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Autumn season:-
Ratatouille - 11th September
Cert U
Release 2007
Animated Film
As good a film as Pixar has ever put out, Ratatouille is a frantic, innovative movie, boasting some of the finest quality animation ever put on the screen.
Ratatouille tells the story of wannabe-chef Remy The Rat, who becomes drawn into the mantra of legendary cook Gusteau, that anyone can cook. The deceased Gusteau’s ghostly image appears to Remy, and guides him to his restaurant, whose standards have been slipping since his death. Remy, through the manipulation of a lowly restaurant worker called Linguini, soon starts secretly cooking the food, and this unusual set up proves to be a trove of treasures that Pixar carefully picks through.
Ratatouille’s trick is to tie its cutting edge animation techniques to old-school essentials. At times harking back to the frenetic style you’d expect of Chuck Jones, it threads an original narrative through its story, which itself is packed with memorable characters (none more so than Peter O’Toole’s superbly-voiced restaurant critic). It perhaps runs a little too long, but it’s so well-written and so lavishly entertaining that it’s a churlish complaint to have.
For in an era of cynically-produced family movies, Ratatouille is really something special. With an appeal that spreads across generations, and a quality that puts it right up there with Pixar’s finest, it’s an outstanding piece of cinema, and one set to be enjoyed for many, many years. Unmissable.
The Loop - 9th October
Cert 15
Release 2009
One of the finest British comedies of the decade, In The Loop takes the genius of the small screen hit The Thick Of It, and fleshes it out into a blisteringly funny feature-length movie.
Written and directed by Armando Ianucci, the film basically follows a plan between the American President and the British Prime Minister to begin a war, and spin it to their advantage. Naturally, not everyone is so keen on the plan, and the problems arise when Simon Foster, the Minister for International Development, declares that a war isn’t foreseeable, a statement that soon gets seized upon. Then In The Loop deploys its not-so-secret weapon, as enter stage left comes the tour-de-force that is spin doctor Malcolm Tucker.
The character of Tucker will be familiar to fans of The Thick Of It, and here, he’s the absolute high point of a film packed with great moments. Foul-mouthed, vitriolic and a majestic comedy creation, much has been written in the past about Tucker’s similarities with Alastair Campbell. The parallels are startling, but it’s in Peter Capaldi’s outstanding portrayal of him that Tucker becomes the force of nature he is here.
Bolstered by an intelligent and incisive script, In The Loop is both an outstanding comedy and a first-rate satire, that only loses its momentum slightly in its final act. Yet by that stage, it’s more than justified both your expense and your time, and it’s virtually guaranteed to stay resident on many people’s rewatch pile too. One of the finest films of 2009.
The Grapes of Wrath - 13th November
Cert PG
Release 1940
John Ford's memorable screen version of John Steinbeck's epic novel of the Great Depression--often regarded as the director's best film--stars Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. After having served a brief prison sentence for manslaughter, Joad arrives at his family's Oklahoma farm only to find it abandoned. Muley (John Qualen), a neighbour now nearly mad with grief, tells Tom of the drought that has transformed the farmland of Oklahoma into a desert and of the preying land agents who have ploughed under the shacks of the sharecroppers. Joined by former hellfire preacher Casy (John Carradine), Tom finds his extended family, including Pa (Charles Grapewin) and his indomitable Ma (Jane Darwell), packing their ramshackle truck to seek work in the fields of California. As the family treks across the country, their dissolution begins with the deaths of Tom's grandparents at close intervals. When they arrive in California, the Joads find only an abundance of poverty-stricken migrants like themselves and little in the way of potential work. Yet, ever resilient, they maintain their dignity, hoping for the best. Among the talented cast, Fonda does perhaps the best work of his career, as does Qualen in the film's most haunting sequence. Director of photography Gregg Toland captures the suffering and the weathered, luminous nobility of the Joads and the other uprooted, drifting families, creating striking images equal to the best work of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. In a stirring film that stands as a microcosm of the depression experience of millions, Ford gives poverty a human face in a way that was rare then and even rarer in the decades to follow as Hollywood films with a sense of class consciousness dwindled like a species nearing extinction.
Amelie - 11th December
Cert 15
Release 2002
French with English subtitles.
Amelie Poulain (Audrey Tautou) is a young woman who glides through the streets of Paris as quietly as a mouse. With wide eyes and a tiny grin, she sees the world in a magical light, discovering minor miracles every day. A shy and reserved person whose favorite moments are spent alone skimming stones into the water, Amelie was raised by a pair of eccentrics who falsely diagnosed her with a heart problem at the age of six and so limited her exposure to the outside world. Now a free and independent woman, Amelie wears a bob that curls in every direction and dresses in red. With a job in a cafe and an aptitude for spying on her neighbors, Amelie entertains herself by enacting a series of homemade, kindhearted practical jokes. She returns a long-forgotten box of childhood knickknacks to its proper owner, she sends her father's garden troll on a trip around the world, and she creates a love connection at the cafe between the hypochondriac druggist and a beer-drinking grouch. But when the day is done, Amelie finds one stone unturned, and decides to work her magic on the quirky object of her affections, Nino Quincampoix (Matthieu Kassovitz), whom she has never met. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who codirected DELICATESSEN and THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN with Marc Caro) presents AMELIE, an aesthetically gorgeous and inventive film. The rich, glowing color scheme is offset by flashbacks in black and white archival footage that give short biographies of each character. A soft-spoken narrator guides viewers through this enlightening fairy tale, which sometimes speeds through the streets and other times drifts in slow motion. AMELIE is humorous, questioning, and strange, and it will change the lives of all who watch it, if only for a short while after leaving Amelie's world.
Alice In Wonderland - 8th January 2011
Cert PG
Release 2010
Featuring an all-star cast including Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter; Burton adds a magical, imaginative twist to this classic story. When Alice returns to the world she encountered as a young girl, she embarks on a journey to discover her true destiny, and encounters some of the most fantastical, charismatic characters ever created. Prepare to see the White Rabbit, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter as you’ve never seen them before.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - 12th February
Cert 18
Release 1975
One of the key movies of the 1970s, when exciting, groundbreaking, personal films were still being made in Hollywood, Milos Forman's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest emphasised the humanistic story at the heart of Ken Kesey's more hallucinogenic novel. Jack Nicholson was born to play the part of Randle Patrick McMurphy, the rebellious inmate of a psychiatric hospital who fights back against the authorities' cold attitudes of institutional superiority, as personified by Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher).
It's the classic antiestablishment tale of one man asserting his individuality in the face of a repressive, conformist system--and it works on every level. Forman populates his film with memorably eccentric faces, and gets such freshly detailed and spontaneous work from his ensemble that the picture sometimes feels like a documentary. Unlike a lot of films pitched at the "youth culture" of the 1970s, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest really hasn't dated a bit, because the qualities of human nature that Forman captures--playfulness, courage, inspiration, pride, stubbornness--are universal and timeless. The film swept the Academy Awards for 1976, winning in all the major categories (picture, director, actor, actress, screenplay) for the first time since Frank Capra's It Happened One Night in 1931.
To be announced - 12th March
AGM and film to be announced - 9th April?>
So put these dates in your diary.
Supported with a grant from the Scottish Arts Council.
Contact:-
Stuart MacKenzie 01592 840638
Maintained by your local supplier of wedding favours:-
www.jsfavours.co.uk
August 2009
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