The Railway Children Return (2022)

The answer, of course, is that British films are no longer made with a 1970s mindset: international casts make them easier to sell internationally, and right now, American racism is a big talking point worldwide. (Then again, when isn’t it?) But there is something depressing about the fact that even a Railway Children revival now can’t escape the churning vortex of the US culture war – that in order to make reviving this beloved property worthwhile, a bigger, louder country’s problems have to be quite literally imported into the UK, as if nothing sufficiently exciting could be found closer to hand. It’s hard not to be reminded of that particular breed of British Twitter user who treats every latest outrage from Washington DC as if it had been committed by their local parish council, rather than a legislature 4,000 miles away, in a nation whose political attitudes and obsessions bear little relation to ours.