Films in our 2006/7 Season

Our 2006/7 film programme is below with the audience reaction percentage achieved.

You can still see our previous year's programme with the audience reaction statistics. The average for last year was 81%. We have more detailed, graphcial analysis of the results available.

Autumn Season

4/10/06 98 mins

Good Night, and Good Luck [PG] Audience Reaction 86%

George Clooney ( USA ) 2006 Lang: Eng

Not surprising that this is the joint winner of your audience suggestions vote. George Clooney's recreation of the televised battle between journalist Edward Murrow and the fear-mongering senator Joseph McCarthy has been much feted. A clever, quiet little movie and a great pleasure to watch, owing much of its success to the continuing relevance of its concerns.

11/10/06 120 mins

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada [15] Audience Reaction 88%

Tommy Lee Jones (USA/Fr) 2005 Lang: Eng

When his Mexican friend is found buried in the desert, Peter Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) is determined to find his killer. The sheriff is uninterested - but Perkins aims to force the killer to take the remains to Estrada's hometown for the final burial . A wholly original and sometimes quirky modern-day western about friendship, loss and regret. Just when you think you have this film's plot pigeon holed it takes you off in a different direction…

18/10/06 95 mins

Les Égarés [15] Audience Reaction 77%

André Téchiné (France) 2003 Lang: Fr

At last! This big French hit finally has distribution in the UK and we are delighted to be able to show it after previous abortive attempts. Emmanuelle Béart, in one of her best performances for years, stars as a widowed schoolteacher who flees Nazi-occupied Paris with her children to hide in the woods. A touching wartime human drama.

25/10/06 100 mins

L’Enfer [15] Audience Reaction 83%

Danis Tanovic (Fr/It/Bel/Jpn) 2005 Lang: Fr

The great writer-director Kieslowski left among his papers three screenplays, Heaven, Hell and Purgatory and now the fine Bosnian (No Man's Land) director Danis Tanovic has shot the second with a (largely) French cast. After their father is sent to prison, Sophie, Celine and Anne drift apart but when a young man called Sebastien approaches Celine, skeletons come rattling out of the family closet….

1/11/06 138 mins

Manderlay [15] Audience Reaction 78%

Lars Von Trier (Denmark/SW/etc) 2006 Lang: Eng

Arguably our finest living director, Lars Von Trier follows the stimulating triumph of ‘Dogville’. though this time without Nicole Kidman to play the embattled ginger heroine. Grace discovers slavery still thrives at the Manderlay cotton plantation in the 30s and appalled, she frees the black residents to teach them about democracy…with dire consequences. Expect a bare-bones soundstage and a critique of US policy – not one for the White House!

8/11/06 95 mins

Pierrepoint [15] Audience Reaction 86%

Adrian Shergold ( UK ) 2006 Lang: Eng

Timothy Spall gives an understated but complex performance as the last century’s most famous hangman. A period piece exploring the relationship between compassion and the quest for perfection at work, it shows Pierrepoint’s absolute faith in what he is doing (despite concealing it from his wife), However, this conviction finally wavers… Not as dark as it sounds so do try it.

15/11/06 91 mins

Paradise Now [15 ] Audience Reaction 84%

Hany Abu-Assad (Fr/Ger/NL/Israel) 2005 Lang: Arabic

The first Palestinian film to be nominated for an Academy Award. The story shows two close friends recruited by an extremist group to perpetrate a terrorist attack in Tel-Aviv…but things go wrong. Never more relevant and not one to miss.

22/11/06

Raymond Chandler on film – an illustrated talk *** POSTPONED ***

Following the great success of Adrian Wootton’s (Film London) talk on Graham Greene 2 years ago, we are delighted to welcome Adrian back. He will be covering Chandler 's life and work including his screenwriting in Hollywood and illustrating this with numerous film + TV clips. Adrian is something of an expert having introduced a series of radio play adaptations of Chandler 's novels.

Because Adrian Wootton was indisposed, instead of the talk we showed The Big Sleep, a classic film from Raymond Chandler's novel. We hope that Adrian will be able to deliver his talk in the next Season. 'Big Sleep' achieved Audience Reaction 92% - maybe this was something to do with the audience?!

6/12/06 107 mins

Junebug [15] Audience Reaction 75%

Phil Morrison ( USA ) 2006 Lang: Eng

A Chicago art dealer meets her husband’s family for the first time but her urban sensibilities clash with those of a middle class Southern home. This is a witty character study full of fresh insights and wry observations with a bittersweet tang… but there’s a magic to Junebug that is almost impossible to describe.

