Lennie James Movies
- Starring:
- James Caviezel, Ian McKellen, (more)
Jericho returned for a second astounding season thanks to unprecedented and impassioned support from its legion of loyal fans, many of whom sent peanuts (reportedly totaling thousands of pounds) to the CBS offices in New York and Los Angeles. Why peanuts? That was a reference to the Season 1 cliffhanger finale, which ended with a character uttering "Nuts." CBS responded by bringing the series back for this concluding seven-episode Season 2 run in the spring of 2008. In the aftermath of a devastating nuclear explosion, and a battle with neighboring New Bern, the once peaceful town of Jericho begins to rebuild itself as it attempts to communicate with the outside world. The newly formed Cheyenne government strives to establish its stronghold in the region, but Jericho's citizens become suspicious of these new leaders as they question their true intentions.
- Starring:
- Skeet Ulrich, Ashley Scott, (more)
A handful of men find themselves forced to deal with acts of brutal violence in an increasingly lawless Britain in this hard-hitting crime thriller from writer and director Nick Love. Sgt. Danny Bryant (Sean Bean) comes home injured from a tour of duty in Iraq to find things aren't what they once were -- a gang of thugs has moved into the neighborhood, and his wife is sleeping with another man. Angry Gene Dekker (Danny Dyer) is roughed up by toughs on the day he's to be married, and rather than head out to the church, he sets out to get revenge on the men who beat him. Terence Manning (Rob Fry), a gangster who has been one of the leaders of London's underworld, is currently on trial, with lawyer Cedric Munroe (Lennie James) heading the prosecution's legal team. Manning's men attack both Munroe and his wife, and persuade Munroe's bodyguard Walter (Bob Hoskins) not to intervene. In time, the men set out to even the score against those who wronged them, though their contempt for the law puts them outside the lines of conventional justice. Outlaw also stars Sean Harris and Rupert Friend. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sean Bean, Bob Hoskins, (more)
The British ambassador to America becomes locked into a tense political firestorm when an airplane explodes while flying over Washington, D.C. in this topical British television series that explores the possibility of a British terrorist operating on American soil. Terrorists have stricken the stateside skies once again, and as a result the British Embassy is set ablaze by a diplomatic firestorm. Now, as affinities are tangled and interests clash, British Ambassador Mark Brydon (Jason Isaacs) realizes that he is being manipulated by an invisible puppeteer whose sadistic power mongering has become a threat to international security. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jason Isaacs, Sharon Gless, (more)
Matthew McConaughey stars as explorer and adventurer Dirk Pitt in this adaptation of the best-selling novel by Clive Cussler. Pitt thinks he may have found both a fortune and the answer to a long-standing mystery when he discovers a rare coin in the waters of a river in West Africa. During the Civil War, an ironclad battleship with a valuable cargo went missing, and Pitt's theory is that the coin places the ship somewhere in the Sahara Desert. Pitt and his goofy sidekick, Al Giordino (Steve Zahn), set out to find it, but along the way they make the acquaintance of Dr. Eva Rojas (Penélope Cruz), a scientist and physician who is trying to determine the source of a strange and deadly disease sweeping the nation. As Eva joins Dirk and Al, they begin to wonder if the mysteries they're trying to uncover might be somehow linked. Sahara was only the second of Cussler's Dirk Pitt adventures to be adapted for the screen; the first, 1980's Raise the Titanic, was publicly dismissed by the author. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Matthew McConaughey, Steve Zahn, (more)
This digital-video biopic uses the life of journalist, record mogul and club owner Tony Wilson to frame the story of the Manchester, England, music scene from the heyday of punk through the late-'80s "Madchester" era. As the founder of staunchly independent Factory Records, Wilson (Steve Coogan) shepherded the careers of doomed post-punk combo Joy Division, synth-pop superstars New Order and hedonistic louts the Happy Mondays. Along the way, he helped bring rave culture to Britain under the aegis of the legendary Hacienda nightclub. 24 Hour Party People follows Wilson from his conversion to punk at a seminal Sex Pistols concert through the suicide of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, the overwhelming success of New Order and the eventual dissolution of the Factory empire thanks to bad business decisions, underworld ties and the hedonistic excess of the Happy Mondays. Directed by Michael Winterbottom and written by frequent collaborator Frank Cottrell Boyce, 24 Hour Party People features cameos from a large number of Manchester music luminaries. The supporting cast includes Shirley Henderson and John Simm, both of whom appeared in Winterbottom's Wonderland, while the film's title comes from a Happy Mondays song. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Steve Coogan, Shirley Henderson, (more)
A man who wants to give his family the good things in life decides to start stealing them in this dark comedy from England. Robert Martin (Lee Evans) is a working-class loser -- or at least he might be working-class if he had a job -- who is obsessed with entering contests, certain a big prize will finally make its way to him. Robert has entered a sweepstakes hoping to win an all-expenses-paid vacation on the Isle of Man, and when a well-off couple (Barbara Leigh-Hunt and Frank Finlay) are declared the winners, Robert concludes he deserves the prize far more than they do, and decides to simply take it away from them. Martin packs up his long-suffering wife, Angie (Kathy Burke); his strident mother-in-law (Linda Bassett); his 14-year-old daughter, Katie (Terri Dumont), who happens to be pregnant; and his surprisingly well-adjusted eight-year-old son, Little Bob (Eric Byrne), and they head off for the nightmare vacation of a lifetime. Ray Winstone and Mark Strong also appear in the supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lee Evans, Kathy Burke, (more)
