“What makes the film tick, when it ticks, is a charmingly deranged lead performance from Dan Stevens…” – Empire The plot of Blithe Spirit sees best-selling crime novelist Charles (Dan Stevens) gets more than he bargained for when a medium, recently exposed as a fraud, accidentally summons the spirit of his deceased first wife. It will nab an easy best picture Oscar nomination next year.” ★★★★★ – The Timesĭan Stevens ( Downton Abbey) and Judi Dench ( Skyfall) lead the cast of this riotous reimagining of Noël Coward’s classic 1941 comedy. “It’s a film of formal beauty, letter-perfect performances, complex and textured writing (also from Branagh) and enough comedic one-liners and Van Morrison musical montages to make you forget that you’re watching a drama about seething sectarian hatreds. “There is a terrific warmth and tenderness to Kenneth Branagh’s elegiac, autobiographical movie about the Belfast of his childhood: spryly written, beautifully acted and shot in a lustrous monochrome, with set pieces, madeleines and epiphanies that feel like a more emollient version of Terence Davies.” ★★★★★ – The Guardian Written and directed by Academy Award nominee Kenneth Branagh, Belfast is set amid the music and social tumult of the late 1960s in Northern Ireland. The Banishing is available on DVD on Amazon.Ĭaitriona Balfe ( Outlander), Judi Dench ( Skyfall), and Jamie Dornan ( 50 Shades of Grey) star in this poignant story of love, laughter and loss in one boy’s childhood. It’s The Turning of the Screw via The Woman In Black, The Haunting of Hill House and one of the creepier episodes of classic Doctor Who, and it’s enjoyable enough in a campfire ghost-story sort of way.” – Hey U Guys “Everyone seems to be having oodles of fun making a proper, old fashioned British period chiller. But Brown Findlay holds it together with her performance of Marianne as the sort of woman who marches no-nonsense into the dark basement brandishing a torch to take on the ghosts of mad monks.” ★★★ – The Guardian “It all gets very silly, and there’s a naff go-nowhere storyline involving Nazis. The Banishing tells the true story of a young reverend, his wife and daughter who move into a manor with a horrifying secret. Jessica Brown Findlay ( Downton Abbey), Sean Harris ( Jamaica Inn), John Lynch ( The Fall), and John Heffernan ( Dickensian) star in this haunted house movie set in rural England in the 1930s.
“What this update has in abundance is charm, humour, sterling child casting and excellent comic-grotesque turns, particularly from Amanda Lawrence as a hunched-over servant.” – The GuardianĪntonia Barber’s novel The Ghosts is available on Amazon. It was fun for all the family, as long as you accept – as Mark Gatiss surely does – there’s fun to be had in fear too.” ★★★★ – The Telegraph “ The Amazing Mr Blunden retained a creepy edge, being both Dickensian in its fascination with violent effigies, and Poe-esque in its sense of menace. Simon Callow ( Four Weddings and a Funeral) leads the cast as Mr Blunden, alongside Gatiss and Tamsin Greig ( Belgravia).
(You can also find out what’s coming up in 2022 here.)Ĭhristmas adventure arrives for London teenagers Jamie and Lucy Allen in the form of a mysterious old man, Mr Blunden, who offers their mum the opportunity to become the caretaker of a ruined country house – one that’s said to be haunted.īased on Antonia Barber’s novel The Ghosts, Sky’s TV movie has been adapted by Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss. Here, in alphabetical order, is every new British historical and period drama movie from 2021! With cinemas kept closed for the majority of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, many exciting titles had their release dates postponed, resulting in a year that was jam-packed with new films to watch. Movie-loving British period drama fans have had a busy year.