Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

      The Railway Man by Eric Lomax. Film Review . "Sometimes the hating has to stop." Engraved on Eric Lomax's tombstone. The film was premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013 and released in the UK in January 2014. Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky and starring Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jeremy Irvine ( War Horse ) and Stellan Skarsgard. The book was published in 1995 and it was a lifelong ambition of Lomax's to retell some extremely harrowing stories of POW beatings and torture during the second world war. The film captures some of his enthusiasm for the railway and his childhood fascination with locomotives but fails to show his passion although the book is far more successful. In other ways too. Eric was an officer in Singapore until its fall and then he became one of many POWs to be sent by the Japanese to work on the Thai-Burma railway, known as death railway because of the high number of fatalities. I was fortun...

                  The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings."Julius Caesar. Cassius rejected the popular theory relating to astrology. The fault here is cancer and the film looks at how two teenagers, in particular, Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters deal with their afflictions and the effects it has on their relationships with their parents. Directed by Josh Boone and produced by Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen. The film is based on the hugely successful book by American writer, John Green. Shailene Woodley (The Secret Life of the American Teenager and The Descendants) stars as Hazel. Ansel Elgort (Carrie, Tommy Ross and Caleb Prior) plays Augustus. Hazel is 16 and has battled cancer for the past 3 years. It is terminal and in order to breathe she needs to carry around with her an oxygen cylinder. She is encouraged to attend a support grou...