Keeping Mum (2005)

Sometimes there's nothing as good as a dose of jet black comedy to counteract the saccharine world, and this British flick made a good stab at it.  Rowan Atkinson (who usually makes me gag) is just about acceptable as a country vicar obsessed with perfecting his sermons and thus ignoring his wife, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, who is tempted to begin an affair with her American golf instructor -- former heartthrob Patrick Swayze looking more and more grotesque as he ages.  Into this melange comes the new housekeeper played by the wonderful Maggie Smith who is even more of a "national treasure" than Dame Judi.  The opening sequences showed a heavily pregnant young woman jailed for murder some 43 years previously and wouldn't you know it, she just happens to be Scott Thomas' mum.  On arrival Maggie does her best to recreate a happy household for her daughter by bumping off any characters who seem to be in the way of her game plan -- and guess what, the murderous impulse seems to be hereditary!  Not the greatest of movies, but a happy nod back to a macabre tradition in British film-making.