• Friday 2 June for 1 week

ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM (15)

(US 2005) dir.Alex Gibney 109m. Documentary.

“The corporate scandal of the century comes under the spotlight in ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM, a movie that's as much disaster flick as documentary. Likened by one interviewee to ‘a house of cards built over a pool of gasoline’, US energy giant Enron went from boom to bankruptcy in the space of 18 months, brought down by hubris and hokey accounting. With Oscar-nominated clarity and verve, director Alex Gibney lays out the whole gory story. He isn't the first one to tell it: the film is based on Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind's bestseller of the same name. The potentially dry material makes a smooth transition from page to screen. With Michael Moore-like savvy, Gibney accommodates the audience with pacey editing, lush cinematography and even an ear-pleasing soundtrack. Despite these feature comforts, you'll be left shocked and sobered by the calamity that unfolds. At the front of the firing line are Enron execs Ken Lay (nicknamed 'Kenny Boy' by George W Bush) and Jeff Skilling, who led the Houston-based company (America's seventh largest) as it cooked the books on a scale that in 2001 cost thousands of employees their jobs and retirement funds. Yet there are several others named and shamed (sometimes implicitly); it all adds up to a piercing indictment of an out-of-control corporate culture that feeds on greed. You won't believe your ears when you hear audiotapes of traders fiddling with California's energy crisis like it's a game of Battleships. Alas, this is an all-too-true cautionary tale for the 21st century.”
(Matthew Leyland, BBCi Films)

BRICK (15)

(US 2005) dir.Rian Johnson 110m.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Nora Zehetner, Noah Segan, Noah Fleiss, Emilie de Ravin, Meagan Good, Matt O'Leary, Richard Roundtree, Brian White, Lucas Babin.

“The last year has given us several contemporary spins on the genre: self-referential pastiche in KISS KISS BANG BANG, comic-book ultraviolence in SIN CITY and now, with BRICK, a patter-heavy gumshoe procedural with a high-school setting. The plot is as chewy as the genre demands, with Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) setting out to find and then avenge his drug-using ex Emily (Emilie de Ravin) after he receives an uncharacteristic plea for help. True to noir form, his pursuit takes him across boundaries of high, low and outlaw society, with an archetypal rogue’s gallery mapped on to the high school ecosystem with satisfying facility. But it’s Gordon-Levitt who cements the whole thing: understated to the point of near-invisibility, his Brendan still has killer smarts, balls of steel, a natty line in put-downs and the shrugging acknowledgement of all Hammett-style heroes that the price of knowledge is violence visited on the body. BRICK is surprisingly plausible. Shooting on his home turf of southern California, Johnson eschews conventionally noirish cityscapes for flat, muted expanses and exploits the sinister potential of the everyday, generating almost Lynchian unease through the sense of unspeakable secrets eavesdropped upon. This is heightened by the film’s canny use of sound. It’s a characteristic moment: violent, chuckling and insisting to be taken on its own terms.”
(Ben Walters, Time Out)

• Friday 9 June for 2 weeks

OFFSIDE (PG)

(Iran 2006) dir.Jafar Panahi 91m. Subtitles.
Sima Mobarak-Shahi, Shayesteh Irani, Ayda Sadeqi, Golnaz Farmani, Mahnaz Zabihi
Nazanin Sediq-zadeh, Melika Shafahi, Safdar Samandar.

“Teenage girls, all ardent soccer fans, masquerade as boys to crash the Iran-Bahrain game at Tehran stadium in the hilariously offbeat OFFSIDE. In his most accessible and spontaneous picture, ranking Iranian director Jafar Panahi reveals unsuspected comic gifts barely visible in his dramatic festival winners THE WHITE BALLOON, THE CIRCLE, and CRIMSON GOLD. Providing continuity is the strong underlying social theme of mistreated femmes deprived of basic rights – here, the right to root for their team. Even as it cleverly spotlights the absurdity of Iran's strict segregation policies toward the female sex, OFFSIDE also describes a surprisingly rebellious world of young people who are not ready to buy into their country's imposed social values. The ensemble acting by the non-pro cast relies on each girl embodying a different type, from the gentle schoolgirl doing something naughty to the masculine toughie who looks and talks like a boy. Each is so comically down-to-earth she effortlessly grabs audience sympathy. The film's great virtue is its spontaneity, very different from the careful control of the director's earlier work, but very much in synch with the hypercharged stadium atmosphere.”
(Deborah Young, Variety)

• Friday 16 June for 1 week

WAH-WAH (15)

(UK 2006) dir.Richard E Grant 99m.
Gabriel Byrne, Emily Watson, Julie Walters, Nicholas Hoult, Miranda Richardson, Zachary Fox, Celia Imrie.

