Brendan Craig

I was drawn to see this at the cinema because of the cast and the fact that the trailer looked beautifully filmed and promised a chance to enter a world we rarely get to see. Unfortunately, my partner and I headed home regretting 2 hours of our lives we will never get back. For quite a while I tolerated the slow pace, believing that I was being led down an intriguing and complex road of conflicting morality and compromise. Ralph Fiennes certainly carries the drama. My partner was getting very restless with the slow pace. Then it started to become clear that the writer was using just one device on repeat to move the plot forward: someone needs a private word because of a secret he/she has been withholding but no longer can. I taught teenagers creative writing for 30 years. Had a beginner shown me such plotting, I would have explained gently that you cannot keep using the one device. It's predictable, implausible, boring and, well, silly. I wish I could tell you that this is the film's worst fault but sadly, the ending is the absolute worst woke nonsense imaginable. Straight out of 1980s Monty Python - except this was serious! "I want to have babies." "You cant have babies! Where's the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?" See if you can guess who ends up saving everyone and the Church by being voted the new pope? Yes, while outside the Vatican, Muslim extremist blow things up and kill innocent people, the answer of course is, we need to be more tolerant and it doesn't matter what body god gave you. Meanwhile the rest of the cardinals are corrupt, either sexually or through a lust for power or money, they are suffering crises of doubt, and altogether unworthy of honour or responsibility. It is a child's view of good and bad and just so insulting for any educated adult audience. I wont trust another Ralph Fiennes film.

I think any film lover over 40 is going to find this self indulgent, over written and not nearly as original as younger fans might think. Think Kafka meets Terry Gilliam to remake Portnoy's Complaint. Joaquin Phoenix is terrific as usual. The quirky film certainly gets off to a rollicking start. And it has its twists and hilarious and disturbing moments. But too many self-consciously clever ideas drag the film into a slow 3 hours. We started getting very restless as the plot borrowed Hamlet's play within a play trick and on it dragged. It could have arrived at the final twist an hour earlier.

Ignore the poor reviews! One of Ben Kingsley's best performances. And that's saying something. Beautiful score. Visually superb. Story angle takes a brave and unexpected view of an ageing icon and his equally passionate, equally performative, equally insatiable wife. Why bother dwelling on the works or the era of Dali's heights of fame? Far more intriguing is the rather sad decline into money grabbing, cynical, desperation we rarely consider or know of. There may be something even worse than never living to see your fame as an artist. And that is outliving it. A must see for any art lover.

This is a magnificent, layered film. Aside from Cate Blanchet's commanding performance as the complex and flawed Tar, the film is a fascinating journey inside the tension-riddled world of a professional orchestra. Politics, status, jealousy, manipulation, bullying, and the hypocrisy and corruption which come with power are all woven into the compelling script. Fascinating too is the ways that the film itself works with a musical rhythm, finishing like a great symphony. Brilliant conversational passages illuminate ideas about time, timing and music itself.