Time for a £4 monday. Very upset that after months of advertising, cineworld didnt have this anywhere at all. The closest was Eastbourne on a tuesday so the Local cinema it was. Im ready to be broken by this film. Ive seen lots of people talk about this being their favourite film of the year & will end up in peoples top 10s so lets see if the internet is right.

I lowered the average age which i was not expecting at my 6:30 showing for this (yea weirdest time for the local cinema ever) Everyone in there was in their like mid 50s or 60s i wasnt expecting it.

Trailers i didnt see them all but i always seem to time it so that Fink in The Wild Robot is shouting SWIM! Love that.

& then the film started… well that was fucking emotional.

I was crying 20 mins into this film. Yea it hurt that much. It wasnt a constant stream of tears through the movie but there were moments which really hurt your soul & made you really truly think that we are all just people living out our lives. There was a lot of trauma to unpack while watching it & a lot of soul searching to do. It was only as the credits were rolling that i realised that half of the actors in the film, were people either from the program or had help set similar programs up. That was such a clever thing to do & cast. It meant those who werent acting were adding realness to their stories & making them very mindful & authentic.

Colmon Domingo will be nominated for another oscar… will he win? who knows. We are still a long way out from it, but if he is not on the list, i will be livid. I really will. He made sure everyone received the same salary who worked on the film. He went & spent time in the actual prison the film is set in, which i didnt know the prison was actually called Sing Sing before the movie started.

Everything just felt natural & organic in the film. There was no over the top drama. When things did go down, it would go down in that sort of life. It made it all look so normal & then suddenly something would happen & you would remember it was a prison & that they are there for crimes. IT did show the inmates for what they really were the good & the bad.

The hopes & dreams & stories people talked about were really moving.

Your fate decided by a panel & then one envelope. To be so happy & then to feel so hopeless.

The play was actually the McGuffin. I liked that. It was important & was so batshit, but it was the thing that just kept the story moving to get to the end & see the play that you dont see, but you do see the real plays they did put on.

I was sure there was going to be a prison bully or something really violent going on which would hurt or take out someone so when they wasnt the case but something else tragic happened that hurt.

I dont think we needed the last 2 scenes of the film. I think it would have been stronger without it. Just a certain image would have done, because if you paid attention to the movie you knew what that image meant.

If someone tells you to watch this film, please do. Its beautifully heart-breaking & rather magnificent. Its going to be one of those films that come March 3rd you will be hearing about quite a lot. The only reason its not a buzzer contender is because of that last 5minutes. But please, see this stunning movie.