''Sometimes Always Never'' is a 2018 British comedy-drama film directed by

Carl Hunter Carl James Hunter (born 21 April 1965, Liverpool, England) is an English director and screenwriter and the bassist in the Liverpool-based pop group The Farm. Career Music In 1983, Hunter was part of the second wave of members who joined Th ...

and written by

Frank Cottrell Boyce Frank Cottrell-Boyce (born 23 September 1959)"COTTRELL-BOYCE, Frank", ''Who's Who 2010'', A & C Black, 2010; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2009 ; online edn, Nov 200 Retrieved 2010-05-16. is an English people, English screenwriter, ...

, starring

Bill Nighy William Francis Nighy (; born 12 December 1949) is an English actor. Nighy started his career with the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool and made his London debut with the Royal National Theatre starting with '' The Illuminatus!'' in 1977. There he ...

Sam Riley Samuel Peter W. Riley (born 8 January 1980) is an English actor and singer.James Mottram: The only people for me are the mad ones. ''Independent on Sunday: The New Review'', 30 January 2011, pp 10–13 He is best known for his performance in t ...

, and

Jenny Agutter Jennifer Ann Agutter (born 20 December 1952) is a British actress. She began her career as a child actress in 1964, appearing in '' East of Sudan'', ''Star!'', and two adaptations of '' The Railway Children''—the BBC's 1968 television seria ...

Premise

Alan is a stylish tailor with moves as sharp as his suits. But he's spent years searching tirelessly for his missing son, Michael, who stormed out over a game of Scrabble. With a body to identify and his family torn apart, Alan must repair the relationship with his younger son and identify an online player who he thinks could be Michael, so that he can finally move on and reunite his family.

Cast

as Alan *

as Peter *

as Margaret * Alice Lowe as Sue *

Tim McInnerny Tim McInnerny ( ; born 18 September 1956) is an English actor. He is known for his many roles on stage and television, including as Lord Percy Percy and Captain Darling in the 1980s British sitcom ''Blackadder''. Early life McInnerny was bor ...

as Arthur *

Alexei Sayle Alexei David Sayle (born 7 August 1952) is an English actor, author, stand-up comedian, television presenter and former recording artist. He was a leading figure in the British alternative comedy movement in the 1980s. He was voted the 18th gre ...

as Bill * Louis Healy as Jack

Reception

On the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, and an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "Like the grieving

Scrabble ''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left t ...

enthusiast at the heart of its unique story, ''Sometimes Always Never'' scores high enough to be well worth a play."

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

reports a score of 67/100 based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Kambole Campbell of ''Empire'' wrote, "Despite strong performances and a witty script, ''Sometimes Always Never'' lays on the homage a little too thick for its own good, shortchanging itself by imitating a particularly idiosyncratic style." Wendy Ide of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' wrote, "The danger of an offbeat British film, particularly one that is as emphatically designed as this, is that it could teeter into whimsy and artifice. But thanks to Cottrell Boyce, and the assured direction of first-time feature film-maker

, the emotional beats are authentic and the distinctive look of the film – it takes its aesthetic cues from '60s ties and '70s wallpaper – never upstages the story."

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, id=tt5068162 2018 comedy-drama films 2018 films British comedy-drama films Works about Scrabble 2010s English-language films 2010s British films English-language comedy-drama films