Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Apr 28th
Shooting Dogs**
GB/Ger 2005. BBC Films/Invicta Capital/Filmstiftung NRW. 111m. ws

Rwanda, April 1994: a Catholic priest and a visiting student witness the horror of the genocide of the Tutsi minority, and the inability of the UN peacekeepers to do anything about it.
Powerful, sometimes heavy-handed (in some of its politics), but very well acted observation of mass murder from an outsider's perspective (similar in some ways to The Killing Fields) which gets across the horror of the event without becoming too overbearing.

Written by: David Wolstencroft.
Producers: David Elton, Pippa Cross, Jens Meurer.
Director: Michael Caton-Jones.
Starring: Hugh Dancy, John Hurt, Clare Hope-Ashitey, Dominique Horowitz, Nicola Walker, Louis Mahoney, Steve Toussaint, David Gyasi.
Photography: Ivan Strasburg.
Music: Dario Marianelli.

+ several of the crew were Tutsi survivors of the genocide

Monday, April 20, 2009

Apr 19th
Wonderful Life*(U)
Wymondham Ex-Servicemen's Club (Former Regal Wymondham)

GB 1964. ABPC. 113m. Techniscope

A group of exiled cruiseline musicians travel to the Canary Isles to help make a film.
Third in the series of Swinging Sixties Cliff musicals, by which time the law of diminishing returns had set in: overstretched and trying to outdo itself, with not particularly memorable tunes, but some interesting fantasy sequences such as an extensive history of the Movies.

d: Sidney J. Furie
s: Cliff Richard, Walter Slezak, Susan Hampshire, Melvyn Hayes, Richard O'Sullivan, The Shadows, Derek Bond, Gerald Harper

Preceded by:
Island People*(GB 1940. bw. Realist Film Unit.; Looking over Britons on an average day.)

+ screening preceded by Q&A session with Susan Hampshire in person talking about her career and working on Wonderful Life

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Saturday, April 18, 2009

Apr 16th
Gregory's Girl**
GB 1980. National Film Trustee Company. 91m.

A drifting teenager develops a crush on the girl who is replacing him as star striker in the school football team.
Droll and clever study of adolescence, quirkily done with a refreshingly sympathetic eye. The themes were universal enough to transcend its setting of dreary Scottish modernity, to make it the "sleeper" hit of the year.

Written and Directed by: Bill Forsyth.
Producers: Davina Belling, Clive Parsons.
Starring: John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn, Clare Grogan, Jake D'Arcy, Chic Murray, Alex Norton, John Bett, David Anderson.
Photography: Michael Coulter.
Music: Colin Tully.
Editing: John Gow.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Apr 10th
The Reader** (15)
Prince Charles Cinema

Berlin, 1958: a young law student has a passionate affair with a helpful but illiterate tram conductor, whom he later discovers was also an Extermination Camp guard at Auschwitz.
Sad, thought-provoking coming-of-age drama, about guilty secrets - secret sex, secret history, secret illiteracy, etc. - and daring to pose the dilemma of an inherently nice person doing evil things. The moral complexities of the novel (across a 40-year timespan) are hard to fully get across on film, but nonetheless skilfully made in all departments, asking that perennial question for Germans in post-WWII: "What would you have done?"

d: Stephen Daldry
s: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Bruno Ganz, Lena Olin, Alexander Maria Lara

Stephen Daldry interview (Newsnight)

Friday, April 10, 2009

Apr 7th
The Comedy of Terrors**
US 1963. American International/Alta Vista/James H. Nicholson-Samuel Z. Arkoff. 88m. Panavision

Impoverished undertakers decide to drum-up business by bumping off their landlord, who unfortunately suffers from narcolepsy.
Veteran horror stars ham it up something rotten in this average but illustrious horror spoof, quite good looking (on AIP's usual low scale) and even with echoes of Laurel & Hardy about Messrs. Lorre and Price.

Written by: Richard Matheson.
Producers: Anthony Carras, Richard Matheson.
Director: Jacques Tourneur.
Starring: Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, Joyce Jameson, Beverly Hills, Joe E. Brown.
Photography: Floyd Crosby.
Music: Les Baxter.
Art Direction: Daniel Haller.

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