Dean Lennox Kelly Movies
After cutting his teeth on a number of television projects for the BBC, director Gareth Carrivick makes his feature debut with this off-beat sci-fi comedy. A normal trip to the pub turns into anything but for a trio of mild-mannered blokes (Chris O'Dowd, Marc Wootan and Dean Lennox Kelly) when a woman from the future (Scary Movie's Anna Faris) shows up and plunges them into a predicament involving space and time. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anna Faris, Chris O'Dowd, (more)
This seriocomic British TV series stars Warren Clarke and Anthony Head as Maurice Riley and Syd Woolsey, a pair of professional burglars who have always managed to evade capture or detection, thereby earning the soubriquet "The Invisibles." Hoping to spend their declining days as peaceful pensioners in a Devon fishing village, Maurice and Syd's dreams of retirement when they run out of the money they've pilfered over the years. Now forced to return to the "old life", our heroes find that they are woefully out of touch with modern criminal methods, obliging them to team up with Hedley Huthwaite (Dean Lennox Kelly), the larcenous but none-too-ambitious son of their former partner in crime. Meanwhile, Maurice must deal with his wife Barbara (Jenny Agutter), who wants him to pack it in and lead an honest life, and with his daughter Grace (played by Anthony Head's real-life daughter Emily Head), whom he has carefully shielded from his perfidious activities and who is completely in the dark as to what her dear old dad has been doing for a living. As for the much-married Syd, he must learn how to get along without women complicating his "second career". Created by William Ivory, The Invisibles (working title: Desperadoes) initially ran for six hour-long episodes on BBC1 from May 1 to June 5, 2008. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Head, Warren Clarke, (more)
The small town gossip, secrets, and romance of Mary Gaskells' popular series of novels comes to the small screen in this BBC drama series from director Simon Curtis. The year is 1842, and Cranford is a modest Cheshire market town on the verge of great change. The railway is reaching to Cranford from Manchester, and the locals fear that their town will soon be overrun with migrant workers and lawlessness. Spinster Deborah Jenkins Eileen Atkins) is the arbitrator of correctness about town, and as far as she and her demurring sister Matty (Judi Dench) are concerned there's never a dull moment in Cranford. Things begin to get especially interesting after handsome new doctor Frank Harrison (Simon Woods) arrives in town shocking the locals with his decidedly non-traditional methods of practicing medicine. Frank has a powerful effect on the ladies around town, but when Matty runs into an old flame at Lady Ludlow's garden party her thoughts drift back to the time when she was forced to give up the man she once loved with all her heart. No one is immune from the gossip that winds its way through the local circuits, and that gossip can almost always be traced back to the Jenkins sisters. When news emerges that the railroad is coming to town, everyone realizes that their tidy little universe is about to expand in ways that they could have never imagined. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Judi Dench, Philip Glenister, (more)
Writer-director Isabel Coixet's (My Life Without Me) beautifully wrought chamber drama The Secret Life of Words opens on Hanna (Sarah Polley), a laconic, backward and introverted girl in her early '30s, quietly drowning in her own isolation. Partially deaf from working an untold number of hours in a loud factory, Hanna must wear a hearing aid. When her supervisors -- deeply concerned about the four years that have lapsed in Hanna's life without a break -- force her to go on holiday for a month, she hesitantly takes off for a coastal village in the north of Ireland. Once there, she decides to dine in a local restaurant, and overhears, by chance, a telephone conversation conducted by Victor (Eddie Marsan), regarding an accident on a nearby oil rig that he precipitated, which left a victim, Josef (Tim Robbins) in its wake. Hanna tells Victor that she is a nurse, and is instantly flown to the rig to treat the bedbound Josef -- temporarily blind from extensive cornea damage, and his body blanketed with severe burns. She also encounters the structure's motley and eccentric band of workers -- from ecologist Martin (Daniel Mays), who spends his time studying mutated mussels that collect on the ship's base and the waves that strike the side of the rig, to Josef, to chef Simon (Javier Camára), who prepares "gourmet" food no one else can stand, to Dimitri (Sverre Anker Ousdal), an elderly gentleman who is as much of a loner as Hanna. As Hanna begins to foresee a new place for herself among these individuals, a relationship gradually develops between Hanna and Josef, who holds his new friend rapt with lyrical, evocative, magisterial tales from his past -- unknowingly drawing Hanna, one step at a time, toward inner joy, self-expression, and revelation of her own sad and complex story. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sarah Polley, Tim Robbins, (more)