The first feature by director Peter Cattaneo since his award-winning British smash hit The Full Monty, Lucky Break is another comedy in the same mold, this time taking place in prison. Small-time crooks Jimmy (James Nesbitt) and Rudy (Lennie James), after years of no success, decide to pull a bank job, where they are both captured and incarcerated. Jimmy is then transferred to Long Rudford, run by the steely security chief Perry (Ron Cook). Jimmy again runs into Rudy (whom he left to take the initial rap) and shares a cell with Cliff (Timothy Spall), a portly man prone to depression. The prison warden, Mortimer (Christopher Plummer), is heavily into Broadway musicals and offers Jimmy an opportunity to stage his long-unproduced work, "Nelson: The Musical," which Jimmy will use as a means to bust out of the prison. After working hard on the new tuner, the boys try to find a way both to do the show and to continue their arduously planned escape. The Sixth Sense's Olivia Williams co-stars as a guard Jimmy falls for, and British comic actors Bill Nighy and Frank Harper appear in supporting roles. ~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Nesbitt, Olivia Williams, (more)
Guy Ritchie's sophomore follow-up to his 1998 sleeper hit Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch revisits the previous film's territory of London's crime-ridden underbelly, and does so with the same brand of humor and stylish direction that made Ritchie's first effort a surprise success. With a labyrinthine plot that is ostensibly oriented around a missing diamond, Snatch introduces viewers to three groups of characters intent on retrieving the elusive stone, which has been stolen from an Antwerp jeweler. In the first group are friends and business partners Turkish (Jason Statham, who also supplies the film's voice-over narration) and Tommy (Stephen Graham), who join up with Mickey (Brad Pitt), an Irish gypsy and boxer. Turkish and Tommy make arrangements with Mickey to take a fall in a match engineered by lunatic gang leader Brick Top (Alan Ford). In another corner resides equally loony Russian gangster Boris the Blade (Rade Sherbedgia), who has asked Jewish gangster Franky Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro) to place a bet on the match for him. Boris is also scheming to have Sol (Lennie James), the owner of a pawn shop, rob the place with a couple of dim associates. Meanwhile, Avi (Dennis Farina), freshly arrived in London from New York, hires Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) to find Franky when he goes missing; it seems that it was none other than Franky who was supposed to be transporting the purloined diamond to New York. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Benicio Del Toro, Dennis Farina, (more)
Four young couples attempt to navigate the twists and turns of modern romance in this romantic comedy drama. As Jules (Emmanuelle Beart) and Will (Daniel Lapaine) are toasted by their friends on announcing their engagement, the happy couple and six of their close acquaintances are trying to sort out their troubles with relationships. Jules is a successful businesswoman who is devoted to Will, but Will has no talent for fidelity and sees a certain prostitute on a regular basis. Billy (Sean Gallagher), a good friend of Will's, is a research scientist who is shy around women; when he finally does meet a woman who is interested in him, it turns out to be Dodie (Kimberly Williams), a single mother from America who espouses the virtues of tantric sex. Frank (Mark Strong) is an analyst in love with Daphne (Daniela Nardini), who loves making him mad. And George (Lee Williams) is a model whose relationship with Graham (Lennie James) is put to the test when George becomes a success and Graham has trouble dealing with his lover's new fame. Elephant Juice was written by Amy Jenkins and directed by Sam Miller, who previously worked together on the successful British TV series This Life. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Emmanuelle Béart, Sean Gallagher, (more)
This $90 million science fiction adventure is adapted from the television series, created by Irwin Allen, which originally ran on CBS from 1965 to 1968. The original series employed a Swiss Family Robinson in outer space premise; sent to colonize a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, the Robinson family was thrown off course by a stowaway and was left wandering from planet to planet (and changing along the way from a black-and-white series to a color series). The 1998 remake is set in the year 2058, when the United Global Space Force sends Professor John Robinson (William Hurt) and family -- wife Maureen (Mimi Rogers), daughter Judy (Heather Graham), teen Penny (Lacey Chabert), and 10-year-old Will (Jack Johnson) -- on a promotional space jaunt to herald the "offshore" future for the human race (now saddled with eco problems on Earth). Major Don West (Matt LeBlanc), more accustomed to fighting menacing Global Sedition forces, is reluctant to sign on as the Jupiter II pilot but quickly changes his mind after he gets a good look at Judy in her fetish-fashioned space togs. Space spy Dr. Smith (Gary Oldman), hired to sabotage the mission, programs in problems but winds up aboard the craft unconscious. Once awake, he summons the Robinsons from suspended animation, and they save the ship just in time, passing through hyperspace to arrive near an Earth ship where they encounter space-pet Blawp and hordes of teethy spiders. A spider bite makes the villainous Smith mutate, one of some 750 special effects, from animatronics (Jim Henson Creature Shop) to CGI, and other adventures await throughout the galaxy. Cameos include actors from the original series, including June Lockhart and Robot Voice Dick Tufeld. In a curious coincidence, the TV series took place in the future of 1997, the year this movie was produced. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Hurt, Mimi Rogers, (more)
Simon Beaufoy, of The Full Monty, scripted this British romantic comedy-drama. Like The Full Monty, this is also set among the working class of Sheffield, England. With his pal Steve (James Thornton) and others, Ray (Pete Postlethwaite) paints electrical pylons across the Yorkshire countryside, and that work separates him from his wife. When young Australian hitchhiker Gerry (Rachel Griffiths) wants to join the paint crew, Ray signs her up. Despite the age gap, it's not long before they're a twosome. Gerry moves in with Ray, and at one point, they both run about nude in an abandoned nuclear power plant. When Gerry decides to seduce Steve, triangular tensions escalate. The BBC's Sam Miller made his feature directorial debut with this film, shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pete Postlethwaite, Alan Williams, (more)






















