'Downton Abbey: A New Era' delivers the same old mix of warmth and tears
CNN
Again facing the challenge of coming up with plots worthy of filling a movie, "Downton Abbey: A New Era" adopts a two-track approach, feeling as cozy as a brandy by the fire. Elegant, occasionally adorable and at times quite emotional, series creator Julian Fellowes still knows how to pluck the right strings -- upstairs and downstairs -- to play a symphony with his sprawling cast.
Coming three years after the first movie and six since the PBS show signed off, this "Era" finds everyone looking a little older, with even the indomitable Dowager Countess (87-year-old Maggie Smith, who really deserves an Oscar push to go with her three Emmys for the show) having lost a step, but none of her rapier wit.
After a slow-ish start, the two flourishes wind up splitting the cast spatially, while creating opportunities to bring some new faces into the mix: An unexpected windfall in the form of a French seaside villa, mysteriously bequeathed to the Dowager by a man she'd known decades earlier; and the grudging decision to let a film company shoot a movie at the grand estate, the year being 1928, as the world is making the transition from silent pictures to talkies.
President Joe Biden warned against a streak of “semi-isolationism” in the US as he stressed the importance of alliances during a symbolic visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery on Sunday, honoring the thousands of Americans who died in World War I at a site former President Donald Trump skipped during a 2018 visit to Paris.
Looking to shore up Latino votes in Nevada and Arizona for his reelection campaign, President Joe Biden is on the verge of soon following up last week’s executive action aimed at curbing border crossings with another move focused on providing legal status for long-term undocumented immigrants married to American citizens and without criminal records.