10 September 2008 BABEL (USA/Mexico 2006)
Director ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ INARRITU and
screenwriter GUILLERMO ARRIAGA have produced an even more ambitious, action
packed movie than their previous successes, Amores Perros and 21 Grams.
In this film four apparently unconnected stories escalate wildly out of control
until they merge into a global crisis, vividly illustrating our inability to
understand the motives and intentions of people from different cultures and
levels of society, in spite of the fact that human feelings and emotions are
universal.
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1 October 2008 TEN CANOES (Australia 2006)
Directed by Dutch born ROLF DE HEER with his
Aboriginal co-director PETER DJIGIRR, this is a unique film made from within the
aboriginal community of the Yolngu people in Arnhem Land in a completely
authentic style. It was inspired by DAVID GULPILIL, who made his screen debut in
Nicolas Roeg’s film Walkabout back in 1970, and who wanted to make a film
celebrating the culture and traditions of his own people. He provides a
beguilingly off-beat narration for this stunningly illustrated story, which
sprang from a photograph taken by anthropologist Donald Thomson in the thirties,
but which was entirely devised by the people participating in the film.
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29 October 2008 BLACK BOOK
(Germany/Netherlands/UK/Belgium 2006)
PAUL VERHOEVEN has brought all his experience
of Hollywood action-packed blockbusters to bear in this film about the German
occupation of the Netherlands, but this isn’t just another World War II drama.
It is a carefully researched, nightmarish vision of the reality of conquest as
experienced by the people caught up in it, and the way in which both the best
and the worst of human nature can be exposed in such a situation. CARICE VAN
HOUTON, as the free-spirited Jewish girl faced with extreme circumstances,
captivates throughout the film, including SEBASTIAN KOCH as a convincingly
‘good’ German.
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12 November 2008 TELL NO ONE (France 2006)
HARLAN COBEN is an American writer of superior,
gripping, urban thrillers. He chose young French director GUILLAUME CANET,
rather than a Hollywood director, to adapt his story to the screen and to
transfer this complex murder mystery to Paris, with all the style and flair
which that implies. At the centre of a star-studded cast is FRANCOIS CLUZET,
outstanding as the broken hero running through the urban scene in a desperate
race against time, when his wife, murdered eight years ago, sends him a message.
Veterans ANDRE DUSOLLIER and JEAN ROCHEFORT add a touch of dark mystery, while
KRISTIN SCOTT-THOMAS and NATHALIE BAYE provide the sophistication.
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10 December 2008 ATONEMENT (USA/UK/France
2007)
CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON stays close to IAN McEWAN’S
novel in this adaptation by JOE WRIGHT of a tragic-romance which swings between
country house heritage movie and World War II Dunkirk realism. JAMES McAVOY and
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY play the star-crossed lovers and SAOIRSE RONAN / ROMOLA GARAI
are excellent as the younger sister who sows the seeds of disaster.
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14 January 2009 THE KITE RUNNER (USA/China 2007)
This film by MARC FOSTER is also about
atonement for a youthful lie. An Afghan exile, now living in California, returns
to his native land and, when he does so, the film changes its character from a
study of exiles making a new life within an alien culture to an adventure story
set in a once familiar, but now much more dangerous, scene. It is based on a
successful novel by KHALED HOSSEINI and does not deal with the present military
situation in the country, but is more concerned with personal loyalties and
family obligations.
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11 February 2009 JINDABYNE (Australia
2006)
Based on one of the RAYMOND CARVER short
stories featured in ROBERT ALTMAN’S marvellous Short Cuts, RAY LAWRENCE
has relocated the action to a rundown outback town in Australia. When four
friends go on an annual fishing trip and find the body of a murdered aboriginal
woman, they delay reporting it so that their weekend won’t be spoilt. The
emotional waves caused by this thoughtless action are potentially lethal, not
least to the troubled couple edgily played by GABRIEL BYRNE and LAURA LINNEY.
The director has made an excellent follow-up to his outstanding Lantana.
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4 March
2009 THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
(USA/Canada 2007)
ANDREW
DOMINIK explores the psychological conflicts which resulted in the death of an
American legend and examines the paradox that a psychopathic killer could come
to be seen as a national hero, while the man who killed him has been vilified.
In doing so he has created an epic Western, but one in which words are as potent
as guns, and the fragile, yet abrasive, existence of the communities in which
the outlaws flourished is set against the overwhelming landscapes of the West.
BRAD PITT and CASEY AFFLECK are tantalisingly locked in an intensely volatile
relationship that simmers threateningly throughout at just below boiling point.
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8 April 2009 THE LIVES OF OTHERS
(Germany 2006)
FLORIAN HENCKEL VON DONNERSMARCK recounts the
story of a Stasi agent in the old GDR, who gradually comes to feel sympathy for
a man he is investigating and who eventually loses his own position in the
process. SEBASTIAN KOCH appears once more as a ‘good’ German.
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Last Year's Programme
