Sundance, day six: "Queen" scribe three for three

Just came from an early morning screening of Tom Hooper's "Longford," easily the best movie you won't be seeing in theaters this year.

It's written by the newly Academy-anointed Peter Morgan, and like "The Queen" and "The Last King of Scotland" it plays loose but fair with real-life figures. In this case, it's Britain's Lord Longford, an aristocratic boffin and intellectual Christian (along the lines of C.S. Lewis) who alienated just about everyone in England when he came to the defense of the country's most notorious serial killer, Myra Hindley. Lord Longford is played by Jim Broadbent in a heartbreakingly good performance and Samantha Morton, that creepy changeling, gives us a Hindley of many colors and never just one. A very, very good film about whether forgiveness can and should be extended to all -- whether even thinking that it can makes you foolish beyond compare -- and, oh, here's Andy Serkis finally leaving Gollum behind with a chilling portrayal of Hindley's lover and accomplice, Ian Brady.

It's Broadbent's movie, though, and this old character duffer disappears into Lord Langford and makes him a figure of pathetic nobility. I'd say it was an Oscar contender except that "Longford" was made with HBO money and will be showing on the cable channel next month. That's good for you -- you get to see it sooner -- but bad for the film, which really would benefit from the attention a theatrical release would bring to it. Although it'll arguably reach a much larger audience on cable. Look for it.