GLENN BURGESS suggests that, despite his record in Spain, Orwell’s enduring commitment to socialist revolution underpins his late novels
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Film round-up: April 29, 2022
MARIA DUARTE of Downton Abbey: A New Era, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, and Your Mum and Dad: A Devastating Truth
CHRISTOPHER POLLARD explains how and why neoliberalism adopted the racist agenda common to the populist right of today
SYLVIA HIKINS recommends a sweeping survey of the world's biggest desert and the people who live there
GUILLERMO THOMAS is persuaded by a scathing critique of the Church of England and its embeddedness in imperialism
MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Materialists, Unmoored, Together, and Bambi: A Tale of Life in The Woods
TONY BURKE revels in the publication of previously unreleased tracks by the great US folksinger
GORDON PARSONS endures heavy rock punctuated by Shakespeare, and a delighted audience
Downton Abbey: A New Era (PG)
Directed by Simon Curtis
★★★★
DOWNTON Abbey returns with all its cinematic glory and Upstairs-Downstairs intrigue as it continues where the 2019 film left off, but with the Crawley family now heading to the south of France on a fact-finding missing to uncover the mystery of the dowager countess’s newly inherited villa.
Written by Julian Fellowes and directed by Simon Curtis, the film, set in 1928, deals with Downton having to confront the modern world as Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), to the horror of her father Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), agrees to allow a film company to shoot their silent movie at the estate in order to pay for much-needed roof repairs while he is away in the French Riviera.
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MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable documentary, culled from 20 years of smartphone footage, that documents the trials of being a single parent
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
MARIA DUARTE recommends the ambitious portrait of an agricultural community confronted by the trauma of enclosure
MARIA DUARTE recommends a chilling examination of the influence of Evangelical Christianity over the far right in Brazil
