Penelope Wilton Movies

Set over the course of five 24-hour periods, the television miniseries Five Days follows the case of a young mother (Christine Tremarco) who vanishes under mysterious circumstances while driving her children to visit their grandfather (Edward Woodward). When the children set out in search of their missing mother, they too seem to disappear without a trace. As a high-profile police investigation begins to make headlines across the country, it appears that everyone involved with the case, including the woman's grieving husband (David Oyelowo), has something to hide. Soon it begins to appear that even Detective Barclay (Hugh Bonneville) and Sergeant Foster (Janet McTeer), the two authority figures in charge of the investigation, are operating on some secret agenda. As the missing mother's parents (Penelope Wilton and Patrick Malahide) step up the pressure to solve the case before too much time passes, a stranger named Sarah (Sarah Smart) gradually works her way into the investigation while gradually ingraining herself with the frustrated family. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A weary London novelist looking to escape her failing marriage flees the city for her Yorkshire cottage only to find that country charm can mask menacing intent in director Tristram Powell's tense tale of romantic deceit. Daisy Langrish (Penelope Wilton) has finally broken free of her straining marriage, and upon arriving at her country cottage she is warmly greeted by her outwardly charming neighbor Henry Kent (Michael Kitchen). Though by all appearances a polite and respectable gentleman, Henry's benevolent offer to maintain Daisy's long-neglected garden masks decidedly malevolent intent. As the manipulative and obsessive Henry carefully conceals his all-consuming fondness for drink and erotica while setting a deadly emotional trap for his unsuspecting new neighbor, Daisy discovers all too late that her flight from the city was only the beginning of her harrowing journey. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

While 18-year-old Victoria (Victoria Hamilton) struggles to escape the rule of her domineering mother (Penelope Wilton), King William IV dies and the teenager assumes the throne as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and empress of India. With the help of sympathetic advisers and her lady-in-waiting, Baroness Lehzen (Diana Rigg), Victoria asserts herself, relocating her mother's living quarters and dismissing her mother's overbearing supporter, Sir John Conroy (Patrick Malahide). She then reluctantly agrees to invite her first cousin, Albert (Jonathan Firth), prince-consort of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Germany, to the royal household as a possible match for her. Remembering him from childhood, she thinks him a bore. But when grown-up Albert arrives, Victoria falls madly in love with him. After they marry, Victoria must counter troublemaking political schemers on the one hand while attempting to assuage a disenchanted Albert on the other. The problem is that he has nothing to do. He is merely an ornament, albeit a cherished one. He cannot even command a servant to clean a fireplace. However, when the administration of the queen's friend and adviser Prime Minister Melbourne (Nigel Hawthorne) collapses, Albert becomes Victoria's partner in government as well as in marriage. In time, she realizes that her husband is really a co-ruler: "A king," she says, "in everything but name." Together, they reign over their empire -- and their brood of nine children. It is Albert's task to supervise the country's Great Exhibition of 1851 to promote British pride, commerce, and industry. But his untiring efforts to make the exhibit a success take their toll on him, and he falls ill. However, he tenaciously clings to life -- and Victoria -- and lives another decade before typhoid fever claims him in 1862, leaving behind a distraught Victoria and a monarchy he helped rescue. ~ Mike Cummings, 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

Singleton (Ian Holm) is a determined British farmer with a gaggle of holiday geese ready for market. It should be a simple task for Singleton to get his honking cargo to town, but it isn't. For starters, his drivers have gone on strike, so Singleton must take the geese himself. The hundred-mile trek to market is fraught with peril and hilarity, and by the time Singleton is halfway there, he's become a national hero. A fond hark back to the Ealing Studios comedies of yore, Singleton's Pluck is a captivating paean to the unquenchability of the human spirit, expertly realized by Ian Holm. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Othello (Anthony Hopkins) is a noble black Moor held in high regard by Venice for his service as a military general. However, he makes a deadly enemy in his ensign Iago (Bob Hoskins) after he promotes Michael Cassio (David Yelland), not Iago, to the position of personal lieutenant. To gain revenge, Iago secretly attempts to break up the new marriage of Othello and his lovely wife Desdemona (Penelope Wilton) by having Desdemona's former suitor Roderigo (Anthony Pedley) inflame Desdemona's father, Senator Brabantio (Geoffrey Chater), against Othello as a sorcerer who used witchcraft to woo his daughter. In the Venetian Senate, which is discussing a Turkish threat against Cyprus, the duke exonerates Othello of wrongdoing and dispatches him to Cyprus to defend it and become the new governor. Unaware that Iago was behind Brabantio's earlier protests against his marriage, Othello orders Iago to accompany his wife to Cyprus, and Roderigo goes along at the urging of Iago, who tells him that Desdemona will eventually tire of Othello. Once in Cyprus, Iago manipulates Roderigo and his own wife Emilia (Rosemary Leach) into helping him to discredit Cassio and make Desdemona appear unfaithful. His plan works. Othello tells Iago he plans to poison Desdemona, but Iago persuades him to kill her in the bed she ''contaminated.'' As for Cassio, Iago says, ''Let me be his undertaker.'' Believing Iago has killed Cassio, the Moor returns to his castle for the awful task of executing his wife. Othello, still loving his wife, kisses her awake, asks her to prepare her soul for death -- and after an exchange of accusations and denials -- smothers her in her bed. When Emilia tells Othello the truth about the scheming Iago, the wounded Cassio backs up Emilia's story. Othello wounds Iago, then kills himself. Iago kills Emilia. After Iago is led away in chains, Cassio becomes governor of Cyprus. ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide

