The hard part about writing criticism - film criticism in my case, but others, too, I think - is dealing with the small things you love. 
The big things, be they splashy failures, or blockbuster successes, are pretty easy to
write. What's harder is dealing with the little gems - those exceptional, smaller works that audiences might miss without word of mouth. You have to calibrate your praise so you don't oversell or set ridiculous expectations; but by the same token, not sound so muted that you don't do the work justice.
(And before we go on, if you get a chance, jump over to the Village Voice for Nathan Lee's review of 300 - it's what I would have liked to have written with a little sleep and a chance to bat our another draft. His is hilarious, and dead-on.)
Meanwhile, I have to find a way to tell you to go see Starter for 10, one of the best "little" movies I have seen in quite a while.
Starter for 10 is a modest coming of age picture, about a boy starting his first year of university in England (at Bristol) in the eighties. Brian Jackson is a good kid whose dream is to play on the "University Challenge" team - a college kids quiz show on British television that his Dad used to watch with him as a kid. Brian does everything he can to make the team, partly out of his childhood desire, and partly to meet Alice, the beautiful blonde who also goes out for the team (for the chance at television exposure, mainly).
Brian makes the team - partly through luck of an accident to another player - but things don't quite go as plan. His chance at a relationship with Alice runs into a number of roadblocks, from a disastrous New Year's holiday at her family's cottage in the woods, to the unexpected arrival of one of Brian's working class friends on campus. Part of what Brian's escaping - the dead end life in his coastal British town - is about moving up in the world and he's caught between who he was and who he wants to be.
Eventually, a disastrous episode during the taping of his University Challenge appearance with the Bristol team forces Brian to reexamine his goals and his expectations, and leads him to find a better balance and the right girl.
What distinguishes Starter for 10 (which refers to the "opening round" question on the UC) from other, similar films - going all the way back to some classic teen comedies from the actual eighties - is the quality of the script by Richard Nicholls, based on his novel. The real danger of writing smart characters is to overwrite, to give them wordy, talky dialogue that sounds written and not real. Here, though the script is sharp, funny, and realistic. Brian's dilemmas, trying to figure out what the right things is, trying to decide between two great girls, Alice (the pretty one) and Rebecca (the smart, sassy one), are developed with subtlety and some wit. Director Tom Vaughan, making his move out of television, gets just the right realistic tone going for the mid-eighties, which are less bright and overstyled than we like to remember these days.
And the performers are first rate - James McAvoy as Brian has a winsome, charming presence that makes Brian's missteps believable without turning viewers off, which is not a simple task here. Alice Eve gives golden girl Alice just enough edge to keep her from becoming a cartoon, while Rebecca Hall's Rebecca is a better, smarter version of Barbra Streisand's Katie in The Way We Were... and she manages to get her guy. Meanwhile, Benedict Cumberbatch (currently also Pitt the Younger in Amazing Grace), and Elaine Tan shine as other members of the University Challenge Team, as does Domenic Cooper as Brian's best mate, Spencer.
I really can't do this film justice - Starter for 10 is graceful, small, and surprisingly moving, set to a soundtrack of eighties Brit classics that convey the times without drifting into parody. Maybe it's just my past history as one of the "Quiz Bowl" kids - I was a team member for my school's "It's Academic" contest - but I think it's more than that - it's rare to see a coming-of-age movie done so gracefully without veering into leering, broad humor. And while I praise it, I'd like to put in a good word for Tom Hanks, whose Play Tone production company helped finance this, and who continues to show remarkable class and taste in his choices for producing projects (as opposed to, say, his acting roles). Starter for 10 will no doubt be overshadowed by bigger, bolder films... but if you get the chance, take a look. You'll be glad you did. Trust me.
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