| 1 September 2023 | Crouching Tager Hidden Dragon |
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In early nineteenth-century China, in the waning years of the Qing dynasty, the renowned swordsman who yearns for enlightenment, Li Mu Bai, decides to give up his legendary Green Destiny sword: the sharp four-hundred-year-old blade of heroes. To mark the end of a blood-stained career, Li entrusts the excellent female warrior, Yu Shu Lien, with the precious weapon to deliver it to Governor Yu; however, once there, an audacious and nimble masked thief manages to steal it. As Shu Lien is hot on the trail of the skilled burglar, unrequited loves; fervent passions; an unconquerable desire for freedom, and bitter loose ends stand in the way. Can Mu Bai shake off his violent past?—Nick Riganas |
| 22 September 2023 | Fear Eats The Soul |
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The wildly prolific German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid homage to his cinematic hero Douglas Sirk with this update of that filmmaker’s All That Heaven Allows (1955). A lonely widow (Brigitte Mira) meets a much younger Moroccan worker (El Hedi ben Salem) in a bar during a rainstorm. They fall in love, to their own surprise-and to the outright shock of their families, colleagues, and drinking buddies. In Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Fassbinder expertly wields the emotional power of classic Hollywood melodrama to expose the racial tensions underlying contemporary German culture. |
| 13th October 2023 | GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE |
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In GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE, two-time Academy Award winner Emma Thompson (Love, Actually) embodies the candor and apprehension of retired teacher Nancy Stokes, and newcomer Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders) personifies the charisma and compassion of sex worker Leo Grande. As Nancy embarks on a post-marital sexual awakening and Leo draws on his skills and charm, together they find a surprising human connection. |
| 3rd November 2023 | Lion |
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In 1986, Saroo was a five-year-old child in India of a poor but happy rural family. On a trip with his brother, Saroo soon finds himself alone and trapped in a moving decommissioned passenger train that takes him to Calcutta, 1000 miles away from home. Now totally lost in an alien urban environment and too young to identify either himself or his home to the authorities, Saroo struggles to survive as a street child until he is sent to an orphanage. Soon, Saroo is selected to be adopted by the Brierley family in Tasmania, where he grows up in a loving, prosperous home. However, for all his material good fortune, Saroo finds himself plagued by his memories of his lost family in his adulthood and tries to search for them even as his guilt drives him to hide this quest from his adoptive parents and his girlfriend. Only when he has an epiphany does he realize not only the answers he needs, but also the steadfast love that he has always had with all his loved ones in both worlds.—Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com) |
| 24th Noember 2023 | The long Goodbye |
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In the middle of the night, private eye Philip Marlowe drives his friend Terry Lennox to the Mexican border. When Marlowe returns home police are waiting for him and learns that Terry’s wife Sylvia has been killed. He’s arrested as an accessory but released after a few days and is told the case is closed since Terry Lennox has seemingly committed suicide in Mexico. Marlowe is visited by mobster Marty Augustine who wants to know what happened to the $350,000 Lennox was supposed to deliver for him. Meanwhile, Marlowe is hired by Eileen Wade to find her husband Roger who has a habit of disappearing when he wants to dry out but she can’t find him in any any of his usual haunts. He finds him at Dr. Veringer’s clinic and brings him. It soon becomes obvious to Marlowe that Terry’s death, the Wades and Augustine are all somehow interconnected. Figuring out just what those connections are however will be anything but easy. |
| 15th December 2023 | Stand by Me |
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It’s the summer of 1959 in Castlerock, Oregon and four 12 year-old boys – Gordie, Chris, Teddy and Vern – are fast friends. After learning of the general location of the body of a local boy who has been missing for several days, they set off into the woods to see it. Along the way, they learn about themselves, the meaning of friendship and the need to stand up for what is right. |
| 12th January 2024 | Belfast |
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Belfast, 15 August 1969. Surrounded by sporadic violence and growing danger, nine-year-old Buddy finds himself confronted with the ugly reality of sectarian conflict. And, as the suffocating stranglehold of increasing turmoil tightens around his once-peaceful working-class neighbourhood, Buddy tries his best to understand The Troubles–after all, someone must be responsible for forcing people to flee their homes. Now, Buddy’s family must come face to face with a nearly impossible, life-altering decision: stay or start packing? |
| 2nd February 2024 | Picnic at Hanging Rock |
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Three students and a school teacher disappear on an excursion to Hanging Rock, in Victoria, on Valentine’s Day, 1900. The movie follows those that disappeared, and those that stayed behind, but it delights in the asking of questions, not the answering of them. Even though both the movie and the book it was based on claim to be inspired by real events, the story is completely fictional. |
| 23rd February 2024 | La Grande Illusion |
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World War I. During an air-reconnaissance mission, German ace pilot Captain von Rauffenstein shoots down the plane of aristocratic French pilot Captain de Boeldieu and his civilian mechanic co-pilot, Lieutenant Maréchal. Before long, the captured officers wind up in the Hallbach POW camp for officers, and they befriend Lieutenant Rosenthal, a wealthy former Jewish banker. There, they organise an escape along with a handful of determined compatriots. However, fate has other plans in store for them. Now, a heavily guarded train transfers the team to the impregnable Wintersborn fortress prison in Alsace, France, overseen by Rauffenstein himself. But something unexpected has happened. As respect and appreciation unite von Rauffenstein and de Boeldieu, the question remains. Will this delicate relationship, and the grand illusion, stand in the way of freedom? |
| 15th March 2024 | Rabit Proof Fence |
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Western Australia, 1931. Government policy includes taking half-white, half-Aboriginal children from their Aboriginal mothers and sending them a thousand miles away to what amounts to indentured servitude, “to save them from themselves.” Molly, Daisy, and Grace (two sisters and a cousin who are fourteen, ten, and eight) arrive at their Gulag and promptly escape, under Molly’s lead. For several days they walk north, following a fence that keeps rabbits from settlements, eluding a native tracker and the regional constabulary. Their pursuers take orders from the government’s “Chief Protector of Aborigines”, A.O. Neville, blinded by Anglo-Christian certainty, evolutionary world view, and conventional wisdom. Can the girls survive? |
| 5th April 2024 | Breakfast Club |
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| 26th April 2024 | Nomadland |
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Following the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada, Fern (Frances McDormand) packs her van and sets off on the road exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad. The third feature film from director Chloé Zhao, NOMADLAND features real nomads Linda May, Swankie and Bob Wells as Fern’s mentors and comrades in her exploration through the vast landscape of the American West.—Searchlight Pictures |
| 17th May 2024 | AGM followed by Bad Day at Black Rock |
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From the time John J. Macreedy steps off the train in Black Rock, he feels a chill from the local residents. The town is only a speck on the map, and few strangers ever come to the place. Macreedy himself is tight-lipped about the purpose of his trip and he finds that the hotel refuses him a room, the local garage refuses to rent him a car, and the sheriff is a useless drunkard. It’s apparent that the locals have something to hide, but when he finally tells them that he is there to speak to a Japanese-American farmer named Kamoko, he touches a nerve so sensitive that he will spend the next 24 hours fighting for his life. |