Drama > Gambon, Michael Drama > up to 5 GBP

Backstage Back-Stabbing

Advantages: Great performances backed up by a witty script and fabulous production design
Disadvantages: Has been largely ignored at the cinema

...bitches in your house…”), that being said, the more realistic speech is well realised. Though the film focuses on the central performance, there is sufficient character development for the other protagonists to seem consistent, if not entirely realistic. Szabó has assembled a solid cast that consists of well-respected thespians and new faces, who acquit themselves well in the face of more experienced actors. The cinematography by Lajos Koltai revels ...
...beautiful people, whilst skimming over the squalor that underpins it all. The characters all put on a public face whilst keeping their private lives to themselves and more than one of them has a secret they are keeping from others. This is illustrated by the games Julia plays; when fully made-up she is playing a role, whether it be actress, mother, wife or lover, but as soon as the mask of make-up is removed, she is nothing more than a vulnerable ...

afy9mab 08.12.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Being Julia (DVD)

Layer Cake Film Review

Advantages: Characters
Disadvantages: Gets compared to the American flicks

...debut with British gangster flick Layer Cake, an adaptation of J.J. Connolly's novel. Daniel Craig stars as "XXXX", who proclaims himself as a "businessman" rather than a gangster (he hates guns and prefers to keep a low profile). His original plan is to retire from the cocaine business for good, but before he can do that he must first search for his boss’s runaway junkie daughter and attempt to settle a massive drug deal gone badly wrong. As the ...
...you didn't know already). Layer Cake never really threatens to topple some of America's finest gangster flicks, but it never really attempts to. It has its own distinctive style: it's neither overly gory nor overly bleak; instead, it's memorable for its touches of intelligence and humour. It prefers the laid-back approach to the "smash-bang-wallop" approach, and although it won't stand out among the endless catalogue of hits in the same genre, you ...

andycarrington 11.08.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Layer Cake (DVD)

Breasts And Guns

Advantages: Easy to follow and light-hearted
Disadvantages: Slightly camp at times

For anyone who has read any of my other film reviews this one will be more of an advert than a proper review because of the circumstances surrounding my viewing of the film. Minnie Driver is one of the main stars in this British crime-comedy all about two ladies who try to blackmail a gang of crooks with strange and highly amusing consequences. Driver plays an English nurse who lives with her best-friend and unemployed - blonde bimbo - actress ...
...it's nationality these days, who is played by Mary McCormack. Anyway. They get the number of a bloke they meet and one night they think they hear a bank robbery going on. They report it to the police who in true English fashion ignore the report. Anyway, the robbery did happen and the two hapless heroines piece together the pieces. Using a mobile number they were given they set up a deal worth 300,000 pounds and then wait. Well the deal goes awry ...

Craggles84 30.04.2003 · Read full review
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Review of High Heels And Low Lifes (DVD)

Whistleblower

Advantages: Intense, eye-opening, thrilling
Disadvantages: Dodgy camera shots

Al Pacino plays the journalist and Russell Crowe is Jeffrey Wigand, a former executive of tobacco company, Brown & Williamson & a whistleblower. The Story Jeffrey returns home, dejected & humiliated. He has just been fired from his job. But worse is to follow when he is approached by a journalist filled with questions about a document on cigarettes & fire safety belonging to another company. He is concerned to mention a confidentiality agreement ...
...legal action & to withdraw the ‘severance package’ of benefits he had from them. Then the threats draw closer to home, becoming more intimidating & more sinister. In order to escape the limitations on what he can say, Jeffrey must be legally obliged to breach the confidentiality agreement. However, a restraining order is made in the court of Kentucky against Wigand preventing him from doing so when he agrees to testify in a court of Mississippi about ...

Ayesha- 01.06.2007 · Read full review
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Review of The Insider (DVD)

Altman does British Costume Drama to Perfection

Advantages: A really good film with a great cast
Disadvantages: None

Gosford Park is an old fashioned English film made by one of the great American auteurs of the twentieth century, Robert Altman. It has a huge array of acting talent involved and was released in 2001 to critical acclaim, at the time it won best original screenplay at the Oscars as well as a Bafta for the Best British Film, it was also lauded as a return to form for Altman whilst Julian Fellowes received similar praise for his script. Ok so that's ...
...Set in 1932, Gosford Park is a wonderfully elegant English country estate. Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) and Lady Sylvia McCordle (Kristen Scott Thomas) gather their closest friends and relations for a weekend shooting party. The film follows the various eclectic guests who have come for the weekend as well as the staff during this hectic weekend. The film is a comedy of manners and class, it has elements of farce and sex, as well as a murder. ...

paulie1975 29.09.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Gosford Park (DVD)