Comedies, costume dramas, historical romance and much more are available to stream now. Best of all, Vodafone UK Pay Monthly mobile customers can enjoy it all for a low monthly fee.
As the nights become longer and colder, many of us will be spending even more time indoors. That needn’t be a recipe for boredom though, as a wealth of streaming riches are available on Amazon Prime Video.
The streaming video service, one of the entertainment options available to Vodafone UK Pay Monthly mobile customers, is best known for its TV boxsets. But it’s also home to some big-name and under-appreciated cinematic gems.
Here are our picks for the month ahead.
The Personal History of David Copperfield
This adaptation of the classic Dickens novel was written and directed by Armando Iannucci, best known for his biting political satires from The Thick Of It to The Death of Stalin.
Iannucci’s take on this coming-of-age story is fresh and effortlessly funny, with the charming cast – including Dev Patel, Peter Capaldi and Hugh Laurie – showing immense chemistry together as they romp through this timeless tale of personal growth and maturity.
Gladiator
The film that ushered Russell Crowe to stardom and popular culture immortality needs no introduction. The legacy of this bloodstained saga of Roman vengeance is hard to overstate. It brought the sword-and-sandals historical epic back into fashion, spawning many imitators but few equals.
Although classicists will be annoyed by the historical inaccuracies and anachronisms, the rest of us will be entranced by Ridley Scott’s sharp direction and Crowe’s mesmerising screen presence.
Eddie The Eagle
Brits of a certain age will fondly remember Eddie The Eagle, the plucky underdog ski-jumper who represented Great Britain at the 1988 Winter Olympics.
This light-hearted biopic, firmly in the cinematic tradition of Cool Runnings, is undoubtedly sentimental and leans on one too many inspirational sports movie clichés. But it’s all the more charming for it, especially with cinematic heavyweights Hugh Jackman and Christopher Walken gamely rounding out the supporting cast.
‘71
For something completely different, try this grey and steely tale of survival in strife-torn Belfast at the height of The Troubles. An inexperienced and naïve British squaddie becomes separated from his fellow soldiers and soon discovers that the conflict is far more complicated than it seems. The social realist, documentary-style of cinematography and direction is as unsettling as it is expertly constructed.
Sarah Millican: Control Enthusiast
The bespectacled Sarah Millican may look like a meek suburban housewife, but that’s clearly not the case as soon as she opens her mouth. Millican’s style of observational stand-up comedy is not for the prudish or the easily embarrassed, as her incisive insights cut close to the bone – and other parts besides. Control Enthusiast is one of two feature-length recorded stadium tours available now on Amazon Prime Video, alongside Outsider Live.
Hunt For The Wilderpeople
A man and his nephew becoming the targets of a manhunt in the New Zealand wilderness isn’t, as you might expect, a harrowing tale of survival against the odds.
Hunt For The Wilderpeople is actually a quirkily imaginative and unexpectedly poignant comedy – unexpected, that is, if you’re unfamiliar with the work of director Taika Waititi. The idiosyncratically subversive humour found in his more well-known films such as Thor: Ragnarok and JoJo Rabbit is also on hilarious display here.
A United Kingdom
A dashing young prince meets the love of his life in a faraway land. Together, they overcome many trials and tribulations, get married and live happily ever after. It’s a familiar archetype for the ages, but this film is more than a fairy tale and tells the real-life story of Botswanan prince Seretse Khama who fell in love with British clerk Ruth Williams during a visit to London.
The film follows their romance and their struggle against both racism and the political intrigue of the post-war world. British thespians David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike ably and deftly bring the lovestruck couple to cinematic life.
Inglourious Basterds
Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France, a hardened company of Jewish-American soldiers slash their way through the jackbooted fascists – taking scalps as they do so. Or at least that’s the way Quentin Tarantino tells it in his own inimitable, genre-straddling fashion with this uproariously irreverent, foul-mouthed and blood-soaked tale.
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