Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Devo X I'm struggling to understand why the reviews aren't better. It's a magnificent film, from a long and difficult source, turned into a fine screenplay. One of the best gangster movies in many years. Sprawling, epic, lovingly photographed and well acted, the film shows that Hollywood can still make good genre films if the script is right. You have to like Afflect to go along with this project, but his character and his performance have depth and the support cast are uniformly believable, the prohibition/gangster era is well-wrought and the story maintains its tempo all the way. It avoids clichés as much as possible , given the genre, and remains plausible throughout.It's well worth your time.

tom-43722 I've never seen Saoirse Ronan before but I was impressed by her performance in this film. I'd even rank her as one of the top three actresses aged 30 or younger, the other two being Jenna Coleman and Jennifer Lawrence. Actually, Saoirse reminded me of Jennifer because they look fairly similar (Jennifer's hotter though) and have similar acting styles. I've never read the novel so I can't compare it to this film, but it seemed to me that Saoirse was perfect for the role of Daisy. Daisy started off as being antisocial and a bit bitchy but despite her rudeness, I didn't dislike her and she developed into a much nicer person throughout the film. I thought her romance with Eddie was a bit rushed and nobody in the film even mentioned the incest going on between them, but overall Saoirse did an excellent job.I also liked Piper, played by Harley Bird, although at times, I thought she put a bit too much emphasis on some of her lines. However, she has a considerable amount of talent which makes up for her inexperience. She did a great job of showing how a child would react in those circumstances and even though she was a bit whiny at times, I wasn't bothered because it was stated in the movie that it was part of her character's personality.George MacKay and Tom Holland did good jobs as Piper's big brothers but didn't impress me as much as the girls. I also thought they didn't get enough focus. Although Daisy and Eddie were in love and Daisy warmed up to Isaac, I felt that her relationship with Piper is what carried the film. If not for the sisterly love between them, this movie would have been pretty weak. Daisy and Piper seemed more like sisters than cousins and I think their relationship was portrayed very well and became the heart and soul of the film. I thought that the terrorist attacks and Daisy's romance with Eddie didn't get enough focus, even though I think they were supposed to be a central part of the story. However, it did show how far one can be willing to go to protect a loved one as Daisy committed murder and serious injury in order to protect Piper. Despite not seeing any battles or explosions, the film did show us the aftermath of these events by showing a pile of corpses and giving Eddie post traumatic stress disorder. I think it may have been going with the idea that some things are better left to the imagination, so I'll give the movie credit for that, but I think a bit more attention should have been given to why Daisy and Piper were taken away. When the soldiers arrived, I wasn't sure if they were taking the girls to safety or simply kidnapping them. Because of the lack of focus on the terrorism and romance, I think the script was a little weak and slightly unfocused but Saoirse and Harley's acting made up for the flaws in the storyline.

NateWatchesCoolMovies How I Live Now is a frank, depressing but beautiful to look at vision of the start of a global disaster and how it affects people. Saoirse Ronan, an actress who impresses me more and more every time I see her in increasingly interesting projects, is perfect in the lead role. She's Daisy, a timid, oddball American girl with some form of OCD, who travels to the remote English countryside to stay with her aunt, cousins and friends in a cottage. She's somewhat of a dysfunctional girl, and initially is antisocial and confrontational towards her cousins, until the quiet, adventurous Eddie (George Mckay) sort of breaks her out of her shell. The romance that eventually blossoms between them is organically acted and lovely to watch. But trouble is on the horizon, in the form of some sort of nuclear crisis, involving ruthless foreign invaders, mass water contamination and uprooting of British citizens from their homes. We don't get any idea of what exactly the matter is, just hushed whispers from overheard phone calls her aunt is making to government reps that she works for. When she leaves them, they are mired in the country with no clue what to do or where to turn. When invaders drive them on a cross country journey to escape persecution and strife, the film flips over from its naive, picturesque opening and thrums with a very real feeling of danger and incredibly realistic depictions of atrocities that children/teenagers of that age shouldn't have to witness. It almost mirrors the loss of innocence we all experience, sometimes at all too young an age. They eventually get separated and must find each other, and a way out of the danger, back to their home. The filmmakers respect the gravity of the situation they are telling a story about, and don't sugarcoat anything. This results in some really horrible stuff that our heroes run into along the way, with scenes that don't shy away from the R rated stuff, despite there being kids involved. This is a brave move, and makes us more invested in what's going on because of this stark unwillingness to censor anything. This ain't no Hunger Games, folks. The flipside to that though, is the gorgeous cinematography and uplifting, ethereal soundtrack. Despite being about human suffering, it's an all out work of art in the sights and sounds department, the stunning countryside and warm, cozy house juxtaposed with the barren, unfamiliar compounds, grey forests and bereft towns that come later on. It's always awesome to see life at it's worst and best, both done well in and film. Bravo. There's young love too, of course. Marred by this maelstrom they are thrust into, but strong enough and well written enough to be yet another realistic, believable facet of the piece.

James Having first watched this film (on DVD) when it was relatively new, I felt the need to return to it in the circumstances of simultaneous territorial gains by ISIL in the Middle East and Russia/Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine. This was a wise move, since the few areas that back then seemed implausible or far-fetched - to a degree - now DO NOT SEEM SO! On that basis, this film rises yet further in my esteem.In the first place, this is the film which begins with an engagingly-bespectacled 14-year-old British eccentric driving his somewhat-older and much-sassier female American cousin to his home from the airport in a litter-strewn Land Rover, only to reach the point two-thirds through the film in which the latter finds the former in the first stages of decay in a body-bag.It will be clear to all that we have quite a hop to make to get from the cutesy beginning to the deadly-serious latter half, but hop it we do - thanks to steadily increasing tension, in the process exploring the importance of nature and the effete futility of many modern habits; the meaning of childhood,life and true love; summer romance turning physical (though handled with a particularly effective - and touching - mixture of gentle eroticism and subtlety) and the vulnerability of the UK as a whole in the wake of a large-scale terrorist attack on London.Somewhere down the line this is a young adult film, yet (in a manner slightly reminiscent of the Dr Who episode "Turn Left") it raises hugely serious, important and very-moving themes, and does so with remarkable honesty and gritty realism, for all that the approach is often minimalistic.It would be easy to try and pick holes here, and presumably there are a few to be found if one tries too hard. But on the whole this superbly-acted and beautifully-set film holds true to its basic philosophy and is as hard to sneer at as it is likely to afford the empathic watcher with a large number of very serious questions beginning with the words "what if...?"