No spoilers in this review.

Their Finest is a drama comedy film about the empowerment of women and the business of making movies. It excels at both brilliantly. It’s the best film I’ve seen this year, and the only film I’ve rated 10/10 on IMDB. It is an adaption of the novel Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans and is set in England during the Second World War. It stars Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin, and Bill Nighy plus a great supporting cast. The three principle actors all give great performances. Bill Nighy heartily sings a song I haven’t heard in decades. Track 19 on the soundtrack album.

The story portrays the making of propaganda films by the Ministry of Information Film Division for the 30 million people who went to the cinema every week in the early 1940’s. Gemma Arterton plays Catrin Cole who is conscripted to the Ministry to help screenwriters Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) and Raymond Parfitt (Paul Ritter), by writing women’s dialogue, or ‘Slop’ as it is dismissively called, after Buckley saw some writing she had done previously. The Ministry wants a film that will inspire the populace and stiffen resolve for the war. Buckley, Cole, and colleagues pitch an idea about the evacuation of Dunkirk, and the script development and the making of the film are the main storylines of Their Finest. As a film about filmmaking, it succeeds wonderfully. Better than Hail, Caesar! that also touched on this subject from a different angle last year. The green-board evolution of the script over time provides an excellent backdrop to show progress in the office where Buckley, Cole, and Parfitt work.

Their Finest has the feeling of a 1940’s film while at the same time not feeling old. From the font in the opening credits to the sets depicting wartime London, the costumes (I want to buy a decent coat now!), and the music the period feel is spot on. They even have the institutionalised sexism nailed as well, which gives a nice counterpoint to the empowerment of women theme that runs through the film.

Their Finest is perfect. I can’t think of anything in it that disappointed or that I would change. Which is why it sports the 10 star on the picture above, and got rated 10/10 on IMDB. It comes with a huge recommendation from me. I plan to see it again in the cinema and I’ve preordered it on iTunes.

Spoilers aplenty below.

Live By Night is a gangster film set in early 20th century Boston and Florida. Ben Affleck, who also directs and wrote the screenplay by adapting a Dennis Lehane novel, stars as Joe Coughlin, the son of a Boston-based Police Chief of Irish descent.

Coughlin returns from the Great War in Europe in 1918 disillusioned by the killing of so many of his compatriots, while the people higher up in society remained largely unscathed or even profited from the war. He vows never to let anyone tell him what to do again and becomes a small-time ‘outlaw’ in Boston. He and two accomplices commit bank robberies and other crimes. They do this outside of the major Irish and Italian crime organisations operating in Boston who are fighting each other for control. Inevitably he gets caught up in the Boston gangster scene. In no small part due to the fact he is having a relationship with Emma Gould, the Moll of the head of the Irish faction Albert White. After a bank raid goes wrong, Coughlin and Gould plan to go to California, but White and his accomplices capture him with the help of Emma who betrays him to save herself. Coughlin seems doomed, but the police arrive to arrest him for the bank job, and therefore stop his murder. He only gets three years in prison largely due to the influence of his father who has damaging information about the prosecutor of the case.

Coughlin’s father tells him that Emma was killed by White, and when he gets out of prison he goes to the head of the Italian faction, Maso Pescatore, so he can get a chance to kill Albert White for killing Emma. Pescatore tells him that in the three years he’s been in prison White and his gang have been driven out of Boston. He gives Coughlin the job of running the Italian prohibition busting rum smuggling operation from Florida to Boston.

Coughlin takes over and runs the rum smuggling operation very successfully for years in combination with the Cuban’s and other immigrants. He falls for and marries Graciela, the sister of the head of the Cuban smuggling business. Everything is operating fine until prohibition repeal starts to be discussed. Coughlin attempts to build a large casino to switch the business from smuggling to gambling, but his plans are derailed by a young girl preacher who turns the town against the idea. At the same time, the local KKK faction is trying to muscle in on the speakeasy and future casino businesses. They also don’t like the fact that Coughlin and others are living with Cuban’s and other non-white people. Coughlin sorts out the KKK, but he later gets double-crossed by Pescatore. Fortunately, he see’s this coming and has a plan in place…

The acting in Live By Night is great. Sienna Miller as fantastic as the Moll Emma Gould. Her Cork accent is fantastic. Elle Fanning isn’t in the film much, but her portrayal of the young preacher Loretta Figgis is fantastic. Fanning was in my favourite film from 2016 (The Neon Demon). She is turning into an excellent actor. The rest of the cast are good, but Miller and Fanning stand out. The script is good, the cinematography is first class, and the film looks gorgeous. The sets and costumes all fit into the 1920’s to 1940’s vibe. Perhaps a bit to clean and sharp for depression period America, but I wasn’t there so can’t say. It didn’t detract from the feel.

I liked Live By Night. It had all the tropes you would expect in a north-east American gangster film. And you need those tropes in a film of this type or you might feel short-changed. It is done well and has a few twists you might not expect. I rated it 8/10. Close to a 9, but not quite. I would recommend seeing it.

La La Land has been winning all the plaudits recently. With almost everyone and their dog singing its praises. Pun intended. It also cleaned up at the Golden Globes, and will likely do the same at the Oscars, unless there is a backlash.

I’m going to take the contrary position and tell you that I don’t agree. I liked it as a film, but think it would have been better without the set piece bits that make it a musical. I’m not saying there shouldn’t have been any music in it. Quite the opposite. The music in the film that is performed in jazz clubs and concerts is excellent and fits into the story perfectly. There is even a version of City of Stars sung in the main characters apartment that advances the story. The City of Stars motif recurs throughout the film and is a fabulous piece of music. But there are about six sections in the film where the characters sing and dance rather than have a normal conversation. I think that these sections could be cut and it would make it a better film. Even if they are not replaced with anything.

Just my view. Admittedly, I’m not a fan of musicals. I rated it 7/10. It would probably have been a 9/10 if it wasn’t for those six or so musical sections.

I liked Sully: Miracle on the Hudson a lot more than I thought I would. It’s a dramatisation of the events that happened in January 2009 when US Airways Flight 1549 had to land on the Hudson River in New York after a bird strike damaged both engines shortly after takeoff. The actual flight time for Flight 1549 was only 208 seconds (3 minutes and 28 seconds), and the film is 96 minutes long. The flight scenes are repeated several times, but even so, there is a lot of additional time to fill.

The bulk of the film is taken up by the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) investigation, flashbacks to when Captain Chesley Sullenberger was learning to fly (including a similar incident in a Navy Phantom jet), and the reaction of Sully and the crew on being thrust into the national spotlight. I thought the flashbacks and the scenes were Sully was thinking about what might have happened if he hadn’t decided to ditch in the Hudson River were great. All the flight scenes in the film are excellent. Including those showing crashes that Sully imagines. I want a flight simulator that’s as good as that! The only disappointing part was the CGI of the water splash on one shot of the plane skidding on the water.

The NTSB investigators are depicted as very aggressive and as if they are looking to blame the pilots for the loss of the aircraft. I don’t know if the original investigators were that aggressive. I doubt it. But it probably had to be done to inject drama into the film for the non-flight scenes. Sully is worth seeing. See it in iMAX or MAXX if you can. Just for the flight scenes over New York alone. I rated it 8/10.