Teenager Colin Smith (Tom Courtenay) is taken to a detention center for juvenile delinquents where the man in charge, the Governor (Michael Redgrave), discovers his talent for long-distance running. With his documentary background, director Tony Richardson became the right person to make one of the key films of the ”angry young man” movement of the … Continue reading The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
SUBTLY, FASCINATINGLY… CORRUPTION BY CORRUPTION… THE SERVANT BECOMES MASTER… Young Londoner Tony (James Fox) hires Hugo (Dirk Bogarde) as his manservant, but Tony’s girlfriend (Wendy Craig) is suspicious of him and the relationship between master and servant begins to change discreetly… The first of director Joseph Losey’s three collaborations with Harold Pinter is the most … Continue reading The Servant
In the 1920s, two women (Judy Davis, Peggy Ashcroft) journey from England to India where their fiancé and son is a magistrate; eventually, they befriend a doctor (Victor Banerjee), but it has startling consequences… Director David Lean’s last film (after a 14-year long break) was based on a book and a play adaptation putting colonial … Continue reading A Passage to India
A SPY STORY… A LOVE STORY… A STORY TO CROSS ALL BOUNDARIES. After receiving a mysterious manuscript from a Soviet woman (Michelle Pfeiffer), British publisher ”Barley” Scott Blair (Sean Connery) is interrogated by MI6 and later sent as a spy to the Soviet Union to find a man called ”Dante”. A spy thriller with appealing … Continue reading The Russia House
Director Richard Ayoade’s follow-up to his debut, Submarine (2011), is equally grim and bleak in tone, as we follow a worker (Jesse Eisenberg) who’s living in a very drab society; everyone around him either puts him down or don’t even recognize his presence. That changes when a new guy is hired at the office who … Continue reading The Double
It happens, although not very often, that a filmmaker creates two masterpieces in a row. James Ivory and his team had barely released and received Oscars for Howards End (1992) when they made The Remains of the Day. Perhaps it comes as no surprise that virtually everyone who was involved in the E.M. Forster adaptation … Continue reading Remains of the Day: Duty Above All
Madonna’s second film as director follows two separate stories that are romantically connected – the love affair between Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, and a New Yorker’s (Abbie Cornish) budding fascination with it 50 years later. Madonna’s ambitions are high, but her way of presenting the stories is clumsy and unnecessarily pretentious, without ever allowing … Continue reading W.E.
West Yorkshire, 1980; an outsider (Paddy Considine) is brought into the local police force in an attempt to inject fresh blood into the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, but he’s not welcomed with open arms. The middle part of this trilogy is the most “cinematic” of the films, delivered in widescreen by the innovative director … Continue reading Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980
NOTHING ESCAPES HIM. One of Sherlock Holmes’s (Robert Downey, Jr.) most dangerous enemies, Blackwood (Mark Strong), is finally caught and executed, but that isn’t the last of him. One of the most oft-filmed characters ever invented was brought back for this high-concept take that could have been written by the showrunners of House; the relationship … Continue reading Sherlock Holmes
SOMETIMES IT’S HARD TO SAY NO. Gangster Gal Dove (Ray Winstone) has retired and moved to Spain; one day a former partner-in-crime of his, Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), shows up to bully him into doing one more job. The opening sequence, where a boulder almost kills Winstone, is wickedly absurd, and there are other symbolic … Continue reading Sexy Beast
THE FAIRY TALE IS ABOUT TO GET REAL. The Prince of Denmark (Luke Mably) goes to a college in Wisconsin to study without telling anyone who he is; he falls in love with an unwitting girl (Julia Stiles). Director Martha Coolidge’s first film in almost a decade is a cute fairy tale for preteens in … Continue reading The Prince & Me
THE FACTORY OPENS JULY 2005. When the reclusive Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) opens his mysterious chocolate factory to the public for the first time in many years, young Charlie (Freddie Highmore) becomes one of five lucky children to get invitations. Tim Burton introduces the amazing Roald Dahl original to a new generation and cleverly combines it … Continue reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
