Everybody loves a nostalgia trip but the key to loving nostalgia is having actually lived through the subject of interest, otherwise it's like sitting through a distant relative's endless slideshow of a long forgotten holiday. And such is Terence Davies' ode to Liverpool, his town of origin; a presentation of reel after reel of archive footage overlaid with a rather pompous and laborious narration which sounds much like a formal poetry recital (which is not entirely inappropriate given that is what much of it is).

Of Time And The City is an extremely personal recount and longing (not unjustifiably so) for the values of a bygone era and specifically the changing face of Liverpool from the pre-wartime toils of domesticity to the architectural ruin and graffiti of contemporary times; from the post war rubble of terrace houses to the rise of apartment blocks; from regal excesses in the face of social poverty to the birth place of contemporary vapid popular music (the rise of the Beatles drove the director to classical music appreciation); the implicit question being, "how did it all come to this?" But being more "diary" than "documentary", the target audience for this love song is a restricted one, however for those who lived through it (or times like it) this film will likely be of immense interest.

5 out of 10.