2018/2019 Season
Finally the wait is over! We are proud to announce the programme for the 2018/19 season, our 17th year. These films were chosen by our discerning and knowledgeable members from a much longer list.
Following on from our affordable pricing policy of last season we are able to offer a £24.00 six film season ticket on the first night, the charge for day membership will remain at £5.00 per film for the season.
I hope you will find much to delight, amuse and challenge in the six films we have chosen. As ever we will meet at The County Hotel, you all know by now how it's the perfect place for a pre-film meal and a post-film drink and blether so I won't go through all that again. Oh.
Doors open at 7.00 film starts at 7.30.
Looking forward to spending winter nights in a darkened room with my Film Club chums watching stories written in light unfold in front of our very eyes.
Cheers, Al
19.10.18 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: 2018 Martin Mcdonagh USA 115mins 15
After months have passed without a culprit being apprehended in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), an immature mother's boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated.
CHANGE OF DATE: NOW SUNDAY 2nd DECEMBER
2.12.18 Cave Of Forgotten Dreams: 2010 Werner Herzog Can/Fr/Ger/USA 90mins U
In 1994, a group of scientists discovered a cave in Southern France perfectly preserved for over 20,000 years and containing the earliest known human paintings. Knowing the cultural significance that the Chauvet Cave holds, the French government immediately cut-off all access to it, save to a few archaeologists and palaeontologists. But documentary filmmaker, Werner Herzog, was granted limited access, and now we get to enter these caves, examining beautiful artwork created by our ancient ancestors around 32,000 years ago. Herzog asks questions of various historians and scientists about what these humans would have been like as he tries to build a bridge from the past to the present.
CHANGE OF DATE: NOW THURSDAY 20th DECEMBER
20.12.18 The Book Shop: 2017 Isabel Coixet, UK, 113mins, PG
1959. Free-spirited widow Florence Green (Emily Mortimer) risks everything to open a bookshop in a conservative East Anglian coastal town. While bringing about a surprising cultural awakening through works by Ray Bradbury and Vladimir Nabokov, she earns the polite but ruthless opposition of a local grand dame (Patricia Clarkson) and the support and affection of a reclusive book loving widower (Bill Nighy). As Florence's obstacles amass and bear suspicious signs of a local power struggle, she is forced to ask: is there a place for a bookshop in a town that may not want one?
11.1.19 Funny Cow: 2018 Adrian Shergold UK 102mins 15
Maxine Peake gives a formidable performance as an aspiring female comedian standing up to a violent husband and the sexist Northern England club circuit. If you think that modern comedy is still lacking in gender equality, then this tough, streetwise British film shows that it's also made giant strides since the in-your-face chauvinism of working men's clubs in decades past. And yet, ill-treatment by men is something our eponymous heroine is grimly used to, from childhood beatings to an abusive husband (scriptwriter Tony Pitts, on terrifying form). More a film about the power of laughter and how to transform pain into humour than a straight-up comedy, Funny Cow is a fitting showcase for Peake. So often dazzling on stage and television, she's hilarious and heart-breaking here. There's fine support too from cast-against-type Paddy Considine as her middle-class paramour and a swooning, melancholic soundtrack by Richard Hawley.
CHANGE OF DATE: NOW SUNDAY 10TH FEBRUARY
10.2.19 Hotel Salvation (Mukti Bhawan): 2016 Shubhashish Bhutiani India 102mins PG
Hindi with English subtitles
An ominous dream convinces 77-year-old Dayanand Kumar that his end could be near. He takes the news to his son Rajiv, knowing he wants to breathe his last in the holy city of Varanasi and end the cycle of rebirth, by attaining Salvation. Being the dutiful son he is, Rajiv, is left with no choice but to set aside the complications of his own family and business life to make the journey with his stubborn father.
15.3.19 The Year And The Vineyard (El año y la viña): 2014 Jon Cenzual Burley Spain 75mins 15
A Sicilian member of the international Brigades during the Spanish civil war on his way to the front in Guadalajara falls through a hole in time on to present day Spain in a small village in the Province of Salamanca, where he befriends the village teacher, has to deal with being confused with an angel, an over enthusiastic priest and the choice of staying in a time where he does not belong or going back to the horrors of war and the woman he loves.