Albert Finney

In Skyfall, Bond`s loyalty to M is tested as her past comes back to haunt her. As MI6 comes under attack, 007 must track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost.

While the government seeks to erase evidence of their top secret programs, Aaron Cross uses his skills to survive the game of cat-and-mouse and finish what Jason Bourne started.

Set in a 19th century European village, the film tells the story of Victor Van Dort, his fiancee Victoria Everglot and Emily, the Corpse Bride. On the eve of his wedding, Victor is spirited away to the Land of the Dead after he accidentally raises the Corpse Bride from her grave. Victor's quest to return to the Land of the Living and reunite with Victoria would also eventually unravel the mystery of Emily's murder years ago by an unknown perpetrator, and bring closure to the Corpse Bride.

At Will Bloom's (Billy Crudup) wedding party, his father Edward (Albert Finney as Old Edward, Ewan McGregor as young Edward) recalls the day Will was born, claiming he caught an enormous catfish using his wedding ring as bait. Will, having heard these stories all his life, believes them to be lies and falls out with his father. Three years later, Edward is stricken with cancer, so Will and his pregnant French wife Joséphine (Marion Cotillard) return to his childhood home in Alabama to spend time with his father. Edward's life is told through flashbacks, beginning with his encounter with a witch in his hometown, Ashton. She shows him his death, but he reacts to it without fear. As he grows into adulthood, he finds his home too confining (his bones grow too quickly as compared to his body and requires extensive bodywork and is made fun of at school (as a freak) to top it all off) (he is a genius in middle school though, with top marks in sports and studies), and sets out into the world with a misunderstood giant, Karl (Matthew McGrory), who has come to town with a traveling circus. The giant is considered a monster as it keeps eating everything in the town & the townsfolk want to kill him when Edward volunteers to talk to him and try to get him to leave the town. Edward talks to Karl in his cave and convinces that the town of Ashton is too small of Karl as well as his own ambitions. They decide to leave together for a big city. Edward and Karl find a fork in the road and travel down separate paths. Edward follows a path through a swamp and discovers the secret town of Spectre, the cheery locals claiming he was expected. There, he befriends Ashton poet Norther Winslow (Steve Buscemi) and the mayor's daughter Jenny (Helena Bonham Carter). However, Edward leaves Spectre, unwilling to settle down but promises Jenny he will return. In the present day, Joséphine speaks to the bed-ridden Edward and asks him to tell her the story of how he met his wife Sandra, with Will listening outside the door. Returning to his story, Edward reunites with Karl after escaping Spectre and they visit the Calloway Circus, where Edward falls in love with a beautiful woman. Karl and Edward get jobs in the circus where the ringmaster Amos Calloway (Danny DeVito) reveals to Edward one detail about the woman at the end of every month. Amos knows the girl that Edward is seeking, but in a bid to keep Karl performing for the circus, he agrees only to reveal 1 detail about the girl at the end of every month. Three years later, Edward discovers that Amos is secretly a werewolf but shows no ill-will towards his employer. Amos, upon returning to normal, reveals the woman is Sandra, and she attends Auburn University. Edward confesses his love to Sandra, but she declines his wedding proposal despite numerous romantic gestures. He then learns she is already engaged to Don Price (David Denman), a fellow Ashton citizen. Don beats Edward in a fight (but only after Sandra makes Edward promise that he won't hurt Don), prompting Sandra to break off their engagement and marry Edward. Shortly after, Edward is conscripted into the army and sent to fight in the Korean War. The service period is 3 years and, in an attempt, to get back to Sandra early, Edward accepts every dangerous mission he could find, to reduce the service period to 1 year. He parachutes into the middle of a North Korean military show, steals important documents, and convinces Siamese twins Ping and Jing (Ada Tai and Arlene Tai) to help him go home in exchange for making them celebrities. Upon returning home, Edward becomes a travelling salesman and crosses paths with Winslow, unwittingly helping him rob a failing bank, inspiring the poet to work