Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  The Photograph is one of those romantic dramas that you imagine is based on a book, as it flips between the 1980s and the present day (well, 2019). It has a scene in one of New York’s boroughs (Queens) in which our protagonists flee from an ongoing hurricane – Storm Tylenol (I think they should sell the naming rights to extreme weather events) or some such moniker. But the budget isn’t up to it. Later, we see the couple in a deserted street lined with fallen wheelie bins to indicate devastation. To paraphrase Guardians of the Galaxy , ‘that’s not a storm’. The film has a melancholic jazz soundtrack and as I discovered the discrete use of trumpet, piano and strings can make any scene play. The music provides prickliness – the sense of an offence that could be taken, a shift in tone – that makes you take notice, even when the drama doesn’t yield any surprises. The film isn’t based on a book. Rather it has an original screenplay by the film’s director Stella Meghie, who is one of...

  Everything, Everything , directed by Stella Meghie ( Jean of the Joneses) is adapted by screenwriter J. Mills Goodloe ( Age of Adaline ) from the debut ‘young adult’ (YA) novel by Nicola Yoon, first published in 2015. It deals with an eighteen year old girl, Maddy (Amandla Stenberg) who has a genetic disorder known as SCID – Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disorder. The disease is rare but real – it is also known as bubble baby disease. The most famous ‘bubble baby’ was David Vetter, born in 1971 but died twelve years later. His condition inspired the John Travolta TV movie, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble , which aired in 1976. In real life, children born with David’s condition can live normal lives, thanks to a breakthrough in treating SCID which was achieved in 2002. This involved a two year old Palestinian girl, Salsabil, being treated with non-myeloblative conditioning. The process involves isolating haematopoietic blood cells and reprogramming them to contain the adenosine...