13/12/06 118 mins

Caché [15] Audience Reaction 75%

Michael Haneke ( France ) 2005 Lang: Fr

This is your other audience suggestion vote winner. Parisian couple Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) start receiving videotapes of their home from an anonymous stalker. But there are many layers to this mystery, some of them tied to France 's colonial past. Part paranoid thriller, part political allegory, Hidden is a quietly terrifying film

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20/12/06 96 mins

Seducing Dr Lewis [15] Audience Reaction 83%

Jean-François Pouliot (Canada) 2006 Lang: Fr

For Christmas we return to the spirit of the Ealing comedies. On a small, rundown island, where the fish have been depleted and everyone is on welfare, only the building of a plastic-container factory can restore prosperity but to attract this investment, a doctor has to be lured to live there. Then the fun begins… All that plus a glass of wine and a mince pie on us!

Spring 2007

10/1/07 127 mins

The World’s Fastest Indian [12A] Audience Reaction 94% (Highest)

Roger Donaldson (USA/NZ) 2005 Lang: Eng

A feel good movie to open the new season. Anthony Hopkins plays a plucky, eccentric pensioner who tries to break the world land-speed record in the 60s on his modified Indian Scout motorbike. A n affectionate portrait of a real-life Kiwi hero that took director Roger Donaldson 30 years to bring to the screen.

17/1/07 103 mins

Grizzly Man [15] Audience Reaction 74%

Werner Herzog ( USA ) 2006 Lang: Eng

For years, bear fan Timothy Treadwell spent the summer camping with grizzlies in the Alaskan wilderness until the inevitable bear attack. The loner on the outskirts of civilisation, both physically and mentally, is classic Herzog material and Treadwell is never portrayed as anything less than a unique and fascinating individual. A different viewpoint on nature to ‘March of the Penguins’…

24/1/07 134 mins

Fateless [12A] Audience Reaction 85%

Lajos Koltai (Hung/Ger/UK) 2005 Lang: Hung, Eng, Ger

Fiercely unsentimental and surprisingly beautiful, this does the seemingly impossible: it succeeds in portraying the subject of the Holocaust in a new and devastating light. The story is of a 14-year-old Hungarian Jew, whose unremarkable arrest on a bus in Budapest leads to Auschwitz and near death. Holocaust Memorial Day is on Sunday 27 January.

31/1/07 100 mins

The Innocents [12A] Audience Reaction 74%

Jack Clayton ( UK ) 1961 Lang: Eng

Deborah Kerr stars as the governess and Peter Wyngarde as Quint in this classic version of Henry James’s evergreen ghost story ‘The Turn of the Screw’. Proof that subtlety and imagination are more effective than special effects…

7/2/07 143 mins

Live and Become [12A] Audience Reaction 87%

Radu Mihaileanu (France/Israel) 2005 Lang: Heb, Fr

Our continued involvement in the Jewish Film Festival brings again a powerful film which deserves wider showing. A Christian boy is included in the rescue of Jews from the Ethiopian famine of the 80s – he grows up fearing his secret will be discovered but never forgetting his mother who stayed behind…

14/2/07 104 mins

The Wind that Shakes the Barley [15] Audience Reaction 86%

Ken Loach ( UK ) 2006 Lang: Eng

Why is Ken Loach not as appreciated as much here as he is abroad? Fearless and perhaps as contentious as ever, this Palme d’Or winner tackles the contentious subject of the IRA in the 20s. A history lesson as well as a powerful drama? Come and see it to decide for yourself..

21/2/07 108 mins

Le grand Voyage [15] Audience Reaction 84%

Ismaël Ferroukhi (France/Morocco) 2005 Lang: Bul, Fr, Arabic etc

A tribute to the 97% of Muslims we never hear about in the Western world" is how the director describes it. An elderly patriarch forces his reluctant teenage son to drive them to Saudi Arabia on a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage. The film’s distributor, surprised that we had not already booked it, told me he had just given a DVD to one of our members so he would not miss it! Must be good then..

