Films normally start at 7.30pm in The Guildhall of St George, King Street. Members and their guests can sign in from approx 7pm.
Forthcoming Film Dates for your Diary
▓ Special Events
▓ We are delighted to once again be working in partnership with the King’s Lynn Festival and have arranged these films as part of the Festival. Tickets for these films will be £4 for members and £5 for the public and will be available from the Corn Exchange. Details have been sent to you on how to purchase at the reduced rate.
Thursday 12th July — THE BIG SICK
▓ Tuesday 17th July 2.30pm — WIND RIVER
▓ Friday 20th July 2.30pm — THE DEATH OF STALIN
▓ Saturday 21st July 11am — THE RED TURTLE
▓ Wednesday 25th July 12.30pm — LOVING VINCENT
Thursday 9th August — FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL
▓ Thursday 23rd August — THE WOMEN’S BALCONY
Thursday 13th September — LADY BIRD
Thursday 11th October — I GOT LIFE
▓ Thursday 18th October — Film to be confirmed
Thursday 8th November — Film to be confirmed
Thursday 13th December — Film to be confirmed
Thursday 12thJuly 7.30pm
THE BIG SICK
Romance comedy — (2017) — 117 mins — Cert 15
strong language, moderate sex references
Director Michael Showalter
Cast includes Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Adeel Akhtar, Anupam Kher, Zenobia Shroff, Bo Burnham
Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani), in the middle of becoming a budding stand-up comedian, meets Emily (Zoe Kazan). Meanwhile, a sudden illness sets in forcing Emily to be put into a medically-induced coma. Kumail must navigate being a comedian, dealing with tragic illness, and placating his family’s desire to let them fix him up with a spouse, while contemplating and figuring out who he really is and what he truly believes.
TRIVIA
The screenplay for The Big Sick is written by Emily V. Gordon and her husband Kumail Nanjiani, and is loosely based on the real-life courtship between them before their marriage in 2007. According to Nanjiani, the idea to make a script about them was first inspired by the film’s eventual co-producer Judd Apatow when the two met while appearing in a 2012 episode of the You Made It Weird podcast. Developed over the course of three years, the script has been called semi-autobiographical because, in addition to the two lead characters modelled after them, many of the events occurring during Gordon and Nanjiani’s relationship are noted as being portrayed to an extent in the film. Though not part of the original script, a real-life incident involving Holly Hunter heckling an unnamed player during a US Open tennis match inspired a similar scene in the film where Nanjiani’s character is heckled during one of his stand-up sets.
The decision to add the real-life photos of Emily and Kumail in the credits was suggested by actress Leslie Mann after seeing an early cut of the film.
While writing the script, Kumail wanted his on-screen family to reflect the jokey and humorous traits of his real life family. He bemoaned that so many Muslim characters were so frequently depicted as overly serious and aimed to avoid that stereotype.
Emily V. Gordon: co-writer and the “real” Emily can be seen in the last scene of the film in the comedy club sitting near CJ and Mary.
Partnership with The King’s Lynn Festival
This is the first of four films we are offering in partnership with the King’s Lynn Festival. Tickets are £5 but film club members and their guests can purchase them for £4 through the King’s Lynn Corn Exchange Box Office using the password which has been sent to all our members.
Tuesday 17thJuly 2.30pm
WIND RIVER
Drama, Crime — (2017) — 105 mins — Cert 15
strong violence, injury detail, sexual violence, language
Director Taylor Sheridan
Cast includes Elizabeth Olsen, Jon Bernthal, Jeremy Renner, Martin Sensmeier, Gil Birmingham, Graham Greene
WIND RIVER is a chilling thriller that follows an FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) who teams up with a local game tracker with deep community ties and a haunted past (Jeremy Renner) to investigate the murder of a local girl on a remote Native American Reservation in the hopes of solving her mysterious death.
TRIVIA
The film is based on actual events.
