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Thirteen-year-old novice witch Kiki must spend a year away from home as part of her training. She decides to settle in a pretty seaside town and set up a broomstick-based delivery service to make a living. Adventures ensue as Kiki faces the dual challenges of making deliveries and maintaining faith in herself in this delightful coming-of-age story.
12.00English-language version.
Vintage Sundays: Classic films back on the big screen where they belong.
Plus Adam Dobay intro: Our resident film analyst and Ghibli geek Adam Dobay returns to reveal new ways to immerse yourself in this classic film with an introduction and a post-film discussion in the bar.
The ultimate sci-fi double bill: one of the most influential movies in the genre, followed by the sequel nobody knew they needed (and probably never thought was a idea in the first place).
First up, Ridley Scott’s brooding 1982 thriller BLADE RUNNER, set in a spectacularly imagined future Los Angeles, where a hired killer (Harrison Ford) is on the trail of a group of renegade androids. With its intense atmosphere, breathtaking visuals and lavishly eerie soundtrack by Vangelis, it’s an unforgettable big-screen experience.
Twenty-five years later, Denis Villeneuve (ARRIVAL, SICARIO) dared to tread on revered cinematic turf to create a sublime, hugely ambitious homage to the original, melding jaw-dropping cinematography with profound meditation on what it means to be human in a tense story set three decades after the events of the first film.
Told in flashback as successful film director Salvatore returns to his native Sicilian village, CINEMA PARADISO centres on the friendship between the young Salvatore and the irascible projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), who preserves a collection of footage censored from the local cinema programme by the priest.
Salvatore inherits from Alfredo not only a love of film, but also his job, as the Nuovo Cinema Paradiso enjoys a brief term of glory as the hub of the community before the days of TV and pop. Romantic, nostalgic, funny and exuberant, CINEMA PARADISO is all the more memorable for the winning performances by the great Philippe Noiret and ten-year-old Salvatore Cascio.
Stanley Kubrick Considers The Bomb, a new short film produced and directed by Matt Wells, will be screened exclusively in cinemas as part of this release. With contributions from those who knew Kubrick best, including Katharina Kubrick, Jan Harlan (Kubrick’s Executive Producer and brother-in-law) and journalist and author Eric Schlosser, the film considers how Kubrick responded to society’s widespread concern about nuclear war and transformed it into his irreverent comic masterpiece.
A brilliant atom-bomb farce, endorsing with suspense and dark comic aplomb Kubrick’s characteristic vision of human fallibility and stupidity. It’s famous for Peter Sellers’ triple role, but George C. Scott, Peter Bull and Sterling Hayden give equally superb performances, the last as the unhinged air force general who launches a war of Mutually Assured Destruction.
The velvet-voiced Barbra Streisand sings like an angel in Frank Pierson’s take on the timeless tale of doomed romance. The film’s musical centrepiece, ‘Evergreen’, a tender ballad co-written and performed by Streisand, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
John Norman Howard (Kristofferson) is a talented but self-destructive rock star whose career has peaked. Years of concerts, managers and tours have made him cynical and the monotony has taken its toll. Then he meets the innocent, pure and very gifted singer Esther Hoffman (Streisand). As one of his songs in the movie says, “I’m gonna take you girl; I'm gonna show you how.” And he does. John shows Esther the way to stardom, forsaking his own career. But as they fall in love, her success only makes his decline even more apparent.
The Raid - Already being hailed as one of the best action films of the last decade after a handful of crowd-thrilling festival screenings, Welsh writer/director Gareth Evans’ martial arts blitzkrieg is a must-see for any self-respecting genre fan. Set in a grime-encrusted Indonesian tower block, THE RAID follows a rookie SWAT team on a floor-by-floor assault to take down a notorious mobster. Pencak Silat sensation Iko Uwais (who starred in Evans’ previous feature, MERANTAU) pinches Tony Jaa’s crown as martial arts cinema’s new poster-boy. This is jaw-dropping, lung-busting, utterly relentless stage combat at its very best.
Dredd - Based on the hugely popular sci-fi comic-book hero, Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is an elite law enforcer-cum-justice dispenser in the dystopian Mega City One, which sprawls across much of a post-apocalypse America.
Dredd is required to assess a rookie colleague with powerful psychic abilities (Olivia Thirlby), and the couple confront a gang led by the vicious Ma-Ma (Lena Headley) in a 200-storey slum called Peach Trees. This is where the gang manufacture Slo-Mo, a powerful psychotic drug that does just what it says on the tin. Outraged by the Judges’ capture of her head honcho, Ma-Ma locks down the entire block, leading to their increasingly desperate and violent efforts to exit intact with their prisoner.
