Salon.com > British film

“The Iron Lady”: Meryl Streep’s bravura turn as Maggie Thatcher

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:00:00 +0000

It's easy to take Meryl Streep for granted, and to view her uncanny ability to disappear inside virtually any kind of character as a form of shtick or a parlor trick. It's perfectly true that Streep has an appetite for larger-than-life characters and a natural instinct for showmanship, and that she's often at her best in mediocre or even sloppy films. But we shouldn't allow that to obscure the fact that she's one of the greatest stage and screen actresses of her time, or anybody else's time. (Indeed, Streep is something like the female Laurence Olivier, with the proviso that she made a far smoother transition to movie stardom than Sir Larry did.)

“The King’s Speech”: Colin Firth’s Oscar-bound performance

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 02:01:00 +0000

I went to "The King's Speech" completely prepared to dig in and resist it: a British period piece, suffused with imperial nostalgia, about a member of the royal family nobly battling a disability. Trustworthy people told me they loved it, but I knew better. Could such a movie be anything but sentimental claptrap, a prettified picture of a long-gone era when kings behaved like kings and commoners knew their place, shamelessly crafted to lure Oscar voters?

Maybe not. There's nothing I can tell you about "The King's Speech" that contradicts that description, except that resistance is futile. It's a warm, richly funny and highly enjoyable human story that takes an intriguing sideways glance at a crucial period in 20th-century history. Its star performance, and probably the best reason to see it, comes from Colin Firth as the monumentally awkward Prince Albert, or Bertie, who became King George VI unexpectedly in 1936 after his older brother, Edward VIII (Guy Pearce), abdicated to marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson (Eve Best).

“Made in Dagenham”: A patronizing film about working-class feminism

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 18:01:00 +0000

It's not like "Made in Dagenham" marks the first time a fascinating historical episode has been made into mediocre melodrama. Moviemakers have ransacked history since the medium was invented, but the combination too often results in bad movies and bad history. You can't even call "Made in Dagenham" bad -- it's a competent entertainment, built around an enjoyable performance by the superb English actress Sally Hawkins (Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"). But it does manage to take a crucial turning point in feminist and labor history -- an event loaded with ambiguous significance -- and render it into one of those gang-of-gals movies full of bicycles, reggae songs, underwear shots and scenes of emotional growth. (Memo to producers: You can't use Jimmy Cliff's "You Can Get It if You Really Want" in your movie. You just can't. It is against the law.)

Pick of the week: “Down Terrace”

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 11:01:00 +0000

If I use the phrase "crime family drama," you have a pretty good idea what to expect, right? I mean, they vary somewhat: There are the Corleones and the Sopranos, the high-living Triad clans of Hong Kong cinema, the brutal, black-suited thugs of the Tokyo yakuza. Australian director David Michôd recently showed us a downscale, suburban Melbourne version in this year's art-house hit "Animal Kingdom."

But I guarantee you've never seen a crime film like "Down Terrace," a strange and dry low-budget blend from English director Ben Wheatley, or a crime family like the one headed by the father-and-son team of Bill and Karl (played by real-life father and son Robert and Robin Hill). We get the impression that Bill, a 60ish guy with close-cropped steel-wool hair and a feral visage, is a major drug dealer in an unnamed English provincial city. (It's Brighton, on the south coast.) But for at least the first half of the movie, he does nothing that even hints at serious criminality. He seems like an aging, impotent, vaguely erudite hippie who sits around smoking bowls and boring people with his monologues about Timothy Leary and Tibetan meditation.

“Exit Through the Gift Shop”: Art-world rebel Banksy exposed (almost)

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:55:00 +0000

Sincerity always poses problems for the news media. Maybe the press has professionally inoculated itself with a vigorous blend of skepticism and cynicism, and maybe it's just grown ever more fearful of being punked by pranksters, celebrities and presidents. One can only wish the New York Times had viewed the Bush administration's call to war with half the caution with which it has approached "Exit Through the Gift Shop," the new documentary made (or presided over, or something) by the mysterious British street artist Banksy.

Commentators for the Times, National Public Radio and elsewhere have become hypnotized by the question of whether this fascinating and often exciting film about the global rise of guerrilla art, Banksy's own career as a provocateur and the genesis of a sub-Banksy pop artist called Mr. Brainwash might itself be some kind of meta-fictional Banksy prank. I felt some of the same anxiety after first seeing "Exit Through the Gift Shop" a few months ago at Sundance, but I now think that reaction dramatically misses the point of the film.

The British indie explosion

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:08:00 +0000

From left, Tom Hardy in "Bronson," Michael Sheen in "The Damned United" and Carey Mulligan in "An Education"

Is it pure coincidence that three of the fall season's best movies are opening right on top of each other -- and that all three are products of Britain's suddenly resurgent indie-film industry? I'm voting both yes and no. It's coincidence in the sense that the film-release calendar seems to operate according to laws that aren't just random but positively irrational: It verges on marketplace suicide to open these three movies at the same time, but here they are. What's not coincidence is that the film biz in post-imperial, post-Tony Blair Britain is riding a hot streak, cranking out splashy, stylish, audience-friendly flicks that bear no resemblance to the fusty, fussy, Jane Austen-in-lingerie stereotypes of yore.