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Miss World might still go on but it doesn’t go on BBC television and might have been forgotten. And although objectifying people for their looks hasn’t gone away, the idea of selecting women from around the World and parading them in front of judges—like a Meat Market, perhaps, or like Crufts?—seems today like a terrible idea. Even if it was televised in the 80s and was part of growing up in that decade, this film concerns the 1970 contest, which was notable for many reasons, mostly because it was protested by the formative “Women’s Liberation” movement. The film tells the story from their point of view, notably Sally Alexander ( Keira Knightley ). Sally has a daughter from an ex, and at the beginning is being judged by a panel of men because she wants to enrol at a university—and it seems like Oxford or Cambridge. Finally being accepted by the University of London, Sally begins to study history and meets the women who will ultimately form the group with her. However there are ...

This latest Pixar movie manages to be a film that’ll make you examine your relationships, as well as mining solid fantasy and having the feel of an 80s caper film. It references High School comedies with the misfit character; it references those John Hughes type films with an absent father; it even references Indiana Jones. And it references a few more things… The premise is that a kingdom has been devoid of magic for a long time, and so those magical creatures like Dragons, Centaurs and Unicorns are mere creatures. Within a troll family, Ian Lightfoot ( Tom Holland ) turns 16. He is the dorky kid at school, and his older brother Barley ( Chris Pratt ) is into a fantasy role-play board-game. Barley has vague memories of their father, who died when Ian was very young, and Ian clings on to a view of the man—and aspires to be what his father means to him. He makes a list in a notebook (using the r etractable ballpoint pen with the multiple colours ) and ticks them off or crosses ...

Based on the group of ladies who contacted the BBC, leading to the excellent TV series, this is a typically British film: a successor to Calendar Girls and Brassed Off , and of course The Full Monty . It’s about what spouses do when their ‘other halves’ are fighting a war—the second Gulf War, in Afghanistan. And it’s a buddy film about the Colonel’s wife and the Regimental Sergeant Major’s wife. Kate ( Kristin Scott Thomas ) is the former: announcing herself immediately as important and in charge. Lisa ( Sharon Horgan ) is nominally in charge of morale amongst the families: she works in the base’s grocery shop and it monumentally low-key compared to Kate. Lisa has a teenage daughter who is frustrated by life on the base; Kate and the Colonel had a son who was killed in the previous Gulf War. This is why she is focused on taking everyone’s mind of their worries: she takes to it by recommending a choir and by learning how to conduct. Kate unearths a Casio keyboard and, althoug...

This is a film that reminds the viewer of Erin Brockovitch , in which the a woman learned Law in order to take on the people who were polluting the local water supply. This is that, but it’s a different kind of David And Goliath story in that the protagonist is a corporate lawyer for a firm that’s trying to win as a client the very company that it’s going to have to sue. Rob Billot ( Mark Ruffalo ) is that lawyer. Happily married to Sarah ( Anne Hathaway ), and happily working for a firm with Tom Terp ( Tim Robbins ) as his boss, he is contacted by someone who knows his grandmother. The farmer descends on Rob’s office with boxes of videotapes, and although Billot doesn’t really want to get into it, once he takes a cursory look he realises that he can’t let it go. The story is fairly tragic and is all based on true events. To say that your teflon frying pan “is killing you” is a crass summary of the situation, because what the film is about is how a company (Dupont) has so mu...