David R. Walker

Posts Tagged ‘Jessie Buckley’

98th Academy Awards took place on Sunday 15th March 2026 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles.

Oscar winners 2026: Full List of Winners

Best Picture: One Battle After Another

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another

Best Actor: Michael B. Jordan – Sinners

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley – Hamnet

Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn – One Battle After Another

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan – Weapons

Best Original Screenplay: Ryan Coogler – Sinners

Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another adapted from the novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon.

Best Cinematography: Autumn Durald Arkapaw – Sinners

Best Costume Design: Kate Hawley – Frankenstein

Best Make up & Hairstyling: Frankenstein

Best Visual Effects: Avatar: Fire and Ash

Best Film Editing: Andy Jurgensen – One Battle After Another

Best Sound: F1

Best Production Design: Frankenstein

Best Documentary Feature:  Mr Nobody Against Putin

Best Documentary Short Subject: All the Empty Rooms

Best Original Score: Ludwig Goransson – Sinners

Best Original Song: K-Pop Demon Hunters

Best Animated Feature Film: K-Pop Demon Hunters

Best Animated Short: The Girl Who Cried Pearls.

Best Live Action Short Film: The Singers & People Exchanging Saliva -Tied Winner

Best International Feature Film:  Sentimental Value directed by Joachim Trier (Norway)

The Bride!

Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Peter Sarsgaard, Penelope Cruz, Jake Gyllenhaal, John Maguro, Jeannie Berlin

Running Time: 2 hours and 6 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

After the success of The Lost Daughter, actor turned director Maggie Gyllenhaal presents her new audacious and avant-garde film The Bride! starring an amazing cast including Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Penelope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard and her own brother Jake Gyllenhaal.

Writing and directing The Bride! for Maggie Gyllenhaal was a huge risk as she attempts to recreate a famous Gothic Horror novel and set it in Prohibition era Chicago in 1926, exactly 100 years ago.

Unfortunately the risk does not always pay off. Despite some unnecessary directorial embellishments, Gyllenhaal is strong on style and aesthetics but her narrative is weak and structurally confusing, much like the composition of Frankenstein himself.

This is a strange pastiche of gothic mixed with gangster as Oscar winner Christian Bale (The Fighter) expertly plays the lonely Frankenstein as he approaches Dr Euphronious played by five time Oscar nominee Annette Bening (The Grifters, American Beauty, Being Julia, Nyad, The Kids are Alright) to find him a companion, a physical relief from his lonely movie watching of the dancing film star Ronnie Reed played by Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain).

Enter The Bride, fantastically played with a manic relish and craziness by Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter, Hamnet) who is excellent as the mad Ida, a prostitute who is trying to trap a vicious mob boss. Buckley also plays a cynical version of Mary Shelley the author of Frankenstein in a series of weird flashback scenes which were totally unnecessary and detracted from the narrative.

As in the opening line of the film, Mary Shelley says “Darling, something has cracked” as she reimagines a companion for the monster Frankenstein.

It is refreshing to see Christian Bale back on the big screen in a solid performance as the socially awkward but aggressive Frankenstein, a complete antithesis to Jacob Elordi’s performance in Guillermo del Toro’s excellent Frankenstein.

Oscar winner Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) is superb as the feminist detective Myrna Malloy who outwits her male counterpart, Jakes Wiles played without effort by the director’s husband Peter Sarsgaard. Myrna and Jake are chasing after Frankenstein and his Bride, Ida or Penelope as they embark on a vicious killing spree from Chicago to New York.

The Bride! is very arthouse and strange. There are some quirky moments followed by some extremely violent scenes which detract from Gyllenhaal’s clear thematic homage to the cinema going experience. The narrative of this film is disorientating much like the doomed duo who are trying to outwit the police.

Thankfully three time Oscar winning costume designer Sandy Powell (The Aviator, The Young Victoria, Shakespeare in Love) does a fabulous job with the 1920’s costumes and the production design by Karen Murphy is perfect, linking the Gothic horror style with the shadowy world of gangsters.

The Bride! will find an audience but it is not a commercial film, but at least director Maggie Gyllenhaal delivered a film which was inventive, feminist and ferocious. Her cinema aesthetic is distinctive and bold.

The Bride! gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and is worth seeing if you enjoy bizarre films like Siesta, Orlando and Stoker. Unfortunately having a great cast does not always guarantee an excellent film.

The 32nd Actor Awards (Screen Actors Guild Awards), honouring the best achievements in film and television performances for the year 2025, were presented on Sunday March 1^st 2026, at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall in Los Angeles, California.

