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Thank you to all our members and guests for your continuing support and we hope to see you again for the start of Season 7 later in the year - click on "COMING SOON IN SEASON 7" in the top menu bar for a selection of films and events planned for future screenings
On Fridays the bar is open 30 minutes before the film starts
On Fridays the bar is open 30 minutes before the film starts
Season 7 - Opening Film
Friday 21st September - 8pm "DARKEST HOUR" (2017) certificate PG running time 122 minutes Best Actor - Oscars 2018 
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Just as Britain negotiates its inglorious retreat from Europe, and our political classes prepare to ratify the chaotic abandonment of a union intended to prevent another war, there seems to be a renewed appetite for movies about 1940. Christopher Nolan has given us his operatic immersion in Dunkirk, and now Joe Wright — who himself staged bravura Dunkirk scenes in his 2007 film Atonement — directs this undeniably exciting and beguiling account of Winston Churchill’s darkest hour in 1940, as Hitler’s forces gather across the Channel, poised to invade. It is written by Anthony McCarten, who scripted the recent Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything.
This is not so much a period war movie as a high-octane political thriller: May 1940 as House Of Cards, with the wartime Prime Minister up against a cabal of politicians who want to do him down. It’s interesting for a film to remind us that appeasement as an issue did not vanish the moment that Winston Churchill took over as Prime Minister; despite the famous David Low cartoon, not everyone was right behind him, rolling up their sleeves. Here, his immediate enemies do not seem to be Hitler and Mussolini as much as Chamberlain and Halifax, agitating for a deal with the Nazis and scheming to undermine Churchill’s cabinet and parliamentary position. GUARDIAN (part review) 4/5 stars 
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Friday 28th September - 8pm
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The drama happens in Ebbing, Missouri, a remote and fictional community in the southern United States, where the joy of life does seem to be receding.
Frances McDormand is Mildred Hayes, a middle-aged woman toughened and weatherbeaten by tragedy, who sometimes affects a bandana, giving her the look of a careworn warrior. She is separated, working in an uninviting gift shop and living with her son Robbie (Lucas Hedges) while her no-account husband Charlie (John Hawkes) has left her to be with a 19-year-old woman employed at the town zoo, a place which we never see. Some time previously, Mildred’s teenage daughter was raped and murdered and no arrests have been made. So Mildred rents three unused billboards just outside of town, demanding to know why the town’s police chief has achieved precisely nothing. The three billboards are cathartic monuments to her rage and grief; they attract the attention of local TV news (though not apparently social media) and astonish and infuriate the town authorities in ways she clearly intends and welcomes. The three billboards are a catalyst, creating and accelerating crises that are only indirectly connected to Mildred’s own tragedy. GUARDIAN (part review) 4/5 stars |
Friday 5 October - the shape of water 8pm (2017)
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Will Gompertz Arts editor at the BBC:
Broadly speaking, humanity can be divided into two types: those who like the fantasy genre and those that do not.
Your pulse either races when someone starts discussing the finer details of Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings or you feel the blood draining from your body.
Of course, there are exceptions that prove every rule. Which, in this case, comes in the form of Guillermo del Toro (director).
Admittedly, the elevator pitch for his multi-Oscar nominated The Shape of Water is unlikely to grab those of us who can live without magical realism.
It is a fantasy drama about a mute cleaner called Elisa (Sally Hawkins) who strikes up an improbable relationship with a mysterious amphibious creature (Doug Jones), which is being kept in a huge water tank at a top-secret government research facility in Baltimore, USA, where Elisa works.
I'll admit that when I sat down and watched the opening title sequence in which we see Elisa lying on a sofa being ethereally submerged by water, my heart sank faster than the furniture in her room.
But when I left the cinema 123 minutes later, I was elated. Not because the film was thankfully over, but because I had just been treated to an intelligent, tender, beautifully shot, meticulously crafted work of art.
It's not really a fantasy at all.
The incarcerated creature from the deep - which has been taken from its natural habitat as a specimen to be exploited by scientists with blood twice as cold as its own - is perfectly believable. As is the relationship Elisa strikes up with it. They have so much in common.
Neither speaks, both have been persecuted; they are misunderstood fish out of water suffering at the hands of an arrogant, unsympathetic society that only respects "winners" who reflect its own hard-bitten, narrow-minded values.
The film is set in early 1960s America, but speaks directly, and critically, to our own times.
Broadly speaking, humanity can be divided into two types: those who like the fantasy genre and those that do not.
Your pulse either races when someone starts discussing the finer details of Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings or you feel the blood draining from your body.
Of course, there are exceptions that prove every rule. Which, in this case, comes in the form of Guillermo del Toro (director).
Admittedly, the elevator pitch for his multi-Oscar nominated The Shape of Water is unlikely to grab those of us who can live without magical realism.
It is a fantasy drama about a mute cleaner called Elisa (Sally Hawkins) who strikes up an improbable relationship with a mysterious amphibious creature (Doug Jones), which is being kept in a huge water tank at a top-secret government research facility in Baltimore, USA, where Elisa works.
I'll admit that when I sat down and watched the opening title sequence in which we see Elisa lying on a sofa being ethereally submerged by water, my heart sank faster than the furniture in her room.
But when I left the cinema 123 minutes later, I was elated. Not because the film was thankfully over, but because I had just been treated to an intelligent, tender, beautifully shot, meticulously crafted work of art.
