• Friday 20 February for 1 week

LOST IN TRANSLATION (15)

(US 2003) dir.Sofia Coppola 102m.
Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi Akiko Takeshita

“Contemporary Tokyo, and Bob Harris (Murray) is having an out-of-body experience. Nothing says disconnection so much as giant billboards of yourself commending Suntory whiskey to a foreign audience when the shoot behind the ads leaves you stranded in a sterile hotel bar nursing your loneliness over several glasses of the same. That’s when he meets Charlotte (Johansson), a soul-searching young New -Yorker idling time while her photographer husband disappears on assignment. She recognises a fellow castaway, and soon the two are trading quips and confidences. Coppola’s film is a deft manifold delight. Johansson again impresses as an old head on young shoulders, but it’s Murray’s infinitely modulated performance that underpins the film. Cinematic cherry blossom.”
(Time Out)

• Friday 20 February for 1 week

DOGVILLE (12A)

(Den/Fr/Swe/Br/Ger/Hol 2003) dir.Lars Von Trier 178m.
Paul Bettany, Lauren Bacall, James Caan, Ben Gazzara, Philip Baker Hall, Nicole Kidman, Chloë Sevigny, Stellan Skarsgård.

“Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier doesn't make bold statements or push the envelope – he hurls cinematic hand grenades. Every film he's made has been nothing short of explosive, but Von Trier isn't just all bombast and shock tactics. That's why it's been so hard for his detractors to write him off. For every shocking ripple, there's a bruising, galvanising moment that says something painfully honest about the human condition. From THE IDIOTS to DANCER IN THE DARK, the power to shock has always been there, but never without something more meaningful behind it. The very set-up of DOGVILLE is a shock: it's all set on a soundstage that doubles for a small town in The Rocky Mountains. There are chalk lines where there should be houses, a black backdrop where there should be a sky, and a spatial simplicity so stark that it almost burns. Into this town comes Grace (Nicole Kidman in one of her finest and most committed performances), who's on the run from the mob. The townsfolk generously take her in, but they soon start to take their favours out in trade, working Grace to the bone as the town slave, and then turning on her with genteel ugliness. DOGVILLE is loaded with subtext: Von Trier seems to be laying waste to the sentimental hokum that surrounds smalltown America, and striking right at the heart of this most ambiguous of nations. But he also delivers a stunning piece of cinema, driven by painfully real characters, a compelling narrative and an unforgettable climax. In short, it's something close to a masterpiece.”
(Erin Free, Filmink)

• Friday 27 February for 1 week

VIZONTELE TUUBA (12A)

(Turkey 2003) dir.Yilmaz Erdogan 111m. Subtitles.
Yilmaz Erdogan, Demet Akbag, Altan Erkekli, Tarik Akan, Tuba Ünsal.

“A colossal popular success, both in Turkey and among the diaspora, this is the phonetically playful sequel to 2000’s comedy drama VIZONTELE. In the original, the arrival of a television in the eponymous backwater town in the country’s Kurdish South East during the 1974 Cyprus crisis led to social upheavals and realignments. The formula and much of the cast are again in place, but this time the action unfolds against the 1980 military coup and the provocative incomer is exiled former official Guner Sernikli who, along with his wife and beautiful daughter Tuuba, arrives to administer a non-existent library... The scene is thus set for multiple storylines, good-natured banter and a burgeoning romance between Tuuba and the town’s loveable Mr Fixit (star comedian Yilmaz Erdogan). What’s fascinating is how much Erdogan gets away with. There’s real political comment (notably with the culminating mass deportations of the town activists) and, with much of the political class of ‘80 still in place, this is no safe nostalgia pic. That this is couched in mass market terms is pivotal. Tellingly, the pic constantly sides with the community over individual or factional grievances. Full of resonant, incidental detail, satire of both military and civil hierarchies and an often evocative sense of the troubled landscape, the implications are significant. Sentimental it might be, but it would be a cynical audience indeed who would begrudge such celluloid consolations to those whose history this shows.
(Gareth Evans, Time Out)

• Friday 5 March for 1 week

21 GRAMS (15)

(US 2003) dir.Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu 125m.
Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo, Clea DuVall, Danny Huston, Paul Calderon.

“Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu burst onto the world’s screens with his impressive debut feature AMORES PERROS, and his much anticipated second film takes some of the same preoccupations – life, death, guilt, redemption – and paints them large. 21 GRAMS alludes to the amount of weight supposedly lost by each person at the time of death, which some people believe is a consequence of the soul leaving the body. this link between the spiritual and the physical is the driving force in this powerful story of three intersecting lives, written by AMORES PERROS screenwriter Guillermo Arriarga. A tragic incident sparks the tinder, bringing together a terminally ill mathematics professor (Sean Penn), a single mother battling her grief and her addictions (Naomi Watts), and an ex-con in search of redemption (Benicio Del Toro). Technically the film is exhilarating, shot with an immediacy and rawness that grips from the opening frames. Structurally complex, it moves boldly backwards and forwards through time, jumping between narratives and trusting the audience to keep up. Remarkably, the film has as much substance as it has style, its devastating emotional charge carried by the three extraordinary central performances. Adventurous, uncompromising film-making.”
(Sandra Hebron, London Film Festival programme)

• Friday 19 March for 2 weeks

ZATOICHI (18)

Jap 2003) dir. Takeshi Kitano 115m. Subtitles.
Beat Takeshi, Tadanobu Asano, Michiyo Ogusu, Yui Natsukawa,
Guadalcanal Taka, Daigoro Tachibana, Yuko Daike, Ittoku Kishibe.

“Switching from the melancholy lyricism of his last feature, DOLLS, Takeshi Kitano is in a playful mood in his first period piece. This 19th century samurai tale resurrects the title figure, a blind travelling masseur and gambler who doubles as a lethal swordsman. He was the protagonist of a popular Japanese television and film series that ended more than 10 years ago. Having established his reputation primarily with distinctive contemporary yakuza films like SONATINE and HANA-BI, Kitano in ZATOICHI turns to pop culture with one of the country's most iconic figures, a kind of Zen Zorro. But Kitano is far too idiosyncratic a director simply to haul the swordsman out of retirement. Instead, he remodels the character – which he also plays, under his acting moniker Beat Takeshi – to fit his own stoically cool screen persona. Kitano's Zatoichi is clearly on the side of good, but remains a detached loner, while the character traditionally befriended the townspeople he protected. The director-star also gives Zatoichi a new look, with platinum-blond hair and a blood-red cane that sheathes his ever-ready sword, and even toys with the notion Zatoichi may be faking sightlessness. Perhaps Kitano's greatest innovation here is two geishas that cry out for their own spin-off film: Okino (Yuko Daike) and her cross-dressing brother Osei (Daigoro Tachibana). The dangerous beauties travel the country, surviving by working as courtesans while they attempt to track down and kill the bandits that butchered their family and stole their fortune. The "sisters" cross paths with Zatoichi in a remote mountain farm community where the townsfolk are being terrorized by the extortionist Ginzo gang. Having grown more invincible since the recruitment of ace samurai ronin Hattori (Tadanobu Asano), the Ginzo clan is now systematically wiping out its opposition. As the clan tightens the screws on the villagers, Zatoichi is prompted to step in, going up against formidable killing machine Hattori. Kitano's fondness for goofball comedy has been a blight on films like GETTING ANY? and KIKUJIRO, but here the sly humour and knowing performances strike a winning note.”
(David Rooney, Variety)

• Friday 2 April for 2 weeks

MONSTER (18)

(US 2003) dir.Patty Jenkins 109m.
Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Scott Wilson.

“Two documentaries by Nick Broomfield may have told the Aileen Wuornos story vis a vis the American justice system and media, but Patty Jenkins tells the human story of the woman in MONSTER. Not as grim as might be expected, the film is nevertheless a harrowing account of the last months of Wuornos’ freedom from 1989 to 1990 in Daytona Beach, Florida, and the six murders she commits. MONSTER also follows the love affair Wuornos has with Selby Wall, a lesbian battling with her parents who are trying to rid her of her homosexuality. Was Wuornos a monster, the film asks, or just a victim of the brutal society around her. Newcomer Jenkins makes a brave and balanced attempt at giving some context to the sordid life of the woman, who was abandoned by her parents and working as a prostitute by the age of 13. But what sets the film apart from any other true life story is the central performance by Charlize Theron who tears into the character of Wuornos with unexpected ferocity and positively becomes her. The screen goddess gained 30lbs to play the role, wore some complexion makeup and a mouthpiece but no prosthetics, and is almost unrecognisable in the part, assuming body movements, gestures and facial tics befitting the character. And, while capturing the external crudeness which Wuornos showed the world in court, Theron also injects the character with a bruised and brutish tenderness like a dog licking its wounds after years of fighting. It’s a raw, unrefined and mesmerising performance which has lead to awards recognition and an Oscar nomination.”
(Mike Goodridge, Screen International)

• Friday 23 April for 2 weeks

KILL BILL VOLUME 2 (*)

(US 2004) dir.Quentin Tarantino (running time tbc)
Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Sonny Chiba, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, LaTanya Richardson, Michael Jai White, Woo-ping Yuen.

The second film in the two-part KILL BILL series. The list started at five – now it's down to three. After successfully killing Oren-Ishii and Vernita Green, the Bride continues in her journey of revenge to kill the remaining three: Budd, Elle Driver, and finally, Bill. But after recently discovering that her daughter B.B. is still alive, the Bride chooses to kill for love, rather than revenge. Complications arise however when the Bride is captured and buried alive, by someone whom she meant to kill first.