Foxcatcher
BBBB (out of 5) The true story of wrestling champions Mark and David Schultz is brought to the screen by Bennett Miller, reuniting with Capote writer Dan Futterman (here sharing credit with E.… Continue reading
Tag Archive: Vanessa Redgrave
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Atonement
BB.5 (out of 5) A classic example of a film that does not equal the sum of its parts. With strong direction, a solid cast, excellent dialogue (Christopher Hampton adapted the novel by Ian… Continue reading
Mother’s Boys
BB.5 (out of 5) Ridiculous, gynophobic thriller about a family being terrorized by a jealous ex-wife and mother (Jamie Lee Curtis). Good dad Peter Gallagher is trying to get on with his life following… Continue reading
Anonymous
B.5 (out of 5) Goodness knows there’s no one I trust more for revelations of history’s errors than the director of The Patriot and Independence Day. In this empty-headed drama, we find out… Continue reading
Cradle Will Rock
BBBB (out of 5) Excellent ensemble comedy about the real life Red Scare events surrounding the birth and quick disappearance of the Federal Theatre Program in the 1930s, a program designed to bring… Continue reading
Isadora
BBBB.5 (out of 5) Vanessa Redgrave gives one of her most electrifying performances in this fascinating biography of modern dancer Isadora Duncan. Never having had any rigorous, traditional training, Duncan wowed the world with… Continue reading
Morgan! A Suitable Case For Treatment
BBBB (out of 5) Vanessa Redgrave made her starring debut in this hilariously cracked British comedy. David Warner plays an oddball chap who is obsessed with communism and dressing up like a gorilla. His… Continue reading
The Pledge
BB.5 (out of 5) Jack Nicholson plays a retiring police officer whose small town is shocked by the rape and murder of a little girl on the night of his retirement party. Deciding to… Continue reading
A Rumor Of Angels
BB.5 (out of 5) A young boy (Trevor Morgan) spends his summer at Cape Cod reliving the memory of the car accident that took his mother’s life. Emotionally reclusive from his absent father… Continue reading
Girl, Interrupted
BBB.5 (out of 5) Some audience members might resist this all-girl version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, but it is often a delicate and touching portrayal of adolescent unhappiness. Winona Ryder gives… Continue reading
Deep Impact
BB.5 (out of 5) The insults to human intelligence that hurl themselves your way one after the other in this loser action film are way deadlier than the meteor that threatens to destroy… Continue reading
Merci Dr Rey! (Merci Docteur Rey)
BBBB (out of 5) Despite the fact that his mother is the most famous opera diva in the entire world, young Thomas (Stanislas Merhar) has been avoiding telling her that his girlfriend is… Continue reading
Evening
BB.5 (out of 5) Vanessa Redgrave lies in palliative care awaiting the end, her mind a sea of emotions and memories that neither she nor her two devoted daughters (Natasha Richardson, Redgrave’s real-life… Continue reading
Deja Vu
BBB.5 (out of 5) Victoria Foyt (Jaglom’s real life wife and co-writer) strikes up a conversation with an older woman while on vacation in Jerusalem, and is given a pair of clips that the… Continue reading
A Month By The Lake
BBBB (out of 5) Sweet romantic film, beautifully photographed and excellently adapted from the novella by H.E. Bates. Vanessa Redgrave plays a single tourist revisiting her favourite resort in Lake Como, one she often… Continue reading
Yanks
BBB (out of 5) ‘The Yanks are overpaid, oversexed and over here!’ were just some of the slogans uttered by British citizens during World War II, when American soldiers were posted in England… Continue reading
A Quiet Place In The Country (Un Tranquillo Posto Di Campagna)
BB.5 (out of 5) Abstract painter Franco Nero decides that city life makes completing his latest gallery of works far too difficult. He asks his married agent and lover (Vanessa Redgrave) to rent a… Continue reading
The Devils
BBBB.5 (out of 5) The other fantastic film that Ken Russell made (besides Women In Love) is this brilliant tale of religious persecution and debauchery, based on the play by John Whiting which… Continue reading
The Butler
BB.5 (out of 5) When Barack Obama was voted in to the White House in 2008, the first African American ever to take the highest office in the land and the breath of… Continue reading
Venus
BBBB (out of 5) Screenwriter Hanif Kureishi (My Beautiful Laundrette, The Mother) continues his exploration of unusual relationships with this beautiful chamber piece about age and beauty. Three retired actors are thrown into… Continue reading
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
BBBB.5 (out of 5) One of the most entertaining and memorable Sherlock Holmes film adventure. Holmes checks himself in as a patient of Sigmund Freud’s to cure his cocaine addiction at the prompting… Continue reading
A Man For All Seasons
