The Frock Flicks team spends a lot of time working through our backlogs on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc., to watch historical costume movies and TV shows. We occasionally take your reader requests to watch and review stuff too. But, alas, not every flick set in the past is worth our time (though check our our archives of reviews by using the search box!).
We gotta tell ya: There are a lot of crappy historical costume movies and TV shows out there! Not everything’s bad enough for Snark Week — some are just weak tea. These are boring movies, the dull shows, the ones with mediocre costumes and stories that can’t even rise up to the level of camp entertainment. Or the ones that are mildly entertaining, maybe have ‘good-enough’ costuming, or are moderately snark-worthy, but we can’t be arsed to work up a sweat about it.
Thus, here’s a continuing series with our one-line reviews of things we’ve tried to watch but just don’t care enough about to write a whole blog post or podcast. Your mileage may vary!
Ghosts (2021-)
The U.S. version of the BBC comedy (about a house full of ghosts from different time periods and the modern couple where the one woman can see the ghosts) is fine. It’s funny, but the first few episodes I watched were almost exact copies of the U.K. version that I was already a fan of. There are a couple characters moved to different time periods, but they all fill the same roles as in the original. You’ll probably love it if you haven’t seen the first one. — Trystan
Gypsy (1962)
I keep thinking I’ll do a full review of this one or fold it into a Top 5 Friday, since I do like a lot of the music plus Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood are fabulously entertaining. But the costumes by Orry-Kelly are soooooo 1960s with only the faintest hints of the 1910s to 1930s period that the story is supposed to take place. It’s fun to watch but hardly qualifies as a frock flick. — Trystan
High Noon (1952)
A classic Western that’s not really about the Old West. It’s a parable for the 1950s red scare and blacklist, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. But the allegory felt heavy-handed to me, and there’s not much else to make it interesting (certainly not costumes). — Trystan
History of the World, Part II (2023)
I grew up on Mel Brooks’ comedies and adore the original History of the World, Part I movie. This series was amusing at times, and overall entertaining, but didn’t reach the LOL heights of Brooks’ earlier works (and no particular costumes of note). The best running bit is a faux-sitcom about Shirley Chisholm running for president in 1972. — Trystan
The Legend of Tarzan (2016)
I’ve hyped “the V” enough that I felt I should track down this version of the early-20th-century, thinly-veiled-racism story. Yes, Alexander Skarsgård’s V was impressive, but honestly I don’t remember much else about the film (okay, so this was several months ago), including whatever Margot Robbie was doing as the love interest. Sorry! I tried to take one for the team and failed. — Kendra
The Mission (1986)
I was intrigued enough by Cherie Lunghi‘s 18th-century costumes, and I’m super interested in early American colonization, that I fired up this story of Jesuit missionaries in South America trying to convert an indigenous tribe, while various political and religious issues play out in the background. Unfortunately, most of Lunghi’s gowns were back-lacing, and the film is mostly about some white saviors (Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson) and their own bullshit while living amongst a bunch of nameless/characterless indigenous people. I gave up halfway through. This won a major commendation from the Vatican, and that tells you a lot about how critically it examines missionary work (in other words, not much). — Kendra
The Miracle Club (2023)
I love my mom enough that I let her drag me to the theaters to see Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates, and Laura Linney in this film about several Irish women who go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes in 1967. Super meh. There’s some nice bonding that happens, but the Big Scandal That No One Speaks Of is too obvious and annoyingly drawn out. See Widows’ Peak instead. — Kendra
Mudbound (2017)
I like Carey Mulligan enough — and I like bleak movies about hard topics — that I was interested in watching this film about two families farming in the Mississippi delta in the 1940s, touching on civil rights and racism. Okay, so the film isn’t entirely successful because it takes what probably worked great in a novel — telling a story from several perspectives — and tried to apply that to film. There just isn’t enough time in a feature film to do this, and so each character gets shortchanged as a result. Nonetheless, Mulligan gives a strong performance as a young woman who goes from a middle-class life to living in a shack and scraping a life out of the dirt. It’s heartbreaking to watch her try to accept her husband’s bad choices and make a life for herself and her children in the face of poverty. And the film does a great job demonstrating how the dynamics of racism played out in the aftermath of World War II, when so many African Americans had risked their lives for their country and enjoyed much more equality, only to return to a country that was stuck in an antiquated way of thinking. — Kendra