“For his writing-directing debut, actor Grant puts his childhood on screen. This is a deeply personal story about growing up under the microscope of an expat community. In 1969 Swaziland, young Ralph (Zachary Fox) watches helplessly as his mother Lauren (Miranda Richardson) runs off with another man. His father Harry (Gabriel Byrne), unable to cope, sends Ralph away to boarding school. A few years later Ralph (now Nicholas Hoult) returns to find an American stepmother Ruby (Emily Watson) stirring up things in the frightfully proper ‘hubbly-jubbly, wah-wah’ English enclave, as Britain prepares to hand the nation back to its king. Stress about his job, and continuing feelings for Lauren, drive Harry to drink. The entire cast is superb. Watson and Byrne are especially strong, creating intriguingly layered characters. Grant directs in a dusty, scruffy 1970s style that makes the most of his locations; it was filmed completely in Swaziland, which seems untouched by time. The relationships are so bracingly recognisable that the film will be difficult for some to watch – snobbery, feuding, indiscretions, denial, fury. And in the end, it's a remarkable ode to both an imperfect father and an emerging nation.”
(Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall)

UNITED 93 (15)

(US 2006) dir.Paul Greengrass 111m.
Ben Sliney, Trish Gates, Polly Adams, Cheyenne Jackson, Christian Clemenson, Khalid Abdalla, Omar Berdouni, David Alan Basche, Lewis Alsamari, Gary Commock.

“UNITED 93 follows, in roughly real time, the 81-minute flight that left Newark minutes before the World Trade Center was hit. In a naturalistic mode, we see the banal chitchat of passengers and crew arriving at the airport, and the beginning of the day at FAA headquarters and several other aviation control centres. As news of one, and then multiple hijackings filters through, the ineffectual bewilderment of the response on the ground becomes clear. In the air, we and the four terrorists await their moment. The on-board environment is realised with exceptional potency, the cinema transformed into an extension of the cabin through tight compositions and muscular sound design. When the hijack finally comes, it comes as a perverse relief. Some of the rhetoric that has grown up around flight UA93 presents the storming of the cockpit as some sort of principled decision to ground the plane before it can be used as a weapon. Here, the fighting back is presented, entirely plausibly and sympathetically, as a last, desperate attempt to live; not self-sacrifice but self-defence. UNITED 93 is powerful and sincere, giving reign to pity and fear without indulging jingoism or sentimentality. For that at least it deserves applause.”
(Ben Walters, Time Out)

• Friday 23 June for 3 weeks

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY (15)

(UK/Ireland 2006) dir.Ken Loach 127m.
Cillian Murphy, Pádraic Delaney, Liam Cunningham, Orla Fitzgerald, Laurence Barry, Damian Kearney, Roger Allam, John Crean, Frank Rourke, Myles Horgan, Mary Riordan.

Acclaimed director Ken Loach sticks to what he does best: telling political and family-led stories with a masterly touch. Ireland 1920: workers from field and country unite to form volunteer guerrilla armies to face the ruthless Black and Tan squads. Driven by a deep sense of duty and a love for his country, Damien (Cillian Murphy) abandons his burgeoning career as a doctor and joins his brother Teddy (Pádraic Delaney) in a dangerous and violent fight for freedom. Despite the apparent victory, civil war erupts and people, who fought side by side, find themselves pitted against one another, putting their loyalties to the ultimate test. Filmed on location in county Cork, this is Loach’s second period drama after LAND AND FREEDOM (1995) and there are similarities here with his earlier story of internal struggle among freedom fighters during the Spanish Civil War. A tense, absorbing and deeply moving approach to a very difficult history. Excellent storytelling and superb acting – an unforgettable film and winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

• Friday 7 July for 1 week

THE PASSENGER (12A)

(Italy/France/Spain 1975) dir.Michelangelo Antonioni 126m. New print.
Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider, Jenny Runacre, Ian Hendry.

