Hurstpierpoint Film Society
The Cinema on the High Street
Programme 2011 - 2012
Doors and Bar open at 7pm, please be in your seats by 7.45 to ensure an 8pm start.
Tuesday
27 September 2011
Sponsored by Clive Miller Family Butchers
Wonder Boys (15)
This is a neglected comic gem from Curtis Hanson, director of LA Confidential.
In possibly his best ever performance, Michael Douglas plays totally against type s Grady Tripp, a confused, pot smoking professor, dealing with a series of crises over the weekend of the literary festival at his college.
Brilliantly directed, with superb supporting performances from Robert Downey Junior as Tripp's agent and Tobely Maguire as a troubled student.
Exit Poll
Not Rated
Thursday
27 October 2011
Sponsored by PSP Homes
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (15)
Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke play two desperate brothers who cook up a crime that can't go wrong - but does.
Buttock clenching, edge of the seat tension grips you from start through to the shattering climax.
This is a Greek Drama disguised as a cracking thriller, the final work by the veteran director Sidney Lumet that challenges his greatest works
Exit Poll
Not Rated
Thursday
24 November 2011
Sponsored by Just Fish
Submarine (15)
Perhaps all teenagers should break away from Facebook and watch this deadpan, ironic and very funny coming of age story set in the 1980's, a faraway world in which there were no mobile phones, internet, DS's or Playstations.
Craig Roberts plays a 15 year old schoolboy fantasist, who falls for an ultra-realist, sparky class mate while trying to solve his parents failing marriage. Smart, funny and touching.
Exit Poll
8/10
Thursday
15 December 2011
Sponsored by South Downs Cellars
Potiche (15)
Set in a provincial French town in the 1970's, Catherine Deneuve plays Suzanne Pujol, a Potiche, or "trophy wife" married to a tyrannical husband.
She is forced to step in to run the family business after workers go on strike and take him hostage.
To everyone's surprise she proves herself to be a highly competent business woman and is unwilling to let the reins of power go when her husband returns.
A delightful screwball comedy.
Exit Poll
8.5/10
Thursday
19 January 2012
Sponsored by The White Horse
Mother(15)
Gripping psychological thriller about a middle aged single mother in rural Korea, whose moody, special needs, son is arrested and convicted of the murder of a young girl.
Convinced he has been set up as a useful scapegoat, his mother turns detective and goes on a mission to track down the real killer and prove her son's innocence.
It soon looks like she will induce red faces among the police...but what really happened?
Exit Poll
8/10
Thursday
23 February 2012
Sponsored by The Mint House
Election (15)
Another ridiculously overlooked comic gem, rightly placed highly in the Guardian 20 All Time Greatest Comedies.
Reese Witherspoon plays Tracy Flick, a pushy student determined to become school council president.
Matthew Broderick is the idealistic teacher determined to see her fail.
This is a pitilessly funny, withering satire on US politics.
Exit Poll
8/10
Thursday
22 March 2012
The Passenger (12)
Jack Nicholson came to Europe to make this masterpiece with Michelangelo Antonioni off the back of two Oscar nominations.
He credits his Oscar winning performance the following year, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, to what he learned in his "...greatest ever acting adventure..." as the burnt out reporter David Locke in this, one of the key films of 70's European film making.
Exit Poll
7/10
Friday
12 April 2012
Midnight in Paris (12A)
A new Woody Allen film used to be an eagerly awaited event, but in the 12 years since the turn of the century he has directed 14 films, most of which have been greeted with a shrug.
But he has at last come up with a film that has been received with some semblance of his former adoration, a wry, touching and witty film that sees him back on sparkling form and is his best film since the mid 1990's.
Exit Poll
9/10
Thursday
26 April 2012
Sponsored by Little
Fidgets
White Material
(15)
Set in an un-named French speaking African country, Isabelle Huppert plays a divorced woman trying to run a coffee plantation,while civil war is closing in around her.
Enthralling and enigmatic. Why is
Huppert’s character so
determined to stay in the face of
impending disaster?
Huppert’s
brilliant
performance leaves you guessing in the beautiful, gripping
and troubling
film.
Exit Poll
6/10
Friday
11 May 2012
Moneyball (15)
Moneyball may, at first glance, be a film about baseball, but as you would expect from a writing duo who were seperately responsible for Schindler's List and The Social Network, the film is actually about much more than that.
It is a highly intelligent and excitingly entertaining film which requires no knowledge of the esoteric rules and rituals of that most American of games.
Exit Poll
8.5/10
Thursday
24 May 2012
Sponsored by The Fig
Tree
The Savages (15)
Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman are a dream pairing for this dark comedy-drama about siblings dealing with a sickly father.
His dry, downtrodden delivery
compliments her equally witty but
rather more hysterical tone, as Wendy
and Jon Savage who
reluctantly decide to put their father
Lenny into a nursing home,
putting their already strained family
relationships under pressure.
Exit Poll
7.5/10
Friday
8 June 2011
Benda Bilili (12A)
A documentary about a group of paraplegics and homeless street kids in Kinshasa, who form a group and practise in the local zoo might not sound appealing, a bit worthy perhaps, but this is one of the most uplifting films you will ever see.
Filled with irresistible music and a group of people facing the hardest of hard times without a shred of self pity or bitterness and suffused with humour.
I challenge you not to stand and applaud at the end of the film and then dance down the street.
Exit Poll
9.5/10
Thursday
21 June 2012
Sponsored by Saitch
Associates
Accident (PG)
Dirk
Bogarde plays the Oxford don, who is horrified when a car
crashes
outside his home one night, killing one student and injuring
the other.
But was this really an accident?
The
events in the months
leading up to the
accident are revealed in flashback, and we see
that Bogarde has been
locked in a battle of egos both with
Michael York, the student killed
in the crash, and Stanley Baxter, a colleague
whose success he covets – the
civil surface of academic life is peeled away to reveal a
world of twisted desire and
brutal behaviour.
Exit Poll