Despite my life-long interest in 15th- and 16th-century English history — a passion I inherited from my dad — I had never managed to visit the city of Leicester, whose connection with the Plantagenet king Richard III has been in the news fairly regularly over the past few years, displaced only by a certain football team. My only previous visit to Leicestershire was when I did my PADI Open Water training in the murky quarry of Stoney Cove back in 2002, so it was high time I returned to the county.

With the crystal clear vision of hindsight, it seems obvious that John F. Kennedy would become known as a great president (especially given the recent plummeting of the bar) but in November 1963, it was, for his wife Jackie, far from inevitable. Pablo Larraín's new film Jackie focuses on the briefest of windows in the days after JFK's assassination during which the titular widow attempts to stage manage his death and secure his legacy. Natalie Portman is fascinating in the lead role and although the film is a little slow in places, her performance won me over by the end.

The film opens as a journalist (Billy Crudup) arrives at the Kennedys' Cape Cod home to interview Jackie a few days after her husband's death. Grief-stricken but desperate to be a good hostess and to give a good interview, Jackie reflects back on her husband's brief presidency, offering up all-too-honest reactions the journalist knows he will never be able to print. "You'll have to say something personal eventually," he goads her, but it isn't clear that he is right. She tries again and, over the course of the 100-minute film, we get various snapshots of grief: the assassination (the full brutality of which only comes towards the end), the funeral arrangements, the handover to the new president and the leaving of the White House.

There are happier memories too, though, including Larraín's version of the real White House Tour documentary during which Jackie presented her remodelling of the residence to the American people. It helps presidents to be surrounded by things that have belonged to previous great presidents, she explains. And it is this pursuit of greatness that drives her actions after the assassination. She quizzes staff members at random about obscure presidents, contrasting their responses with their reactions to her questions about Lincoln, eventually deciding that she should seek inspiration from Lincoln's funeral for JFK's own funeral. "History's harsh," she notes.

Legacy is central, then, but legend and myth play a key role too as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue becomes Jackie's own Camelot. Lerner and Loewe's musical of the same name made its début just three years earlier and its music, lyrics and essence echo throughout Larraín's movie. Form and beauty are crucial in this world. Portman's Jackie never allows her pain to distract her long from her decisions about appearances — whether to continue wearing the iconic, bloodstained pink Chanel suit, for instance.

Beautiful and stylish as the film is, its bleaker moments outnumber the lighter intermissions. Tonally, it reminded me a lot of a French New Wave film — you can almost imagine Claude Chabrol or François Truffaut's influences in places. Mica Levi's haunting, questioning score only deepened these resemblances.

All told, Jackie is an interesting, if not always easy to watch, film (I found Larraín's 2012 film about the 1988 referendum in Chile much more enjoyable). Portman really does carry the film — Peter Sarsgaard as Bobby Kennedy and especially Greta Gerwig as White House social secretary Nancy Tuckerman are somewhat wasted — so it's lucky she is so good in the role: charismatic but complicated, and forceful but grief-stricken.

When I heard that Steven Spielberg had a new Cold War spy thriller called Bridge of Spies, I assumed it would be about the Cambridge Spy Ring, which inspired a 2003 BBC miniseries that was, I believe, filmed partly in my college, home to the Bridge of Sighs. Other than this missed opportunity, there is little to dislike about Spielberg's film but nor does it push many cinematic boundaries or deviate from the tried-and-tested Spielberg formula.

At the centre of Bridge of Spies is a character that will be intensely familiar to anyone who has seen a Spielberg film before: the nice guy who wants to do the right thing. In this case, the nice guy is insurance lawyer Jim Donovan (Tom Hanks), who is given the opportunity — many would say poisoned chalice — of representing Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), who has been arrested on suspicion of being a Soviet Spy. "Everyone will hate me but at least I'll lose," he surmises. Donovan is tasked with providing Abel with "a capable defence" and, in case there is any doubt about what the outcome must be, even the judge (Dakin Matthews) remarks: "God willing he'll be convicted."

Donovan's efforts to give Abel his fair trial frustrate and worry even his wife (Amy Ryan) at times, but the two men develop a certain respect for each other. Rylance's portrayal of a softly spoken chap with a slight Scottish accent, who enjoys painting and can't keep track of his false teeth is certainly not your central-casting Soviet spy. Abel seems very accepting of his likely fate; "would it help?" he replies when Donovan asks him if he worried.

Although Abel is, of course, convicted by a jury, Donovan persuades the judge to avoid the death penalty given that Abel is likely to be a useful commodity should any Americans fall into the wrong hands. Oh, and wouldn't you know it? A handful of carefully selected pilots, including a certain Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), have just been recruited into the CIA to fly a series of espionage missions over the Soviet Union. As is well known, Powers' plane was shot down and he was captured by the Soviets.

It then falls upon Donovan, of all people, to travel to Berlin to facilitate the exchange of his former client for his new client, of sorts — Powers. He has some assistance from the CIA but they are keen to keep the government out of the negotiations. Berlin is cold and dangerous and Donovan's unofficial position complicates matters, especially when his own desired outcomes for the negotiation differ from those of his country and when it's unclear whom, if anyone, he can trust.

There are few surprises in Bridge of Spies but that doesn't mean it isn't entertaining and compelling. Hanks's central performance is a solid anchor for the film and his warmth and humour give it a powerful emotional core. Rylance, in a much more understated role, is also excellent, although he reminded me of Danny Boyle so much that it was a little distracting! Visually, of course, the film has all of the Spielberg trademarks, and it touches on big, bold themes like liberty, justice and compassion. The script — adapted by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers from Charman's novel of the same name — is well edited and has just the right balance of lighter, wittier touches and darker, more serious moments.

I was away from London for most of this year's Open House London weekend, in which hundreds of London's famous, infamous and secret buildings open up to the general public. Naturally, big queues form for some of the most desirable locations on the list, including 30 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin) — a personal architectural favourite — and I only had a few hours on Sunday afternoon.


