Caught this one at the ReelHeart festival in Toronto over the summer where it won best film - didn't think it was the most exciting of films but i guess it kept me amused for the duration.
Basically Ulysses Road is one of those quirky British comedy drama things where not a whole lot seems to happen while a succession of increasingly oddball characters pop up and have weird conversations with each other. This on its own wouldn't normally be enough to keep me in the cinema but there was a fairly interesting thriller subplot which i felt like seeing through to the end.
The film was extremely slow to start off with, which given its meager 70 min runtime doesn't leave a whole lot of time for the action once it gets going but at least it does not drag on for too long.
For me the best thing was the acting; the characters ranged from sympathetic to sinister to downright deranged believable and really hold the whole film together its just a shame that the crazy peters guy doesn't have more screen time as he was by far the most entertaining aspect of the movie and barely gets a look in.
The story itself is pretty minimal with a injured soldier coming back from the front to hide away, only to find his privacy invaded by the appearance of his own colonel who he though was dead; shortly after strange things begin to happen... They probably could have done a lot more to make the narrative a bit more pacey and exciting instead of simply having the characters gently nudge the story along through dialog and as mentioned earlier at 70 mins its by no means an epic.
Visuals were very nice, lots of gorgeous shots of Costal england circa 1947, period setting very believable, although it would have been nice to see more in evidence of the war as everything seemed remarkably idyllic to me.
All in all not a bad film though not enough action for my taste - watch if you are into this kind of thing.
Basically Ulysses Road is one of those quirky British comedy drama things where not a whole lot seems to happen while a succession of increasingly oddball characters pop up and have weird conversations with each other. This on its own wouldn't normally be enough to keep me in the cinema but there was a fairly interesting thriller subplot which i felt like seeing through to the end.
The film was extremely slow to start off with, which given its meager 70 min runtime doesn't leave a whole lot of time for the action once it gets going but at least it does not drag on for too long.
For me the best thing was the acting; the characters ranged from sympathetic to sinister to downright deranged believable and really hold the whole film together its just a shame that the crazy peters guy doesn't have more screen time as he was by far the most entertaining aspect of the movie and barely gets a look in.
The story itself is pretty minimal with a injured soldier coming back from the front to hide away, only to find his privacy invaded by the appearance of his own colonel who he though was dead; shortly after strange things begin to happen... They probably could have done a lot more to make the narrative a bit more pacey and exciting instead of simply having the characters gently nudge the story along through dialog and as mentioned earlier at 70 mins its by no means an epic.
Visuals were very nice, lots of gorgeous shots of Costal england circa 1947, period setting very believable, although it would have been nice to see more in evidence of the war as everything seemed remarkably idyllic to me.
All in all not a bad film though not enough action for my taste - watch if you are into this kind of thing.