The film received a lengthy 8 minutes standing ovation at the end of its premiere in the Un Certain Regard competition of the Cannes film festival.
Wind River Indian Reservation is the seventh-largest Indian reservation in the U.S.
The gruelling location shoot was filmed in real blizzard conditions with crew and equipment being primarily ferried to locations on snowmobiles and snowcats, since regular vehicles were totally unsuitable for the hazardous terrain. Cleaning up unsightly vehicular tracks left in the snowy landscape had to be done with some compositing in post to keep the vista in ‘virginal’ condition.
During the course of the shoot, writer-director Taylor Sheridan was visited on set by some Shoshone tribal leaders who astonished him with the revelation that, at that very time, there were 12 unsolved murders of young women on a reservation of about 6,000 people. Due to a 1978 landmark government ruling (Oliphant v. Suquamish), the Supreme Court stripped tribes of the right to arrest and prosecute non-natives who commit crimes on native land. If neither victim nor perpetrator are native, a county or state officer must make the arrest. If the perpetrator is non-native and the victim an enrolled member, only a federally-certified agent has that right. If the opposite is true, a tribal officer can make the arrest, but the case must still go to federal court. This quagmire creates a jurisdictional nightmare by choking up the legal process on reservations to such a degree, many criminals go unpunished indefinitely for serious crimes.
Partnership with The King’s Lynn Festival
This is the second of four films we are offering in partnership with the King’s Lynn Festival. Tickets are £5 but film club members and their guests can purchase them for £4 through the King’s Lynn Corn Exchange Box Office using the password which has been sent to all our members.
Friday 20thJuly 2.30pm
THE DEATH OF STALIN
Drama, Comedy — (2017) — 104 mins — Cert 15
very strong language, brief strong violence
Director Armando Iannucci
Cast includes Rupert Friend, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Steve Buscemi, Jason Isaacs, Jeffrey Tambor
In early-1953 Moscow, under the Great Terror’s heavy cloak of state paranoia, the ever-watchful Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, collapses unexpectedly of a brain haemorrhage. Inevitably, when his body is discovered in the following morning, a frenetic surge of raw panic spreads like a virus in the senior members of the Council of Ministers, as they scramble to maintain order, weed out the competition, and, ultimately, take power. But in the middle of a gut-wrenching roller-coaster of incessant plotting, tireless machinations, and frail allegiances, absolutely no one is safe; not even the feared chief of the secret police. In the end, who will prevail after the death of Stalin?
TRIVIA
Director Armando Iannucci insisted on not having the characters speak with Russian accents, for two reasons: he thought it would take audiences out of the film, and he did not want the actors to worry about their accent when improvising. In an interview on BBC Radio 5 for the film’s U.K. release, Iannucci stated that Russian journalists who had seen it praised the decision.
In one scene, Beria locks a young woman in a cell and then gives her a bunch of flowers upon release. Beria was a notorious sexual predator, sometimes driven around Moscow in search of victims. After Beria had finished with his victims, they were routinely offered a bunch of flowers. To accept was to imply that whatever had happened was consensual. To refuse meant arrest and disappearance.
In the scene where Stalin collapses from a stroke, one guard, having heard his collapse from outside, asks if they should investigate, with the other guard bluntly refusing by shooting back that he should shut up before they are both killed by Stalin for entering without permission. This was a reference to the fact that Stalin left explicit orders to not disturb him while he was sleeping under any circumstances, with the penalty of disobeying being the death penalty, which was one of the reasons why no one attempted to investigate when he did not wake up at his usual time.
The film was banned in Russia on 23rd January, 2018, two days before it was due to be released. The Cultural Ministry stated, “The distribution certificate for the film The Death of Stalin has been withdrawn.” One member of the Culture Ministry’s advisory board was quoted as saying, “The film desecrates our historical symbols — the Soviet hymn, orders and medals, and Marshal Zhukov is portrayed as an idiot,” and added that the film’s release in advance of the 75th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Stalingrad would be “an affront to Russia’s World War II veterans.”
