Dead of Night

Starring Michael Redgrave, Mervyn Johns,Sally Ann Howes and Googie Withers
Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton , Robert Hamer and Basil Dearden
UK 1945
102 mins

Our final film of 2019 is a traditional ghost story for Christmas - or rather five of them! 'Dead Of Night' is what is known as a portmanteau film - an anthology of short stories linked by a theme. It was made in 1945 by Ealing Studios - based just a few miles from Acton. The studio famously specialised in comedy - producing such beloved classics as 'The Lavender Hill Mob', 'Passport To Pimlico' and 'The Ladykillers' but this movie is in a very different genre - although one of the five tales is distinctly comic in tone.

An architect wakes from a disturbing nightmare and then sets off to inspect a job at a country house in Kent. There he meets a group of people who he feels strongly he has met before - each of them has a different supernatural story to tell...

Some of Ealing's most celebrated talents were behind the camera - Charles Crichton (who many years later would make 'A Fish Called Wanda') directs one story and Robert Hamer who made the wonderful 'Kind Hearts And Coronets' another. Each brings their own sensibility to the tale being told.

The most famous episode in the collection is 'The Ventriloquists Dummy' - in which Michael Redgrave plays a man who believes the doll in his stage act is beginning to take him over. Redgrave's edgy, febrile performance and the sinister characterisation of Hugo the dummy make this a creepy chiller that will stay with you for a long time...

As a one off we are screening the film at the excellent West London Trades Union Club - it benefits from a very reasonably priced bar and on the eve of election day there is bound to be nervous tension in the air...

Orphée

Starring Jean Marais, François Périer, María Casares and Marie Déa
Written and directed by Jean Cocteau
France 1950
95 mins

Jean Cocteau was an extraordinary and imaginative talent - at various times in his life a visual artist, a poet, a playwright, a novelist and a designer. He also made a handful of the most magical and extraordinary films ever to come out of France including 'La Belle et la Bête' (his entrancing version of Beauty and the Beast) and tonight's picture 'Orphée'.

Cocteau takes the classic Greek myth of Orpheus and relocates it to 20th century Paris. His regular collaborator - the actor Jean Marais - plays a famous poet who finds himself drawn into the underworld when his path crosses with a mysterious princess and her companion on a night out. Soon Orphée is embroiled in a struggle to save his wife Eurydice from the clutches of death and her minions...

Cocteau achieves dreamlike visual effects through the simplest means in 'Orphée' - mirrors become a portal to the other side and liquid mercury a permeable barrier while slow motion and negative images serve to transport us out of this world into the next. Made only a few years after the end of WW2 bombed-out locations like the St Cyr military academy provide the film with striking settings while the abstract, supernatural poetry heard on the radio echoes the coded messages sent via the BBC to the resistance movement.

Just this month a Philip Glass opera based on 'Orphée' is premiering at the ENO - proving that nearly 70 years after its release this mesmerising movie continues to impress and inspire.

Cabaret

Starring Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey, Michael York, Helmut Griem and Marisa Berenson
Screenplay by Jay Allen based on writings by Joe Masteroff, John Van Druten and Christopher Isherwood
Directed by Bob Fosse
US 1972
124 mins

The BFI is currently running a wonderful season of musicals in its Southbank theatres and re-releasing a number of pictures around the UK including 'Singing' In The Rain' and 'Tommy'.

Among the myriad artists they are celebrating is Bob Fosse - the brilliant maverick choreographer and director whose short but glittering cinema career includes 'Sweet Charity', 'Lennie' and 'All that Jazz'.

Fosse's most famous movie is 'Cabaret' - the 1972 masterpiece that made a superstar of Liza Minnelli and rebooted the musical - moving it from studio spectacular to grungy real life locations - blending 'divine decadence' with hard-hitting satire and glorious song and dance numbers.