on Wall Street (Winslow makes millions in wall street and sends a check for $10,000 to Edward as his fee as his "career advisor") (Edward uses the money to buy Sandra a house with a white picket fence). In the present, Will investigates the truth behind his father's tales (Will simply does not believe the stories that Edward told him about his life. He thinks they are all lies, so Edward asks him to check it out himself) and travels to Spectre. He meets an older Jenny, who explains that Edward rescued the town from bankruptcy and rebuilt it with help from his friends from Calloway Circus. A few years back Edward was travelling in his job when he came across the same road that led to Spectre, on that road he found Spectre again which was not a derelict town, up for auction. Edward bought the whole town with help from Winslow, Amos and the Siamese Twins. Will suggests that Jenny had an affair with his father, but she reveals while she loved Edward, he remained loyal to Sandra. Will returns home but learns Edward has had a stroke and stays with him at the hospital (the attending doctor tells Will about the real story of his birth, and Will finds that the real version is not very exciting, but the version told by Edward had excitement, fantasy and entertainment. Will, at that moment, realized his father's love for story telling). Edward wakes up but, unable to speak much, asks Will to narrate how his life ends. Though struggling, Will tells his father of their imagined daring escape from the hospital to the nearby lake, where everyone from Edward's past is there to see him off. Will takes Edward into the river, where he transforms into the giant catfish and swims away. A satisfied Edward dies, knowing Will finally understands his love for storytelling. At the funeral, Will and Joséphine are surprised when all the people from Edward's stories come to the service, though each one is a slightly less fantastical version than described. Will, finally understanding his father's love for life, passes on Edward's stories to his own son

Based on a true story, the movie follows Erin Brokovich, a single mother who becomes a legal assistant and fights a Californian company that was polluting the city`s water supply.

On the verge of forced resignation, a strict old-fashioned teacher rethinks his life. Andrew Crocker-Harris (Albert Finney) is an embittered, disliked teacher of Greek and Latin at a British public school. After nearly 20 years of service, he is being forced to retire on the pretext of his health and might not even be given a pension. The boys regard him as a Hitler, with some justification. His wife Laura (Greta Scacchi) is unfaithful, and lives to wound him any way she can. Andrew must come to terms with his failed life and regain at least his own self-respect. —Reid Gagle British public-school student Taplow (Ben Silverstone) completely changes the self-perception of his master, Andrew Crocker-Harris (Albert Finney) so that he can accept his forced retirement from his academic establishment with his head held high. —jwassermann@shaw.ca

"The Dresser" opens with a performance of "Othello" at a regional theater in England during the last days of World War Two. In the title role is an ageing, once-famous Shakespearean actor identified to us only as "Sir" (Albert Finney). He is of the old. bombastic school of British acting, full of grand gestures and fine oratory. As the curtain comes down on the last act, and as the actors line up for their curtain call, Sir lectures them on the mistakes they've made during the performance, showing us that he is the leader of this traveling band of actors bringing Shakespeare to the provinces during wartime. Waiting backstage is Norman (Tom Courtenay), who has been Sir's dresser for decades. Norman is an efficient, somewhat effeminate little man who knows Sir's every whim and fancy, is used to his tirades and temperamental rants and is, for all intents and purposes, Sir's servant. As Norman waits for Sir to come offstage after a typically florid closing address to the audience, we see one way he copes with his job as he takes a nip from a handy little bottle of brandy always in his back pocket. Next we see the company hurrying to its next venue, a theater in the industrial town of Bradford where Sir is to give his renowned portrayal of King Lear. The train nearly leaves without them, as Sir makes his stately progress through the train station to the platform, Norman scurrying ahead to plead with the train guard the even the conductor to hold the train for Sir's arrival. But the