Eleanor Reviews

***** David Copperfield takes to the stage to recount his life and times, interspersed with the plethora of colourful characters he's met along the way. It's clear that Armando Iannucci loves Dickens' Victorian behemoth David Copperfield , because only someone who loves the 800-page bildungsroman could have created a film that is at once wonderfully faithful and yet wholly creative with the source text. The film begins with our eponymous hero (the charming Dev Patel) taking the stage to recount his story, something that Dickens himself also did in wildly popular tours of Britain and the United States, and it feels like another respectful nod from Iannicci (who shares screenwriting credits with Simon Blackwell) to one of the most celebrated authors who ever lived. Throughout his film, Iannucci both pokes fun at Dickens ('why am I even this scene?') and celebrates his works, giving a new lease of life to a story that most of us would bypass in the book ...

***** With their father at war, sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy navigate the difficulties of growing up, bumping into some colourful characters along the way. For many generations of readers, and hopefully many more to come, Little Women has been a treasured tale. For me, first gifted the audio book and then the novel, it's a story that instantly reminds me of my childhood. When I came to study the text for my degree, the class ubiquitously agreed that it was a nostalgic treat to revisit the book again - perhaps why so few of us chose to analyse it for our end-of-module exam. Sitting in a cinema, packed with women of all ages, that same sense of nostalgia washed over me as Greta Gerwig deftly and sensitively interwove two time frames (the youthfulness of the Little Women story with the bittersweet nature of the sequel, Good Wives ), whilst simultaneously reintroducing me to some of my favourite literary creations. Let's start with the elephant in the room - Gr...