Actors Awards in the Film Category:

Best Cast: Sinners – Michael B. Jordan, Jack O’Connell, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Delroy Lindo, Wunmi Mosaku, Lola Kirke, Saul Williams  

Best Actor: Michael B. Jordan – Sinners

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley – Hamnet

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan – Weapons

Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn – One Battle After Another

The British Academy Film Awards –

The 78th British Academy Film Awards, also known as the BAFTAs, were held on 22nd February 2026 at the Royal Festival Hall in London, honouring the best national and foreign films of 2025.

Best Film: One Battle After Another          

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another

Best Actor: Robert Aramayo – I Swear

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley – Hamnet

Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn – One Battle After Another

Best Supporting Actress: Wunmi Mosaku – Sinners

Best British Film: Hamnet

Best Original Screenplay: Ryan Coogler – Sinners

Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another

Best Costume Design: Frankenstein

Best Foreign Language Film: Sentimental Value directed by Joachim Trier

Rising Star Award: Robert Aramayo

Hamnet

Director: Chloe Zhao

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson, David Wilmot, Jacobi Jupe, Noah Jupe, Olivia Lynes, Bodhi Rae Breathnach

Running Time: 2 hours and 5 minutes

Film Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Oscar winning director Chloe Zhao weaves her cinematic magic in a beautiful yet gut wrenching masterpiece of a film, Hamnet based upon the acclaimed novel by Maggie O’Farrell and produced by Steven Spielberg, Pippa Harris and Sam Mendes amongst others.

Set in Stratford upon Avon and London, Hamnet traces the early life of William Shakespeare, his courting of the headstrong and pastoral Agnes through their wedding and subsequent birth of their three children. While Will is away in London quietly becoming one of England’s greatest playwrights that ever lived, Agnes is dealing with her three children – Susanna played by Bodhi Rae Breathnach and twins Hamnet, the only boy played by Jacobi Jupe and his sister Judith played by Olivia Lynes.

With an absent father, Agnes in a breath taking performance by Jessie Buckley who deserves every acting accolade under the sun, discovers that Judith the weaker of the twins contracts the pestilence brought to England from Europe in 1596. Her twin brother Hamnet is distraught that his sister is sick but also that his mysteriously brooding and famous father is continually absent. But Shakespeare told Hamnet to be brave.

In an effort to cure his sister of her devastating illness, Hamnet shares a bed with his sick sister.  

There is no greater strain on a marriage than the loss of a child and director Chloe Zhao paints a beautiful portrait of a young couple trying to survive a terrible tragedy. When Agnes is paralyzed by grief, her brother Bartholomew played by Joe Alwyn (The Brutalist) urges his sister to go to London to see what accomplishments young Shakespeare has created. Agnes’s stepmother tells her that Shakespeare has written a new play and it’s not a comedy but a tragedy, a monumental meditation on mortality, betrayal and grief. Hamlet, one of the greatest and most complex plays ever written.

Oscar nominee Paul Mescal (Aftersun) is brilliant as the ambitious and frustrated playwright William Shakespeare who has to sacrifice being with his family in order to achieve literary fame. At the emotional centre of Hamnet is Agnes, a heart wrenching performance by Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter) who is so angry at what the fates have given her, even though her destiny of only having two surviving children is chillingly fulfilled.

On every level Hamnet is a masterpiece from superb performances by the two main leads, to the remarkable young actors including brothers Jacobi Jupe playing young Hamnet and Noah Jupe playing the fictional character of Hamlet to the recreation of the Globe Theatre.

A masterful adaptation of a beautiful novel, Hamnet is an authentic and classic film portraying how grief can tear families apart but how literary success and fame can serve as a method of dealing with such untimely tragedy.

The last half of Hamnet is captivating, from its production design by Fiona Crombie who also did The Favourite to the musical score by Max Richter to the excellent Elizabethan costumes by Malgosia Turzanska.

Hamnet will appeal to lovers of Shakespeare and literary films which are skilfully told. In this case it is the sacrifice of a child that is the origin of a famous tragedy. Hamnet is immersive viewing, extremely sad but absolutely brilliant. Director Chloe Zhao is a master of her craft.

Hamnet gets a film rating of 9.5 out of 10 and is highly recommended for anyone that loves film and theatre. A masterpiece that Shakespeare would be proud of.

The 83rd Golden Globe Awards took place on Sunday 11th January 2026 in Los Angeles and hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association at the Beverly Hilton Hotel – Here are the 2026 Golden Globe Winners in the Film Categories:

Best motion picture – Drama:

Hamnet

Best motion picture – Musical or Comedy:

One Battle After Another

Best actress in a motion picture – Drama:

Jessie Buckley – Hamnet

Best actor in a motion picture – Drama:

Wagner Moura – The Secret Agent

Best actress in a motion picture – Musical or Comedy:

Rose Byrne – If I had legs I would kick you

Best actor in a motion picture – Musical or Comedy:

Timothee Chalamet – Marty Supreme

Best supporting actress in any motion picture:

Teyana Taylor – One Battle After Another

Best supporting actor in any motion picture:

Stellan Skarsgard – Sentimental Value

Best Director – motion picture:

Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another

Best Original Screenplay – Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another

Best motion picture – non-English language: The Secret Agent directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho

The 31st Critics’ Choice Awards were presented on Sunday January 4, 2026, at the Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport in Santa Monica, California, honouring the finest achievements of filmmaking and television programming in 2025.

