Maggie Smith (1934-2024): “I don’t tolerate fools, but then they don’t tolerate me”
She had little time for celebrity, saying: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act and one’s still acting.”
•Paul Bond
British & Irish Films
Wicked Little Letters: A biting comic work, but gilding the lily only weakens it
Colman and Spall in particular know these sorts of lower middle class characters inside out. Their performances would be difficult to improve upon.
•David Walsh
Saltburn: The worm turns
Despite setting off in an intriguing manner, the plot quickly degenerates into forms of deranged sociopathy.
•Penny Smith
Glenda Jackson (1936–2023): “The best theatre is about trying to find and tell the truth”
Her acting was self-critical and unsentimental, driven, director Charles Marowitz said, by a “loathing for lame and easy effects.”
•Paul Bond
The Forgiven: The accidental death of “a nobody”
The 2021 film concerns the consequences of a wealthy couple, on the verge of divorce, accidentally hitting and killing a young boy, while driving to a party in the Moroccan desert.
•Penny Smith
Ali & Ava: A love story between people “ordinarily overlooked”
The film documents the developing relationship between the unusual pair, which encounters a number of obstacles, including family members and different tastes in music.
•David Walsh
In life’s pressure cooker: Boiling Point
Andy’s final collapse is moving because it rings true to all that has gone before both on and off camera.
•Paul Bond
Oppose the right-wing, racialist attack on composer Bright Sheng at University of Michigan
Sheng, the Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor of Composition and a world-class composer, was forced to stop teaching a course after screening Laurence Olivier’s 1965 Othello.
•International Youth and Students for Social Equality at the University of Michigan
Death of British filmmaker Michael Apted at 79, director of Up documentary series, Coal Miner’s Daughter
Film director Michael Apted, who died January 7, was responsible for an intriguing variety of work over his lengthy career. We are reposting here the review of 63 Up as a tribute.
•Paul Bond, Kevin Martinez
Ricky Gervais’ After Life: To be or not to be, that’s one of the questions
Tony Johnson (Gervais) is devastated by the death of his beloved wife Lisa (Kerry Godliman) from breast cancer. He finds it difficult to carry on with life and frequently contemplates suicide.
•David Walsh
Michael Apted’s 63 Up: The ninth film in the remarkable series
The British documentary “Up” series has followed the lives of a group of Britons from age seven up to the present, when they are now all 63. The latest film provides insights into not only their lives, but the nature of the postwar period.
•Kevin Martinez
Wild Rose and Yesterday: A Scottish singer seeks country music fame and a world without the Beatles
Two recent British-made films delve into the field of popular music. Works about such a subject can be a means of getting at social life from an unusual and unorthodox point of view.
•Joanne Laurier
Mike Leigh’s Peterloo: A drama of the British working class
The opening of Peterloo in the US this week and next is an event of some importance. The film was inspired by important ideas and created with great seriousness and artistry.
•David Walsh
An interview with Mike Leigh, director of Peterloo: “You don’t run out of steam if what you do…is to literally hold the mirror up to nature”
The WSWS spoke to British filmmaker Mike Leigh during the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2018.
•David Walsh
Film Review
“Grenfell changed everything”—Failed by the State: The Struggle in the Shadow of Grenfell
A new three-part documentary shows how the Grenfell Tower inferno exposed the realities of class oppression and social inequality in the most brutal way.
•Paul Bond