This is my first time hearing of this film.
Anyone here seen this yet or plan on seeing it?




'Nowhere Boy' tells the story of John Lennon before he was fab
Published: Friday, December 03, 2010, 5:00 AM
Newhouse News Service

Every great artist begins with a child who wasn't heard.


Aaron Johnson as John Lennon in 'Nowhere Boy.'

They may not have been unhappy. They may have been deeply loved. But they never felt they were quite understood. And art becomes a way of saying "Listen to me!"
Sometimes shouting it, over and over again.

So it was for John Lennon. He filled notebooks with poems. His teachers told him to stop wasting time. He started learning music. His Aunt Mimi primly told him a guitar was "all right, " but "you'll never earn your living by it."

Twenty years of the world's greatest pop songs were his way of proving them wrong.

"Nowhere Boy" is the latest in a line of films -- "Becoming Jane, " "Coco Before Chanel" -- that show us how the adolescent became an artist. This particular story begins in 1955, when John's Uncle George gives him a harmonica; it ends five years later, as John leaves for Hamburg, and his first big gig with the Beatles.

His life had changed completely. Ours were about to.

If you're even a casual Beatles fan, you know the bare facts of the story -- how Lennon's fun but irresponsible mother, Julia, gave him away to her strict sister to raise, how years later John and his mother reconnected briefly only to be torn apart forever.

Rage and forgiveness, rebellion and domesticity -- these were the poles he would swing between for the rest of his life.


Aaron Johnson as young John Lennon and Anne-Marie Duff as Julia Lennon in Sam Taylor-Wood's 'Nowhere Boy.'

A flawed "Nowhere Man" dramatizes them, aided mostly by some good actors. Although he has blue eyes (were brown contact lenses too much to ask?), Aaron Johnson gets the intonation of a young Lennon right without ever toppling over into cheap "Beatlemania" mimicry -- you see him actually becoming who he was to be.

And although Kristin Scott-Thomas' Auntie Mimi is a bit one-note -- she seems to have "No Bloody Fun" stamped on her forehead -- Anne-Marie Duff's Julia is marvelously complicated. Flirtatious, fragile, flagrantly inappropriate, she's everything a mother shouldn't be -- and everything that her son grew to idealize and mourn.

That's all here -- along with, unfortunately, direction which is sometimes uncertain, falling back on awkward invention. (Director Sam Taylor-Wood's favorite go-to device is the surreal dream, always the sign of a filmmaker with more pretense than purpose.)

The actual musical details are scanty, too, and that's more of a problem. It would be nice to have more of a sense of how John and new friend Paul McCartney actually wrote their first songs. (It'd be nicer if the young actor actually looked like young Paul McCartney.)

And, of course -- mostly due to the time period, but also thanks to copyright fees -- there's no Beatles music at all, and only a snatch of Lennon's wrenching solo song "Mother" over the end titles.

But then, the Beatles really hadn't happened yet. "Nowhere Boy" is about John before he was fab -- back when he was just John Winston Lennon of Menlove Avenue, Liverpool. Back when he had something to say, and nobody to listen.

Back before -- just before -- he'd figured out how to be heard.

Note: This review was written by Steven Whitty of the Newhouse News Service.

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NOWHERE BOY
2.5 stars, out of 4

Snapshot: A biopic on the teenage life of future Beatle John Lennon.

What works: Strong performances from a strong cast -- particularly Aaron Johnson and Anne-Marie Duff -- cover up the film's flaws.

What doesn't: Sam Taylor-Wood's clumsy direction often strays close to pretention.

Starring: Aaron Johnson, Anne-Marie Duff, Kristin Scott-Thomas. Director: Sam Taylor-Wood. Rating: R for language and a scene of sexuality. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes.

Film trailer can be found here: http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2010/12/nowhere_boy_tells_the_story_of.html

I have heard GREAT things about this movie .


" Nowhere Man  " is Macca's favorite John song .

definitely worth the price of admission, and there is a ton in there that will appeal to beatles fans: paul auditioning of for john with "20 flight rock" at the woolton parish fete (just what the hell is a fete anyway??)....george trying out in the back of a bus...an excellent take of the quarrymen doing "in spite of all the danger" in that 5 quid recording studio....it cuts out just as john is leaving to go to hamburg. the acting is superb...the only thing i found odd was their choice to make some odd sort of sexual attraction between john and julia. i didn't much care for that. that kind of shit happens in nebraska but not to our favorite fab.

kristin scott thomas was fabulous as aunt mimi. oscar nod??

it's a great movie, I saw it quite a while ago, I'll have to watch it again.

I downloaded and watched Nowhere Boy nine months ago and LOVED it! The extra's disc has some cool stuff on it too, one of the original Quarrymen showing the real places where the events in the movie took place.

uncleson wrote on Dec 9^th, 2010 at 3:24pm:

sonny!

when is the davies biopic coming out?