Hampstead
Original post date: 31 March 2019 Rating: ✭✭✰✰ In the sweepstakes for unconvincing romantic movie couples let us add the names of Diane Keaton—here a poster girl for the notion that older single women are totally hopeless with money—and Brendan Gleeson, playing a Dubliner living rough on London’s Hampstead Heath. Also unbelievable is the plot of this movie, which is kind of odd since it is actually inspired by a true story. In real life, Harry Hallowes was from Sligo, not Dublin, and before he died in 2016 he expressed the intention of willing his slice of the heath, which he won in a court battle, to the British royal family, calling them the “the last bastion of refinement and sophistication.” In this flick his fictional alter ego, Donald Horner, likes to lunch next to Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery, which is kind of funny because Donald is basically an anti-government survivalist and loner who refuses to pay taxes or for any city services. By the end of his court battle t