Film / Previews
Event Cinema for January 2016
2016 hits the ground running with a feast of ballet (Rhapsody/The Two Pigeons, The Taming of the Shrew), theatre (the NT’s revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses plus encore screenings of Jane Eyre and The Winter’s Tale) and Opera (Les Pecheurs de Perles, Turandot). Oh, and an Adventure Film Festival, a terrible thriller, Jodorowsky weirdness with a live score and comedy classic Airplane! with grub. And don’t forget Slapstick, which we’ve previewed separately here. As usual, you can find more info and trailers, where available, in our detailed film listings starting here.
Sherlock: The Abominable Bride
Yep, instead of slumping in front of the telly to watch the Beeb’s feature-length New Year’s Day Sherlock special, you can schlep to the cinema to watch it broadcast simultaneously on the big screen. Incentives include a tour of 221B Baker Street and a making-of documentary starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.
is needed now More than ever
Screening Jan 1: Vue Cribbs Causeway
Branagh Theatre Encore: The Winter’s Tale
More encore screenings of Ken Branagh’s Bardfest. Having famously doubled the roles of Hermione and Perdita for Trevor Nunn, Judi Dench returns to The Winter’s Tale as noblewoman Paulina. Ken bags himself the role of King Leontes.
Screening Jan 3: Vue Cribbs Causeway, Vue Longwell Green, Cineworld
Screening Jan 10: Curzon
It’s an irresistible subject for a documentary and Brit director Nick Read was granted full access to capture the fallout in what will inevitably be dubbed a “real-life Black Swan.” On January 17, 2013, a masked assailant threw acid into the face of Bolshoi Ballet Director Sergei Filin. In an extraordinary twist, former Bolshoi principal dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko was subsequently arrested and charged with orchestrating the attack. Read’s film follows the aftermath, as Dmitrichenko goes on trial and Filin undergoes surgery in the hope of saving his sight, revealing the poisonous atmosphere of ambition and intrigue backstage at Russia’s greatest cultural institution.
The screening will be followed by a satellite Q&A with the filmmakers, Bolshoi principal dancer Anastasia Meskova, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore and others TBC
Screening Jan 10: Showcase Cinema De Lux
Director Sally Cookson brings her strikingly imaginative Bristol Old Vic production of the Charlotte Bronte classic to the National. Originally performed over two nights, it’s now staged as a single piece.
Screening Jan 12: Orpheus
Met Opera: Les Pecheurs de Perles
Director Penny Woolcock conjures up an undersea world on stage as she brings Bizet’s opera of lust and longing back to the Met for the first time in 100 years. Set in the Far East, it stars soprano Diana Damrau stars as Hindu princess hottie Leïla, whose rival pearl diver suitors are tenor Matthew Polenzani and baritone Mariusz Kwiecien.
Screening Jan 16: Cineworld, Showcase Cinema De Lux, Vue Cribbs Causeway, Vue Longwell Green
The annual Adventure Film Festival returns to the Cube for two nights of adventurous foolhardiness.
The first programme on Jan 17 comprises Bear Island, which is also being screened this month as part of the Nordic Film Festival; Burn It Down, in which ‘longboarder’ James Kelly races down Californian roads; and The Last Explorers of the Rio Santa Cruz, following an expedition to retrace the footsteps of Captain Fitzroy along the length of the Rio Santa Cruz in 1834.
On Jan 24, you can see seven short films, including the self-explanatory The 82-Year-Old Sky Diver and Sufferfest 2, in which a pair of cyclists set out to climb 45 of the American Southwest’s most iconic Desert Towers – by their most difficult routes, obviously.
Screening Jan 17 & 24: Cube
Back in the ‘70s, cinemas became clogged with increasingly ludicrous Airport flicks in which the starry likes of George Kennedy and Robert Wagner faced all manner of airborne peril. The genre was clearly ripe for spoofing, but who could have imagined the spoof would become a genre all of its own, with the permutations of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team at the helm and Leslie Nielsen usually in a starring role? Technically, the lesser-known Kentucky Fried Movie came first, but Airplane! established the ground rules of that now-familiar scattershot style: not all the gags are funny, but they come so thick and fast that you’re never more than 30 seconds away from a guffaw. The plot has washed-up fighter pilot Ted Striker (Robert Stack) pursuing his stewardess ex-girlfriend Elaine (Julie Hagarty) onto a flight, only to find himself forced to land the jumbo after paedophile Captain Oveur (Peter Graves) and his co-pilot Murdock (Kareen Abdul-Jabbar) contract food-poisoning. Every cliché is mercilessly parodied (the terrorist, the terminally ill child, and so on), with plenty of clever wordplay and sight gags. The cast play it all perfectly straight, especially Lloyd Bridges as the deranged air traffic controller. Even the Elmer Bernstein score is hilarious.
Movies’n’nosh specialists Cannoli & Gun‘s January 18 screening is accompanied by a choice of steak, fish and chips or vegetarian lasagne. Go here for ticket information.
