Anna Massey Movies

Author Thomas Hardy's infamous novel is translated to the screen courtesy of director David Blair, who relocates the timeless tale of greed and deception to a modern setting. Driven by poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles, beautiful innocent Tess Durbeyfield finds her ruse falling apart after crossing paths with the suspicious and highly manipulative Alec D'Urberville. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

When Louis and Emily Trevalyan exchanged wedding vows on a day that seemed to mark the beginning of a blissful union, little could they foresee the trials that would face them in their first year of marriage. As Anthony Trollepe slowly peels away the layers of Victorian propriety, a variety of colorful characters are revealed, including a colonel of questionable morals who makes unwholesome advances to the newlywed bride. As the fans that fuel Louis' jealousy soon give way to a raging inferno, the dejected groom rejects his wife and newborn son leading to a tragic bid to destroy everything in the world that he loves. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Directed by Harley Cokliss, An Angel for May follows a modern boy (Matthew Beard) living in Yorkshire, England, and his dog, who cross through a brick wall leading directly into the early 1940's. Tom (Beard) looks very strange to Sam Wheeler (Tom Wilkinson), who owns the property which Tom managed to land on. Sam, who lives with his adult daughter, Alison (Julie Cox), also provides shelter for a traumatized waif named May (Charlotte Wakefiled). May, who had been buried under the rubble when her entire family was killed in a bombing raid, sleeps with the dog outside and refuses to come inside the house even for meals. However, after she spends some time with Tom, she quickly progresses. Tom, meanwhile, is intent on finding his way back to the future. However, once he gets there, he realizes that he left something very important back in the past. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

Mad Cows is a slapstick comedy about sex and the singles scene. Single and confused Maddy has just had a baby. The first day that she goes out with her baby, she gets arrested at Harrods for shoplifting. While in detention at the Holloway Prison's Mother and Baby Unit, she smuggles Jack out in her friend's handbag. She seeks help from her ex-lover Alex, who is sure he is god's gift to women. In the meanwhile, the prison psychotherapist Edwina Phelps is on Maddy's back. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

Screenwriter and director John Byrne transformed his own 1983 off-Broadway play into this coming-of-age comedy-drama that is divided into six segments, each one a different day during one week in the lives of its main characters. Spanky Farrell (Russell Barr), Hector McKenzie (Bill Gardiner), and Phil McCann (Robin Laing) are a trio of working class teenage boys who labor in a drab Scottish carpet factory in 1957. Each of the lads dreams of a way out of his dreary life: Spanky desires to relocate to the U.S., Hector plans to marry a coworker -- Lucille (Louise Berry), who works in the mailroom -- and Phil toils as an artist, assembling a portfolio that he hopes will earn him an art school admission. While they plan for the future, the three young men are also eagerly anticipating a staff-sponsored dance that's going to be held that weekend by their company. Byrne's original stage production starred Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn and Val Kilmer in the leads. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

A 19th-century British naturalist falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a wealthy aristocrat, but he soon discovers that her family's perfect facade disguises unexpectedly grim secrets. Director and co-screenwriter Philip Haas's adaptation of A.S. Byatt's Morpho Eugenio eschews the usual gentility of Victorian period pieces in favor of subtle creepiness. The unsettling mood is emphasized by the film's detailed attention to its protagonist's scientific endeavors, which center on the study of insects and their behavior. In fact, it is his love of insects that brings William (Mark Rylance) to the well-heeled Reverend Alabaster (Jeremy Kemp), who takes a personal interest in William's welfare when a shipwreck leaves William practically penniless. William is welcomed into the Alabaster home, and he resumes his entomological studies while courting the reverend's daughter, Eugenia (Patsy Kensit). Close-up glimpses of insect society parallel this aristocratic world and hint at the dark secrets with which William soon becomes unexpectedly familiar. As in Haas's previous film, The Music of Chance, an unusual, highly symbolic filmmaking approach creates an effective drama, with the potentially detached intellectualism balanced by unusual characterizations and an absorbing attention to detail. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

The Grotesque (aka Grave Indiscretion, aka Gentleman Don't Eat Poets) is a very black, very British comedy that puts an unusual and perversely entertaining spin on the classic tea-cup-and-intrigue mystery. Sir Hugo Coal (Alan Bates) is a grumpy, eccentric English gentleman (and self-styled paleontologist) obsessed with reconstructing a dinosaur skeleton with bones dredged up from a nearby moor. He is also penniless, and so must live vicariously off the inheritance of his smoldering American wife Harriet (Theresa Russell). Enter: the crafty and secretive Fledge (Sting) and his wife and co-conspirator Doris (Trudie Styler) the new Coal family servants. Fledge immediately sets his sights on Harriet and the Coal fortune, Doris on the household wine cellar. When Hugo and Harriet's daughter Cleo (Lena Headey) announces her engagement to demure poet Sidney Giblet (Steven Mackintosh), Hugo is less than pleased, but not for long, since Sidney is murdered soon after and, we learn, his body gruesomely disposed of. As the rivalry between Fledge and Hugo escalates, Cleo, the police, and the poet's shrewd mother Mrs. Giblet (Anna Massey) follow a trail of clues from the swampy, bone-littered moor to the Coal pig sties and finally (rather horribly) back to the Coal dinner table. Though criticized for its irreverent humor and somewhat ambiguous ending, The Grotesque is worth a watch. Sting and his real-life partner Trudie Styler (who co-produced the film) are both wonderful as the loathsome, manipulative servants, as is Anna Massey as the poet's investigative mother. The real stars of the film, however, are not the actors, but the dense, ornamental interiors provided by Jan Roelfs and Michael Seirton. Every corner of the Coal mansion is littered with artifacts and art objects, every frame crawling with worms, frogs, and reptiles. Like a Dutch still life, The Grotesque is simultaneously repellent and attractive, a painterly assemblage of morbidity and dramatic artifice. ~ Anthony Reed, All Movie Guide

In this fact-based drama, a British man accused of his wife's murder becomes the target of his friends' and neighbors' wrath. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

When a father attempts to return to his abandoned family after 23 years his grown son tries to murder his drunk, unemployed father. ~ All Movie Guide

Louise (Elizabeth Bourgine) is a young woman working at a publishing house who develops an unusual affection for submitted manuscript. She breaks up with Serge (Philippe Leotard), the printer who loves her. Louise tells the heartbroken Serge she has fallen in love with the author whom she has never met or even seen. She travels to New York to hunt down the elusive author and ends up in a remote farmhouse in Vermont, where she is greeted by Norma (Anna Massey), the mother of the elusive author. The two women wait for his return in this psychological drama that later becomes a thriller. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Hazard of Hearts was adapted for television from a 1948 bodice-ripper by Barbara Cartland. Set (where else?) in 1810 England, the film stars Helena Bonham Carter as the obligatory innocent young lass with a dynamite figure. Falling in love with a Rochester-like Marquis (Marcus Gilbert), Helena is whisked off to the mysterious Castle Mandrake ("played" by England's Belvoir Castle and Burghley House). Here, our heroine is menaced by Diana Rigg, the Marquis' evil, possessive mother. First broadcast December 27, 1987, Hazard of Hearts was buried in the ratings by NBC's repeat showing of Terms of Endearment (1983) and ABC's telecast of Stir Crazy (1980). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide