Set Fire To The Stars

Gorgeous, evocative and well performed ...

The film wallows too much in its subject's glumness, but it comes alive whenever TV actor and co-writer Celyn Jones, whose only previous film credit is 2005's Lassie, plays Thomas as a big shaggy dog.

As tedious as "Set Fire to the Stars" gets, it remains watchable courtesy of the stunning black and white cinematography by Chris Seager.

"Set Fire to the Stars" barely skims the surface of characters you wish had been given more dimension, but as a snapshot of postwar academia and its pretensions, it exerts a creepy fascination.

Stylistically assured and tastefully appointed.

[A] watchable but thematically repetitive drama about Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' arrival in America in 1950.

Set Fire belongs to a genre that might be called Close Encounters With Greatness. They're not biopics, but glancing views by nobodies in a position to observe the backstage workings of genius. It's a formula, and Set Fire never gets beyond that formula.

Although the screenplay lacks insight into his creative process, the film playfully dissects stuffy postwar academic ostentation.

Set Fire to the Stars may be thematically uneven, but the aforementioned performances and Chris Seager's cinematography more than make up for it.

Story of the love/hate relationship between the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and his tour-agent during his first visit to America.

It's a terrifically rounded portrait that captures both Thomas's depressive neuroses and his zest for life.