Based on the experiences of writer Christopher Isherwood in pre-war Berlin and the play 'I Am A Camera' by John Van Druten - 'Cabaret' tells the tale of Sally Bowles, an exuberant ex-pat American performing in the sleazy Kit Kat Club and her tangled relationship with Brian Roberts - the shy British academic who becomes her neighbour, friend and lover.

Top drawer performances and Fosse's dynamic choreography and direction make for an iconic and unforgettable cinematic experience - the comings and goings at the Kit Kat all conducted against the ominous backdrop of the creeping Nazi tide. One scene where a young boy sings 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me' is chilling and horribly relevant in our current times.

You may have seen it before but this modern classic never disappoints...

Woman at War

Starring Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Davíð Þór Jónsson, Magnús Trygvason Eliasen, Ómar Guðjónsson
Written by Benedikt Erlingsson and Ólafur Egill Egilsson
Directed by Benedikt Erlingsson
Iceland/France/Ukraine 2018
101 mins

The Acton Film Club started in 2009 and we are screening a film that may have gone under your radar from every year since we began - this time we arrive at our final film in the sequence - released earlier in 2019.

Halla lives a double life - by day she works as a mild-mannered choral director but in secret she is an eco-terrorist known as 'Woman Of The Mountain' - determined to disrupt the construction of an aluminium smelting plant that will bring further pollution to the land. Her expertise with a bow and arrow causes havoc with power lines across the island - these bold exploits cause the authorities to ramp up their efforts to catch and discredit her.

In the midst of all this drama a long-forgotten application to adopt a child from Ukraine is approved - meaning Halla must try to reconcile her illegal activities with becoming a parent.

Director Benedikt Erlingsson cut his teeth in TV comedy and he infuses Woman At War with a delightfully dry, deadpan humour, underscored by music provided by a quartet who appear onscreen like a Greek chorus. Cinematographer Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson captures the weird beauty of Iceland and gives the movie a distinct and quirky visual style.

This little-seen gem is stylish, funny and affecting - thanks in large part to the terrific performance of Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir in the lead role.

Border

Starring Eva Melander, Eero Milonoff, Jorgon Thorsson and Ann Petrén
Written by Ali Abbasi, Isabella Eklöf and John Ajvide Lindqvist
Directed by Ali Abbasi
Sweden 2018
110 mins

The Acton Film Club started in 2009 and we are screening a film that may have gone under your radar from every year since we began - this time 2018.

Tina works for the customs service in the Swedish sport of Kapellskär. She has an unusual appearance and a remarkable ability to sniff out contraband. This strange power leads her to make a sinister discovery about a passenger passing though the border that involves the police and a shocking discovery.

Away from work Tina's emotional life is stagnant. She lives with Roland in a remote woodland cabin - but he seems more interested in the dogs he keeps while she rejects his occasional advances. But when Tina connects with a traveller who has similar looks to her own a startling new chapter in her life begins.

'Border' is based on a short story by John Ajvide Lindqvist - author of the acclaimed novel 'Let The Right One In' - which was itself made into a memorable movie in 2008. The two pictures have common themes - the struggle of the minority and the problems of prejudice and difference. Both dare to deal with taboos and transgression.

The performances are excellent - in particular Eva Melander is extraordinary as the outsider who calls herself 'an ugly strange human with a chromosome flaw'.

'Border' combines Scandic noir with folklore, satire and social drama - the result is a unique, utterly surprising and oddly sensual romance - undoubtedly one of the most unusual films in recent memory.

Faces Places

Starring Agnès Varda and JR
Directed by Agnès Varda and JR
France 2017
89 mins

2019 is our tenth year as a film club. To mark this we are screening a movie that may have gone under your radar from every year that we have been operating.

Now we have reached 2017 and we turn to the penultimate film by Agnès Varda - 'Visages,villages' (English title 'Places Faces'). This exquisite documentary follows a journey she made around France with the contemporary artist JR, exploring rural communities and creating portraits of the people they meet along the way.