Part two of Alan Ayckbourn's Norman Conquests trilogy is subtitled "Living Together." Though not precisely a sequel to part one, part two finds Norman (Tom Conti) continuing his romantic pursuit of various female in-laws in the parlor of his family home. Heads of the household Richard Briers and Penelope Keith persist in their efforts to maintain decorum in a household full of inebriates and libertines. The 93-minute Living Together was originally produced for British television. It was telecast in the US on various PBS and cable outlets. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An unruly collection of clever but crass Thatcher-era English high-school students seek to earn the scores needed to enroll in Oxford and Cambridge in director Nicholas Hytner and screenwriter Alan Bennett's screen adaptation of Bennett's Tony-winning play. The History Boys focuses on a group of eight students, all of them deemed by their overeager headmaster (Clive Merrison) to be the best and the brightest. Though they've been coddled by their humanities-loving instructor, Hector (Richard Griffiths), and their acerbic history teacher, Mrs. Lintott (Frances de la Tour), the boys are deemed in need of additional tutoring; thus, the brash, young Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) is recruited to challenge them further. The subtle power games the boys used to their advantage with their previous tutors are of no use with Irwin, whose wit borders on the callous. Meanwhile, Irwin's presence -- and a hush-hush scandal -- forces all of the faculty members to reassess their position at the school. Hytner shot The History Boys shortly after the play's Broadway run, to capitalize on the enthusiasm and energy exhibited in the live shows. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

It's often said that the true character of a man is only revealed in times of dire crisis, and for likable, lovelorn loser Shaun (Simon Pegg), that moment of reckoning came when the dead rose from their slumber to feast on the flesh of the living. A hapless electronics store employee who spends most of his spare time downing pints at the local pub with his roommate, Ed (Nick Frost), Shaun's life seems to fall apart when he is dumped by his girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), and his obnoxious stepfather, Philip (Bill Nighy), shows up to berate him for not being more attentive to his caring mother Barbara (Penelope Wilton) -- especially since he forgot to send flowers for her birthday. Things take a turn for the worse when the dead return to stake their claim on the Earth, and though the chaos that follows threatens to swallow up all of England, it's up to Shaun to keep his cool and prove himself once and for all by successfully rescuing Liz and his mother. With his trusty roommate by his side, nothing -- not even the living dead -- can stand between Shaun and the two most important women in his life. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Carrington is the true story of the peculiar love affair between two nonconformists in Victorian England: painter Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson) and author Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce). Dora is a young English artist who is part of the Bloomsbury Group, an assemblage of British writers, painters, and eccentrics that includes the likes of Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, when she meets Strachey. A confirmed homosexual before meeting Carrington, Strachey inquires who the "ravishing boy" is and discovers that it's a woman. Shocked to discover this, he finds himself captivated by her, and they begin an unusual 17-year love affair/friendship. Strachey (most famous for the groundbreaking book Eminent Victorians) and Dora eventually move in together and have a series of offbeat sexual experiences with other members of the group and sometimes even with the same man; at one juncture, Dora even marries another man. Yet their relationship endures until Strachey's death years later. Pryce was honored as Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

John Fowles' original novel The French Lieutenant's Woman was distinguished by a literary technique that involved telling a story of Victorian sexual and social oppression within the bounds of a 1970s viewpoint. How does one convey this time-frame dichotomy on film? The decision made by director Karel Reisz and Harold Pinter was to frame Fowles' basic plot within a "modern" context of their own making. While we watch as Sarah (Meryl Streep), a 19th-century Englishwoman ruined by an affair with a French lieutenant, enters into another disastrous relationship with principled young Charles (Jeremy Irons), we are constantly made aware that what we're seeing is only a film. This is done by surrounding the story with a modern narrative, focusing on a movie production company which is on location--filming The French Lieutenant's Woman. Meryl Streep doubles in the role of Sara and the American actress who plays her, while Jeremy Irons essays the dual role of Charles and the handsome Briton playing Charles. Likewise, everyone else in the cast is seen as "themselves" and as their French Lieutenant's Woman characters. Not surprisingly, the "real" Streep and Irons enter into an affair which closely parallels their characters' relationship. The commercial TV version of French Lieutenant's Woman eliminates 30 minutes' worth of "extraneous" scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Nigel Cole directs the feel-good comedy Calendar Girls, based on the true story of a group of working-class British housewives who became overnight celebrities by posing for a nude calendar in order to raise more than 500-thousand pounds for a new leukemia unit. The film follows the adventures of best friends Chris Harper (Helen Mirren) and Annie Clarke (Julie Walters), both members of the charitable Rylstone Women's Institute in North Yorkshire. After Annie's husband John (John Alderton) succumbs to leukemia, the friends are motivated to take some action. They convince the group to craft a tastefully nude calendar featuring the usual ladies' activities of gardening and baking, as photographed by the young amateur Lawrence (Philip Glenister). Despite the disapproval of the Institute's leader Marie (Geraldine James), the calendar quickly becomes a best-seller and leads the group to Hollywood. Ciaran Hinds appears as Chris' husband Rod Harper. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide