Saturday, December 3, 2016

Film Review - Sing Street (2016)

Sing Street is directed by John Carney who made Once and Begin Again and takes place in Dublin in 1985 and concerns Cosmo (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) a young schoolboy who is transferred to a public school so his parents can save money and he struggles at first but one day he sees a young girl named Raphina (Lucy Bonyton) and he then decides to start a band to try and hopefully win her heart.

Sing Street is a really nice movie with great songs, performances and loads of heart and soul to go around, Peelo and Bonyton have very nice chemistry together and the scenes the 2 of them share really make you believe that the connection they begin to share, the mix of new songs as well as existing 80s songs was also very nice and the film is very sweet in terms of its story but Carney manages to find a way to balance that out with dashes of darkness and not putting in too much sugary sweetness for those more nicer moments.

But the film also really nicely recreates the 1980s to such a degree that when I was watching it part of me felt like I was watching a Roadshow Home Video or a Premiere Home Entertainment VHS release from 1985/86 and that feeling was so strong in my mind I also was imagining the preview for this movie being on one of those releases like the Terminator or Woman in Red or Blood Simple or Rebel or Flesh and Blood those that previewed M rated titles from that era I know this part of my review sounds silly but that feeling was very strong in my mind when I watched this movie.

And so that was Sing Street a film I was very glad to have caught up with before the year ended as its one of the highlights of what has been a fairly crap year at the cinema, 3 and a half out of 5.

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