• Friday 24 September for 2 weeks

HERO (12A)

(China 2002) dir.Zhang Yimou 99m. Subtitles.
Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Donnie Yen, Daoming Chen.

“In third century BC China, an assassin called Nameless (Jet Li) visits a warlord (Daoming Chen) to describe how he's killed three of the tyrant's most terrifying enemies. But the truth may not be as he says… The comparisons are inevitable, so let's get them out of the way. HERO is a better film than CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON. Ang Lee's sword-centred melodrama was, for most, their first taste of wushu – a Chinese film and fiction genre which loosely translates as ‘heroic warrior‘ – and it certainly delivered on the lyrical action front. HERO, though, is the real deal. Zhang Yimou, who has emerged as one of the East's most visually adventurous directors, and cinematographer Christopher Doyle have between them raised Joel Silver's famous action bar too high for Hollywood's current reach. Indeed, it's an irony that a director of the Fifth Generation should now have pushed the craft of action way beyond anything that commercially-driven Western cinema has so far delivered. It's impossible not to think of ballet as Yimou's camera tracks his characters through their airborne slaughter, with bodies hanging against the sky in graceful, perfect compositions. The fights form a consummately sustained crescendo: a contest in a rain-drenched chess arena, daringly conducted mostly in the protagonists' minds, is followed by a frantic battle in an autumnal forest in which the blood-red duellists swoop among an orange blizzard of falling leaves, before Yimou abruptly switches the colour palette to greens and blues as the pair of assassins dance a pas de deux above the glassy waters of a placid lake.You've seen a lot, but you've never seen anything like this. You'll be hard-pressed to find anything as visually dazzling in cinemas this year. In fact you'll be hard pressed to find anything as visually dazzling as this in cinemas ever. And since Yimou has described it as a mere rehearsal for his next run at wushu (HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS), there's more to come..."
(Adam Smith, Empire)

• 1 Oct for 1 week & 15 Oct for 1 week

THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES (15)

US/Argentina/Chile/Peru 2004) dir.Walter Salles 126m. Subtitles.
Gael Garcia Bernal, Rodrigo de la Serna, Mia Maestro, Gustavo Bueno, Jorge Chiarella.

“Forget everything you thought you knew about the Ché Guevara. Instead, this is the story of the two young Argentinian students who spent seven months in 1952 travelling the length of their continent as close friends and curious witnesses to chronic inequality and artificial borders. This is a film about integrity, honesty, friendship, citizenship, political awakening and how an exceptional road journey sowed the seeds of the future experiences of 23-year-old Ernesto ‘Ché‘ Guevara (Bernal) and 29-year-old Alberto Granado (De la Serna). Walter Salles' camera is that of a documentary-maker; it subtly captures the real people and places that the two encountered along the way, while also presenting an intelligent witty and human script.”
(Dave Calhoun, Time Out)

• Friday 8 October for 2 weeks

BRIDE & PREJUDICE (12A)

(Br/US 2004) dir.Gurinder Chadha 110m.
Aishwarya Rai, Martin Henderson, Daniel Gillies, Naveen Andrews, Namrata Shirodkar, Indira Varma, Nadira Babbar.

“Swapping corsets for saris, and polite pianoforte for the bhangra beat, director Gurinder Chadha reinvigorates Jane Austen's 'Pride And Prejudice' with fun and flamboyance. Starring Aishwarya Rai and Martin Henderson, BRIDE & PREJUDICE marries a quintessentially English romance with classic Bollywood bombast – different in style yet both trading in the discord of love across borders. What Chadha loses in the sly subtext that made Austen's novel so compelling, she makes up for with wit and mischief. When Lalita Bakshi (Aishwarya Rai) meets Californian blueblood Will Darcy (Martin Henderson) at a wedding in her Indian hometown, it's hate at first sight. She accuses him of being an imperialist snob and he brushes her off as a coddled village girl, blinkered to the ways of the world. Still they find themselves drawn together in a series of fractious but increasingly flirtatious encounters. Chadha cannily entwines other aspects of Austen's novel, including a wickedly funny turn by Nadira Babbar as Lalita's overbearing mother – keen to marry off her four daughters to nice Indians boys. Meanwhile, Darcy's half-brother Wickham (Daniel Gillies) messes with Lalita's affections and threatens to bring dishonour upon the family. Then there's the hilariously over-the-top Nitin Ganatra, a stereotypical 'coconut' who's shopping for a wife to take back to LA. The musical sets are lavish while sending up the Bollywood tendency for melodrama – one of the numbers, a pyjama-clad knees-up, brings to mind the Sandra Dee song from GREASE. And while Rai and Henderson don't generate the electricity quite befitting their suppressed passion, inherent charm wins out over their characters' foibles. For the most part, BRIDE & PREJUDICE is a romantic comedy that amply delivers on its eastern promise.”
(Stella Papamichael, BBCi)

• Friday 5 November for 2 weeks

MY SUMMER OF LOVE (15)

(Br 2004) dir.Pawel Pawlikowski 86m.
Natalie Press, Emily Blunt, Paddy Considine.