Partnership with The King’s Lynn Festival
This is the third of four films we are offering in partnership with the King’s Lynn Festival. Tickets are £5 but film club members and their guests can purchase them for £4 through the King’s Lynn Corn Exchange Box Office using the password which has been sent to all our members.
Saturday 21stJuly 11am
THE RED TURTLE
Fantasy, Animation — (2016) — 79 mins — Cert PG
Director Michael Dudok de Wit
Surrounded by the immense and furious ocean, a shipwrecked mariner battles all alone for his life with the relentless towering waves. Right on the brink of his demise, the man set adrift by the raging tempest washes ashore on a small and deserted tropical island of sandy beaches, timid animal inhabitants and a slender but graceful swaying bamboo forest. Alone, famished, yet, determined to break free from his Eden-like prison, after foraging for food and fresh water and encouraged by the dense forest, the stranded sailor builds a raft and sets off to the wide sea, however, an indistinguishable adversary prevents him from escaping. Each day, the exhausted man never giving up hope will attempt to make a new, more improved raft, but the sea is vast with wonderful and mysterious creatures and the island’s only red turtle won’t let the weary survivor escape that easily. Is this the heartless enemy?
TRIVIA
Studio Ghibli sent Michael Dudok de Wit an email with two questions: if they could distribute his short film Father and Daughter (2000) in Japan, and if he would make a feature film for them. Dudok de Wit replied answering the first question and saying he did not understand the second, as he was baffled and could not believe it.
This is the first non-Japanese film to be produced by Studio Ghibli.
Only six animators from Studio Ghibli worked on this film.
When the woman and boy swim they propel themselves with their arms but do not use their legs. This is similar to the way sea turtles swim.
Partnership with The King’s Lynn Festival
This is the forth of four films we are offering in partnership with the King’s Lynn Festival. Tickets are £5 but film club members and their guests can purchase them for £4 through the King’s Lynn Corn Exchange Box Office using the password which has been sent to all our members.
Wednesday 25thJuly 12.30pm
LOVING VINCENT
Drama, Animation — (2017) — 93 mins — Cert 12A
suicide theme, infrequent moderate sex, injury detail
Directors Hugh Welchman, Dorota Kobiela
Cast includes Robert Gulaczyk, Aidan Turner, Helen McCrory, Eleanor Tomlinson, Jerome Flynn, Chris O’Dowd
In the summer of 1891 in France, nearly twelve months after the master painter Vincent van Gogh’s mysterious death, Armand Roulin, the local postman’s young son, is reluctantly tasked with delivering one of the artist’s final letters to his brother, Theo, in Paris. However, when Armand discovers that Theo, too, met his own demise, he embarks on a mission to investigate Vincent’s untimely death, starting off from scenic Auvers-sur-Oise. Has Van Gogh committed suicide or was he murdered? As Armand’s search for evidence continues, there’s more to this enigma than meets the eye.
TRIVIA
The world’s first fully painted animation feature.
It took a team of over 100 professional artists, over 60% women, to hand paint every single frame of the movie. According to the official site, the work has resulted in a total of 853 different oil paintings, as each one was used multiple times, painting subsequent frames on the top of the original ones. In the final movie there are exactly 853 different shots.
The film was animated with rotoscope. It was filmed in live action with real actors, then each frame was painted and animated. In the end credits, the cast and sets are shown before painting.
In the 8 years between starting to paint and his death Vincent painted over 800 paintings only one of which was sold in his lifetime.
