Last week, I enjoyed learning about the obscure story behind the reason that there's a mastodon from Missouri in London's Natural History Museum. Tina reviewed Foster by Claire Keegan on Goodreads, a story about a girl in a foster family in Ireland.
I watched more movies in the last few months than I had time to write about - especially last month when I was busy participating in National Novel Writing Month. I successfully wrote a very bad draft of a 50,000-word novel. Next up is to write a slightly better and longer draft.
So, here are a bunch of films that I think you might like for their British and Irish stories.
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022): A fun Cinderella story where Cinderella is her own fairy godmother and doesn't need to be rescued by a prince. I learned a lot about how haute couture works or, at least, how it worked in 1957. It's not obvious that this would work well as a date movie, but we both enjoyed the humor and charm. Obviously, a lot of this movie is set in Paris, but Mrs. Harris is a working-class British person from start to finish and her adventure begins in London. (DVD from Netflix)
Supernova (2020): Beautiful scenery (the Lake District in England) but a terribly sad story. We enjoyed the performances of Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. (DVD from Netflix)
Father Christmas is Back (2021): The traditional story of the mum who wants to create the perfect Christmas in her Yorkshire manor house but refuses to take into account her very imperfect family - all played for broad comedy by a cast that includes John Cleese and Kelsey Grammer. (streaming on Netflix)
Murder by Decree (1979): This film gives the fictional Sherlock Holmes the most famous murder case in British history, Jack the Ripper. There are fun moments, playing on the tropes of two classic stories. The sound was bad, so we found it difficult to hear and there were no subtitles to help. I looked at some of the reviews and I think that our confusion may have been as much due to the script as to our inability to hear the dialogue. Christopher Plummer plays Holmes without an addiction and with a wicked sense of humor. James Mason gives us a Watson with scientific, medical, and military skills that contribute to their enterprise. We also enjoyed spotting Donald Sutherland and John Gielgud. (DVD from Netflix)
All is True (2018): A story about William Shakespeare and his family that reminded me a lot of Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. there are so few facts about the historical characters that it's fun to imagine their lives. We particularly enjoyed Judi Dench as Anne Hathaway and Ian McKellen as the Earl of Southampton. (DVD from Netflix)
Enola Holmes 2 (2022): I enjoyed this sequel to Enola Holmes, featuring a more mature main character and improving relationships with her brother, Sherlock, and the young man that she rescued in the earlier film. The story builds on a real event that I appreciated learning about - the Matchgirls' Strike. The film didn't portray the history particularly accurately, but it made me curious enough to learn about it myself. (streaming on Netflix)
The Wonder (2022): A powerful, somewhat grim, film set in 1862 Ireland. Florence Pugh ( Little Women) stars as a nurse who served in the Crimean War. The film is based on a book of the same name by Emma Donoghue who also wrote Room. (streaming on Netflix)
The Duke (2020): Based on a true story, Jim Broadbent plays an ordinary man from Newcastle who stole the portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in 1961 as a protest against television license fees. We enjoyed the humor in the story, the performance of Helen Mirren as the long-suffering wife, and the amused detachment of the barrister played by Matthew Goode. (DVD from Netflix)
What have you watched recently that you enjoyed?
About Joy Weese Moll
a librarian writing about books