Munich, the Edge of War (2021)
You know I likes me my World War II movies, so yeah, I watched this film about Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (Jeremy Irons) — the one who tried to appease Hitler. It recasts his usually-criticized strategy as heroic, having bought Britain time to arm up for the war. Whether you feel like rethinking Chamberlain or not, it was an interesting-enough watch — just not interesting-enough (or costumey enough!) for a full review. — Kendra
An Officer and a Spy (2019)
An interesting look at the real-life Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906), in which a French army officer was falsely accused of spying for the Germans. The film focuses very narrowly on Colonel Georges Picquart, who discovered Dreyfus’s innocence, and Jean Dujardin gives a strong performance in the role (Louis Garrel plays Alfred Dreyfus, and he’s good, but sadly not hot with his accurate-to-the-real-guy balding hair here) — but the film barely scratches the surface of how this scandal affected French society and vastly increased anti-Semitism, which is a disappointment. As it was directed by child-rapist Roman Polanski, I’m glad I found a free version. The costumes — by Pascaline Chavanne — were very authentic, but primarily featured military uniforms (there’s one minor female character as well as some extras), so it’s not really worth a full review. — Kendra
What did you think of these movies or TV shows? What other stuff should we remove from our queue? Have you searched our site recently to see if we’ve already reviewed your faves?
I did sit through Gypsy once; I actually preferred Tom & Lorenzo’s review. :)
I wasn’t impressed by Hotel Portofino! Bad waist placements, and now one under the age of 40 had their hair bobbed! Also some outfits just looked 1930s to me?
I’ve sat thru an episode of Hotel Portofino & it didn’t even register enough to make it to this short review list, lol. That’s how unimpressed I was.
I will admit that’s almost a nice shirtwaist and hobble skirt on Margot, Tho!
Really? The blouse feels very Talbot’s-y to me!
I used to force myself to sit through crap to review it, but now I think life’s too short. :P
You get us!
And a happy Patreon person, so that you do this hard work for us!
MWAH thank you!!!
OK, I submit. I don’t know enough about the time period to have commented (Hotel Portofino re swimming suits) so shall continue to be a lurker.
Alexander Skarsgard is literally “God’s gift,” even so, I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch Tarzan. I caught about 5 minutes on TV once, and I couldn’t go further than that. (He was wearing clothes during those 5 minutes, so maybe that’s why…) Never even heard The Miracle Club, but now I want to watch it! I liked Ghosts; I watched a few eps of the US version then learned of the UK version later. It was fun. Gypsy—the mother-daughter dynamics make it hard for me to want to re-watch!
I feel like I should defend Ghosts. Not for the costumes—- those don’t really get more interesting—- but because I too was originally disappointed by how closely it seemed to follow the British show (even through loved the British version) during the first few episodes. And because that doesn’t last. There are a few more obvious parallels etc. but they turn into very different shows with very different feels to them I would say. The American one is far more optimistic for one. It also tends to sand down/ combine characters to make them more conventionally sympathetic ( which is not necessarily a good thing sometimes, however…). Maybe more importantly, the longer seasons are used to give character arcs to the ghost that either have been barely started or given far less screen time in the British version. On the other hand the “livings” some times end up getting the short end of the stick when it comes to character moments in the US version, something exacerbated by the more optimistic tone. The end result is that the ghosts are better developed and the people just a bit more cartoony in the US version while I would say the opposite is true in the British one.
I could see the US one diverging as it goes on. But there’s not enough for me to really review here, given that I’ve already reviewed the UK one ;)
I’d like to say that GHOSTS (USA) is well worth watching in it’s own right: I keep hoping that the two versions of the series will do a sketch suggesting they both exist in the same world and that both casts of dramatis personae vary between amusement, astonishment and pure superstition over the parallels between all concerned.
I do hope that we get an episode of Thor being Token White Ghost for a millennium – “Why are you white?!?” “Because” “Because why?” “Ask me again when I find out” – as a running joke in an episode where Sasappis has to negotiate the pecking order of a set of First Nation ghosts (From ‘New Kid’ to older brother) in an episode that shows that the Americas had some interesting history (and some interesting changes over time) long before one Amerigo Vespucci was a glint in his father’s eye.