Ian Hart

In 1903 London, following the dismal reception of his latest play (the play is taken down after a few days of opening night), Little Mary, Barrie (Johnny Depp) meets the widowed Sylvia (Kate Winslet) and her four young sons (George (Nick Roud), Jack (Joe Prospero), Peter (Freddie Highmore) and Michael (Luke Spill)) in Kensington Gardens. A strong, close friendship develops among them. He proves to be a great playmate and surrogate father figure for the boys, and their imaginative antics (they imagine whole worlds and create characters and play them with conviction. Injuns and the westerners. Exploration of Africa in the backyard. kite flying) give him ideas which he incorporates into a play about boys who do not want to grow up, especially one named after troubled young Peter Llewelyn Davies. Barrie gifts Peter his first diary and encourages him to write stories coming out of his vivid imagination. Barrie is shown to be friends with Arthur Conan Doyle (Ian Hart). Barrie's wife Mary invites Sylvia, her kids and her mother to dinner. Barrie misses meals at home and suggests that they loan their own cook to Sylvia, as she is short of helping hands in her own house. Although Barrie sees this family as wonderful and inspirational, people question his relationship with the Llewelyn Davies family. Sylvia was a widow: her husband died from cancer and left her with four boys to bring up on her own. Arthur makes Barrie understand that people are questioning his relationship with Sylvia and even her boys. Barrie brushes them aside and takes Sylvia and her boys to his summer cottage for the summer. This is where the script for Peter Pan takes shape. Barrie's wife Mary (Radha Mitchell), who eventually divorces him (she started an affair with Gilbert Cannan (Oliver Fox). When Barrie tries to reconcile she demands that he return home at the end of the rehearsals and stop his forays into the countryside with Sylvia's family), and Sylvia's mother Emma Du Maurier (Julie Christie), object to the amount of time Barrie spends with the Llewelyn Davies family (a grown man spending so much time with the kids, and that Barrie is hurting any future prospects that Sylvia might have for settling down into a married life again). Emma also seeks to control her daughter and grandsons, especially as Sylvia becomes increasingly weak from an unidentified illness (which started at the summer cottage). Along the way, Barrie goes on adventures with Sylvia and her boys. He too is a boy at heart and spending time with the family is special. Barrie takes those adventures he has with the boys and makes them into a play called Peter Pan. Peter blames Barrie for Sylvia's illness. Producer Charles Frohman (Dustin Hoffman) skeptically agrees to mount Peter Pan (The play demands a ship on stage, surrounded by huge amounts of water, which requires huge amount of money. But Barrie says that they can fake the water), despite his belief that it holds no appeal for upper-class theatergoers (doctors, lawyers, and so on with their wives). Barrie asks Charles to set aside 25 seats in the audience, scattered all over the place. George breaks his hand when Jack and Michael let go of the ropes helping him fly in the air (in the theatre). George insists that Sylvia undergoes medical examination, before he will allow the doctors to set his hand right. Barrie peppers the opening night audience with children from a nearby orphanage, and the adults present react to their infectious delight with an appreciation of their own. The play proves to be a huge success. Barrie is all set for his play, but when Peter arrives alone to the play (as Sylvia had a coughing fit and was in no position to attend), Barrie goes to Sylvia's house to check up on her and misses the show. Peter attends the play and realizes the play is about his brothers and Barrie. Mary attends the opening and realizes that Barrie could never have written anything like this, without Sylvia's family. She understands and apologizes to Barrie. Sylvia is too ill to attend the premiere, so Barrie arranges to have an abridged production of it performed in her home. He gets the actors, props and musicians together in the Llewelyn Davies house. At the end of the play, Peter Pan points to the back doors and implies that Sylvia should go off to Neverland. She takes the hands of her boys and slowly walks out into Neverland. The living room and back garden transform into Neverland and Sylvia continues to walk on her own. In the next scene, everyone is at Sylvia's funeral. Barrie discovers that her will says that he and her mother should look after the boys, an arrangement agreeable to both. The film ends with J. M. Barrie finding Peter on the bench in the park where they first met after Peter ran off from the graveyard. Peter is holding his book where he wrote the plays that he ripped apart and that his mother glued back together for him. Barrie sits down and puts his arm around Peter to comfort him. They both fade, and all that is left is the bench.

