Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 15 April
Boy A (Crowley, 2007)
I’ve had this tab open since I saw We Live in Time back in September last year as I knew that it would be a nice connection between Andrew Garfield’s most recent collaboration with director John Crowley and his first. It’s only now that Boy A has become available, yet another example of how pitiable our online choices really are.
Boy A featured in the New Zealand International Film Festival in 2008 but took a year to return to cinemas:
The great Peter Mullan (My Name is Joe, The Claim) plays a social worker preparing a young man for the outside world. “Jack Burridge” has been in detention since he participated in the brutal murder of a young girl when he was a child. Given a new identity in a new town, and coached by Mullan, he ventures out to see if redemption is possible – redemption taking the form of a normal life with jobs, pubs and girlfriends. Beautifully acted by Mullan, Andrew Garfield (as Jack) and Katie Lyons as the woman who falls for him, Boy A is the best film in a very good week and it makes you wonder how the British film industry can put so much time, effort and lottery money into garbage like Sex Lives of the Potato Men when there’s talent like this about.
I’ve also been thinking – as I suppose has Prime Video – that Boy A might make a good companion piece to the TV show of the moment, Adolescence on Netflix.
Also in that July 2009 Capital Times review: the original and best of The Hangover trilogy (“… the Citizen Kane of all getting-fucked-up-in-Vegas movies – so supremely pre-eminent that (let us hope) we never have to watch another of its kind ever again); Viggo Mortensen plays a reluctant Nazi in Good; Ben Kingsley and Penélope Cruz in a Philip Roth adaptation, Elegy; Will Ferrell rebooting Land of the Lost (“the adult tone makes it an unwise choice for anyone under 10 and the lack of good jokes make it a poor choice for anyone older than that”); and faith-based high school rugby redemption story Forever Strong – “simply must be destroyed”.
Where to watch Boy A
Aotearoa, Australia & Canada: Streaming on Prime Video
Ireland: Not currently available online
India: Digital rental
USA: Streaming on Peacock or Kanopy (free from participating libraries)
UK: Not currently available online