Programme + Booking - The Eclectic Cinema

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WINTER PROGRAMME 2025
Unforgiven   15
USA | 1992                 130 minutes
20 January 2025 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (under 26) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Clint Eastwood
STARRING
Clint Eastwood|Gene Hackman|Morgan Freeman

In the ABC of Cinema, we’re going to screen a film by Clint Eastwood – a Western. Eastwood’s film-acting career goes back to the mid-1950s, but he started directing in 1971 with Play Misty for Me. Since then, he has built up a roster of over forty films as director – and often also as producer and star. The Western genre is particularly associated with Eastwood, although he has also directed thrillers, biopics, and at least one romance.

In Unforgiven, Eastwood plays Will Munny, a former killer, now reformed so as to focus on farming and raising a family with his young wife. But his wife has recently died, so to secure his family’s future, Will is persuaded to turn bounty-hunter again. The bounty has been raised by women of the local brothel, one of whom has been severely disfigured in a recent violent attack by two men from out of town. The sheriff (played by Gene Hackman) released the men without trial or punishment, thus leaving the women to find their own route to justice.

At the 1993 Academy Awards, this film won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Eastwood) and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Hackman).

GAP
The Florida Project   15
USA | 2017                 111 minutes
27 January 2025 MONDAY 19:30
GREEN ROOM BAR
Tickets £7.00|£5.00 (under 26) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Sean Baker
STARRING
Brooklynn Prince| Bria Vinaite| Willem Dafoe

Sean Baker’s latest film Anora (released November 2024) just won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and we screened one of his earlier (micro-budget) movies Tangerine last April. The Florida Project again involves the lives and experiences of marginalised people – in this case the poor, trying to scrape a living in present-day America. And, again, many of the actors are first-timers, from whom Baker has drawn the most moving and memorable performances.

The scene is the Magic Castle Inn, a motel located next door to Walt Disney World. Halley and her six-year-old daughter Moonee share a room there, the mother getting by working as a stripper. Moonee is friends with other kids living in the motel, and together they enjoy unruly and imaginative fun over the summer, pretty much unsupervised. All the while the janitor of the motel keeps a supportive eye on his diverse residents.

The children are brilliant – little rascals running amok in their peculiarly pastel environment. Brooklynn Prince, as Moonee, was acclaimed by the critics, as was Bria Vanaite, playing her mother. And Willem Dafoe – as the janitor holding things together – was reckoned to have delivered one of his best performances.

GAP
Dreams   PG
Japan/USA | 1990                 119 minutes
10 February 2025 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (under 26) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Akira Kurosawa
STARRING
Akira Terao|Mitsunori Isaki|Martin Scorsese

Dreams is mesmeric, challenging, and unique. It’s one of the final films, and a departure from his archetypal Samurai epics, of the legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. In this extremely personal project, he presents an anthology of eight wildly differing dreams he was plagued with throughout his life. Spanning an array of themes from death, guilt, spirituality and fear, to more particular subjects like environmentalism and nuclear fallout, each vignette, for the most part, comes across like a mystical folk tale of old.

Although the screenplay was penned entirely by Kurosawa, the production was a collaborative effort. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were instrumental in bringing the vision to life, and Martin Scorsese, who cites Kurosawa as 'my master', makes a cameo appearance.

Films like Dreams come along only once every few years. They echo through the generations, transcending linguistic, economic and geographical barriers. While Kurosawa's legacy was secure long before Dreams, this film undoubtedly deserves a place in his highlight reel.

GAP
Dance Craze   12A
UK | 1981                 91 minutes
17 February 2025 MONDAY 19:30
GREEN ROOM BAR
Tickets £7.00|£5.00 (under 26) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Joe Massot

Dance Craze documents the phenomenon of 2-tone – the music genre that blended Jamaican ska and reggae with punk rock and new wave. It swept through the UK music scene at the end of the 1970s and into the early ‘80s - the start of Thatcher’s Britain.

This is not a documentary of ‘talking heads’ – just live music, filmed in 1980 at various gigs around the country, from Aylesbury to Coventry; from London to Liverpool. The atmosphere achieved in the film is infectious, and it includes performances of 26 songs by various bands in the 2-tone fold, featuring The Specials, Madness, Bad Manners, The Bodysnatchers, The Selecter, and The Beat. First released to the world in 1981, Dance Craze was restored and re-released in 2023. Obviously, we’ll be screening the restored version.

