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Internet Movie
Database (www.imdb.com)
The website imbd.com
gives details of the making of the film, the director, the actors, lots
of other interesting information and invites comment on each movie listed.
Links are provided below to the films to be shown in the TPH 2009/10 season.
Just click on each underlined link and scroll down to the heading "Users
Comments" to read a reviewer's commentary together with notes from
other readers to say whether the review was helpful or not.
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September
2009 - June 2010 Film Programme
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Burn after Reading
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Fri
September 11th 7.30pm
Armstrong Hall
Burn after Reading,
2008, (Cert 15)
Director: Ethan &
Joel Coen (USA)
A star studied comedy
starring George Clooney, John Malkovich and Brad Pitt.
The CIA seem to learn of the events at second hand as they seek to recover
a "classified" CD. Osbourne Cox is fired by the CIA and begins
a memoir. His wife wants a divorce and expects her lover, Harry, a philandering
US marshal, to leave his wife. A diskette of Osbourne's musings falls
out of his bag at a fitness center. Two simple gym employees try to turn
it into cash: Linda, who wants money for elective surgery, and Chad, an
amiable goof. They try to sell the disc back to Osbourne, then they visit
the Russian Embassy. To sweeten the pot, they decide they need more of
Osbourne's secrets. Meanwhile, Linda's boss likes her, and Harry's wife
leaves for a book tour.
Directed by the Cohen Brothers following No Country for Old Men, the film
is a brilliant collection of caricature studies interwoven by social interactioins.
For full synopsis
and reviews Click http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887883/
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Fri
October 2nd 7.30pm
Armstrong Hall
Man on Wire, 2008,
(Cert 12)
Director: James Marsh
(UK)
In 1974 Philippe Petit,
a French wire walker, juggler, and street performer spent 45 minutes walking,
dancing, kneeling, and lying on a wire he and friends had strung illegally
between the rooftops of the Twin Towers. Dubbed the artistic crime of
the century the Port Authority police arrested Petit immediately after
his amazing act. The film uses contemporary interviews, archival footage,
and recreations to tell the story of his previous walks between towers
of Notre Dame and of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, his passions and friendships,
and the details of the night before the walk: getting cable into the towers,
hiding from guards, and mounting the wire. It ends with observations of
the profound changes the walk's success brought to Philippe and those
closest to him.
For full synopsis and reviews click http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1155592/
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Man
on Wire
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Caramel
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Fri
October 16th 7.30pm
Armstrong Hall
Caramel, 2007, (Cert
PG)
Director: Nadine Labanski
(France)
Set in a Beirut beauty
salon, co-writer and director Nadine Labanski stars in this ensemble comedy
centred on the relationships and bonds between four women who work in
the salon and two of their customers. Each has her own secrets and hopes.
There's Layale, in love with a married man, willing to drop everything
at a honk of his horn. Nisrine, engaged to Bassam, with a secret she shares
with her co-workers; Jamale, a divorced mother of teenagers, a part-time
model, fearing the encroachment of time; but her efforts do not seem to
helping her career. Rima, always in pants, attracted to Siham, a client
who smiles back; There's also Rose, a middle-aged seamstress, who cares
for Lili, old and facing dementia. Rose has a suitor; Layale has an admirer
on the police force. Is delight a possibility?
A mature film that
still manages to be a lot of fun.
For full synopsis
and reviews click http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0825236/
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Fri
November 13th 7.30pm
Armstrong Hall
The Class, 2008, (Cert
15)
Director Laurent Cantet
(France)
Winner
of the 2008 Palm d'Or the film charts the battle of wills beteeen teacher
and pupils in a tough inner city school in Paris. The teachers talk to
each other about their prospective students, both the good and the bad.
They want to inspire their students, but each teacher is an individual
who will do things in his or her own way to achieve the results they desire.
They also have differing viewpoints on the students themselves, and how
best to praise and discipline them. François Marin's class of fourteen
and fifteen year olds is no different than previous years, although the
names and faces have changed. Marin tries to get through to his students,
sometimes with success and sometimes resulting in utter failure. Even
Marin has his breaking point, which may result in him doing things he
would probably admit to himself are wrong. But after all is said and done,
there is next year and another group of students.
