Featuring our pick of the films for December……
Antichrist (R18+) 104 mins
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Synopsis: One of most celebrated filmmakers of our time, Lars Von Trier is back with the beautiful, terrifying, and altogether engrossing Antichrist. The talk of 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where star Charlotte Gainsbourg took home the award for Best Actress, the full, unedited version of this eagerly awaited film promises to captivate audiences.
A grieving couple (two-time Oscar®-Nominee Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) retreat to 'Eden', their isolated cabin in the woods, where they hope to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.
Reviews: 'Unmissable...5 STARS' Luke Goodsell, Empire
'A compelling symphony of exquisite film-making', Luke Davies, The Monthly
'A bold, beautiful journey into the dark side of the soul... A most compelling experience...4.5 STARS' Margaret Pomeranz, At the Movies
'4.5 STARS', Simon Foster, SBS Film
A Serious Man (M) 105 mins
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed
Synopsis: Imaginatively exploring questions of faith, familial responsibility, delinquent behavior, dental phenomena, academia, mortality, and Judaism – and intersections thereof – A Serious Man is the new film from Academy Award-winning writer/directors Joel and Ethan Coen.
A Serious Man is the story of an ordinary man's search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV. It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik (Tony Award nominee Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), who seems to her a more substantial person than the feckless Larry. Larry's unemployable brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny (Aaron Wolff) is a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) is filching money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job.
Amelia (PG) 111 mins
Director: Mira Nair
Cast: Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor
Synopsis: Amelia stars two-time Academy Award®-winner Hilary Swank as Amelia Earhart, the legendary aviatrix and enigmatic symbol of the American free spirit, who was guided by a profound curiosity for everything life had to offer. Earhart's early aviation triumphs and meteoric rise to fame and fortune were propelled along by her tempestuous partnership and eventual marriage to publisher George Putnam (Richard Gere).
Bound by mutual ambition, admiration and, ultimately a great love, their bond could not be broken even with her brief passionate affair with Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor). Ms. Earhart was the first woman to solo the Atlantic and was the first pilot, man or woman, to fly unaccompanied across the Pacific. In Amelia's attempt to be the first to fly around the world in an equatorial flight her life was tragically cut short with her mysterious and untimely disappearance over the South Pacific in 1937.
Prime Mover (M) 99 mins
Director: David Caesar
Cast: Michael Dorman, Ben Mendelsohn, Gyton Grantley and William McInnes
Synopsis: From Australian writer/director David Caesar (Mullet, Dirty Deeds) comes Prime Mover, a diesel charged romance about ambition, pressure, responsibility, and the love shared by a man, a woman and his truck.
Starring rising talent Michael Dorman (Subur...ban Mayhem, Daybreakers, Acolytes) and award-winning actress Emily Barclay (In My Father's Den, Suburban Mayhem), Prime Mover is a bitter sweet love story with action, some singing, and a little bit of dance.
Reviews: 4 STARS 'Caesar has always been a skilful director, and PRIME MOVER is beautifully made - painful and funny, sad and very human' David Stratton, At The Movies
Genova (M) 94 mins
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Colin Firth, Catherine Keener, Hope Davis, Willa Holland
Synopsis: From acclaimed filmmaker Michael Winterbottom (A Mighty Heart, Tristram Shandy, Wonderland) comes Genova, an intimate and beautifully nuanced familial drama about love, loss and forgiveness, set against the captivating beauty of a postcard-perfect Italian locale.
Following a tragic accident, Joe (Colin Firth) decides to leave behind his home in the United States - which holds too many memories – in search of a new start. With hopes that the change of setting will help to pull his fractured family together, Joe relocates himself and his two young daughters to the exotic town of Genova, Italy, where he accepts a position teaching at the local university and rekindles an old friendship with university colleague Barbara (Catherine Keener).
An insightful exploration into the power of grief and the strength of family, Genova is enriched by the sensitively felt performances of its talented cast of both well established and up-and-coming actors. Visually exquisite and emotionally enthralling, this latest offering from the prolific Winterbottom will take audiences on a journey of the heart which they won't soon forget.
Subtitles: English/Italian
The Informant (M) 108 mins
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Matt Damon, Lucas McHugh Carroll, Eddie Jemison
Synopsis: Academy Award® winner Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting, the 'Bourne' movies) stars in this film based on the true story of the highest-ranking corporate whistleblower in U.S. history. The film is directed by Oscar® winner Steven Soderbergh (Traffic).
What was Mark Whitacre thinking? A rising star at agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Whitacre (Matt Damon) suddenly turns whistleblower. Even as he exposes his company's multi-national price-fixing conspiracy to the FBI, Whitacre envisions himself being hailed as a hero of the common man and handed a promotion. But before all that can happen, the FBI needs evidence, so Whitacre eagerly agrees to wear a wire and carry a hidden tape recorder in his briefcase, imagining himself as a kind of de facto secret agent.
The Damned United (M) 98 mins
Director: Tom Hooper
Cast: Colm Meaney, Henry Goodman, David Roper
Synopsis: Set in 1960's and 1970's England, The Damned United tells the confrontational and darkly humorous story of Brian Clough's doomed 44 day tenure as manager of the reigning champions of English football Leeds United.
Previously managed by his bitter rival Don Revie, and on the back of their most successful period ever as a football club, Leeds was perceived by many to represent a new aggressive and cynical style of football - an anathema to the principled yet flamboyant Brian Clough, who had achieved astonishing success as manager of Hartlepool and Derby County building teams in his own vision with trusty lieutenant Peter Taylor.
Taking the Leeds job without Taylor by his side, with a changing room full of what in his mind were still Don's boys, would lead to an unheralded examination of Clough's belligerence and brilliance over 44 days. This is that story.
Broken Embraces (M) 128 mins
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar
Synopsis: A man writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car crash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident, he not only lost his sight, he also lost Lena, the love of his life.
This man uses two names: Harry Caine, a playful pseudonym with which he signs his literary works, stories and scripts, and Mateo Blanco, his real name, with which he lives and signs the film he directs. After the accident, Mateo Blanco reduces himself to his pseudonym, Harry Caine. If he can't direct films he can only survive with the idea that Mateo Blanco died on Lanzarote with his beloved Lena.
In the present day, Harry Caine lives thanks to the scripts he writes and to the help he gets from his faithful former production manager, Judit García, and from Diego, her son who is his secretary, typist and guide.
The story of Mateo, Lena, Judit and Ernesto Martel is a story of 'amour fou', dominated by fatality, jealously, the abuse of power, treachery and a guilt complex. This is a moving and terrible story, the most expressive image of which is the photo of two lovers embracing, torn into a thousand pieces.