Starting out as a photographer Varda became part of the New Wave of French filmmaking in the 1960s and came to prominence with her feature 'Cléo de 5 à 7' - an experimental work with a strongly feminist theme. She would go on to make over 20 movies - both fiction and documentary - describing her method as 'cinécriture' - writing on film. She believed that by combining the roles of cinematographer, screenwriter and director it would make for a more cohesive result.

In 'Faces Places' Varda and her collaborator JR make a distinctly odd couple whose different styles are somehow combined with wit, humour and generosity to produce a charming, thought-provoking road movie in which the passing of time and the changing rural societies of France are celebrated and remembered. The visuals are often astonishing - combining still photography, architecture and landscape in fascinating ways.

Agnès Varda died in March of this year at the age of 91 - her legacy is unique and as this wonderful film shows she produced great work right to the very end...

The Apartment

Starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley Maclaine and Fred Macmurray
Written by I. A. L. Diamond and Billy Wilder
Directed by Billy Wilder
USA 1960
110 minutes

Ten years ago, on the 12 August 2009, the Acton Film Club started. Mark Mason and I had talked about setting it up for at least two years and when Mark discovered that a rival film club was planned at The Rocket - determined not to be beaten, we took the plunge and began.

Tragically Mark died suddenly in May of the following year. Since then Amanda and I have programmed a film every three weeks – some 150 films altogether – you can see all the titles in the archive pages of this website.

‘The Apartment’ is the very first film the AFC ever screened and was one of Mark’s favourite movies. Like him the film has a marvellous quick-witted and genuine quality combined with a generosity of spirit and a soft if not sentimental centre.

The script is by I. A. L. Diamond and Billy Wilder – they had earlier written ‘Some Like It Hot’ for Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis – a comic masterpiece that we screened outdoors a few years ago. 'The Apartment' is less far less frantic and slapstick – a perfectly-executed, bittersweet romantic comedy that lifts the lid on the cold inhumanity of the corporate machine.

The themes are tough and real – bullying in the workplace, sexual harassment, loneliness and suicide but the film speaks truth to power and gives us one of the most uplifting and beautiful finales in all of cinema.

Lemmon is brilliant as the little guy caught in a trap as a result of his generosity and naivite, Shirley Maclaine is luminous as Miss Kubelik the lift attendant and Fred Macmurray plays the executive with sleazy charm and ruthless motivation.

You may have seen it many times before but 'The Apartment' will always repay another screening – especially one under the stars.

Here’s to you Mark…

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Starring Sam Neill, Julian Dennison and Rhys Darby
Written and directed by Taika Waititi
New Zealand 2016
107 mins

The Acton Film Club is 10 years old this year - to mark that we have been showing a film that may have passed you by from every year since we started in 2009. This time the movie is from 2016 and is the first picture from New Zealand that we have ever screened.

The director of 'Hunt For The Wilderpeople' is Taika Waititi - a comedian, writer and actor whose work includes episodes of the cult TV show 'Flight Of The Conchords' and the brilliant mocumentary 'What We Do In The Shadows' which followed the lives of four vampires sharing a flat in a Wellington suburb. Waititi's hilarious, offbeat humour was also a major feature of 'Thor Ragnarok' - one of the best of the sprawling Marvel superhero franchise.

'Hunt For The Wilderpeople' is a much smaller, more intimate drama and tells the tale of Ricky, a juvenile delinquent from the city who, after his mother abandons him, is placed with his sympathetic aunt and curmudgeonly uncle in the remote countryside. When tragedy strikes Ricky runs away - only to be pursued by his uncle into the bush. The two strike up an unlikely friendship and are forced to evade the authorities who are by now looking for them...

The miraculous onscreen chemistry between this odd couple is at the heart of one of quirkiest and most beautifully played comedies you will see in a long time.

This is our final film at The Rocket until September but don't miss our annual outdoor screening on Friday July 26th - Billy Wilder's masterpiece 'The Apartment' - the very first film the Acton Film Club showed in August 2009.