For full
synopsis and reviews click http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1068646/
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The
Class
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Central
Station
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Fri
December 4th 7.30pm
Armstrong Hall
Central Station, 1998,
(Cert 15)
Director Walter Salles
(Brazil/France)
Dora, a dour old woman,
works at a Rio de Janeiro central station, writing letters for customers
and mailing them. She hates customers and calls them 'trash'. Josue is
a 9-year-old boy who never met his father. His mother is sending letters
to his father through Dora. When she dies in a car accident, Dora takes
Josue and takes a trip with him to find his father.
You sit in disbelief
as Dora shows herself to be a heartless opportunist, and as your expectations
are being confounded, you begin to realize how this villainess came to
be such a person. The boy she begins to help is also no innocent movie
cherub, he has an endearing slyness and a will to survive despite the
horrible tragedy he has experienced.
Their road trip is
an odyssey from bad to worse, and you begin to sympathize. The characters
they meet and the landscape they traverse give a flavor of the real Brazil
and seem as complex and beautiful and full of contradiction as the Brazilian
music you hear. And the final destination for the boy (you're on the edge
of your seat hoping things will turn out right) seems to indicate a new
direction for the character.
For full synopsis
and reviews click http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0140888/
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Fri
January 8th 7.30pm
Armstrong Hall
The Pope's Toilet
(El Baño
del Papa) 2007 (Cert 15)
Directors
César
Charlone and Enrique Fernández (Uruguay/Brazil/France)
El Baño del
Papa was Uruguay's Official Submission to the Best Foreign Language Film
Category of the 80th Annual Academy Awards (2008).
Written and directed
by César Charlone and Enrique Fernández, the film stars
César Troncoso as the small-time smuggler Beto, and Virginia Méndez
as Carmen, his loving but cautious wife. The Pope is going to pay a visit
to their small Uruguayan city near the Brazilian border. The residents
are in a fever of anticipation about the visit, especially about the thousands
of Brazilian tourists they expect to come across the border to be present
at this historic moment.
Beto, like all his
friends and neighbors, is caught up in the almost ritualistic excitement.
The plot hinges on
Beto's schemes to acquire enough capital to construct a pay toilet for
the tourists and to get the project finished before the Pope arrives.
In order to do this, he has to come to terms with people other than the
"honest" small-scale tradesmen who purchase his smuggled household
goods. It shows very clearly and graphically the contrast between the
opulence of the trip of the Pope and assistants and the hopeless poverty
of the locals living in the expansive pampas.
For full synopsis
and reviews click http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482901
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The
Pope's Toilet
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Still
Life
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Fri
February 5th 7.30pm
Armstrong Hall
Still Life, 2006,
(Cert PG)
Director Jia Zhang
Ke (China)
Winner of the 2006
Venice Film Festival
IN 2006 China announced
that the total displaced by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam on
the Yangtze Riverto will be more than 1.4 million people. The $22.5-billion
US dam, a mega-project five times the size of the Hoover Dam, which has
been heavily criticized by environmental and human rights groups, was
begun in 1993 but will not go into full operation until 2008. In Still
Life, director Jia demonstrates to the world how one of China's most gorgeous
areas, one that brings in 1.3 million tourists a year, has become a scene
of squalor.
Coalminer Han Sanming
comes from to the Three Gorges town Fengjie to look for his ex-wife whom
he has not seen for 16 years. The couple meet on the bank of the Yangtze
River and vow to remarry.
Nurse Shen Hong also
comes to Fengjie to look for her husband who has not been home for two
years. The couple embrace each other and waltz under the imposing Three
Gorges dam, but feel they are so apart and decide to have a divorce. The
old township has been submerged, while a new town has to be built. Life
persists in the Three Gorges
For full synopsis
and reviews click http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0859765/
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Fri
March 5th 7.30pm
Armstrong Hall
Moon, 2009, (Cert
15)
Director Duncan Jones
(UK)
Sam (Sam Rockwell)
is a lonely moon worker patiently finishing his 3 year mining contract
for Lunar Industries. He is helped by Gerty (voice of Kevin Spacey), and
watches old video messages from his wife while his communications unit
is fixed, then there is a malfunction.
The film received
excellent reviews at this year's Sundance Festival. Despite being a sci-fi
based thriller, "Moon" is slow in places, which isn't necessarily
a bad thing since it's essentially a character development piece. On the
other hand, the movie just looks absolutely fantastic, Jones' team having
created fantastic sets and effectively used CG to create the lunar environment.
