Clapham Picture House Listings for 5 May 2011
For film times and booking information please go to the Clapham Picture House website.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND 2D (PG)
Director: Tim Burton
Origin: United States
Year: 2010
Duration: 108m
Starring: Helena Bonham Carter, Christopher Lee, Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Stephen Fry
Disney's updated live-action / CGI reimagining of Lewis Carroll's 19th-century novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, as seen through the surreal eyes of Tim Burton (CORPSE BRIDE, CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY). Along with longtime collaborator Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter and wife Helena Bonham Carter as the wicked Red Queen, ALICE IN WONDERLAND boasts a wealth of British talent, with Stephen Fry voicing The Cheshire Cat, Michael Sheen as The White Rabbit, Matt Lucas as Tweedledee / Tweedledum and Alan Rickman as the hookah-smoking Caterpillar. Budding Australian actress Mia Wasikowska (AMELIA) stars as the young heroine who journeys down a rabbit hole and ends up in a bizarre fantasy land.
FAREWELL (L'AFFAIRE FAREWELL) (12A*)
Director: Christian Carion
Origin: France
Year: 2009
Duration: 113m
Starring: Emir Kusturica, Willem Dafoe, Guillaume Canet, Alexandra Maria Lara
Featuring a heavyweight European cast and steeped in '80s Cold War atmosphere, director Carion's (MERRY CHRISTMAS) FAREWELL is a taut espionage thriller based on true events that changed the world. Colonel Sergei Gregoriev (played by revered director Emir Kusturica, ARIZONA DREAM), a Russian KGB operative, finds himself increasingly disenchanted with the communist regime. He starts liaising with the enemy, supplying documents to a Moscow-based French engineer, who relays them to the French secret service. At the height of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan (Fred Ward) meets with French president Fran?ois Mitterrand (Philippe Magnan) to use this information to alter the course of international politics.
*Contains strong language
Note: this film is subtitled
FIRE IN BABYLON (tbc)
Director: Stevan Riley
Origin: United Kingdom
Year: 2011
Duration: 82m
In a turbulent era of apartheid in South Africa, race-riots in England and civil unrest in the Caribbean, the West Indian cricketers of the late ?70s and ?80s struck a wonderfully defiant blow at the forces of white prejudice worldwide. With Caribbean flair, a fearless spirit and a thumping reggae beat, they hijacked the genteel game of the privileged elite and replayed it on their own terms. By dominating at the highest level - for longer than any other team in the history of sport - their symbolic declaration was clear: they will not be dictated to, on a cricket ground or in any other context. FIRE IN BABYLON boasts dynamic archive footage, classic music by the likes of Bob Marley and the Wailers, Gregory Issacs and Burning Spear, and is a story that celebrates the equalising power of sport.
FROM THE ASHES (tbc)
Year: 2011
Duration: 150m
FROM THE ASHES is an uplifting and remarkable tale of a summer that changed English sport forever. In July 1981, rioting and discontent ruled the streets of England. On the playing fields, England was 1-0 down after two tests against old enemy Australia, and iconic all- rounder Ian Botham had resigned as captain. Watching on was the opposition captain Kim Hughes, the brilliant and eloquent golden boy of Australian sport. With English cricket on the brink, bookmakers offered odds of 500-1 against an English win in the 3rd test. But Botham would not lie down and rediscovered his cavalier flair in a series of remarkable, match-winning performances that defined him and saw The Ashes returned home. Packed with match action and interviews with the chief protagonists - including Botham, Gower, Willis, Marsh, Hughes and others - FROM THE ASHES tells the story of one of the most remarkable sporting turnarounds in history from the perspective of two men who would be king.
HANNA (12A*)
Director: Joe Wright
Origin: Germany, United Kingdom, United States
Year: 2011
Duration: 111m
Starring: Eric Bana, Olivia Williams, Cate Blanchett, Saoirse Ronan
A full-blooded action-thriller with a pulsing score from The Chemical Brothers, HANNA marks a change of tack for multi-BAFTA-winning British director Joe Wright (ATONEMENT). The plot follows a teenage assassin named Hanna (Saoirse Ronan, THE WAY BACK), who?s been raised to kill in an isolated snow-blanketed shack in Finland by her ex-CIA father (Bana, MUNICH). Her moment of truth arrives when her father sends her out on a stealth mission across Europe, where she is duly tracked by a team of intelligence operatives commanded by a ruthless US government agent (Blanchett, ROBIN HOOD). As she nears the end of her assignment, however, the truth about her existence will change Hanna?s fate forever. Contains moderate violence and one use of strong language.
