If you’re going Downton cold turkey, Merchant Ivory’s take on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker Prize winner is probably not the movie to have you skipping joyously around the living room. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed to break your heart, such is the moving, unexpressed current of emotion that passes between Anthony Hopkins’ butler, the stoical Mr. Stevens, and housekeeper, Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson), an old acquaintance who comes back into his life. We’d still heartily recommend it as a neat snapshot of late ‘30s Britain and a beautiful not-quite-love-story. While Stevens is sacrificing love in the name of duty downstairs, upstairs, James Fox’s misguided lord is busy wooing the Nazis. It’s a recipe for disaster on so many levels that even the lookout on the Titanic could see it coming.