THAT SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP Premieres, Previews & New Releases of UK & USA Cinema

New Release A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK

Woody Allen’s romantic comedy tells the story of Yardley College sweethearts Gatsby Welles (Timothée Chalamet) and Ashleigh Enright (Elle Fanning).

Gatsby learns that Ashleigh is to travel to Manhattan to interview the cult director Roland Pollard (Jude Law) for the college paper and he plans a romantic weekend with her. His hopes are dashed as quickly as the sunlight turns into showers. The two are parted and each has a series of chance meetings and comical adventures while on their own.

Considering the general reviews surrounding this film, and the long delay in its release, it would be easy to assume that it isn’t very good. It may not be ‘Annie Hall’ or ‘Hannah and Her Sisters’, but it is still well worth seeing. It certainly has all the ingredients; the Manhattan location, Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography, a “Woody Allen-like” protagonist, wearing the obligatory cord clothes and sneakers. He likes gambling, the seedy side of life and jazz (soundtrack by the fabulous Erroll Garner). There is romance, cynicism, humour and a great cast, with the two leads in particular excellent, but with good work from the rest, including Law and Liev Schreiber. Chalamet plays the selfdoubting, eccentric art-loving nonconformist intellectual that Allen would play in his own films. While the latter may not be at the top of his game, even a lesser film from him is still more interesting than the bulk of other releases. It was never distributed theatrically in the UK, so here is a rare chance to enjoy it on the big screen.

USA 2019 WOODY ALLEN 92M

UK Premiere

Finally Nearly Getting There

Two couples plan a car-share to attend a wedding. When one half of each couple drops out, the “plus ones” make the long trip from Wales to East Sussex together. This feature-length debut by the Brighton- based writer/director/editor James Card is a modest road movie distinguished by fine performances from Roisin Rae and Brooks Livermore. Their dialogue and their interactions, much of them improvised from a conversation-free script outline of just 16 pages, are entirely credible and there are hints of Linklater’s ‘Before Trilogy’ in this impressive exercise in understatement by a filmmaker who has long wanted to make a work in the “mumblecore” subgenre.

UK 2023 JAMES CARD 80M

Fri 18 Aug 20:45 – Auditorium Sat 19 Aug 14:00 – Auditorium

Theater Camp

This Christopher Guest-style comedy is an affectionate salute to the outsider kids who find community and shared passion in their love of the stage.

It stars Ben Platt and Molly Gordon as daffily over-serious instructors captured by an unseen documentary crew at a rundown theatre camp in upstate New York. The lakeside community is in turmoil after its cash-strapped matriarch, Joan (Amy Sedaris), slips into a strobe-light-induced coma at a middle-school production of ‘Bye Bye Birdie’; her blogger son Troy (YouTube star Jimmy Tatro), a caricature of a socialmedia hypeman and with zero knowledge of musical theatre, steps in to “en-troy-preneur” the place. Much of ‘Theater Camp’ feels improvised and works because the jokes that land outweigh the ones that don’t. It certainly has a high gag-per-minute ratio, jumping from concept to concept, and prioritising the humour over all else. The songs have some of the silliest lyrics imaginable, but the kids in the cast (plus one surprise adult star) sing the hell out of them and, somehow, they’re almost catchy. It’s simultaneously a mess and inspired.

USA 2023 MOLLY GORDON, NICK LIEBERMAN 96M Our thanks to Disney/Fox for this screening.

Fri 18 Aug 11:00 – Studio

Ufologists

The truth is out there. Well – in Cornwall anyway!

Intrepid television reporter Ellie Thornton dives deep into the lives of a four-man UFO investigation team who are convinced that Bodmin Moor and the rugged Cornish coast are the hottest spot in the UK for sightings of visits by aliens: a rival to Nevada’s Area 51. The imperative is ‘Witness–Experience-Accept’. What might in other hands justify no more than a 20-minute sketch is sustained to feature length in Jason Gregg’s mockumentary, thanks to a delicious script, immaculate casting, fine photography and a perfectly pitched score. A little gem.

UK 2022 JASON GREGG 96M

The Trouble With Jessica

Sarah and Tom, a successful London professional couple, panic after their friend Jessica kills herself in their garden just as they are on the brink of selling the house for some urgently-needed cash. Their situation takes a terrifying nosedive with the sudden death of their uninvited guest, Jessica (Indira Varma). Panicking that the buyer will pull out of the sale if they find out what happened, Sarah (Shirley Henderson) and Tom (Alan Tudyk) persuade their best friends, Richard (Rufus Sewell) and Beth (Olivia Williams), to help them relocate Jessica’s body. Faced with the moral dilemma of their lives, they make a series of choices that could be either their salvation or their destruction. This is a delicious black comedy, and as the title suggests, it has echoes of Hitchcock’s ‘The Trouble with Harry’.

UK 2022 MATT WINN 90M

We welcome the director Matt Winn to introduce this UK premiere and follow the screening with a Q&A.

Our thanks to Parkland Pictures for this screening.

Oppenheimer

A Special Festival Screening on 35mm

This new film from Christopher Nolan (‘Inception’, ‘Dunkirk’) delves deep into the life and work of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), a brilliant scientist whose involvement in the Manhattan Project changed the course of history.

Set against the backdrop of World War II, the film uncovers the complex motivations and dilemmas faced by Oppenheimer and his team as they race against time to develop a weapon capable of ending the war. As they unlock the destructive power of the atom, they must confront the ethical implications of their actions and grapple with the devastating aftermath. The incredible cast includes Murphy, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr, Gustaf Skarsgård, Gary Oldman, Josh Hartnett, Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek and Casey Affleck. NB. Another aspect of this subject concerns Ted Hall, a young physicist working for the Manhattan Project, which is explored in the outstanding documentary ‘A Compassionate Spy’. See pg36 for details.

USA 2023 CHRISTOPHER NOLAN 179M

A rare opportunity to see this film in the 35mm format as preferred by director Christopher Nolan.

Brought to you by:

Wed 23 Aug 17:45 – Auditorium

Thu 24 Aug 13:30 – Auditorium

Past Lives

Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are separated after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Twenty years later, they are reunited for one fateful week as they confront notions of love and destiny.

The rare love story that’s both impossibly romantic and crushingly pragmatic, ‘Past Lives’ follows two people who might be soulmates, even though they have never kissed and haven’t been in the same city for two decades. Making an utterly assured feature debut, writerdirector Celine Song modulates perfectly the delicate tonal balance of this wise, wistful film, dividing her narrative into three distinct segments and following the characters when they’re roughly 12, 24 and 36 – with each passage more moving than the last. There are three superb performances at the picture’s centre, but none is more radiant than that of Greta Lee, gracefully capturing the spirit of a searching soul who seems to understand things about the nuances of love that are beyond the grasp of the rest of us. Premiered at both Sundance and Berlin to rave reviews. (Subtitles)

USA 2022 CELINE SONG 106M

Our thanks to StudioCanal for this screening.

Sat