Better Late Then Never

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Going back to my Music GCSE, I'd describe the structure of this film as having a simple ternary form - A-B-A' - standing aptly in this case for Adult-Boy-Adult'.The limitations of this 'song form' are plenty and frustrating for a viewer looking for a story - what happens between A and B, or more significantly, between B and A? Are we just looking here at a story of guilt? Are we supposed to draw a link between what happens in B as a way of explaining Joe's (CRAIG) behaviour in A? I'm not sure we're able to make such assumptions.So instead I could only take each of the film's three sections as self-standing, but that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the film as a whole.Indeed, a film that resists a coherent narrative and prevents identification with its characters is perfectly suitable structurally for such themes of guilt and escape.That is what makes this film moving. Not for the on-screen emotion, but for what is left out, unseen and lost in the hyphens of the film's structure.

The title of 'Flashbacks of a Fool' informs us at once of its peculiar structure: a world-weary middle aged actor recalls his childhood on learning of the death of an old friend. The flashbacks are fairly run-of-the-mill stuff: typically clueless teenage boy finds himself lusted after by two glamorous young women determined to strip him of his innocence (less typical, perhaps, of real life, but common in coming of ages stories usually written, one suspects, by men, dreaming of an adolescence they never actually experienced). Cue lots of early 70s period effects and music, and a tragedy. The film's greater problem is that while its plausible that this tragedy could have affected the entirety of the actor's subsequent life, without any portrait of the intervening years, we're asked to take this entirely on trust, and accept that the reason for his current miserableness is his failure to seek closure for his past. But the interesting bit of the story is missing - why it is that he never came to terms with what had happened, and how it continued to haunt him throughout years of superficial success. Without this, there seems little connection between the two halves of the film; while the principal female characters appear oddly to age less than the male one. Daniel Craig is good in the lead role, never overplaying, but there's too little substance behind the suggestion for the film to truly satisfy.

Flashbacks of a Fool… Where to begin? As I began to watch the film, I had no idea what to expect. At first I anticipated a (500) Days of Summer type film, with irregular time shifts and jumps throughout. But after watching Daniel Craig skilfully applying his Touche Éclat I wondered whether it would have more of an American Psycho angle to it. In fact, after viewing the entire film I was still wondering what on earth the film was about. Yes, it was shot beautifully, and Emile Robert played the part of the stern anti-hero (the Young Daniel Craig) to a tee, but in my opinion the film lacked a certain something.. a storyline.In essence, this is basically a film about an obnoxious twerp who matures and grows into an even more obnoxious adult, who, despite having an enviable lifestyle and physique, insists on maintaining a frown throughout. You hate him as an adolescent, when he stands up his best friend's crush in order to have rampant sex with his mother's friend, and he has sex with said mother again, though this time her daughter ends up playing on an abandoned mine, and ends up getting blown up to smithereens. Oh, and Craig decides to make advances on his best friend's wife just hours after his funeral. And that's about it. I would definitely recommend this film, if you appreciate artistic cinema and naked flesh, but if you're after a gripping, eventful film, Flashbacks of a Fool is definitely worth avoiding. Not only is there no real conclusion, but if you're like me, you will genuinely wonder what on earth you spent the past 90 minutes or so watching. On the plus side though, the music is brilliant, especially if you happen to be a Bowie fan, and you get to see Daniel Craig's naked buttocks. Repeatedly.

Joe Scot is a fading actor, spending his days and nights drinking heavily and taking even heavier drugs. He is a broken man, all on his lonesome.But the untimely death of an old friend revives old feelings and demons Joe Scot had long forgotten.The film is slow to begin with...Actually it has an awful opening with a tired Daniel Craig moaning and drinking away his day....It's definitely a terrible opening, however once we delve into Joe's past, we see the young boy he once was...the girl he fell in love with, and the woman he made love too, and the tragic death he caused. It is then that the film takes shape and we, witness a broken Joe Scot return home to face those old demons he had once run away from.....