Robert Lang Movies

An elderly widow and a young would-be author strike up an unlikely friendship in this comedy drama. Mrs. Palfrey (Joan Plowright) has been uneasy since the death of her husband, and she decides to move from her long-time home in Scotland to London so she can be closer to her grandson Desmond (Lorcan O'Toole). Mrs. Palfrey settles into the Claremont Hotel, a shabby residential inn for senior citizens that has seen better days. She tries to contact Desmond, but isn't able to get in touch with him, and at first she has a hard time relating to the other folks at the Claremont, especially friendly busybody Mrs. Arbuthnot (Anna Massey). Lonely and out of sorts, Mrs. Palfrey goes out for a walk one day and takes a nasty spill after losing her balance. Ludovic Meyer (Rupert Friend), a struggling writer in his mid-twenties, finds Mrs. Palfrey on the pavement and helps her, taking her back to her room and making sure she's OK. The two strike up a conversation and discover they have a surprisingly amount in common. A friendship grows between them, even though Mrs. Palfrey asks Ludovic to pose as her absent grandson so her neighbors will stop asking questions about him. Mrs. Palfrey even gives her new friend romantic advice, encouraging Ludovic to ask a pretty girl he meets at the video store out on a date. Based on a novel by the British author Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont was directed by Dan Ireland. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This acclaimed British comedy centers on the intermittent romance between a charming (if slightly bumbling) Englishman and a beautiful American woman, who seem to always run into each other at weddings. Indeed, it is at the first of the title's four weddings that Charles (Hugh Grant) and Carrie (Andie McDowell) meet, enjoying a brief but fleeting connection. The spark is rekindled several months later, when they unexpectedly meet at another wedding. Unfortunately, however, Carrie has become engaged to another, a fact that complicates matters for them both. The story may seem simple, but the film is elevated by screenwriter Richard Curtis' ear for witty dialogue and a colorful supporting cast. Director Mike Newell's sympathetic attention to character keeps the proceedings believable, and prevents the film's more serious moments from seeming mawkish. These elements, along with Grant's star-making performance as Charles, helped the film achieve unexpected international success, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

