin.

Set to be directed by J.C. Chandor (Margin Call), All is Lost is the exhilarating journey of one man’s fight to survive after being lost at see.

Robert Redford (Lions for Lambs) is attached to play the lead role.

All is Lost is set to begin shooting in May at the Baja Studios in Rosarita Beach, Mexico.

Redford will next be seen in The Company You Keep, opposite Shia LaBeouf (Wettest County) and Julie Christie (Finding Neverland).

Source: Variety

All through the marketing campaign for this film I kept my mind open and hopes relatively high. Catherine Hardwicke scolded those who noted the film’s apparent similarities to Twilight, something the trailers and posters played very heavily on, and yet I knew this was a sure fire way of getting people into the cinemas in order, I hoped, to spin us an entertaining yarn based on the enduring fairy tale.

Guess what happened?

It’s Twilight in a red cape with all the subtlety of a wolf bite to the arse, and the emotional complexity of a pantomime dame slipping on a banana skin. I hate reviewing very bad films, and genuinely try to find something positive but the only good note I had was that it looks great, pleasingly side-stepping the Burtonesque shorthand which passes for ‘dark fairy tale’ at the moment. The village and its surrounding landscape gives the right sense of heightened reality with the requisite feeling of isolation. However the film soon falls apart as Hardwicke populates it with a swag bag of clichés and paper thing characters; when Julie Christie and Gary Oldman cannot elevate a film you have problems.

It’s a shame too. Amanda Seyfried, when given more to do than choose between boys, is capable of bringing something complex and seductive to the screen. While Atom Egoyan’s Chloe did often step into a strange self-parodic parallel reality during its running time there were moments when the sexual politics of Seyfried’s titular character were given depth and weight. Not so here, with Wealthy Handsome Mr. Nice going up against   Swarthy Handsome (but Poor) Buck for her affections and those pesky Twilight comparisons are back in force . Couple this arid game of attraction with a lame Whodunnit element and you’ve missed the chance to bring a rendition of the fairy tale, with a far greater and complex exploration of female sexuality (which isn’t hard to imagine).

If the true story of how this film came to the screen ever gets told I wonder if Catherine Hardwicke’s original take differed greatly from what we ended up with. In this interview with our own Ben Mortimer she talks of her extensive research opposing the business of making a film and I wonder if her original intentions were stymied by a studio plumbing new depths of audience underestimation on the promise of another Tween friendly hit.

So, less Company of Wolves, more Company of Idiots. It’s an hour and forty minutes of Tell, Not Show with plot points marked out in huge audience friendly exposition. “Your Mother has what she wants…” Swarthy Handsome  Buck says to Amanda Seyfried, discussing her arranged nuptials to another, “Money,” he continues just in case we were left in any doubt of the black and white nature of the relationships on offer here. Some of the dialogue, no actually – most of the dialogue would have been laughed out of the South Chuffley Brownies’ annual revue for being too childish. Even Gary Oldman, who could belt out endless stanzas of McGonagall and imbue them with feeling and sincerity, is awash in the hysterical inanity of it all. His warrior preacher had, on paper, a decent stab at actual depth of character with a horrific incident in his past turning him onto his current werewolf-hunting path. Sad it is in the extreme then that he is forced to unveil himself like a pantomime villain drunk on theatrics and the burn of the spotlight.

I have no problem with a simple adaptation of the story, indeed the fact that it has been passed down through generations is precisely because it is so simple – with its instructive and instinctive cautionary tale a mainstay of childhood literature, but to make a dull affair is a waste. It’s so damn bloodless.

*~~~~ (1/5)

There is an alternative edit with a few ‘steamy’ scenes added in, and I watched this without having seen the film in its original form. It still wasn’t sexy. There’s also a ‘hidden’ extra in which Hardwicke appears to be auditioning an actor – I won’t spoil it save to say that if you’ve bought this Blu-ray then you deserve the punchline this little skit affords you.

To mark the  release of digitally restored Don’t Look now on Blu-ray 27th June, Optimum Releasing have given us three copies of the movie to give away.

Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie star in DON’T LOOK NOW, Nic Roeg’s brilliantly atmospheric adaptation of the novel by Daphne du Maurier. Following the death of their daughter, John and Laura Baxter travel to Venice where he is to oversee the restoration of an old church. Here they encounter a pair of elderly sisters: one of them a blind psychic who claims to have been in communication with the couple’s dead child. Whilst Laura is intrigued John resists the idea, despite the possibility that he is having his own visions that threaten to put his life in danger…. Genuinely unsettling, DON’T LOOK NOW is widely acknowledged as perhaps Roeg’s finest film and one of the best British films ever made.

New restoration supervised and approved by Nic Roeg.

Extras: Nic Roeg commentary / Looking Back (The Making of) Documentary / Interview with composer Pino Donaggio / Compressed version of Don’t Look Now made by Danny Boyle for BAFTA tribute – new / Nothing is as it seems / Trailer / Easter Egg: Tony Richmond playout / Interview with Danny Boyle – new / Interview with Allan Scott – new / Interview with Tony Richmond – new / Interview with Donald Sutherland – new

For your chance to win the movie on Blu-ray, simply answer the following question using the form below:

Who plays the character John Baxter in the movie, Don’t Look Now?

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED

The small print:

• Open to UK residents only
• Only one entry per household will be counted
• The competition will close 4th July at 23.59 GMT
• The winner will be picked at random from entries received
• No cash alternative is available

The usual T&Cs can be found here. Good Luck!

Red Riding Hood is coming out at the end of this week, and HeyUGuys recently caught up with the film’s star, Amanda Seyfried to talk about her experience making the film.  During the course of the interview she spoke about the script, her casting, working with Catherine Hardwicke, and how strange it was for her and Gary Oldman to be fighting make believe wolves.

She also mentioned that her favourite directors are David Lynch and Darren Aronofsky, but unfortunately our recording became somewhat garbled in that part (we blame witchcraft), so we can’t give you a full quote, but we wanted to share it with you because it’s such an awesome fact.

On the script

The script was really solid. The whodunit was exciting, because I don’t know anybody who guessed who the wolf was when they read the script. The crew wasn’t able to read past page 80, because we needed to keep it under wraps. And I think we did a good job of doing that, people saw the movie and they had no idea.

It was really well written, I thought. How else are you going to take a small story and put it on the screen in 2011? You have to add romance. You don’t have to, but we were making it for a younger audience, and I believe romance is key. I was really, and truly inspired by love and romance when I was a teen, still am; I love watching love stories.

On  Catherine

She’s crazy. I don’t think we’d have got through the movie if she wasn’t.

She’s a child, she doesn’t lose energy. She never drinks caffeine, she doesn’t eat sugar, it’s just a natural energy she has. It’s very special. It’s tough to make a movie, I don’t know how she does it, but she knew what she wanted, and she’s very confident about that.

On her casting

I knew Catherine wanted me to play Red Riding Hood, which was really flattering. I met with her and she showed me all her ideas on paper, paintings, a short trailer that she had made, music; paintings  her sisters had painted of animals, and paintings of Red Riding Hood in the forest with her cape over her head, and drawings and paintings of what the houses were going to look like, and what the medieval buildings were going to look like, and her idea for what the wolf was. She did a lot of it herself, she’s very talented.

I was completely drawn in. I knew I needed to do it; it’s an iconic character that lives in our psyche, no matter where you’re from. Red Riding Hood, and all of these other fairy tales are part of us. To transform it however, there’s a million ways you could have made Red Riding Hood, this is just one. It’s special in its own way, and I’m proud of it. It was really fun.

On the shoot

Nobody really felt we were given enough days for this movie. The budget was smaller than we would have liked because we needed those extra days. We were kind of rushing by every day, but we got it.

On how she Gary Oldman, fighting a pretend wolf and making a period film

I think Gary and I had the hardest task, because we had to fight and imagine there was this wolf there, and there wasn’t, so it was lots of yelling. I know he felt ridiculous at times, and so did I. So did everybody at a point, because there was so much going on all the time: horses and stunt people and flying and fake snow. He was just a really good energy to have around you.

We had a great cast, and the day Gary Oldman left it was a sad, sad day. We got on, and we pulled through , and it was very exciting because we were on a medieval set. It’s the first period movie I’ve ever done, it was so cool; getting in that costume every day really does change things a little.

There is, I am sure, an audience for Red Riding Hood. My best guess is that it is made up of the same hormonal teenage girls, and depressed, middle aged women who are responsible for the Twilight franchise taking nearly two billion dollars at the box office. If you recognise yourself in this description, you won’t be disappointed. By anything. Ever.

Like Twilight the film contains identikit, charisma-less, clothes horses mouthing their way through awful dialogue, and failing to create anything resembling sexual tension, so book your tickets now. And while you’re at it, probably best to pre-order the DVD, and make some ‘team Henry’ T-shirts as well.

More to the point, if you fit this description, you probably won’t want to read this review. I’m going to say some pretty nasty things about the film, and I’m going to spoil the ‘surprise twist’, so look away now.

That means spoilers if you carry on so only read on if you dare!

Still with me?

Good.

Red Riding Hood is rubbish. It’s badly written, it’s stupid, and it’s lazy, lowest common denominator filmmaking at its worst, on a par with anything Michael Bay has churned out recently. Still, it’s not actually bad. If it were, it would almost be excusable. It would certainly provide some camp enjoyment. Instead it’s simply, unrelentingly bland. The cinematic equivalent of eating a bowl of Corn Flakes, in a room with magnolia walls while listening to James Blunt*. An utter waste of time, money and effort.

We could have had an exceptional film, or at least an entertaining one. The high concept is intriguing enough: the story of a girl on the verge of womanhood, who confronts a beast from within her community, while also confronting her own sexual desires. This idea, which we were actually sold in the trailers, could well have been a modern take on The Company of Wolves.

Instead we got chaste sexual fantasies for people who never have sex, played out by robots with hair that’s been gelled to within an inch of its life.

Actually, I’m being entirely unfair to the cast. While none of them are going to win an Oscar for their performances, they do the best they possibly can with the material at hand. Gary Oldman in particular tries desperately to make the film enjoyable, as does Michael Hogan, who is essentially playing Battlestar Galactica’s Col. Tigh, but is at least having some fun while he does so.

There are elements of the film that are vaguely interesting: The mystery surrounding the identity of the werewolf; the isolated community, beset by monsters; the troubled adolescent girl, at war with those around her. Yet not one of these manages to hook the audience. It’s true none of these are new ideas, and each has been done better by other films, Company of Wolves, Ravenous and Ginger Snaps spring to mind,  but they really shouldn’t have fallen as flat as they did.

The one remotely original idea was that the Oldman’s character, a hunter of werewolves brought in to save the village, is actually a much greater threat than the wolf itself. Indeed, this alone could have been the basis of an engaging, intelligent film. Unfortunately, with any sort of edge the movie may have had dulled, and with an emphasis on the ‘love’ triangle between the film’s leads, this is relegated to a sub-plot that never quite works.

And it’s far from the only idea that doesn’t work. One plot strand involves the paternity of Valerie’s sister. As it turns out, her mother is the village bicycle, and she is revealed to be the accidentally incestuous, half-sister of Max Iron’s Henry. We also have several contenders for village idiot, who aren’t so much characters as walking, dribbling plot devices, and Valerie’s mother, who insists that Valerie marries the son of the wealthiest man in the village**, having inexplicably not married his father twenty years before hand.

It may well be that somewhere on a cutting room floor are the other strands of these plots, that make them fit together, and allow them to make sense. It’s probably not the case, but you never know.

And then there’s the ‘twist’ ending.

The wolf is her father.

To comprehend how stupid this is, you would have to see the film. As a rough guide though, it is vaguely analogous to me showing you a line up of possible murder suspects, and then revealing to you that it was committed by the pot plant in the corner. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. Consequently, when it comes to light, we get ten minutes of ridiculous exposition trying to justify the development, rather than a neat recap of cleverly laid plot threads one would expect from a big reveal.

There’s more to say about the film. About how cheap it feels, about Hardwicke’s hit-and-miss direction. About the member of Gary Oldman’s retinue who should be significant because he’s the only one who wears a helmet throughout, but turns out to be utterly irrelevant. About the message this sends to teenage girls about what they should expect out of life. About the ropey CGI wolf. About everything, but it doesn’t deserve it.

Don’t see this movie.

*~~~~ (1/5) – and that’s for the soundtrack.

