23rd March 2011
The Company of Wolves (18)
(Neil Jordan, UK 1984, 93mins)
Neil Jordan's fascinating and imaginative grown-up interpretation of the timeless classic, 'Little Red Riding Hood' and of werewolf fables, adapted by Angela Carter from her own story.
27th April 2011Come and See (15)
(Elem Klimov, Soviet Union 1985, 140mins, Subtitled)
A physically and emotionally draining viewing experience, the film follows Florya, a 12-year-old boy living in 1943 Byelorussia. When he digs up an abandoned gun, Florya gleefully signs up with the Russian Army, looking forward to life as a soldier. Yet the fantasy rapidly deteriorates when the reality of the situation confronts him head-on.
18th May 2011
Twelve Monkeys (15)
(Terry Gilliam, USA 1995, 129mins)
This is a great sci-fi film; a terrific 'end of the human race' story escapes the cliches because of Gilliam's imaginative direction and sense of the fantastic. The cast, which includes Bruce Willis, are very strong, with the famous leads giving some of their best performances to date. Downbeat, imaginative, engaging and one of the more accessible of Gilliam's films, it stands out as one of the best American sci-fi's of the past few decades. (Inspired by Chris Marker's 'La Jetée').
15th June 2011Nostalgia (15)
(Andrey Tarkovsky, Italy/Soviet Union 1983, 120mins, subtitled)
Beautifully and evocatively filmed, this mystical vision of man's struggle for true faith is at once cerebral and symbolically obscure, rendered as it is with Tarkovsky's inimitable cinematic poetry of spiritual longing.
29th June 2011The Boy Friend (U)
(Ken Russell, UK 1971, 125 mins)
Based around Sandy Wilson’s musical stage play of the same title, Russell’s extravagant fantasy is an exuberant pastiche of 1920’s stage musicals and Busby Berkeley’s film musicals of the 1930s. Supermodel Twiggy plays Polly Browne, nervous stage manager of a production of ‘The Boyfriend’ who is obliged to take the place of injured leading lady Rita. Russell’s film follows the performance, which is a disaster onstage and off, as the cast competes for the attention of De Thrill, a Hollywood director in the audience.
20th July 2011
Time of the Gypsies (15)
(Emir Kusturica UK/Italy/Yugoslavia 1988, 142mins, Subtitled)
Pervaded by an atmosphere reflecting the mysticism and nomadic existence of the Yugoslavian Roma, this is a life-enhancing glimpse into the utterly irrepressible soul of a marginalized people. A gypsy teenager is tricked into a life of crime in Italy, and grows up planning to somehow return home. This film won an award at Cannes for directing and was the first feature to be filmed with its entire dialogue in the Gypsy language, Romany.
27th July 2011The Dead (U)
(John Huston, UK.Ireland/USA 1987, 82mins)
Huston's last film is an adaptation of one of the greatest English short stories, from the collection 'Dubliners.' James Joyce was one of the director's favourite authors, and this adaptation became for the dying Huston a love letter to the land of his ancestors and to the country where his children grew up. Movingly, he was able to work with his screenwriter son Tony and his actress daughter Anjelica. The scene is a snowy Christmas in old Dublin, and the evening evokes melancholy reminiscences of a first, long-lost love, and its tragic outcome ...
10th Aug 2011
The Virgin Spring (15)
(Ingmar Bergman, Sweden 1960, 89mins, Subtitled)
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring is a harrowing tale of faith, revenge, and savagery in medieval Sweden. Starring frequent Bergman collaborator and screen icon Max von Sydow, the film is both beautiful and cruel in its depiction of a world teetering between paganism and Christianity, and of one father’s need to avenge the death of a child.
24th Aug 2011
Last Year in Marienbad (U)
(Alain Resnais, FR 1961, 94mins, Subtitled)
Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. This surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.
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