Gosford Park review

 Number 992 on the top 1000 films of all time is Robert Altman's 2001 period drama/murder mystery Gosford Park.

Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) is a wealthy industrialist, married to Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas) who invites a group of equally wealthy Britons and one American to dine in his country estate. Some of these guests include Sylvia's aunt Constance, Dowager Countess of Trentham) (Maggie Smith,) William's brother-in-law Raymond, Lord Stockbridge (Charles Dance,) film star and William's cousin Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam) and American film producer Morriss Weissman (Bob Balaban.) However, when one of the party is discovered dead, everybody becomes a suspect. This includes all of the downstairs staff. Richard E. Grant, Kelly Macdonald, Emily Watson, Eileen Atkins and Helen Mirren star as some of the butlers, valets, cooks and housekeepers.

I can totally understand why this film is so low down on this list. It was so boring. When things actually got going, it did start to pick up, but it takes over an hour for things to get going. Prior to anybody being murdered, it was an endless onslaught of rich, pretentious people talking about rich and pretentious things. All of the characters very much blurred into one and it was difficult to distinguish between them all. The cast was far bigger than it had any right to be.

This is a period drama and I bloody hate period dramas, so, no doubt, I do have some bias toward this film. Period dramas have never been something that's interested me. They're full of unrelatable characters with unrelatable problems. And I don't know why they're called dramas. There's nothing dramatic or remotely interesting about them. That criticism very much applies to Gosford Park too.

 Julian Fellowes wrote Gosford Park, so it's no surprise that the film turned out the way it did. He's part of the House of Lords and a member of the British landed gentry. Originally, Downton Abbey, which Julian Fellowes also wrote, was supposed to be a spin-off of Gosford Park, before it became its own show. I haven't watched Downton Abbey and I have no bloody intention to now.

As I said, once somebody actually dies, things become interesting, because we have a mystery to solve. We're treated to Stephen Fry playing the incompetent Inspector Thompson. He really helped to liven up the stuffy atmosphere. But why do we have to wait over an hour to get to this point? By this point, I had almost lost interest in the film. It was all so pretentious.

I really did not care for Gosford Park at all. It was overly-long, boring, pretentious and a sheer waste of the acting talent involved. But I am biased toward period dramas, so maybe that's just me.