Iris Villarca is a young girl growing up in the early 20th Century. She lives practically alone with her father in a remote mansion on Dartmoor. Her father strives to keep her isolated from other people, because of a mysterious disease that afflicts the family line, which means many of their ancestors died young.
Is the disease real though, or does something else haunt the Villarca line, some supernatural presence that reveals itself only when one of the family falls in love?
So what happens when Iris starts to have feelings for Tom the stable hand?
Since I read my first Ward novel (The sublime The Last House on Needless Street) I’ve read the rest of her work in a somewhat backwards fashion, and so it comes to pass that of her currently published work, ironically it is her first novel that I read last (no spoilers but given how the story bounces abound in time there’s a certain poetry to that).
I’ll get the more negative element out of the way first.
Rawblood is not always an easy read. The prose is dense and her vocabulary is vast, and at times in those early chapters I did struggle a little.
But I persevered and I’m glad I did because this is a superb story. That it was her first novel boggles the mind, so intricately does she weave the plot.
The blurb on the back makes it seem like you’re in for a relatively straightforward tale. This is not the case at all. Instead you’re faced with a gothic epic that rewards your patience with an incredible story.
The sweep of the story is grand, and doesn’t just focus on Iris. Ward charts the history of Rawblood, switching from one character to another, one era to another. At times it feels like a romance worthy of a Brontë, at others a dark tale of resurrectionists and doctors performing experiments worthy of Mary Shelly.
It’s melancholy and at times heartbreaking, but rarely anything other than engaging. Also, having thought I understood her talent for narrative trickery, it also caught me by surprise more than once, and while I did figure it out, I came to this realisation at roughly the same point as Iris.
Directed by Edgar Wright. Starring Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Katy O’Brian, Martin Herlihy , Colman Domingo and Josh Brolin.
Seen in November
In the near future America is a totalitarian state ruled over by an authoritarian media network. The Network uses violent gameshows and reality tv to distract the masses who live in poverty and have limited access to healthcare.
Ben Richards (Powell) is a blue collar worker blacklisted for union activism. With no money, and a sick daughter, Richards tries out with the Network, hoping an appearance on a trashy game show might earn enough for the flu meds his daughter needs. Instead he’s selected for The Running Man, the Network’s most popular show, where constants can win a billion dollars…if they stay free for 30 days. The catch is that a group of vicious hunters is on their tale, and the public can earn money for reporting sightings of the contestants.
Richards is persuaded by the show’s executive producer, Dan Killian (Brolin) to enter. He figures even if he only lasts a few days it has the potential to save his daughter.
Ben and his fellow contests Laughlin (O’Brien) and Jansky (Herlihy) and introduced by the show host Bobby T (Domingo) before being given a 12 hour head start.
Can Richards stay one step ahead of the hunters, or is he due to follow the example of every other contestant (with one exception) and die long before he can reach thirty days?
Based on the 1982 novel by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) The Running Man was famously filmed in 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards. Whilst not exactly faithful to the book the Arnie film is still a lot of fun.
The 2025 version of The Running Man, on the other hand, is a classic example of a film of two halves, and whilst both halves are enjoyable to some extent, the film really shines in the first half, as Ben signs up for the show and initially goes on the run. The longer the film goes on the more convoluted it becomes and the more people who crawl out of the woodwork to help (or sometimes hinder) Ben. It also feels like Wright and the producers didn’t know how to end it.
Going by the trailer I expected the film to follow the book more closely than the ’87 version of the film, and to be fair it does, but it still goes off on tangents and tries to have its cake and eat it. Where it’s at its best is where it tacks close to the novel. So Richards has to record a video every day, and purposefully heads for downtrodden areas.
What we’re left with is a film that’s a curious mishmash of the book and the ’87 film (kudos to the great Arnie reference) Even then it might have worked, but the final five or ten minutes make it clear there were a lot of last minute reshoots as they tried desperately to end the film on a high. Whether this came from above, whether it was Wright’s doing or whether the original ending just didn’t test well we may never know, but the last five or ten minutes feels really tacked on.
I like Powell, he has genuine star quality, even when playing a dick in Top Gun: Maverick that was obvious, and he makes for much more of an everyman than Arnie did, but he’s still not quite everyman enough, he is ridiculously handsome and buff. A younger William H Macy would have made for a more convincing Richards, not that Powell isn’t eminently watchable.
It feels like Josh Brolin was phoning it in a little, but frankly even phoning it in he’s great, and Domingo is clearly having a blast as the host of The Running Man. Cera is interesting, but his character is all over the place. Similarly, Emilia Jones (I was today years old when I realized she’s Aled Jones’ daughter!) has an important part to play in the finale, but she shows up way too late in the narrative for us to care too much about her.
Of the rest the highlight for me is O’Brien’s Laughlin (can we get a parallel film that just follows her?)
Wright is a good director and the film zips along. For all its flaws it’s nowhere near as bad as it’s been painted and I was never bored. I had fun, I just wish it’s been more fun than it was, and more coherent, particularly in the latter stages, so for the moment the ’87 version remains the most enjoyable Running Man for me.
One final point, which perhaps sums this version up best of all, is this, in a dystopian film about corporate greed and manipulation, really obvious product placement feels exceptionally jarring.
Directed by Nicholas Hytner. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Roger Allam, Mark Addy, Alun Armstrong and Robert Emms.
It’s 1916 at the height of the Great War. In the Yorkshire mill town of Ramsden, the local choral group are faced with a decision after their choirmaster joins up to fight. After much deliberation they hire Dr Henry Guthrie (Fiennes) as his replacement, despite the fact that he spent many years living in Germany, is an atheist and also gay.
Guthrie agrees. After complaints (via a brick through the window) the choir abandon plans to perform Bach and turn instead to Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius.
With so many of the town’s young men away at war, Guthrie opens up the choir to a wider membership, including working classes and war wounded, but will their performance be a success?
On the face of it The Choral might seem like a hundred other such films, as a local band/choir/cricket team overcome adversary, but The Choral rises above the average thanks to an acerbic script from Alan Bennett that stays the right side of sentimental, and superb performances from a committed, ensemble cast.
The film addresses class, patriotism, grief, the war (and the ridiculousness of young men on both sides being sent to die) with lines such as “We’re fodder for the mill, and we’ll be fodder for the war.” That both Guthrie and his pianist (Emms) are gay just adds to the mix. If I had a niggle it would be that it perhaps could have gone further on the subject of women at this time.
As good as the bigger names in the cast are, the film’s lesser-known actors all give great performances as well and it’s a true ensemble, in fact as the film goes on Fiennes seems to take more of a back seat and is happy to see others shine.
Yes it’s a gentle film, and yes perhaps a little predictable, and it chooses to go with a low key finale, but that just adds to its charm. In a world at war even the smallest of victories is still a victory, and with the war continuing for some time it’s a heartfelt end as young men we’ve grown to know go off to the front.
It looks great, and more importantly sounds great. The cast are uniformly excellent and it’s funny, sad and thought-provoking. Not my usual kind of film but I enjoyed it a lot.
werewolves on the moon 