Stuart: A Life Backwards

Great acting from Hardy and Cumberbatch is this soberly presented human-interest story with a pacemaker instead of a heart. Stuart’s story has the ideal balance of humor and sad to depressive (and bloody) moments and Attwood is fairly successful at supplementing them with animated passages (most likely) similar to the illustrations in the book. Stuart isn’t trying to be anybody else, he just brings his own story. Simply a nice movie about the suffering and the joy of a friend... who’s homeless. (28.05.2015)

When you get Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch it’s practically every movie buff’s obligation to get that movie and watch it with gusto. And watch it with gusto I did, but it wasn’t as polished as I’d expected. I mean Tom Hardy was absolutely amazing, there’s not debating that. As expected, he was the sturdiest beam that held the qualities of the story together. Then obviously the plot is another thing you can count on with a movie like this. But that’s about it. Benedict delivered an inconspicuous and standard performance. The editor, on the other hand, probably puffed on some hash because for example at the beginning, I couldn’t understand the relationship between Tom and Benedict. I don’t know if it was intended, but Benedict comes across as really naïve. Tom portrays a junkie and Ben simply moves in with him and pretends it’s nothing. It seemed the story was so brutal and sad that at times the authors tried to make it lighter with some chill scenes. Something like Trainspotting. But I don’t think it worked out too well in this case. (13.01.2014)