Tale of Tales

Starring Salma Hayak, Vincent Cassell, Toby Jones and John C. Reilly
Written by Edoardo Albinati, Ugo, Chiti, Matteo Garrone and Massimo Gaudioso
Directed by Matteo Garrone
Italy/France/United Kingdom 2015
134 mins

The Acton Film Club started in 2009 and we are screening a film that may have gone under your radar from every year since we began - this time 2015.

Matteo Garrone burst onto the scene in 2008 with his gritty, documentary style feature 'Gomorrah' set around Naples and detailing the activities of the Camorra - a traditional Mafia style criminal syndicate. The film was unflinching in its depiction of the ruthless violence of its protagonists in one of Italy's poorest and most deprived areas.

His next film 'Reality' - set in the world of tabloid TV - won the Grand Prix at Cannes. In 'Tale of Tales' Garrone heads in a very different direction - taking the writings of Giambattista Basile - a 17th century poet and collector of fairy stories - to create a portmanteau collection of fantastical tales - strange, funny, sometimes lurid and always entertaining. The style is inflected by Chaucer, Boccacio and The Brothers Grimm - with kings, queens, courtiers and peasants caught up in the most weird and wonderful situations. A strain of dark humour is to be found throughout - with a gifted international cast making the most of their roles.

Gorgeously lensed by Peter Suschitzky and with a lush score by Alexandre Desplat - "Tale Of Tales' was seen by too few people on release. It is a marvellous, eccentric melange of a movie which will leave you smiling and possibly a little disturbed...

Ida

Starring Agata Kulesza,
Agata Trzebuchowska and Dawid Ogrodnik
Written by Pawel Pawilokowski and Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Directed by Pawel Pawilokowski
Poland/Denmark/France/UK 2014
82 mins

The Acton Film Club started in 2009 and we are screening a film that may have gone under your radar from every year since we began - this time 2014.

Perhaps the most talented and visually accomplished filmmaker working in Britain today is Pawel Pawilokovski. Born in Poland but raised and educated here Pawlikowski started out making documentaries but switched to fiction in 2001 with 'Last Resort'. He won a BAFTA Best Newcomer award for that film and has gone on to win numerous prizes including a BAFTA and an Oscar for 'Ida' in 2015. His latest - 'Cold War' - was one of the highlights of last year - a raw semi-biographical love story that charted the history of the post-war years in Europe.
Pawilokowski's films are poetic, beautiful and frequently very moving. He often shoots in black and white -  framing the shots with a painter's eye for composition.
Set in Poland in 1962 'Ida' tells the story of a young woman on the verge of taking her vows as a nun, who when she visits her aunt Wanda, makes an unexpected discovery about her heritage.
The two take off on a road trip during which Wanda encourages her niece to experience worldly pleasures before she commits to the religious life. Their subsequent experiences have a profound effect on both of them...
Agata Kulesza is luminous as Ida while Agata Trzebuchowska gives a powerful performance as Wanda - a woman scarred by the post war communist world and her part in it.
'Ida' is a sublime movie, intense, insightful and at times transcendent.

Don't miss it.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Starring Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston
Mia Wasikowska and John Hurt
Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch
UK/Germany 2013
123 mins

The Acton Film Club started in 2009 and we are screening a film that may have gone under your radar from every year since we began - this time 2013.

Since his early movies 'Stranger Than Paradise' and 'Down By Law' in the 1980s Jim Jarmusch has established himself as one of the most fascinating and influential independent film makers working in the west. His quirky, highly contemplative style synthesises American, European and Japanese cinema - often featuring extended takes and a still camera technique with the focus on character development and mood rather than driving narrative.

Jarmusch has made films in a number of genres including comedy, western, thriller, portmanteau drama and documentary. Throughout his career he has maintained an extraordinary degree of independence - retaining the negatives to all of his pictures - a truly rare thing in modern movie making. He is a composer as well as a filmmaker and has frequently collaborated with musicians like Neil Young, Tom Waits, Joe Strummer and Screamin' Jay Hawkins - often using them in dramatic roles in his movies. His band SQURL provides the opening song 'Funnel Of Love' for this film.

