Mrs. Henderson Presents
Saw Mrs. Henderson Presents with Twig last night.
Quite good, very much worth watching.
Judi Dench is fabulous as always. Bob Hoskins quite good as well. As are the rest of the cast; I particularly liked Will Young and Kelly Reilly in supporting roles. Good plot, great characters, good acting, good dialogue, cute musical numbers (I think I'm gonna buy the soundtrack album). Directed by Stephen Frears, who's directed a bunch of other good movies: My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity (not my favorite, but I think it was well-regarded), The Queen (which I haven't seen yet), Cheri (also haven't seen yet), etc.
For those who don't know, the story of Mrs. Henderson (this gets a little spoilery, but I'm not saying anything in this paragraph that wasn't in the previews) involves a rich 70-year-old British widow in 1937 who buys and renovates an old theatre and hires a man to manage it for her. It starts out as vaudeville-style variety acts, but later they start having nude women onstage.
It's charming and bittersweet and quite funny, and "inspired by" the true story of the Windmill Theatre. The movie's later parts get quite a bit darker (which I found a mildly jarring shift of tone), and there's one key moment of character motivation that I felt was a little simplistic and a little predictable, but those are minor flaws. It's really a quite enjoyable movie.
