Stephen Frears

  • Stephen Frears – Gumshoe (1971)

    1971-1980ComedyMysteryStephen FrearsUnited Kingdom

    Synopsis:
    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. Read More »

  • Stephen Frears – The Van (1996)

    1991-2000ComedyDramaStephen FrearsUnited Kingdom

    Bittersweet comedy about two unemployed Dubliners who open a mobile fish and chip shop. The film is set in a working class suburb of the Irish capital against the backdrop of the 1990 World Cup, when Jackie’s army made it into the quarter finals.Read More »

  • Stephen Frears – Bloody Kids (1980)

    1971-1980DramaStephen FrearsUnited Kingdom

    Quote:
    This 1979 collaboration between two of the UK’s brighter rising talents – writer Stephen Poliakoff and director Stephen Frears – is a strange affair. Set in a slightly slipped-reality version of faded seaside Southend, it follows two 12-year-old pranksters (Peter Clark and Richard Thomas) who stage a sham knife fight – just for something to do, or so it seems at first – which ends up with one of them in hospital. What follows is a drab odyssey through all the public spaces the era offered – football ground, shopping precinct, disco, underground car park, Chinese restaurant, cop shop, hospital, caff – as Leo (Clark) is quizzed in hospital by the police, keen to know who his assailant was. Read More »

  • Stephen Frears – Play for Today: Sunset Across the Bay [+ Extra] (1975)

    1971-1980BBCDramaStephen FrearsThe Wednesday Play & Play for TodayTVUnited Kingdom

    A married couple, after a life time of work and bringing up a family, retire and awaken to the fast changing world around them, the habitual nature of their relationship, and what they have left.Read More »

  • Stephen Frears – My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)

    1981-1990DramaQueer Cinema(s)Stephen FrearsUnited Kingdom

    Quote:
    ‘LAUNDRETTE,’ SOCIAL COMEDY SLEEPER
    DON’T be put off by the title, which makes it sound like a failed French farce. ”My Beautiful Laundrette,” written by Hanif Kureishi and directed by Stephen Frears, is the first real sleeper of the year.

    The film, which opens today at the Embassy 72d Street Theater, is a rude, wise, vivid social comedy about Pakistani immigrants in London, , particularly about the initially naive, university-age Omar (Gordon Warnecke) and Omar’s extended family of wheeler-dealers and unassimilated layabouts.Read More »

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