Originally produced in the U.K. for BBC1, where it first aired on October 9, 2002, the three-part miniseries Tipping the Velvet was adapted from Sarah Waters' best-selling debut novel of the same name. Set in the 1890s, the series focuses on the romance between Nan Astley (played by Rachel Stirling, daughter of actress Diana Rigg), a cook in the seaside restaurant owned by her father, and Kitty Butler (Keeley Hawes), a musical hall entertainer specializing in male impersonation. Given the strict (and somewhat hypocritical) moral restrictions of the Victorian era, the lesbian relationship between Nancy and Kitty must be kept a closely guarded secret, except in the hedonistic underground circles in which the actress and her libertine friends travel. Tipping the Velvet was brought to the US by way of the BBC America digital-cable service beginning May 23, 2003. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rachael Stirling, Keeley Hawes, (more)
The great British obsession with football (soccer to Americans) receives a thorough skewering in this mock documentary look at perhaps the most hapless coach in the history of professional sport. The manager of England's national football unexpectedly succumbs to a heart attack, and suddenly the search is on for a replacement. Most people who seem qualified for the position have the good sense to turn it down, and so the responsibility falls to Mike Bassett (Ricky Tomlinson), a scruffy and loud-mouthed lout whose claim to football fame is leading a previously undistinguished team to a league championship. Bassett insists that England will win the World Cup under his leadership, but that's before he replaces his star player with a once-gifted footballer (Dean Lennox Kelly) who has since developed a drinking problem, and hired a one-time car salesman (Philip Jackson) as his assistant. After several stunning losses to Poland, Bassett goes from a favorite of both fans and the press to one of the most hated men in England; hoping to whip his team into shape, he subjects them to the high-tech training methods of eccentric Dr. Shoegaarten (Ulrich Thomsen), which injures more players than it helps. Despite Bassett's ineptitude, England manages to qualify for the World Cup tournament thanks to a loophole in the rules, and he flies to Rio with his team in hopes of somehow turning their bad luck around. British television journalist Martin Bashir, musician and comic Keith Allen, and international football sensation Pele all appear as themselves to lend Mike Bassett: England Manager an air of authenticity. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ricky Tomlinson, Amanda Redman, (more)
Music video director Jamie Thraves made his feature debut with this cinema verite look at a group of bohemian Londoners straddling the line between apathy and ambition. Aidan Gillen (of the popular British TV series Queer As Folk) plays Frank, a prop artist who spends his free time chain-smoking, drinking, pontificating, and chain-smoking some more. He's at a crossroads, however: Unable to tolerate his loud, drug-dealing neighbors, he considers buying a flat of his own. At the realtors, he meets the fetching Ruby (Kate Ashfield), who shows him a variety of dismal real estate opportunities, barely veiling her contempt for the offerings. Charmed, Frank begins to go out with Kate, and as their relationship heats up, Frank notices changes in his group of laterally mobile friends. Mike (Dean Lennox Kelly) begins to take on more responsibility, both at the prop shop and in his personal life, as he proposes marriage to his longtime girlfriend -- putting him at odds with the more lackadaisical John (Tobias Menzies), a chronically tardy co-worker who's beginning to reconsider his career track. Frank finds himself mediating between the two, and unable to make any definitive choices in his own life. The Low Down made its North American Premiere at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Aidan Gillen, Kate Ashfield, (more)
Lost deep in the enemy territory of the western front during World War I, allied soldier Private Charles Shakespeare (Jamie Bell) and eight other British soldiers from the Y Company seek refuge in maze of an abadoned German trench. Winding through the twisting tunnels through piles of corpses and hungry rats, the exhausted soldiers decide to hold thier position and await a rescue team. As the soldiers begin to fall prey to an unseen force, one by one thier numbers dwindle and thier suspicions of one another grow. A young soldier who illegally entered the armed forces at the tender age of sixteen, Private Shakespeare must now summon the courage to face an evil greater than he could ever imagine. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jamie Bell, Ruaidhri Conroy, (more)















