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Excellent but underrated film

The first must-see film of the year.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

How do ideas get into production? Here we are shown how radar came to be. And what a struggle. From the initial ideas, (first developed in Germany apparently, but ignored!), but under the dire threat of Nazi bombers and the mad Hitler, Britain's committees got going.Eddie Izzard is Watson-Watt and goes through the stages he had to do to get the funding and the support to prove his ideas would work. There is quite of bit of personal side-tracking, with the Official Secrets Act, and his abandoned wife and family. It is not just Watson- Watt of course, there were a team of dedicated and really hard-working colleagues too.Very little technical explanation, but that can be obtained elsewhere, (ie, youtube), and it is important to know about the personal sacrifices that sometimes have to be, and were, made.

A local theatre has been showing little-known WW II films this month (August 2015) on the 70th anniversary of the end of that war, and this film on the British development of radar for the RAF prior to WW II was one of them. I'm interested in the historical development of technology plus I had seen a PBS Nova show several years ago on WW II's spur to radar's development, so I was interested in this BBC production. In addition, Ian Kershaw, a well-respected British historian, wrote the script. I was not disappointed; it was a very enjoyable film for me.I had also seen earlier this year "The Imitation Game" featuring Alan Turing and his team of British mathematicians and codebreakers at Bletchley Park, and the parallels with "Castles" are striking. Both films have groups of unconventional geniuses monitored by class-conscious representatives of Britain's ruling circles and sequestered in rural hideaways where they work under great pressure to help win the war ("Imitation") or prepare for war ("Castles"). Robert Watson Watt, played by Eddie Izzard, is the Alan Turing of "Castles", and although not as eccentric as Turing, is sufficiently unconventional to warrant suspicion and doubt by those in the British government in the late-30s who must trust him with their scarce resources. His idea is to use a series of radio beams: (1) of sufficient strength to echo off incoming objects, e.g., bombers, at a sufficient distance, (2) and of sufficient number to ascertain their direction. The senior officials want him to use the nation's top physicists from Oxford and Cambridge to assist him, but Watt is an engineer for the Meteorological Service and wants to use his fellow "weather engineers" who can think outside-the-box. He gets his way against the rigid class structure of pre-war Britain, and for my money the visible drama of demonstrating radar's efficacy in detecting planes from 60 miles out (as shown in "Castles") is more striking than the drama that unfolds in "Imitation" where the group is finally able to read a coded message. The end of "Castles" shows how well radar has been integrated into RAF's Fighter Command by taking us inside their command centers that are ready to scramble fighters at the first ping on the radarscope on the eve of the Battle of Britain (when the Luftwaffe had three times as many planes at the outset).Modern wars, for better or worse, are said to be won with economic production and technology, and it's thus gratifying to see little-known figures like Watt featured in a film like this. It's sad to compare, however, that Watt was rewarded with a knighthood in 1942 for his pre-war development of radar, while Turing, pledged to secrecy by the British government for his war-time codebreaking, was not honored during his lifetime and apparently committed suicide.

In 5 years, this is only the second review that I have done on IMDb. The reason for this review is that there were only 4 other user reviews and this movie deserves much more so here I am writing a review. I started off watching by myself and a few minutes into the movie my son joined me. My son is an action movie buff and will usually leave the room if it isn't action so I was surprised to find him still there at the end of 'Castles In the Sky'. Not only was he still there, he initiated a discussion about the movie with respect to his new-found know knowledge of just how important radar was in helping Britain win the second world war. This movie was also very inspiring since Robert Watts developed radar in the face of adversity and very much to his credit, he was able to overcome many obstacles while under immense pressure. I know that myself and my son left this movie with a 'can- do' attitude. The acting was superb and even though it was a dark time for England, there was some light-hearted scenes which were thoroughly enjoyed by both of us. I can absolutely state that this movie is a good movie that I would highly recommend to others.

I guess I enjoyed this film because of its theme - RADAR - rather than the cinematic dimensions. I worked in the BBC's engineering department many years ago and could identify the challenges of inventing something new with limited resources.Having said that I thought Eddie Izzard did a really good job despite other people's criticism or his wobbly accent. His acting was believable and carried the passion that Robert Watson-Watt must have had to press through to an operational system. I liked the themes of teamwork, toxic relationships, camaraderie, not giving up, working to deadlines. As another reviewer mentioned, there was good use of symbolism if you were open to see it. The weakest part for me was the relationship between Robert and his wife played by Laura Fraser. Seeing her again made me want to watch the wonderful 'A Knight's Tale' with Heath Ledger.I guess the technology challenges added to the score for this. If you like that kind of thing this is a good film to watch.