*Actually, that’s unfair. I’ve implied that the soundtrack is middle of the road, easy listening music. It isn’t. Instead it’s actually very good, featuring a score that is clearly inspired by the Ravenous soundtrack, and a number of pumping electro-pop tunes by Fever Ray, aka ‘that girl from The Knife’.

**Don’t get too excited. It seems that the only thing that sets him apart as more wealthy than anyone else is the ability to make crap jewellery and to be played by a man who was once on Stargate: SG1

To celebrate the release of Red Riding Hood in cinemas on April 15, we are offering one lucky reader the chance to win a Red Riding Hood cape and goody bag.  Four runners up will also receive a goody bag!

Synopsis: Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is a beautiful young woman torn between two men. She is in love with a brooding outsider Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), but her parents have arranged for her to marry the wealthy Henry (Max Irons). Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter are planning to run away together when they learn that Valerie’s older sister has been killed by the werewolf that prowls the dark forest surrounding their village. For years, the people have maintained an uneasy truce with the beast, offering the creature a monthly animal sacrifice. But under a blood red moon, the wolf has upped the stakes by taking a human life. Hungry for revenge, the people call on famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon (Gary Oldman), to help them kill the wolf. But Solomon’s arrival brings unintended consequences as he warns that the wolf, who takes human form by day, could be any one of them. As the death toll rises with each moon, Valerie begins to suspect that the werewolf could be someone she loves. Panic grips the town as Valerie discovers that she has a unique connection to the beast-one that inexorably draws them together, making her both suspect…and bait.

To be in with a chance of winning this great prize, all you need to do is answer the following question using the form below:

Red Riding Hood was shot at this location, which also happens to be where co-star Michael Shanks was born. Name the location.

1. Vancouver
2. New York
3. San Francisco

For more information on Red Riding Hood please visit the official website here www.redridinghoodmovie.co.uk

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED

The small print:

• Open to UK residents only
• Only one entry per household will be counted
• The competition will close 15th April 23.59 GMT
• The winner will be picked at random from entries received

The usual T&Cs can be found here. Good Luck!

© 2011 Warner Bros. Entertainment All Rights Reserved

In cinemas April 15

It’s hard to know exactly where Catherine Hardwicke is pitching her telling of the Red Riding Hood fairy tale. The spectre of Twilight hovers over the trailers and posters and is an easy target, but if you’re selling your ‘twisted’ fairy tale to an audience it makes sense to play on the similarities. I still hold out the slightest hope that there’s something more here.

W Magazine stepped on the Vancouver set a while ago to talk all things Grimm and while there they took a few pictures, one of which gives hungry Hoodies a look at Julie Christie as the Grandmother and her enormous house.

Hardwicke explains herself and her story,

[T]he embattled Red (aka Valerie) is caught up in a love triangle with her betrothed, Henry (Max Irons, Jeremy’s son), the scion of a wealthy family, and her purported soulmate, the brooding drifter Peter (Shiloh Fernandez).

The big bad wolf has also been updated, taking the form of a werewolf that lurks in the woods by moonlight and walks undetected about town by day. However, the film’s central drama, says Hardwicke, is Valerie’s coming-of-age—a topic with which the director is intimately familiar, having helmed the first Twilight movie and 2003’s haunting Thirteen.

“If you do the right thing all the time, you won’t learn,” she says. “That’s why characters in fairy tales do the wrong thing. Really, the moral is, Don’t listen to your parents.”

Here are the two pics, there is another over at the site, but it’s just Amanda Seyfried and Shiloh Fernandez having a nosh*,

*Nosh is British for ‘eating’.

This is the one you Red Riding Hood marketing completists have been waiting for – Russia’s own poster for the Catherine Hardwicke film. We are so good to you.

Amanda Seyfried leads the Hardwicke film and stars alongside with Virginia Madsen, Billy Burke, Julie Christie, Shiloh Fernandez, Gary Oldman, Michael Shanks and Luke Haas – personally I’m only in it for Goldman (which is what my sleep deprived brain turned Gary Oldman’s name into – I’ve decided not to correct it in the hope that it catches on).

I’m sure that if you cared to, you could read something very insightful into each country’s specific variant poster for the film, something about the role of folklore in each society and how fear, innocence and the allure of such is conveyed and represented, then used to sell tickets to a movie most people are saying is Twilight with a cape. Or not. It’s up to you.

