Chicago Reader review: In 1969 Ken Loach took time out from an acclaimed television career to
direct this quietly powerful narrative feature, a classic of British
social realism. Based on a novel by Barry Hines but shot like a
documentary, with a hardscrabble industrial setting and a cast that
blends professionals and amateurs, the film tracks an introverted
Yorkshire lad (David Bradley) who's abandoned by his father and bullied
by his coal-miner brother (Freddie Fletcher). A failure in the classroom
and on the soccer pitch alike, the boy finds his wings when he adopts
and trains a fledgling kestrel. Working in the style of cinema verite,
cinematographer Chris Menges captures the petty tyrannies of the
provincial working class and the inchoate joys of a youngster stumbling
toward the greater world. Andrea Gronvall
This is the UK premiere of the 4K restoration of one of John Ford's early magnificent westerns. The screening features an introduction by Bryony Dixon, Rosie Taylor and Makeda Doyal and a live accompaniment by Ashley Valentine.
Chicago Reader review: The film that introduced Yasujiro Ozu, one of Japan's
greatest filmmakers, to American audiences (1953). The camera remains
stationary throughout this delicate study of conflicting generations in a
modern Japanese family, save for one heartbreaking moment when Ozu
tracks around a corner to discover the grandparents, alone and
forgotten. A masterpiece, minimalist cinema at its finest and most
complex. Dave Kehr
This film is part of the Category H’s late night Rio Forever season.
Category H introduction: Where strange inhabitants commit unspeakable deeds or where past
inhabitants can’t quite seem to put their bad habits to rest, even
from beyond the grave. Blood (1973), directed by cult filmmaker
Andy Milligan, is a sprawling tale of multiple monsters who move into
a new home in order to conduct scientific experiments. Led by one Dr
Orlofski and his beautiful sunlight hating wife Regina, the monsters
attempt to find ways to make their strange family work in a hostile
new town. Blood plays as a strange melodrama featuring constant
injections, arguments and the odd carnivorous plant, creating an
entertaining completely one of a kind film. Screening at the Rio for
the first time X years, leave any ideas of typical plot development
at the door and prepare to be injected with Milligan’s infectious
cinematic world. After a short break, we will return to the
cinema for Bones (2001). Bones is a truly original 00s horror film
that was sorely overlooked upon release, and which we cannot wait to
bring to the Rio Cinema for the first time. Starring Snoop Dogg and
featuring Pam Grier, Bones is a ghost story tinged with giallo.
Twenty years after his unlawful death, former man of the people Jimmy
Bones’s ghost remains haunting his now run down neighborhood. After
a group of teenagers acquire his old house and plan to turn it into a
nightclub, they accidentally summon his vengeful spirit who is
looking to take revenge on those who have ruined his beloved former
home. Featuring incredible practical effects and excellent
performances, Bones is a film ripe for reappraisal.
Prince Charles Cinema introduction: Four
teenage friends from Hell's Kitchen end up being sent to reform
school after almost killing a man. There they are brutalized by the
guards. John (Ron Eldard) and Tommy (Billy Crudup) grow up to be hit
men who recognize their abuser years later and kill him. Their trial
is prosecuted by another member of their gang, who is now the
assistant DA.
This 35mm screening is part of the Nolan in 35mm season at the Screen on the Green from June 20th to July 15th. Full details here.
