period drama
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THE WELL DIGGER’S DAUGHTER
This sentimental old-fashioned French melodrama oozing with charm is a faithful remake of the 1940 original movie penned and directed by novelist turned playwright Marcel Pagnol. This time it is helmed by veteran award winning actor Daniel Auteuil making his directing debut and taking the starring role too. There are no CGI, (computer generated imagery)…
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FAREWELL, MY QUEEN
When the French Peasants stormed the Bastille in Paris on July 14th 1789, their Queen Marie-Antoinette was holding Court elsewhere in the country at the Palace in Versailles. This rather resplendent and engaging costume drama follows the doomed Dauphine’s next three days fuelled by courtier’s gossip as all their lives start to fall apart. The…
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WUTHERING HEIGHTS
The original idea behind this latest movie version (the 17th) of this much beloved romantic 19th Century novel was to give it a glam Hollywood treatment with stars like Natalie Portman and Michael Fassbinder attached to play the leads, but the moment that Brit director Andrea Arnold came on board it was inevitable that this…
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TOAST
The only one food that Nigel Slater’s mother could cook without ruining it was toast, and so consequently this was his staple diet as a young middle-class boy grooming up in Wolverhampton, a town in the British Midlands, in the 1960’s. Late at night Nigel would surreptitiously read cookery books in bed by torchlight pining…