If you had been the Monarch for 44 years: how would you like it if your newly elected Prime Minister (the 10th during your reign) told you how to conduct yourself after the death of your divorced former daughter-in-law? This well crafted and underplayed screenplay plots the tides and undercurrents of public opinion and their effects on the British monarchy after the car accident which killed the Princess of Wales. Dianas death in 1997 provoked such international mourning that the newly elected British Prime Minister Tony Blair (Sheen) was forced to plead with his Monarch (Mirren) to relax protocol. The Queen believed that as Diana was no longer "HRH" the funeral was a private matter for the Spencers. Prince Charles and Blair instinctively felt that the "People's Princess" must have a State funeral and they worked collaboratively towards this outcome. Media footage from the week Diana lay in state is used to good effect to explore the strong public sentiment that had the potential to bring down the House of Windsor and cripple the first British Labour government in 17 years. Helen Mirren relishes the role of HM the Queen (introduced to Blair as Ma'am, as in ham; not Marm, as in farm), Michael Sheen as Tony Blair plays a convincing PM and the supporting elements include the craggy Scottish Highlands and a magnificent stag. Whether you are a monarchist or a republican this is a likely multi-award winner and well worthy of your patronage. '

Directors, writers, actors, etc. are frequently criticised for forgetting that whats important in a film is the story. This short film was made when this cliche was a new idea - it's one of the earliest motion pictures that can be said to have a narrative, and even introduced cross-cutting (where we follow two things happening simultaneously by switching between them). Four bandits rob a train, shoot a passenger, and are hunted down.'

A leftover bomb from WWII explodes in Pimlico, London and reveals two things: a fortune in mediaeval gold coins, and documents revealing that this tiny borough of central London is really under the authority of the Duke of Burgundy, France. The locals declare independence from an unpopular national government (and, coincidentally, get to keep the treasure). Soon theres a new government, customs officials at the border - and a siege, with English forces cutting off electricity and food supply - which, curiously enough, the people of Pimlico, with a staunch national identity about 24 hours old, actually rather like. They already harbour a secret nostalgia for the days of the Blitz.Or if they didn't, at least the British audiences of the day did. Like other Ealing Studios comedies, this assembles a crack cast of actors with impeccable timing and looniness, but won't entirely play things for laughs; perhaps the film works so well as escapism because the sense of communal solidarity it can't quite bring itself to ridicule is something we're all secretly nostalgic for. (Whether we've ever actually experienced it before is, of course, beside the point.)'