Stretching from London to the Outer Hebrides and spanning centuries, this movie collection demonstrates .
Benediction
The late Terence Davies, who breathed glorious cinematic life into Scottish author Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s gleaming novel Sunset Song, turned his attention to the life of soldier-turned-pacifist-poet for his final feature. A suitably elegiac film, the central role is shared by lead Jack Lowden and Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi. Handling the long scars inflicted by the horrors of war with great care, as well as Sassoon’s wrangling with both his faith and his sexuality, it’s as heartsore as it is beautifully uplifting.
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Benediction
biography • Historical drama • 2021
biography • Historical drama • 2021
Yardie
After dabbling in music videos, Luther star Idris Elba marked his promising directorial debut feature with this bruising crime drama. Adapted from the bestselling novel of the same name by Jamaican-born British author, it follows D (Antwayne Eccleston as a young man, then I May Destroy You’s Aml Ameen) from Kingston in the ‘70s, to the London borough of Hackney – where Idris grew up – in the ‘80s. Trying to make his way in the city, will he settle down with partner Yvonne (a brilliant Shantol Jackson), or get drawn into drug-fuelled gang violence? Therein lies the tension.
Yardie is streaming until 31 July at SBS On Demand:
Hamlet
Playing the tragic Prince of Denmark is, ironically, a British rite of theatrical passage thanks to the immortal words of William Shakespeare, with the likes of Richard Burton, John Gielgud, Peter O’Toole, Kenneth Brannagh, Papaa Essiedu and Ralph Fiennes all having a go. The incomparable Laurence Olivier set a high bar when he took the role from the stage to the screen with his 1948 adaptation, which he wrote, directed and starred in, opposite the equally magnetic Jean Simmons as Ophelia. It’s a monumental take for the ages.
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Hamlet
drama • 1948
drama • 1948
Ali & Ava
Yorkshire-born filmmaker Clio Barnard brings a documentarian’s eye to her social realist dramas, including the pretty brutal but incredible . This one offers a gentler way in, casting Four Lions star Adeel Akhtar as Ali, an odd jobs man, DJ and all-round drifter who’s separated from his wife. But he finds a spark of connection with lead Claire Rushbrook’s classroom assistant, Ava. A tender exploration of halting romance, the major hurdle comes in the shape of Ava’s young son, who’s picked up bad habits from his deadbeat racist dad.
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Ali & Ava
drama • 2021
drama • 2021
Saint Maud
Rose Glass is well on her way to world domination following the success of her sweaty, sexy sophomore feature Love Lies Bleeding, but she was already on fire with her English seaside-set horror debut. Featuring Morfydd Clark (Galadriel in The Rings of Power) as an ostensibly well-meaning nurse who is suffering from loneliness, things take a turn for the very much worse when she gets increasingly fanatical about ‘saving’ her private patient Amanda, played by Jennifer Ehle. It all goes to hell in one of the most gasp-inducingly great British flicks of recent years.
Saint Maud is streaming now at SBS On Demand:
Limbo
Set on the wind-lashed Western Isles off the coast of Scotland, writer-director Ben Sharrock’s unmooring debut feature is a luminous reckoning with the plight of refugees. British-Egyptian actor Amir El-Masry is magnificently moving as Omar, a broken-souled Syrian musician who can no longer muster the energy to make music while languishing alongside other hopefuls seeking residency but trapped in never-ending bureaucratic loops. The locals are highly suspicious of this transient mob, but more than a little curious too, with shared humanity ultimately shining through. Also look out for Borgen star Sidse Babett Knudsen in a scene-stealing cameo set to a Hot Chocolate bop.
Limbo is streaming now at SBS On Demand:
Gosford Park
The late, impossibly great American director Robert Altman () successfully slipped into the stiff upper lip-mode of a very British murder mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie. And he did so in fine company, with the ridiculously stacked cast including a pre-Downton Abbey Maggie Smith (the show’s loosely inspired by the film), Kristin Scott Thomas, Michael Gambon, Charles Dance, Helen Mirren, Clive Owen, Richard E. Grant and more joining US young gun Ryan Phillippe in an Oscar-winning whodunnit that revels in class conflict.
Gosford Park is streaming now at SBS On Demand:
The Nest
Canadian filmmaker Sean Durkin (The Iron Claw) has also snuck into this collection, but collaborating with the BBC gets you a pass card, as does casting Jude Law. He plays a dubious British banker living in the US who convinces his American horse-riding teacher wife (Carrie Coon, The Leftovers) to return home with him and their kids. Renting an impressive but irredeemably spooky mansion in Surrey in the deceptively idyllic, but really rather menacing English countryside, things soon start to spiral in this slow-burn suspense movie. Convincingly set in the 80s, it’s a suffocatingly tense relationship drama.
The Nest is streaming now at SBS On Demand:
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The Nest
