It’s astonishing to see the control that the director Paul McGuigan exercises over the overtly sentimental drama.
So if you get the impression that is a film about an ill-matched bohemian couple indulging in a scandalous affair, then banish the thought.
“Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool” (at least the one in this film doesn’t) is a deeply tragic tale of star-crossed love, almost like a “Romeo and Juliet” whose Juliet is, in the words of Liverpool’s Romeo old enough to play Juliet’s nurse.
Adapted from a play first performed in 2010 and since toured around the UK and worldwide, Ghost Stories is the brainchild of Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson, long-time collaborator of Derren Brown and the unseen quarter of the League of Gentlemen respectively. Appropriately, the experience of watching Ghost Stories is like riding a funfair ghost train: rattling along, bursting through doors, watching creepy scene after creepy scene until a loop-the-loop finale that leaves you on a spectre induced high
Ghost Stories follows Professor Phillip Goodman (Andy Nyman), a TV sceptic, as he tries to solve three cases with ties to the supernatural. These include a night watchman (Paul Whitehouse) working in a former asylum, a teenager (Alex Lawther) whose car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and a businessman (Martin Freeman) awaiting the birth of his first child. Professor Goodman maintains that every ostensibly paranormal encounter has a rational explanation, but the more he learns about the unresolved incidents, the more his beliefs are tested.
Set against the milieu of a faded seaside town and the grey skied isolation of countryside living, the locations and landscapes in which Ghost Storiestakes place are as much of a character as any of the cast. It’s a very cold and decaying world that’s created by the camera, one that successfully helps grow the unease of the audience. One of the creepiest scenes in the movie takes place in a shadowy and oppressive suburban family home with the uncanny image of two figures, completely motionless with their backs to the camera, made all the worse by the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house [ . . . ]
Simon and Mark present highlights of the show in 2017 including guests Keanu Reeves, Emma Stone and Riz Ahmed, reviews of Blade Runner 2049, Moonlight and Paddington 2 and their favourite contributions from the Wittertainment congregation.
Chris Knight: There’s little that feels unseemly about the film, whose wish-fulfillment vibe is strengthened by the drab-chic look of 1980s Britain
There’s a lovely little subgenre, often British, in which a regular Johnny has a brush with A-list fame. Think of Eddie Redmayne and Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn; Zac Efron meeting (British-born) Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles; or, in the realm of pure fiction, Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill.
The latest, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, is based on the book by British actor Peter Turner, and on the life of American film star Gloria Grahame, who died in 1981 – in New York, to be clear. You may remember her as the flirtatious Violet in 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life (“I only wear this when I don’t care how I look,” she says of a clingy, traffic-stopping dress) or from an Oscar-winning supporting role a few years later in The Bad and the Beautiful. [ . . . ] Read Full Review at: Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool brings an oddball May-September romance back to life