Screening Jan 18: Steak of the Art
Back in November, the Kids Kino Project sent four volunteers to Nepal to screen films to children affected by the 2015 earthquakes.
This is a chance to find out more with films and footage from the trip, plus all the latest news about the Kids Kino Project.
Screening Jan 21: Cube
Bolshoi Ballet: The Taming of the Shrew
French choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot’s new ballet in two acts to music by Shostakovich is based on Shakespeare’s great comedy. The ballet was created especially for the Bolshoi dancers, so this live broadcast is probably the only opportunity most of us will have to see it.
Screening Jan 24: Showcase Cinema De Lux, Orpheus
Austrian and German directors Martin Reinhart, Thomas Tode and Manu Luksch raid the archives for footage from the late 19th and early 20th century to illustrate their contention that there’s nothing remotely new about our obsession with technological innovation – especially where telecommunications are concerned – or our anxieties about its implications. Drolly narrated by Tilda Swinton, this intriguing and engrossing film culls clips from such diverse sources as newsreels and slapstick comedies and includes a glimpse of what may well be the very first mobile phone.
The Cube’s Jan 25 screening is followed by a panel discussion about the impact of technology, with guests including the film’s co-director Manu Luksch and media artist/lecturer Rod Dickinson.
Screening Jan 25: Cube
Two ballets choreographed by Frederick Ashton, broadcast live from the Royal Opera House. Rhapsody is Ashton’s tribute to virtuoso dance, set to music by Rachmaninoff. The Two Pigeons is a two-act ballet on the nature of love. The live broadcast is on Jan 26. Some cinemas also have encore screenings on Jan 31.
Screening Jan 26: Showcase Cinema De Lux, Orpheus, Odeon, Vue Cribbs Causeway, Vue Longwell Green
Screening Jan 31: Showcase Cinema De Lux
Bristol Bad Film Club: Dangerous Men
After moving to the US from Iran, it took Jahangir Salehi Yeganehrad (aka John S. Rad) 26 years to realise his vision. Alas, his vision was a terrible pile of steaming crap that took a princely $70 on release in the US back in 2005, before inevitably acquiring new life as a ‘cult classic’.
Boiled down to its bare essentials, this is the story of a woman who goes on a psycho rampage in LA, determined to take out all the human trash after witnessing her fiancé being done in by scumbags, with a renegade cop hard on her heels. Over to Rolling Stone‘s critic: “The joy of Dangerous Men, for a certain type of film lover, is that there are more questions than answers. Why is a highlighted script so visible on the desk of one character? Why does a biker bar have an espresso machine? Why are three minutes of the film devoted to a phone call between a peripheral cop and his wife, leading to a sex scene that’s as awkward as it is meaningless? Why is there romantic music (composed by Rad himself) playing during a tense scene between a kidnapped biker and a vigilante cop? And why does one character hide a knife in her ass?”
Profits from this Bristol Bad Film Club charity screening go to Dev4X. Tickets, price £5, are available here.
Screening Jan 26: The Wardrobe Theatre
NT Live: Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Directed by Josie Rourke, the Donmar Warehouse’s 30th anniversary production of Christopher Hampton’s Olivier Award-winning stage adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 novel boasts a cast that includes Adjoa Andoh, Theo Barklem-Biggs, Morfydd Clark, Elaine Cassidy, Edward Holcroft, Janet McTeer, Jennifer Saayeng, Una Stubbs and Dominic West.
West plays the sneering Valmont, while McTeer is cast as the manipulative Marquise in this evergreen tale of debauched aristos playing games of sex and power.
Screening Jan 28: Showcase Cinema De Lux, Curzon, Odeon, Orpheus, Vue Longwell Green, Vue Cribbs Causeway
In ancient Peking, loveless Princess Turandot has had just about enough of chaps. She’s decided that any potential suitor must answer three riddles correctly or be put to death. When smitten Prince Calaf succeeds, our heroine goes into a bit of a decline. So Calaf magnanimously offers a proposal of his own. If she can guess his real name before dawn, he will forfeit his own life. Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Puccini’s final opera returns to the Met, with soprano Nina Stemme in the title role and tenor Marco Berti as Calaf. Yep, this is the only opera known to all football fans, though they should perhaps be warned that they’ve got a bum-numbing wait until Act III to hear Nessun Dorma.
Screening Jan 30: Showcase Cinema De Lux, Vue Cribbs Causeway, Vue Longwell Green
The Holy Mountain + live score
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s even-more-deranged follow-up to his cult El Topo also boasts plenty of surreal and blasphemetastic imagery, though you’d be hard pushed to come up with an explanation of what on earth he’s on about. Still, if you’ve a taste for armless dwarves, small birds emerging from gunshot wounds, and the conquest of Mexico re-enacted by costumed frogs and lizards, this is very much the movie for you. Watch out for Jodorowsky himself in amusing robes and huge hat as “the alchemist”.
The Cube’s screening benefits from a live re-score by local psychedelicists Asteroid Deluxe, incorporating sounds from the original foley.
Screening Jan 30: Cube
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
