Submarine

Decent, but it progressively gets more and more boring as it goes, as well as being familiarly indie-quirky in a progressively more annoying way. Not a bad debut, though, some good visuals and lines.

Spectacularly written and directed coming of age-comedy. Stylish and very funny. This is definitely one I'll be returning to.

Stylistically and thematically positioning itself somewhere between Rian Johnson's "Brick" and Hal Ashby's "Harold and Maude" (!), "Submarine" deals with growing pains, the family unit and, well, relationships in general with - as thaklos noted in his mini-review - a clever discrepancy between Tate's disaffected outward appearance and his inner emotional turmoil reflected in the narration. It's awkward, weird and charming. Not unlike adolescence, I guess.

I really enjoyed this. It does a great job of capturing elements of the confusion, delusion, uncertainty, awkwardness and honesty of teen life, and does it with a very natural sense of humour. I'm sure Ayoade has his influences - this feels Wes Anderson-esque to a degree - but despite the style there is also an admirable measure of restraint. The casting is terrific, as are the performances (Considine nails it). An impressive, assured debut. Also, "My mum gave a handjob to a mystic" - great.

Bloody well shot, cut and scored. If only the quirkiness had been equally striking story wise as visually instead of this pretty pretentious mess...