It looks so good, you'll probably wonder how much money went into the
making of the movie. Certainly, it couldn't have cost much, but the recreation
of the moon's surface, the mining stations and even the mining process
are all very impressive. Wisely, Jones also hired composer Clint Mansell
to construct a chilling ambient score to accompany Sam's lonely existence.
For full synopsis
and reviews click http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/
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Moon
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Flame and Citron
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Fri
April 16th
7.30pm Armstrong Hall
Flame and Citron,
2008, (Cert 15)
Director Ole Christian
Madsen (Denmark)
Based
on a true story, this twisting tale of two second world war folk heroes
of the Danish resistance unfolds with noir-ish intrigue. Atmospherically
photographed on a fat budget, the film looks stunning but retains a gritty
period realism. The action takes place in 1944 when nerves are flaying,
the civilian government has been replaced by martial law , liberation
appears close, the Gestapo are tightening the screws and the politicians
are preparing for post-war life.
The performances are
universally strong and there is a real chemistry between the two central
characters; Mads Mikkelsens' quirky Citronen, a twitching, sweaty bundle
of amphetamine-fuelled nervous energy and his sole ally, the flame-haired,
but relatively cool-headed Flammen (Thure Lindhardt).
This is a war film
- but the war we experience here has a dreamlike, claustrophobic quality.
This is a world of lies, paranoia and spiralling violence which threatens
to erode our heroes moral certainty and destroy their sanity.
For full
synopsis and reviews click http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0920458/
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Fri
May 14th 7.30pm
Armstrong Hall
The
Band's Visit, 2006, (Cert 12)
Director
Eran Kolirin (Israel/France)
The Alexandria
Ceremonial Police Orchestra arrives in Israel from Egypt for a cultural
event, only find there is no delegation to meet them, nor any arrangements
to get to their destination. They arrive instead at the remote town of
Beit Hatikva. Stuck there until the next morning's bus, the band, lead
by the repressed Tawfiq Zacharaya, gets help from the worldly lunch owner,
Dina, who offers to put them up for the night. As the band settles in
as best it can, each of the members attempts to get along with the natives
in their own way. What follows is a special night of quiet happenings
and confessions as the band makes its own impact on the town and the town
on them.
"The
Band's Visit" is about people - mostly awkward, all real, well- and
ill-behaved in turn - and not about agenda, ideology, politics. It's an
unsentimental "people movie", enormously likable, a treasurehouse
of humanism. "Visit" is also a film you have to work with. It's
not dumped on the audience in its fullness by its writer and (first-time)
director, Eran Kolirin. Action is slow or nonexistent, dialogue is halting,
silences are rampant. And yet it all works so well: even if you have never
heard Egyptian music, when the band finally plays (as the end-credits
roll), you're guaranteed to groove on it.
For full
synopsis and reviews click http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1032856/
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The
Band's Visit
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Kind
Hearts and Coronets
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Fri
June 11th 7.30pm
Armstrong Hall
Kind
Hearts and Coronets, 1949, (Cert U)
Director
Robert Hamer (UK)
Louis
Mazzini's mother's frequent tales of how her titled D'Ascoyne family shunned
her after she eloped with an Italian commoner causes a simmering resentment
in him. On being spurned because of his lowly status by his lifetime (if
devious and fickle) sweetheart Sibella, he decides to permanently remove
all the D'Ascoynes standing between him and the Dukedom.
In the
course of his systematic, and wholly undetected, elimination of the D'Ascoynes
(all played by Alec Guiness), Louis (Dennis Price) becomes very intimate
with Edith (Valerie Hobson), the lovely widow of one of the D'Ascoynes
he has murdered. This creates some tension with his long-time, and attractive,
girlfriend Sibella (Joan Greenwood).
The most
sophicsticated and darkest of the Ealing Comedies "Kind Hearts"
is in the top 100 "must see" movies. It is unusually dependent
on voice-over narration, objective and understated, which is all the funnier
by being so removed from the sensational events taking place. Murder,
Louis demonstrates, can be most agreeably entertaining, so long as the
story lingers on the eccentricities of the villain rather than on the
unpleasant details of the crimes.
For full
synopsis and reviews click http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041546/
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Grants and Supporters
We are very
grateful for the help we have received from the following in supporting
TPH:
Brian
Clay - The British Federation of Film Societies
Chris Baker - Bath Film Festival
Brazen Graphic Design
Thornbury Arts Festival
Thornbury Town Council
South Gloucestershire Council
Awards for All
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