Thursday 9thAugust 6pm
PRE-FILM MEAL AT THE RIVERSIDE
The menu and booking information will be added here nearer the time
Thursday 9thAugust 7.30pm
FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL
Drama — (2017) — 103 mins — Cert 15
strong violence, injury detail, sexual violence, language
Director: Paul McGuigan
Cast includes — Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, Leanne Best,
Vanessa Redgrave, Julie Walters, Kenneth Cranham
Real life proves just as dramatic off-screen as it does on it for these two actors, the ageing Hollywood superstar Gloria Grahame and her younger lover, Peter Turner. As their mismatched romance waxes and wanes over time, events conspire to keep them in each other’s lives even when it proves difficult and demanding. Ultimately, they find that they must each come to terms with whatever fate they face in the future whether they are together or apart.
TRIVIA
The real Peter Turner, on whose memoir this is based, appears in the role of ‘Jack’.
Only the third non-James Bond movie produced by Eon Productions, the first being Call Me Bwana (1963) and the second Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
The film cast includes one Oscar winner: Vanessa Redgrave; one BAFTA winner: Jamie Bell; and two Oscar nominees: Annette Bening and Julie Walters.
Thursday 23rdAugust 7.30pm
THE WOMEN’S BALCONY
Hebrew-subtitled — Comedy-Drama — (2017) — 96 mins
Director: Emil Ben-Shimon
Cast includes Evelin Hagoel, Igal Naor, Orna Banay, Einat Sarouf, Avraham Aviv Alush
The small Jewish community in “The Women’s Balcony” is a tight-knit one. When they talk, they don’t say “I,” they say “We.” They are not just a community, they are a “congregation,” with all that that implies to the faithful. A huge box office hit in Israel, the film was written by Shlomit Nehama, and directed by Emil Ben-Shimon. “The Women’s Balcony” is an eccentric portrait of an already devout community suddenly under pressure from a super Orthodox rabbi to observe their faith in a more rigid way. While the mood is that of a gentle and affectionate comedy, the film makes some extremely sharp points about fanaticism, sexism masked as holiness, and tolerance among the faithful.
Thursday 13thSeptember 7.30pm
LADY BIRD
Drama, Comedy — (2017) — 94 mins — Cert 15
very strong language, brief strong nudity
Director: Greta Gerwig
Cast includes — Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lois Smith
Going by the name of “Lady Bird”, the outspoken Catholic high school senior student, Christine McPherson, is dreaming big of finally leaving her home in Sacramento, practically on pins and needles to attend a sophisticated New York City college. However, with her average grades and her family struggling to keep afloat, attending a public university closer to home would be a lot cheaper and safer, especially after last year’s devastating 9/11 attack. In the end, amid grades, numerous college applications, a blooming teenage sexuality, and a strong-willed mother who is a real mother hen, Lady Bird must find a way to make her dreams happen. Can she survive life’s bumps and cracks?
TRIVIA
The film takes place from 2002 to 2003, the time when Greta Gerwig herself graduated from St. Francis Catholic High School in her home town of Sacramento, California.
The film is Greta Gerwig’s solo feature directorial debut.
Nearly all of the songs sung in the audition scene were written by Stephen Sondheim, who also composed the musical they end up performing, “Merrily We Roll Along.” The audition songs include “Being Alive” from “Company,” “Everybody Says Don’t” from “Anyone Can Whistle,” and “Giants in the Sky” from “Into the Woods.”
Lucas Hedges and Saoirse Ronan previously appeared in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), though they did not share any scenes.
Thursday 11thOctober 7.30pm
I GOT LIFE (aka AURORE)
Romance, Comedy — (2017) — 89 mins — Cert 15
French subtitled — brief strong sex
Director: Blandine Lenoir
Cast includes: Agnès Jaoui, Thibault de Montalembert, Pascale Arbillot, Sarah Suco, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, Nicolas Chupin
Aurore, separated from her husband, has just lost her job and been told that she is going to be a grandmother. She is slowly being pushed to the outskirts of society, but when she accidentally runs into the great love of her youth, she puts her foot down and refuses to be relegated to the scrap yard. What if now was the time to start over?
