Kingsbridge Kino

Previous Films

Season:  2012

Featured image for “La Strada”

La Strada

Director : Federico Fellini

Country : Italy

Release Date : 1954

Duration : 94 mins

Language : Italian

Subtitles : Yes

WINNER : BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM AT 1956 OSCARS

Fellini drew on his own circus background for this classic tale.  Set in a seedy travelling carnival, this symbolism-laden drama revolves around brutish strongman Zampano (Anthony Quinn), his simple and servile girlfriend Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina, Fellini’s wife), and clown Matto (Richard Basehart).  Appalled at Zampano’s insensitive treatment of Gelsomina, the gentle-natured Matto invites her to run off with him but Gelsomina, like a faithful pet, refuses to leave the strong man’s side.  Eventually Zampano’s volcanic temper erupts once too often, leading to tragic consequences.  Winner of the first official Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, awarded in 1956.

“The movie that perhaps I loved the most.”  (Pope Francis)

Featured image for “Gardens in Autumn”

Gardens in Autumn

Director : Otar Iosseliani

Country : France / Russia

Release Date : 2007

Duration : 114 mins

Language : French

Subtitles : Yes

A lazy politician is forced to resign and has to adapt to a more humble life, finding old friends and pleasures.  A joyous satire, poetic and surreal by turns, from one of the world’s most individual film-makers.

“Subtle, slily subversive and boasting countless delightful sight-gags, this is absurdist/surrealist movie-making at its most poetic, stoic and sceptical of political change.”  (Geoff Andrew – Time Out)

Featured image for “Lagaan”

Lagaan

Director : Ashutosh Gowariker

Country : India

Release Date : 2001

Duration : 224 mins

Language : Hindi

Subtitles : Yes

SHORT-LISTED : BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM AT 2002 OSCARS

It’s 1895 and the villainous British offer to remove a crippling tax if the local villagers can beat them at cricket.  The best film ever made about cricket with blazing song and dance numbers.  A Bollywood classic.

“A lavish epic, a gorgeous love story, and a rollicking adventure yarn.  Larger than life and outrageously enjoyable, it’s got a dash of spaghetti western, a hint of Kurosawa, with a bracing shot of Kipling.”  (Peter Bradshaw – The Guardian)

Featured image for “Skeletons”

Skeletons

Director : Nick Whitfield

Country : UK

Release Date : 2010

Duration : 96 mins

Language : English

Subtitles : No

Davis and Bennett (played by odd couple Ed Gaughan and Andrew Buckley) are psychic cleaners.  They work for a company which visits homes in need of a purge – if marriage guidance, regression therapy or theta healing haven’t worked, you need these spiritual ghost-busters to rattle through the skeletons in your bedroom cupboard.  They possess antiquated-looking gadgets and dress more like Burke and Hare but their results are first rate, even if the secrets they reveal can leave couples in shock.

“A playfully off-kilter universe … this is a genuinely ambitious and brightly original comedy.”  (Jason Solomons – The Guardian)

Featured image for “The Quince Tree Sun  (El sol del membrillo)”

The Quince Tree Sun (El sol del membrillo)

Director : Victor Erice

Country : Spain

Release Date : 1992

Duration : 134 mins

Language : Spanish

Subtitles : Yes

WINNER : PRIX DU JURY AT 1992 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

Spanish artist, Antonio López, tries to make a perfect painting of the quince tree in his garden, struggling to capture a perfect, fleeting moment of beauty on canvas, and the film meticulously chronicles his work. One of the best films about painting by a great film-maker.

“A truly magnificent film … visually extraordinary, funny, touching and quite unlike anything else.”  (Geoff Andrew – Time Out)

Featured image for “Kekexili (Mountain Patrol)”

Kekexili (Mountain Patrol)

Director : Lu Chuan

Country : China

Release Date : 2004

Duration : 85 mins

Language : Mandarin

Subtitles : Yes

Gripping action drama set on the Tibetan plateau as a journalist joins a group of local volunteers struggling against ruthless antelope poachers.  Shot with dazzling visual style to match the majestic scenery.

“Breathtakingly beautiful, breathtakingly brutal and simply breathtaking.”  (Steven Rea – Philadelphia Inquirer)

Featured image for “Laura”

Laura

Director : Otto Preminger

Country : USA

Release Date : 1944

Duration : 88 mins

Language : English

Subtitles : No

“I shall never forget the weekend Laura died …” begin’s Otto Preminger’s masterpiece of erotic obsession, jealousy, deceit and betrayal.  Hollywood noir at its best with Gene Tierney as the enigmatic Laura and Clifton Webb as the barbed Waldo Lydecker (“In my case, self-absorption is completely justified.  I have never discovered any other subject quite so worthy of my attention.“)

” ‘Laura’ almost succeeds in pulling the screen apart at the seams, if only to stitch it together again … the plot is deliberately perfunctory, the people deliciously perverse and the mise-en-scene radical.”  (Paul Kerr – Time Out)

Featured image for “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Director : Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Country : Turkey

Release Date : 2011

Duration : 157 mins

Language : Turkish

Subtitles : Yes

WINNER : GRAND PRIX AT 2011 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

A small group of police and prisoners search for a missing body during one long night on the remote Turkish steppe.  A subtle and atmospheric murder mystery from Turkey’s leading director.  Winner of Grand Prix Cannes 2011.

“A movie of such dark, smoldering intensity that it’s easy to forget that half of it takes place in near darkness.”  (Michael O’Sullivan – Washington Post)

Featured image for “Le Havre”

Le Havre

Director : Aki Kaurismäki

Country : Finland

Release Date : 2011

Duration : 93 mins

Language : French

Subtitles : Yes

WINNER : FILM CRITICS’ PRIZE AT 2011 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

Affectionate, whimsical portrait of impoverished but generous folk of a run-down waterfront who take in a boy stowaway from Congo.  A love letter to France and French cinema from the Finnish master of deadpan humour. Kaurismäki envisions it as the first installment in a trilogy about life in port cities. His ambition is to make follow-ups set in Spain and Germany, shot in the local languages.

“I was on cloud nine throughout the film: that place of Technicolored rapture where Kaurismäki fans dwell, and where past, present and oneiric future are rolled celestially into one.”  (Nigel Andrews – Financial Times)

Featured image for “La Belle et la Bête”

La Belle et la Bête

Director : Jean Cocteau

Country : France

Release Date : 1946

Duration : 95 mins

Language : French

Subtitles : Yes

Upon the film’s December 1947 New York City release, critic Bosley Crowther called the film a “priceless fabric of subtle images … a fabric of gorgeous visual metaphors, of undulating movements and rhythmic pace, of hypnotic sounds and music, of casually congealing ideas.”  Cocteau’s fairy tale set standards in fantasy which few other film makers have reached.  The sequences set in the enchanted castle – complete with living statuary and dignified by a Beast at once ferocious, erotic and genuinely tragic – are pure magic.

“Perhaps the most sumptuously elegant of all filmed fairy tales.”  (New Yorker)