Sun 6 Aug • No double bill

Sun 20 Aug • Double bill

TIME TO LEAVE (18) 2.15

(France 2005) dir.François Ozon 81m. Subtitles.
Melvil Poupaud, Jeanne Moreau, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Daniel Duval, Marie Rivière.

“Romain is a 31-year-old gay fashion photographer and not the most likeable man in all Paris. Too bad, then, when he is diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer and given just a few months to live… How to deal with this news? How to consider one’s suddenly shortened life? Ozon’s treatment of these questions is elliptical, essential and defiantly in the first-person.”
(Dave Calhoun, Time Out)

+ C.R.A.Z.Y. (15) 3.55

(Canada 2005) dir.Jean-Marc Vallée 127m. Subtitles.
Marc-André Grondin, Michel Côté, Danielle Proulx, Émile Vallée, Maxime Tremblay.

“It all begins to go wrong for eight-year-old Zachary when his father finds him in a dress. Fast-forward seven years to 1975 and teenage Zac is agog over Ziggy Stardust and his cousin’s boyfriend. A zippy, colourful coming-of-age tale buoyed along by engaging central turns, iconic pop tunes and a pleasingly meandering narrative.”
(Ben Walters, Time Out)

Sun 27 Aug • Michael Haneke double bill

CODE UNKNOWN (Code Inconnu) (15) 1.15

(France/Germany 2000) dir.Michael Haneke. Subtitles.
Juliette Binoche, Thierry Neuvic, Alexandre Hamidi, Ona Lu Yenke, Luminita Gheorghiu.

CODE UNKNOWN follows the destinies of diverse characters witness to one seemingly inconsequential action – a disaffected youth tossing a paper wrapper into the lap of a Romanian woman begging. It's a rewarding strategy that produces a multi-perspective portrait of Western Europe as a society predicated on lies, inequality and communication breakdown. Moreover, the film's emotional force should finally give the lie to Haneke's reputation as a coldly academic film-maker.”
(Geoff Andrew, Time Out)

+ HIDDEN (Caché) (15) 3.30

(Fr/Aust 2005) dir.Michael Haneke 118m. Subtitles.
Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou, Annie Girardot.

Haneke’s latest opens with a lingering, static shot of a bourgeois Parisian home. It’s an illusion: we are watching a video that’s been sent anonymously to the owners of this house, Georges and Anne Laurent. For the Laurents, it’s the start of a horrific upset... A smart marriage of the thriller genre with a compendium of strong ideas about guilt, racism, recent French history and cinema itself, this is an unsettling, self-reflective masterpiece.”
(Dave Calhoun, Time Out)

Sun 3 Sep • Double bill

THANK YOU FOR SMOKING (15) 2.15

(US 2006) dir.Jason Reitman 92m.
Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Cameron Bright, Adam Brody, Sam Elliott, Katie Holmes.

“’Anyone who smokes in a movie is either a psychopath or a European’, according to Nick Naylor. As the chief spokesman for a big tobacco corporation, he is arguably the former, but Jason Reitman's ingenious satire casts Naylor – played with great panache by Aaron Eckhart – as the hero. This is a story of spin, of Naylor's witty attempts to justify the indefensible products of his bosses while playing the fatherly role model to his 12-year-old son.”
(Paul Arendt, BBCi Films)

+ FRIENDS WITH MONEY (15) 4.05

(US 2006) dir.Nicole Holofcener 88m.
Jennifer Aniston, Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack, Catherine Keener, Scott Caan.

“Cash can't buy you happiness – or can it? Indie filmmaker Nicole Holofcener (LOVELY & AMAZING) leaves this open to question in this engaging comedy drama. As teacher-turned-maid Olivia, Jennifer Aniston is down on her luck and down on herself, but her wealthy pals are just as wanting in self-esteem. It's a delicately crafted script full of witty vignettes although it does feel oddly lopsided because the supporting characters are more roundly portrayed.”
(Stella Papamichael, BBCi Films)

Sun 10 Sep • Double bill

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED (12A) 1.30

(US 2005) dir.Liev Schreiber 105m.
Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz, Boris Leskin.

“Jonathan Safran Foer is a collector of little reminders of everything that happens to him. When his grandmother dies, she leaves him an ancient photo of his grandfather and some woman in a field in the Ukraine, so off he goes to find out the story. He hires the local tour guide Alex and his grandfather to drive him in search of his history. The story is told as a series of screwball adventures as this oddball trio takes a slightly surreal road trip through the Ukrainian countryside. Schreiber films this gorgeously, with style and energy that capture the landscapes and the culture. While Wood's performance is intensely internalised and emotional, Hutz and Leskin provide the energy and hilarity.”
(Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall)

+ FATELESS (Sorstalanság) (12A) 3.30

(Hung/Ger/UK 2005) dir.Lajos Koltai.140m. Subtitles.
Marcell Nagy, Áron Dimény, Daniel Craig, Zsolt Dér, András M. Kecskés.

“Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész’s screen adaptation of his semi-autobiographical novel is a major addition to the cinema of the Holocaust. Since Hungary was nominally a German ally, it wasn’t until 1944 that deportations began to affect Budapest’s largely assimilated Jewish population, which in part explains 14-year-old Gyuri Köves’s initial disbelief as he’s packed into a train for Auschwitz. Measured, unsentimental, and of a sustained intensity appropriate to but never exploitative of the situation, Lajos Koltai’s directorial début explores the horrifying ramifications of perseverance in the face of incomprehensible horror. Relatively few films touching on the Holocaust are worthy of their subject; this one is.”
(Trevor Johnston, Time Out)

Sun 17 Sep • Double bill

FORTY SHADES OF BLUE (15) 1.45

(US 2005) dir.Ira Sachs 110m.
Dina Korzun, Rip Torn, Darren E. Burrows, Andrew Henderson.

“Ageing Memphis music producer Alan James is a planet around which his family – his grown-up son Michael and his younger Russian girlfriend Laura – have no choice but to orbit. Matters come to a head when Michael visits the family home after a long absence... Sach’s second film is a sensitive and insightful study of the dark shadows cast by powerful men, and the gaping gulf between their public and private lives. Torn does a great job with the character of Alan but it’s Laura proves the most fascinating.”
(Dave Calhoun, Time Out)

+ LITTLE FISH (15) 3.55

(Australia 2006) dir.Rowan Woods 114m.
Cate Blanchett, Sam Neill, Hugo Weaving, Martin Henderson, Dustin Nguyen.

“Tracy is trying to get a bank to loan her the cash that would enable her to buy from her boss the Sydney video store in which she works. Neither the banks nor, for that matter, her mum Janelle have much faith in her future; they’re clearly worried she might succumb to the heroin addiction she painfully put behind her five years ago. It’s a sober, sensitive film about degrees of dependency, grief, guilt, recrimination and recuperation. ”
(Geoff Andrew, Time Out)

Sun 24 Sep • Double bill

THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST (12A) 1.00

(Finland 2002) dir.Aki Kaurismäki 97m. Subtitles.
Markku Peltola, Kati Outinen, Juhani Niemelä, Kaija Pakarinen, Sakari Kuosmanen.

“On arrival in Helsinki, a man is viciously mugged and given up for dead – but miraculously revives; without memory or any idea of who he is, the man wanders off into the city, moves in with the homeless living in freight containers around the harbour, and eventually begins to put his life back together. A typically droll, deadpan comedy from Kaurismäki, complete with nods to '50s B-movies, rock'n'roll, and fairytale romance, but also addressing social and political issues with the lightest of touches. Beautifully tender, funny and idiosyncratic, right down to some lovely stuff featuring a predictably melancholy dog.” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out)

+ THE DEATH OF MR LAZARESCU (15) 3.00

(Rumania 2005) dir.Cristi Puiu 154m. Subtitles.
Ion Fiscuteanu, Luminita Gheorghiu, Gabriel Spahiu, Doru Ana, Dana Dogaru.

“Cristi Puiu’s purpose is to show, almost in actual time over one night in Bucharest, the indignity, sadness and sheer mundanity with which an unexceptional, lonely 62-year-old man can leave this earth within hours of reporting a suspicious headache to the emergency services. A shadow hangs over Puiu’s handheld, docu-realist style and it’s a contemplative one. Puiu has a sensitive touch for character and his overriding interest is human, not political. The film’s real success is that Puiu impresses both with his compassion for human behaviour and his tight grip on realist, documentary-style filmmaking.”
(Dave Calhoun, Time Out)

Sun 1 Oct • Antonioni double bill

ZABRISKIE POINT (15) 1.15
(US 1970) dir.Michelangelo Antonioni 106m.
Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin, Rod Taylor, Paul Fix, G.D. Spradlin, Kathleen Cleaver.

Antonioni’s second American feature tells of a love affair between a couple of radical students against the backdrop of the late sixties student revolt in America. Highly controversial at the time of its release, the film – endowed with an amazing soundtrack by Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead among others – is now celebrated as a cult piece that has aged better than many earlier hits.

+ THE PASSENGER (Professione: Reporter) (12A) 3.30

(Italy/US 2006) dir.Michelangelo Antonioni 126m. New print.
Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider, Jenny Runacre, Ian Hendry, Stephen Berkoff.

“The last in a trio of English-language films Antonioni made for MGM, the dazzling THE PASSENGER has been kept out of cinematic distribution for the past two decades. Reissued here in a newly restored version, it showcases one of Jack Nicholson finest ever screen performances. He plays the burnt-out reporter Locke, who exchanges identities in Chad with a dead acquaintance. THE PASSENGER explores the impossibility of evading our own personal and national histories, and of truly knowing ourselves and our loved ones. As Locke is pursued across Europe by the authorities and by business associates, Antonioni draws on certain thriller conventions: there are car chases, assassinations, and a female romantic interest, in the form of Maria Schneider's resourceful unnnamed student. Thanks to Luciano Tovoli's magnificent cinematography of the African desert and the arid Spanish countryside, we gain a potent sense of Locke's internal emptiness.”
(Tom Dawson, BBCi Films)