Instead, I decided to go on a tour that I could book and I picked a venue that I see from the outside almost every day — in fact, I can even see it from my desk at work: The St Pancras Renaissance Hotel and St Pancras Chambers apartments. We met our guide in the hotel forecourt and learned a lot about the history of St Pancras station and the former Midland Grand Hotel, whose building is now occupied by the Renaissance Hotel and the apartments. It was a beautiful sunny day — perfect for a little Open House adventuring.



St Pancras station was built as the central hub for the Midland Railway, with the grand (some said too grand) Renaissance Hotel as its pièce de résistance. It isn't surprising that the neighbouring King's Cross station, home of the Great Northern Railway, developed something of an inferiority complex. King's Cross itself has smartened up considerably over the past few years, but St Pancras is still the more striking and elegant of the two. Although the Midland Grand Hotel, which opened in 1873, used to occupy the whole of the building, the Renaissance just takes up the first floor (with a separate, west wing that has further rooms); the upper floors are made up of offices and apartments.


First, our guide took us inside the Renaissance. I've been to the lovely Booking Office bar for cocktails a few times, but I have never explored the rest of the hotel. We walked over to the hotel's grand spiral staircase, which has been the setting for various TV shows and, most famously, for the music video for the Spice Girls song Wannabe. It hasn't changed much since then! I was more interested, however, in the beautiful hand-painted ceiling with its golden stars on a teal background. We didn't go upstairs but the view from the ground floor was still impressive.




Our next stop was to the apartments upstairs. Looking up at the ceiling from the ground floor, it is hard to ignore the influence of Islamic architecture — although the roof has a glass ceiling, the light streams through. The building is also designed so that the ceiling on each floor is a couple of feet lower than than that of the floor below. Naturally, the servants used to bunk down in any free space they could find on the top floor.



Our guide couldn't confirm the urban legend of the West Indies cricket team setting up nets in the long hallway on the fifth floor, but did tell us about some of the design constraints faced by owners and tenants in this listed building.


Finally, we visited one of the clock tower apartments on the fifth floor. We didn't get to go right up to the clock, but enjoyed looking at the period features (the wooden box that looks a bit like a wardrobe or a phone box used to house the clock's winding mechanism before it was automated).



The views through the windows out over King's Cross were pretty nice too.



Another tour group was right behind us, so we had to leave the apartment before I had the chance to take any more photos. It's such a beautiful space and you can even rent it out on Airbnb. I'm seriously tempted, even though I live in London. We filed back down the spiral staircase, stopping briefly to peep out at The Lovers (AKA Paul day's The Meeting Place) in the main hall of St Pancras station.



There are, of course, plenty of places worth visiting during Open House London, but I would definitely recommend the St Pancras tour. You do need to book early, though, as they sold out pretty quickly this year.

Rather than taking a direct bus from Mérida to Cancún and then Isla Mujeres, I decided to stop at Chichén Itzá, one of the most famous Mayan archaeological sites — a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. 

Yesterday morning, I went to the two last museums on my list for this trip: the Museo Nacional de Historia and the Museo Nacional de Antropologia, both of which are based in the Bosque de Chapultepec, a huge park on the west side of the city centre. Chapultepec means 'the grasshopper hill' in Nahuatl, and the history museum is located in the Castillo de Chapultepec, at the top of the said hill. 

Dangerous Liaisons meets Gardeners' World is the best way to describe Alan Rickman's sweet, if predictable, new film A Little Chaos, which tells the tale of a female landscape gardener tasked with designing and constructing the gardens of the Palace of Versailles.

I went to see a preview screening last night, enticed by the prospect of watching Rickman's second venture into the director's chair and by the decent cast. It was pleasant enough and frankly, I could listen to Rickman, who also appeared as King Louis XIV, reading a seed catalogue for 117 minutes, but the lack of conflict and dramatic tension made the first half of the film in particular drag. The garden was lacking plot, if you will.

As the film opens, Sabine De Barra (Kate Winslet) is hired ahead of several male colleagues to help the king's Executive Director of Garden Services, André Le Notre (Matthias Schoenaerts) to create and realise the centrepiece of the gardens of the king's newest and grandest palace. You think she isn't going to get the job, but she does, and then you think she's going to have a hard time of it, but then she doesn't. The jolly king hints that Le Notre — and thus Sabine — will be in trouble if he doesn't like the finished product, but Rickman's Louis XIV is so much more avuncular than Damian Lewis's Henry VIII, say, that it's hard to believe him.

Meanwhile, Sabine is haunted by ghosts from her past. She refuses to talk about the death of her husband and young daughter or to move on, but she begins to feel a connection with Le Notre, much to the dislike of his self-involved wife (Helen McCrory), who isn't above going all Marquise de Merteuil on this manual-labouring interloper, who has managed to worm her way into high society, charming even the king.

Eh, bien, continuons... A Little Chaos makes for pleasant enough viewing but it could have been a much bolder, more interesting story, focusing on the challenges of a strong woman making her way in a rare profession for her gender for the time. There are a few chuckle-worthy lines — most of them from Rickman himself or from Stanley Tucci, who plays the Duc d'Orléans and who doesn't get nearly enough screen time — and the film even opens with a fart joke. But it's almost as though Rickman can't decide whether he wants to create a light-hearted wigs-and-wags romance, or a more serious drama, and he doesn't really succeed at either. It doesn't help that Winslet and the usually excellent Schoenaerts seemed to be phoning home their performances and were really just rather wet. Ultimately, the film is more of a jolly afternoon stroll along the Seine than a son et lumière extravaganza.

