Sing Street

I was skeptical about Sing Street when I heard it was an Irish movie, that really could go either way! Without knowing anything else about it, I went along and found myself being completely blown away by it! Sing Street is one of the best movies I have seen in a very long time, and I am so thoroughly delighted that it is an Irish production and indeed a quintessentially Irish story.

The protagonist is a young lad in Dublin in the 1980s who is moved from a private secondary school into the public school on Synge Street, which is in a rougher part of the city with a more colourful student body. He makes new friends through the formation of a band, Sing Street (I always give bonus points for puns). As the band experiments with its sound, we are taken on a nostalgic musical journey through the 80s, with the fashion, hair styles and eye-makeup to boot. There's a wonderful innocence to this journey as we see it through the eyes of a teenage boy who grapples with a teenage romance, schoolyard bullies, the idolization of his older brother and the turbulent relationship of his parents; no matter what obstacles are thrown in his path, he manages to maintain his childhood innocence and joie de vivre and the childhood optimism of the movie becomes infectious.

Sing Street manages to capture the essence of Dublin at that time, from the economic downturn to the strict Christian brothers to the roller-coaster of musical treats. There wasn't a moment of the movie where I wasn't completely enthralled, my only disappointment was when the journey ended and I found myself wanting to watch it again right there and then. The performances were excellent, the writing simple but poignant and the music a real treat for any lover of the 80s. Sing Street gets two whopping thumbs-up from me, I can hardly wait to watch it again.

The Huntsman: Winter's War

This is a difficult movie to review because it was pretty bad, but not as bad as say The Hateful Eight where I wanted to rip my eyeballs out and never watch a movie again. The first 15-30 minutes is a protracted, contrived set-up to try to force us to see how this movie is related to the first; But without the character of Snow White, and with only minimal involvement of Ravenna (Charlize Theron) I was left wondering why they bothered at all. Of course The Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) is the continuity, but regardless of what the movie or his character was called I would have gone to see him in an axe-wielding, arrow slinging melee anyway so again I was left wondering why, why, why.

There really was nothing special about this movie - there were some fight scenes, they were fine. There were some newly-created worlds of ice and snow or goblins and forests, they were fine. There was Chris Hemsworth, who is always fine! :) But overall, nothing to write home about.