Word: welland
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Britain's been here before, most famously in 1982, when Chariots of Fire picked up four Academy Awards including Best Picture, and screenwriter Colin Welland accepted his Oscar with the cry, "The British are coming!" Few British films have done that well since - but, then, it's getting harder to define a British film. According to the Treasury, Britain's Finance Ministry, a film is considered British if it fulfills a certain number of cultural points: one point if the director is a British citizen, two if over 50% is shot in Britain, and so on. What's a little...
Twice in a Lifetime would deserve respectful attention if all it did were redress that imbalance. But the story of how the 30-year marriage of Steelworker Harry Mackenzie (Hackman in another solid performance) and his wife Kate (Ellen Burstyn) sunders has another dimension. Scenarist Welland (who wrote Chariots of Fire with another kind of class consciousness) and Director Yorkin (who created All in the Family with Norman Lear) want to use the Mackenzies' disorder to explore sympathetically an entirely unfashionable layer of life...
Predictably enough, Newland ends up giving the liberal countess a lot more than just the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, he's engaged--and to Winona Ryder, no less! Winona plays the idiotic but socially savvy May Welland (a huge come-down from her kicky roles in "Heathers," "Beetle-juice," and "Edward Scissorshands...
...Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a true romantic gentleman. He is romantic because he wants to shrug off the opera cape of domestic respectability and follow his heart to hell with the Countess Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). He is a gentleman because, having already declared his love to pretty May Welland (Winona Ryder), he is bound to behave honorably. He knows that when passion and propriety collide, only bitter defeat may rise from the wreckage...
Screenplay by Colin Welland and Euzhan Palcy...