June 1940. Storms — both literal and metaphorical — are coming to Paris and to the small French town of Bussy. While France struggles to deal with the realities of the German occupation, Lucile Angellier (Michelle Williams) and her mother-in-law (Kristin Scott Thomas) are more concerned about keeping up appearances and keeping the family estate in good shape for when Lucile's husband returns from the prisoner-of-war camp where he is imprisoned. But when a regiment of German soldiers arrive in Bussy and one, Bruno (Matthias Schoenaerts), is assigned to live with the Angellier women, Lucile's world changes forever.

Saul Dibb's new film Suite française is based on Irène Némirovsky's excellent novel of the same name. The novel was supposed to be the first in a series (one translation of the title is "French series"), but tragically, Némirovsky was arrested in 1942 and died later that year in Auschwitz. Sixty years later, her daughter discovered the manuscript among her mother's papers and the book soon became a bestseller. The novel itself is finely crafted, compelling and moving; in its transition to the big screen, the story feels a little more standard-WWII-melodrama, but the sterling performances from the three leads — especially Schoenaerts — elevates the film.

Lucile is a complex character to portray: the Angelliers are one of the wealthiest families in the village and even before the arrival of the Germans, she faces a fair degree of antagonism from her resentful tenants, not helped by Mme Angellier's hardball approach to rent collection. Lucile is also lonely — she misses her husband, but it's unclear how much she loves him, especially when we find out that they didn't meet and marry very long before war breaks out. She maintains a sort of friendship with Madeleine (a fiery, tough Ruth Wilson), who lives with her war-wounded husband Benoit (Sam Riley) and struggles to make ends meet.

When Bruno moves into her house, Lucile wants to hate him and her mother-in-law demands that she hate him, but Bruno is kind, seems reasonable and plays the piano beautifully. Lucile doesn't recognise the song he plays most often, a piece he composed himself called Suite française. Given the circumstances, though, their relationship can hardly be allowed to blossom and indeed, the film isn't just a tale of wartime romance: it's the story of a town in crisis, as the narrative weaves in the struggles faced by Benoit and Madeleine, and some of the other residents, including the mayor and his wife, and there is a great ensemble cast.

There are about two lighter moments, but this is not a happy film. I suspect it's not a movie that will stand the test of time, which is a shame because it tells an important story and does benefit from some great acting performances. It is also beautifully shot and, as you might expect, has a lovely score from Rael Jones.

I only found out about Odeon's Screen Unseen programme this month, but I was intrigued and bought a ticket for this month's screening on Monday night. Essentially, you pay £5 for an advance screening of a surprise film ("not your typical Hollywood fare. These are films that are edgy, intriguing, controversial and thought-provoking"), which is unveiled on the night. Odeon gives away a few clues on Twitter and I was pretty confident that I had worked out that we were going to see Ava DuVernay's Selma — the fact that the screening was on Martin Luther King Day only sealed the deal — and I was right.

Selma is the last film of this year's Best Picture Oscar nominees that I've watched and it wasn't my favourite, but it is an important and well-told film with stand-out performances from David Oyelowo and Carmen Ejogo as Martin Luther King Jr and Coretta Scott King. The film opens in 1964. King is about to receive his Nobel Peace Prize while his wife frets over his outfit. He wonders, wryly, what the brothers back home would think of his fancy attire. Meanwhile, a few months earlier in a church in Birmingham, Alabama, four young girls are full of admiration for Coretta but—within moments—the building is violently blown to pieces.

The film takes place in the few months between the Nobel ceremony in late 1964 and the protest marches in spring 1965 between the titular Selma, Alabama, and the state capital Montgomery, some 50 miles east. King is campaigning hard with President Lyndon B. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) over the lack of enforcement of the recent law permitting African Americans to vote in some states, especially Alabama where Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth) prefers the status quo.

King and some of his fellow activists in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference visit a few Alabama towns to try to find a good test case. King is beaten up within moments of trying to check in to a hotel in Selma, and they realise that "this place is perfect". Town sheriff Jim Clark (Stan Houston) helps them to create national headlines by ordering his troops to attack and scare off the peacefully protesting activists who have gathered outside the town hall to register to vote.

Several tragic deaths at the hands of the Selma law enforcement and a few more front-page headlines draw more focus on King and on Selma, but King knows that he has to do something really big to persuade Johnson, who—as he reminds King—is a politician not an activist and has more than one issue to consider, to take immediate action on voting rights. "Let's not start a second battle when we haven't won the first," Johnson urges.

Although we get some detail on King as a person and, in particular, as a husband, Selma is also a one-issue movie. And given the importance of this story in American—and world—history, it is hard to argue with that. Certainly, I knew embarrassingly little about the protest marches and the town of Selma—or that marches were so key in the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—until the film was released. The film-makers didn't have the rights to King's real words, but writer Paul Webb did admirably, slipping only occasionally into grandiosity.

Oyelowo is also really, really good as King, conveying a sense of calm leadership combined with highly compelling charisma. The whole ensemble cast is good, in fact; I particularly liked seeing Dylan Baker (AKA creepy wife-killer from The Good Wife) playing a super-creepy J. Edgar Hoover. Overall, Selma is a powerful and uplifting story and although it is clearly never going to be as fun as Birdman or Grand Budapest Hotel, it is essential viewing nonetheless.

The opening act of James Kent's Testament of Youth plays out like an advert for Visit Yorkshire: a young woman frolics in a cool, clear lake and, laughing, wanders o'er hill and dale with her beloved brother and his two friends. The toughest challenge in Vera (Alicia Vikander)'s life is persuading her father (Dominic West) to let her sit the Oxford entrance exam so that she can join her brother Edward (Taron Egerton) and sweetheart Roland (Kit Harington) and eventually become a writer.

She wins a place at Somerville College, but before we can go full Brideshead, the Great War has erupted and Edward, Roland and several other friends have enlisted. Vera begs Roland not to go but he insists. "How many generations get a chance to be involved in something like this?" he asks, and soon he has gone to fight. Even the honeyed stone walls of Oxford offer little solace to Vera and she leaves behind her Ivory Tower to become a nurse — first on home turf and then in France where she can be closer to the action.

