Film Reviews by SB

This story of the trials and tribulations of growing up as young women in late 50s Ireland, based on a Maeve Binchy book, is better than one might suppose, with a lot of emotional truth. Andrew Davies' script is tight, and most of the performances are good. I did not spot any period mistakes, although the home village looked a bit too scrubbed clean. Minnie Driver carries the lead role well; she had not yet achieved her full unusual beauty, and in any case had to gain weight for the role, but makes a believable attractive young woman beset with tiresome parents, an unwanted admirer and the pangs of first love. As the object of her love, Chris O'Donnell puts in a personable performance. Alan Cumming is suitably obnoxious as the dishonest young man who wants to marry her for his own reasons. Some other performances are more lightweight. Colin Firth does his diffident but callous upper-class thing, and Ciaran Hinds has fun in a few scenes where he shocks students with anthropological stories. The terrors of sex before the Pill are well evoked. Not surprisingly, the Catholic church is not depicted in a positive light, although the film is far from anti-religious.

This is a review of episodes 1-7 only , being those which cover the timescale I am interested in, from the late twenties to the earlier part of the Second World War. Adapted from CP Snow's novels and set in the worlds of the law, academia and the civil service/scientific research, the series needs needs close attention (the books are even more demanding). The locations and backgrounds are well done, and there are many fine performances from character actors in a massive cast.

Unfortunately Shaun Seymour, playing the lead Lewis Eliot, is also really a character actor, and is simply not up to the job of portraying someone who is seldom off-screen. It is not possible to believe the things people say about him or that he would make such an impression on others. He was much better as, say, Lord Hollingford in the BBC 'Wives and Daughters'. The revolting Sheila Ruskin is also a mistake as Eliot's first wife. But there is some redemption in the depths of the war as Eliot finds a lover (played by Cherie Lunghi) who apparently understands him and loves him for his own sake. Nigel Havers as the tortured Roy Calvert is good in a departure from his more usual 'light' roles.

Out of these episodes, the best (not least because Eliot's wife is absent) is probably episode 5, which is based on 'The Master' and is a tightly-focussed examination of college politics in Cambridge. Even this however is much more superficial than the book.

This review is of Episodes 21 onwards, which cover the two novels 'The Prime Minister' and 'The Duke's Children'.

The first thing to say is that this is not Trollope in any real sense. Yes, the characters and main plot outlines are there, but the affectionate authorial commentary is absent and many of the characters are far from being the same as those in the novels. Some characters don't suffer too much from this – Plantagent Palliser, for example, and Lady Glencora, who has too much airtime but is adequately done by Susan Hampshire, an actress whom I dislike but brings out the character's weakness and vanity.

Others fare less well. In 'The Prime Minister' episodes, Lopez is too much the peevish matinee idol, while Emily is reduced to a simpering wife, whereas she is a strong intelligent woman with a sheltered upbringing who is undone by love of a bad man. And her wily curmudgeon of a lawyer father is shown here as just a shrewd English gentleman who feels able to physically push Lopez about. The last of these three episodes (23) is possibly the best.

When we move into episodes 24-26 covering 'The Duke's Children' the general quality is maintained. Susan Hampshire becomes tiresome in her dying, but there is good work from Philip Latham and Anthony Andrews as father and son, and Kate Nicholls as the spirited daughter. Jeremy Irons' part of Frank Tregear is rather underwritten. Some of the seedier characters are played well. Overall, this is a fitting conclusion to the series.

The settings and costuming are appropriately, even lavishly, done and considering that the series is nigh on 50 years old, the technical quality is acceptable. The spaciousness – 26 episodes for the whole series – is of another age.

Coming of age film set in the American suburbs. Very realistic, avoids over-dramatic situations and the cliches of the high school genre. Woody Harrelson gives it some gravitas as the apparently world-weary teacher, and Hailee Steinfield's performance in the lead earned her a Golden Globe nomination. Virtually anyone would recognise some of the emotional difficulties the film portrays, and it would be good viewing for any teenager going through those angst-filled years.

Occasional bad language is realsitic but might annoy some parents.

