Stream Selected Films Starring or with Bill Nighy
In several of these films, Nighy is an ensemble player, but the movies themselves are worthy and might otherwise be missed, so they’re included.
Love Actually 2003 Directed by Richard Curtis. Wonderful ensemble cast playing out (sometimes linked) stories of love in all its forms and alterations. One of the great feel-good films and set during the holidays (should you need an excuse for romance). Nighy plays rock and roll legend Billy Mack and though just one of many grand turns, his is an exceptional hoot. Also with, in part, Kiera Knightley, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Martin Freeman… Have a good time! Rent on Amazon Prime.
Their Finest 2016 dramady based on the novel Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans. A British Ministry of Information team making a morale-boosting film about the Dunkirk evacuation during the Battle of Britain and the London Blitz. 1940. Catrin Cole (Gemma Arteton), desperate to earn money so her live-in boyfriend Ellis (Jack Huston) can paint, accepts a job at the ministry thinking it’s secretarial and finds herself writing films. Screenwriters Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) and Raymond Parfitt (Paul Ritter) at first make office life tough for Catrin, but her ideas are good and she becomes an us-against-them (idiots who run the place) team member.
Truth is manipulated for expediency and theatrical drama, budgetary considerations call for ingenuity, a motley crew is assembled by the sea. Nighy plays a well known actor on the downslope appearing in and making a fuss about the piece. One reviewer called the role that of “a colossally proportioned scene-stealer,” something the actor inhabits with gusto. Catrin grows to love her work and gradually, in the face of Ellis’ selfishness, to respond to Tom. Humor is wry, characters well written, the cast excellent, the tale credible – and not pat. Also with Helen McRory, Helen Marsan, Richard E. Grant, and Jeremy Irons. Rent on Amazon Prime.
The Bookshop 2018 Based on the novel by Penelope Fitzgerald. Directed by Isabel Coixet. Young widow, Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), takes her small inheritance and fulfills a lifelong dream to open a bookshop. She finds an abandoned house in the countryside of Hardborough, Suffolk and creates a charming establishment. Unfortunately for her, town diva, Violet Gamart (Patricia Clarkson), had plans for the structure she has no intention of giving up. Underhanded machination even includes involving a nephew who’s a member of Parliament.
Serendipitously, Florence finds a staunch supporter in recluse and best customer Edmund Brundish (Bill Nighy). Still, Violet is powerful and this is decidedly not a rose-colored-glasses Hollywood film. Quietly charming and adult. Free with Amazon Prime.
The Kindness of Strangers 2019 Written and Directed by Lone Scherfig. Stories of struggling people who eventually find (and help) one another. A wonderful film. Well acted, deftly written, tender, sometimes very painful. Clara (Zoe Kazan) and her two young sons sneak out of the house where her cop husband abuses them. They drive to New York from Buffalo ostensibly on vacation. She’s taken nothing. He has her credit card. She crashes a party at a Russian Restaurant and steals food. They sleep in the car.
Alice (Andrea Riseborough) is a nurse who feels too much empathy. She channels it into running a church sponsored therapy group based on forgiveness. The Russian restaurant is a refuge. She’s friends with Tim (Bill Nighy) who inherited it from his father, but hasn’t a clue how to run the place. Having dined there with his lawyer friend John (Jay Baruchel), Mark (Tahir Rahim) wanders into the back room finding Tim with his partners. He’s just been released from prison having served four years for his addict brother. Mark knows how to run a restaurant and is hired.
John begins to take Mark to Alice’s therapy group, but neither talks. Clara steals clothes and food. The car gets towed. When Clara’s husband turns up at a Chinese restaurant, each child makes an excuse and the three of them run out a back door. Alice finds them shuddering in the church and loans them her office with a fold-out bed. The youngest boy lands up in a hospital. Clara and her older son sleep under the piano in the restaurant. Eventually everything straightens with realism and heart. Not Hallmark. Rent (do) on Amazon Prime.
Hope Gap 2020 Written and Directed by William Nicholson, adapted from his play The Retreat from Moscow. A powerful relationship/family drama centering on Edward’s (Bill Nighy) finally leaving a suffocating 29 year marriage to dour Grace (Annette Bening) which seems based on habit and inertia. Shocked, Grace falls apart. Adult son Jamie (Josh O’Connor) attributes guilt. This gentlest of men has, however, found someone to love. Dark and severe with splendid acting. Rent on Amazon Prime.
Sometimes, Always, Never 2020 Directed by Carl Hunter. An odd indie about estrangement, reconciliation, and scrabble. Three generations of men in Alan’s family: the widowed patriarch, Bill Nighy, his son Peter (Sam Riley) and his son, Jack (Louis Healy) are addicted to gaming-in particular, Scrabble at which they excel.Missing is Alan’s second son, Michael, who walked out of the house provoked by a Scrabble disagreement and kept going never to be seen again.
Peter (and Michael) were raised cheaply and without warmth by their emotionally distant dad, so when Alan suggests a day trip, Peter’s intrigued. In fact, his father has tricked him into staying overnight in a small town in order to identify a body that might be Michael. (The corpse is a stranger.) As usual, they don’t talk at all. Back home, Alan shows up at his son’s house and stays, commandeering Jack’s computer and teaching him a little something about life on the side. Alan is embroiled in a series of Scrabble games with a player he’s sure is Michael. Here and there the film employs animation. Good acting. Small story. Odd. Free with Amazon Prime.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 2012 and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel can be found in Stream Selected films of Dame Judi Dench
Terrific, sophisticated thriller series, The Worricker Trilogy, can be rented on Amazon Prime.
Top photo: Bigstock
