CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (PG)

• Friday 29 July for 2 weeks

(US/Br 2005) dir.Tim Burton 115m.
Johnny Depp, Freddie Highmore, David Kelly Helena Bonham Carter, Noah Taylor, James Fox, Deep Roy, Christopher Lee Adam Godley, Julia Winter, Philip Wiegratz, Liz Smith.

"Like a 21st century Wizard of Oz, this inspired combination of Roald Dahl, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp is sheer magic, with a twisted, involving subtext that keeps it from being merely a goofy kids' movie. Young Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) lives in fairly picturesque poverty with his parents (Helena Bonham Carter and Noah Taylor) and grandparents in a leaky shack positioned in the shadow of the Wonka Chocolate Factory. Now after years of secrecy the mysterious Willy Wonka (Depp) is opening his factory for five lucky children: spoiled brat Veruca Salt (Julia Winter), high-achiever Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb), chocoholic Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz), videogame addict Mike Teavee (Jordon Fry) and of course Charlie. They really could never imagine what they'll see and experience inside. The design is in constant service to the fanciful story and vivid characters and it especially lives in Depp's marvellously warped performance as the untrustworthy child-man with a tortured past (cue another outrageous flashback). This is the kind of densely packed comedy that keeps adults' attention even while amazing the young ones. Film references, witty asides, running gags and both audio and visual jokes abound. Dahl's blend of humour and horror balances perfectly. And there's enough subtext to add some real meaning along the way. So much fun you just want to eat it."
(Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall)

CRASH (15)

• Friday 12 August 2 weeks

(US 2004) dir.Paul Haggis 112m.
Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner, Brendan Fraser.

“This is a solid film about seriously important issues. All of the plot threads deal with racial issues: A District Attorney and his paranoid wife (Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock) are carjacked by two black teens (Chris Bridges and Larenz Tate). A pair of very different cops (Matt Dillon and Ryan Phillippe) surprise themselves during tense situations. A wealthy couple (Thandie Newton and Terrence Dashon Howard) endure a horrible incident, then have their worldview challenged even further. Two detectives (Don Cheadle and Jennifer Esposito) find their interracial relationship strained to the breaking point. A Latino locksmith (Michael Peña) copes with slurs and a terrifying assault. And a Middle Eastern family (Shaun Toub, Bahar Soomekh, Marina Sirtis) feels oppressed by everyone around them. This film can't help but get under our skin, thanks to extremely strong production values and transparent, raw performances from the entire cast. Director-cowriter Haggis (MILLION DOLLAR BABY) tackles the race issue from just about every conceivable angle; each scene snaps with life and energy, tapping into the emotions and highlighting the issues in extremely insightful ways. It's impossible to pick a standout cast member – they're all astonishing. The script keeps things nicely grounded in honest reality, avoiding obvious flashpoints for something much more meaningful and resonant.”
(Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall)

BOMBÓN EL PERRO (15)

• Friday 26 August for 1 week

(Arg/Spain 2004) dir.Carlos Sorin 98m. Subtitles.
Juan Villegas, Walter Donado, Micol Estevez, Kita Ca, Pascual Condito.

“Hardship seems innate in Carlos Sorin’s Patagonia, as if it issued from the doleful dusty desert that, under mockingly wide skies, rolls on for mile after mile. Coco (Juan Villegas) is the wrong side of 50. He tries travelling salesmanship, but people only want to barter: a woman at the roadside gives him a great white dog – a pure-bred perro argentino. Coco’s initially unpersuaded, but ‘le chien’ proves a staunch companion, and brings him some fiscal luck. Ostensibly a shaggy-dog story, BOMBÓN traces the pair’s progress through a succession of by-the-way incidents and character encounters. Its bold, crisp compositions, pretty light, lolling landscapes and guitar accompaniment don’t so much sugar the pill as cast it to the winds. A lovely film.”
(Nick Bradshaw, Time Out)

YES (15)

• Friday 26 August for 1 week

(Br/US 2005) dir.Sally Potter 100m.
Simon Abkarian, Joan Allen, Sam Neill, Shirley Henderson, Samantha Bond, Stephanie Leonidas, Gary Lewis, Raymond Waring.

“YES is a post-9/11 love story, set chiefly in London, about a passionate adulterous affair between an Irish-American scientist (Joan Allen), who's unhappily married to an English politician (Sam Neill), and a somewhat younger Lebanese cook (Simon Abkarian), who's unmarried and used to work as a surgeon in Beirut. All the dialogue, which Potter wrote, is in rhyming iambic pentameter, ten syllables to a line, apart from a few direct declarations with eight syllables. Far from a gimmick, this is the ideal way to convey Potter's poetic intelligence and her feelings about the contemporary world. Moreover, the dialogue is delivered with such skill by the actors that it remains expressive without ever seeming mannered or show-offy. YES firmly, if offhandedly, undermines several received notions: That movies are a visual medium, so images matter more than sounds in general and words in particular. That rhyming dialogue, unless it's from Shakespeare, is a fool's mission. That movies shouldn't try to address the state of the contemporary world. That using individual characters to represent nations, cultures, genders leads to facile generalizations. That communism is dead and Cuba (where She flees after her aunt dies) isn't worth thinking about except to scoff at. Potter's brazen movie seems to invite ridicule, though it's more lighthearted in its provocations than heavy-handed or bleak. The strengths and limitations of these characters are essentially those of Potter's poetic conceits, so they're somewhat generic – which is why they lack names, unlike the husband, the cook's three coworkers, and a few others in the cast who project more prosaic and naturalistic social realities. Speaking most directly and intimately to us is the nameless maid (Shirley Henderson), who frames the film's action as she periodically looks up from her work to address the camera. She's the film's philosophical conscience, which is evident mainly in her discussions of dirt and its meaning. She's its Molly Bloom, providing the Joycean affirmation of the film's title, the last word in Ulysses, though unlike Molly, she has an intellectual lucidity that goes well beyond libido. Her obvious lesson is that no one can address today's problems without addressing our assumptions about a lot of things.”
(Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader)

LAST DAYS (15)

• Friday 2 September for 2 weeks

(US 2005) dir.Gus Van Sant 97m.
Michael Pitt, Lukas Haas, Asia Argento, Scott Green, Nicole Vicius, Ricky Jay, Thadeus A. Thomas.

