Dough (2015)

Another packed room roared with laughter at this story of an elderly Jewish baker in London who takes on a young Muslim apprentice whose help, both intentional and not, causes the struggling business to boom. The closing feature at our local Jewish Film Festival, it has a twist that surprised me, even though it's on the poster and every synopsis I've read of the movie. I'll leave it out, because that's how I roll.

It stars Jonathan Pryce (profiled in Hysteria) as the baker, Jerome Holder (new to me) as the apprentice, and Ian Hart (some of the movies he's been in that I loved were Backbeat (1994) in which he played John Lennon, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain (1995), Michael Collins (1996), The Butcher Boy (1997), Monument Ave. (1998), Enemy of the State (1998), The End of the Affair (1999), Liam (2000), Finding Neverland (2004), twenty episodes of Dirt, and four of Boardwalk Empire--he was also in one Harry Potter movie as Quirinus Quirrel) as a bad guy), and Pauline Collins (last blogged in Quartet) as a saucy widow.

Directed by John Goldschmidt (new to me but no novice) from a script by Jonathan Benson (yes, a novice--it's his first) and Jez Freedman (his first feature after one short), the movie has music that I liked but cannot find online, composed by Lorne Balfe. On his website, however, you can find many other tracks he has written,

We had such a good time that I wrote to distributor Menemsha Films to ask how my friends and readers could see it. I was told "the film will begin its theatrical release this spring, starting in Florida and then going wide in April!" So, I hope, there is a DVD in its future.

I hit a milestone on Sunday, having seen 800 movies since the first one in the blog on September 3, 2008 (Brideshead Revisited). And now that I'm all caught up on the writing, I can put that number on the index, with the other number, 821, of movies summarized in these pages.

UPDATE: Yes, it's true. Dough's release date is April 29, 2016 probably on the coasts, and will reach the rest of the country soon.