Here’s Russia’s version all the way from Shockya, tomorrow it’s Bulgaria’s turn*.

*Probably, hopefully not.

Getting in ahead of the numerous fairy tale inspired films coming our way is Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood, and if the previous clips, trailers and assorted imagery haven’t convinced you then why not take some time with these new offerings?

Amanda Seyfried looks more than a little unhinged in this new Spanish poster, though it’s hard to deny she can walk the line between innocence and brain pounding crazy very well, Atom Egoyan’s Chloe forces itself upon me as an example of this.

Personally I’m looking forward to this one despite the tired, yet entirely justified given what we’ve seen so far, comparisons to Twilight.

Here’s all a handy link to all the Red Riding Hood goodies released so far, then the new poster, then the TV spots. Bet you can’t believe your luck.

To get all sourcey for a moment, the poster came from IMPA and the clips from Bloody Disgusting.

Warner Bros. Pictures, have released a brand new Red Riding Hood trailer, a re-imagining of the folk tale Little Red Riding Hood.

Red Riding Hood is directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight) and stars Amanda Seyfried, Virginia Madsen, Lukas Haas, Billy Burke, Julie Christie, Gary Oldman, Michael Shanks, Max Irons and Shiloh Fernandez.

Valerie (Seyfried) is a beautiful young woman torn between two men. She is in love with a brooding outsider, Peter (Fernandez), but her parents have arranged for her to marry the wealthy Henry (Irons). Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter are planning to run away together when they learn that Valerie’s older sister has been killed by the werewolf that prowls the dark forest surrounding their village. For years, the people have maintained an uneasy truce with the beast, offering the creature a monthly animal sacrifice. But under a blood red moon, the wolf has upped the stakes by taking a human life. Hungry for revenge, the people call on famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon (Oldman), to help them kill the wolf. But Solomon’s arrival brings unintended consequences as he warns that the wolf, who takes human form by day, could be any one of them. As the death toll rises with each moon…

The film will be released in the UK on April 15.

Another poster has been unveiled for Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood.

A recent trailer played up the romantic elements and while the Twilight connection of Hardwicke are being promoted to sell the film I’m hoping there’s more to this film then meets the eye.

According to this new poster Red Riding Hood is a breathtaking vision of the fairy tale and stars Amanda Seyfried, Virginia Madsen, Billy Burke, Julie Christie, Shiloh Fernandez, Gary Oldman, Michael Shanks and Luke Haas.

Look below for the poster, give it a click if the mood takes you,

Coming Soon told this tale first.

More images spill forth from Catherine Hardwicke’s telling of Red Riding Hood, and our heroine, played by Amanda Seyfried, is both front and centre.

A few weeks ago we enjoyed the first trailer for the film and while these new images don’t offer much more of an insight we do know that there’s some kissing near a fire and a man drinking a lot in the background of one scene.

Along with Seyfried the film stars Virginia Madsen, Billy Burke, Julie Christie, Shiloh Fernandez, Gary Oldman, Michael Shanks and Luke Haas and why they don’t tease us with images of Oldman clad in his purple robes I don’t know. Maybe they’re saving that for the next trailer?

Here are the pictures, each clickable.

ShockYa did indeed with these pics.

These pictures from Catherine Hardwicke’s retelling of the enduring tale of Red Riding Hood aren’t new, but neither are they scanned from the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, so you can enjoy them in a decent resolution now.

The trailer and poster were released recently and there is something striking about the vivid red of the titular garment against the snow, and as the writer of last year’s nicely dubious horror Orphan is behind this adaptation I’m hoping that we’ll see something a little deeper than those who decried the trailer expect.

Bloody-Disgusting got their paws and watermarks on these images and despite the reaction to the aforementioned trailer I’m looking forward to checking this one out when it hits on the 15th of April. Seriously – who wouldn’t want to see Gary Oldman looking like this?

Here are the two pics in the shiniest of resolutions so get clicking hi-res fans,

And no mention of the ‘T’ word either.

Barely a few days after we had our first glimpse of Amanda Seyfried in the title role of Catherine Hardwicke’s take on the story of Red Riding Hood we are graced with the presence of the first trailer and poster to emerge.

It’s not exactly what I expected, although Gary Oldman looks the spirit of dapper and Amanda Seyfried does wide eyed well. There’s a decent looking film here, I just wonder how far the shadow of Twilight falls.