“In the movies, as in life, the most delicate things are the hardest to articulate. Friendship innocent of suffering, affection that's not a vast, all-conquering love... these things test the limits of representation: how do you say, simply, that you're fond of someone? That you like having them around, and you suspect it might not last, life being so complex and all – but you're happy to enjoy it, for however long it lasts? Film traditionally favours the grand emotions, not the simple ones, and only a few directors have succeeded in depicting the commonplace nature of ordinary emotional bonds, the mystery and intensity of a single shared moment. It is, you suspect, a matter of life experiences, and what might, for lack of a better term, be called wisdom. Pawel Pawlikowski's third feature, the long-awaited follow-up to his LAST RESORT is the story of such a friendship. It traces the entire arc – from its shy, tentative beginnings, through its growing sense of intimacy and trust, to the event which precipitates its decline. It starts almost accidentally and ends, as so many of these things do, for no good reason. And all in the course of a few days, or weeks – the film's chronology is unclear. Suffice to say it's summer, and something of the hazy indolence of those days creeps into the narrative, which is loose-limbed and allusive. Its focus is two 16-year-old girls, whose drift into friendship occurs despite, or perhaps because of, the obvious differences in their backgrounds. (Mona is local, working-class, clever and restless; Tamsin moneyed, Southern, well-educated and cynical.) There is a sense that, as in any good relationship, each somehow completes the other, and the film's genius is to capture the simple beguilement of a new presence: how one might be surprised and excited by another. And how that feeling might possibly grow, to encompass the sexual curiosity of youth. The plotting is, by definition, almost non-existent: structured as a series of moments, its power cumulative rather than linear, the film depends heavily on the strength of its performances, which are note-perfect: newcomers Nathalie Press and Emily Blunt are each superb, in radically different styles, and are lent fine support by Paddy Considine, excellent as ever as Mona's older brother Phil – a born-again Fundamentalist Christian, and an increasingly disturbing presence, single-mindedly intent upon salvation. Pawlikowski favours a dreamy visual style, suited to both the rural setting, and its air of languid eroticism. It is beautifully visualised: as a director, he favours abrupt transitions and a palpable intimacy with his subjects, deriving perhaps from his background in documentaries. Nevertheless, despite its vaguely European tone, this is indisputably a local work: British cinema at its most sophisticated and superb. Watching, the word 'masterpiece' comes to mind.“ (Edinburgh Film Festival Programme)

• Friday 12 November for 1 week

THE CORPORATION (PG)

(Canada 2003) dirs. Jennifer Abbott & Mark Achbar 144m.
Documentary

“While unabashedly reproachful in regard to the corporate model's history, THE CORPORATION avoids a sense of excessively partisan rhetoric. That's due in part to the impressive range of commentators, but also to a bold organisational scheme that lets focus jump around in interconnective, humourous, hit-and-run fashion. The film's onscreen ‘map‘ is a grid of shifting images, with each ‘box‘ representing a subthesis (‘Planet Inc.‘, ‘The Price of Whistleblowing‘, etc.). It zeroes in on one for each chaptered sections. The fact that it doesn't hit every item at length underlines the pervasive notion that corporations are a bottomless topic in every sense. Starting point, in fact, is the 1886 U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively gave corporations – hitherto strictly controlled, largely time-limited entities mostly assembled for public-works projects – the same rights as individuals. The decision opened a Pandora's box of potential abuses in terms of monopoly, without moral scruples, unchecked political influence, et al. If the documentary's reach sounds almost impossibly broad, credit is due co-creators Achbar (producer/director), Jennifer Abbott (director/editor) and Joel Balkan (writer) for creating a package at once deliberately overwhelming, sharp-eyed and consistently engaging. Talking-head interviews are salted into a heady mix of news telecasts, breaking event footage, computer graphics and much archival arcana. Latter includes vintage commercials, industrial training reels and propagandistic ‘soft news‘ plants, rendering pic a delightfully ironic ‘That's Entertainment!‘ for corporate ‘perception management‘ through the last century. Forty-two principal commentators represent a Who's Who of spokesmanship for myriad key points of view. Seriousness of related human rights, global warming, rich/poor gap, governmental corruption, etc., concerns is amply underlined here, even as whirlwind progress allows for just brief weighing of any specific consequence. This film is outstandingly kitted out in every respect, with special kudos due Abbott's extraordinary editing effort.” (Dennis Harvey, Variety)