Novelist Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) is writing "This is a diary of hate" as he starts a new book as well as the film's narration. It's 1946 when Bendrix has a chance meeting one rainy night in London with Henry Miles (Stephen Rea), husband of his former mistress Sarah (Julianne Moore). Two years before, she had abruptly ended their affair for reasons revealed later. Henry suspects Sarah is currently having an affair and is considering employing a private eye to investigate. Bendrix was jealous of Henry during his affair with Sarah and had tried to persuade her to leave him. If she has since started an affair with someone new after telling him there would never be anyone else, Bendrix wants to find out. Without telling Henry, he hires the investigator himself, at the same time as making arrangements to meet Sarah. Consistent with the tone of his diary, their meeting is cold and promises no future. Events are shown from Bendrix perspective, with contrasting flashbacks of Bendrix with Sarah as they began their affair during World War II. The present day action continues as Bendrix encounters the private investigator Parkis (Ian Hart), who uses his young son Lancelot (Sam Bould) to help him snoop. The boy has a birthmark that disfigures his face. Parkis reports that he has found who Sarah has been seeing under the pretence of attending dental appointments. Bendrix jealousy leads him to confront the man named Smythe, using Lancelot as a ploy to gain access to his home. Smythe (Jason Isaacs) is a priest who admits he knows Sarah and who Bendrix is. Smythe is affronted by the way he has approached him and tells him to leave. The climax of Act 2 is a night of passion during the war when we witness them making love amid the sound of V2 rockets falling and shaking the house. Bendrix gets out of bed to check on his landlady and is blown down the stairs by the blast from a rocket hitting the house. When he recovers consciousness, he goes back upstairs to find Sarah praying. Seeing him, she is shocked that he is alive. Bendrix detects that her attitude has changed and accuses Sarah of being disappointed that he survived. She leaves telling him "Love doesn't end, just because we don't see each other." Back to 1946 and Parkis inveigles his way into a social function at the Miles house and steals Sarah's diary which he gives to Bendrix. As he sits to read it, the film sequences of the main events in their relationship are reshown but the narrative is from Sarah's perspective. After Bendrix is hurt by the bomb, Sarah runs downstairs and finds him motionless with no pulse. Assuming him dead, she runs back upstairs and begins to pray for a miracle. Just as she makes a promise to God that she will stop seeing Bendrix if he is brought back to life, Bendrix comes into the room. Now knowing why Sarah ended the affair, Bendrix follows Sarah and begs her to reconsider. Sarah tells Bendrix that she has felt dead without him and can no longer keep her "promise" to God. They rekindle the affair. Bendrix tries to persuade Sarah to leave Henry and confesses to Henry that he hired Parkis to find out who she was seeing while making fake visits to the dentist. Henry is furious and burns the evidence Bendrix produces about Smythe. Henry also desperately asks Sarah not to leave him. Bendrix is visited one night by Henry as he and Sarah are in bed. He does not open the door. She agrees to go away with him the following morning to Brighton where Bendrix finds Parkis is following him. To increase the likelihood of divorce, Bendrix contrives to kiss Sarah in view of their hotel bedroom window where Parkis can photograph them. Bendrix believes his goal has been realised when Henry appears in Brighton. But Henry's reason is not to confront the adulterous couple. It is to tell them what he had come to Bendrix' house for the night previously, that Sarah has a terminal illness and will not survive much longer than the duration of a divorce. Bendrix stays with Henry and Sarah during her final days. Bendrix does not permit Smythe entry when he tries to visit Sarah, telling her it was just a person, and not the postman. When she dies, Smythe visits to offer spiritual support but evokes anger from Bendrix who blames God for taking her. It becomes clear the object of hate in his book is not Sarah or Henry but God. "I hated You as though You existed. Now I am tired of hating...but You're still there". At Sarah's funeral, Parkis tells Bendrix that after finding his son Lancelot asleep in a doorway while he was supposed to be recording her visits to Smythe, she had kissed his birthmarked cheek as she put him on a train home. When the birthmark disappeared, Lancelot believed she had worked a healing miracle on him. At Henry and Sarah's house, Bendrix continues to talk to God whose existence and virtue he had earlier doubted, completing his book with the lines.. "I've only one prayer left. Dear God, forget about me. Look after her and Henry".