The supporting cast includes Virginia Madsen, Billy Burke, Julie Christie, Shiloh Fernandez, Gary Oldman, Michael Shanks and Luke Haas and the film is due out next March.

See it below or in HD at Apple, but check it out in as high a resolution as you can.

Here’s the poster.

In their latest issue, Entertainment Weekly have scored the first two official stills from Dark Castle Entertainment’s Red Riding Hood.

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight), from a script by David Johnson (Orphan), Red Riding Hood stars Amanda Seyfried, Virginia Madsen, Billy Burke, Julie Christie, Shiloh Fernandez, Gary Oldman, Michael Shanks and Luke Haas.

Set in a medieval village that is haunted by a werewolf, a young girl (Seyfried) falls for an orphaned woodcutter, much to her family’s displeasure.

Warner Bros. will release Red Riding Hood on March 11, 2011.

Check out the first two stills below, courtesy of Shocktillyoudrop:

Having directed Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown and then the first installment of the Twilight franchise, Catherine Hardwicke then signed on for an adaptation of Red Riding Hood.

We reported here that Amanda Seyfried was to play Red Riding Hood herself and now Accidental Sexiness have put up a whole bunch of on-set stills, showing the principal cast in all of its costumed glory.

Hardwicke will work from a script by David Johnson (who wrote last year’s Orphan) which leaves the story in its medieval setting, but now revolves around a village being terrorised by a werewolf, with Red Riding Hood falling for an orphaned woodcutter.

We have shots below of some of the main players, including Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Lukas Haas and Virginia Madsen. Julie Christie and Michael Shanks round out the principal cast. You can follow the link above to see the rest of the extensive set of snaps. The film might be called Little Red Riding Hood, Red Riding Hood or The Girl With The Riding Hood. We’ll let you know. Thanks to Screen Rant for the heads up on this.

Stephen Poliakoff’s dark, labyrinthine account of England’s tumble into the Second World War was premiered at the London Film Festival this year and we were impressed by it.

As today sees the film’s release I wanted to take another look at this drama, to see if it lives up to its name.

Glorious 39 is not as glamorous as the marketing would have us believe. The posters suggest a costume drama about the brilliant and carefree life of British Aristocracy in the world of “Jeeves and Wooster”, with the faint whiff of a world war in the air. Instead, the new film by Stephen Poliakoff turns into an interesting and almost Hitchcockian conspiracy thriller.

“Almost” ““ because it seems that the director can not decide what type of film he is directing and keeps swinging between historic political drama and conspiracy thriller. As a result the film’s pace is very slow and does not deliver the crucial emotional epiphany to the audience when it is most desired.

As the name of the film suggests the story is set in the summer of 1939, in London and the peaceful countryside. The film is centered around the aristocratic Keyes family, who continue their luxurious lifestyle or parties and parliament despite Europe being at the edge of war with Hitler. The head of the family, Alexander (brilliantly played by Bill Nighy) is an influential MP and a great father to his three children: Ralph (Eddie Redmayne) who works at the Foreign Office and Celia (Juno Temple). The eldest adopted daughter, a young actress, Anne (Romola Garai) is in love with Foreign Office official Lawrence (Charlie Cox).

Anne’s lifestyle is all London-parties and countryside picnics and it is changed dramatically after one of her friends, a young MP (David Tennant) speaks out against British government and Hilter and shortly after that is found dead. Her suspicion and sense of dread is compounded by Anne’s discovery of hidden recordings with some secret Government information.

Anne’s journey of unveiling the truth lies not only in the political world of Britain ruled by Chamberlain’s government, but it also reveals great family drama, a tragedy of her personal fears. Romola Garai is brilliant in delivering her character’s fears, sense of betrayal, confusion and, finally, terror. She is supported by great performances of her screen siblings, Eddie Redmayne and Juno Temple, and the remarkable Julie Christie as Aunt Elizabeth.

Glorious 39 is the first film for Stephen Poliakoff after a 10-year break, during which he focused on TV dramas for BBC. That is probably the reason why film feels like it belongs to TV screen rather then cinema. The cinematography by Zac Nicholson is picturesque eye-candy, but it does not help in conveying the sense the horror of upcoming war and our heroine’s panic.

