Absolutely Fantastic

Absolutely Brilliant!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I watched this film with virtually no expectations, simply because I was curious about Daniel Craig outside the action genre. To my great surprise, I thought it was one of the best and most moving performances I have seen from him; largely due to its simplicity and resulting, relatively narrow focus. The greatest surprises, though, were the quality of the direction and the performances from the two young stars playing the main characters in the flashback scenes. The fact that I grew up through the 60s and 70s made this film a lot more accessible to me, with the music of Bowie and Ferry etc. a feature perfectly chosen to highlighted the era's mood just as I recall from those teenage years. I suspect that relatively few moviegoers will rave about this film but to those of us for whom it is contemporary, it triggers strongly emotional memories and maybe - as in my case - a sense of melancholy loss. The precise and skillful direction makes the most of an intense but narrow subject matter and the acting is perfectly matched to the roles. It may never be listed on the roll of greatest-ever movies, but it is, and will remain, one of my favourite movies of all time. It was a few years ago that I first watched it and still, to this day, I find myself frequently remembering and contemplating particular scenes from it. Highly recommended for anyone born in the early 60s who doesn't mind remembering the mistakes, pain and angst of their growing up.

The title of 'Flashbacks of a Fool' informs us at once of its peculiar structure: a world-weary middle aged actor recalls his childhood on learning of the death of an old friend. The flashbacks are fairly run-of-the-mill stuff: typically clueless teenage boy finds himself lusted after by two glamorous young women determined to strip him of his innocence (less typical, perhaps, of real life, but common in coming of ages stories usually written, one suspects, by men, dreaming of an adolescence they never actually experienced). Cue lots of early 70s period effects and music, and a tragedy. The film's greater problem is that while its plausible that this tragedy could have affected the entirety of the actor's subsequent life, without any portrait of the intervening years, we're asked to take this entirely on trust, and accept that the reason for his current miserableness is his failure to seek closure for his past. But the interesting bit of the story is missing - why it is that he never came to terms with what had happened, and how it continued to haunt him throughout years of superficial success. Without this, there seems little connection between the two halves of the film; while the principal female characters appear oddly to age less than the male one. Daniel Craig is good in the lead role, never overplaying, but there's too little substance behind the suggestion for the film to truly satisfy.

I was zapping into this movie about 5 minutes in when it was aired on BBC. At first I wouldn't have expected anything good from a movie with Daniel Craig, but I was more than pleasantly surprised by this story, when it took a turn.First surprise was the scene that triggers main Character Joe Scot's nervous breakdown, when his agent basically fires him (a brilliant performance from a perfectly vicious Mark Strong). Second surprise is a very extended Flashback, which turns out to cover the majority of the story. The young adulthood drama in this Flashback is full of teenage love and dreams and utter drama. But it's done so well, it's a sheer pleasure to follow. Harry Eden is very convincing as a young Craig, and Felicity Jones as the young Ruth is just spraying her youth and confidence all over the screen. Olivia Williams excels as a warm and caring mother, so does the rest of the cast cover their parts in a more than convincing manner. I very much enjoyed this movie. It's a Flashback that might actually take you back to your own teenage dreams some 20 years ago, too.

I must admit I really did'not expect this to turn out to be such a little gem. I was locked into it from the first 10 minutes or so. But it's a great pity the screenwriter did'not fill in a few more bits of the main characters life. I could have sat there for another 40 minutes at least. Daniel Craig has come a long way since playing the Geordie bouncer and hit-man in 'Our friends in the North' a part which he played so convincingly at the time, I did'not think he'd ever be able to move on. Typecasting is so rife in TV. Realistically Sad in parts, and not the screeching OTT theatricals that you usually get from the Media.