A young woman attempts to end her criminal career. But she needs love to make it. Alan is a schoolteacher in London who also moonlights as a jazz disc jockey for a hospital PA system. One night after work, he goes to a bar and sees Beatrice a beautiful woman who is arguing with two men. Alan is immediately captivated by Beatrice and begins to pursue her. What Alan doesn't know is that Beatrice is an infamous thief known to the police as "B. Monkey" (named for her ability to break into anything) and the men she was arguing with were Paul and Bruno a homosexual couple who are her partners in crime. When Alan becomes aware of Beatrice's secret, he tries to lead her into a safer and more honest way of life, even as she lures him into the thrilling existence he's been dreaming of. Alan Furnace is a young man with the perfectly proper, quiet life of a London school teacher. But beneath all of that decency lies a burning desire for excitement and he just found it. She's a woman unlike any other: Unruly Irish eyes, Latin lips... her name is Beatrice, but on the streets they call her B. Monkey. She's about to take him on an outrageous, dangerous and sexy ride through the wild side of London. —Babalu Beatrice is a smash-and-grab jewel thief, an Italian in London, robbing with her partner Bruno. She and Bruno live with Paul, who's Bruno's lover and a world-weary cokehead in debt to a local thug. Each of the three loves the others. Beatrice quits the game, Paul and Bruno split, and a primary-school teacher named Alan enters Beatrice's life. He romances her with dinners and a trip to Paris to dance at a jazz club. Paul faces pressure to pay, Bruno wants another score, and Beatrice may not be able to trade the rush of robbery for the quiet life of a teacher's wife. Her entanglements with Paul and Bruno may not be easily cut. And what of Alan: will he fight for love? —<jhailey@hotmail.com>

1703: Robinson Crusoe has to leave Scotland for a year, but after months sailing, a storm wrecks his ship. He ends up as only survivor on a desolate island. Robinson Crusoe flees Britain on a ship after killing his friend over the love of Mary. A fierce ocean storm wrecks his ship and leaves him stranded by himself on an uncharted island. Left to fend for himself, Crusoe seeks out a tentative survival on the island, until he meets Friday, a tribesman whom he saves from being sacrificed. Initially, Crusoe is thrilled to finally have a friend, but he has to defend himself against the tribe who uses the island to sacrifice tribesmen to their gods. Over time, their relationship changes from master-slave to a mutual respected friendship despite their difference in culture and religion. —Tiny T

