Review
AT HOME WITH JAMIE EAST
Days Of The Bagnold Summer has a lovely script and wonderfully conjures up feelings of nostalgia
SIMON BIRD (Inbetweeners, Friday Night Dinner) offers an assured directorial debut with this gentle and sweet coming-of-age movie.
Based on a comic novel, which in turn was based on a short story, the film stars Earl Cave and Monica Dolan as mother and son Daniel and Sue Bagnold.
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When a planned summer with his father (who is now living in Florida with his pregnant partner) falls through, Daniel is forced to spend the entirety of the holidays at home, much to both their horror.
While he has his nu-metal band rehearsals, she has dates with his history teacher (Rob Brydon).
The film wonderfully conjures up the nostalgia of those uneventful holidays at home I still vividly remember.
It captures the topical mundanity of being stuck in daily when you’d rather be anywhere else.
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Though with adult hindsight, you’d probably quite enjoy a summer with no responsibilities now.
Bird has done a great job in making the most of a lovely script, a brilliantly fitting soundtrack and some really warm performances, particularly from Dolan (who I last remember as a very different character, Rosemary West).
An eminently watchable film which makes Bird most definitely one to watch – even when he’s behind the camera.
Days Of The Bagnold Summer (12) 86mins
Digital streaming
★★★☆☆
Carmine Street Guitars
SOME documentaries make you angry, others make you change your mind on something you didn’t even know you had an opinion on.
Others, like Carmine Street Guitars, just fill you with an overwhelming sense of tranquillity and joy.
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If you enjoy those long YouTube videos where a master of a craft makes something incredible before your very eyes, then you will LOVE this.
Rick Kelly is the softly-spoken proprietor of Carmine Street Guitars, an almost laughably cliched guitar store in achingly cool Greenwich Village, Manhattan.
A conveyor belt of amazing musicians drop in, including Charlie Sexton, Nels Cline and Jamie Hince, to give a snapshot of their lives and relationship with music.
It’s not a traditional fly-on-the-wall, though.
It has a strange whiff of constructed reality, where conversations have had to be jump-started rather than happen naturally.
Carmine Street Guitars (12) 80mins
Curzon Home Cinema, BFI Player
★★★★☆
Irresistible
DEMOCRATIC strategist Gary Zimmer (Steve Carrell) is gutted after Clinton’s defeat to Trump so decides to focus his talents on a blue-collar bloke championing workers’ rights in Wisconsin.
Zimmer sees an opportunity to sell this disgruntled everyman to America so persuades retired Marine Jack Hastings (Chris Cooper) to run for mayor.
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He activates the full Washington PR machine but doesn’t count on the Republicans sending in rival strategist Faith Brewster (Rose Byrne) to spoil the party.
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Written and directed by Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) and with a cast (including Topher Grace, Mackenzie Davis and Russian Doll’s Natasha Lyonne) this should have been a lot better than it is.
There are funny moments, but they’re generally as a result of Carrell giving his usual performance rather than the biting satire you’d expect from Stewart.
Irresistible (15) 101mins
Sky Store, Now TV
★★★☆☆
Carmine Street Guitars: Official trailer for movie documentary centred around unique New York guitar shop
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