Movies

David Lean, Mike Leigh, Terry Gilliam, Stephen Frears , Terrance Davies, Ken Loach, Danny Boyle

A sharp look, the slighest lift of an eyebrow… how Lesley became the boss of Day-Lewis

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Grande dame of stage Lesley Manville tells our reporter about acting beside Daniel Day-Lewis in ‘Phantom Thread’, and playing an alpha-woman and femme fatal

On a grey, mid-winter day in London, Lesley Manville is dressed in cosy knits and tucked away on a couch in a hotel suite in Soho. Still delicately beautiful at 61, her blue eyes are bright, and her rich-beige hair is loose around her face.

She is, in the film, a kind of exotic bird existing in a rarefied world. Most of her scenes take place inside The House of Woodcock, where she reigns supreme. Though it is her brother, Reynolds Woodcock, a creative genius with a controlling streak, who is the design talent, it is Cyril who rules the roost.

Cyril is a central figure in a film that deals, in many ways, with female power – both soft and not so soft. And her special kind of influence is evident in the control and restraint with which she plays the part. She doesn’t need to raise her voice. All it takes is [ . . . ] More: A sharp look, the slighest lift of an eyebrow… how Lesley became the boss of Day-Lewis

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool brings an oddball May-September romance back to life

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Chris Knight: There’s little that feels unseemly about the film, whose wish-fulfillment vibe is strengthened by the drab-chic look of 1980s Britain

There’s a lovely little subgenre, often British, in which a regular Johnny has a brush with A-list fame. Think of Eddie Redmayne and Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn; Zac Efron meeting (British-born) Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles; or, in the realm of pure fiction, Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill.

The latest, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, is based on the book by British actor Peter Turner, and on the life of American film star Gloria Grahame, who died in 1981 – in New York, to be clear. You may remember her as the flirtatious Violet in 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life (“I only wear this when I don’t care how I look,” she says of a clingy, traffic-stopping dress) or from an Oscar-winning supporting role a few years later in The Bad and the Beautiful. [ . . . ] Read Full Review at: Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool brings an oddball May-September romance back to life

Ewen Bremner on life after Trainspotting, new film Renegades … and his love of The Muppets

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EWEN Bremner is sitting in the parking lot of a truck stop in rural New Mexico when I call. “The wild west,” he says. “It’s the only place I can get a phone signal around here.”

A phone signal that stutters and drops out more than once over the next half hour. On those moments when Bremner’s soft Edinburgh accent drops away I find myself trying to jerry-rig a metaphor out of our communication difficulties. Something along the lines of Bremner having a career that has been blinking in and out of visibility ever since he made his name on some film back in the 1990s … What was it called again? Oh yes, that’s right Trainspotting [ . . . ]

Source: Ewen Bremner on life after Trainspotting, new film Renegades … and his love of The Muppets