Movie Review: Belle (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Belle is a film that holds as many surprises as its lead character, played by the electrifying Gugu Mbatha-Raw. On the surface it's a costume drama about the young, mixed-race Dido Elizabeth Belle, brought up in an upper class British household led by her grandfather, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson), England's Chief Justice (second in power only to the king, as one man puts it). In private, Dido is treated as separate but equal to her cousin Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon). In public, though, she is forced to play the deferential role blacks were expected to, walking a few steps behind the rest of her family, waiting in the drawing room while they finish their meals in the dining room with any invited guests. A curious turn of events makes Dido an heiress to her father's great fortune while leaving Elizabeth penniless, giving Dido the surprising upper hand in finding a suitable marriage partner.

Movie Review: The Railway Man (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Based on Eric Lomax's autobiography of the same name, The Railway Man is a contemplative film about the damage Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome inflicted on him for decades after his torture at the hands of the Japanese at a prisoner-of-war camp. The title refers not only to the love Lomax held for anything related to railways but also to his coincidental imprisonment in a POW camp where the prisoners were responsible for building the Burma Railway, a job so difficult that, as Lomax puts it, only punishing slave labor could accomplish.