Niven Boyd Movies

The new parish priest of Shrewsbury, Father Ailnoth, proves to be most unpopular with his parishioners. After refusing to baptize the illegitimate baby of a prostitute, he's found dead in the river; unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of murder suspects. Cadfael's (Derek Jacobi) subsequent investigation fails to expose the murderer, but a new clue presents itself when he finds the priest's old skull cap on a nail underneath the bridge. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

A temperamental London lawyer adapts to the challenges of fatherhood when he is left with sole responsibility for his infant daughter in this well-performed British comedy-drama. Richard E. Grant stars as Jack, a high-pressure attorney who believes his life is on the right track: a successful career, a beautiful wife (Imogen Stubbs), and a baby on the way. Tragedy strikes, however, when his wife dies during labor, leaving Jack to raise his daughter Sarah, named in his wife's honor. Shocked and depressed, Jack is forced to deal with his grief for the sake of the new child. At first reluctant to turn to others, he receives help from a local derelict (Ian McKellen) who begins to act as Jack's butler, and a charming young American woman, Amy (Samantha Mathis), who becomes Sarah's nanny. The new challenges of fatherhood provide Jack with his solace and eventually lead him reevaluate his life and behavior. The debut film of writer-director Tim Sullivan, Jack and Sarah follows a well-worn path, but Grant's nuanced central performance and a strong supporting cast elevate the material above its predictable outline. ~ Judd Blaise, Rovi

A young boy comes to fear that his blind mother may become the next victim of a serial killer in this complex psychological thriller. Unfolding at first as a traditional suspense tale, the film follows the terrified boy's attempts to determine the killer's identity, a task his policeman father has failed to achieve. Things take a more provocative and puzzling turn when the boy's penchant for fantasy is revealed, forcing the audience to question whether what has been shown has been real or merely a product of the boy's imagination. As a result, much of the anxiety in Afraid of the Dark emerges not from the violent shocks, but from the uncertain reality and the tantalizing, disturbing hints of the child's psychology. This purposeful ambiguity may strike some viewers as confusing and alienating, despite the film's assured performances and striking imagery. ~ Judd Blaise, Rovi

Director Bernard Rose and screenwriter David Yallop were inspired by the real-life Hulten/Jones murder case of 1944, famously known as The Cleft Chin Murder Case, after a London cabbie was found murdered. It was a sensation in England, where American soldier Karl Hulten and British showgirl Elizabeth Maud Jones became household names -- even beating out news of the war. In the film, Karl Hulten (Kiefer Sutherland), is an American GI who is stalking the black market of London after stealing an army truck and going AWOL. There he meets up with Betty Jones (Emily Lloyd), a stripper with a deluded fantasy world view formed by watching a steady stream of Hollywood film noir and gangster pictures. Seeing Karl, who claims he is Chicago Joe doing advance work in London for encroaching Chicago gangsters, Betty takes the opportunity to set her fantasies to life as she connives Karl into a crime spree of petty crimes. With luck on their side, the spree keeps escalating, until Betty urges Karl to commit the ultimate crime -- murder. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Richard Attenborough directed this dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods (Kevin Kline) is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko (Denzel Washington), a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist. Woods and his wife Wendy (Penelope Wilton) get to know Biko, and they become friends, until Biko is brutally murdered at the hands of government troops in 1977 for his activities against the country's repression of the black majority population. Donald is shocked and appalled by Biko's murder and determined that the truth about Biko will become known to the world; eventually, Donald and Wendy Woods and their children must leave South Africa (and nearly everything they have) as they spread the word about Biko's life and death to ensure that he did not die in vain. Washington received an Academy Award nomination for his performance as Biko. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

With the notable exception of Pennies From Heaven, The Singing Detective was the best-known TV miniseries project of the iconoclastic, darkly humored Dennis Potter. A reworking of Potter's first novel Hide and Seek, the six-part series starred Michael Gambon as crime novelist Philip E. Marlow. Suffering from a hellish skin-and-nerve disease called psoriatic arthroparthy (a painful infliction which ultimately killed the real-life Potter), Marlow was confined to a hospital bed, where under the influence of numerous prescription drugs he began to imagine himself as the hard-boiled hero of his latest detective novel. While trying to solve a difficult case, Marlow continually drifted backward in time to his childhood in the Forest of Dean, occasionally bursting into song to express his emotions. As fantasy and reality merged into one, Marlow was forced into a tortuous session of self-analysis and personal discovery. Virtually everyone in the cast was seen in double and triple roles, including nominal leading ladies Alison Steadman and Joanne Whalley (aka Joanne Whalley-Kilmer). The series earned two BAFTA awards (the British equivalent of the Emmys), one for Best Actor to Michael Gambon. After its initial BBC1 run from November 16, to December 21, 1986, The Singing Detective was shown in the United States via public and cable television, where it picked up another award, the prestigious Peabody, in 1989. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi