Film Review - Philomena (2013)

Philomena is the true story of Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) an Irish woman who has a child out of wedlock in 1950's Ireland and is forced to see her son Antony adopted to American foster parents but on his 50th Birthday she tells her daughter about him and she in turn tells a BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith who decides to tell her story, a story that could shock the world.

I really loved watching Philomena, Dench is just marvellous in the role and her Irish accent almost never wavers not to mention the fact that she holds your attention the entire time she is on screen and as a result you lose track of the world of the theatre around you that you are seeing the film in, Coogan is also on good form and he looks the part of a BBC journalist very well which whilst watching him reminded me of his cameo in Hot Fuzz and I thought "Has he come off the set of the Bill?" though his snarky tone did bother me a little from time to time.

But the main thing that really got me was the story and whilst watching it I did think to myself "This all actually happened" which gave the story an added resonance for me and when I came out of the film I thought to myself "This has all that I require from a film."

And that is simply to just tell a good story that I find intriguing and with that, excites my imagination and that can range from something like:

- The Russians developing a silent propulsion system for their Submarine fleet
- The tale of a heroic Rebel Alliance fighting a tyrannical Galactic Empire
- A tale of 5 guys, 12 pubs and a whole lotta strange fun

Those of course are just 3 examples but I hope it gives you an idea of my point for quite frankly, I'm not as impressed as others are in regards to technical accomplishments in modern films as it's so easy to pull that sort of thing off nowadays with digital computer graphics and for me I just get fairly tired of it after a while.

But enough about that and more of me wrapping this up by saying that Philomena is well worth seeing, 4 out of 5.