Time Out review: It’s been a summer of great expectations. First there was ‘The
Avengers’, which ticked all the right geeky boxes and made a truckload
of dosh. Then ‘Prometheus’, which disappointed most but still managed to
ring a few tills. Now here comes the biggie. Can Christopher Nolan see
out his Bat trilogy in style? Can he make that so-far-elusive five-star
superhero movie, the one which gets the blend between action, emotion,
plot and character just right? Can he at least live up to the eyepopping
standard he set with 2008’s ‘The Dark Knight’? The answers are yes, no, and mostly. As its running time suggests,
‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is a sprawling, epic feast of a movie, stuffed
to the gills with side characters, subplots and diversions. So if the
balance skews in favour of grandstanding action rather than emotional
resonance, of statuesque icons rather than real people, we can let it
slide. There’s nothing here to match the intensity of Heath Ledger’s
Joker, and the movie feels weaker for it. But that was a one-off, and
the show must go on. We’re reintroduced to Bruce Wayne, aka Batman (Christian Bale), living as a recluse, holed up in the east wing of Wayne Manor while Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) presides over a relatively crime-free Gotham City. But when marauding, mask-wearing psycho Bane (Tom Hardy) muscles in with the intention of kickstarting a popular revolution, Bruce must don the cape and cowl once again. This is just the central thread in an increasingly tangled story: there’s also Anne Hathaway as a slinky, burgling Catwoman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
as a square-jawed beat cop and lots of confusing financial shenanigans
with the shareholders of Wayne Enterprises. As in the previous films,
Nolan and his co-writer, his brother Jonathan, draw on real-world issues
to spice up the fantasy, and with dubious results: with its rampaging
Occupy Gotham anarchists, philanthropic billionaires and decent cops who
ignore due process, this is so staunchly right-wing it’ll thrill all
those Fox News anchors outraged by ‘The Muppets’. But when the Bat flies, such considerations go out the window.
Sublimating CGI in favour of real crowd scenes and massive cityscapes,
Nolan creates a grand, dirty, engrossing world, and his action sequences
just hum. The way the various strands tie up is a mite predictable, but
it’s satisfying nonetheless. And as our heroes swoop off into the
sunset, we realise we’ve been witness to something truly impressive: a
seven-year cinematic adventure which combined the epic and the personal
in dizzying, inventive, sometimes perplexing, often enthralling, always
imaginative ways. Tom Huddleston
This 35mm screening is part of the Nolan in 35mm season at the Screen on the Green from June 20th to July 15th. Full details here.
Time Out review: Funny things, dreams. Fascinating for the dreamer, but as dull
as a late morning in Slough for anybody else, unless, of course, your
guide is Freud. Or, as it turns out, Christopher Nolan, the 39-year-old
British director of ‘Memento’ and ‘The Dark Knight’, whose solution to
the boredom of other people’s dreams is to collide their woozy,
ever-changing, upside-down and roundabout nature with the thrust of a
fast-paced, men-on-a-mission movie and a startling visual language that
mirrors their strangeness. Better still, the dreams preferred by Nolan
include images of Paris folding in on itself and a trackless train
thundering through a city. The limited, sleepworld excitements of
retaking your A levels ad infinitum or forever missing a flight at the
airport don’t figure here. Nolan throws a perfect
storm of stunts, effects, locations and actors at one big idea: that
it’s possible to pilfer ideas from dreams by a process called
‘extraction’, which involves hooking yourself up to a drip, falling
asleep and entering the world of the subconscious. The holy grail of
this process is to reverse it, which is ‘inception’, the planting of a
new idea in another’s mind. That’s the trick that experts Dom (Leonardo
DiCaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon Levitt), aided by new recruits
Ariadne (Ellen Page) and Eames (Tom Hardy), try to pull off while
hopping from Tokyo to Paris to Mombasa. They’re working for Saito (Ken
Watanabe) in pursuit of business magnate Robert (Cillian Murphy), and
their motives vary, from financial to intellectual. But DiCaprio has
another driver: the memory of his wife Mal (Marion Cottilard) is
haunting him and it’s going to take a lot of psychological
spring-cleaning for him to reconnect with that lost world. All
hail Nolan for mastering a higher class of mass entertainment. Like all
good science fiction, ‘Inception’ demands we pay serious attention to
pure fantasy on the back of strong ideas and exquisite craft – but it
also combines fantasy with real observations about our sleeping lives.
Like a dream, Nolan’s film fades swiftly in the light – but while it
lasts, it feels like there’s nothing more important to decipher. Dave Calhoun