In many ways the definitive rock concert doc, Martin Scorsese’s THE LAST WALTZ feels as fresh and invigorating today as ever. Capturing what was billed as The Band’s last ever live performance in San Francisco on 25 November 1972, Scorsese’s film provides an intimate first-hand portrait of a group weary from 16 years on the road but still dedicated to their loyal following. The charismatic frontman Robbie Robertson is very much the focus, and at times his personality overshadows the film’s end-of-an-era undertones. As a piece of documentary cinema, however, THE LAST WALTZ is unmissable viewing, not least for the presence of rock royalty that peppers the footage, including Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond and Ringo Starr.
Bob Fosse’s stylishly directed and choreographed screen adaptation of John Kander’s fine musical based on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin stories. With a chilling vision of Weimar Berlin, a city of gaiety and perversion, champagne and Nazi propaganda, CABARET features a show-stopping, Oscar-winning musical performance from Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey as the unforgettable emcee, and a truly extraordinary final fadeout.
Ella Fitzgerald was a 15-year-old street kid when she won a talent contest in 1934 at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Within months she was a star. Over the next six decades, her sublime voice would transform the tragedies of her own life and the troubles of her times into joy. JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS retraces this extraordinary journey.
Using never-before-seen images and unheard interviews, the film shows an Ella the world never knew: tough, thoughtful, funny; a dazzling musical innovator who defied horrifying racism; a committed civil rights activist; and an intensely private soul who sacrificed much of her personal life. At a time when she was the biggest singing star in the world, her pianist and friend Oscar Peterson said Ella was “the loneliest woman in the world”. But, as Jamie Cullum says, “Her music is one of the reasons it’s worth being on this planet.”
18.00Headline Acts: A summer of music films
Picturehouse Docs: Bringing you the best in new and topical documentaries covering issues around the world.
A documentary record of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY is popularly hailed as one of the first and most influential live concert films. A who’s who of legendary jazz and rock ’n’ roll performers make up the impressive line-up, with director Stern’s deft, economical style capturing them in all their glory. In terms of stand-out turns it’s too close to call, but Chuck Berry’s rendition of ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ nestles pretty near the top of the pile, with Mahalia Jackson’s spine-tingling performance of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ closely jostling. The film set the template for the genre; WOODSTOCK and MONTEREY POP swiftly followed. JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY is unquestionably essential viewing for music, archival and documentary fans alike.
Fargo - The Coen brothers' unique visual style and quirky sense of humour are superbly put to work in this blackly comic kidnap drama. In a cold and snowy Minnesota in 1987, debt-ridden car salesman Jerry (Macy) hires two thugs to kidnap his wife and collect a ransom from her rich father. When the hapless pair shoot a state trooper and two innocent bystanders, the local Police Chief's (McDormand in an Oscar-winning role) leads keep coming back to the suspicious-looking Jerry. Creating an array of intriguing characters, the Coens' script is a triumph of understated humour that earned them an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson are at their best in this blistering pitch-black comedy from Martin McDonagh (In Bruges). McDormand stars as the foul-mouthed, tough-as-nails Mildred Hayes, a grieving mother whose frustration boils over when the local police allow her daughter’s murder case to go cold. She publicly shames the town’s revered sheriff, William Willoughby (Harrelson), with three disused billboards, a sequence of bright red reminders that justice has not been served. The move stokes the ire of Willoughby’s thuggish, bigoted deputy (Rockwell), and so begins a violent, vicious circle of anger and revenge. From there, Three Billboards hurtles along an unpredictable but hugely rewarding narrative arc, veering between riotous laughter and sobering drama throughout. Sharply scripted and wonderfully acted, it’s one of the most accomplished contenders in this year’s awards race.
The Royal Tenenbaums - Royal Tenenbaum and his wife had three children - Chas, Richie and Margot - and then they separated. Chas started buying real estate in his early teens. Margot was a playwright and received a 50,000 dollar grant in ninth grade. Richie was a junior champion tennis player and won the U.S. Nationals three years in a row. Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure and disaster, mostly considered to be their father's fault. The family tells of their sudden, unexpected reunion one recent winter.
The grand Budapest Hotel - Set in the interwar years, the film centres on the eponymous hotel, its savvy concierge Gustave (Fiennes) and his new lobby boy Zero Moustafa (newcomer Tony Revolori), who progresses from naive apprentice to Gustave’s trusted accomplice.
The guile of both is tested when one of Gustave’s most favoured guests (a heavily camouflaged Tilda Swinton) bequeaths him a priceless painting, thereby arousing the suspicions of Edward Norton’s detective Henckels.
Their ensuing adventures propel the story along at a heady pace and involve numerous roguish characters, many played by Anderson regulars including Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson. Glorious fun.
