Keyword Archive:
Great Britain

The Damned United (2009)

Monday, June 13th, 2011

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I wasn’t on that particular job.

When Brian Clough (Michael Sheen) takes over as manager of the Leeds United football club in 1974, he seems less interested in preparing them to play and more focused on punishing the team for the sins of its previous coach, his personal bête noire, Don Revie (Colm Meaney).

The Damned United

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Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Thursday, May 26th, 2011

It’s a matter of professional integrity! No girl wants to marry a doctor who can’t tell if a man’s dead or not!

What do you do when the lead actor gives a good performance, but he’s still just all wrong for the movie? Robert Downey, Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes is lively, colorful and fun to watch, but ultimately failed to make me think of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Game's Afoot

In the end, Guy Ritchies’ take on the Holmes mythos is a handsomely executed, entertaining action movie with a Victorian setting, but every time “Holmes” stepped on screen, I kept expecting him to strap on an iron suit and start fighting terrorists.

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Henry V (1989)

Sunday, November 25th, 2007

Gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves acursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap.

Just 29 when he made this, Kenneth Branagh fired a shot across the bow of no less a figure than Laurence Olivier, who had, forty-five years earlier, also directed and starred in his own adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play. Olivier’s version, made in wartime, was intended as a patriotic rallying cry for a weary nation. Branagh’s grittier, more ambiguous version is no less accomplished, although it could stand to be slightly better paced.

We few. We happy few. We band of brothers.

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The Queen (2006)

Sunday, July 15th, 2007

Will someone please save these people from themselves!

The Queen is the story of the near-eternal struggle between tradition and modernity. The bare plot outline of Stephen Frear‘s thoughtful portrait of the Great Britain in the throes of that struggle probably does not excite the casual moviegoer, but this quietly engrossing drama is anything but dull or sedate.

The Queen

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The Great Muppet Caper (1981)

Thursday, December 8th, 2005

Listen, nothing’s going to happen. This is just the opening credits.

This follow-up to 1979‘s The Muppet Movie is a little heavier on the plot and a little lighter on the celebrity cameos but otherwise quite similar in tone. More important, it’s just as funny in the same lightly sophisticated but still kid friendly way.

The Great Muppet Caper

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Yes (2004)

Sunday, November 27th, 2005

There’s no such thing as nothing, not at all.

Sally Potter, the writer and director of Yes, has Something Important to say. Sadly, whatever message she was attempting to deliver gets lost among the gimmicks that call too much attention to themselves. It doesn’t help that the main characters are hollow ciphers asked to carry the burdens of their respective cultures.

Yes

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