Benedetta

I know this sounds mad, but I actually thought that Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation of Immodest Acts: The life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy by Judith C Brown was (for him) actually quite restrained. It’s northern Italy around the turn of the 17th Century and the abbey of Terantia is running along quite nicely…

Compartment No.6

If you’d asked me before this film if I ever entertained a hankering to see the Petroglyphs of Murmansk, I would probably have looked blankly at you and mumbled “the what of where?” But having spent nearly two hours in the company of Laura and Ljoha as they journeyed north by rail, thro a Russian…

Operation Mincemeat

I should start by saying that my family owes a great personal debt to the characters who devised and implemented this particular Second World War special operation. My father was serving with the 8th Army in North Africa and would join forces with others in the Mediterranean theatre to launch the Allied invasion of Sicily…

True Things

Based on the book by Deborah Kay Davies and intended as an intense study of a toxic relationship, Harry Wootliff’s second feature (after Only You) will be remembered for featuring a world record number of shots of Tom Burke’s naked buttocks. (They seem to be everywhere just at the moment and I’m pretty sure they…

The Phantom of the Open

Move over Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards. In the pantheon of films about heroic British sporting failures there’s a new kid on the block. Meet Maurice Flitcroft (Mark Rylance) a crane driver from Barrow-in- Furness who takes up golf aged 46 and embarks on an Odyssey to contest the Open Championship. You know he’s not quite…