Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  The last Jane Austen adaptation I watched was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies . But Emma scripted by New Zealander Eleanor Catton and directed by the American photographer and pop video maker, Autumn de Wilde, proves that you don’t have to mess with Austen to give an audience a good time. De Wilde understands both visual pleasure and physical comedy and employs them in abundance. Emma is the first Jane Austen adaptation I have wanted to re-watch almost immediately. Alas, after a month it which grossed £7 million at the box office, it is finishing its run in the UK. By comparison, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies made just $1 million here. Proof, if ever you needed it, that bonnets and the living dead don’t go well together. Most Americans know the novel as the inspiration for director Amy Heckerling’s contemporary teen comedy Clueless , which relocated the action to Beverly Hills and gave star Alicia Silverstone her biggest solo hit. It turns out that social status and inherite...

  Pictured : 'Stand and deliver. Your money or your life.' Alex of Nine Tassles ( Aneurin Barnard ) proves that chivalry is something to be scared of in writer-director-star Alice Lowe 's time hopping anti-new-romantic comedy. ' Timestalker '. Still courtesy of Vertigo Releasing (UK) Most British actresses who take a punt at directing generally stop after a single attempt. Rebecca Hall, Kristen Scott Thomas, Jessica Hynes, Dolly Wells and Romola Garai all exemplify ‘one and done’. Kudos to Alice Lowe who scores ‘two and cool’, with Timestalker , the amusing, long-in-gestation follow-up to her 2016 debut, Prevenge . Both films are comedies that stretch a single idea to breaking point. Once again, she takes the leading role, this time of Agnes, a 17 th Century lovelorn woman who falls for a performer, Alex ( Aneurin Barnard ) who is about to be put to death – her friends turn up for the gore. As he faces the rack, Alex’s mask is removed. Agnes is besotted, approa...