Kent's anthem for doomed youth is based on Vera Brittain's memoir of the same name and it paints a bleak, uncompromising portrait of war and waste, love and loss. There is mud and blood, with little room for romance or romanticisation. The film has a lot in common with Poliakoff's Glorious 39, but the similarities with Joe Wright's Atonement are more immediate (it almost feels like a prequel), from the long sweeping shots of battlefields to Max Richter's haunting score. Atonement is a cleverer, more complex film but Testament of Youth has at its core a strong and moving central performance from Vikander and a powerful story.

Jon Snow (AKA Harington) has had a bit of a haircut and scrubbed up rather nicely, but he is soon dispatched to the wall (well, the front line) and his main role is to look dolefully at Vera with those puppy-dog eyes. It seemed to me that there was more of a connection and stronger chemistry between Vera and Edward than Vera and Roland. West, meanwhile, is also wasted in his role as the sad, powerless patriarch but he makes the best of the material is given. Emily Watson, as Vera and Edward's mother, doesn't have a lot to do either, although there is a nice, if brief, turn from the ever sparky Hayley Atwell, as a take-charge, stiff-upper-lip nurse Vera meets in France.

Testament of Youth is a bleak film to start off a new year, especially with the World War I centenary and the dramatic display of poppies at the Tower of the London barely having concluded. It is, however, a well-made film that tells an important story about a unique and fascinating historical character — a story that will stick in my mind for some time, as well as prompting me to re-watch the excellent Atonement.

I work in science communication so I probably know more than many about the brilliant mathematician and computer science pioneer Alan Turing. Yesterday, I had a long meeting in the Turing Room, and my journal celebrated the 100-year anniversary of his birth in 2012, sixty years after his conviction for gross indecency and a year before he was eventually given a posthumous royal pardon. But you don't have to know a great deal about Turing to enjoy Morten Tyldum's new film The Imitation Game, which explores Turing's role in the cracking of the Enigma code. I went to see the movie on Friday night with a diverse group of people and we all really enjoyed it.

Turing is played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who puts in a really top notch performance. The movie flits seamlessly between three time periods: World War II, as Turing is hired — barely — to join a team of mathematicians and engineers at Bletchley Park to crack the supposedly unbreakable German Enigma code machine; Turing's schooldays in the late 1920s; and the darker years of the early 1950s when Turing is investigated by the police, suspected of spying for the Soviets, and then of the aforementioned gross indecency.

When he arrives at Bletchey, Turing is hardly the most popular of employees. In fact, he is only hired by Commander Denniston (played by a sneering, Tywin Lannister-esque Charles Dance) because Winston Churchill commanded it. Turing takes over from Hugh Alexander (Matthew Goode), whose team has been making slow progress, and fires the dead wood. He then recruits several crossword enthusiasts including — shock, horror! — a woman, namely the mathematician Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), with whom he develops a friendship.

It isn't long before Turing makes a breakthrough: "What if only a machine can break a machine?" he asks. With a huge government grant of £100,000, he sets about building such a machine that he calls Christopher and which would eventually become known as a Turing machine. But Denniston and MI6 man Stewart Menzies (Mark Strong) aren't convinced that they will see a return on their investment and Turing and his team are given an imminent deadline for their work. Will they be able to crack Enigma in time?

Most people probably know the outcome and also know that Turing took his own life in 1954 after being convicted of gross indecency and offered the horrific choice between prison and chemical castration (he took the latter). The Imitation Game ends shortly before then, and it is an emotional but understated ending.

Despite the shocking recency of the UK's former barbaric anti-gay laws and despite the tragedy of Turing's death, the film works very well as a celebration of his often isolated and all-too-short life. It's also quite funny in places, mainly when Turing is standing up to Denniston and Menzies, and when he is trying to do things he sees other people do but does not understand, including jokes and flirting. It reminded me a little of The Social Network — Cumberbatch's Turing is not dissimilar to Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg, and although both films are, at their heart, about the cracking and the writing of code, their respective directors manage to tell a much more complex and interesting story.

Cumberbatch really stands out in a great ensemble cast but Alex Lawther, who plays the young Turing, is also excellent, and Knightley does well in a somewhat two-dimensional role. The Imitation Game is a moving, compelling portrait of a fascinating man and it's definitely worth a watch.

Half my lifetime ago, I fell in love with Shakespeare in Love. I saw John Madden's film with my family in a crowded Manhattan cinema and we all loved it. So much so that when I returned to Oxford, I eagerly awaited the film's UK release date so I could watch it again with my friends. I probably haven't watched it for at least a decade, though, so when I heard that it was being brought to the London stage, it felt like it was high time to catch up with Will, Viola and the gang.

My family and I had great seats in the stalls, and after some brief excitement when we spotted Tom Hollander in the audience, we settled down to watch the play. It is a faithful adaptation of Tom Stoppard's original screenplay — as far as I remember, anyway — and it is witty, funny and enjoyable, with a great ensemble cast.


Will Shakespeare (Tom Bateman) is struggling to finish — or even to start — the plays he has promised two theatre-owners. In fact, he can't even finish the poem that would become Sonnet 18. Luckily, with the help of his friend and rival, Christopher Marlowe (the gorgeous David Oakes), he comes up with enough of a far-fetched plot involving a young chap called Romeo and a pirate's daughter named Ethel to keep one of his two masters — Henslowe (Paul Chahidi) — happy.

Casting the perfect Romeo is tricky, however, until a talented young fellow called Thomas Kent arrives to audition. Kent is great and gets the part but is, of course, the alter ego of a wealthy heiress and would-be actress named Viola De Lesseps (Lucy Briggs-Owen). Yes: a woman. And a woman who is about to be married off to the loathsome Earl of Wessex (Alistair Petrie), no less. Will also meets the 'real' Viola after sneaking into a ball at her father's house, and they promptly fall in love. Yet the course of true love never did run smoothly, especially when Will must try to avoid being bumped off by one of Wessex's cronies and keep his vain, feckless bunch of actors in order, as well as winning over Viola.