While we may not be able to recreate in the Green Room Bar the particular character of the venues where the gigs were performed back in 1980, we’ll do our best to make it a House of Fun. The seating will be more cabaret than theatre, the bar will be open throughout, and we’ll even try to squeeze in a dance floor.

This is a chance for Gen-X to introduce Gen-Z to the some of the best things that happened in 1980. Even if you done too much, much too young, you can still be having fun with Dance Craze at The Eclectic Cinema!

GAP
MORE DETAILS OF THE FOLLOWING FILMS WILL BE POSTED SOON
(TICKETS ARE NOT YET ON SALE)
Mr Klein   12
France/Italy | 1976                 123 minutes
24 February 2025 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (under 26) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Joseph Losey
STARRING
Alain Delon|Jeanne Moreau|Michael Lonsdale
We bid a final farewell to Alain Delon - French actor, who died last August, aged 88 - with a screening of Mr Klein. Set in occupied France, 1942, Delon plays an art dealer taking advantage of the wealthy French Jews keen to sell artworks to finance their escape. Seemingly, Mr Klein the art dealer is not Jewish, but seemingly there is another Mr Klein, who is certainly Jewish, is wanted by the police, but cannot be traced. The mystery of these two Mr Kleins and their identities moves in Kafkaesque fashion towards tragic consequences.
GAP
Call Me by Your Name   15
USA/Italy/France | 2017                 132 minutes
3 March 2025 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (under 26) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Luca Guadagnino
 
STARRING
Armie Hammer | Timothée Chalamet | Michael Stuhlbarg
This film brought its Italian director international acclaim, which has continued since with his two 2024 releases Challengers and Queer. The screenplay was written by James Ivory based on a book by André Aciman. It’s a coming-of-age romantic drama in which Elio (Chalamet), 17-year-old son of an archaeology professor, develops an attraction to Oliver (Hammer), a 24-year-old graduate, who is spending the summer with the family in Lombardy as an assistant to Elio’s father (Stuhlbarg). The film was a great critical and commercial success, and James Ivory was honoured with an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
5 March 2025 WEDNESDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (under 26) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
GAP
Love Lies Bleeding   15
USA/UK | 2024                 104 minutes
DIRECTED BY
Rose Glass
STARRING
Kristen Stewart | Katy O’Brian | Ed Harris
GAP
We Need to Talk about Kevin 15
UK/USA | 2011                 112 minutes
DIRECTED BY
Lynne Ramsay
STARRING
Tilda Swinton|John C. Reilly|Ezra Miller
GAP
Fanny and Alexander   15
Sweden | 1982                 188 minutes
For fans of Kristen Stewart, a great addition to her filmography: an erotic thriller set in New Mexico. She plays Lou, manager of a run-down, out-of-town gym with a diverse iron-pumping clientele. When Jackie appears, Lou is immediately attracted and offers help for her new client to prepare for a body-building competition in Las Vegas. Soon they are sharing more intimate moments. The thrills begin as they are drawn closer to Lou’s unstable and criminal family. From the British director of St Maud, this is Rose Glass’s second film and really should not be missed!
17 March 2025 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (under 26) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
Lynne Ramsay's psychological thriller, and a masterly adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s book, examines the parent-child bond between first-time mother, Eva (played by Tilda Swinton), and her unplanned son, Kevin. Ramsay uses a non-linear structure, following two timelines simultaneously. One precedes, the other follows, and they merge with an event so serious that it has re-shaped the family’s lives. By teenage, Kevin is Ezra Miller, whose behaviour has developed from irritatingly mindless to intentionally manipulative. His mother is the main object of Kevin’s vindictiveness. Meanwhile, sound design, colour palette and editing help the audience enter Eva’s troubled mind.
24 March 2025 MONDAY 19:30
AUDITORIUM
Tickets £8.00|£5.00 (under 26) CONCESSION NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE
DIRECTED BY
Ingmar Bergman
STARRING
Bertil Guve | Pernilla Allwin | Ewa Fröling
As a follow-up to our presentation of Summer with Monika (1952), we now screen Ingmar Bergman’s later, and perhaps greatest film. Based partially on Bergman’s own childhood, it tells the story of the theatrical Ekdahl family, who live in pleasant chaos in their large family home. The focus is on Alexander, highly imaginative son of Oscar and Emilie, who is very drawn to the ideas of theatre and story-telling. But happiness is cut short by Oscar’s sudden death and Emilie’s remarriage to an authoritarian bishop, who believes Alexander’s imagination must be curbed.
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