These are the winners in the film category:

Best Picture: One Battle After Another

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another

Best Actor: Timothee Chalamet – Marty Supreme

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley – Hamnet

Best Supporting Actor: Jacob Elordi – Frankenstein

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan – Weapons

Best Original Screenplay: Ryan Coogler – Sinners

Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another

Best Cinematography: Alphonso Veloso – Train Dreams

Best Production Design: Tamara Deverell, Shane Vieau – Frankenstein

Best Costume Design: Kate Hawley – Frankenstein

Best Visual Effects: Avatar: Fire and Ash

Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story

Director: Sinead O’Shea

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Gabriel Byrne

Running Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Please note this film is a documentary.

Oscar nominated Irish actress Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter) serves as the competent narrator with her clear and quirky commentary on life of Irish novelist Edna O’Brien in Sinead O’Shea’s riveting documentary Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story which is a must see film.

Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story tells the scandalous story of writer Edna O’Brien who was a gifted novelist but got married very young to a much older Irish writer Ernest Gebler and had two small children in 1954. At a time of non-existent women writers that were telling tales of the sexual frankness and desires of young Irish women, Edna O’Brien’s early novels The Country Girls, Girls in their Married Bliss and August is a Wicked Month caused a major stir and were immediately banned in the conservative Ireland of the early 1960’s.

What made her initial fame even more precarious was that her husband took all her royalty checks from the publication of her first couple of novels and kept them himself. He gave Edna an allowance for groceries.

Then Edna O’Brien as a novelist who by 1964 was earning enough money from her writing to become independent made the bold decision to leave her husband and move into a house in the fashionable Carlyle Square in SW1 in London. Edna and her dreadful husband were divorced in 1968 after a four year separation.

Edna O’Brien as a controversial novelist who challenged the patriarchy in Anglo-Irish society and also expertly exposed the sexual desires of young women in her ground breaking novels became a cause celeb and was the centre of a bohemian social whirl in the 1960’s that included film stars and celebrities like Robert Mitchum, Sean Connery, Joan Plowright and even Jackie Onassis.

O’Brien’s popularity as a novelist was cemented in America after the endorsement by prestigious writers like Philip Roth, John Updike and J. D. Salinger in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Heavily influenced by Irish modernist writer James Joyce, Edna O’Brien’s fame as a novelist was firmly established.

Irish documentary film maker Sinead O’Shea creates an impressive and elegant story of the life of Edna O’Brien in her brilliant documentary Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story which had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Unfortunately Edna O’Brien passed away in July 2024 just three months before the release of this fascinating story of her provocative life.

Featuring interviews with famous Irish actor Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects, Vanity Fair, Siesta) Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story is an interesting documentary on a female writer whose sexual frankness initially shocked conservative Anglo-Irish society and left a literary legacy which any avid reader should explore more thoroughly.

Documentaries on the lives of writers can be difficult to make but ably assisted with the tantalizing commentary provided by Jessie Buckley, director Sinead O’Shea brings to the cinema the life of a bold independent woman of letters whose novels scandalized the English speaking world and earned Edna O’Brien the moniker Playgirl of the Western World.

If audiences love literary documentaries then Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien story is highly recommended viewing and gets a film rating of 8 out of 10. An insightful film both politically and socially.

The Lost Daughter

Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal

Cast: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Ed Harris, Peter Sarsgaard, Jack Farthing, Dagmara Dominiczyk, Paul Mescal

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Running time: 2 hours and 1 minute

Taking its inspiration right out of the equally sinister 1990 film The Comfort of Strangers, directed by Paul Schrader, actress turned director Maggie Gyllenhaal directs an entirely unsettling film The Lost Daughter all set on a remote island in Greece, populated by some fascinating characters including some menacing beach goers.

Directors seldom make purely psychological thrillers nowadays which were extremely fashionable in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It is with a stroke of luck that Maggie Gyllenhaal managed to cast the granddaughter of Tippi Hendren, the star of such classic Alfred Hitchcock films such as The Birds and Marnie, Dakota Johnson (The Social Network, Bad Times at the El Royale) alongside Oscar winner Olivia Colman (The Favourite) in The Lost Daughter.

