SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

This is a gem of a film which was the opener for the Maine Jewish Film Festival. But it is not about just one of these topics. It is a wondrous story which could take place anywhere in the world. The film succeeds because it uses tired themes ("there goes the neighborhood") and puts a fresh slant on them with terrific acting and cinematography. You do not have to know anything about any of the subjects, Jamaica, Judiasm or cricket, but you will learn something about humanity when seeing this film. Sure, it is not perfect but it is rare to see a bigger budget film handle these themes so well. This film is definitely worth seeking out.

Eleven-year-old David is so passionate about cricket, he barely notices he doesn't know how to play. But when his cricket-mad new neighbors teach him the game, David begins to emerge from his 'wondrous oblivion'. Trouble is, David's Jewish, his neighbors are Jamaican and this is 1960 in pre-multicultural London.Wondrous Oblivion is a delightful film with an important message. Sam Smith engages as David, and there is a wonderful rapport between him and his neighbors: daughter Judy (newcomer Leonie Elliot) and father Dennis, played by Delroy Lindo from Malcolm X, and Gone in Sixty Seconds. Coincidentally, Jamaican-born Lindo actually grew up in Lewisham, where the film is set, at around the same time.And it's not just David that matures as a result of meeting these happy-go-lucky Caribbeans : his mother Ruth (Emily Woof – The Full Monty, Velvet Goldmine) and father Victor (Stanley Townsend) gradually become less afraid of life. Wondrous Oblivion was written and directed by Paul Morrison, who garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film for his first feature Solomon and Gaenor. Recommended, even if you don't play cricket. ***½/***** stars.

My wife and I both enjoyed Wondrous Oblivion very much. I am a cricket lover but she loathes the game. I was apprehensive that she would be bored by too much concentration on cricket but that was not so. The 1960 sets were brilliantly portrayed and the script very good and thought provoking. I went to a private school in 1956 and the cricket scenes were very true to life.At my school,very often if a boy did not show an aptitude for the game, the sports master just gave him the job of scoring without trying to coach him to be better,as happened in the film.It was lovely to see Dennis spend time with David so that him skill at cricket so improved.We give the film 10 out of 10- excellent.

This is one of the best films about the immigrant experience in the UK that I've seen in a while.It starts off appearing to be about a very English-looking German Jewish boy who's family are ultra-assimilationist and who wants nothing more than to succeed at the most English of sports, Cricket.As it unfolds it takes in the experiences of some of the first West Indians to come to England, and are much more talented at cricket but doomed to suffer the depradations of little Englanders by virtue of their high melanin levels.The complex racial issues that ensue are handled in a way that's sensitive and believable, as long as you can believe that the young jewish boy really is jewish, and not the scion of some old anglo-Norman family. The period detail is pretty spot on as well, though the use of colourised pathe footage slightly jars with the overall aesthetic of the film.Mercifully, you don't have to be able to understand cricket to get this film, just appreciate how difficult it can be to live in a strange country