Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Although British by birth, John Boorman is perhaps best known as a Hollywood director, responsible for, among other things, that fine drama "Deliverance". "Hope and Glory", however, is a quintessentially British film, based on his own childhood experiences of wartime London. The film tells the story of the Rohans, a typical middle-class suburban London family between 1939 and 1942. The family consists of parents Clive and Grace, daughters Dawn and Sue and 10-year-old son Billy, through whose eyes the action is seen.The film does not have a strongly defined plot, but rather tells of how Grace and her children get on with the business of living after Clive goes off to join the army. Dawn falls in love with a Canadian soldier and gets pregnant by him. The family home burns down and they are forced to move in with Grace's parents who live outside London. A theme running throughout is how, in the midst of death and suffering, people manage to find joy in the small pleasures of life. For the teenaged Dawn this means letting her hair down at the local dancehall. For Billy and his friends this means exploring bomb sites to add to their growing collections of German bullets and shrapnel. And, even more importantly for the cricket-mad boy, it means learning how to bowl a googly. For a film about the war, this one contains a surprising amount of comedy.The title, of course, derives from the well-known patriotic song "Land of Hope and Glory". In some ways the film is critical of some of the less attractive aspects of British patriotism, such as Billy's terrifying headmaster calling upon God to rain down destruction on the Germans or his teacher who explains to her class that the war is being waged to keep as much of the world map as possible coloured pink. Yet in other ways Boorman celebrates what might be called the "patriotic myth of the Blitz", the idea that when confronted by hardship and a ruthless enemy the British people reacted with solidarity and stoicism, taking in their stride things which at one time might have seemed like major disasters. Before the war, an unmarried teenaged girl who found herself pregnant might well have been disowned by an outraged family, but Grace and Clive only treat Dawn with love. The family's loss of their home becomes easier to bear because they have already seen several of their neighbours lose theirs. When a German pilot is forced to bail out into the middle of the people he has just been bombing, they gaze at him in curiosity rather than hatred (although they have plenty of reason to hate him) and make no attempt to harm him before he is led away by a policeman.Four acting performances stand out. There is young Sebastian Rice-Edwards who makes Billy a most engaging hero, a rather less scruffy version of Just William. There is Sammi Davis as Dawn, older than her brother and therefore more acutely aware that war is something real and deadly dangerous rather than an exciting adventure; her desperate search for love and pleasure can be attributed to this sudden recognition of her own mortality and to a desire to enjoy life while she can. (Davis seemed to be one of the rising young stars of the British cinema in the late eighties, but little has been heard of her recently). Then there is Sarah Miles, not always my favourite actress but here excellent as Grace, a woman trying to cope with the task of raising her family while her husband is away, and also trying to cope with her own emotions. (We learn that the real love of Grace's life was not Clive but his friend Mac, still a civilian and unexpectedly single after being abandoned by his own wife). And finally there is Ian Bannen as the family's difficult and eccentric old grandfather.The film was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing. It didn't win in any of these categories, but it is a tribute to Boorman's skills as a film-maker that it received so many nominations, because it was not a film particularly calculated to appeal to the American market. It deals with the British war effort during a period when America was still neutral. It deals with the lives of ordinary people rather than a recognisable figure like Churchill. It does not star any big-name American actors; making a character in a British war movie Canadian is normally a device to create a role for a major Hollywood star, but not here. It does not even have any internationally known British stars apart from Miles. And, worst of all, it requires a certain knowledge of cricket, a sport which has about the same following in America that baseball does over here.Despite the Britishness of his subject-matter, however, Boorman was able to make a film which reflects universal values- love, the family, the struggle for survival, determination, humour in the face of adversity. It is the emotional power generated by this combination of the particular and local with the universal which makes "Hope and Glory" one of the best British films of the 1980s, a decade when our national film industry experienced a remarkable revival following its nadir in the 1970s. It is perhaps the best film ever made about the wartime Home Front. 9/10

Hits lots of good notes. One of my favourites. Gramps is a classic pompous legend in his own mind. Billy is wonderfully played. The balloon scene is simple but memorable. The Canadian Corporal is perfect to the stereotype and well cast. The teenage daughter is suitably incorrigible. The family relationships are honest. The reality of domestic existence during the blitz comes to life. Clive is, well, who you would expect Clive the dad to be. A time without TV, many cars, cellphones or much wealth for the British middle class. It is an uplifting film which leaves you feeling good. The mom has not entirely accepted her lot, but abides it sufficiently well. All in all, time well spent.

When I saw the poster of the film I thought : "waow ! it is going to be a romantic film, we will take out our hardkerchieves". But it is not. I have found the film unbelievable, wonderful. I have been touched by all characters. The acting is perfect. The little boy who plays the role of Bill is magnificent and the elder daughter is playing beautifully. The film is seen through the eye of a British boy, we can say that the film is autobiographical. John Boorman shows own experience during world war II with a lot of sentiments, emotion, a mixture of fun moments and sad moments. I think it is the best film I have seen in years. I give it an 8 and I will always be thankful to my teacher for seeing the film. It is a film for you if you want to be touched, to be flabbergasted and please if you are touched by the film like me, pass on the message that this film is wonderful.

There is something so distinctly British about the Home Front during World War II. Perhaps it was the movies that portrayed the typically 'stiff upper-lipped' Brits holding their heads high and getting on with their everyday lives, not letting the fact that the country was being destroyed by German bombs get them down. And so came John Boorman's semi-autobiographical account of a child growing up during the Blitz, trying to capture that old-school spirit, and giving a fresh perspective from a particularly naive child's point of view.The film follows the Rowan family whose youngest child Bill (Sebastian Rice-Edwards) finds the frequent air raids and destruction as exciting as it is terrifying. His sister Dawn (Sammi Davis) falls for a Canadian solider who is soon called back into action. His father Clive (David Hayman) volunteers for the army and heads off to fight until he's deemed too old and supports the war effort from an administrative angle. And struggling to hold the whole family together is the mother Grace (Sarah Miles), who in her loneliness seeks out the comfort of Clive's best friend who she had feelings for back before she got together with Clive.Nominated for 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, I was expecting a definitive account of Britain during WWII. What I witnessed was a badly acted, amateurish and poorly scripted film that I found reminiscent of an ITV drama with a slightly bigger budget that normal. I was genuinely surprised, as I'd heard nothing but good things about it. It felt that one scene led to the next without any control or idea of where it was heading. The relationship between Dawn and the Canadian soldier is every bit as predictable and tedious as you would expect, and I failed believe any of it. The third act of the film moves the action to the granddad's countryside home, and meanders there for a long time without much happening at all.The film is also guilty of some truly terrible acting. Decent child actors are always hard to find, but Rice-Edwards doesn't even remotely convince as an actor. He delivers his lines with a rigid blankness and is not able to channel his character's emotions through to the audience. And the late Ian Bannen playing Grandfather George suffers from a bad script and bad direction. He is meant to be the lovably grouchy old man, but stomping around muttering inaudible grumblings over and over and over again is neither funny or convincing.I'll stop the moaning there I think, because there were things I also liked about the film, it's just that the negatives irritated me so much that they overshadowed the positives. A stray weather balloon causing havoc amongst the rooftops whilst the family watch with glee, and the Canadian solider pulling faces through the family window while they stand straight-faced listening to 'God Save The Queen' are a couple of the rather wonderful and funny moments of the film. And the forbidden and potential love affair between Grace and her husband's best friend seen through the eyes of a maturing Bill is cleverly explored only in glimpses.Overall an okay movie, which I will no doubt watch again in a few years to see if I've just missed something, giving the overwhelmingly positive critical response the film received. But for now I'll stick to my guns.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com