Tuesday, 19 January 2016, 8pm: Older than Ireland
Director: Alex Fegan, Ireland 2015, 81 mins, Cert: PG
Featuring 30 women and men, this remarkable group of centenarians all born before 1916, is the last generation to have borne witness to Ireland’s bloody transition from a fledgling republic to a mature European state. A landmark documentary, these centenarians muse on youth and true love, loss and regrets, the meaning of life and the hereafter. A delight.
Tuesday, 26 January 2016, 8pm: Slow West
Director: John Maclean, USA 2014, 83 mins, Cert 15A
Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Caren Pistorius
Jay is a lovelorn 17-year-old Scottish aristocrat who travels to the American West at the close of the nineteenth century to track down his former lover. Confronted with the harsh realities of the frontier, he falls in with Silas Selleck, a righteous mercenary, who soon discovers that the focus of Jay’s affection has a price on her head. Together, the two navigate a vast, untamed wilderness while attempting to stay one step ahead of a bloodthirsty posse and a colourful bounty hunter.
Tuesday, 2 February 2016, 8pm: Manglehorn
Director: David Gordon Green, USA 2014, 97 mins, Cert 12A
Starring: Al Pacino, Holly Hunter, Harmony Korine, Chris Messina
Left heartbroken by the woman he loved and lost forty years ago, an eccentric small-town locksmith tries to start his life over again with the help of a new friend. Trudging through an America he doesn’t understand, he is surrounded by oddities, many of whom may be just in his head. Humour and insight weave together in this likeable film, in which Pacino gives one of his strongest performances in years.
Tuesday, 23 February 2016, 8pm: Noble
Director: Stephen Bradley, UK/Vietnam 2014, 101 mins, Cert: 15A
Starring: Deirdre O’Kane, Sarah Greene, Brendan Coyle, Liam Cunningham, Ruth Negga
1989, fourteen years after the end of the war, a funny feisty woman, Christina Noble, arrives in Vietnam. She last left behind an extraordinary story of hardship and survival, and arrives with just a few dollars, a dream and her own abilities. She sets out to help more than 700,000 street children with humour and music. An inspirational story.
Tuesday, 1 March 2016, 8pm: In the Courtyard
Director: Pierre Salvadori, France 2013, 98 mins, Cert: CLUB
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Gustave Kervern, Feodore Atkine, Pio Marmaï
Antoine walks off stage and out of his career as the lead singer in a rock band. He ends up being hired as the concierge of a run-down apartment building in Paris by Mathilde, one of its residents, who has recently retired. Anxious and neurotic, Mathilde seems calmed by Antoine’s schlumpy passivity, and they form a friendship in this gently meandering study of two troubled souls.
Tuesday, 8 March 2016, 8pm: The Wonders
Director: Alice Rohrwacher, Italy 2014, 110 mins, Cert: 15
Starring: Maria Alexandra Lungu, Sam Louwyck, Alba Rohrwacher, Monica Belluci
Gelsomina (12) lives with her family who have escaped urban life to try to live self sufficiently in the country. She helps her father mind bee hives and extract honey, when they decide to enter a television competition promising big prizes for country produce. An entertaining, warm and engaging drama which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2014.
Tuesday, 22 March 2016, 8pm: She's Funny That Way
Director: Peter Bogdanovich, USA 2014, 94 mins, Cert 12
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Imogen Poots, Owen Wilson, Rhys Ifans
A joyous screwball farce, this is a story told by Izzy, a former prostitute, who recounts how she got her break in showbusiness from film director Arnold, who produced a Broadway play featuring his wife, her ex-lover and the play’s straight-laced writer. Included in this mix are the writer’s poisonous psychologist girlfriend, her obsessive patient and a stealthy private-eye who all combine to cause chaos. Highly entertaining.
Tuesday, 29 March 2016, 8pm: Tangerines
Director: Zaza Urushadze, Estonia/Georgia 2013, 89 mins, Cert: CLUB
Starring: Lembit Ulfsak, Giorgi Nakashidze, Elmo Nuganen, Mikhail Meskhi
The first Estonian film to be shortlisted for an Oscar, it is set during the conflict between Georgia and Russian-backed Abkhazia in 1992. Ivo, whose family has returned to Estonia, stays behind to help his friend and neighbour harvest his tangerine crop. When an injured Chechen mercenary (on the Abkhazian side) and a wounded Georgian soldier end up in Ivo’s house, the stage is set for conflict, some resolution and a comment on the insanity of war. A beautiful, well-crafted film.
Tuesday, 5 April 2016, 8pm: 99 Homes
Director: Ramin Bahrani, USA 2014, 110 mins, Cert 15A
Starring: Michael Shannon, Andrew Garfield, Laura Dern
An emotionally grandstanding drama about temptation, shame, humiliation and greed. Dennis Nash, a hardworking carpenter who becomes unemployed, falls behind in his mortgage repayments and he, his son and his mother are evicted from their home. Desperate for work he begins to work for the eviction company in an attempt to get back his family home – at the cost of his soul. A taut, lean, powerful drama that plays with pitiless accuracy on the horror of bankruptcy.