28/2/07 96 mins

L’enfant Note [12A] Audience Reaction 78%

J-P + L Dardenne (Belgium/Fr) 2005 Lang:Fr

More gripping social realism from the Dardenne brothers as petty crook Bruno struggles to deal with the consequences of selling his first born child. “ A movie is not a court of justice,” say the directors, “the more you see him (Bruno), the more you realize he's not just a bastard. You are forced to try to understand the character.” Palme d’Or winner 2005.

7/3/07 109 mins

The History Boys [15] Audience Reaction 92% (Second)

Nicholas Hytner (UK/USA) 2006 Lang:Eng

We've managed to get this date back into our schedule!

Richard Griffiths stars as the inspiring English teacher, who clashes with a young supply teacher over coaching 6th Formers for Oxford and Cambridge entrance exams. The clash of new and old world values turns the school days nostalgia into a fascinating picture. Alan Bennett's play won endless awards when it hit The National Theatre and unusually, it loses nothing as it is transferred to the big screen - same director, same cast - it's ensemble acting is a sheer delight.

14/3/07 120 mins

U-Carmen eKhayelitsha [12A] Audience Reaction 78%

Mark Dornford-May ( S Africa ) 2006 Lang: Xhosa

Set in the shantytown of Khayelitsha and sung entirely in the Xhosa language, this is a rousing and acclaimed contemporary adaptation of George Bizet's classic opera Carmen. Flashbacks illuminate the murky, sensuous past of the Don Jose character while the story has pool halls, bars, courtyards and factories as its dramatic backdrop.

Summer 2007

18/4/07 120 mins

Volver [15] Audience Reaction 87%

Pedro Almodóvar ( Spain ) 2006 Lang: Span

Almodovar's most sophisticated film to date: a joyous, touching, funny and thrilling account of the up-and-downs of family life. Part thriller, part comedy and part drama, it offers Penelope Cruz the chance to show she really can act. Cruz plays a working class mother of a precocious teenage daughter with a layabout husband – her life changes when her aunt dies and she returns for the funeral to her native village in the country..

25/4/07 110 mins

Brick [15] Audience Reaction 37% (No, it isn't a typo - the lowest for several seasons!)

Rian Johnson ( USA ) 2006 Lang:Eng

Brendan follows the trail of his missing girlfriend with a dogged persistence and a bone-dry wit in this intriguing deconstruction of film noir. The Humphrey Bogart patter is not laughable parody since the sincere acting and the web of deceit uncovered in a High School setting provide solid thrills.

2/5/07 Bread and Tulips [12A] Audience Reaction 82%

Silvio Soldini 2000 Lang:It

A big hit in Italy now finally released in the UK , this enjoyably whimsical romantic comedy has unfulfilled fortysomething housewife Rosalba falling for a melancholic Icelandic waiter Fernando (‘Downfall's’ Bruno Ganz). Set in Venice , with dream sequences and eccentric supporting characters, it offers its very own fairy-tale charm.

Note there will be no showing on 9/5/07

16/5/07 140 mins

L'Armee Des Ombres [12A] Audience Reaction 85%

Jean-Pierre Melville 1969 Lang: Fr

A haunting but brilliant account of a group of mainly middle-aged resistance fighters in Occupied France during World War Two. Magnificent set-pieces, including an escape from the Gestapo headquarters and the daring attempt dreamt up by Simone Signoret's Mathilde to rescue a tortured prisoner by posing as a German ambulance crew.

23/5/07 99 mins

Audience Vote The Queen [12A] Audience Reaction 89% (Third)

Stephen Frears (UK) 2006

Little introduction may now be needed following Helen Mirren's Oscar success in the title role of 'The Queen'. Set in the week following the death of Princess Diana, the film portrays the backstage debate between Tony Blair and the Monarch. The Queen retains her regal dignity - a traditionalist adrift in a fast-changing world, her public face remaining her private one. There is however a oving moment when she meets a wild stag pegged for slaughter on the Balmoral estate - a fitting metaphor for the general inner turmoil of the time. Make sure you know what all the fuss was about and find out why this British picture reached the Oscar summit.

30/5/07 125 mins

Les Poupées Russes [15] Audience Reaction 72%

Cédric Klapisch (France) 2006 Lang: Fr

Romain Duris, the hottest name in French cinema, co-stars with Audrey Tautou in this entertaining globe trotting comedy, which reunites a group of holiday-makers as they reach their 30s. One of their number is about to get married (to a Russian ballet dancer), sparking various crises of the heart…Expect some fancy camera work plus some bursts of magic realism!