train begins to pull out of the station, until Sir delivers a loud, commanding "STOP....THAT....TRAIN!" from the platform steps. The conductor, taken aback, does just that and Sir placidly leads his company aboard. Arriving in Bradford, however, we soon learn another source of Norman's anxiety, for it becomes obvious that Sir's mental capacities are rapidly fading. Norman rescues him from a confused, almost violent rant in the town square that lands Sir in the hospital. As the company tries to decide what to do, Sir unexpectedly arrives at the theater, disoriented and exhausted, saying he's checked himself out of the hospital. Norman ushers Sir theater's dressing room, fiercely resisting the stage manager's insistence that the show be canceled and insisting Sir will be ready to go on. The middle section of the film takes place nearly entirely in the dressing room, as Norman struggles to prepare Sir for the curtain. Sir's wandering mind and nearly incoherent ramblings gradually become more focused as Norman gets him to concentrate on applying his makeup, remembering his lines; and we see how dependent the two men are on each other. Sir would have no career left without Norman; Norman, even worse, would have no life without Sir, to whom he has so long dedicated all his time and energy. By the time Sir's wife, referred to only as "Her Ladyship" and who is playing Cordelia to her husband's Lear, arrives in the dressing room for the five-minute call, Sir is ready for the role we learn he has performed 227 times. The curtain rises for the opening dialogue among Lear's courtiers, but Sir seems to mentally drift away while waiting for his cue, much to Norman's distress, forcing the hapless actors on stage to improvise speeches while Norman struggles to convince Sir of his entrance. Air raid sirens sound, signaling the possibility of an airstrike; and, indeed, distant bombs that can be heard falling seem to rouse Sir and he strides on stage to deliver what all agree is his finest portrayal of Lear in his long career. After the triumphant performance, however, Sir collapses from exhaustion and Norman helps him to his dressing room to lie down. Sir requests Norman to read from an autobiography he claims to have been writing. Although all Sir has written is the opening dedication, Norman reads aloud Sir's gracious thank yous to his audiences, his fellow actors, to Shakespeare, to stage technicians...but not a word about his dresser who has served him so long and loyally. About to protest, Norman discovers that Sir has died while he's been reading. Norman, by now slightly drunk from the evening's brandy nips, flies into a rage, accusing Sir of being a thankless old sod, and in his anger even madly scribbles an addition to Sir's writing thanking himself. But Norman's anger only temporarily covers his disorientation at losing the only life he has known for so many years and, as Norman tearfully admits, the only man he has ever loved. The film closes with Norman sprawled across Sir's body, unwilling to let go of his life and his love.

"The Duellists" is based on a story written by Joseph Conrad, which, according to the author, was itself based on a true story whose origins sprang from a ten-line paragraph in a small Southern France local newspaper. That brief paragraph reported the fatal ending of a duel between two officers in Napoleon's Grand Army. The two officers had fought a series of duels in the midst of great wars on some futile pretext. As the pretext was never disclosed, Conrad invented one. We are in 1800, in the garrison town of Strasbourg, on the Rhine. There is a lull in the Napoleonic wars, and the French soldiers are enjoying a moment of peace before resuming the slaughters. As the film opens, a young girl driving a gaggle of geese happens upon two men dueling in a meadow. Lieutenant Gabriel Féraud (Harvey Keitel), from the 7th Hussar Regiment, is in the process of settling a score with an unknown man who soon ends up skewered on the Lieutenant's épée. We learn that this man is the nephew of the Mayor of Strasbourg, and is seriously wounded, when General Treillard (Robert Stephens), Commandant of the garrison, enters his officers quarters and makes inquiries about this Lieutenant Féraud. Lieutenant Armand d'Hubert (Keith Carradine), from the 4th Hussar Regiment, admits to vaguely knowing the gentleman, and he is immediately "volunteered" by his Commandant to find him and bring him back to the barracks, where he will be put under house arrest. General Treillard, who must see that his soldiers obey the Emperors rules