“LAST DAYS, the brilliant concluding chapter in the ‘death’ trilogy that inspired Gus Van Sant's artistic rebirth, wafts through the final 48 or so hours of a Kurt Cobain-like rock star. Nirvana fans, be forewarned: This sensuously entropic elegy is the most elemental and circumscribed of biopics. In place of psychological clarity, LAST DAYS affords a woozy existential coherence. Like ELEPHANT, LAST DAYS zeroes in on the hallucinatory stillness of a final countdown. When the film opens, the Cobain figure – christened Blake and impeccably impersonated by Michael Pitt – is for all intents already dead. He's first glimpsed stumbling through the woods, a very apt vision of unwashed blond androgyny, heading to a roaring waterfall to pee and bathe. The morning after, the pyjama-clad wild child, retreats to his tumbledown mansion, where a posse of hangers-on is encamped. Avoiding the amorphous entourage, he plays dress-up with a wardrobeful of Kurt-iconic outfits, toys with a shotgun, prepares cereal and macaroni and cheese, and – in an amazing sequence – nods out to Boyz II Men's "On Bended Knee" video. Blake's own music surfaces only twice – the slouching-toward-Nirvana dirge "Death to Birth" (a Pitt composition) and an improvised jam captured in slow zoom-out – but sound is a key factor in his mental breakdown. LAST DAYS' blurred sense of interior and exterior – its living-death conception of limbo – brings to mind another American masterpiece Jarmusch's DEAD MAN, whose enigmatic hero happens to be called William Blake. Sacred allusions abound. Not unlike William Blake, Van Sant risks religiosity and arrives at spiritual clarity – in a ghostly afterimage that transcends both the Christian notion of Ascension and the rock cliché of the stairway to heaven.”
(Ann Powers, The Village Voice)

ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (15)

• Friday 9 September for 1 week

(US 2005) dir.Miranda July 91m.
John Hawkes, Miranda July, Miles Thompson, Brandon Ratcliff, Carlie Westerman, Brad Henke.

“Every so often, a movie blindsides you, leaving you feeling different, enlightened, possibly even improved. ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW is such a movie. It's a revelation really, a disarmingly upbeat debut film from performance artist Miranda July. ME AND YOU is an intimate little ensemble about a struggling multimedia artist (July) who chauffeurs old folks for a living, a divorced shoe salesman/potential love interest (DEADWOOD's John Hawkes) who's losing touch with his two sons, those two sons, and three precocious neighbourhood girls. There are other characters, too, but these seven make up the film's core, united by their desire to connect with someone beyond themselves. The movie is ultimately about communication in the digital age, but July approaches her theme slyly, dancing around her ‘message’ while filling her story with refreshingly original real-world observations. It's a film full of humour and moments so unexpected they seem almost surreal: a love affair between two pink shoes, a man who sets his hand on fire, the secret mystery of the sunrise, and more. It helps that July regards the world with childlike innocence, exploding with curiosity where other filmmakers see only irony. She's not afraid to wear socks on her ears or talk in silly voices, but best of all, she's still fascinated by her environment, discovering new qualities in everything around her.”
(Peter Debruge, Premiere)

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (U)

• Friday 16 September for 2 weeks

(Br 2005) dir.Joe Wright 127m
Keira Knightley, Matthew MacFadyen, Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland, Tom Hollander, Rosamund Pike, Jena Malone, Judi Dench.

With this new adaptation of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, the glorious world of Jane Austen is back on the big screen in all its romance, wit and emotional force. This period drama is a classic tale of love and misunderstanding in class-conscious England at the end of the 18th century. Mrs Bennet (Brenda Blethyn) has raised her five daughters in the awareness that marriage is the only way for them to secure their future. The news that wealthy bachelor Mr Charles Bingley (Simon Woods) is taking up residence in a nearby mansion brings hopes for Jane Bennet (Rosamund Pike), the eldest daughter. Accompanying Charles is his sophisticated and handsome friend Mr Darcy (Matthew McFadyen), who catches the eye of Jane’s younger sister Elizabeth (Keira Knightley). Unlike his friend who is immediately taken with Jane’s serene beauty, Mr Darcy isn’t ready to lower himself among provincials at first, although he soon – and in spite of himself – falls for the charm of the lively and witty Elizabeth. As for her, she quickly takes a dislike at the man’s arrogance. Meanwhile, the arrival of the army in town brings Mr Wickham to her attention. However, after a ball organised by the Bingleys, the two sisters’ fate is overthrown by their family’s vulgarity, deemed unsuitable for the Bingleys. Charles leaves abruptly for London, leaving Jane devastated... Filmed entirely on location, the film’s romantic tone benefits from dramatic use of the English landscape, majestic mansions and sumptuous costumes, beautifully photographed by Roman Osin. The film’s strength lies in its performances, with Keira Knightley proving she can carry a film and excellent support from Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland and Judi Dench as Darcy's powerful aunt Lady Catherine. A very nice treat indeed.