Jessie Buckley

Hamnet

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Hamnet
  • IMDb: link

Based on the historical novel of the same name, Hamnet offers a fictionalized telling of William Shakespeare‘s (Paul Mescal) family and the series of events that could (depending on what scholars you believe) have played into the playwright’s finest tragedy. Whether or not the account is accurate, there is no debate that director Chloé Zhao (who co-wrote the screenplay with the novel’s author Maggie O’Farrell) delivers a heartbreaking, yet ultimately cathartic, emotional tour de force that won’t leave a dry eye in the house.

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Wicked Little Letters

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Wicked Little Letters
  • IMDb: link

Wicked Little Letters

Inspired by true events, Wicked Little Letters takes us back to the seaside town of Littlehampton in West Sussex which was turned upside down in the 1920s by a barrage of hate mail to a local spinster (Olivia Colman) whose controlling father (Timothy Spall) blames on their Irish immigrant neighbor (Jessie Buckley) known for her bawdy behavior and near-constant swearing that is mirrored in the letters. While most are willing to believe the worst of Rose (Buckley), despite any real evidence, a few in the town, including the sole police woman (Anjana Vasan) and even some of the victim’s friends (who, like others in the town eventually become targets of the letters) dig a little deeper to discover the truth of the situation.

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Women Talking

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Women Talking
  • IMDb: link

Adapted from the novel of the same name by writer/director Sarah Polley, Women Talking takes us inside the conversations of a group of women (Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, and Kate Hallett) of a Mennonite colony who discover that several of the men have been drugging and raping the women at night and now must deal with the hard truth which has been revealed.

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Misbehaviour

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Misbehaviour
  • IMDb: link

Misbehaviour movie reviewMisbehaviour looks back at both the 1970 Miss World competition in London and a handful of women involved with the women’s liberation movement who achieved overnight fame by invading the stage and disrupting the live broadcast. The script by Rebecca Frayn, who also directs, and Gaby Chiappe is a bit more nuanced than I expected. While the film certainly points out the numerous issues with the pageant objectifying the contestants for the public, it also showcases the good of Miss World offering opportunity to women all over the world and allowing both the panel’s judges and its audience the opportunity to consider beauty in different forms.

Keira Knightley stars as a college student and new member of the more disruptive chapter of the WLM (Jessie Buckley, Ruby Bentall, Lily Newmark, among others). The 1970 pageant was memorable both for the protest, which disrupted the live telecast, and for the fact that Miss Grenada (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) became the first black woman to win. Greg Kinnear is a bit hammy playing Bob Hope, who the organizers (Rhys Ifans and Keeley Hawes) recruit as this year’s celebrity. But, to be fair, he is playing Bob Hope.

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The Courier

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Courier (2020)
  • IMDb: link

The Courier movie reviewBased on true events, director Dominic Cooke‘s The Courier offers a solid period thriller surrounding Soviet scientist Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) and British salesman Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) who becomes a vital piece in Cold War espionage by smuggling Soviet secrets out Moscow for Penkovsky and into the waiting arms of MI6 and the CIA in the months leading up the the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Penned by Tom O’Connor (The Hitman’s Bodyguard), The Courier fits easily into its genre. The structure of the film, following events from beginning to end in chronological fashion, does offer a rather large shift in The Courier‘s final half-hour which may have been avoided by more imaginative editing and structure. Cumberbatch and Ninidze will gather the most interest here. The women of the story don’t fare as well. The film has a lesser interest in Wynne’s wife (Jessie Buckley) and almost no interest in Penkovsky’s family. Even Rachel Brosnahan as the CIA agent who brings the case to MI6’s attention and pressures them to make good on their promises, isn’t given anything all that interesting to do.

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