prohibiting combat with civilians, needs to investigate what happened in the meadow. It is somewhat ironical that Bonaparte, who spent a large part of his life dueling with the rest of Europe on a rather grand scale, involving tens of thousand of participants on both sides (but was somewhat of a dilettante when judged by present day's standards), had little respect for the same tradition on an individual level. D'Hubert, after looking all over town, ends up at Féraud's private quarters, where he learns that the Lieutenant is attending a soirée at the salon of Madame de Lionne (Jenny Runacre). At the salon, d'Hubert meets with Féraud and informs him of his mission. Féraud, having judged himself the insulted party in his morning duel, cannot comprehend the reason for his arrest. Further, he determines that d'Hubert has in turn insulted him by bursting into the salon of Madame de Lionne, disturbing him with the General's orders as he was talking to the lady. Féraud immediately challenges d'Hubert to a duel with sabers, which ends when Féraud is wounded. Now, not only has Féraud's forearm been injured, but his wounded pride demands satisfaction. From then on, for the next fifteen years, Féraud will be obsessed with the idea of settling his dispute with d'Hubert, holding him captive by Férauds tragic, ironic concept of honor. D'Hubert goes to meet his friend, an army surgeon (Tom Conti), asking his advice on how to get out of this messy situation. The surgeon tells him first, to keep away from Féraud, second, to always stay ahead of Féraud in military rank, since only duels between soldiers of equal ranks are tolerated and third, to rely on Napoleon for keeping the wars going, as there is no dueling during a state of war. Augsburg, one year later. Lieutenant d'Hubert meets an old girl friend, Laura (Diana Quick), one of the camp followers. She tells him she has an offer of marriage from a one-armed veteran, but they nevertheless resume their relationship. It happens that Lieutenant Féraud is in the same town, and of course they will duel again. Epées, this time. This encounter is not so lucky for d'Hubert, who ends up gravely wounded. Their seconds propose that now the honor of both parties has been saved, but The Duellists both refuse the opportunity for reconciliation. Laura nurses d'Hubert back to health, but after a face-to-face with Féraud and a subsequent consultation with a fortuneteller, she realizes that these duelists will go on until one of them is killed. If it is d'Hubert who is to die, she cannot see any future in their relationship. She decides to leave him and go and marry the disabled ex-soldier. Captain Féraud (he caught up in rank with d'Hubert, who was promoted earlier) and Captain d'Hubert meet in a third duel, again with sabers, in a cellar. The two combatants fight to total exhaustion in an inconclusive duel, and eventually, dirty and bleeding, must be separated by their seconds. Lubeck, 1806. Captain d'Hubert and Captain Féraud duel a fourth time, on horseback. It is Féraud's turn to be wounded, seriously enough to not be able to continue the fight to its conclusion. Laura reappears on the scene. She is now a widow, and had hoped to settle with her ex-lover, Captain d'Hubert, but she sees that this is just wishful thinking. D'Hubert, too involved in this dueling matter, remains deaf to her subtle suggestion that they resume their affair. Russia, 1812. The Emperor's Grand Army, defeated by the terrible Russian winter and the Russian battle tactics, is in retreat. Colonels Féraud and d'Hubert are now like grunts in the "sacred battalion," consisting of officers of all arms who had no longer any troops to commend. One night, around a campfire, they find themselves again face to face. They silently recognize each other. The next day, Féraud requests a volunteer to go investigate some Cossack activities in the nearby woods. The soldiers are so exhausted and despondent that Féraud had guessed rightly that d'Hubert would be the only one to follow him, with the ulterior motive of finishing their endless confrontation. Far from the camp they come face to face, each with a pair of pistols, but at that moment, a group of Cossacks appears and the two adversaries present a common front to fight them off. Following this, in a gesture of reconciliation, d'Hubert offers Féraud a drink from his hip flask, but the latter disdainfully walks away: "Pistols, next time," he says. Tour, 1814. Napoleon is in exile on the Island of Elba and the Bourbons are back in power with Louis XVIII. General d'Hubert is convalescing