Despite the title, “The Miracle Club” isn’t so much about miracles as it is redemption, faith and uplift.
Set in 1967, in Ballygar, Ireland, this is the story of four women. Chrissie (Laura Linney) left the seaside town for Boston under a cloud forty years before and hasn’t been back. When she returns for her mother’s funeral, she must face the demons of the past, and the people she left behind, including her former BFF Eileen (Kathy Bates) and her late mother’s passive-aggressive best friend Lily (Maggie Smith). Bitterness runs deep between the three, each harboring grudges that have bubbled for four decades.
At a church fundraiser, Father Dermot Byrne (Mark O’Halloran) the local priest and center of religious life in the small town, throws a talent show. The prize is a trip to Lourdes in southwest France. One of the most visited places by Catholics from around the world, it is a pilgrimage site where, since 1858, the faithful have flocked to pray for miracles while bathing in the healing waters where a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous is said to have witnessed visions of the Virgin Mary.
Despite their best efforts at the talent show, Eileen, Lily and new mom Dolly (Agnes O’Casey) come in second, winning a hunk of meat instead of the coveted tickets. The first-place winner, feeling sorry for them, offers his tickets to them, and soon they are boarding the bus for Lourdes. Along for the ride is Chrissie, who uses her mother’s ticket for the trip.
On site in the holy town, miracles are in short supply but the situation forces the three generations of women to confront their pasts and prejudices. “You don’t come to Lourdes for a miracle,” says Father Byrne. “You come for the strength to go on when there is no miracle.”
“The Miracle Club” isn’t about divine agency. Nothing miraculous happens, excepting the power of truth and compassion to heal the long-simmering wounds each of these women carry. Their shared trauma (NO SPOILERS HERE) overwhelms their lives, forming who they are as people. The actors imprint each of these characters with the cumulative weight of their lives, willing Eileen, Lily and Chrissie into stubborn life, despite a script that attempts to keep them as stereotypes.
It is these performances that give “The Miracle Club” much of its power to engage with the audience. It is in each of their abilities to imply the inner lives of the characters without necessarily verbalizing them, that shows how deeply they have been devastated by past events. That, and the movie’s evocative sense of time and place, create the backdrop for the more pedestrian story in the foreground.
The title, “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” promises a moving-forward of the big screen adventures of the aristocratic Crawley family. Fans want more story, but progress? That’s something else.
The popular television series and 2019 film delivered a preserved-in-amber glimpse at melodramatic “Upstairs, Downstairs” classism mixed with some laughs, a touch of sentimentality and expertly delivered barbs from Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess. Fans embraced the illusion of high-mindedness and the fantasy of life at the mansion.
For enthusiasts, a return to Downtown is a creature comfort, like a cup of hot tea with a warm crumpet. You don’t have it often, but when you do, you want it to taste exactly the same as it always has. The presentation can be tweaked, but the essence must be untouched.
Director Simon Curtis and writer Julian Fellows, seem to understand what fans expect, and deliver. It may be predictable, but narrative complacency is part of its appeal for folks who spent six seasons on television getting to know these characters.
The story begins in 1929 as the Dowager Countess of Grantham inherits a beautiful villa on the Cotes d’Azur from a long-ago admirer. The family, Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), Lady Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern), Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael), Tom (Allen Leech), Lucy (Tuppence Middleton) and the ever-dutiful Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) pack up there best and head to the South of France. “They better be warned,” says Mr. Carson, “the British are coming.”
Once there, a mysterious locket appears to hold the key to a long-withheld family secret and a decades-old “idyllic interlude.”
Meanwhile back at Downton Abbey, an expensive roof repair convinces Lord Grantham to allow a film crew to shoot in the grand old mansion in return for a large rental fee. The downstairs workers are excited but Grantham’s enthusiasm is muted. “I think it’s a horrible idea,” he snorts. “Actresses plastered in make-up and actors just plastered.” Still, the roof is leaking and soon the house’s grand rooms are overrun by a film crew, including director Jack Barber (Hugh Danccy) and his stars, matinee idol Guy Dexter (Dominic West) and the glamorous Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock). “We got through the war,” groans the Dowager Countess. “We can get through this.”