This film is mostly shot in extreme close up, which gives audiences an unsettling intimacy with the characters involved all of whom are slightly off kilter particularly Leda, another stunning performance by Olivia Colman, who plays a lonesome middle age comparative literature professor who travels to Greece to take a break from her daughters back home.

On the exotic and hot Greek island, she has a sinister encounter with the highly strung Nina, a devilishly beautiful performance by Dakota Johnson and Nina’s extended family which are vaguely hinted to be part of some nefarious crime organization.

Leda is an emotionally damaged woman contemplating her own role as a mother, as she often reflects back to her younger self, which are featured in a series of raunchy flashbacks featuring an absolutely superb Jessie Buckley (Doolittle, Misbehaviour) who deserves an Oscar nomination for her role as the younger Leda as she is navigating motherhood and her fractious relationship with her average male partner Joe, played by Jack Farthing. For the younger Leda desires more and yearns for another existence than just being a mother to two very demanding young daughters.

The younger Leda embarks on a passionate affair with a fellow professor, a wonderfully erudite Professor Hardy played by Peter Sarsgaard (An Education, Jackie, Black Mass, Kinsey).

As The Lost Daughter weaves it’s complex narrative between the past and the present, the older Leda must confront her weird emotional impulses and her strange flirtations with the men on the island, particularly Lyle played by Oscar nominee Ed Harris (The Hours, Pollack, The Truman Show, Apollo 13) and the younger beach boy Toni played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen.

Based on the novel by the bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante, The Lost Daughter is a brooding mix of menace and desire, a psychologically twisted tale of crushing responsibilities, abandonment and reconnection, held together by two exceptionally good performances by Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley.

Psychological thrillers generally do not have mass appeal, but director Maggie Gyllenhaal does a skilful job of dissecting a complicated issue around maternity and natural responsibility while casually mixes it up with forbidden sexual desire and pervasive fear.

The Lost Daughter gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is remarkable for its haunting unique quality as a cinematic gem.

Judy

Director: Rupert Goold

Cast: Renee Zellweger, Jessie Buckley, Finn Wittrock, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Richard Cordery, Royce Pierreson, Gemma-Leah Devereux, Darci Shaw, Gus Barry

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Based on the Stage play by Peter Quilter, End of the Rainbow, director Rupert Goold’s poignant musical drama Judy features a mesmerising performance by Oscar winner Renee Zellweger (Cold Mountain) as Judy Garland in the autumn of her career.

Zellweger transforms herself into Judy Garland as she becomes the film Judy with herself in virtually every scene as she battles with drug addiction and alcoholism in a desperate attempt to revive her flagging musical career in a series of shows in London in the winter of 1968 at a cabaret club in the West End, called The Talk of the Town.

With insightful flashbacks of herself as a young Judy Garland when she became the breakout child star of the 1939 hit Musical The Wizard of Oz for MGM. During this time, the young Judy played by Darci Shaw is under a strict contract by the formidable head of the studio Louis B. Mayer played by Richard Cordery. As a young star she forms an attraction to another young child star Mickey Rooney played Gus Barry. Yet the studio had the young Judy Garland on a stringent diet of appetite suppressants, uppers and downers as she always had to watch her figure, becoming a slave to the merciless studio system which exploited young actors and actresses who were under severe contractual obligations.

Fast forward to 1968, Judy Garland meets the dashing Mickey Deans wonderfully played by Finn Wittrock (Unbroken, The Big Short) at her elder and more famous daughter Liza Minelli’s house party in the Hollywood Hills. Liza is played by Gemma-Leah Devereux.

Judy is having a custody battle over her two younger children with her fourth ex-husband Sid Luft played by Rufus Sewell (Carrington, Gods of Egypt, Hercules). Her financial difficulties force her to take up a Gig in London performing at the glamorous Talk of the Town cabaret venue where she forms a veritable bond with her personal assistant Rosalyn Wilder played by Irish actress Jessie Buckley as Judy belts at some fabulous numbers on a glittering stage.

Psychologically, Judy Garland is dealing with some traumatic emotional issues while always pretending to be a consummate performer. Zellweger expertly gives a nuanced heart-wrenching performance as Judy Garland, a legendary Hollywood star in the autumn of her career who also become a champion for London’s gay community in the 1960’s.

At the centre of Rupert Goold’s film Judy is a staggeringly brilliant performance by Renee Zellweger who definitely deserves another Oscar for her excellent portrayal of a Hollywood icon. In a particularly hilarious scene with a doctor, who asks her what do you take for depression?

Judy candidly replies four ex-husbands!

Judy gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 is highly recommended viewing for those that enjoy films about Hollywood Divas. For those that enjoyed My Week with Marilyn, they will love Judy, a gem of a British film featuring a staggering performance by Renee Zellweger.