at his sister Leoni's home from a bad leg wound sustained during the campaign in France, fighting the Prussians. She suggests to her brother he ought to get married, and offers to introduce him to Adele (Cristina Raines), the niece of her neighbor, the old aristocrat Chevalier de Riverol (Alan Webb). After a short courtship, the two marry. D'Hubert is visited by a Bonapartist gentleman (Edward Fox), a friend of General Féraud, who tries to recruit him to aid in the planned return of the Emperor, but d'Hubert refuses. Following the "Hundred Days," the return of Napoleon to French soil, the Emperor is defeated at Waterloo, and definitively exiled to the Island of St. Helena. Louis XVIII is returned to the throne. Many known Bonapartists are arrested, including General Féraud, and these will be executed as examples. Upon hearing the news, d'Hubert meets with the Police Minister of the Second Empire, Fouché, now Duke of Otranto (Albert Finney), and requests Férauds pardon, a request that is granted. D'Hubert asks only that his intervention on Férauds behalf be kept secret. Having discovered d'Hubert's whereabouts, Féraud sends two of his ex-companions in arms to set up yet another, and hopefully, final duel. The Duellists meet at dawn, on d'Hubert's property, with pistols. Two shots each, fire at will. D'Hubert gets to fire the last shot, but instead of killing Féraud, he fires a bullet into the ground, and with this gesture becomes the rightful owner's of Féraud's life: "I shall simply declare you dead," says d'Hubert. The final scene shows Féraud, from the back, standing on a bluff overlooking the Dordogne River winding through the beautiful valley below. He stands wearing a two-pointed cocked hat and a long black, straight military capote, reminiscent of his Emperor's portraits on the Island of St. Helena - could it be "le petit caporal" (the little corporal), the Emperor himself, humiliated and defeated? It is the "end of the road" for Féraud: finally at peace, as he meditates on what has been his life.

The murder Having sorted a matter out in the Middle East, detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) is returning to England aboard the Orient Express. During the journey, Poirot encounters his friend Bianchi (Martin Balsam), a director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, which owns the line. The train is unusually crowded for the time of year: every first-class berth has been booked. Shortly after the train's departure from Istanbul, a wealthy American businessman, Ratchett (Richard Widmark), tries to secure Poirot's services for $15,000 since he has received many death threats, but Poirot finds the case of little interest and turns it down. That night the train is caught in heavy snows in the Balkans. The next morning Ratchett is found stabbed to death in his cabin. Poirot and Bianchi work together to solve the case. They enlist the help of Dr. Constantine (George Coulouris), a Greek medical doctor who was travelling in another coach with Bianchi as the only other passenger and thus not a suspect. Pierre Michel (Jean-Pierre Cassel), the middle-aged French conductor of the car, also assists the investigation, as well as being a suspect. Poirot soon discovers that Ratchett was not who he claimed to be. The victim's secret past indicates a clear motive for murder, even justification, but who was the killer? Clues Dr. Constantine's examination of the body reveals that Ratchett was stabbed 12 times. Some wounds were slight, but at least three of them could have resulted in death. The stopped watch in the victim's pocket, as well as Poirot's reconstructed timeline of passenger activities the night before, indicate that Ratchett was murdered at about 1:15 a.m. The train had stopped, surrounded by fresh snow, before that time. There are no tracks in the snow and the doors to the other cars were locked, so the murderer is almost certainly still among the passengers in the coach in which Ratchett was killed. Most importantly, Poirot realizes that Ratchett was in fact a gangster called Cassetti. Five years previously, Cassetti and a henchman kidnapped and murdered Daisy Armstrong, the baby daughter of a wealthy British Army Colonel who had settled in America with his American-born wife. The body was found after the ransom had been paid. Overcome with grief, the pregnant Mrs. Armstrong went into labor early and died while giving birth to a stillborn baby. A maidservant named Paulette who was wrongly suspected of complicity in the kidnapping committed suicide. Colonel Armstrong, consumed by