Tag: review

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

It’s Labour Week­end and, as such, you can pret­ty much guar­an­tee that the weath­er will be filthy and the movies will be the place to be. So, what is there to choose from?

Nora Ephron made Sleep­less in Seat­tle back in the day (and wrote When Har­ry Met Sal­ly) and now she has cun­ning­ly merged two best-sell­ing books into one film — Julie & Julia. On one hand Julie Pow­ell (Amy Adams) attempts to cook every recipe in Julia Childs’ famous cook­book for a blog project and on the oth­er hand Meryl Streep por­trays the real Julia Childs and her trans­for­ma­tion from Amer­i­can intel­li­gence agent to one of the great cooks of Europe. Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house, Embassy (shar­ing with the Ital­ian Film Fes­ti­val), Light­house, Sky City Queens­gate.

Cinephilia: Italian Film Festival

The Ital­ian Film Fes­ti­val once again sur­veys the best of recent Ital­ian com­mer­cial cin­e­ma. Based at their entire­ly appro­pri­ate new home of the Embassy The­atre, the Fes­ti­val screens 16 dif­fer­ent fea­ture films over the next two weeks and the range means that there will (almost cer­tain­ly) be some­thing for every­one.

High­lights include The Girl By the Lake, a grip­ping psy­cho­log­i­cal who­dunit that won sev­er­al Donatel­lo Awards (the Ital­ian Oscars) in 2008 as well as two prizes at the 2007 Venice Film Fes­ti­val. Set dis­tinc­tive­ly in the north­ern Ital­ian Dolemite region, the film fol­lows the police inves­ti­ga­tion of a young girl’s death. Inscrutable detec­tive Toni Servil­lo dis­cov­ers sev­er­al sus­pects, mean­while his per­son­al own life isn’t going so well.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

As that old war film quote goes, “it’s qui­et, too qui­et”: only three films open­ing this week­end as the mad rush of the last few weeks works its way through the sys­tem.

Back from the Fes­ti­val (and haven’t I had to say that a lot recent­ly?) is An Edu­ca­tion, adapt­ed by Nick Horn­by from Lynn Bar­ber’s mem­oir of grow­ing up in 1960s Eng­land “before it became the 60s”. Wise bods are pick­ing new­com­er Carey Mul­li­gan for an Oscar nom­i­na­tion next year as the lead, and she’s very sol­id sup­port from the likes of Alfred Moli­na, Emma Thomp­son and Peter Saars­gard (whose Eng­lish accent is very good judg­ing by the trail­er). The direc­tor is Lone Scher­fig who came out of the Dogme move­ment in the late 90s but also made the dark com­e­dy Wilbur Wants to Kill Him­self. Empire, Pent­house and Light­house.

The rest of this week’s new releas­es after the jump.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Freakin’ school hol­i­days. 9 — count ’em — new films are open­ing this week and most of them are designed to keep rest­less young peo­ple out of the hair of their elders and bet­ters. Time is short so I’m just going to list them here:

• G‑Force. Talk­ing cute rodents audi­tion to be spe­cial agents by tak­ing down super-vil­lain Bill Nighy. Read­ings (3D), Empire (2D), Sky City Queens­gate (3D).
• Fame. The re-hash­ing of beloved 80s pop­u­lar trash con­tin­ues (Foot­loose is next). Read­ings, Empire, Embassy, Sky City Queens­gate
• Shorts. Robert Rodriguez puts togeth­er anoth­er vir­tu­al­ly home­made dig­i­tal fan­ta­sy for kids — in the spir­it of Shark Boy and Lava Girl and we all know how much we loved them. Read­ings, Sky City Queens­gate
• The Secret of Moonacre. For­mer ani­ma­tor Gabor Csupo made the smart Bridge to Ter­abithia the year before last and this is aimed at a sim­i­lar age group. Read­ings, Para­mount.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Still, they are return­ing from the Fes­ti­val: Moon by Bowie’s boy Dun­can Jones is a Para­mount exclu­sive which should do quite nice­ly for them as they pre­pare for new own­er­ship (dis­cuss rumours you might have heard in the com­ments). After three years alone min­ing the moon Sam Rock­well might be going slight­ly nuts and imag­in­ing that he’s got com­pa­ny. Or is he?

The Pent­house and the Light­house both share Stephen Frears’ Chéri and the doc­u­men­tary that launched the Fes­ti­val back in June, The Sep­tem­ber Issue. Chéri is based on two nov­els by Colette and is a cher­ished project by acclaimed screen­writer Christo­pher Hamp­ton (Dan­ger­ous Liaisons, The Div­ing Bell and the But­ter­fly).

[The rest of this week’s new releas­es after the jump]

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

I think the high­light of the Welling­ton­ista cin­e­ma-going week is like­ly to be a toss-up between the won­der­ful Van­guard ret­ro­spec­tive at the Film Archive or the restored print of Casablan­ca. The Para­mount has been bring­ing back the ven­er­a­ble old favourite reg­u­lar­ly for the last 20 years (always with new­er prints it should be said) and it’s still a big draw. Do you need to know the plot? Read Tom G’s sum­ma­ry here at Ornery World. Two shows a day until Sun­day.

Fresh­er fare is on offer else­where but noth­ing is like­ly to be as sat­is­fy­ing. Atone­ment direc­tor Joe Wright returns to the screen with a mod­ern day dra­ma (and more Oscar-bait), The Soloist. Jamie Foxx plays a gift­ed cel­list, blight­ed with men­tal ill­ness and Robert Downey Jr is the hack who befriends him. Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house.

[The rest of this week’s new releas­es after the jump]