An African boy gets involved in the political unrest in Kenya in 1950 while working as a kitchen boy in the home of the chief of police.

Richard Attenborough's passion weighs so heavily on every frame of Grey Owl, the true story of a pioneering conservationist in the Canadian wilderness, that it tends to smother the characters. Pierce Brosnan is stiff, deliberate and terse as Archie Grey Owl, a part Scotch Native American adopted and raised by a Canadian Ojibwa tribe. He gets by as a trapper, hunting guide, and sometime writer, but becomes an internationally revered activist in the 1930s when he publishes a book on the vanishing wilderness. Annie Galipeau is the native Canadian woman who sees through his tough hide and secretive quiet: "Yeah, I know. You're a loner. You have to live in the wilderness. I hear it everyday. " But she doesn't pierce his most zealously guarded secret, a distracting subplot that most of the audience figures out in no time. Attenborough's hushed reverence for Archie's dream slows an already lugubrious drama, and Brosnan all too often comes off as a walking cliché, his flat speech and long, slow stares a Brit's idea of a movie Indian. The real star of the film is the magnificent Canadian wilderness: carpets of forests, clear crystal lakes, and vast blue skies. [+]

John Schlesinger's solid adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel sees three rival suitors vying for the affections of the beautiful Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie decked out in a variety of bonnets and frilly dresses), who has just inherited a farm. The men in her life are stout, whiskered yeoman Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates), an impoverished local farmer; neurotic, repressed squire William Boldwood (Peter Finch); and handsome rascal Sgt. Troy (Terrence Stamp), who breaks women's hearts for a hobby. Thanks to cameraman Nicolas Roeg and production designer Richard MacDonald (who also worked for Joseph Losey), 19th-century Dorset looks as pretty and as picturesque as a John Constable reproduction on top of a cookie tin. Not that Schlesinger or screenwriter Frederic Raphael underplays the duress of rural life. We see the hardship of the farm workers' lives as the seasons turn. The film opens with a spectacular sequence in which Gabriel Oak's dog drives his flock of sheep over a cliff, thereby forcing him into penury. Whether hunger or heartbreak, every character here suffers. Bathsheba (like the model Christie plays in Darling) is a free spirit in a society in which women's rights are severely restricted. -Geoffrey Macnab.

Filmed on location in Russia and England, this informative and entertaining full-length feature film presents the fascinating life of the great ballerina, Anna Pavlova. This film presents her early years at the Imperial Ballet School, her work with dance world legends Diaghilev and Fokine, and highlights her triumphant world tour with her own ballet troupe. This is a lavish re-creation of the incredible life of the world's greatest ballerina. Starring Galina Beliaeva as Anna, with James Fox, Martin Scorsese, Roy Kinnear, and Bruce Forsyth.

John Schlesinger's solid adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel sees three rival suitors vying for the affections of the beautiful Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie decked out in a variety of bonnets and frilly dresses), who has just inherited a farm. The men in her life are stout, whiskered yeoman Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates), an impoverished local farmer; neurotic, repressed squire William Boldwood (Peter Finch); and handsome rascal Sgt. Troy (Terrence Stamp), who breaks women's hearts for a hobby. Thanks to cameraman Nicolas Roeg and production designer Richard MacDonald (who also worked for Joseph Losey), 19th-century Dorset looks as pretty and as picturesque as a John Constable reproduction on top of a cookie tin. Not that Schlesinger or screenwriter Frederic Raphael underplays the duress of rural life. We see the hardship of the farm workers' lives as the seasons turn. The film opens with a spectacular sequence in which Gabriel Oak's dog drives his flock of sheep over a cliff, thereby forcing him into penury. Whether hunger or heartbreak, every character here suffers. Bathsheba (like the model Christie plays in Darling) is a free spirit in a society in which women's rights are severely restricted. -Geoffrey Macnab.

Sally Potter's self-reflective film stars Potter (an actress and the director of Orlando), more or less as herself, learning to tango from master dancer Pablo Veron and considering making a film called The Tango Lesson. The film that we happen to be watching, however, is concerned largely with the delicious conflict between the politics of tango-the need for one partner, typically the woman, to yield to the other-and the expectations of the filmmaker to do things on her own terms. Can Potter simultaneously surrender and control for the duration of this circular project? The question is made more complicated by Veron's desire to be in one of Potter's films-in other words, to follow her lead. Potter may not be Veron's equal on the dance floor, but that isn't the point of this interesting movie and its provocative, internal debate. -Tom Keogh.

Evelyn Waugh's classic novel of romantic yearning and loss became the universally acclaimed television serios that viewers on both sides of the Atlantic wished would never end. Set between the wars amid the fading glory of British Empire and great family fortunes, Brideshead is a story of youthful illusions, of exquisite earthly beauty and of divine grace. Starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews and featuring Diana Quick, Sir John Gielgud, Claire Bloom and the incomparable Laurence Olivier in an Emmy Award-winning performance. Fill a bowl with alpine strawberries, break out the Château Lafite (1899, of course), and bask in this benchmark 1981 British miniseries based on Evelyn Waugh's classic novel. Adapted for the screen by John Mortimer (Rumpole of the Bailey), this impeccable, nearly 11-hour production mesmerized American viewers during the course of its PBS run in 1982. In his breakthrough role, Jeremy Irons stars as Charles Ryder, a disillusioned Army captain who is moved to reflect on his "languid days" in the "enchanted castle" that was Brideshead, home of the aristocratic Marchmain family, whose acquaintance Charles made in the company of an Oxford classmate, the charming wild child Sebastian. Anthony Andrews costars as the doomed Sebastian, whose beauty is "arresting" and "whose eccentricities and behavior seemed to know no bounds. " The "entitled and enchanted" Sebastian takes Charles under his wing ("Charles, what a lot you have to learn"), but vows early on that he is "not going to let [Charles] get mixed up with [his] family. " But mixed up Charles gets. He becomes a friend and confidante, not to mention a lover, to Sebastian's sister Julia (Diana Quick). [+]