MARCH 2010 @ RBCFT

March Quick View - click on film for full film details:

A stunning and compelling period drama about a German village on the eve of WWI that is plagued by strange accidents.

Who is behind it all? The schoolteacher observes, investigates and little by little discovers the incredible truth. Are we being asked to consider whether these events heralded something that would explode years later with the rise of Nazi Germany? Did these events contain the germs of the tragedies that followed?

Film Club, 6.30pm on Monday 1 March

Funny, anarchic and, above all, moving confessional drama about modern family life – complicated, fractured but still with great possibilities for love and joy.

Clive Owen is Joe Warr, a wisecracking sportswriter whose beloved second wife dies, leaving him to bring up their six-year-old son alone. He struggles with grief and singleparenting, challenges compounded by the arrival on the scene of Harry, Joe’s teenage son from his first marriage. Joe decides the best way forward is least-resistance parenting, and introduces a ‘just say yes’ maxim. In a house devoid of feminine influence, with a cultivated lack of rules and deep emotion swirling below the surface, life becomes exhuberant, reckless .. and potentially disastrous.

1pm on Wednesday 3rd March

10.45am on Thursday 4th March

From the acclaimed director behind ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’, ‘A Prophet’ is one of the most electrifying, authentic and engaging films to hit our screens.

Malik is an uneducated teenager stepping into a French prison after being given three years for attacking a policeman. Once there, he’s at the mercy of his surroundings, and despite being of Arab descent, is taken in by the Corsican mafia and kingpin Cesar Luchiani (a brilliant Niels Arestrup), who begins to use him for errands and murders, and who inadvertentlystarts Malik’s rise to power….

Winner of the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Liverpool 1955, and 15-year-old John Lennon (newcomer Aaron Johnson) is torn between two extraordinary sisters: stern, forbidding Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) and affectionate, volatile Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), his real mother who abandoned him years ago for reasons unknown. The siren lure of rock and roll is his escape from stifling suburbia as he struggles to come to terms with domestic turmoil just as a new tragedy hits home.

Artist Sam Taylor-Wood’s debut feature is a sensitive and sprightly look at John Lennon’s formative years.

As heartbreaking on screen as it was on Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer-prize winning pages, ‘The Road’ is an almost unbearably sad film, beautifully arranged and powerfully acted. There is so much in this picture, from dread, horror, to suspense, bitterly moving love, extraordinary, Oscar-worthy art direction and a desperate lead performance from Viggo Mortensen which perfectly illustrates the wrenching fear of parental love.

Hard going, you are unlikely to ever forget John Hillcoat’s (‘The Proposition’) interpretation of McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic planet where “each day is greyer than the one before”..

Film of the Book
Stay on after the screening on Saturday 6 March for a buffet lunch and conversation with Adrian Turpin, Wigtown Book Festival director..
- Combined ticket: £20 full; £18 concs
- Individual ticket: lunch £12, film and talk (each) £6 full, £4.60 concs
Please state dietary requirements at the time of booking (tel: 01387 264808).

Film Club, 6.30pm on Monday 8 March

J.M. Coetzee’s award-winning novel ‘Disgrace’ offered a disturbing insight into the soul of modern South Africa. The screen version does not disappoint and features an outstanding performance from John Malkovich as the disgraced professor whose personal life reflects the turmoil of a country in transition.

Dismissed from his university, David Lurie (Malkovich) decides to visit his daughter at a remote farm in the eastern Cape that she shares with a trusted black worker. When they are savagely attacked by three black youths, David is finally confronted by the realities of a South Africa where the old rules no longer apply.

Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep play ex-husband and wife who suddenly get the hots for each other after ten years apart, in this farce of revived lust. While Baldwin's Jake - now married to a much younger model, with a nightmare toddler in tow - jumps at the chance, Streep's bakery owner Jane is initially appalled at her own behaviour.

Back by popular demand!

10.45am on Thursday 11th March

Covertly filmed against the backdrop of the tumultuous 2008 Zimbabwe elections, this harrowing documentary follows 75-year-old farmer Mike Campbell and his family as they fight to save their farm (and the lives and livelihoods of the 500 black workers who live on their property) from the hands of Robert Mugabe's controversial land seizure campaign. The family bravely seek to challenge the President in an International court, charging racism and violation of human rights, while being threatened and intimidated, kidnapped and beaten.

Part thriller, part courtroom drama and part an inspirational story of courage, this is an intimate, often terrifying film of one family's grit and determination.

