Doubt

John Patrick Shanley's serious adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play is a complex meditation on Catholic guilt that veers between being tense and compelling in certain scenes to po-faced and obvious in others. Set in a Catholic school in 1964, Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) suspects the friendly Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) of sexually abusing Donald, a black altar boy. Acting on the shyly-voiced suspicions of the idealistic Sister James (Amy Adams), Aloysius attempts to hound Flynn out of the parish, insisting that she doesn't need proof, all she needs is her "certainty".

There's plenty to admire here but not an awful lot to love. What Doubt excels at is character motivation. We're not sure on why Aloysius pursues Flynn with such vigour or whether Flynn is guilty of what she accuses him of. There's one particularly memorable scene with Viola Davis as Donald's mother. To say any more would rob the scene of its dramatic impact but suffice to say that it's uncomfortable and provocative in the way that good cinema should be. Shanley's direction is unfussy but he's unable to overcome the stagey-ness of his central conceit, and is too reliant on metaphor to get his point across (the storm constantly raging outside, a lamb placed in a Nativity scene with an air of significance). He is, however, ably served by four actors all on the top of their game. Davis and Streep are especially electric, whilst Hoffman and Adams provide nuanced, intelligent riffs on similar roles in their back catelogue. It's a clever film but it's also one that is, for the most part, distant and emotionally uninvolving.

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

Delightful screwball comedy based on Winifred Watson's 1938 novel. Set right before the onset of World War II, Frances McDormand plays Miss Pettigrew, a governess who's constantly being fired on account of her prim, judgemental behavious towards her employers. In order to keep off the streets, Miss P. masquerades as a social secretary to a young American actress, Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams). Delysia, a flighty thing, has three men on the go at once: Nick, an arrogant nightclub owner, Phil, who she's hoping will cast her as the lead in his new play, and Michael, who loves Delysia for who she is not who she pretends to be.

During the course of a day, Miss Pettigrew helps Delysia understand the important of true love, meanwhile beginning her own tentative romance with lingerie designer Joe Blomfeld (Ciaran Hinds). Plenty of silly, fluffy mishaps, break-ups and make-ups follow. It's silly and slight, but anchored by the performances of its leading actresses. Adams is typically enchanting, whilst Frances McDormand's quiet, sad reflections on the last war add a more serious counterpoint to all the frippery. No classic perhaps, but good frilly fun all the same.