Goldcrest Films is a British film production company founded by Jake Eberts in January 1977. It enjoyed great success in the 1980s with films such as Local Hero (1983), The Killing Fields (1984) and Hope and Glory (1987) mostly produced by David Puttnam on modest budgets. The company also benefited from the new investment of Channel 4 in film production. The company won two Academy Awards for Best Picture, for Chariots of Fire in 1981 and Gandhi in 1982. After these initial successes the company backed more expensive productions with established Hollywood stars that often ran over schedule and budget culminating in Revolution, The Mission (1986) and Absolute Beginners that all turned out to be box office flops.
The film takes place in 1958, a time in which pop culture is transforming from 1950s jazz and early rock to a new generation on the verge of the 1960s. London is post-World War II, but pre-Beatles/Stones. The storyline incorporates elements of the 1958 Notting Hill race riots.
Miss Lucy Honeychurch is from an English village in Surrey and is on holiday in Italy with her much older cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett. Charlotte is conventionally English, with an extremely restrictive personality and tends to get her way by expressing her emotions to manipulate others. Lucy has been brought up in an upper-middle class but loving and easygoing household, and had fewer inhibitions, which creates a strong tension between herself and Charlotte. They are in contrast with the more free-thinking and free-spirited backdrop of Italy. At a small pensione Lucy meets such people as Reverend Beebe, the two Miss Alans, and the author Miss Eleanor Lavish, but most importantly, the nonconformist Mr. Emerson and his handsome, philosophical son, George, who becomes friends with Charlotte. These men, although also English, represent the forward-thinking ideals of the turn-of-the-century, seeking to leave behind the repression and caution that was the norm in Victorian times. At first, the Emersons seem strange and unfamiliar to Lucy and Charlotte. They seem sincere but unaware of finer upper class Victorian manners. Mr. Emerson offers to switch rooms with the women, who desire a room with a view. Charlotte is offended, believing him to be rude and tactless for what she perceives to be indebting them with his offer. As Lucy begins her journey to maturity, she finds herself drawn to George due to his mysterious thinking and readily expressed emotions.
Connie Wyatt is a restless 15-year-old who is anxious to explore the pleasures of her sexual awakening. Before she enters her sophomore year in high school, she spends the summer moping around her family farm house. She suffers from her mother's put-downs, while hearing nothing but praise for her older sister, June. Her father somehow manages to float around the family tensions. She also helps paint the cottage, just as her mother constantly demands her to.
In the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh during May 1973, the Cambodian national army is fighting a civil war with the Khmer Rouge, a result of the Vietnam War overspilling that country’s borders. Dith Pran, a Cambodian journalist and interpreter for The New York Times, awaits the arrival of reporter Sydney Schanberg at the city's airport but leaves suddenly. Schanberg takes a cab to his hotel where he meets up with Al Rockoff (John Malkovich). Pran meets Schanberg later and tells him that an incident has occurred in a town, Neak Leung; allegedly, an American B-52 has bombed the town.
The setting is a 1930s Eton-esque public school, where Guy Bennett (Rupert Everett) and Tommy Judd (Colin Firth) are friends because they are both outsiders in their own ways. Bennett is openly gay. Judd is a Marxist.
The Dresser opens with a performance of King Lear at a regional theatre in England during the last days of World War II. In the title role is an ageing, once-famous Shakespearean actor identified to us only as "Sir" (Albert Finney). He is of the old, bombastic school of British acting, full of grand gestures and fine oratory. As the curtain comes down on the last act, and as the actors line up for their curtain call, Sir lectures them on the mistakes they've made during the performance, showing us that he is the leader of this travelling band of actors bringing Shakespeare to the provinces during wartime.
James Penfield (Pryce) is an ambitious London-based BBC radio reporter, from humble origins but Oxford-educated. He is commissioned to write a book on the Suez Crisis and undertakes this commission, claiming not to be a socialist, at the same time as the 1982 Falklands War is starting to dominate the British media.
"Mac" MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) is a typical 1980s hot-shot executive working for Knox Oil and Gas in Houston, Texas. The eccentric chief of the company, Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster), chooses to send him (largely because his surname sounds Scottish) to Scotland to acquire the village of Ferness to make way for a refinery. Mac (who is actually of Hungarian extraction) is a little apprehensive about his assignment, complaining to a co-worker that he would much rather take care of business over the phone and via telex machines. Happer, an avid astronomy buff, tells Mac to watch the sky, especially around the constellation Virgo, and to notify him immediately if he sees anything unusual.
The screenplay of Gandhi is available as a published book. The film opens with a statement from the filmmakers explaining their approach to the problem of filming Gandhi's complex life story:
Pink, the protagonist, is a rock star, one of several reasons behind his apparent depressive and detached emotional state. He is first seen in an unkempt hotel room, motionless and expressionless, watching television. The opening music is the Vera Lynn recording of "The Little Boy that Santa Claus Forgot". It is revealed that Pink's father, a British soldier, was killed in action while defending the Anzio bridgehead during World War II, in Pink's infancy.
Alex Holbeck (Martin Sheen) is recruited as a CIA agent. He is sent to East Berlin on a mission to steal an Enigma code scrambler. This is part of an attempt to stop the Russian assassination of five Soviet dissidents which is planned for Christmas Day. What Alex doesn't know is that the CIA already has a code scrambler. By stealing the scrambler in Berlin, they are trying to convince the Russians that they don't have it.
In 1919, Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) enters the University of Cambridge, where he experiences anti-Semitism from the staff, but enjoys participating in the Gilbert and Sullivan club. He becomes the first person to ever complete the Trinity Great Court Run – running around the college courtyard in the time it takes for the clock to strike 12. Abrahams achieves an undefeated string of victories in various national running competitions. Although focused on his running, he falls in love with a leading Gilbert and Sullivan soprano, Sybil (Alice Krige).
In 1988, following a 400% increase in crime, the United States Government has evacuated Manhattan and turned the island into a giant maximum-security prison in which all inmates serve a life sentence. A 50-foot (15 m) containment wall surrounds the island and routes out of Manhattan have been dismantled or mined. Armed helicopters patrol the rivers and harbor.
Henry est un tueur à gages à la retraite. Recherché, il mène aujourd'hui une vie solitaire au bord d'un lac au Nord des États-Unis. Un jour, il recueille dans son chalet une jeune femme ayant subi un grave accident de motoneige. Il va ensuite découvrir qu'elle est elle aussi recherchée. Celui qui a jadis appris à tuer va devoir apprendre à protéger quelqu'un.