Is This The Summer Of The Great British Blockbuster?
By
5 days ago
Three new British films are top of our agenda this summer
Are we back in a golden era of British film? With the likes of Saltburn (2023), Rye Lane (2023) and Aftersun (2022) all released in recent years, it certainly seems like it. Here are the top three on our watch list this summer.
3 New British Films To Watch This Summer
Hot Milk (Mubi)
Hot Milk (4 July, Mubi)
Hot Milk’s cinematic release is a long time coming – almost a decade if we begin with the publication of Deborah Levy’s mesmerising Booker-shortlisted novel, on which Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s film is based. From an all-female team behind the scenes, Hot Milk centres on Sofia (Emma Mackey), a young anthropologist who sacrifices her PhD to care for her co-dependent mother, Rose (Fiona Shaw), who is confined to a wheelchair by a mysterious illness. ‘Rose is fundamentally sapping the energy from her daughter who wants to be free to go into the world,’ says Shaw, and she finds the opportunity when the mother-daughter duo travels to sizzling Almería to seek a cure for Rose’s ailments from an eccentric, enigmatic healer. Spain is in the throes of political and economic turmoil, and Sofia finds that freedom in the jellyfish-riddled sea, a hire car she isn’t licensed to drive, and a magnetic young woman called Ingrid (Vicky Krieps) promising passion and liberation.
Celia Imrie, Sir Ben Kingsley, Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan in The Thursday Murder Club. (Giles Keyte/Netflix)
The Thursday Murder Club (28 August, Netflix)
Richard Osman took the world by storm (and by surprise) when his debut crime caper hit our bookshelves in 2020. There’s no denying the ubiquity of Osman since, from his podcast The Rest Is Entertainment to his five subsequent novels. The seed for The Thursday Murder Club came from his mother’s retirement home. ‘You sit and chat with people who brim with amazing stories and gossip and wisdom,’ Osman says. ‘And you think, “These people are so overlooked”.’ Overlooked, underestimated, but sharp as a whistle: the novel – which centres on four amateur sleuths solving the murder of a property developer nearby – is brought to the screen by US director Chris Columbus, working with the ‘best cast since Potter’. Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie make up the leading quartet, joined by a supporting cast of David Tennant, Naomi Ackie, Richard E. Grant and Daniel Mays. ‘Helen Mirren set the tone,’ Columbus says. ‘Unburdened by tension or anxiety, the actors had the opportunity to perform with total freedom.’
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. (© Rory Mulvey/2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC)
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (12 September, Universal)
This closes the book on Julian Fellowes’ very British story. After six television series and two films, Downton Abbey will conclude with a third film dedicated to the late great Dame Maggie Smith. Since series one, we’ve journeyed from 1912 to the cusp of the 1930s as the aristocratic Crawley family – headed by the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) – navigate a changing social landscape. Actors young and old cut their teeth on this fictional Yorkshire estate, from Rose Leslie and Lily James to Matthew Goode and Charlie Cox. Simon Russell Beale, Paul Giamatti, Joely Richardson and Alessandro Nivola join this last hurrah, as we say farewell to characters who have kept us company in this cosy costume drama for a decade and a half.
