AS things currently stand, Phantom Thread - out this week - is to mark the final acting performance of Sir Daniel Day-Lewis, who has opted to retire from acting at the age of 60.

A four-time BAFTA-winner, Day-Lewis has starred in 21 films through his career. Highlights include Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York and Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln, for which he won an Oscar as the titular former president.

In Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis plays Reynolds Woodcock, a renowned fashion designer in 1950s London who falls in love with a countryside waitress (Vicky Krieps) and enters a relationship that proves far more tempestuous than either expected.

From Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas-Anderson, Phantom Thread has been widely acclaimed for its acting, design and music by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. Day-Lewis and Anderson, meanwhile, have scooped Oscar nods for their work in the film.

In Winchester, Helen Mirren plays real-life American heiress Sarah Winchester who was left a widow following the death of her famed gun manufacturer husband in March 1881.

Racked with grief, Mrs Winchester became convinced that she was being haunted by the ghosts of those who died at the barrel of a gun made by her husband’s business.

It was after consulting a medium that the widow began to invest her fortune in the building of a mansion in San Jose. The film, directed by the Spierig brothers, tells that story.

A third historical drama out this week is Saul Dibb’s Journey’s End, the final act in Britain’s four-year cinematic commemoration of the First World War.

This fifth film adaptation of the R. C. Sherriff’s 1928 play has been written by Simon Reade and stars Sam Claflin, Asa Butterfield, Paul Bettany and Toby Jones.

For those unfamiliar with the play, Journey’s End takes place over the four days leading to Operation Michael in March 1918.

The action unfolds in a British officers’ dugout and it is through the eyes of captains and lieutenants that we experience the war.

The new film’s road to release has not been a simple one, with questions over the ownership of the play’s production rights almost halting the project until an intervention from Prince Andrew found them to be up for grabs.

Toby Symonds