It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I feel that this is a well executed film. In the film there is a real sense of desperation, loss and despair, and I feel that this is accentuated in the way that it is shot and also the music that is used. A sense of reality features very prominently within the film and although there isn't much in common with me and any of the characters, I find myself feeling sorry for them but also getting angry at the same time with some of them over the drug use. I actually felt quite shell shocked at the end, not because of the ending or the drug use but because there was lots going on within the film. Everyone had their own little narrative, which was neatly woven into the main theme of the film. I liked the monologue from the girl at the beginning of the film and also how we came back to it at the end. Overall an interesting film and as I say in my summary could have been a little shorter.

The most sombre and grey film i have ever seen. Scandinavian films are blue, this British film is very grey and is like the British version of Requiem for a dream.Life is not such a dingy grey, it is like a pinkish glow, on grey.The heartache of drug taking and brain sprouting fungus.You need to have a lead lined stomach to fully enjoy this, but if you like films like the Machinist and Requiem for a dream, then you should like this film.The horrors of death and drug taking in a sombre area of the British countryside and towns.

'Better Things' is Duane Hopkins bleak but brilliant directorial debut set in rural Britain. It tells a series of stories against a backdrop of a countryside that, far from idyllic, has become a wash with drugs, death, intrigue and teenage angst. Shot beautifully any single frame from the first ten minute sequence could be a photograph in an exhibition, as too could certain shots right the way through this movie. Cold and almost bleached out you can really feel the grey and the pain as we get snapshots of peoples lives, people affected by death, drug abuse, isolation, frustration, its not the easiest watch but like last years 'Hunger' it deals with dark subject matter and turns it into a thing of random beauty. Hopkins draws from his cast of first timers a sense of the real like we are privy to their lives and watching a documentary of sorts. But it's in the spaces in-between where the films real strength lie giving the viewer only part of the story and leaving the feverish mind to fill in the gaps. Take for example the old couple, she asks her husband at one point if he will forgive her but you never find out what for, it is probably not as bad as you think it is or maybe its worse. These spaces are like the gaps between verses and choruses in songs, places to let the piece breathe and ultimately they are essential to the overall film. Like peeking through the curtains at the seedy underbelly of Britain 'Better Things' wont be to everybody's taste but anyone who likes a well paced and superbly shot meditation should check it out, a great first film that should see Hopkins move onto bigger and better things.

...Bruno Dumont. I've read a lot of reviews lauding this supposedly great example of British art-house cinema. Even Sight and Sound made it film of the month. But the facts are simple, everything about it says the filmmaker is in thrall to the work of Bruno Dumont, particularly La Vie de Jesus and L'Humanite. And why not, they are magnificent films.Unfortunately it only goes to highlight the miserable state of British art-house and British film-making in general that this is held up as a fine example of it when all it does is rip off the style and downbeat content of Dumont's great works. For the unforgiving Northern France landscape of Dumont substitute the Cotswolds and you've got it.In fact its worth pointing out that the similarities in the prolonged static widescreen shots and the dull grey cinematography, so perfectly mimic L'Humanite especially that one would almost believe the filmmaker had had the audacity to give the colourist a copy of that film and then have him match the shots one by one.But no filmmaker could be that cynical or unoriginal. Could they? 2 stars for the perfectly copied photography.