The Outrun

If you are fan of the very adaptable Saoirse Ronan then you'll probably love this - she throws just about everything into the role of "Rona". She has returned to her mother's home in Orkney to recover from a fairly torrid time of booze and drugs in London. The timelines are threaded together to drip feed us the causes of her current predicament whilst looking at her own efforts to get - and stay - clean. Of course, there are domestic issues at home too with her father suffering from bi-polar disorder and her mother having turned to religion which add to the turbulence of her life. In the…

Saoirse Ronan totally nails it with her amazing performance in this intense addiction-recovery drama, making it super powerful and engaging.

The struggle to overcome addiction is indeed a noble one, and it’s been the subject of many fine films over the years. The same is true of movies that explore individual efforts to get one’s life back on track by returning home to one’s roots, both as a way of finding oneself and healing. And, in the latest effort from writer-director Nora Fingscheidt, viewers get some of both of these cinematic motifs, based on the fact-based memoir penned by author and journalist Amy Liptrot. The film follows the odyssey of London-based biologist Rona (Saoirse Ronan), whose wild child tendencies and…