Later in the film the Dowager Countess says that life is about “getting past the unexpected.” That may apply to life at the Abbey, but it certainly doesn’t apply to the movie because there is nothing unexpected about anything that happens in the film’s two-hour running time. A better title may have been “Downton Abbey: Fan Service,” because it is a crowd-pleasing slow simmering stew of favorite ingredients, with no extra spice or flavorings. It is what the fans expect, no more but sometimes less.
“Downton Abbey: A New Era” is a plucky, stiff upper lipped movie meant for devotees who will likely excuse the filmmaking, which is as dry as a day-old scone at tea time.
Near the end of “Downton Abbey,” the big screen finale to the widely popular slice of British upper-class life, Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern) coos, “I do love our adventures.” I imagine the vast majority of the audience will nod in silent agreement, basking in the reflected glow of highly polished silverware in this very fan friendly film.
The story picks up shortly after the end of the television series. Inside the mammoth country house that gave the show its name Earl Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) sips tea and trades barbs with his acid tongued mother the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith), his wife Cora at his side. Daughters Edith (Laura Carmichael) and Mary (Michelle Dockery) are married to the 7th Marquess of Hexham (Harry Hadden-Paton) and Henry Talbot (Matthew Goode) respectively. Son-in-Law Tom Branson (Allen Leech), former chauffeur, Irish socialist and current estate manager for the property, raises his daughter with the help of… well, the help, who live downstairs.
Everyone, upstairs and down, are whipped into a tizzy when it’s announced that Queen Mary (Geraldine James) and King George V (Simon Jones) will be stopping by for a visit.
The news sends the house staff into a frenzy of silverware polishing and menu planning. Retired butler Carson (Jim Carter) is called back into service, while his head housekeeper wife Elsie (Phyllis Logan) gets the staff, including snooty butler Thomas Barrow (Rob James-Collier), cook Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol) and assistant cook Daisy (Sophie McShera), ready for the Royal visit.
Trouble is, Lady Maud Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton), one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting is in the Dowager Countess’s bad books. Seems Lord Grantham is her closest relative but she intends to leave her substantial estate to someone else. Prepare for some grade-a Dowager zingers.
Add to that a suspicious character in the village (Stephen Campbell Moore), the pompous royal staff, questions about Tom’s allegiance, stolen knick-knacks, a mild mutiny in defense of Downton’s honour, unlikely love stories and one royal meltdown and you have a story that feels like a high-falutin’ soap opera made by Merchant Ivory on an Earl Grey binge.
“Downton Abbey” is pure fan service. Most of the characters return, although Lily James fans will be disappointed, the house is as grand as ever and James is just as petulant as ever, if perhaps a little less villainous this time around. Revelations are made, storylines from the TV show are closed and, as always, life goes on at Downton. It all feels very familiar but like a comforting cup of tea, very welcome.
Fans of Maggie Smith’s cantankerous “Downton Abbey” character Violet Crawley will find some pleasure in her new performance as a homeless woman. The costumes have changed but her irascibility and way with a line are firmly in place.
“The Lady in the Van,” is the true story of the friendship between “The History Boys” playwright Alan Bennett (Alex Jennings) and Miss Mary Shepherd (Smith, reprising her acclaimed stage role) the woman who lives in front of his Camden home. In the early 1970s he let her park her van in his driveway. “It’ll be easier,” he says, “just until she figures out where she’s going.” Fifteen years later she was still there, a curiosity for the neighbours but a muse of sorts for Bennett.
Little by little he discovers more details about her life—how she was once a nun, a gifted piano player and once committed to an institution by her family—including her darkest secret, that she felt responsible for the death of a motorcyclist after a car accident. Living in fear of arrest her life unravelled and she wound up on Bennett’s driveway and a part of his life.
“The Lady in the Van” is a character study of a difficult person contained in a movie that often errs on the side of sentiment, particularly in its fanciful final moments, but avoids caricature. It isn’t driven by story, instead it’s a comedy of manners propelled by Smith’s characterization of the eccentric titular character and the human bond that grows between Bennett and Shepherd.