James Cameron's much-hyped epic action adventure fantasy 'Avatar' takes us to a spectacular new world beyond our imagination. Set in 2154, a paraplegic marine named Jake Sully arrives on the distant moon of Pandora with a mission to displace its indigenous population.

But, after winning their trust, Jake finds his allegiances gradually shifting.

George Clooney is at his smooth, sardonic best as Ryan Bingham, a corporate hatchet man, constantly flying across the US, visiting companies which have hired him to fire their employees. But chaos looms when lone-wolf Ryan falls for Alex (Vera Farmiga), the beautiful frequentflyer of his dreams, just as his employers threaten to make him deskbound.

With its sharp script ‘Up in the Air’ presents a merging of the best qualities of Reitman’s two previous films, combining the skewed look at the modern workplace of ‘Thank You For Smoking’ and the sentimental romance of ‘Juno’.

Film Club, 6.30pm on Monday 15th March

1pm on Wednesday 17th March

10.45am on Thursday 18th March

A young and indebted Japanese cellist, Daigo Kobayashi returns to his hometown to look for work. He answers a classified ad entitled "Departures" thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a "Nokanshi" or "encoffineer," a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of “Nokanshi,” acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death.

An astonishingly beautiful look at a sacred part of Japan's cultural heritage, ‘Departures’ won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2009.

"I regard ‘Departures’ as the most moving film I have ever seen commemorating the bonds between the living and the dead." Andrew Sarris, New York Observer

A stirring true-life story about South African leader Nelson Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman) who used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to unite his people and heal the rifts of an apartheid-torn country.

Blending entertainment, social message and history, it’s a rousing and inspiring film packed with humour and humanity.

In November 2009, a film-maker (Alex Barclay) and a writer (Tom Pow) came to Ae Primary School with the purpose of helping pupils, staff and villagers to tell stories about the past, to record the present, and to create memories for the future. A portrait of a school and a community. Anyone who liked ‘Etre et Avoir’ will enjoy this short, warm-hearted film.

£2 per ticket.

The highest grossing Bollywood movie of all time, this is an entertaining comedy-drama with a terrifically charming central performance from superstar Aamir Khan.

Three friends embark on a quest for a lost friend Rancho. Along the way, they flash back to their college days and recall the impact that free-thinking, fair-minded Rancho had on each of their lives, as well as his relationship with the spirited Pia and his frequent clashes with her father, college professor Viru. However, when the mystery surrounding Rancho suddenly deepens, they begin to wonder if they ever truly knew their friend at all.

Film Club, 6.30pm on Monday 22nd March

Both a horribly upsetting and movingly inspirational film about the plight of an obese African American teen in Harlem whose 16 years of life have encompassed more suffering than most people could comprehend. She’s pregnant for the second time by her absent father; at home, she must wait hand and foot on her mother (Mo’Nique), a poisonously angry woman who abuses her, emotionally and physically. School is a place of chaos, and Precious has reached the ninth grade through luck. But when she is offered the chance to transfer to an alternative school, she begins a journey that could change her life forever. A must-see portrait of life’s underprivileged which is utterly compelling.

A Yokohama family struggles with intergenerational tensions as they gather for their annual remembrance of the death of a son, Junpei, who died 15 years before while attempting to save a drowning child. Hirokazu Koreeda's latest meditation on family drama is a quiet masterpiece that seems to originate from a deeply personal yet universal experience of regret.

Good cheer is the order of the day, but for some of them the festive gathering is an endurance test. Koreeda handles the family dynamics deftly and infuses the film with much warmth between the discordant notes, creating a bittersweet gem.

10.45am on Thursday 25th March

Fashion designer Tom Ford gets it spectacularly right first time round in his directorial debut, a tale of love interrupted based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood. Set in Los Angeles in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis is at its height, Colin Firth (Oscar Nominated for Best Actor) gives his most nuanced, compelling performance to date as George Falconer, a gay British College professor struggling to live his life after the sudden death of his long-term partner. The film follows George through a single day as he tries to find meaning to his life amidst his loss.

A beautiful, autumnal period drama about private freedom and public repression in a conformist and manicured suburbia.

Film Club, 6.30pm on Monday 29th March

1pm on Wednesday 31st March

‘Ponyo’ places Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ in a contemporary Japanese setting. An adventurous little fish called Ponyo escapes her sorcerer father’s underwater home and is discovered by Sosuke, a boy who lives on the top of a cliff in a small seaside village. Ponyo falls in love with Sosuke and all she really wants is to become human…

A gentle and moving re-visiting of the classic fable by the world-renowned Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki (‘Howl’s Moving Castle’, ‘Spirited Away’).