Penelope Wilton

Penelope Wilton

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The BFG Trailer


Sophie and the other girls at Mrs. Clonkers orphanage share a big sleeping dorm and once the lights go out, the girls are expected to go straight to sleep. No talking and most certainly no getting out of bed but little Sophie isn't one for sticking to the rules. Once the rest of the girls are asleep, Sophie is busy reading her books. 

When the bespectacled young girl hears strange noise coming from outside her window, she can't help but take a peek out of the pane. A vague shape starts to form in the background, Sophie's unsure what it is but knows it's gigantic. Beginning to get scared, Sophie runs back to her bed and hides under her blankets but it's too late, before Sophie knows what's happening she's snatched from her bed and taken to a far and distant world.

Initially scared for her life, Sophie thinks the giant has taken her to have as his next meal but soon she's introduced to her new home and keeper, The BFG (Big Friendly Giant). The BFG doesn't want to hurt Sophie, he wants to protect her. As the pair begin having adventures together, Sophie soon learns that not all giants are as welcoming as The BFG.

'The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' Unites Original Starry Cast With Richard Gere


Richard Gere Judi Dench Maggie Smith Bill Nighy Celia Imrie Dev Patel Penelope Wilton

After The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel earned nearly $140 million on its release in 2012, the all-star cast and crew were keen to reassemble for a sequel. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel hits UK cinemas this weekend and arrives in America next week, adding Richard Gere and Tamsin Grieg to a cast that includes Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Dev Patel and Penelope Wilton.

Richard Gere and Lillette Dubey in 'The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'
Richard Gere is a newcomer in 'The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'

For Nighy, the biggest fear during filming was "killing the national treasure that is Dame Judi" while filming a sequence on a scooter. "This is the second time I've been on a motorcycle - the first was the first movie - and it's probably the last," he laughed. "That's enough for my motorcycling career!"

Continue reading: 'The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' Unites Original Starry Cast With Richard Gere

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Review


Good

A badly under-developed script leaves a fine cast without much to do in this sequel to the 2012 hit. Reuniting in India, the actors find moments of comedy and emotion that help make the film watchable, and the big Bollywood-style finale leaves the audience with a smile on its face. But the simplistic plot-threads never amount to much at all, which leaves the project feeling like a missed opportunity to deepen the characters and push the premise in more interesting directions.

Business at the hotel in Jaipur is booming, so managers Sonny (Dev Patel) and Muriel (Maggie Smith) are looking for investors to expand into a second property. But this distracts Sonny from his upcoming wedding to Sunaina (Tena Desae), and she's not too happy about that. There are also two new guests (Richard Gere and Tamsin Grieg) who may be important. Meanwhile, Evelyn (Judi Dench) is offered a new job just as she realises she might like to pursue a relationship with Douglas (Bill Nighy), whose ex-wife (Penelope Wilton) turns up unexpectedly. Madge (Celia Imrie) is struggling to choose between her many suitors. And Norman and Carol (Ronald Pickup and Diana Hardcastle) are having relationship issues due to their lack of communication.

All of these momentous plots, and a few more, swirl around over the course of about a week, which means that none ever has a chance to develop. It also means that the characters are all so busy with their own stories that they don't interact very much, and what contact they do have feels rather contrived. As a result, the film feels like an awkward mix of disconnected slapstick, farce and melodrama. That said, these high-powered actors can hold together even the flimsiest scene. Dench and Nighy generate some lovely emotional resonance in their contrived storyline, while Smith finds some quiet pathos in Muriel's own journey, even if the filmmakers seem to have forgotten to hire someone to do her costumes, hair and make-up.

Continue reading: The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Review

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Trailer


Set eight months after the 2012 original film, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel sees the majority of the cast return India for this sequel from director John Madden. In the run up to Sonny's (Dev Patel) wedding to Sunaina (Tena Desae), he is struggling to find the time to work at his hotel. With only one room left in the hotel, Sonny is confronted with an interesting situation when two new arrivals turn up - Guy (Richard Gere) and Lavinia (Tamsin Greig). With help from Murial (Maggie Smith) acting as the co-manager, will Sonny will be able to juggle his personal and working lives?

Continue: The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Trailer

Belle Review


Excellent

The plot feels like a Jane Austen novel infused with a hot-potato political issue, but this is actually a true story. It's been somewhat fictionalised, but the central facts are accurate, and while the production is perhaps a bit too polished for its own good, the solid acting and filmmaking make the story involving and provocative. And its themes feel just as relevant today.

In 1769 London, a young half-black girl named Dido Belle is taken by her soldier father (Matthew Goode) to live with his uncle, the Lord Chief Justice Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson). With his wife (Emily Watson) and sister (Penelope Winton), he is already caring for another niece, and the two girls grow up as inseparable friends. Hidden from society, Dido (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) inherits a small fortune from her father. And while Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) is penniless, her white skin makes her a more suitable spouse. Then family friend Lady Ashford (Miranda Richardson) foists her son James (Tom Felten) on Elizabeth. To their horror, his brother Oliver (James Norton) falls for Dido. But she's more interested in an impoverished law student (Sam Reid).

Along with these rather standard period-movie romantic shenanigans, there's a major subplot about Lord Mansfield's imminent ruling in the first court case to take on the slave trade, which could destabilise the entire British Empire. And this is where the film jolts into something significant: the UK's top judge had an adopted mixed-race daughter who probably influenced the first landmark decision against slavery. Meanwhile, director Amma Asante also vividly portrays the gritty realities of this young black woman's precarious position in society.

Continue reading: Belle Review

Belle Trailer


Dido Elizabeth Belle is the mixed race daughter of Royal Navy officer Captain John Lindsay resulting from his affair with an African woman. Desperate for his only child to receive a comfortable upbringing, he takes her back to England and begs his uncle, Lord Mansfield, to take her in and care for her as their own. As much as she is treated well and enjoys the company of her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray, she finds herself an outcast with no specified social status and disallowed from dining with her family on social occasions all because of her colour. While she is shunned by almost everybody, one man takes an interest in her; John Davinier, the apprentice of Lord Mansfield. However, both her great-uncle and John's parents are averse to the idea of their marriage - though their shocking love story forces Mansfield to re-think his own feelings about race and family.

Continue: Belle Trailer

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Review


Very Good
Colourful and engaging, this lively comedy-drama gives a handful of mature actors terrific roles to play within a bustling international setting. It feels a bit cute and tame, but it's still entertaining.

Seven retirees meet at the airport as they move to Rajasthan to retire in a newly restored hotel. Evelyn (Dench) is financially strapped due to her late husband's debts. Muriel (Smith) is getting a faster, cheaper hip replacement.

Douglas and Jean (Nighy and Wilton) can't afford to retire in Britain. Graham (Wilkinson) has unfinished business in India. And Norman and Madge (Pickup and Imrie) are both single and looking for love. But manager Sonny (Patel) has slightly exaggerated the hotel's facilities.

Continue reading: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Review

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Trailer


Muriel, Evelyn and Jean are just a few of a group of British retirees who decide to travel to India to stay at The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. After viewing the hotel's website, they are won over by how luxurious the hotel is and are soon on the first flight out of the UK.

Continue: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Trailer

Calendar Girls Review


Excellent
Nigel Cole's empowering Calendar Girls calls to mind Peter Cattaneo's The Full Monty, though not just because it's about nude British people who have no business being in their birthday suits. Both imports work from simple one-line premises centered around the fundraising efforts of a cheeky lead (here it's Helen Mirren, while there it was Robert Carlyle). And each employs a sassy spirit of friendship over hardship that guarantees your heart will dance with empowered delight as the clothes continue to hit the floor.

As a rite of passage, American children join the scouts. Older British women, as a similar rite of passage, join the National Federation of Women's Institutes, shortened to the W.I. by its faithful members. The group holds true the notions of enlightenment, fun, and friendship, though lately they've been in a rut. Guest speakers to the group have brought the latest news on cauliflower. Not quite headline-worthy material.

Continue reading: Calendar Girls Review

Iris Review


Excellent
In the refined and sobering drama Iris, we witness a loving but unconventional relationship between a strangely elegant couple -- English critic John Bayley and his Alzheimer's-stricken, novelist wife Iris Murdoch. Writer-director Richard Eyre, who wrote the script with Charles Wood based on Bayley's memoirs Iris: A Memoir and Elegy for Iris, delivers an amazingly touching portrait of resilient and everlasting passion between two eccentric creative forces who have contributed to the literary world immensely. Iris is an enchanting and finely-acted personal drama that manages to absorb the pleasures and pain of an undying spirit of togetherness. Expressionistic and resoundingly involving, Eyre's thought-provoking film is perceptively engaging.

Eyre does a terrific job in showing us the deterioration of a brilliant-minded woman in Iris Murdoch. It is always frustrating to witness anybody's decline in health, but it must be particularly awful for a talented author with an impeccable series of written work to her name. The film shows us the two phases of Iris's life -- as a free-spirited young woman in 1950's Oxford, England and as an aged, sickly soul trying to survive her last days in the 1990s while her husband tends to her needs. Titanic heroine Kate Winslet plays the youngish and energetic Iris while Oscar-winning actress Judi Dench portrays her ailing years.

Continue reading: Iris Review

Penelope Wilton

Penelope Wilton Quick Links

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Actor


Penelope Wilton Movies

The BFG Movie Review

The BFG Movie Review

For his adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic, Steven Spielberg reunited with screenwriter Melissa Mathison,...

The BFG Extended -  Trailer

The BFG Extended - Trailer

One of Roald Dahl's most popular children's novels The BFG is once again going to...

The BFG Trailer

The BFG Trailer

Sophie and the other girls at Mrs. Clonkers orphanage share a big sleeping dorm and...

The BFG - Teaser Trailer

The BFG - Teaser Trailer

Sophie has spent her life alone. She lives in an orphanage full of girls just...

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Movie Review

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Movie Review

A badly under-developed script leaves a fine cast without much to do in this sequel...

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Trailer

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Trailer

Set eight months after the 2012 original film, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel sees...

Belle Movie Review

Belle Movie Review

The plot feels like a Jane Austen novel infused with a hot-potato political issue, but...

Belle Trailer

Belle Trailer

Dido Elizabeth Belle is the mixed race daughter of Royal Navy officer Captain John Lindsay...

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Movie Review

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Movie Review

Colourful and engaging, this lively comedy-drama gives a handful of mature actors terrific roles to...

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Trailer

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Trailer

Muriel, Evelyn and Jean are just a few of a group of British retirees who...

Calendar Girls Movie Review

Calendar Girls Movie Review

Nigel Cole's empowering Calendar Girls calls to mind Peter Cattaneo's The Full Monty, though not...

Iris Movie Review

Iris Movie Review

In the refined and sobering drama Iris, we witness a loving but unconventional relationship between...

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