Stephen Frears

News, Reviews & Features
  • Victoria And Abdul

    Movie Review | Becky Suter | 21st September 2017

    Shared universes are all the rage now. Marvel, DC, the Potterverse and now get this – there’s even a Royalverse, where Judi Dench is the same Queen Victoria in her new movie as she was in Mrs Brown. There’s even a Netflix spin-off series about her great-granddaughter. It’s crazy – where do they get these ideas? Regardless, in Victoria And Abdul, director Stephen Frears wants us to believe that a crotchety old queen, Empress of a country she never visited, is the most tolerant person in a time when society was decidedly un-woke. And it’s all because she wants some hot young D.

  • Tamara Drewe

    Movie Review | James | 13th September 2010

    A frequent idiom of broadsheet reviewers putting pen to paper on the subject of Tamara Drewe is to describe it as a more debauched variant of The Archers, something which is certainly true to an extent, tinged as proceedings are in the cosy trappings of Radio 4 teatime dramas. However, to do so risks dismissing this adaptation of Posy Simmonds' serial as yet another rustic folly laced with the standard Curtisian saccharine associated with most modern British comedy. Instead, director Stephen Frears has produced a film which not only contains the expected biting hyper-sexuality, but also a refreshing streak of bittersweet sincerity.