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Lord Grantham For many years Julian Fellow’s sprawling Edwardian drama was a television staple, beginning with the sinking of the Titanic and its effect on who inherits the Crawley family’s eponymous mansion, the series went through to the 1920s—upstairs and downstairs characters went about their lives as society slowly changed. And even though the whole thing has cinematic heritage in the form of Gosford Park , who’d have thought that this series, which delivered must-see Christmas episodes for a few years, would become a feature film? And who’d have thought that the film would cling to the box office charts for so long? Lady Mary The film begins in the way the first episode of the series started: A letter wends its way from the Royal Household all the way to Downton Abbey, mostly by steam train but also by van and rider before it is passed through various hands before being read by Lord Grantham ( Hugh Bonneville ). The Royal family—George V and Queen Mary—are going ...

Films that feature protagonists who go into space to investigate are a hit-and-miss business, and the reason is probably that the hit is called 2001 A Space Odyssey. That film was followed by its novel, by Arthur C Clarke of course, which was followed by several sequels—but only 2010 was filmed and is a niche film rather than a cult hit. These films are exploring people, and space is simply the setting because… well we’ve discovered the surface of the planet and travelling around it is not much of a challenge. As a civilisation we have reached the point where stirring films about exploring space—from The Right Stuff to Apollo 13 have said all that needs to be said, and First Man has turned the Apollo 11 mission into an exploration of a man and his family. So Ad Astra is in a crowded space, a space that’s clearly not infinite. In Ad Astra there’s the family stuff: Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) confronts the loss of contact with his father, Clifford, who’s far away from Earth ...

There’s a moment right at the start of this incredibly moving film where Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly) walk through the back of a 1930s movie set. One of the staff does the Ollie hair-pull manoeuvre and Stan Laurel dutifully removes his hat and becomes his comedy self for a second. And it is Steve Coogan being Stan Laurel being Laurel’s on-screen persona—absolutely incredible. The pair are two very different men, but Laurel and Hardy at that time were among the most famous in the world. As a pair they worked like a comedy machine: carefully choreographed slapstick comedy as well as traditional song and dance. A famous dance sequence is recreated before the drama sets in: Stan wants to get more money from the studio because he feels that they’re not as valued as, say, Charlie Chaplin. Oliver Hardy was on a different contract, so when he went on to make a film without Laurel, a rift between the pair set in and lasted for decades. The film...

This is an unusual film: it’s a lot like the Sofia Coppola version of Marie Antoinette, a film that had a period setting but a punk aesthetic. Nothing so blatant here, but The Favourite is quite sweary (“strong language” says the BBFC card), quite perverted (“strong sex”) and just… odd. It’s getting attention now because of the Awards Season. Olivia Coleman stars as Queen Anne, whose health is failing as she supervises a waning conflict with France and battling her Parliament and he failing health. She favours Lady Sarah (Rachel Weitz) - a long time friend who seems to be running the country as Anne battles with gout. And then, a formerly aristocratic woman who has fallen on hard times shows up at court. She is Abigail, and Emma Stone is triumphant in the role. The tone of the film is utterly serious, or so it seems, but it gets a little weird fairly quickly—a bit Madness of King George , but then the first c-word. Abigail and Sarah become friends—they bond partly over p...

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