In 'Only Lovers Left Alive' Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton play Adam and Eve, a pair of glamorous, ubercool vampires - centuries old and living respectively in Detroit and Tangiers. They exist in a nocturnal world - reliant on supplies of uncontaminated blood to maintain their ancient lifestyle. Among their friends is Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt) - the playwright contemporary of Shakespeare who is sometimes credited with having written some of the his greatest works.

If you don't care for horror movies don't be put off - this is no conventional vampire flick - it is infused with Jarmusch's peculiar sensibilities and eschews gore in favour of exquisite production design and what Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian called a 'sulphurous chemistry' between the two leads.

Rust and Bone

Starring Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts
Written by Jacques Audiard and Thomas Bidegain
Directed by Jacques Audiard 
France/IBelgium 2012
123 mins

Director Jacques Audiard is principally known for 'The Beat That My Heart Skipped' and 'The Prophet' - two dramas set in tough masculine worlds.  His new film is a dark comedy western - 'The Sisters Brothers' which opens here on the 5th April. In between Audiard made 'Rust And Bone', an intense and passionate love story that moves effortlessly between edgy realism and transcendental beauty.

Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a drifter who hitchhikes to the south of France with his young son and meets Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) who works in a local marine tourist park. When Stéphanie is the victim of a terrible freak accident her life changes and depression strikes. A call to Ali one day sparks a casual sexual relationship between them - but as time goes on things begin to change...
Based on a novel by Canadian author Craig Davidson 'Rust And Bone' features two wonderful and contrasting performances from the leads. Cotillard had previously excelled as the singer Edith Piaf in 'La Vie En Rose' but Schoenaerts was a virtual unknown whose unselfconscious style is a perfect complement to Cotillard's powerful portrayal. 

The soundtrack includes a score by Alexandre Desplat but also features artists as diverse as Katy Perry, Bruce Springsteen and the B52s. The combination of image and music is frequently potent and affecting - giving us a great love story and much more besides...

Le Havre

Starring André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and  Blondin Miguel
Written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki
Finland/France/Germany 2011
93 mins

2019 is our tenth year as a film club. To mark this we will screen a movie that may have gone under your radar from every year that we have been operating.

'Le Havre' was released in 2011 - it is the 16th feature by Aki Kaurismäki - Finland's best known director, whose movies are distinguished by their deadpan humour and minimalist approach. Kaurismäki's characters are given laconic dialogue and his films have a strange detached quality which belies their subtlety and grace. His pictures have often been nominated for awards and in 2002 'The Man Without A Past' was awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes while iIn 2017 'The Other Side Of Hope' won the Silver Bear for best director at the Berlin Film Festival.

This film centres on Marcel Marx - a failed writer working as a shoeshiner in the down-at-heel French port of Le Havre. When his wife Arletty becomes ill and he crosses paths with Idrissa - an underage illegal immigrant from Africa -Marcel's life takes a different turn. He and his neighbours rally round to hide the boy from the authorities who may, or may not, be hot on their heels...

'Le Havre' is filled with the director's trademark touches - as Leslie Felperin wrote in Variety: 'Le Havre is a continual pleasure, seamlessly blending morose and merry notes with a deftness that's up there with Kaurismäki's best comic work'. It's a quirky picture full of eccentricity and humanity from one of the true auteurs working today. 

The Kids Are Alright

Starring Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo
Written by Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg
Directed by Lisa Cholodenko
USA 2010
107 mins

The Acton Film Club is 10 years old this year - to mark that we are showing a film from every year since we started in 2009. 'The Kids Are Alright'  is a charming 2010 comedy about a same sex couple and their family living in Los Angeles.

Nic is an obstetrician and and Jules a landscape gardener who each conceived a child using the same anonymous sperm donor. Those children - Laser and Joni - are now teenagers and when one of them decides they want to know who their father is he and his sister track down the man - Paul - who they arrange to meet. This leads to Paul coming to their home and encountering  Nic and Jules for the first time - at which point the complications begin...

