The most traitorous act about this British spy story would be to admit that one didn’t like (Dame) July Dench’s performance as the octogenarian widow suddenly arrested by the Authorities for what she got up to at University in the 1940’s. The hesitation is not a reflection of her in anyway, but in the … Continue reading
I discovered this amusing parody of all those Merchant/Ivory British period costume dramas when researching the work of late great Peter Ustinov, and it rather tickled me to be reminded of how very silly Brit comedies can be. This one is like an EM Forster novel (with a nod to Thomas Mann’s ‘Death in … Continue reading
Suffragette is a new historical drama that makes Hollywood history itself as it is movie about women, made by woman and starring women. Well technically this movie not is actually Hollywood as it is British with one notable exception, and was even financed by British and French money too. But in light of all the … Continue reading
The third part of Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin’s trilogy ‘Love, Death and the Devil’ is a slow-winding powerful globe-trotting epic that follows Nazaret Manoogian (French actor Tahar Rahim) an Armenian blacksmith on his journey to reunite with his family after war has torn them apart. It starts in 1915 when the Turkish Army carry out … Continue reading
It would be wrong to even infer that Brit filmmakers ever play down the sheer atrocities that occurred during WW2, but there is definitely a whole platform of them who somehow make their war dramas seem almost like a squabble between gentleman that has somehow got out of hand. The Exception is very much … Continue reading