It's not really a fantasy at all.
The incarcerated creature from the deep - which has been taken from its natural habitat as a specimen to be exploited by scientists with blood twice as cold as its own - is perfectly believable. As is the relationship Elisa strikes up with it. They have so much in common.
Neither speaks, both have been persecuted; they are misunderstood fish out of water suffering at the hands of an arrogant, unsympathetic society that only respects "winners" who reflect its own hard-bitten, narrow-minded values.
The film is set in early 1960s America, but speaks directly, and critically, to our own times.
Friday 12 October - finding your feet (2017)
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Laughs, tears and mid-life awakenings abound in this feature from Richard Loncraine (The Special Relationship) starring Imelda Staunton, Timothy Spall, Celia Imrie and a scene-stealing Joanna Lumley as members of an amateur dance troupe in London.
Staunton plays Sandra, introduced prattling on about the range and categories of honours bestowed by the Queen. Her husband Mike (John Sessions) has just retired as police commissioner, and Sandra is basking in his ascension to the peerage and her newfound status as a Lady. All their friends are assembled for Mike's retirement party at the couple's palatial Tudor house in Surrey, but when Sandra finds him in the arms of her long-time friend Pamela (Josie Lawrence) in the garage, she packs her bags and lands on the East London doorstep of Bif (Imrie), the free-spirited older sister she hasn't seen in 10 years. Sandra's hauteur immediately bumps up against the dry playfulness of handyman-with-a-van Charlie (Spall), her sister's friend, who lives on a houseboat in Maida Vale after selling his home to pay for the care of his wife Lilly (Sian Thomas), who is suffering from dementia. Charlie and his widower neighbour Ted (David Hayman) shake off their grief at a regular dance class in the local town hall, where they're joined by Bif as well as Jackie, an inveterate divorcee and former barrister played by Lumley. After a charity dance in Piccadilly Circus goes viral, the group is invited to perform in Rome, and what follows after the group’s European sojourn is more interesting, as Sandra is forced to choose between her old life and a new one without guarantees. (No prizes for guessing.) Hollywood reporter (part review) |
Friday 19 October - the greatest showman (2017)
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“Being panned by some critics hasn't stopped Hugh Jackman's infectious movie musical “The Greatest Showman” from becoming the most enduring film hit for a decade.” Lucy Todd BBC
"The Greatest Showman," directed with verve and panache by Michael Gracey, is an unabashed piece of pure entertainment, punctuated by 11 memorable songs composed by Oscar- and Tony-winning duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who composed the songs for "La La Land," as well as the current Broadway hit Dear Evan Hansen. The film is made for the whole family to enjoy, and so it leaves out many of the darker elements (explored in the 1980 Broadway musical Barnum, music by Cy Coleman). This is a difficult tightrope to walk, but credit is due to Gracey, a perfectly cast Hugh Jackman, and the entire cast, who play this story in the spirit in which it was written (by Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon). "The Greatest Showman" positions itself as a story celebrating diversity, and the importance of embracing all kinds. Roger Eber.com |
"Friday 26 October - sweet country (2017)
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Warwick Thornton’s majestic, 1920s-set outback western does quite a bit of momentarily slipping backwards or forwards through time to show us characters as they once were or are yet to be. Written down it sounds disorienting, but in practice it is mesmerisingly intuitive – and an inspired means of expressing on film the Aboriginal sense of time as a circular pattern, rather than a linear path.
A little foresight puts us at an advantage too: the country might be staggeringly beautiful, but it is also stark and merciless, particularly on the white settlers scratching out their lives from one day to the next on land that refuses to be tamed. It may was inspired by actual events in Central Australia in the 1920s. Sweet Country is tough, spare and lyrical right down to the bone: even its soundtrack is nothing more than a natural background chorus of insects and birdsong, plus one solitary Johnny Cash track that plays over the closing credits. It is also a work of moral conscience that rules out easy answers, with acridly funny moments of black comedy and a sense of awesome natural spectacle that is inseparable from its dramatic impact. It has a power that makes the cinema shake. Telegraph (part review) |
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Besides our film programme, trailers and membership details being available on our website www.longcrendonfilmclub.com we also email members one month in advance.
We also publicise our programme at Long Crendon Community Library and in The Crendon Crier.
You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter (by clicking on the social media icons below) for news on new films being added to our programme each month. www.facebook.com/longcrendonfilmclub
Please note if you are viewing the website on mobile phone there is a drop down menu on the top left by the logo.
THE FILM CLUB INCOME CONTRIBUTES TO THE RUNNING COSTS OF THE COMMUNITY LIBRARY AND HELPS KEEP IT OPEN - ARE YOU INTERESTED IN VOLUNTEERING TO ASSIST WITH FOH AND THE BOX OFFICE?
WE NEED ADDITIONAL CREW email: longcrendonfilmclub@gmail.com for details
Besides our film programme, trailers and membership details being available on our website www.longcrendonfilmclub.com we also email members one month in advance.
We also publicise our programme at Long Crendon Community Library and in The Crendon Crier.
You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter (by clicking on the social media icons below) for news on new films being added to our programme each month. www.facebook.com/longcrendonfilmclub
Please note if you are viewing the website on mobile phone there is a drop down menu on the top left by the logo.