these tragedies, later killed himself as well. Cassetti's accomplice was arrested and executed, but Cassetti himself fled the country with the ransom, as he was only revealed to be the leader on the eve of the execution. Having established these facts, Poirot, Dr. Constantine and Bianchi summon the other passengers one by one and proceed to interrogate them. (The fictitious Armstrong case was inspired by the real-life kidnapping of aviator Charles Lindbergh's child.) Suspects The thirteen suspects are: Hector McQueen (Anthony Perkins), a tall, young American man, the victim's secretary and translator; Edward Beddoes (Sir John Gielgud), the victim's British valet; Mary Debenham (Vanessa Redgrave), a young British woman, returning home to England after working as a teacher in Baghdad; Colonel Arbuthnott (Sean Connery), a British officer in the British Indian Army returning to England on leave; Princess Natalia Dragomiroff (Wendy Hiller), an elderly Russian royal; Hildegarde Schmidt (Rachel Roberts), a middle-aged German woman, the Princess' personal maid; Count Rudolf Andrenyi (Michael York), an aristocratic Hungarian diplomat; Countess Elena Andrenyi (Jacqueline Bisset), née Grünwald, his beautiful young wife; Greta Ohlsson (Ingrid Bergman), a middle-aged Swedish missionary returning to Europe on a fund-raising trip for her mission in Africa; Mrs. Harriet Belinda Hubbard (Lauren Bacall), an older, fussy, very talkative American pluri-widowed socialite; Antonio (Gino) Foscarelli (Denis Quilley), an exuberant Italian American car salesman from Chicago; Cyrus B. "Dick" Hardman (Colin Blakely), a Pinkerton's detective masquerading as a talent agent; Pierre-Paul Michel (Jean-Pierre Cassel), the French conductor of the sleeping car. Motive Poirot soon comes to realise that all the suspects were connected to the Armstrong family and had reason to seek revenge for the tragedies that followed the kidnapping. Some openly admit their connections to the Armstrongs, while other ties must be uncovered by Poirot. McQueen was the son of the District Attorney who prosecuted the case and was very fond of Mrs. Armstrong; Miss Debenham was Mrs Armstrong's secretary; Beddoes was Colonel Armstrong's army batman and the family butler; Col. Arbuthnott was an army friend of Col. Armstrong; Princess Dragomiroff was Sonia Armstrong's godmother; Miss Schmidt was the Armstrongs' cook; Miss Ohlsson was Daisy's nursemaid; Foscarelli was the Armstrong's chauffeur; Hardman was, at the time, a policeman who was in love with Paulette; Michel was Paulette's father; Countess Andrenyi was Mrs Armstrong's sister; Mrs Hubbard was Mrs Armstrong's mother; Count Andrenyi was Mrs Armstrong's brother in law. Ratchett was sedated by Beddoes and McQueen. Each of the passengers then stabbed him in turn. Poirot presents this explanation for the murder to the assembled passengers, describing it as the "complex" solution to the crime. Yet he also offers another explanation, a "simple" one. In the course of the inquiry evidence has been found of an intruder on the train, who may have murdered Ratchett and then escaped evidence planted by the suspects. Poirot suggests that Ratchett/Cassetti may have been involved with the Mafia and murdered as the result of a feud. He leaves it to Bianchi, director of the line, to decide which explanation to present to the local police. Bianchi decides that this "simple" solution will be enough for the local police and that Ratchett deserved everything he got. A cover-up is therefore instigated. Poirot is satisfied that justice has been done, though he does admit to a struggle with his conscience.

A British private eye's relatives confuse his case. Ginley (Albert Finney) is a nightclub bingo caller eager for a career change. On his thirty-first birthday, he advertises himself as a private eye in the newspaper. He dons a trench coat, and begins engaging others in rapid-fire dialogue as if he were Humphrey Bogart, or some Dashiell Hammett creation. Soon after, Ginley is phoned by a fat man, who gives him a package containing a gun, a photograph, and a large sum of money. Eventually Ginley is investigating a case involving smuggling of weapons as well as drugs. Ginley also finds himself at odds with his unsupportive brother, who offers Ginley payment to break off his investigations. Eventually Ginley learns of his brother-in-law's involvement in the crimes at hand. Ginley faces a series of daunting tasks: solving the crimes, bringing justice to the smugglers (and a murderer), as well as maintaining his safety and sanity in the process.