Hope and Glory
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Movie Reviews of Hope and Glory
Movie Review: Hope and Glory
Summary: 5 Stars
Hope and Glory
An excellent movie that I received in the estimated delivery time. This will encourage me to purchase more items in the future.
Movie Review: Fabulous Film!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a film that sticks in your head. Years after I'd seen it, I searched until I could find out what it was again just so I could see it again. Not only is it beautiful, but funny and wonderful. I highly recommend this!Movie Review: This is a classic and I've wanted it for a long time!
Summary: 5 Stars
It's amazing to see how people react to war and this is most certainly a classic to have. To view this through the eyes of everyday life in England during the war and how it was for them is a movie for keeps.Movie Review: The WWII from the eyes of a younf boy in London
Summary: 5 Stars
A fantastic story that gives a great look into the war from a young boys point of view and the effects a father away from home has on his family. Funny and sad, it's a great movie.Movie Review: War and Remembrance...from a Young Boy's Viewpoint
Summary: 4 Stars
Filmmaker John Boorman's unique memory piece based upon his childhood during WWII London provides plenty of pleasures, chief among them a compelling sense of how a young boy views a war that affects every aspect of his family's life. This is refreshingly not a patriotic history lesson about bravery on the home front but a genuinely evocative, often humorous film full of broad characters and small-scale events that seem to capture perfectly how a nine-year old would remember them. The story focuses on the Rowan family from son Billy's perspective. His father Clive has enlisted but been relegated to typing duties, and his mother Grace is alternately brave, volatile and wistful as she ensures the family keeps bonded during his absences. Billy's older sister Dawn has fallen for a wild-eyed Canadian soldier, while his baby sister Sue watches intently. Meanwhile, Billy joins a local band of young hooligans who rifle through the houses destroyed by the German bombs that pummel them during the London Blitz until one strikes the Rowan house, at which point the family goes to stay in the more pastoral setting of his grandparents' house in the country.
The 1987 film is full of shrewdly observed vignettes, nostalgic but never sentimental and sometimes with a welcome absurdist sense of humor that surprises and delights. I particularly like the almost surreal scene where the deflating dirigible is flailing downward from the sky to the immense entertainment of the locals. The one periodic drawback to the film is Boorman's episodic story structure, which makes the narrative feel linear and lacking in dimension beyond the immediate events portrayed. This becomes more problematic during the later scenes when the pacing slows somewhat with a long cricket-playing sequence between Billy and his grandfather. Nonetheless, what is inarguable is the superb casting, in particular, Sarah Miles as Grace, especially when she grapples with her unresolved feelings for her neighbor Mac; Sammi Davis as Dawn, forever petulant even when she finds herself in an unfortunate predicament; Ian Bannen in full late-period Olivier mode as he steals all his scenes as the blustery grandfather; and in his only film, Sebastian Rice-Edwards who holds the whole film together as Billy. Special credit needs to be given to cinematographer Phillipe Rousselot, who gives the film a sumptuous look even during the bombing sequences. The 2001 DVD contains a fine print transfer but nothing else in terms of extras.