July 30th
Make Mine Mink**
GB 1960. Rank. 102m. bw

Tenants at a Kensington boarding house turn amateur thieves, stealing furs to give to good causes.
Unlikely but enjoyable British farce, with faint echoes of The Lavender Hill Mob and a welcome array of comedic faces.

Written by: Michael Pertwee, Peter Blackmore, from the play "Breath of Spring" by Peter Coke.
Producer: Hugh Stewart.
Director: Robert Asher.
Starring: Athene Seyler, Terry-Thomas, Hattie Jacques, Elspeth Duxbury, Billie Whitelaw, Jack Hedley, Raymond Huntley, Irene Handl, Sydney Tafler, Kenneth Williams, Clement Freud.
Photography: Reg Wyer.
Music: Philip Green.

July 28th
Charlie's Angels*
US/Ger 2000. Columbia/Flower Films/Tall Trees. 98m. Panavision

Three beautiful crimefighters foil a secret plot to kill their elusive boss Charlie.
Practically plotless excuse for a series of male (and female) fantasy-oriented images of girls in high-kicking action scenes, a very definite triumph of style over content, which begins quite promisingly as a female variation on James Bond (but even by his standards loses credibility), and thereafter relies a good deal on the appeal of its complacent-looking stars. An adaptation of a cult 1970's TV series that took somewhat ironic advantage of the Women's Lib era (the Angels seem independent but their bosses are still men) now adapted for the Spice Girls generation; an almost unwatchable sequel, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle came along in 2003.

Written by: Ryan Rowe, Ed Solomon, John August (and others), based on the TV series by
Ivan Goff, Ben Roberts.
Producers: Leonard Goldberg, Drew Barrymore, Nancy Juvonen.
Director: Joseph McGinty Nichol ("McG").
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Bill Murray, Sam Rockwell, Tim Curry, Kelly Lynch, Crispin Glover, Matt LeBlanc, Luke Wilson, Tom Green, John Forsythe (voice only).
Photography: Russell Carpenter.
Music: Edward Shearmur.
Music Supervision: John Houlihan.
Production Design: J. Michael Riva.



CHARLIE'S ANGELS. Girls that just wanna have fun.

Jul 20th
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave
GB 1968. Warner Bros/Seven Arts/Hammer. 92m.

Count Dracula wreaks vengeance on the priest who has isolated him from his castle.
The lines are showing in this clumsily scripted addition to the Hammer horror cycle, where the usual hard-working economical production values lack a good deal of atmosphere, despite the best that acting and art direction can do.

Written by: John Elder (Anthony Hinds).
Producer: Aida Young.
Director: Freddie Francis.
Starring: Christopher Lee, Veronica Carlson, Rupert Davies, Barry Andrews, Barbara Ewing, Ewan Hooper, Marion Mathie, Michael Ripper, George A. Cooper.
Photography: Arthur Grant.
Music: James Bernard.
Art Direction: Bernard Robinson.

July 9th
The Ghoul**
GB 1933. Gaumont British. 79m. bw

A dying Eqyptologist believes in the afterlife with a valuable gemstone, which others are also after.
Stilted, slightly eccentric but very watchable British horror with some memorable moments in the Frankenstein tradition, and a brilliant cast.

Written by: Leonard Hines, L. Du Garde Peach, Roland Pertwee, John Hastings Turner, Rupert Downey, Frank King, from his novel.
Producer: Michael Balcon.
Director: T. Hayes Hunter.
Starring: Boris Karloff, Cedric Hardwicke, Ernest Thesiger, Dorothy Hyson, Anthony Bushell, Kathleen Harrison, Harold Houth, D.A. Clarke-Smith, Ralph Richardson, George Relph.
Photography: Gunther Krampf.
Music: Louis Levy.

July 4th
Let the Right One In** (15)
Prince Charles Cinema

Swe 2008. Filmpool Noro Sveriges Television SVI/WAG/Efti. 115m.

A 12-year old boy who is being threatened by school bullies finds help and encouragement from a strange girl of the same age who is actually a centuries-old vampire.
Unusual horror fable, a pre-adolescent vampire love story in effect, set in grimy 1970s Scandinavian locations. Some of the cutting (and the film as a whole) could have been shorter and sharper, but also nicely understated in thoughtful arthouse cinema fashion, with only brief concessions to the genre when a female victim of the child vampire also becomes a member of the Undead.

Written by: John Ajvie Lindqvist, from his novel.
Producers: John Nordling, Carl Molinder.
Director: Tomas Alfredson.
Starring: Kare Hedebrant, Lina Llanderson, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl, Karin Berqquist, Peter Calberg, Ika Nord, Mikael Rahn.
Photography: Hoyte Van Hoytema.
Music: Johan Soderqvist.

June 29th
The Pianist*** Fra/Ger/GB/Pol 2002. RP/Heritage/Studio Babelsberg/Runteam/Canal+/Telewizia Poland. 150m.

In 1939 a renowned Jewish pianist has his life turned upside down by the Nazis, loses his family to the extermination camps, but survives the war hiding in the remnants of the ghetto thanks to a sympathetic German officer.
Grim but powerful and brilliantly observed Holocaust memoir given vivid treatment by Polanski, himself a Holocaust survivor, who avoids any autobiography (which would have been too painful), but instead looks at another survivor's story with that detached form of sadism that is prevalent through much of his other work. In its way, less sentimental and much more authentic than Schindler's List.

Written by: Ronald Harwood, from the book by Wladyslav Szpilman.
Producers: Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde, Roman Polanski.
Director: Roman Polanski.
Starring: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Emilia Fox, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Ed Stoppard, Julia Rayner, Jessica Kate Meyer.
Photography: Pawel Edelman.
Music: Wojciech Kilar.
Producstion Design: Allan Starski.