How I Live Now
I generally don’t comment about films here: I don’t know much about making them, and everyone who cares has already heard about movies before I see them.
But I hadn’t heard anything at all about How I Live Now, and you ought to take a look. (Streaming from Netflix). Its director thinks it’s too dark for the US, but it’s a terrific YA dystopia. Daisy is an American (played wonderfully by Irish actress Saoirse Ronan, even though she is never convincingly Yankee) who is sent to visit her British cousins. One of them picks her up at Heathrow and drives her far, far into the countryside. Fairport’s Tam Lin is on the radio; Daisy rolls her eyes. The cousins are irritating and charming and the oldest boy is gorgeous and sweet.
And then World War III breaks out.