21 April 2026 – This week, the cinema club was divided, and we saw two different films, two going to each film.  The film screening for the other two was ‘The Wizard of The Kremlin’, whilst I was one of the two who went to see ‘Glenrothan’.

The synopsis on the cinema website was as follows:

“Two brothers following a violent exchange with their father on the day of their mother’s funeral, the younger of the two left their Highland home for America. After forty years they reunite in the land of their birth.”

I would add that they only reunite with some pressure being applied by the older brother.  From there, we have frequent flash-backs, and a largely sentimental romp through a fairly simple story, about a distillery in trouble, and with an uncertain future for the village, with some health issues and chequered pasts thrown in for good measure. 

Some minor twists and lots of scenery are involved, and there are no great surprises.  It had the same kind of feel as the recently-viewed Mother’s Pride, very much the slow, British movie, rather than the full speed American movie that is more commonly viewed by us. 

I did enjoy the film (as did my companion), but I was not so keen on Alan Cummings’ singing, and ‘My Heart is in the Highlands’ was a rendition too far for me, although treated specially as it was repeated as the play-out music at the end, so others clearly take a different view from me.

The leading members of the cast were Brian Cox, Alan Cumming and Shirley Henderson, although some strong supporting performances were made by others, too.  This was a directorial debut for Brian Cox, who described the film as a “love letter to Scotland”, when interviewed by Simon Mayo for ‘Kermode and Mayo’s Take’, available on YouTube.

Mark Kermode described the film as a “warm hug of a movie”, and compared it in type to both ‘Mother’s Pride’ and ‘Fishermen’s Friends’.  He did also describe it as a “nuts and bolts movie, bordering on ‘clunky’ ”, with “nothing surprising” contained within it, and “not a work of art”, but he did feel that after playing so many dark characters in his career, Brian Cox had “earned the right to make such a sweet movie”.

I gave it a score of 6, whilst ‘IMDB’ gave it 6.1 and the ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ score was 1.8 (18%).

Fraser