This is a relatively short and focussed film in a long series of Biblical stories, this one set in the time just after the Jews' captivity in Persia. It is a story of love and court intrigue. The former is simple enough (and very low key since the film is PG certificate), but the latter is a bit difficult to understand at first, mainly because the intriguers are all elderly men with beards. Once the main villain is identified however, all goes well. Louise Lombard hardly looks Jewish, but makes an intelligent and beautiful replacement queen after her predecessor (Ornella Muti, singularly wasted) gets too big-headed and is fired , while F. Murray Abrham tries to be cunning and honest at the same time. It's basically a feel-good film about the origins of the Jewish Purim festival. Nearly all of it is set, fairly credibly, in the King's palace and surrounds, with not many desert scenes.

Joseph Fiennes is well cast as a nasty, weak man who betrays everyone - his wife, his daughters and even the peasant farmer woman who inexplicably lusts after him in this war film. The film blurb does not help audience understanding by implying that the events are those of the 1939 invasion of Poland - when it is actually set in the first part of 1941, just as the Germans are rounding up Polish Jews as part of the ghettoisation programme.

The stifling rural milieu which is the setting after the initial section is well drawn, and Neve McIntosh puts in a fine performance as the younger version of the wife who finds herself having to balance the lives of her daughter and herself against her husband's infidelities and erratic behaviour. Clare Higgins is also good as the older version of the character, part of the film being set in 1971 with quite complex but fairly clear flashbacks.

However, the events in the last twenty minutes of the film are shown in a confusing way, and it does not help viewers that all the characters speak in a dodgy Slavic accent. The somewhat portentous references to the source work add little.

This is not such a mess as some of the other ITV Marple films. Geraldine McEwan makes a good Marple, the period settings are mostly fine if a little too glitzy, and there are some unexpected pleasures such as Simon Callow's splenetic Chief Constable. But once again the producers cannot trust Christie, so we have to endure Joanna Lumley in a much souped-up role as Dolly Bantry, while wasting the talents of James Fox who plays her husband. Ian Richardson is slightly uneasy casting as Conway Jefferson, okay at the start but unconvincing in later more emotional scenes.

Meanwhile the script is amended to have a different murderer from that in the novel, apparently for no better reason than to have a late-signalled lesbian affair and passionate kiss on the beach. The film is worth watching but yet again, see the BBC/Hickson version for the real thing.

This is a review of episodes 1&2 only. The story of Einstein is told through a flashback device, with two parallel timelines, a later one set in the twenties and then the beginning of the Nazi regime in Germany, and an earlier in the 1890s where the young Einstein is battling a conformist education system which recognises his genius but doesn't know what to do with it. He disovers women, and also encounters difficulties there.

Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Flynn (the latter almost unrecognisable) are both quite good as the elder and the younger Einstein respectively - although the age gap between them looks too great for the actual span of years involved. The supporting cast is fine, and the settings in various mid-European cities and universities are well done. You do not need to understand physics, as this is essentially about Einstein vs the world.

This film (the alternative title 'Teenage Bad Girl' gives a less accurate impression) was an attempt to cash in on the 1950s trend for teen-themed films; it explores the angst of raising a 17-year-old daughter who is infatuated with a young man of dubious morals. For most of the film everything is far too decorous - the suburban middle-class milieu of the family, the very restrained young tearaway and so on. Anna Neagle seems a little dim as the mother, and Sylvia Syms in her first film is only adequate. Wilfred Hyde White does his usual patronising uncle type as the magazine owner who employs the mother. The best performance is from Julia Lockwood as the younger daughter - very natural and emotional. The film goes awry when it descends into melodrama in the last half hour.

Some very unlikely things also - for example, the daughter can apparently drive a Bentley with ease through central London although she has never had driving lessons, and the magistrate conducts the court case in a very odd way.

The French title, 'Engrenages' means something like 'gears', and this better describes the script's concentration on the interconnectedness of crime and how every piece of a puzzle needs to be solved.

I have seen every series of this on TV. It is one of the best police procedurals ever made. Intense, realistic, funny, dramatic, set in the real non-tourist Paris, with an exceptional cast who are very believable together. It is exhausting to watch, because it is so engaging.