The play, like the film, is very clever and filled with plenty of references to Shakespeare's works — present and future. "Out, damned Spot!" someone cries when Spot the naughty dog runs across the stage at an inopportune moment. And the actors who weren't fond of Two Gentlemen of Verona aren't too pleased to find that the play that has become Romeo & Juliet (or, if you are Ned Alleyn (Doug Rao), Mercutio) is based in the same city. "Verona again?" The first half of the play is very funny indeed, although things necessarily become a little more serious in the final act.


The terrific performances from the ensemble cast make Shakespeare in Love's transition to the stage a success. Briggs-Owen makes a great Viola; Rao steals plenty of scenes; and Ferdy Roberts' Ray Winstone-esque Fennyman is hugely funny, especially when his character is given the role of the apothecary in Romeo & Juliet. The sets were also cleverly designed — the balcony and circle tiers of the on-stage theatre doubling up as stately homes and even ships. If you liked the film and can make it down to the Noel Coward theatre to see the play, you won't be disappointed. But if not, re-watching the movie isn't too bad a substitute.

My cinema attendance has been pretty woeful so far this year, but I did find time to see Amma Asante's new movie Belle this evening at my local, the Shortwave in Bermondsey. I saw the US trailer for the movie before a screening of The Grand Budapest Hotel in New York and couldn't tell whether Belle would be the thoughtful and thought-provoking tale of a fascinating but little known historical figure, or a cheesy, bodice-buster. Happily, it turned out to be more of the former, with a healthy dose of legal drama.

The film is inspired by a 1779 painting of two young women: Lady Elizabeth Murray and her mixed-race cousin, Dido Elizabeth Belle. Their equal position in the portrait prompted interest in the hitherto little known story of Dido — the illegitimate daughter of Captain John Lindsay and Maria Belle, an enslaved woman in the West Indies — who was raised with her cousin by their great-uncle, the Earl of Mansfield. As the film opens, Captain Lindsay (Matthew Goode) takes the young Dido to the Hampstead residence of his uncle, Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson), and his wife (Emily Watson), asking them to raise his mixed-raise daughter alongside her cousin Elizabeth — their other great niece. Somewhat reluctantly, the Mansfields eventually agree — and Lindsay heads off to sea again.

Years later, and Dido (now played by the brilliant Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) are looking forward to making their début in London society. Although they are conscious of the differences between them, neither really understands why Dido isn't allowed to eat dinner with her family or with the servants. In addition, Dido finds herself in a stronger position than her cousin, in some ways, after she finds out that her father has perished at sea, leaving her a small inheritance.

In theory, Elizabeth should receive a sizeable inheritance from her father, but the said father is too busy living it up with his second wife abroad and has abandoned his eldest daughter. This means that when the cousins meet the brothers Grimm Ashford — older, nastier James (played by Draco Malfoy) and younger, slightly more ambiguous Oliver (James Norton) — it is unclear which woman stands a stronger chance of making a match. Certainly, Mother Ashford (Miranda Richardson) couldn't imagine anything worse than having Dido as her daughter-in-law until she finds out about her income, while Elizabeth plummets rapidly in Lady Ashford's expectations when the latter learns of the former's fortunes — or lack thereof.

Meanwhile, a friendship develops between Dido and John Davinier (Sam Reid), a promising would-be lawyer who is doing his best to sway Mansfield's opinion on the Zong massacre case Mansfield is working on, the outcome of which could have implications for the whole British slave-trade industry. Mansfield is less impressed with Davinier's 'overly idealistic' world-view, and he certainly doesn't see Davinier — the son of a vicar — as a suitable suitor for his great-niece. 142 slaves were thrown overboard to drown by sailors of the Zong who claimed there wasn't enough water to go round. In fact, the slaves' poor living conditions had led to the spread of disease, which would have meant they were worth more to the slave-trade company in insurance money than alive. Unsurprisingly, the insurers cried fraud. This is probably the only film where viewers want an insurance company to win the case!

Although Belle does veer into Austen territory at times, especially in some of the overly sentimental scenes between Dido and Davinier, it's a very compelling film, anchored by the strong central performance from Mbatha-Raw. The scene in which Dido sits in front of a mirror, cursing her complexion and clawing at her face is particularly hard to watch. The other actors in leading roles were perfectly fine, but didn't stand out. Elizabeth, who we are told several times is a feisty lass, was particularly wet, but I'm not sure that is necessarily Gadon's fault, and the scenes with the two cousins alone together were very strong.

One silly thing that did distract me was that the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford was playing the part of the High Court in London. As such, Dido is seen to hop in a carriage in Bedford Square and arrive some 50 miles down the road practically before her great-uncle has finished his opening remarks in the Zong case. Oxford is, of course, very attractive and filled with 18th century architecture, so it's perfectly understandable that they wanted to film there. This quibble aside, Belle tells a fascinating story set in a period that was far from England's finest hour.

Faced with a choice between Spike Jonze's Her and George Clooney's new film The Monuments Men this weekend, I decided I would probably enjoy the latter more. Based on the poster, I was expecting an Ocean's Eleven-style caper, although with more serious subject matter. I did like the movie, but I think it suffered from trying to be too many things to too many people.


Clooney, who directed, co-wrote and produced the film, also stars as Frank Stokes, an art expert tasked with putting together a small team of art and architecture specialists to try to recover some of the paintings and sculptures stolen by the Nazis in the dying days of World War Two. These guys, including James Granger (Matt Damon), Walter Garfield (John Goodman) and Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), are about as equipped to head off to war-torn Europe as Bruce Willis's team of drillers are to save the world from asteroid doom. They do, however, know their art, so after rudimentary training, they ship out to France and Stokes splits them into mini-team tasked with rescuing specific works.