First telecast by the BBC on November 14, 1993, the two-part British TV movie The Return of the Borrowers is a sequel to the classic children's book by Mary Norton. Real-life husband and wife Ian Holm and Penelope Wilton head the cast as Pod and Homily Clock, a pair of teeny-tiny people who, with their equally microscopic daughter, Arietty (Rebecca Callard), live beneath the floorboards of a Victorian house. In order to survive, the Clock family must "borrow" various necessities from normal-sized people -- or as they're known to the trio, "Human Beans." Forced to move from their familiar digs, the Clocks stumble across a miniature model house that proves to be just right for their needs, and in the bargain they befriend a youthful Human Bean named George (Paul Cross). Alas, the well-being of the diminutive brood is threatened by the evil designs of one Mrs. Drivers (Sian Phillips). In America, The Return of the Borrowers was first seen over the TNT cable network on June 4 and 5, 1996. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Franz Kafka's classic tale of Josef K., a bank clerk who is placed on trial for an unnamed, unknowable crime, is given a faithful, if not overly literal, treatment in this drama. Knowing only that he has been charged, Josef naturally sets out to defend himself, but soon finds himself deeply mired in a battle against an incomprehensible government bureaucracy. Following Orson Welles's adaptation of the book by some three decades, director David Jones chooses to avoid the earlier film's expressionistic approach. Instead, he sets Josef's travails against a realistic background that specifically recalls Eastern Europe during the early 20th century, the time of the book's writing. Similarly, the screenplay by famed British playwright Harold Pinter, whose own darkly absurd vision owes much to Kafka, hews closely to the original text. This faithful approach helps ground the story in historical reality, and allows for a good use of brooding Prague locations. However, many critics have found this approach less effective than the low-budget abstraction of Welles' version, which is more successful at highlighting the universality and symbolic nature of the tale. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Keith Carradine, Valentina Yakunina, and Anthony Quayle star in this drama about a former member of the Irish Republican Army who finds himself working with a musician from Russia in order to stop an attempt on the life of the pope. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Although the story of 19th century Irish statesman and patriot Charles Steward Parnell resulted in a disastrous movie vehicle for Clark Gable in 1937, the results were more satisfying when the same story was adapted as a four-episode British TV miniseries in 1990. Trevor Eve headed the cast as Parnell, prime advocate for Irish home rule at a time when such a position was tantamount to treason. For all his good works, Parnell was doomed to infamy as the result of his clandestine romance with Katharine O'Shea (Francesca Annis), the wife of a British Member of Parliament. Parnell and the Englishwoman was written for television by celebrated Irish playwright Hugh Leonard. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Two terminal cancer patients break out of the hospital in a final attempt to enjoy their last days in this black comedy drama. Decker (Anthony Edwards) is an American ex-football player resigned to die. Bancroft (Timothy Dalton) is an attorney who is more optimistic and talks Decker into a journey to a Dutch whorehouse for a final fling. The unlikely duo steal an ambulance and head for Holland. They make a stop at the wedding of Bancroft's former flame -- who abandoned him with his terminal illness. Decker and Bancroft come across two women with car trouble, Maureen (Camille Coduri) and Hazel (Janet McTeer). Maureen and Decker immediately hit it off, but Bancroft considers the meeting an interruption of their quest. The women are unaware the two men are dying, and the men have no way of knowing Hazel is pregnant. They arrive at the bordello where they eventually learn each other's secrets. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This Australian TV movie is a sequel to the internationally distributed miniseries Tenko. In the year 1950, several former female inmates of Tenko, a Japanese POW camp, stage a reunion in Singapore. Each of the women discusses how their years under the thumb of the Japanese have altered their lives. Suddenly, the group is taken captive by Communist bandits-and it's 1942 all over again. Several of the stars of Tenko (Stephanie Cole, Patricia Lawrence, Emily Bolton, Elizabeth Chambers et. al.) made encore appearances in Tenko Reunion. For the record, the original Tenko has been shown in the US on the A&E and History Channel Cable Services. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Shakespeare's tragedy, made for British television, is given a full-blooded rendition here with the great Laurence Olivier in the title role and a stellar cast to support him, in the tale of a king torn apart by the ambition and treachery within his family and by his own pride. ~ Mark Hockley, All Movie Guide

Not a remake of the landmark 1903 Edwin S. Porter film, The Great Train Robbery is a dramatization of the famous first hold-up of a moving train in 1855 England. The conspirators in this undertaking are Edward Pierce (Sean Connery), Agar (Donald Sutherland) and Clean Willy (Wayne Sleep). Pierce is the brains, Clean Willy the brawn, and safecracker Agar provides the finesse. The scheme involves stealing a shipment of gold bars intended to be used in the payroll for the Army in the Crimean War. Lesley Anne Down co-stars as Miriam, the woman on the outside who arranges Connery's getaway. When released in England, this film was titled The First Great Train Robbery, so as not to be confused with Britain's embarrassing 1963 railroad heist. Director Michael Crichton adapted the story from his own, more-clinical novel on the same subject. Filmed in Ireland, The Great Train Robbery was dedicated to the memory of its director of photography, Geoffrey Unsworth, who died shortly after the production wrapped. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Previously seen on two episodes of the original Avengers, those malevolent metallic menaces, the Cybernauts, are at large again. This time, the man behind the Cybernaut invasion is Kane (Robert Lang), a crippled and disfigured double agent who has a score to settle with John Steed (Patrick MacNee). Part of the scheme involves the "rebirth" of the supposedly dead Kane with a new Cybernautic body--and the superpowers that go with it. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lee Remick made her TV movie debut in And No One Could Save Her. She plays an American heiress whose husband (Frank Grimes) has apparently disappeared in the middle of a transcontinental flight. Remick heads to Ireland, her husband's original destination, to get to the bottom of things. And No One Could Save Her was the first TV production of the Robert Stigwood Group (Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Can't Stop the Music etc.) The film originally aired February 21, 1973. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide