Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Based on the 1868 and 1869 pair of novels by Louisa May Alcott, the film Little Women tells the story of the March sisters, so-called because they have a spring in their step or, perhaps because they march towards social progress. Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is a budding author, whom we first see in New York framed by a publisher’s door. She gives her handwritten manuscript to a potential author (Tracy Letts) who proceeds to edit it in front of her (‘too long’), then says, ‘we normally pay twenty-five or thirty-five for this sort. I offer you twenty.’ Jo, who has never been published by Volcano Press before, accepts. She runs through the crowded street elated. In time, her work will be in print, though her reader, a fellow boarder, Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel) withholds his approval. Meanwhile in Paris, her sister, Amy (Florence Pugh) is accompanying a rich aunt (Meryl Streep) on her travels. Aunt March believes that the fate of the March family will depend on Amy’s choice of husband. A...

  The route from acting to direction is a familiar one. Recognising the limits of a star persona, actors retreat behind the camera to tell different stories, ones that reveal a broader range of interests, with more emotional depth and subtlety. In 1978, Sylvester Stallone used the kudos afforded to him by the success of Rocky to write and direct Paradise Alley , a drama about three brothers in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, who enter the world of professional wrestling in the 1940s. So determined to one-eighty away from reprising Rocky Balboa in a different guise, Stallone cast Lee Canalito as a strong simpleton in the mould of Lenny from Of Mice and Men who is persuaded by his two brothers to enter the ring. The film was not a success. Stallone’s next film as director was Rocky II , a year later, and he rarely deviated from giving the audience what they wanted – even his Saturday Night Fever sequel, Staying Alive (1983) was directed like a sports movie. Stars use their celebrity to ...