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The Uprising
(2026)

The Uprising (2026)

Director – Paul Greengrass – 2026 – UK – Cert. 15 – 128m

****

A farmer, a priest and an ex-soldier lead a march on London that will later become known as the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 9th

1381. South East England. Ploughman (Andrew Garfield) stands, a lone figure in a desolate landscape. A commoner.

At a local village, backed up by a small retinue of soldiers representing the Crown, a tax collector is collecting annual revenue from each and every adult male, which has increased to a point where ordinary people who work the land can no longer afford to pay it.

It comes out that Ploughman has lost his wife and kids to the recent outbreak of the Black Death, and he loses his composure and gets into a fracas with a soldier over the latter’s inappropriate treatment of a woman. You expect at this point for Ploughman to get carted off and imprisoned, but somehow his act inspires others to stand up to the soldiers, and he comes through the experience rather better than the official, who is forced to leave.

Meanwhile, the 14-year-old King (Woody Norman) is a spiritually troubled young man beset with nightmares and doubts.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

A Good Year

Director – Ridley Scott – 2006 – US – 12A – 118 mins

***1/2

A ruthless, successful Square Mile bond trader travels to Provence to sort out the estate he’s inherited from his late uncle – UK release date 27/10/2006

Back in the 1980s, British TV commercials spawned a number of hugely successful feature film directors, with Scott arguably the most talented. A great visual stylist, his impressive filmography includes the seminal (Alien, 1979; Blade Runner, 1982; Thelma & Louise, 1991), the blockbuster (1492: Conquest Of Paradise, 1992; Gladiator, 2000; Kingdom Of Heaven, 2005) and the forgotten (Black Rain, 1989; White Squall, 1996; G.I. Jane, 1997). Scott is perhaps the archetypal ‘style over content’ director: his impressive visuals often threaten to overpower everything else, yet his sense of style invariably makes anything he does worth a look. A film-maker, in other words, of extreme contradictions.

The end of that same era saw highly regarded London advertising man Peter Mayle relocate to the South Of France to pen a series of books about that region starting with the bestselling A Year In Provence.

Scott and Mayle have known each other since the eighties advertising boom.… Read the rest