Train, The (1964)

Mrs Brown written by Jeremy Brock, directed by John Madden and starring Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Billy Connolly as her servant, John Brown, is a Masterpiece Theatre costume drama, based fairly faithfully on true events, which has found its way onto the big screen and manages, in spite of all expectations, not to…

Judy Berlin by Eric Mendelsohn is chiefly worth seeing for the performance of Edie Falco (Carmela Soprano on the HBO’s series about New Jersey gangsters) in the title role, and for its affectionate portrait of suburban Long Island, though nothing much happens in it. Also notable is the performance of the late Madeline Kahn in…

Post Coitum Animal Triste, directed by Brigitte Roüen, stars Miss Roüen herself as Diane, a publisher married to the decent but boring lawyer, Philippe (Patrick Chesnais). She suddenly falls passionately in love with the much younger Emilio (Boris Terral) — a hydraulic engineer who goes about doing good, bringing water to the third world. What…

In Les Misérables, directed by Bille August, it is the film itself which turns out to be misérable: thin and poor and wretched and in need of feeding up. The one thing you don’t want to skimp on when you are filming an epic is the epic proportions. August, a fine director of intense and…

A beautiful and profound meditation on the claims of a very little, very fragile human life upon eternity

A chick-flick for women of a certain age — and a certain age greater than their emotional one