Mostly British Film Festival

Schedule Of Events

Monday February 10, 2025

2:30 pm - Merchant Ivory

Rodgers & Hammerstein. Laurel & Hardy. Proctor & Gamble. These partnerships clicked for reasons the duos themselves didn’t always understand. This endearing documentary about the inspired filmmaking team of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant attempts to explain their magical, if at times volatile, chemistry that resulted in “Room With a View,” “Howard’s End” and “The Remains of the Day.” Watching clips from their classics made during the pair’s heyday in the 1980s and ‘90s may send you home to stream them in their entirety. Interviews with Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and a very lively Helena Bonham-Carter enrich Stephen Soucy’s documentary as they reminisce about the esprit de corps Merchant and Ivory created on their movie sets. Zoom interview with Ivory and Soucy conducted by Mostly British senior programmer Maxine Einhorn.

UK 2024 (112 minutes)

5:00 pm - A Room with a View

This wonderful Merchant Ivory production can be revisited over and again with its perfect casting, launching the careers of Helena Bonham Carter (at 18) Julian Sands, Rupert Graves and Daniel Day-Lewis, as well as cementing those of Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. Adapting the 1908 E.M. Forster novel, the screenplay gently critiques the fastidious, supercilious social niceties of upper crust Edwardian England as young Lucy Honeychurch (Bonham Carter) tours Italy, chaperoned by her cousin, prissy Miss Bartlett (Smith), shielding her from any hint of indelicacy. In Florence, Lucy encounters the dashing George Emerson (Sands), melting into that famous kiss in the Italian poppy field. Beautiful cinematography, beautiful lovers, beautiful Italy combine with the music of Puccini to carry us away.

UK 1985 (117 mins)

7:30 pm - The Last Rifleman

Pierce Brosnan has to be the most underrated superstar actor. This movie shows his full wonderful range – he plays a man 21 years older than he is in real life. It is about a 92-year-old WW II vet who escapes from his care home in Northern Ireland to travel to France for the 75th anniversary of the storming of Normandy. It’s about looking back at a long life lived and trying to see the ghosts — your own ghosts — and finally saying goodbye to them or at least being able to live with them.

UK 2023 (99 minutes)

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Date: February 6-13, 2025