Stephen Poliakoff deliberately stayed away from the war footage and instead showed Britain as it was the edge of WWII. One of the surreal pictures shows scenes when people have to abandon their pets and take them to be “put down” to vets. The pictures of pets are almost horrific, as well as the condition of Anne, who discovers secrets that can totally ruin her whole concept of life.

However, despite brilliant performances and some surreal pictures, the film does not deliver the sense of horror. Poor editing and slow pace makes this film very hard to enjoy and follow the director’s vision. It seems the director wants to show too many interesting things that are hard to put into one film. In this case a longer frame of TV dramas feels like a better choice.

Glorious 39 is out today.

Glorious 39 marks acclaimed filmmaker Stephen Poliakoff’s return to the big screen after  twelve long years and it is an epic triumph of ambition and craft, delivering a superb and engaging thriller of duplicity and deceit on the eve of World War II.

Threatened by the impending ‘little war’ the aristocracy, fearing their way of life will be destroyed by Hitler’s army, adopt an aggressive strategy of appeasement and it is this anxiety which propels the plot of Poliakoff’s script forward. The uncertainty and tension of the late summer of 1939 is our scene and an intriguing and poignant journey into the darkness of war produces an unforgettable drama from a writer and director whose ability to illuminate the harrowing detail of betrayal and heartache has never been more potent.

The formidable cast, eager to work with Poliakoff in the first feature production for over a decade, is headed by Romola Garai, recently seen in the title role of the BBC’s latest production of Emma, as Anne Keyes, the adopted eldest child of an aristocratic family with a rich history of high ranking public servants. Anne’s father is Sir Alexander, Bill Nighy in what can be considered one of his most impressive performances yet as the grave, morally ambiguous member of parliament with an agenda hidden deep within the labyrinths of power.

Their relationship is our safe haven in the film. When news of war breaks and hearts flutter with arrivals and disappearances Anna and her father console one another and Nighy is perfect as the solemn, solicitous patriarch whose family are integral to the nation’s fate.  Eddie Redmayne and Juno Temple are Sir Alexander’s children by birth and their complicity and active part in the family’s fortune comes to overshadow the carefree and affectionate relationship they share with Anna when the film begins. Every relationship has a truth and a solidity to it that is Poliakoff’s forte, and it compels each and every twist with great power.

Charlie Cox plays Lawrence, Anna’s lover and a middling civil servant whose fate is buffeted by the class-invoked tempest that results from the declaration of war. He is a sympathetic in a well cast role, and thanks to the overbearing air of suspicion his agenda and manner is constantly under scrutiny. His friendship with Hector Haldane, played with a frenzy and passion by David Tennant, and a fateful birthday celebration for Sir Alexander brings together the family with several shady government officers whose silence and reverence for the host of the party fuels a distrust in Anna that has devastating consequences for all involved.

Poliakoff’s contribution to film and television is unparalleled and it with great pleasure that we welcome him back onto the big screen. His recent television works, including The Lost Prince and Shooting the Past, are works of such complexity and grace that even a minor work is considered a glowing achievement in the field. Glorious 39 has moments of true genius, from the stunningly original method of establishing the transition from present to the past to the message from the grave Anna receives is a chilling and bold spin on a cliched turn.

The camerawork is almost Kubrick-esque as the handheld tracking shots following characters as they move through the shadowy interiors of houses or into running into rapidly collapsing external spaces is breathtaking. The rose pink skies over the quiet Norfolk hills contrasts perfectly with the cluttered, smoke scarred London with its cacophonous clash of bells; every location is perfect and serves the story well. The ruins of an old cathedral in the family grounds is an evocative environment and the various ways it is used to further the plot is thrilling in its invention.

The language is beautiful and precise, the prosaic nature of government and family politics is rendered with such imagination and poise that the plot, as it unravels, is gripping at every turn and the scenes we encounter as Anna’s world closes in on her are filled with emotional authenticity. The use of a Keats poem to foreshadow a key plot point is a moment of joy.

The opulence of scenery, of performance and complexity to this tale is so overwhelming  that to attempt to cast a critical eye upon its entirety is futile. This is a powerful masterwork whose elements combine to produce a moving, thrilling film.

Glorious 39 is out in cinemas on the 20th of November.