I should have had great difficulty following the story of this film had I not previously seen the 2022 Anglo/French TV production. Obviously a two-hour film must be more compressed (especially as it covers a longer time period, up to the Revolution) but very little effort is made here to explain who people are, the complex relationships at the courts of Louis XV/XVI, the social/political background, or anything really.

The film has a lot of visual flair, but maybe too much effort was put into that and not enough into the script. Despite all the clothes Kirsten Dunst, a bland actress, makes a bland Marie Antoinette. Her husband is not so much odd as invisible. Amongst the supporting cast Shirley Henderson and Mary Nighy make the best of small opportunities. Steve Coogan does his best as the Austrian ambassador.

After the film has got a bit more into its stride, it loses its way again - the last half hour is very rushed.

Some have complained about the '80s soundtrack, but I found this jarred only on a couple of occasions.

Continuity laziness – Antoinette leaves Vienna in early summer, judging by the trees, but arrives in France, not too far away even by 18th century carriage, in late autumn.

So, just about worth watching but if you want to see it done much better, with Emilia Schule as a superb Marie Antoinette, watch the 2022 TV production.

This is a difficult film to categorise, having elements of comedy, tragedy and meolodrama, so it's better not to try. It's certainly unusual and becomes fairly compulsive viewing after the first 20 minutes or so.

Ralph Fiennes has a role well suited to his persona, and Ms Taylor-Joy uses her beautiful eyes to good effect as usual as the two leads play off each other. Amongst the supporting cast Janet McTeer is good as a pretentious restaurant critic. The film has ambitions to be social commentary on luxury, fine dining, egotism, narcissism, etc but it's probably best to simply watch it for the events which unfold.

One negative about the blu-ray disc – the soundtrack is shockingly bad. My TV sound is usually set at 15-20; I had to turn it up to 50 to hear the dialogue on this disk.

I found it hard to warm to. Charles Boyer seemed to me rather too remote a figure at the start to cause the attachment between him and Ingrid Bergman's character, and some of the underlying premise is not believable. There must be many simpler ways to get at the jewels (or at least try to get at them) in an uninhabited house than going through a marriage, whatever the delights of Bergman. And on that subject, why on earth was she lumbered with such an unflattering hair style for most of the film? Of course she is not just beautiful but also a good actress, but she always seems to be slightly unreal in this role. As for the detective, it is impossible to believe in him as someone from the time period in which the film is set - he could be wanderinga round 1940s New York. Disappointing overall and interesting mainly for historical reasons.

This series (I have only seen Series 1) updates the classic BBC serial in a number of ways, for example by giving the housekeeper Mrs Hall a much more central role, and a past. Generally speaking the tone is warmer but still retains the rural tragedies and funny happenings that accompany farming. Samuel West is suited by a beard and makes a credible head of the practice, but is less dominating than Robert Hardy's Siegfried. The actors who play James and Tristan are perhaps too much like each other. As the ravishing Helen, Rachel Shenton manages to look wonderful even when tramping through the muddy fields, but also gives promise for a wider role in later episodes.

Viewers should be aware that although Disc 1 has episodes 1-4, Disc 2 has only episodes 5&6 plus some extras. The Christmas special which actually rounded off the series is missing, in a penny-pinching move by the distributors. and is instead at the start of Series 2.

Somewhat confusingly the two discs for Series 2 begin with the Christmas Special which was really the end of Series 1 but was omitted from the discs for that series.

In this series the trend towards concentration on people rather than animals becomes more evident. Whether you like this is a matter of individual taste. There's a delicate balance to be struck in this sort of story between pain and pleasure, and maybe it's a little too much feel-good compared with the original BBC series. Again, that's a matter of taste. The cast (with one or two replacements) continue to do good work, especially Anna Madeley as the housekeeper Mrs Hall and Imogen Clawson as Jenny. The directors continue to be happy to indulge in a fondness for pretty landscapes.

The 'special features' are distinctly not special and consist of two small galleries of still pictures.