TRUMBO 27 JUNE 8PM
FAVERSHAM
F
ILM SOCIETY
April to July 2016
(CERT.15) 124 mins – US
Trumbo serves as an honorable and well-acted tribute to a
brilliant writer’s principled stand. In the 1930s Dalton Trumbo
was an award winning author who went on to become a
highly successful screenwriter. After the war though, as antiSoviet hysteria mounted, Trumbo was forced to testify to the
House Un-American Activities Committee about his
communist sympathies. He refused to name names, and was
blacklisted and jailed for 10 months. For years afterwards he
was forced to work anonymously. His later scripts included
Roman Holiday (1953) and The Brave One (1956), which both
won Oscars, but he wasn’t credited. The Oscar-nominated
Bryan Cranston gives a wonderful performance as Trumbo, an
elegant, witty figure, both courageous and fond of his creature
comforts. He “talks like a radical” but lives like a “rich guy”.
With his spectacles and moustache, he looks a little like
Groucho Marx and shares his flair for one-liners. He is also a
contradictory figure whose selflessness is combined with a
strong streak of egotism. Among a cast of real life figures are
John Goodman, and Helen Mirren, in a series of mad hats,
going for broke as gossip columnist Hedda Hopper who speaks
of “registered communists”as if they are child molesters.
HAIL CAESAR
11 JULY 8PM (CERT.12A) 106 mins –
WE
ARE SHOWING 7 FILMS IN THIS SEASON
All films start at 8pm & are at the Royal Cinema, Market Place, Faversham
ROOM 11 APRIL 8PM
US
The Coen brothers conjure up nostalgic joy from this hilarious knockabout homage to the later days of
Hollywood’s Golden Age. The film follows a single day in the life of a studio fixer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin)
who is presented with plenty of problems to fix. It’s 1951, and the
motion picture industry is responding to the threat of television
with colourful choreography, escapist romances and biblical epics.
On the lot is Hail, Caesar!, a tale of swords, sandals and salvation,
all done in the best possible taste. But things hit a snag when
George Clooney’s Baird Whitlock (Kirk Douglas with a whiff of
John Wayne) is kidnapped and held to ransom. Meanwhile, Ralph
Fiennes’s testy European director Laurence Laurentz needs a
leading man for his sophisticated drama. The Coens have stuffed
the film with storylines, most of which start off apparently
unconnected, but by the end have all locked into the same tangled
web. Primarily, of course, it’s a chance for them to show off, with
the film-studio setting allowing them to recreate a range of works,
from drawing-room melodramas to cheapo westerns to elaborate
aquamusicals (Scarlett Johansson as an Esther Williams-style bathing
beauty). Both directors and cast are having a lot of fun; the
standout turn is arguably Ralph Fiennes, who provides the latest in
a string of comic tours de force as the director attempting to get
sophisticated diction out of the strangulated tones of an actor called
Hobie Doyle, hitherto employed only as a singing cowboy.
FILM START TIMES: PLEASE BE ON TIME – our films have to start promptly at 8pm. With the cinema’s new digital projection most of the
films screened arrive as high definition digital files coded to play at a specific time, over which we have no control. This means that the film
has to start playing at 8pm or not at all. Thus to avoid potentially missing the start of the film, it's worth arriving in good time for the screening.
(CERT.15) 118 mins – Canada/Ireland
Superbly adapted by screenwriter Emma Donoghue from her own novel (both director Abrahamson and
Donaghue were nominated for Oscars and Brie Larson won Best Actress), Room is an unexpectedly lifeaffirming parable of parenthood wrapped in the clothing of a modern-day horror story; a heartbreaking
tale of the power of motherly love and of a nurtured child’s ability to find light in the dark woods of the
adult world. A young woman (Brie Larson) has been kidnapped and imprisoned for years by a psychotic
abuser; she and her young son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) are forced to live in a tiny room with rudimentary
facilities, secured by a heavy steel door. This squalid cramped space is the only world Jack has ever known;
he has evolved a magic/religious belief in how things arrive from the outside. He calls it “Room”, a word
whose ironies gradually emerge, and for him it is a richly and reassuringly detailed universe, beyond which,
through a skylight, he nonetheless glimpses a mysterious sky beyond. But, as Jack reaches his fifth birthday,
the deceit and
moment-by-moment
nightmare of their
situation become
intolerable for his
mother. She hatches a
desperate plan to
escape. Larson gives a
powerful performance,
conveying the
nauseous
wretchedness of her
life and the strain of
concealing the truth
from her son.
Tremblay is very good,
too, with a child’s
ability to accept
everything.
For enquiries or an e-programme email: [email protected] or call: 01795 536784
All films are subject to cancellation or alteration at short notice, please check with cinema on 01795 591211 to avoid disappointment.
