The Roses
The Roses this week has Never Too Late, which the website describes as ‘The Great Escape meets The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’. After slitting my wrists, I noticed it stars James Cromwell, Jacki Weaver and … Dennis Waterman. An Australian effort, aimed at people so old they have lost their critical faculties. It also has Sing 2, an animated sequel, including the screen debut of sometime rock star and current world saviour Saint Bono. Just when I thought my wrists were going to heal up. Then there’s Moonfall, Roland Emmerich’s lastest earth-in-jeopardy space opera, with Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley and Donald Sutherland. The only film this week that really interests me is The Eyes of Tammy Faye, starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield, a feature about the rise and fall of the American evangelical con-artist and her husband Jim Bakker. The combination of adultery, Jesus-jumping, avarice and legions of gullible citizens of The World’s Greatest Nation (™) sounds irresistible.
I note that the Tewkesbury arts centre’s excellent advance programme now includes all of its theatrical output and not a single film listing. Really, Patrick? That’ll bring back the punters.
The Guildhall
The new film at The Guildhall is a ‘Sky original’ called Save The Cinema, a feelgood Britcom, supposedly based on real events, in which a Carmarthen hairdresser saves her local flea-pit by getting kindly plutocrat Steven Spielberg to let her put on one of his dreary children’s films. The irony of the British industry making and showing this at at time when it can’t persuade any customers to plant their bums on its seats is beyond humour. Otherwise there is Ken Branagh’s Belfast, Licorice Pizza, Sing 2 and Branagh’s otiose Death on the Nile.
The Cineworlds
It’s actually worth looking at Cineworld’s website this week, if it works. At Cheltenham there is Joe Wright’s delayed Cyrano; another attempt at explaining the French public’s fascination with a nasally-challenged love poet; Dog, a broad comedy starring Channing Tatum and a snarling black faeces-machine (visit any Cheltenham park for more information); a Polish comedy called Koniec Swiata Czyli Kogel Mogel 4 (which makes me sad I missed the previous three Koniec Swiata Czyli Kogel Mogels), Marry Me, a Hollywood showbiz nuptials comedy presumably not based on John Updike’s novel, and even a Bollywood. Stephen Ilott will wear out his Unlimited card. Fans of ‘Spot The Difference’ may wish to look at the Gloucester page.
The Tivoli
The Tivoli has the usual uninteresting stuff, plus a Showtime (TV) documentary, The Real Charlie Chaplin, which might force me to brave its chilly ambience and uncomfortable seating if only to hawk some of my unused Modern Times booklets (The Bitter Tears of John von Morrish). There’s also, on Sunday, a one-off presentation of Peter Jackson’s hour-long edit of someone else’s film of the 1969 Beatles concert on the roof of their ego-shop in Savile Row in 1969, after which the drugged-up, self-loathing multi-millionaire philanthropists and seers disappeared and were never heard of again. I wish. The Beach Boys were much better.
The Sherborne
The lovely Sherborne cinema in Gloucester has Belfast, Death on the Nile and Sing 2. I tell you what, Mark, retire and sell it to me. I’ve been searching down the back of my sofa for the readies.