In 1922, Joe O'Reilly (Ian Hart) attempts to console Kitty Kiernan (Julia Roberts), who is mourning the death of Michael Collins. Flashback to the end of the Easter Rising in 1916, the besieged Irish republicans surrender to the British Army at the republicans' headquarters in Dublin. Collins (Liam Neeson), Harry Boland (Aidan Quinn), Eamon De Valera (Alan Rickman), and other survivors surrender to the British Army. As the Dublin Metropolitan Police's "G" Division identifies the leaders, Collins tells Boland that next time, "We won't play by their rules, Harry. We'll invent our own." Several key figures of the Rising, including Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, Tom Clarke and James Connolly, are executed by firing squad, but De Valera, an American citizen, is imprisoned in England. Collins, Boland, and the others are sent to Frongoch internment camp. After his release, Collins runs for a seat in the First Dail. The 1918 Irish general election results in the victorious Sinn Féin party unilaterally declaring Irish independence and in so doing beginning the Irish War of Independence. De Valera is elected President and Collins is appointed Director of Intelligence for the emerging IRA. While giving a speech, the rally is attacked by the Royal Irish Constabulary. Collins is severely beaten but is rescued by Boland. While recovering on a friend's farm, they meet Kitty, who begins a romance with Boland. Collins is tipped off by Detective Ned Broy (Stephen Rea) that the British plan to arrest De Valera and his Cabinet. De Valera, sensing that the arrest will spark a worldwide outcry, dissuades his cabinet from going into hiding and persuades them to allow their arrests to take place. Collins and Boland evade arrest, though there is no response to the wider action. As the last senior leader still free, Collins begins a counter-intelligence campaign with help from Broy. Numerous assassinations of agents and Irish collaborators are carried out by the IRA's Dublin Brigade. Later, Boland and Collins travel to England and break De Valera out of Lincoln prison. Angry that Collins has overshadowed him, De Valera announces that he will travel to the United States to seek recognition from Woodrow Wilson, and orders Boland to accompany him. Before they depart, Collins informs Boland that De Valera fears leaving them alone together. The war continues to intensify; the British assign SIS Officer Soames (Charles Dance) to counter the Irish Republican Army, though he and several of his agents are killed in an attack orchestrated by Collins. Left in command, Collins orders the IRA to begin raiding police barracks for weapons. He also issues a statement that all collaboration with the British will be punished by death. Collins then recruits a squad from the IRA's Dublin Brigade, which, on Bloody Sunday, assassinates fourteen members of MI5's Cairo Gang. In retaliation, the Black and Tans fire into the crowd at a Gaelic football match at Croke Park. Broy's assistance to Collins is also discovered by Soames, who subsequently has Broy tortured and killed. De Valera returns from the USA having been unable to secure President Wilson's support. After returning, De Valera decrees that the IRA must attack The Custom House. The British hint at direct communication with the Irish, though Collins' guerrilla campaign has boded poorly for Ireland's image. Collins argues that fighting conventionally will allow the British to win, but the Irish Cabinet votes to support De Valera. The attack fails catastrophically, leaving six men dead and seventy captured. In the aftermath, Collins declares that the IRA can only hold out for a month. In private, he tells Boland that the IRA will be lucky to hold out for another week. Despite the desperate situation the Irish Republican Army now finds itself in, the British unexpectedly call for a cease to the conflict. Collins is ordered to London to participate in negotiations with the British, despite objecting that he is not a diplomat. After the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, De Valera erupts upon learning that the terms have been published without his agreement. Though the Republic of Ireland is not immediately granted independence, the treaty enables Ireland to achieve it over time while remaining a British dominion during the interim as well as losing six of the nine Ulster counties, which will remain under British control. Collins argues that the Treaty gives them the freedom to achieve the Republic. De Valera and his supporters resign in protest after the Dail approves the Treaty by 64-57. Both Collins and De Valera try to sway the Irish people in their respective directions. Collins is attacked by an anti-Treaty Republican during a rally, but escapes. In the aftermath, he asks Kitty Kiernan to marry him, and she accepts. When the people vote to approve the Treaty, De Valera refuses to accept the results and orders the IRA to seize the Four Courts in Dublin. Ordered by the Cabinet to retake the Four Courts, Collins is appalled at having to fight former comrades. Arthur Griffith (Owen Roe), however, informs him that, if the Irish Free State Army will not deal with the IRA, the British Army will. In the subsequent Battle of Dublin, the IRA is driven from the city. Despite Collins' attempts to capture him, Boland is shot by a sentry while trying to swim the Liffey. Devastated by Boland's death, Collins travels to County Cork. He reaches out to De Valera through an intermediary, asking for a peace conference. Without De Valera's knowledge, the intermediary informs Collins that De Valera will meet him at Beal Na Blath the following day. As a convoy of Irish Army vehicles approaches, they find a cart laid across the road and IRA men open fire from a nearby hillside. A short ambush starts, and Collins is shot and killed after breaking cover from behind an armored car. Joe O'Reilly (Ian Hart) tries to revive Collins, but he dies and his attacker unknown. Kitty is informed of his death just after trying on her wedding gown. She is devastated by his death. Completing his story, O'Reilly tells Kitty that Collins would not want her to mourn as long as she has.

When an English cartographer must tell a Welsh village that their mountain is only a hill, the offended community sets out to change that. Two English cartographers visit the small South Wales village of Ffynnon Garw, to measure what is claimed to be the "first mountain inside of Wales". It's 1917, and the war in Europe continues. The villagers are very proud of their "mountain", and are understandably disappointed and furious to find that it is in fact a "hill". Not to be outwitted by a rule (and the Englishmen who enforce it), the villagers set out to make their hill into a mountain, but to do so they must keep the English from leaving, before the job is done. —Rob Hartill

A dramatization of the Hamburg, Germany phase of The Beatles' early history. A pre-fame Beatles head for the seedy clubs of Hamburg in search of success. The band meet up with a group of trendy German beatniks, one of whom (Astrid Kircherr) bass guitarist Stuart Sutcliffe falls in love with. Whilst best friend John Lennon can only watch, Sutcliffe has to choose between rock 'n roll and a new life in Germany... —Douglas Baptie John Lennon and the rest of his new rock-and-roll group - Paul McCartney, Pete Best, George Harrison and Stuart Sutcliffe - travel to Hamburg to try their luck. Word soon gets out and they become increasingly popular, especially with the girls. But Stuart still thinks he is a better painter than bass guitarist, and he has fallen seriously in love with a German girl. He and the rest of the group have to make some decisions. —Jeremy Perkins {J-26}