Judy Davis

Nitram

by
Nitram and a burning car

Nitram is a tough sell: a film about the Port Arthur shooting in 1996 – 35 dead, 23 wounded at the hand of a lone gunman called Martin Bryant – it was controversial in Australia, where the shooting occurred, and unsurprisingly several politicians were particularly vocal in campaigning against it. The fact that Australian’s gun laws were changed in the aftermath of the shooting might suggest culpable hostility on the part of politicians who had clearly been asleep on the job if a man with restricted intelligence, with a history of reckless behaviour and with no firearms licence could easily buy enough weapons to supply a small army. It’s a tough sell, though, … Read more

Salting the Battlefield

by
Bill Nighy as Johnny Worricker

After the exotic holiday atmosphere of the second film, Turks & Caicos, The Worricker trilogy concludes with Salting the Battlefield. Writer/director David Hare takes us back, literally, to where we started gradually, starting the action out in Europe, where former agents and lovers Johnny Worricker (Bill Nighy) and Margot Tyrell (Helena Bonham Carter) are on the run, before swinging the focus back onto England, then London and finally the claustrophobic confines of the spying community and the upper echelons of the UK government. Familiar faces return – a heavily pregnant Felicity Jones as Worricker’s permanently angry estranged daughter Juliette, Saskia Reeves as Anthea Catcheside, the deputy prime minister wondering if her hour might be … Read more

Page Eight

by
Rachel Weisz and Bill Nighy

From the instant Page Eight starts we know where we are. The camera focuses on Bill Nighy’s face. He lights a cigarette and, as jazz music sulks away on the soundtrack, he strides out into the night. Johnny Worricker (Nighy) is another of Raymond Chandler’s white knights tilting at baddies out on the mean streets and we’re in a noirish thriller set in a world of duplicity. Personally, I’ll watch anything with Nighy in it, his gangling deadpan generally improving everything it’s inserted into. But there are two other “watch anything they’re in” presences in Page Eight. Michael Gambon (not in it nearly long enough), “the Great Gambon” as Ralph Richardson called him, … Read more