Featuring our pick of the films for April……
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (MA15+) 153 mins
Director: Niels Arden Oplev
Cast: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace
Synopsis:
Swedish thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is based on the best-selling novel, the first in Steig Larsson's Millennium Trilogy.
16-year old girl Harriet Vanger disappeared without a trace on September 29th 1966.
Nearly forty years later a journalist, Mikael Blomqvist, gets an unusual assignment. He is contacted by industrial leader Henrik Vanger, who wants him to write the history of the Vanger family. But the family chronicle is just a cover for the real assignment: to find out what really happened to Harriet.
Brothers (M) 104 mins
Director: Jim Sheridan
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Tobey Maguire
Synopsis:
When a decorated Marine goes missing overseas, his black-sheep younger brother looks after his wife and children at home with consequences that will shake the foundation of the entire family. Brothers tells the powerful story of two siblings, thirty-something Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) and younger brother Tommy Cahill (Jake Gyllenhaal), who are polar opposites. A Marine about to embark on his fourth tour of duty, Sam is a steadfast family man married to his high school sweetheart, the aptly named Grace (Natalie Portman), with whom he has two young daughters (Bailee Madison, Taylor Grace Geare). Tommy, his charismatic younger brother, is a drifter just out of jail who's always gotten by on wit and charm. He slides easily into his role as family provocateur on his first night out of prison, at Sam's farewell dinner with their parents, Elsie (Mare Winningham) and Hank Cahill (Sam Shepard), a retired Marine.
The Last Station (M) 112 mins
Director: Michael Hoffman
Cast: Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, James McAvoy
Synopsis:
The Last Station is a love story set during the last year of the life and turbulent marriage of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) and his wife Countess Sofya (Helen Mirren).
Tolstoy, having rejected his title and embracing an ascetic life style, finds himself increasingly at odds with Sofya. As his devoted disciple Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti) urges him to sign a new will leaving the rights to his work to the Russian people rather than his family, the conflict between husband and wife grows to breaking point. The whole affair is witnessed by Tolstoy's new secretary, Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), whose burgeoning love for the beautiful and feisty Masha (Kerry Condon) is set against the waning love of Tolstoy and Sofya.
A tale of two romances, one beginning, one near its end, The Last Station is a complex, funny, rich and emotional story about the difficulty of living with love and the impossibility of living without it.
Micmacs (M) 105 mins
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Cast: Dany Boon, André Dussollier, Nicolas Marié
Synopsis:
Jean-Pierre Jeunet is one of cinema's most inventive and inspired talents and the creator of Amelie, Delicatessen and A Very Long Engagement. His new film Micmacs, is a dazzling comedy that follows a band of misfits, lead by accidental hero Bazil, who takes revenge on big business. Dany Boon heads a terrific cast in a film that is part comic fable, part caper and always deeply human.
Featuring Jeunet's trademark sense of wonder, Micmacs is full of magical schemes and a chain of fateful events that lead Bazil and his friends through the bewildering mysteries of life - and brings answers to questions such as: Can a woman fit inside a refrigerator? Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes? Is it better to live with a bullet lodged in your brain, or have it removed? The aesthetic sensibility at play in Micmacs is breathtaking, and with its ingenious plot, infectious imagination and sprinkling of romance, promises to delight and entertain audiences.