'The Kids Are Alright' was the first mainstream film to feature a same sex couple as parents and is partly based on the experiences of the filmmaker Lisa Choldenko - who has herself used donor sperm to conceive. The leads are all excellent - in particular Annette Bening and Julianne Moore - two of the finest American actresses working today. 

The script is deft - a smart exploration of the modern incarnation of a very traditional family situation.
'The Kids Are Alright' was on many critics top ten lists in the year it was made but perhaps perhaps because of its themes did not have the widest release. Don't miss this opportunity to see it.

Dogtooth

Starring Christos Stergioglou, Michelle Valley, Angeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni and Christos Passalis
Directed by Jorgos Lanthimos
Greece 2009
97 minutes

'Dogtooth' was released in 2009 - the year we started and is the first major film from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos whose latest picture 'The Favourite' is currently in cinemas - enjoying rave reviews and big box office success. His other films 'The Lobster' and 'The Killing Of A Sacred Deer'  have attracted much attention - sometimes dividing audiences and critics with their surreal narratives and off-kilter characterisation.

'Dogtooth' depicts a family living in a walled compound - the grown up children have been told by their parents that the world is a dangerous place - unsafe for them to go into until they lose a dogtooth (a canine) They are misled by the parents into thinking that aeroplanes are tiny objects and that cats are incredibly dangerous and savage creatures. 

Incarcerated and unaware of normal behaviour  the children begin to experiment with sex...
In 'Dogtooth' Lanthimos shows himself to be the modern successor to the great Spanish surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel - the black humour and twisted reality of the dialogue and situations are at once disturbing and revealing. The cinematography is unsettling - Roger Ebert wrote that Lanthimos has 'complete command of visuals and performances. His cinematography is like a series of family photographs of a family with something wrong with it'

Just as 'The Favourite' is an historical drama like no other you have seen so 'Dogtooth' will challenge your preconceptions and give you a very strange and different take on family life.
It is a shocking and perverse drama but clearly the work of a significant artist who shows us the world in a way no other living film maker does.

Butch Cassidy And the Sundance Kid

Starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Katherine Ross
Written by William Goldman
Directed by George Roy Hill
USA 1969
110 mins

In November 2018 William Goldman, the award-winning screenwriter and playwright died aged 87. His films included 'The Princess Bride', 'Marathon Man' and 'All The Presidents Men' but perhaps his most famous screenplay was for 'Butch Cassidy And the Sundance Kid' - a supremely entertaining comic western based on the lives of two real-life outlaws in the last years of the 19th century.

The film teamed Paul Newman and Robert Redford as Butch and Sundance - good hearted bandits whose love triangle with schoolteacher Etta Place forms the centre of the story. Their daring and ramshackle exploits enrage the authorities who form a super-posse to track them down and kill them. 
Butch Cassidy can be seen as part of the wave of counter culture that was sweeping through Hollywood at the time in which films like 'Bonnie And Clyde' and 'Easy Rider' glorified the outsider and the outlaw. It was a new kind of western - a very long way from John Wayne, sharing some of the characteristics of the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone but with a lighter streak of anarchic humour.

Conrad Hall's cinematography gives the action an elegiac glow backed by  Burt Bacharach's breezy score - most memorable in the iconic sequence where Newman and Ross fool around on a bicycle to the strains of 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head'.

The picture made huge box office stars of Newman and Redford, who would later work again with director George Roy Hill on 'The Sting'. Their effortless chemistry  as the two loveable rogues and a series of beautifully timed set pieces make for an enduring modern classic. Goldman would famously write 'nobody knows anything' in 'Adventures In The Screen Trade' - his wonderfully astute book about Hollywood. What this great film proves is that he knew certainly knew how to write a movie...

We look forward to seeing you for the first screening of 2019 - our tenth year as a film club!