Title: Toast Directed By: SJ Clarkson Written By: Lee Hall, adapted from Nigel Slater’s memoir Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Ken Stott, Oscar Kennedy, Victoria Hamilton, Freddie Highmore Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 9/13/11 Opens: September 23, 2011 The way to a man’s heart may be through his stomach, but there is this big exception: it helps if you like the cook. Watching SJ Clarkson’s period piece, which takes place in small-town British Midlands during the sixties, you’ll be tempted to re-think the Scepter’d Isle as Europe’s prime location for godawful food, but Lee Hall’s script, adapted from food writer Nigel Slater’s memoir, makes us wait a while before liberating a…

Title: Toast Director: S.J. Clarkson Starring: Oscar Kennedy, Freddie Highmore, Helena Bonham Carter, Ken Stott, Victoria Hamilton, Matthew McNulty British period piece import ‘Toast’, playing at Laemmle theaters in Los Angeles this weekend as part of their “From Britain With Love” series, is a well-acted if somewhat meandering and pedantic coming-of-age story, based on the memoir of Nigel Slater, a popular English food writer, journalist and broadcaster. Fans of ‘EastEnders’ and all other sorts of across-the-pond television, as well as kitchen-sink dramas in general, will find reward in the detail and clarity of this tale. The movie opens in Wolverhampton in the late 1960s, where nine-year-old Nigel (Oscar Kennedy, quite…

Title: Bride Flight Director: Ben Sombogaart Starring: Karina Smulders, Elise Schaap, Anna Drijver, Waldemar Torenstra, Rutger Hauer Based on the novel by Marieke van der Pol, Dutch import ‘Bride Flight’ is emblematic of the particular sort of heritage cinema that is from the outside and at first glance stuffy and a bit boring but, if one gives it time and an open heart and mind, eventually blossoms due to the strength of its characterizations. Directed by Ben Sombogaart (‘Twin Sisters’) and based on true events, the film opens in the present day at a funeral and then flashes back to 1953, as a plane full of (mostly betrothed) women escape…

Title: Empire of Silver Writer-director: Christina Yao Starring: Aaron Kwok, Tielin Zhang, Jennifer Tilly, Hao Lei There’s a special type of moviegoing misery to be found in self-important period pieces, and that’s just the sort of screaming boredom that Empire of Silver, the nearly impenetrable, emotionally arrested feature film debut of essayist and playwright Christina Yao, delivers. A drama focused on a powerful banking family in the late imperial/early Republican era of China, the movie rather gorgeously establishes its setting, but never locates a single compelling character or imparts any sense or sort of reality of what its subjects’ lives must truly have been like. Adapted from a thick, three-volume romance, Cheng Yi’s…

Film fanatics everywhere are anxiously awaiting “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” or “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I” later this year. But what about the lesser-known genre? Yes, I am talking about Period films. “Jonah Hex”, “Water for Elephants”, ‘True Grit” or the independent film “Carnies”. This is our list of our most anticipated Period films coming soon to theaters and DVD. 10. The Hobbit Ok, The Hobbit is not coming out this year, but originally it was scheduled for part 1 to come out this coming December. Financial problems with MGM and the departure of Director Guillermo Del Toro has pushed this film back to, well no one…