Days of the Bagnold Summer
Horrible as it may be to spend summer indoors doing nothing, we can take solace in the release of Days of the Bagnold Summer, the directorial debut of Simon Bird. Following the life of a rebellious teen and his hard-working mother who unexpectedly spend the summer together, the awkward yet lovely scenery makes for an engaging backdrop. Strong performances from a stalwart backlog of veteran actors synonymous with British television, Rob Brydon and Tasmin Greig turn in stellar roles. Nothing can steal the show away from the pairing of Monica Dolan and Earl Cave though, who are on top form throughout. Ewan Gleadow
Eminent Monsters: A Manual for Modern Torture
A labour of love for Scottish director Stephen Bennett, this begins as a story about a father and a son. The son is the regrettably named Canadian psychiatrist Dr. Harvey Weinstein, who discovered the shrinks looking after his father Louis – particularly one Dr. Ewan Cameron – were not treating his debilitating mental illness. They were deliberately causing it, using techniques now familiar from Guantanamo Bay. The line between Cameron’s CIA-funded brainwashing experiments and War on Terror scandals has often been drawn – just this year the Rosie Kay Dance Company released a film of their similarly-themed Adam Curtis collaboration MK Ultra. What Bennett brings is clarity, moral anger and a British perspective, meaning that the treatment of IRA prisoners in the 1980s, for instance, is included in this narrative for once. A chilling, comprehensive, beautifully scored look at an issue that will continue to dominate the West’s foreign and domestic conflicts. Graham Williamson
Fanny Lye Deliver’d
My pick for Most Overlooked Film of 2020 is Fanny Lye Deliver’d starring my favourite actress, Maxine Peake. Set in 1657, when England was in tumult following the events of the Civil War, the film explores the extraordinary awakening of Peake’s eponymous character, hitherto a Shropshire farmer’s wife and mother subjugated to a life of dour oppression at the hands of her husband John, played by Charles Dance. It is a production I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever see, as filming actually wrapped some three years prior to its eventual release this year. This unhurried nature seems par for the course from its perfectionist director Thomas Clay, whose last film before this was 2008’s Soi Cowboy. Clay reminds me of Ben Wheatley, who also dipped a toe in the mid-1600s with A Field in England back in 2013. Like that film, Fanny Lye Deliver’d defies description. It’s like the bastard child of Sergio Leone and Michael Reeves, an Wyrd English Western careering into the home invasion genre, as Freddie Fox and Tanya Reynolds’ wanted young couple turn the Lye’s world violently and irrevocably upside down with their licentious radicalism and unbridled, shroom-fuelled lust. Like many of Wheatley’s films, Fanny Lye Deliver’d is deeply idiosyncratic and no doubt a difficult prospect for distributors and mainstream cinema. But, if you’re on its wavelength ( or indeed ley line) then there’s much to enjoy. You won’t have seen another like it in 2020 that’s for sure. Mark Cunliffe
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