“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)

• Friday 14 July for 2 weeks

ATOMISED (15)

(Germany 2006) dir.Oskar Roehler 109m. Subtitles.
Moritz Bleibtreu, Christian Ulmen, Martina Gedeck, Franka Potente, Nina Hoss, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Corinna Harfouch.

This adaptation of Michel Houellebecq's 1998 controversial novel, ‘Atomised’, has been much anticipated, and not without a reason: the French writer’s grotesque portrait of society acquired cult status almost immediately following its publication. Here, Roehler transposes the story to Berlin shortly after the millenium, and has gathered some of the best actors in contemporary German cinema. The film focuses on two very different half-brothers Michael (Christian Ulmen) and Bruno (Moritz Bleibtreu) and their disturbed sexuality after a chaotic childhood with a hippie mother (Nina Hoss) who only cared for her affairs. A molecular biologist, Michael is more interested in genes than women, while Bruno is obsessed with his sexual desires, but mostly finds his satisfaction with prostitutes. His pitiful life changes when he gets to know the experienced Christiane (Martina Gedeck). In the meantime, Michael meets Annabelle (Franka Potente) again, the love of his youth... A mature and understated investigation of the meaning of sex in society and how people’s obsession with it influences their lives to an unhealthy extent.

• Friday 21 July for 1 week

HEADING SOUTH (15)

(France/Canada 2005) dir.Laurent Cantet 108m. Subtitles.
Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, Louise Portal, Menothy Cesar, Lys Ambroise, Jackenson Pierre Olmo Diaz.

A challenging and gripping investigation of sexual tourism from the acclaimed director of HUMAN RESOURCES and TIME OUT. Haiti, late 1970s: It's a paradise of sea, sex and sun for three middle-aged North American women - Ellen, (Charlotte Rampling), Brenda (Karen Young) and Sue (Louise Portal) - going through an enchanted interlude, with little care for the neighbouring poverty nor 'Baby Doc' Duvalier's violent dictatorship. Lonely and forsaken in their native countries, here they can indulge in carnal exultation without shame thanks to handsome local young men they pay a few dollars. But outside the hotel's artificial bubble, it can't be long before Legba (Menothy César), the young man favoured by both Ellen and Brenda, falls foul of the all-powerful Macoute militia. This is arguably Cantet's most achieved, and certainly his most challenging feature. With a script based on three stories by the Haitian writer Dany Laferrière, the film sensitively but trenchantly takes a look into a complex nexus of sexual and political issues. Among the cast of this gripping, compact drama, Karen Young is terrific as the vulnerable Brenda, while as the ambivalent, possessive, highly knowing Ellen, Charlotte Rampling rides her current career renaissance with cool, abrasive brilliance.

• Friday 28 July for 2 weeks

CARS (PG)

(US 2006) dir.John Lasseter 121m. Animation.
Voices of Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt, Larry The Cable Guy, Cheech Marin, John Ratzenberger, Michael Keaton.

Academy Award-winning director John Lasseter and the technical wizards at Pixar Studios have already taken moviegoers into the magic realms of toys, bugs, monsters, fish, and superheroes. Now they hit the road with this fast-paced comedy adventure set in the world of cars, in which a hotshot, a rookie and a born-to-win race car, Lightning McQueen (voiced with cocky charm by Owen Wilson), learn that life is about the journey, not the finish line. Lightning is speeding on his way to California's Piston Cup Championship when he crashes into Radiator Springs, a small town on fabled but sleepy Route 66. Having wreaked havoc in the place, Lightning is sentenced to community service by judge Doc Hudson, a 1951 Hudson Hornet (voiced by the acting and racing legend Paul Newman). Meanwhile he gets to know the town’s offbeat characters – including Sally (Bonnie Hunt) a snazzy 2002 Porsche, and Mater, a rusty but trusty tow truck (Larry The Cable Guy) – who help him realise that there are more important things than trophies, fame and championship. Once more, Pixar have excelled at giving the scenery an atmosphere of its own. CARS shows how to blend brash comedy with technical prowess so that each enhances the other. A high octane delight for moviegoers of all ages.