Token Brit Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville) heads to Bruges to save the Madonna; Garfield and the beret-wearing token Frenchman Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin) travel into the countryside. Granger gets sent to Paris where he meets Claire, a museum curator who might know where the Nazis took some of the paintings, played by Cate Blanchett doing her best to look dowdy. The operation faces a number of challenges and are frequently asked to justify their efforts to save mere art works when millions are dying. This gives the screenplay the opportunity to opine about the importance and transcendent power of art and how you have to destroy culture to truly, permanently crush a people. "Great works of art can never belong to one individual," Stokes says.

And the film's worthiness hampers its enjoyability to some extent. It was clearly trying to be funny too but in that case, it wasn't funny enough. There were a few chuckles from the audience — mainly about the frequent language/accent jokes (Damon's character has appalling French — he learnt in Montréal he admits, cuing the eye-rolling of the French — although Blanchett, playing a French character, didn't have a very good French accent either). Damon, and especially Blanchett, felt under-used, with their characters marooned from the rest of the gang. The momentum never really builds up, either, so that when a big breakthrough is made, it doesn't have the dramatic force Clooney is shooting for.

Still, it's an interesting story — based on real events — and one I knew nothing about, and all of the lead actors are as fun to watch as always. I just think Clooney needed to think more carefully about whether he wanted to tell a powerful, worthy story or an entertaining one.

"One small fact," opines the narrator, as The Book Thief opens. "You are going to die." Well, with that cheerful thought, let's head off to Nazi Germany in 1938 for some, er, light relief? I haven't read Markus Zusak's novel on which Brian Percival's new film is based, but I saw a trailer for the movie a few weeks ago and thought it sounded interesting, so I signed up for a preview screening last night.

At the start of the film, our young heroine Liesel (Sophie Nélisse) is on a journey to a new foster home, when her brother dies suddenly. Liesel picks up a book from the graveyard and keeps it to remind her of her brother, even though she can't read. Her new foster parents are the Hubermanns: the dour Rosa (Emily Watson) and the jovial, accordion-playing Hans (Geoffrey Rush). They are being paid to take in Liesel, whose mother is suspected of being a communist, and Rosa is initially hard on the girl because the death of her brother means they receive less money. Hans is more welcoming, however, and he begins to teach Liesel how to read: they start with her rescued book, which turns out to be a guide to grave-digging, before moving on to more literary works.

Liesel has a few run-ins with the school bully, but becomes firm friends with her cheerful blonde neighbour Rudy (Nico Liersch). Life returns to normal. Well, normal for late-1930s Germany. But then Liesel's foster parents agree to take in Max (Ben Schnetzer), the son of an old friend of Hans's to whom Hans's accordion belonged. Max is Jewish and seriously unwell after months on the run from the Nazis. He hides out in the Hubermanns' basement and strikes up an unexpected friendship with Liesel: he challenges her to describe what is happening in the outside world in imaginative ways and she reads to him the books she steals — borrows — from the library at the Burgermeister's house.

Around them, the world is changing fast as World War II begins and nothing is certain any longer. Books are burned, basements are searched and people are taken away for having one n too few at the end of their name. For Liesel, who has already lost so much in her life, the thought of something happening to her new friends and family is unbearable.

Overall, I enjoyed The Book Thief. At 130 minutes, it is a little long and the pacing felt slightly odd at times — many small or medium events that weren't anchored by big turning points. Part of the problem is the narrator (voiced here by Roger Allam), an omnipotent Death character who, throughout the film, breaks the fourth wall, making dry asides to the audience as he eyes up his next victim. These seemed out of place and weakened the dramatic tension, particularly in the last few scenes. Nélisse was impressive as the titular book thief (she reminded me of Kiernan Shipka), and Watson and especially Rush entertained as Liesel's good cop, bad cop foster parents. The story is compelling and thoughtful, but may irritate those hoping for something with a bit more vim and/or vigour.

After a slow start for new cinema releases, 2014 is getting back on track as the countdown to the Oscars begins. Today I went to see Steve McQueen's excellent new film 12 Years a Slave, which surely has numerous Academy Award nominations in the bag.

Well, Joe Wright's long-awaited adaptation of Anna Karenina is finally out and you could tell it was going to be something a little different when its star, Keira Knightley, has to go on the Today programme and caution that it will probably be quite divisive. Indeed, when I heard about the theatrical setting of the film, I wasn't sure I would like it, but although it was a little too long--not excessively so, given the length of the source material--I thought Knightley and Jude Law, playing one of the Alexeis, Anna's dependable but dull husband Karenin, were excellent and that Wright managed to pull it off.

Having a screenplay by Tom Stoppard definitely helped. Don't get me wrong--this version is still a tragedy but the script crackles with wit and dark, tongue-in-cheek humour ("divorce is one thing; dinner's quite another," Anna's brother Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen) tells Karenin). Condensing an 850-page novel into a 2h10 film inevitably means that a lot of plot has to be edited out. The film sticks to the basics: beautiful, bored Anna falls for the handsome, arrogant Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), they begin an affair and then, this being the 1870s, it all goes a bit Pete Tong when she decides to leave her husband for him. The other main sub-plot of the film is the love story between Kitty (Alicia Vikander), Anna's sister-in-law's sister, and Levin (Domhnall Gleeson), but these scenes always felt a little out of place and as though too much of Tolstoy's social commentary had been left on the cutting room floor. I'm really not sure whether we were supposed to care whether or not they ended up together.

