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Film Review: Mrs Lowry & Son (2019)

Vanessa Redgrave and Timothy Spall are always watchable but Mrs Lowry & Son lacks the quality they deserve

“Anything’s possible living in Pendlebury”

Mrs Lowry & Son has two things going for it, in the shape of up-and-coming names Vanessa Redgrave and Timothy Spall in its two leading roles. Watch out for them, they’re bound to go far etc etc… What this biopic-of-sorts lacks though, is a film to match their talents.

Martyn Hesford has adapted his own radio play for the screen here and Adrian Noble’s direction does little to disguise the static staginess of its very nature. It covers the relationship between renowned artist LS Lowry and his unsupportive bed-ridden mother, at the point where his artistic career has yet to truly flourish. Continue reading “Film Review: Mrs Lowry & Son (2019)”

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DVD Review: Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000)

“I feel so absolutely stumped on the floor”

Proving that not even Kenneth Branagh is infallible when it comes to Shakespearean adaptations, this musical version of Love’s Labour’s Lost sees him really come a cropper. Relocating the story to 1939 on the eve of the Second World War and swapping out three-quarters of Shakespeare’s text for a handful of Cole Porter songs to evoke the feel of a classic Golden Age musical, it is a curiously insubstantial enterprise and at its worst, somewhat smug.

It doesn’t help that the play itself ain’t a classic, as evidenced by the rarity with which it is produced but still, the approach here just doesn’t work. There’s a game cast of actors who are clearly up for it but their every weakness in singing and dancing is left exposed, there’s a paucity of triple threats here which just leaves you wondering why bother? And when you see the amazing moves of Adrian Lester or the sweet tones of Alessandro Nivola’s voice, you get hints of what might have been. Continue reading “DVD Review: Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000)”

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DVD Review: My House in Umbria

“There are, naturally, laughter lines”

As with Ladies in Lavender (which also starred Dame Maggie Smith), early 2000s film My House in Umbria has the distinct air of talcum powder about it, a fustiness that comes its uninspired and frankly tedious ‘niceness’. Richard Loncraine made this film for US cable channel HBO and so some of its overly manneredness could be forgiven as a sop to that market, but it doesn’t change how terribly dated it feels.

Based on a short story by William Trevor, Hugh Whitemore’s screenplay does little to inject any kind of life into the tale, happy instead to potter around lackadaisically. Smith plays Emily Delahunty, a writer of pulpy romance novels who has decamped to the Italian countryside with faithful pal Quinty (Timothy Spall). La bella vita is interrupted though when a bomb explodes on a train she’s on but after she escapes unscathed, she invites the rest of the survivors to recuperate at her villa.  Continue reading “DVD Review: My House in Umbria”