World Cinema Tuesday (28/12)         01:20   Film4                  Wings of Desire (1987). Powerful and poetic Wim Wenders fantasy-romance about an angel (brilliant Bruno Ganz) who falls in love with a trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin) and desires to become mortal. Haunted and haunting German classic.    … [continues]

World Cinema Saturday (11/12)          21:30    BBC4                   Stieg Larssons Millenium Episode 5 (2010). Better known as The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest Part 1. Swedish with English subtitles.                            … [continues]

World Cinema Saturday (4/12)        21:30   BBC4                   Stieg Larssons Millenium Episode 4 (2010). The second part of The Girl Who Played With Fire. In Swedish, Italian and French, with subtitles.                            … [continues]

World Cinema Saturday (27/11)        21:30   BBC4               Stieg Larssons Millenium Episode 2 (2010). According to the BBC’s website, this is the conclusion of The Girl Who Played With Fire, reviewed last week. According to the Radio Times, it’s the first part. I wish these people would get their… [continues]

World Cinema Saturday (20/11)          21:30      BBC4                  Stieg Larssons Millenium Episode 2 (2010). The second half of the screen version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, in which Mikael Blomkvist, ejected from his journalist role as a result of a court… [continues]

World Cinema Saturday (30/10)   21:00   Talking Pictures   The Gods Must Be Crazy (1981). A South African – Botswanan comedy, which became the most commercially successful South African film up to that time and gained wider release. The farcical action revolves round a Coca Cola bottle dropped from a plane, a biologist and some guerrillas. Largely seen as a… [continues]

World Cinema Sunday (24/10)           00:40   BBC2     The Age of Shadows (2016). Korean resistance fighters smuggle explosives from China to attack the occupying Japanese in Seoul in the 1920s. The first Korean film funded by Warner Bros. Hollywood loves a revolution, but only some revolutions. Never mind: the trailer suggests it… [continues]

FILM OF THE WEEK I chose this week’s Film of the Week, Young Ahmed by the Dardenne brothers, before the news of the killing of the Tory MP. It couldn’t be more topical or apposite. The review is here. World Cinema Sunday (17/10)         01:10     BBC2             … [continues]

Film of the Week Our real film of the week is The Mother (2003), starring Anne Reid and Daniel Craig. Here’s the write-up. I’m also intrigued, however, by The Special Relationship (2010), the third in the loose trilogy the British screenwriter Peter Morgan wrote about Tony Blair. This BBC/HBO film follows The Deal (2003) and… [continues]

FILM OF THE WEEK Inside Man (2006), directed by Spike Lee. Paramount, Monday (20/9) at 22:55. Previewed by John Russell This is unusual territory for Spike Lee but definitely worth a look. Denzel Washington and Clive Owen are pitted against each other as hostage negotiator and taker, in a bank heist with unusual features. One is… [continues]

FILM OF THE WEEK By Steve Sasanow The Graduate (1967) It would be quite difficult to over-estimate the social, cultural, cinematic and musical influence of this film. Its take on the American dream, its sexual audacity, its time-frame in American history, its use of contemporary music, all make it one of the most significant films of… [continues]

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]