Joe Wright's film is beautifully, luxuriously shot and I thought the theatre setting generally worked quite well. I enjoyed the grand ballroom scenes and Vronsky's race--also conducted on a stage with the womenfolk watching in the stalls and boxes of the theatre--was an impressive piece of cinematography. Toy train sets in children's bedrooms sometimes evoked the feeling of train journeys without a real train having to be evoked. And Anna and Vronsky's relationship is lush, sexy and hedonistic. Anna, usually seen wearing black or dark, rich colours, wears virginal white in the presence of her lover and they frolic and revel decadently in the Russian countryside. Less sexy was the sight of Anna licking Vronsky's 'tache, which, along with his bleached-blonde hair, makes him look more like a German eighties throwback than a Russian count. Confusingly, with his lighter hair, he also looks like a younger Jude Law in some scenes.

Taylor-Johnson's Vronsky is suitably arrogant but appears to be relatively true to his lover, despite her later paranoid fears. Law's Karenin is also very sympathetic--he is so desperate to do the right thing and to protect his family, that his own feelings about his wife's fostering feelings for the other Alexei usually come in second place. "My wife is beyond reproach," he says, when questioned about the growing rumours about Anna. "She is, after all, my wife." The Anna Knightley portrays is trickier to interpret. She isn't very likable--she is bored, lazy, selfish and stubborn--but nor is Tolstoy's Anna. It's all very well women complaining about the double standard of 19th century men being able to screw around as much as they liked whereas if their wives grow tired of them, they don't get the same luxury. But who can feel sorry for Anna who brings all of her own troubles upon herself and generally acts thoughtlessly? In a number of her scenes with Vronsky, she just looks bored and as though she is going through the motions. Even later on, when she is shunned by her former friends ("she did worse than break the law; she broke the rules"), and blames everyone but herself, it's hard not to just roll your eyes. That isn't to say that Knightley doesn't put in a good performance. Anna is a tough character to portray, given these aforementioned character flaws, and Knightley, with her cool, dark eyes and her Helena Bonham-Carter-esque mad hair, simpers and seethes exactly as required.

The cast list contains a number of other impressive names in more minor roles, who don't get nearly enough screen time--Olivia Williams as Vronsky's manipulative mother, for example. I loved Dario Marianelli's beautiful, haunting score for another Joe Wright film, Atonement, and I'm glad his work was featured again in his newest film. And overall, I was fairly impressed with Anna Karenina. It isn't without its flaws, but the quirky setting, the sharp screenplay and the good performances from the lead actors keeps things interesting.

It goes without saying that James Marsh's new film Shadow Dancer, based on Tom Bradby's adaptation of his own novel of the same name, paints a very bleak picture of Anglo-Irish relations in the early 1990s. It is definitely a thriller but the slow-burning kind, where the tension and the intensity build throughout the 1h40 film. There are hardly any action sequences, but they would have been overkill for this subtle and superbly acted drama.

In Belfast in 1973, a young girl encourages her little brother to go to the shop to buy her some sweets, but he never comes back alive, to the despair of the family. Twenty years later and Colette (Andrea Riseborough) is riding the Tube, nervously eyeing her shoulder bag. After a botched attempt (or was it?) to set off a bomb on the Underground, she is picked up by MI5 and escorted to a hotel room where she meets Mac (Clive Owen). He has enough information on her and her family to send her off to a grim prison for the rest of her life and to send her young son into care. Or, she can turn informant and meet with Mac once a week to let him know any IRA-related activities her two brothers Gerry (Aiden Gillen) and Connor (Domhnall Gleeson) are planning. In return, he promises to keep Colette and her son safe. As a further carrot, he seems to have information that may reveal who was really responsible for the murder of her younger brother, all those years ago.

Writer Tom Bradby (R) discusses Shadow Dancer at the Mayfair Hotel

It isn't much of a choice, and Colette grudgingly agrees to her weekly appointment on the beach with Mac. It quickly becomes clear to them both, however, that the higher-ups in the IRA are soon going to work out the source of the leak, making Colette's position extremely precarious. Mac promises to do everything he can for her--indeed, he seems to be rather more emotionally involved with her than he ought to be, and certainly more than his boss Kate (played by a cool, power-suited Gillian Anderson) thinks he should be--but is that enough? And what if his own agenda doesn't match as closely with that of his colleagues? In 1990s Belfast, it's hard to know who is 'doing the right thing,' if it's even possible. And as Colette struggles to balance her roles of loyal sister and mother, and informant, it's clearly not going to be long until everything comes to a head.

Riseborough is great as the scared but strong Colette, tasked with the unenviable go-between role, caught between family duty and self-preservation (and love of her son). She barely smiles during the entire film, but although Marsh is clearly avoiding trying to make any moral judgments or to define the 'goodies' and the 'baddies,' Riseborough is extremely sympathetic and human, even in her most tragic of decisions. Despite his high billing on IMDb, Clive is only a "with" role (as is Anderson), although he does get a fair chunk of screentime, where he does his husky, crusading, papa-bear best. This is not by any stretch of the imagination a romance, but the chemistry between Riseborough and Owen crackles and sparks throughout the film.

I watched Shadow Dancer at a preview screening at the Mayfair Hotel this evening, and was lucky enough to listen to a Q&A with Tom Bradby after the film. He talked about his own experiences as a young political correspondent in Belfast in the early 1990s--unsurprisingly, many aspects of the story he tells are inspired by real events. What he really wanted to create with Shadow Dancer, he said, was a really good thriller about a small group of individuals in a terrible situation, analyzing how they behave to one another. In that he certainly succeeded.

He also talked about some of the differences of opinion he and Marsh had. Marsh was apparently very much of the opinion that the audience should be left to work things out and draw their own conclusions; Bradby tended to argue that some scenes needed a little more spelling out. The ending--which, without saying too much, is shocking, powerful and does very much leave it up to the viewer to interpret--worked very well, I thought, but there were a few other scenes that seemed to have been over-edited and a couple more lines or moments of explanation might have been handy. Not because I need spoon-feeding but because there are lots of complications around the relatively simple set-up, and it was good to hear Brady talk about a couple of cut scenes, including one between Mac and Kate, where Mac asks her if she likes playing god. We are supposed to identify emotionally with Mac, you see, but intellectually with Kate. The film seems to have changed a lot from the book--Mac's character was much younger and had a bit of a different role, including a rivalry with someone from Special Branch; for the film, Bradby decided to keep the focus on Colette and those immediately connected to her, which I think was probably a smart choice.