*Contains moderate violence and one use of strong language
JIG (PG*)
Director: Sue Bourne
Origin: United Kingdom
Year: 2011
Duration: 97m
JIG is the remarkable story of the 40th Irish Dancing World Championships, held in March 2010 in Glasgow. Three thousand dancers, their families and teachers from around the globe descend on the city for one drama-filled week. Clad in wigs, makeup, fake tan, diamantes and dresses costing thousands of pounds, they compete for the coveted world title.
*Contains infrequent mild language and drug references
LIMITLESS (15*)
Director: Neil Burger
Origin: United States
Year: 2011
Duration: 105m
Starring: Robert De Niro, Abbie Cornish, Bradley Cooper
A struggling writer unlocks the full potential of his brain by taking a cutting-edge pharmaceutical, only to find that his newfound abilities have made him a target for some of the most greedy and dangerous men on the planet.
*Contains strong bloody violence
NT ENCORE: FRANKENSTEIN (15)
Director: Danny Boyle
Origin: United Kingdom
Year: 2011
Duration: 135m
A new play by Nick Dear based on the novel by Mary Shelley. "I followed nature into her lair, and stripped her of her secrets! I brought torrents of light to a darkening world! Is that wrong?" Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein's bewildered creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror- struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal. "All I ask is the possibility of love!" Urgent concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing classic gothic tale. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is adapted for the stage by Nick Dear and realised by Danny Boyle in his return to the theatre after winning the Academy Award for best director for SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the Creature and Jonny Lee Miller is Victor Frankenstein in this version. "Slowly I learnt the ways of humans: how to ruin, how to hate, how to debase, how to humiliate. And at the feet of my master I learnt the highest of human skills, the skill no other creature owns: I finally learnt how to lie." Please note this recorded screening has been given a (15) certificate by the British Board of Film Classification.
SOURCE CODE (12A*)
Director: Duncan Jones
Origin: France, United States
Year: 2011
Duration: 93m
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga, Michelle Monaghan
Following his critically acclaimed breakthrough feature MOON, British director Duncan Jones takes things to the next level in this intelligent, full-blooded action thriller. When Captain Colter Stevens (Gyllenhaal, LOVE & OTHER DRUGS) wakes up in another man's body on a train full of strangers, he naturally struggles to make sense of it all. He soon learns, however, that he's part of a secret government operation called 'Source Code', a highly advanced method of mental transplantation that allows him to occupy a host subject for the last eight minutes of their life. His mission: to find a bomber on the train and stop a potentially catastrophic act of terrorism in its tracks.
*Contains one use of strong language and moderate threat
THOR 3D (12A*)
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Origin: United States
Year: 2011
Duration: 114m
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman
Before Captain America crash-bangs onto the big screen and way before Spidey and the Dark Knight return, Thor is set to make his mark on the comic-book movie world. In actor/director Kenneth Branagh?s (SLEUTH) muscular 3D epic based on the Marvel comic character of the same name, the Nordic man mountain (Hemsworth, STAR TREK) is thrown off his divine perch and sent crashing to Earth to slum it with the humans as punishment for igniting an ancient feud in Asgard. With all manner of evil making its way to the mortal realm, the God of Thunder is required to muster up all of his warrior nous and sheer brute force to protect mankind from the threat of extinction. Contains moderate fantasy violence.
*Contains moderate fantasy violence
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS (12A*)
Director: Francis Lawrence
Origin: United States
Year: 2011
Duration: 120m
Starring: James Frain, Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson
Adapted from Sara Gruen's novel by acclaimed screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, THE HORSE WHISPERER), WATER FOR ELEPHANTS is a deeply romantic film that confronts the trauma of loss and how seemingly insignificant decisions can shape the course of our lives. Recently orphaned and adrift, Jacob Jankowski (Pattinson, TWILIGHT) jumps aboard a passing train and enters the world of freaks and misfits in a second-rate circus struggling to survive the Great Depression. Landing the job of looking after the animals, he encounters Marlena (Witherspoon, WALK THE LINE), a gentle and alluring equestrian who happens to be betrothed to the villain of our tale. This timeless and endearing story of love against the odds has a beautiful period recreation that harks back to classic Hollywood melodrama on a grand scale.
*Contains moderate violence, threat and brief nudity