We went out on Thursday night to the wonderful Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley to see Vera Drake, the latest film from director Mike Leigh. I didn’t quite know what to expect – we had seen the trailer a week before, which looked excellent, but I had read the review in Uncut magazine, which didn’t like it at all. It’s a wonderful, if very tragic and depressing film – probably one of the saddest things I have ever seen. Good for a melancholy weeknight.
Having seen the film I completely disagree with the Uncut reviewer, John Mulvey, when he calls the film “crude and unconvincing” and says that the director “drags out his thin, grim plot with sadistic relish.” I felt the film got the pace just right – we got to know the characters and the family before things start to go awry. From the consolidated reviews over at Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, it looks like most people agree.
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