Oh dear, SFX magazine is not so keen on the first of the new ‘young Tolkien’ biopic movies. Their review gives Dome Karukoski’s Tolkien (May 2019) just three stars and barely a quarter of a page. The dire new Hellboy gets two and a half stars, by comparison, in the same issue. The main complaints seem to be un-engaging acting and lack of cinematic flourish…

[The love] scenes are earnestly performed, but don’t feel particularly cinematic or engaging. The better sequences are those that follow Tolkien while he’s suffering from trench fever during World War I, where – delirious – he starts hallucinating the bones of future ideas.”