The Last Bus movie review: middle of the road
British twee is baked into this slight travelogue. Spall’s performance is lovely, and though the film mostly avoids overt schmaltz in favor of mild sentimentality, it’s gentle to the point of inertia.
Timothy Spall
I’m on BBC World Service’s “The Arts Hour” again, Saturday, September 7th
They like me — they really like me! — at “The Arts Hour” on the BBC World Service radio experience.
Mrs Lowry & Son movie review: portrait of the artist as an abused man
A study of the painter LS Lowry that, with sly whimsy and darkness, finds a universality of the creative psyche via the toxic relationship with his mother, who tried (unsuccessfully) to crush him.
Finding Your Feet movie review: it’s never too late for a fresh start in life
A tart, sharp, life-affirming dramedy, one that is slightly more edgy and far less predictable than it probably has any right to be. Celia Imrie and Imelda Staunton are magnificent.
The Party movie review: bring your own battle
Sally Potter’s brutally snappy take on the classic British drawing-room comedy hauls it into the 21st century with a cutting takedown of the anxieties and hypocrisies of well-off left-wingers.
The Journey movie review: a civil end to war
This fictional dialogue inspired by a private meeting between real-life enemies can’t muster up more than the usual banalities about the ethics of politics and war.
Denial movie review: a film for the resistance
A terrific legal procedural about defending factual truth and smacking dishonest sowers of doubt. An essential film for our era of “alternative facts.”
Mr. Turner movie review: in the concrete abstract
This is no stuffy costume drama but a richly lived-in visit to early-19th-century England that is rough, bawdy, often funny, and more often unsettling.
movies I can’t wait to see at the 58th BFI London Film Festival
LFF is a veritable orgy of cinema, and I love it. It’s exhausting, but I love it.
The Love Punch review: below the belt
The jokes are as creaky as the aching bunions and bad backs onscreen, but Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan are incandescent together.
