May 28th
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness**
GB 1958. Twentieth Century Fox. 158m. Cinemascope

The true story of would-be missionary Gladys Aylward, who in the 1930s successfully transported hundreds of refugee children across the Chinese mountains to safety during the war against Japan.
A typical piece of Hollywood sincerity (shot mostly in North Wales) with a rather international cast and crew doing a thoroughly professional job in giving a rather maudlin scenario (with dollops of clumsy comedy and added romance) the proper conviction, particularly in its latter third.

Written by: Isobel Lennart, from the novel "The Small Woman" by Alan Burgess.
Producer: Buddy Adler.
Director: Mark Robson.
Starring: Ingrid Bergman, Curt Jurgens, Robert Donat (who died soon after completing his scenes), Athene Seyler, Peter Chong, Moultrie Kelsall, Ronald Squire, Richard Wattis, Burt Kwouk.
Photography: Frederick A. Young.
Music: Malcolm Arnold.
Art Direction: John Box, Geoffrey Drake.

May 23rd   
Slaughterhouse Five**    
US 1972. Universal/Vanadas. 104m.

An optometrist finds himself flitting back and forth in time, from his experiences as a PoW in Dresden in 1945, to the future on a distant planet.
Reasonably faithful adaptation of the late Kurt Vonnegut's most famous cult novel, which captures the fragmentary but vivid nature of the story in occasionally excessive but highly cinematic style, giving the director good excuse to show off some rapid intercutting between time zones. The science fiction elements of the story, perhaps inevitably, work better on the printed page than on the screen, but certainly earn marks for trying.

Written by: Stephen Geller, from the novel by Kurt Vonnegut.
Producer: Paul Monash.
Director: George Roy Hill.
Starring: Michael Sacks, Valerie Perrine, Ron Leibman, Eugene Roche, Sharon Gans, Holly Near, Perry King, Friedrich Ledebur, John Dehner, John Wood.
Photography: Miroslav Ondricek.
Music: J.S. Bach (performed by Glen Gould).
Editing: Dede Allen.

May 22nd
Incense for the Damned
GB 1970. Titan/Lucinda Films. 87m.

An impotent young Oxford don becomes infected with the exotic pleasures of vampirism on a Greek island.
Risible sex horror thriller, badly edited in very rushed style (the director disowned the end result), and much bowdlerized from relatively mature source material. The Oxford scenes are interesting though.

Written by: Julian More, from the novel "Doctors Wear Scarlet" by Simon Raven.
Producer: Graham Harris.
Director: Michael Burrowes (Robert Hartford-Davis).
Starring: Patrick Mower, Patrick Macnee, Alex Davion, Peter Cushing, Johnny Sekka, Madeleine Hinde, Imogen Hassall, Edward Woodward, William Mervyn, David Lodge.
Photography: Desmond Dickinson.
Music: Bobby Richards.

May 19th
Sunshine*
Electric Palace, Harwich
Certificate 15

The crew of spaceship Icarus II fly towards the Sun on a mission to save a dying Earth, and discover a distress signal from a previous Icarus mission...
Slightly pretentious variation on Alien with the Sun's rays and an unexpected (and unnecessary) additional crew member as the combined villain of the piece, and a lot of scientific gobbledygook delivered by one-dimensional characters until the incoherent finale. Suspenseful and visually striking, but not particularly satisfying.

d: Danny Boyle
s: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Cliff Curtis, Trory Garity, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Chipo Chung (voice).

May 17thMy Life as a Dog* Swe 1985. Svensk Filmindustri/Film Teknik. 101m.
A dysfunctional child loses his mother to illness, but identifies with the first dog in space while he lives with his uncle.
Quirky childhood nostalgia with a rather annoying central character, but attractively photographed without too much cloying sentiment. The assortment of characters and scenes make it pleasing in parts rather than as a whole.

Written and Directed by: Lasse Hallström, from the novel by Reidar Jonsson.
Producer: Waldemar Bergendahl.
Starring: Anton Glanzelius, Anki Liden, Manfred Serner, Tomas Von Brömssen, Melinda Kinnaman, Ing-Marie Carlsson, Kicki Rundgren, Didrik Gustavsson.
Photography: Jörgen Persson.
Music: Bjorn Isfalt.

Preceded by:
Bugs Bunny in
Rabbit Hood**(US 1949. Warner Bros. 8m.; d: Chuck Jones; voices: Mel Blanc.)