THE ASSASSIN
25 APRIL 8PM (CERT.12A) 106 mins –
Taiwan
Taiwanese director Hsiao-Hsien Hou’s Palme d’Or
contender is a martial arts saga like no other – and one of
the prettiest films you’ll ever see; an immaculate treasure
box of light, texture and movement – though just when
you think you’ve pinned it down, it slips your grasp as
nimbly as its lead character darting through a silver birch
grove. The plot is based on a seventh-century Chinese
folk tale about a female assassin charged with restoring
balance to the crumbling Tang Dynasty court. Shu Qi,
Hou’s long-time muse, plays the assassin herself, Nie
Yinniang, trained since the age of ten to be a silent
executioner for the Imperial Court. Though The Assassin
has its roots in action cinema, Hou wants to lower your
heart rate, not raise it. The soundtrack rarely gets more
complex than a low drum-beat, which could almost be
the controlled heartbeat of the assassin – or perhaps of
the Chinese court itself. Hou has spoken of scouting locations in Inner Mongolia and Hubei province, and
finding “silver birch forests and lakes” which were like stepping into “a Chinese classical painting”, with
“water and mountains evoked in a single brush stroke”. This is a work of strange and subtle power, unlike
anything else you’ll see this year, and an extraordinary comeback from a necessary filmmaker.
RAMS
9 MAY 8PM (CERT.15) 91 mins –
A Bigger Splash
23 MAY 8PM (CERT.15) 124 mins –
Italy
Luca Guadagnino’s sun-splashed melodrama begins
in playful fashion but grows more fraught as it
probes away at its characters’ narcissism and
insecurity. The film boasts a magnificently
flamboyant performance from Ralph Fiennes as rock
manager and producer Harry, who gatecrashes the
villa where his ex-lover, rock star Marianne Lane
(Tilda Swinton) is staying with her boyfriend, Paul
(Matthias Schoenaerts). Harry has brought along his
coquettish daughter (Dakota Johnson). He is a
wildly energetic old rake with an appetite for food,
alcohol, sex and mischief. Marianne is affectionate
toward Harry but there is mounting tension
between him and Paul. The film makes its
hedonistic protagonists seem like characters in a
classical tragedy. The intimacy between them becomes more oppressive and results in ever more extreme
behaviour. The zest of the film-making belies the darkness at the core here. But Guadagnino keeps
everything in balance, and Harry’s own multifarious issues are only part of a complex and finely shaded
bigger picture which includes an influx of Tunisian refugees that provides a sly political context. It’s a
tempting feast for eyes and mind alike, with an aftertaste that lingers like the sting of grappa on the tongue.
The Martian 13 JUNE 8PM (C
ERT.12A) 141 mins – US
Iceland
In a secluded Icelandic valley, estranged brothers Gummi and Kiddi
are warring neighbours, competing with each other for the best
ram prize that has become a symbol of their family feud. But when
the spectre of the fatal scrapie disease threatens their remote
farms, both brothers are faced with the prospect of a cull. Can
these long-term enemies find common purpose when their
ancestral stock and way of life are threatened? “Beyond farming,
there is something special about sheep,” says writer-director
Grímur Hákonarson, adding: “Most farmers I know have a stronger
connection to sheep than to other domesticated animals.” This will
ring true with anyone who saw Magali Pettier’s eye-opening British
documentary Addicted to Sheep, to which this darkly comedic
drama, by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, provides a deadpan
Nordic riposte. Sigurður Sigurjónsson and Theodór Júlíusson are
utterly convincing as the battling brothers whose alienation is expressed more through morosely bearded
gesture than drunken buckshot dialogue. There’s real pathos in the possible loss of the pair’s livelihood, an
emotion intensified by the positioning of these antiheroes as men out of time, the last vestiges of an all-butobsolete way of life. A wonderfully minimalist wheezing score by Atli Örvarsson lends a mournful solemnity
to the proceedings, perfectly accompanying cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen’s imposingly chilly vistas.
Left for dead on the red planet following a spectacular storm, botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) must
hunker down for the long haul, knowing that any rescue mission is years away. Luckily, he is quite literally
“the best botanist on the planet”, and after declaring that he’ll
have to “science the shit” out of his Robinson Crusoe situation,
he discovers that it is indeed possible to grow potatoes in his
own poo. This is just the first of many self-help survivalist
discoveries that find Watney entertainingly facing up to the
challenge of “not dying”. Armed only with recordings of Happy
Days and his captain’s collection of old disco classics, our lonely
starman pitches his skills against the inhospitable elements,
counting the solar days (“sols”) until help arrives, even as mission
control fight their own battles, practical and geopolitical. The film
revels in the sheer absurdist pleasure of watching human beings
outwit the universe with Sellotape and string. Watney’s tools are
maths and science. Damon plays him in engaging, subtle fashion.
If the astronaut is wisecracking on the edge of the abyss, the
actor makes us see this is not through flippancy but because he
realises the only alternative is despair. Meanwhile, his former
crewmates wrestle with the guilt of his unexpected survival.
Rousing and original fare, The Martian delivers on both
intergalactic spectacle and feet-in-the-soil character drama.
A formidable supporting cast includes Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel
Ejiofor, Sean Bean, Jeff Daniels and Kristen Wiig.