BBBB (out of 5) The Best Picture Oscar winner of 1966 is this powerful adaptation of Robert Bolt’s thought-provoking play. It takes place in the court of King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw), who… Continue reading
Julia (1977)
BBBB.5 (out of 5) Until writing her autobiographical book Pentimento, upon which this terrific drama is based, Lillian Hellman never included her childhood friendship with a World War II freedom fighter in any… Continue reading
Camelot
BBB (out of 5) Following the success of My Fair Lady, Jack L. Warner put his studio right to work on filming Lerner and Loewe’s next Broadway musical hit, based on The Once… Continue reading
Wilde
BB.5 (out of 5) According to director Brian Gilbert, Oscar Wilde never had a normal moment in his life–everything he says or does in this film is always perfectly spoken, perfectly lit and… Continue reading
Coriolanus
BB (out of 5) One of Shakespeare’s least-known plays is adapted to the big screen by actor/director Ralph Fiennes, playing the Roman general who goes back and forth in popularity with his people… Continue reading
Murder On The Orient Express
BBBB (out of 5) The seventies saw a few Agatha Christie murder mysteries made into films, and this is the most celebrated of them all. While riding a train through Europe after solving… Continue reading
Mission: Impossible
BBBB (out of 5) Brian De Palma has done a great job with bringing the classic sixties television show to a nineties sensibility, and he’s got a veritable movie star like Tom Cruise… Continue reading
Prick Up Your Ears
BBBB (out of 5) Terrific drama about playwright Joe Orton, based on John Lahr’s play of the same name. The film follows Orton (Gary Oldman) from his early days living with his parents… Continue reading
Howards End
BBBBB (out of 5) The team at Merchany Ivory productions complete their E.M. Forster trilogy after A Room With A View and Maurice and save the best for last with this phenomenally good… Continue reading
The Bostonians
BBBB (out of 5) Henry James’s novel is given first-class treatment by the team of Merchant Ivory. Vanessa Redgrave plays the leader of a group of nineteenth-century Americans dedicated to the advancement of… Continue reading
The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe
BB.5 (out of 5) Oppressively weird little film from the production house of Merchant Ivory, with British actor Simon Callow directing an American drama as if it took place on another planet. Vanessa… Continue reading
Looking For Richard
BB.5 (out of 5) Self-indulgent examination of Shakespeare’s bloodbath tragedy Richard III has Al Pacino directing a semi-documentary of himself preparing for a production of the play, while interviewing some famous Hollywood faces about… Continue reading
Lulu On The Bridge
BB.5 (out of 5) This romantic drama with touches of science-fiction has moments of pure loveliness but doesn’t maintain its intensity throughout. Harvey Keitel plays a jazz musician whose career is taken away from… Continue reading
Oh! What A Lovely War
BB.5 (out of 5) Already a celebrated actor, Richard Attenborough made his directorial debut with this bloated, partly enjoyable war epic. Based on the stage play of the same name, it re-imagines the first… Continue reading
Smilla’s Sense Of Snow
BBB.5 (out of 5) Julia Ormond is fantastic in this story about a half-Inuit woman living in Copenhagen who believes a little boy’s accidental death in her apartment building was more than just accidental.… Continue reading
The House Of The Spirits
BB.5 (out of 5) Unfortunate waste of an excellent possibility. Isabel Allende’s epic novel has been turned into a melodrama of confusion by Danish director Bille August, a filmmaker who should never have… Continue reading
The Trojan Women
BB.5 (out of 5) This stagey but engaging adaptation of the ancient drama by Euripides is probably the least effective of the films that Michael Cacoyannis made of the great tragedian’s works. It… Continue reading
Searching For Debra Winger
BBB.5 (out of 5) Alternately fascinating and disappointingly shallow, this terrific concept has Rosanna Arquette interviewing successful women in Hollywood about being female in the male-dominated movie business. Her inspiration was the news that… Continue reading
Mrs. Dalloway
BBBBB (out of 5) There’s probably nothing more challenging for a screenwriter than to bring to life a novel that thrives on interior monologue. Eileen Atkins (an actress as well as writer) rises… Continue reading
Agatha
BBB (out of 5) Unfairly panned, this enjoyable film concerns the real-life mystery of the twelve days during which Agatha Christie disappeared without a trace and returned with no explanation (a secret she… Continue reading
Blow-Up
BBBBB (out of 5) Michelangelo Antonioni’s first film in the English language, starring David Hemmings as a fashion photographer who examines random photographs he has taken while walking through the park and discovers clues… Continue reading
Little Odessa
BBB.5 (out of 5) Deeply felt gangster drama chronicles the destruction of an entire family thanks to one member’s life in organized crime. A Russian Jewish family in Brooklyn are dominated by a… Continue reading