Nowhere Boy

It is perfectly accomplished, and pleasing enough, but it's not going to blow your socks off, even though the combination of Ms Taylor Wood and such a compelling story would give you every reason to think it might.

This is a very decent effort for a first-time director, but given the auteurist expectations created by Taylor-Wood's track record in the art world, it's hard to discern a distinctively personal take on the material, or indeed the medium.

The acting all round is pretty good, but the story itself is given to a sense of drift, as if the film itself doesn't know any better than Lennon what it wants.

Taylor-Wood has specialized in video installations and off-kilter portraits, and it was tempting to hope that her take on Lennon would unsettle and provoke. Instead, she stays resolutely on-kilter, as if awed into numbness by her subject.

Nowhere Boy reveals the magnitude of the good women behind the grand icon.

The events chronicled are all longstanding Beatles legends, though director Sam Taylor-Wood manages to stage even the most portentous moments without making you feel a celestial choir is in order.

Nowhere Boy, with all its quirky vagueness, at least offers a nostalgic charge reminiscent of the old Liverpool of Penny Lane. [Full review in Spanish]

For any massive fans of The Beatles then this is a must-see. The filmmakers also manage to carefully and effectively replicate the lates 50s and early 60s era in great attention to detail.

A film of image over substance, something Lennon himself spent a lifetime rejecting. The film not only ignore that, it betrays it.

The film has very few historical flaws and is a raw portrayal of John Lennon's adolescence, which adds to the flavour and makes one wish they could discover The Beatles for the first time, all over again.