MikePadgett.com

• Director: James Ivory
• United Kingdom, 1992
• 

There’s something grating about the bourgeois self-sufficiency of the upper middle class during Forster’s era, as it sits around babbling blithely about suffrage and philosophy. Yet for all its self-professed modernism, it took two World Wars to truly change the character of English society.

Nevertheless, Forster is documenting progress here and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s screenplay is sharp enough to navigate the material with enough sensitivity and distinction between the three families.

Elsewhere, the locations are formidably rich and well photographed, a feature typical of all Merchant Ivory productions. And defying the otherwise sagging middle section of the film, Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson bring fizz to their scenes together, prefacing their brilliance in Ivory’s next and more accomplished effort The Remains Of The Day.

• Director: Kirk Jones
• USA / UK, 2005
• 

For children, Emma Thompson’s screenplay is a cautionary tale about the consequences of cheeking one’s elders. For adults, it’s a solid argument for the use of reverse psychology to discipline the little scamps.

Nanny McPhee is an evenly paced, brightly painted yarn whose eponymous magical heroine relies upon a frog’s whisker of CGI in comparison to the graphical gluttony of the Wizard of Seven Novels (sic).

Despite a standout performance from Thomas Sangster and the onscreen Thompson’s character-deepening tics, the real star here is the make-up. Angela Lansbury is rendered almost unrecognisable as Aunt Adelaide by an outrageous facial array, whilst the crookedly eccentric Nanny’s transformation from “something to fear” unto “someone to love” is superbly executed.