In terms of any real action, nothing much happens, save for a bang at the beginning.
Bennett, who wrote the screenplay based on his stage play, is clearly fond of his central character—despite describing her as someone for whom “feelings of gratitude, humility and forgiveness were either foreign to her nature or had become so over the years”—and has painted a portrait of a socially uncomfortable woman who isn’t an ogre but a tragic figure. Smith brings her to vivid life, giving this slight movie some real heart and soul.
That’s the line in “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” that explains the motivation of almost every character in the story. The retirement comedy paints old age in broad strokes, but nails the dark humour of the twilight years with clear, concise and funny dialogue.
As we learned in the first instalment, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a slightly ramshackle retirement home in the Indian city of Jaipur. It’s the kind of place where the proprietor, Sonny (Dev Patel) takes roll call every morning to ensure no one has passed on during the night. His guests are mainly British expats looking to comfortably live out their remaining days… and maybe get a new lease on life.
The original hotel is almost fully booked, and with everyone is looking hale and hardy, there likely won’t be many vacancies for some time. Always a big thinker Sonny looks to expand his business with the backing of an American retirement home chain. The first hurdle in deciding whether the Best Exotic Marigold becomes a “franchise or a footnote” is quality test administered by an undercover guest. When two new guests arrive on the same day director John Madden cues the screwball comedy, injecting a mistaken identity element into the feel good story.
“The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” is like a mini-Bollywood epic, there’s a bit of everything—dance numbers, comedy, romance and even a murder plot. Ordinarily that would be too much for a two-hour movie—an attempt to please everyone which usually means you please no one—but here the elements fit together. Sure, sometimes the plot shards creek almost as much as the joints of the oldsters we’re watching on screen, but the goodwill the cast—who much have upwards of a 1000 years of combined screen experience—is the cinematic Voltaren that greases the script’s tired bones.
Of the headliners, Judy Dench is reliably great, touching and sincere while Bill Nighy is heartbreakingly moon-faced in love but it is Maggie Smith who steals the show. She stares down mortality with a mixture of poignantly observed insight and on-target barbs. She delivers lines like, “Just because I’m looking at you while you talk doesn’t mean I’m interested,” and “How was America? It made death more tempting,” with the precision of a neurosurgeon and elevates every scene she’s in.
“The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” is review proof. It’s a charm offensive from a group of actors aiming to please, and for the most part, they do.
Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death has more in common with its predecessor, the 2012 chiller Woman in Black, than just a title and source material.
The first film starred Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter himself, in the lead role. The spooky new movie about the strange goings-on at a haunted house during World War II co-stars Potter alum Helen McCrory and Adrian Rawlins.
McCrory, who plays Angel of Death’s uptight schoolmarm, was pregnant when Potter producers offered her the role of pure-blood witch Bellatrix Lestrange in Order of the Phoenix. She passed and the part went to Helena Bonham Carter but two years later she jumped at the chance to play Narcissa, Bellatrix’s sister and the mother of Draco Malfoy, in The Half-Blood Prince.
Co-star Rawlins is the shadowy Dr. Rhodes in Angel of Death, but is best known as the father of Harry in seven Potter movies. Years before playing James Potter the actor starred in the original Woman in Black TV adaptation as Arthur, the role Radcliffe played in the recent remake.
Over the ten years they were in production it seems like the Potter films employed almost all of the British Actors’ Equity Association. Everyone from Ralph Fiennes, Richard Harris and Gary Oldman to Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton and Emma Thompson appeared in the series. When Bill Nighy was cast in The Deathly Hallows he said. “I am no longer the only English actor not to be in Harry Potter and I am very pleased.”
Less well known than the British superstars that peppered the Potter cast are some of the supporting players, many of which have gone on to breakout success without Harry.
Tom Felton will likely always be associated with cowardly bully Draco Malfoy, so it’s not surprising he played the spineless bad guy utters the famous “damn dirty ape” line,” in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
Before he starred opposite Rachel McAdams in the time travel romance About Time Domhnall Gleeson was Curse-Breaker Bill Weasley in The Deathly Hallows. The son of actor Brendan Gleeson is on his way to household name status with a role as an Imperial officer who defects to the Republic in J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
The biggest breakout Potter alum has to be Robert Pattinson. He’s best known as sparkling vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight franchise but he first appeared as Cedric Diggory in The Goblet of Fire. “The day before [the movie came out] I was just sitting in Leicester Square,” he said, “happily being ignored by everyone. Then suddenly strangers are screaming your name. Amazing.”
The last time Kevin Kline journeyed to France on film, he played a French jewel thief who duped Meg Ryan into committing a crime in “French Kiss.” In “My Old Lady” he’s back in the City of Light but this time around he’s a desperate, down-on-his luck New Yorker who inherits an apartment from his late father, only to find it comes with strings.
Kline is Mathias Gold who travels to Paris in the hope of selling his estranged father’s huge and valuable apartment. He’s broke and has three ex-wives to go along with the three novels he wrote and never published. When he arrives his lack of proficiency in French isn’t his only problem. An elderly English woman, Mathilde Girard (Maggie Smith) lives in the apartment with her daughter Chloé (Kristin Scott Thomas). The apartment is a “viager,” and according to French real estate laws, because Mathilde has possession of the place Gold must pay her a “rent” of 2400 euros a month until she dies. If he defaults, she keeps the flat. “I own this apartment and I also own you,” he says. As tensions run high the old lady makes a startling revelation. “Your father and I were lovers since I was twenty-nine,” she says. “If you want to know for whom you are named, you are named for me. I am Mathilde, you are Mathias.”
“My Old Lady” is the kind of film that is enhanced by its performances. What begins as a fish out of water story about real estate and desperation slowly becomes a character study. It’s very theatrical, which makes sense given playwright-turned-film-director Israel Horowitz’s background, but the stage-bound feel doesn’t take away from the rawness of the emotions or the snappiness of the dialogue. By turns comedic, by turns tragic, “My Old Lady’s” carefully crafted acting earns it a recommend.
For the second time in as many months comes a film set around the world of classical music, with powerhouse performances from an a-list, ensemble cast but despite the similarity of names between “A Late Quartet” and “Quartet” they are actually very different movies.
Both are heartfelt examinations of growing old, but “Quartet,” from 74-year-old director Dustin Hoffman, has more in common with the easy sentiment of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” than “A Late Quartet.”
The action centers around Beechham House, a luxurious retirement home for aging musicians. Three quarters of a once famous vocal quartet, Reginald (Tom Courtenay), Cissy (Pauline Collins), and Wilfred (Billy Connolly), live there quietly until their former diva, Jean (Dame Maggie Smith), arrives. Her presence stirs up old feelings from ex-husband Reggie but might also be the key to changing the fortunes of the cash-strapped retirement home.
Based on a play by Ronald “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” Harwood, “Quartet” could have gone one of two ways. It could’ve been a depressing look at the difficulties of growing old, or it could have turned into one of those “loveable old coot” movies. While both those aspects are present, so are unexpected laughs, elegance and warmth.
Like “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” it confronts the vagaries of old age head on, tackling them with equal parts humor and pathos. It treats its elderly characters like vibrant, real people, even though they use walkers and have lapses of memory. Medical conditions aside, emotionally they are as rich—if not richer—than 90% of the characters we see in any Katherine Heigl romantic comedy.
From Jean’s insecurities (“I can’t insult the memory of who I once was.”) to Cissy’s diminishing mental state to Reggie’s attempts to connect with some young students to Wilf’s roguishness, the movie is an intimate look at courage, fragility and Cissy’s favorite saying, “Old age is not for sissies.”
By times it is also, unfortunately, predictable, just this side of twee and don’t get me started about the unsatisfying ending. Luckily it’s a crowd pleaser due to the chemistry of the cast and Hoffman’s sure, but underplayed directorial hand.
The uber-chick flick of the season, too bad it’s not a better movie. Once the clichés starts flying fast and thick you have to duck to avoid getting hit with a drunken southern belle or a teary-eyed reconciliation scene. Maggie Smith struggles valiantly to add some zip to this turkey, but not even her monumental talents can truly bring these cardboard characters to life. Save your ticket money, and read the book. This Ya Ya is a No No.
