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Roberta Whiteman, a longtime editor for Variety who specialized in international coverage, died June 17 at a hospice facility near Vero Beach, Fla., where she lived. She was 62.

Known as Bobbie, the British native was a skilled copy editor and news editor who was an unfailingly sunny presence in Variety‘s newsroom for nearly 13 years. Whiteman demonstrated her courage, strength and resilience after being diagnosed in 2007 with a rare form of cancer that affected her spinal cord and brain.

Despite undergoing difficult treatments, Whiteman was rarely absent from the newsroom for long. She was renowned for her skill at sorting through the high volume of news filed round the clock by Variety‘s unmatched roster of international correspondents.

Whiteman knew every correspondent and stringer in every territory, and she also shouldered the unenviable task of helping to ensure that their freelance payments were sent out on time. She was an encyclopedia...

Most British crime films of the '40s and '50s have been slow crossing the pond, but Olive Films has a winner here, a gloss on Yank gangster pix from an earlier era. Just clear of prison, a tough criminal vows to punish the gang that abandoned him, and carries it out a ruthless revenge. But I think it was a mistake for him to involve that dance hall girl... Appointment with Crime Blu-ray Olive Films 1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 91 min. / Street Date June 21, 2016 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98 Starring William Hartnell, Herbert Lom, Joyce Howard, Robert Beatty, Raymond Lovell, Alan Wheatley. Cinematography Gerald Moss, James Wilson Film Editor Monica Kimick Original Music George Melachrino Produced by Louis H. Jackson Written and Directed by John Harlow

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Ask today's American film fan about old British crime films, and he'll probably not be able to...

Even back when Britain was an industrial nation, films about industry were relatively rare: audiences who worked on assembly lines presumably wanted to look at something more glamorous on their night at the pictures. In Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Albert Finney snarled, "Don't let the bastards grind you down," a neat encapsulation of the working man's political philosophy, whereas I'm Alright Jack (1959) took a dismayed view of the hostile stand-off between Capital and Labor. That Boulting Brothers satire may have adopted a "plague on both your houses" stance, but in fact its sympathy was with management.

The Agitator (1945) is the product of a gentler age: it tries to be sympathetic to everybody, but again there's a hidden conservative bias. Still, as the product of a generation who had just won the war and were looking forward, some of them, to a bright socialist future of free education and health care,...

Actress Joyce Redman, Oscar nominated for both Tom Jones and Othello, died in Kent, England, earlier today. The Newcastle-born Redman, who was either 93 or 96, had been suffering from pneumonia. Film lovers will remember her as Tom Jones‘ Mrs. Waters, stealing the movie while “sexting” — as in, sex while eating — Albert Finney. Mostly a stage and television performer, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art-trained Redman appeared in only a handful of movies. Yet, her brief film career was notable because of her two Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominations. In fact, Redman brought "Oscar luck" to her movies and fellow players: Best Picture Oscar winner Tom Jones (1963) earned five nominations in the acting categories (Joyce Redman, Albert Finney, Diane Cilento, Dame Edith Evans, Hugh Griffith), while the filmed version of Britain’s National Theatre presentation of Othello (1965) earned four (Joyce Redman as Emilia, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Frank Finlay). Regarding the nominations for the Othello actors,...