Hayley Atwell

The Duchess
110 MINUTES
WRITTEN BY Jeffrey Hatcher and Anders Thomas Jensen
DIRECTED BY Saul Dibb
STARRING Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Charlotte Rampling, Hayley Atwell, Dominic Cooper

In true and dubious movie fashion, The Duchess transforms a serious, carefully researched biography of historical significance by best-selling British writer Amanda Foreman into a bucket of frothy banality overwhelmed by wigs, costumes, gilt-edged ceilings, sumptuous country manors and expensive period furniture as imagined by Sofia Coppola. It looks like outtakes from the nauseating bubble-gum fantasy Marie Antoinette.

The scandalous lady in the title is 18th-century socialite Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, and if the movie has any longevity, it’s because she was the great-great-great-great aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales.  read more »

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED
RUNNING TIME 135 minutes
WRITTEN BY Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies
DIRECTED BY Julian Jarrold
STARRING Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, Greta Scacchi, Hayley Atwell

Here it is at last: the intelligent movie filmgoers have waited for all year. The film version of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited transforms one of the quintessential novels of the 20th century into one of the grandest, most enriching films of 2008. The 11-part 1981 miniseries was such a milestone in TV history that purists who watch the four-volume DVD set might squabble about the merits of reducing so much artistry into an almost two-and-a-half-hour film.  read more »

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED
RUNNING TIME 135 minutes
WRITTEN BY Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies
DIRECTED BY Julian Jarrold
STARRING Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Emma Thompson, Hayley Atwell, Greta Scacchi, Michael Gambon

Julian Jarrold’s Brideshead Revisited, from a screenplay by Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies, is based on the seductively class-ridden novel by Evelyn Waugh. This literary masterpiece has, strangely, never been made into a movie, though it was the source of a popular 12-hour television miniseries that aired in 1981, with Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews and Diana Quick in the lead roles now assigned to British newcomers Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw and Hayley Atwell.  read more »