TOM STURRIDGE

JOURNEY'S END (2018)
Starring Sam Claflin, Asa Butterfield, Paul Bettany, Tom Sturridge, Toby Jones, Stephen Graham, Robert Glenister, Theo Barklem-Biggs, Miles Jupp and Oliver Dimsdale. Directed by Saul Dibb.

March, 1918. C-company arrives to take its turn in the front-line trenches in northern France led by the war-weary Captain Stanhope. A German offensive is imminent, and the officers and their cook distract themselves in their dugout with talk of food and their past lives. Stanhope, meanwhile, soaks his fear in whisky, unable to deal with his dread of the inevitable. A young new officer, Raleigh, has just arrived, fresh out of training and abuzz with the excitement of his first real posting - not least because he is to serve under Stanhope, his former school house monitor and the object of his sister’s affections. Each man is trapped, the days ticking by, the tension rising and the attack drawing ever closer...

REVIEWS Journey's End - A sobering, intelligent tale of fear and bravery

MARY SHELLEY (2018)
Starring Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth, Bel Powley, Maisie Williams, Joanne Froggatt, Stephen Dillane, Tom Sturridge, Ben Hardy, Hugh O'Conor and Jack Hickey. Directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour.

Mary is a rebellious and outspoken teenager. When she meets the poet Percy Shelley, there’s a spark of attraction between the two outsiders who feel trapped within polite society. When Mary’s family discover that Percy is married with a child, they forbid any further contact. Mary and Percy elope, taking Mary’s half-sister Claire along for the ride. It’s a scandal, and with Percy’s philandering ways, rumours of a ménage à trois are whispered everywhere they go. Claire willfully flirts her way into the affections of poet Lord Byron, and Mary is relieved when they are asked to join the decadent poet at his house in Lake Geneva.

During one stormy summer night, to distract Mary from Percy’s infidelities, Lord Byron suggests they all write a ghost story. All the pain and guilt that Mary feels about Percy, Claire and the child she lost, is poured into giving birth to Frankenstein’s Monster. The story is incredible, a classic that even Percy must acknowledge. But women don’t write books, and publishers certainly won’t print them. The rebel rises, and Mary fights for her creature and her identity, all at the age of eighteen.

REVIEWS Mary Shelley - A paint-by-numbers biopic

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (2015)
Starring Carey Mulligan, Tom Sturridge, Matthias Schoenaerts and Michael Sheen. Directed by Thomas Vinterberg.

In Victorian England, the independent and headstrong Bathsheba Everdene attracts three very different suitors: Gabriel Oak, a sheep farmer; Frank Troy, a reckless Sergeant; and William Boldwood, a prosperous and mature bachelor.

REVIEWS Far From the Madding Crowd - A grand, romantic classic