<img src='' title='Event Category: Film' alt='' id='templ_icon_' width='' height='' /> Event Category: Film

Luca Guadagnino / USA, Italy 2024 / 131 min / Cert 15

Following a triangle of relationships between tennis prodigies, Challengers vividly communicates the pains and gains of the professional tennis circuit, with a brilliantly innovative soundtrack.

Josh O’ Connor captures the charisma of talented but wayward Patrick; Mike Faist exemplifies boyhood buddy Art’s dogged discipline; Zendaya personifies beautiful Tashi’s talent, discipline and love for the game (that treats her cruelly).

We see the single-mindedness of elite athletes – attractive maybe but not necessarily nice or loveable?

Former world Top-10 player Andrea Petkovic wrote: “It’s not the best movie I have ever seen. But it is the best tennis movie. Maybe even the best sports movie. Sorry, Moneyball”

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Wim Wenders / Japan, Germany 2023 / 125 min / Cert PG / Subtitles

Wenders’ best film since Wings of Desire is a heart-warming Oscar-nominated drama which finds beauty and serenity in the everyday.

Kôji Yakusho won Best Actor in Cannes for his portrayal of Hirayama, a fastidious, solitary man who takes pride in his work as a toilet cleaner and finds joy through music (his collection of classic rock and pop cassettes), reading (second-hand paperbacks), photography (film camera) and trees.

Perfect Days is a gentle and quietly profound character study of an analogue man in a digital world, a love letter to Tokyo and a case for leading a simpler way of life.

Richard Peppiat / Ireland, UK, 2024 / 105 min / Cert 18

Kneecap is a comedy/drama set in west Belfast in 2019, describing the rise of Belfast based hip hop trio, Kneecap.

Fate brings together disillusioned music teacher, JJ, and self-confessed low-life scum, Naoise and Liam Og.

Under the name ‘Kneecap’, the band begin moulding their language to fit their anarchic and hedonistic lives.

However, to get their voices heard the trio must overcome police, paramilitaries and politicians as well as realising that their worst enemies are often themselves.

This is an original and exhilarating biopic.

Hiyao Miyazaki / Japan 2023 / 124 min / Cert 12A / Subtitles

Hayao Miyazaki’s first film in 10 years The Boy and the Heron is set in 1940’s wartime Japan and follows the story of Mahito a twelve-year-old boy who has lost his mother and moves with his father to a new rural town, following his father’s re-marriage.

There Mahito struggles to fit in, then meets a talking heron who leads him into a forbidden tower and then on into a fantastical world full of strange animals and magical characters that echo the world he has left.

A coming-of-age story, the Boy and the Heron explores grief, acceptance, and redemption.

“A strikingly beautiful densely detailed fantasy”(The Guardian) Wendy Ide- The Guardian.

“Thrilling, adventurous, spikily funny and beautifully crafted, a feast for the eyes, mind, heart and soul.” Ben Travis- Empire On-line

Niels Arden Oplev / Denmark / 2022 /106 min / Cert 12A / Subtitles

Sophie Gråbøl (The Killing) stars as Inger in this poignant and tender film, involving the relationship she has with her sister which is greatly challenged on a coach trip to Paris.

In response to Inger’s announcement on the coach that she has mental health issues, there is a mixture of responses from pity to discrimination from the other coach passengers.

On arrival in Paris, it becomes clear that Inger has a hidden agenda involving somebody from her past.

This is a funny and uplifting film which handles the issues and related discrimination with sensitivity and tenderness.

Hilmar Oddson / Iceland, Estonia 2022 / 113 min / Cert 12 / Subtitles

Middle-aged and disappointed, Jón, spends his days knitting and listening to the radio with his domineering elderly mother, on their rural Icelandic farmstead.

With his life overtaken with looking after his home and his mother’s needs, Jón’s isolated world is upended when she suddenly dies. Having left him a series of instructions to follow upon her death, Jón sets out on a journey across Iceland to honour her final wishes – including being buried in her home village.

Strapping her into his Ford Cortina, and with the beloved family dog Brezhnev in tow, he sets off on his strange odyssey.

With his late mum still nagging him from the back seat, he meets a variety of peculiar and charming strangers en route, and encounters some ghosts from his past too…

Graham Moore / UK 2022 / 105 min / Cert 15

Set in a gentlemen’s outfitters in Chicago in 1956, this old-fashioned crime thriller has a strong dialogue driven story with lots of twists on the way.

Mark Rylance gives a stellar performance as Leonard Burling, a master tailor from Saville Row. Most of Leonard’s customers are gangsters who use his back room as a place for trading messages. He turns a blind eye, until a visit one evening has devastating consequences.

With its action in a single location, it has been likened to a Hitchcock thriller. “The Outfit follows a pattern set by countless flicks of the past, but its freshness is in the intelligence and surprise of the script” (Empire)

Ilker Catak / Germany 2023 / 98 min / Cert 12A / Subtitles

A gloriously intense thriller about things that can happen every day – and the dramatic impact of a few wrong decisions, even if taken with good intentions.

Leonie Benesch (The Crown) plays Carla, a dedicated young German high school teacher. When a series of thefts occur and one of her students is suspected, she does some modest detective work – with unexpected consequences.

She then tries to mediate between outraged parents, opinionated colleagues and aggressive students, but is relentlessly confronted by the school system structures, overlaid with national, racial and class resentments.

As we will Carla to transcend the obstacles and threats, the more desperately she tries to do everything right, the more she seems to approach disaster.

Jonathan Glazer / UK 2023 / 105 min / Cert 12A / Subtitles

The most requested film by our members and the winner of both the Oscar and Bafta for the best foreign language film.

Based on Martin Amis’ novel of the same name, it tells the story of Rudolf Hoss who is a devoted family man. He lives with his wife and young children in an attractive villa close to his work as the commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp.

The film has been described as a landmark movie, hugely important, that’s unafraid of difficult ideas. It does not show what is happening close to the family home, but the events are heard.

The picture won the Oscar for best sound.

Jonathan Glazer’s unforgettable Auschwitz drama is a brutal masterpiece (The Guardian)

Jeff Nichols / USA 2023/ 116 min / Cert 15 / Speech subtitles, to help audience members with hearing loss

Set in 1960s Chicago, this is an absorbing drama based on true events. We follow the rise and decline of fictional motorbike club, The Vandals, through the eyes of Kathy (Jodie Comer, giving a riveting performance). She is married to Benny (Austin Butler), who is expected to be the successor to leader Johnny (Tom Hardy).

The country changes with the return of the Vietnam veterans, as does the bikers club. “Jodie Comer, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy are magnetic in this power struggle-cum-love triangle inspired by Danny Lyon’s 1968 photographic study of

Chicago bikers.” (The Guardian).