Shadow Dancer is jarring on the nerves but well worth watching for the powerful performances and its portrayal of the brutal, unapologetic realities of 1990s Northern Ireland, and, on a more basic level, its portrayal of the competing burdens of family duty, love, trust and betrayal.

If you are looking for a fun, light-hearted movie to round off the weekend, don't go to see Nikolaj Arcel's A Royal Affair (En kongelig affære). But it may well fit the bill if you fancy a thought-provoking, well-acted, tragic movie depicting one of the most dramatic periods of Danish history. There are elements of La Reine Margot and of any film depicting Henry VIII's relationship with his second and fifth wives. Not to mention The Madness of King George, whose protagonist is the sister of our heroine in A Royal Affair.

It is 1766 and a young British princess (Alicia Vikander), whose name we only discover is Caroline Mathilde almost two hours into the film, is being shipped off to marry King Christian VII of Denmark (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard). He is supposed to be charming and fun, and Caroline is optimistic for her future. No one mentions the fact that he also suffers from various symptoms of mental illness, and is erratic, wildly promiscuous and, according to the movie at least, obsessed with masturbation. The first years of the marriage do not go well--Caroline is repulsed and scared by her husband in the bedroom and cannot forgive his need to sate his desires elsewhere. Nonetheless, she does her duty and the future Frederik VI is soon on his way.

Denmark, like much of Europe at this time, is in a period of great change. The country is ruled by the conservative elite, who take advantage of the fact that the king will sign any document if it means he can return to the brothel sooner. But the Enlightenment is underway and those who support it manage to get Johann Friedrich Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen), a small-town doctor with big, revolutionary ideas, a job as the king's personal physician. Struensee becomes the king's closest friend and confidant and is soon able to use his influence to start pushing through radical reform that he hopes will make the country a better, and fairer, place. Naturally, the conservative ruling council and the king's stepmother (Trine Dyrholm), who wants her own son on the throne, are unimpressed and plot to remove this dangerous upstart from government.

Their job is made easier by the fact that Strunsee and Caroline fall in love; ironically, the king tells Struensee to try to make Caroline more fun. They are attracted to each other but they also bond over Rousseau and it is clear that the queen is on Team Enlightenment, which means she can also push through some radical reforms of her own. For a while, Caroline feels as though she has it all: her husband is happy--and less erratic--with his new BFF, she is doing things that will make Denmark a better place, and she has a thoughtful and attractive lover. When she finds out she is pregnant, she manages to persuade her husband to sleep with her early enough that he wouldn't doubt the child's paternity, but as the queen and Struensee become more confident in their successes, they also become more careless. Spoiler alert: the ending is pretty bleak, although the closing title cards hint at a faint note of hope for the future.

Mikkelsen acts his heart out as the 'nobody' who goes on to become, arguably, Denmark's most powerful man. Struensee isn't perfect--he is often patronising to the king and is later guilty of manipulating the king and using him as a pawn in the same way he criticised the king's earlier advisors of doing; then, of course, he betrays the king completely by having an affair with his wife and lying about it. Mikkelsen makes him seem flawed but sympathetic. Meanwhile, Vikander does her Keira Knightley best as the doomed queen: all sad, brown eyes, resigned to her fate. A Royal Affair is a bit of a weepy, but there is plenty of drama (plus the usual brothels and balls) and some big ideas that keep things moving nicely throughout its 2h35 length. The period depicted in the film spans only about six years, but it feels a lot more epic. Go and see it, but be sure to take a handkerchief.

This afternoon, I found myself scanning Thursday's newspapers in search of stories about the research I've helped to promote, as I do most Mondays. We only get the broadsheets delivered and it's always interesting to see which stories some papers avoid and which ones are, in Private Eye's words, exclusive to all newspapers. By the time I've finished, I usually feel like I would have done really well on the BBC News's 7 Days quiz if only I'd read them earlier.

This is a long-winded way of justifying why I was reading Thursday's Daily Torygraph and why I found a short piece by Alison Weir, who is pimping her new book about Mary Boleyn (a review of the book will follow as soon as I've read it; it's still on my shelf at the moment). The story is hooked to the announcement that Hilary Mantel's sequel to Wolf Hall will be published next year, but Weir quickly gets on with dissing the rather cavalier approach to the truth and historical accuracy taken by the film of The Other Boleyn Girl and the now, fortunately, defunct TV show, The Tudors. She then asks:

What is it about the Tudors that we find so compelling? Easy to answer: they were the most charismatic and dynamic of monarchs, who ruled over an age of great change. A king with six wives, two of whom he beheaded? A young woman (Lady Jane Grey) executed after nine days on the throne? The first women to rule? You couldn’t make it up.

Not that that stopped the likes of The Tudors sexing it up to the max. I did used to enjoy The Tudors during the first season. I tried not to think about the inaccuracies and the campness of it all, but it was good fun and at least if people are watching this show, they might learn a tiny bit of history, which you can't say for the "structured reality" crap that seems to dominate most TV schedules. < /rant > The trouble with a Tudors TV programme is that when characters are popular, you can't exactly write the script to allow them to live on for another season; after the death of Anne Boleyn, The Tudors was hanging by a thin thread.

In her biography of Anne's older sister Mary, Weir, it seems, is on a mission to debunk some of the myths perpetuated by The Other Boleyn Girl, which will be interesting given how little information there is available about Mary. Weir writes biographies and historical fiction and I've enjoyed both genres, so I'm looking forward to her treatment of the elusive Mary Boleyn.