FILM OF THE WEEK By John Morrish In the early hours of tonight (in other words, Saturday 4/9) at 00:05, BBC2 has The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019). It’s really excellent.  Zak, a 22-year-old man with Down’s Syndrome, has been placed in an old people’s home in rural Carolina by the state authorities. A rebellious old man helps him… [continues]

World Cinema FILM OF THE WEEK By Sim Fox On Friday (3/9) at 01:35, Film4 is showing Force Majeure (2014), overlooked by Cheltenham Film Society in 2015. Tomas and Ebba are a well-heeled Scandinavian couple on a skiing holiday in the Alps with their two young children. Faced with a supposedly controlled avalanche that looks like… [continues]

FILM OF THE WEEK Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (1995), starring Alicia Silverstone, is loosely based on Jane Austen’s Emma. Cher, the Silverstone character, is a rich young woman who wants to fix other girls’ romantic lives, just like Emma Woodhouse. Unlike Emma, she does it by taking them to the mall, doing their hair and make-up… [continues]

FILM OF THE WEEK

Thanks for joining our filmcheltenham.online newsletter. It’s like the old CFS newsletter but better. Not yet, perhaps, because I haven’t had time to do it properly, but it will be.  FILM OF THE WEEK I’ve just watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) for the first time. It’s brilliant.  I ignored it at the time of… [continues]

FILMS OF THE WEEK Stephen keeps meticulous records, and he recalls giving top marks to Stronger (2017), tomorrow at 23:05 on BBC2. So I watched it. It tells the true story of a man called Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenaal), who lost both his legs in the Boston Marathon terrorist bombing of 2013. The film shows… [continues]

FILM OF THE WEEK There must be people waiting breathlessly for Stephen Spielberg’s forthcoming remake of West Side Story (1961), but I’m not among them. The trailer looks terrible. The original West Side Story (1961) is a piece of film history, of course, but it is still vivid and alive.   Its concerns – youth, tribalism,… [continues]

Film of the week Trumbo (2015) was Bryan Cranston’s first big film role after his all-conquering lead in the TV hit Breaking Bad, and it wasn’t an obvious crowd-pleaser. It tells the story of Dalton Trumbo, who was, at least according to this account, the highest-paid screenwriter in 1940s Hollywood. He was also a Communist… [continues]