Room at the Top

Pros: Outstanding performance by Simone Signoret; complex characters; excellent human melodrama; strong social theme
Cons: Not especially lovely to look at, with its gritty style of cinematography

This being the first day of July, 2005, and July being the month of patriotic celebration in America, I thought I'd channel my rather sparse patriotic impulses into a film project for the month: a one-man invasion of Great Britain. My ancestor, Michael, ...

Pros: script, casting, direction, story, cinematography
Cons: none worth mentioning

Room at the Top was part of the 'kitchen sink' dramatic genre of British films, featuring angry young working-class men trying to find their way. Look Back in Anger (1958) began the movement, which continued with Saturday Night and...

Pros: Poignant, hard-edged British melodrama with a lot to say 43 years after its filming
Cons: None

Lawrence Harvey and Simone Signoret are the star-crossed lovers in this poignant, barbed portrayal of life in class-conscious England, circa 1959. Harvey plays an ambitious municipal worker hellbent on advancing in the world, all the while looking for a...