May 16th
Spider-Man 3*
(Odeon Colchester)
Certificate 12A

Peter Parker combats the Sandman, a vengeful Harry Osborne (aka. The New Green Goblin), an alien virus, and his arch nemesis Venom.
Third in an increasingly clunky and formulaic but still entertaining Spiderman series, overloaded with villains, CGI effects, and the sort of plot coincidences that could only come out of a comic book. Some of the supporting players are underused, and even Spidey himself doesn't do much "good" in the film, which seems perenially obsessed with taking his mask off. That said, the team that have been ever-present since the first film are in reliable form, and the ending is refreshingly different.

d: Sam Raimi
s: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons, James Cromwell, Theresa Russell, Cliff Robertson, Willem Dafoe.

May 15th
Into Great Silence***
(Review by John Sales)
Ipswich Film Theatre. Certificate U.


A profoundly moving documentary detailing life in the 'Grand Chartreuse' monastery in Grenoble. We are taken through a typical year in the lives of the cloistered monks of the Carthusian order. Reflecting the title, there is no musical soundtrack as such, just the timeless beauty of Gregorian chant used for the Divine Office. All nine 'hours' are covered, from Matins to Compline, which is followed by solemn Benediction.





The film illustrates perfectly the solitude and asceticism of the monks' life, closing with the thoughts of a blind, aged member of the order, who renders his moving thoughts on death, and how it holds no fears for him. In summary, a touching presentation, giving a lucid insight into mortals striving, by means of their austere rule, to follow in the steps of their Creator, seeing His works in the natural habitat and stunning scenery all around them.

May 12th
Goya's Ghosts**
Apollo West End

Spa 2006. Saul Zaentz/Kanzaman. 114m.

During the Spanish Inquisition, a model for the artist Francesco Goya is imprisoned, and her captor himself becomes tortured and reformed.
Professionally made but puzzling historical drama cum black comedy, with a rather over-extended circular plot and no discernible point or a central character - Goya himself is an incidental figure.

Written by: Milos Forman, Jean-Claude Carriere.
Producer: Saul Zaentz.
Director: Milos Forman.
Starring: Javier Bardem, Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgaard, Michel Lonsdale, Blanca Portillo, Randy Quaid, Jose-Luis Gomez, Mabel Rivera, Julian Wadham.
Photography: Javier Aguirresarobe.
Music: Varhan Bauer.

May 10thVictim** GB 1961. Rank/AFD. 100m. bw
A homosexual barrister goes on the trail of a network of blackmailers, at risk to his own career and marriage.
A daring subject for the time is treated with rather a heavy hand in rather artificial style, a fairly humdrum thriller with a heavy amount of sub-text and unnecessary gloomy photography, as though the central theme is a form of dark evil (which is probably what got it past the censors). All a little bland by today's standards of course, but interesting to watch in its more sensitive scenes, and it is certainly rare for a major British film, before or since, to deal with a taboo in such detail.

Written by: Janet Green, John McCormick.
Producer: Michael Relph.
Director: Basil Dearden.
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Sylvia Sims, Peter McEnery, Dennis Price, Nigel Stock, Donald Churchill, Anthony Nicholls, Norman Bird, Derren Nesbitt, Charles Lloyd Pack, John Barrie, John Cairney.
Photography: Otto Heller.
Music: Philip Green.
Editing: John D. Guthridge.

Apr 30th
Hitler: The Rise of Evil**
Canada/US TVM 2003. Alliance Atlantis. 177m. (2 parts)

One-dimensional biopic covering Adolf Hitler's rise to power up to and including the first blood purges in 1933, played by an actor who frequently drops his t's and h's, but physically a remarkable performance, and the production is strong and offers detailed depictions of the failed Munich Beer Hall putsch of 1921, and of Hitler's tragic infatuation with his niece.

Written by: John Pielmeier, G. Ross Parker.
Producer: John Ryan.
Director: Christian Duguay.
Starring: Robert Carlyle, Julianna Margulies, Liev Schreiber, Matthew Modine, Jena Malone, Stockard Channing, Peter O'Toole (as Hindenburg), Peter Stormare, Frederick Von Thun, Zoe Telford.
Photography: Pierre Gill.
Music: Norman Corbeil.
Editing: Henk Van Eeghen, Sylvain Lebel.