Monk is a novelist, constantly frustrated that ‘Black’ entertainment pandering to offensive tropes is more successful than his own more nuanced work. To prove a point he adopts a pseudonym to write a fake book full of exaggerated stereotypes, satirising the tastes of the white literary establishment. He expects it to fail, but it becomes a massive hit, leading to a publishing and film deal, and Monk is forced to choose between success and his principles. A biting and important satire on the prejudices faced by people of colour in arts and the media.
Featuring Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae
Dir Cord Jefferson | 2023 | USA | 117 min | 15 | English
The theme for this season’s Audience Choice Screening is animation. You let us know your favourites – anything from mainstream feelgood family classics to foreign-language dramas and documentaries – and we take all your ideas and turn them into a shortlist of four great pictures.
Perfect Blue:
Pop star Mima, her fame and fortune beginning to slide as fashions change, is persuaded to turn to acting, reluctantly accepting an ill-defined role in a television soap opera. However, Mima’s grip on reality begins to loosen as a result; she imagines that she has an identical twin who has maintained a singing career, and becomes increasingly paranoid after her friends are either threatened or killed. Can Mima unravel the truth before she is driven completely over the edge?
Featuring Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto
Dir Satoshi Kon | 1999 | Japan | 81 min | 18 | Japanese
Mahito is mourning the loss of his mother to a WWII bombing and coming to terms with his father’s remarriage and move to the countryside. Taunted by a terrifying heron, he stumbles upon a strange boarded-up tower and is captivated by its sinister aura. Inside he meets strange and magical creatures, some kind and some malevolent. When his father’s new wife is captured within the tower, Mahito realises that it is up to him to save her. Celebrated filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki returns from retirement with a meditation on mortality inspired by events in his own life.
Featuring Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Takuya Kimura
Dir Hayao Miyazaki | 2023 | Japan | 124 min | 12A | Japanese
Rebellious New Yorker Leila is trying to balance the Iranian and American aspects of her culture and dealing with the cruelty of her mother, who cannot come to terms with Leila being gay. Then, on a trip to see family back in Iran, Leila’s grandmother reveals what forced her parents to leave for the USA, and Leila, a wannabe filmmaker seeing the opportunity to write her next script, immerses herself in her mother’s life from being a young bride in the 1960s to raising children in the 1980s.
Joy is an undocumented Filipino immigrant struggling to do the best she can to support her daughter, Grace. Joy secures what seems to be the perfect job: taking care of an extremely wealthy but terminally-ill old man. The new position pays well and guarantees a roof over their heads, but very soon, Joy and Grace start to realise everything is not as it seems. Something is festering beneath the surface, threatening all they have worked for. An impressive combination of creepy English country house horror and urgent, sharply observed social critique.
Director Paris Zarcilla will be in attendance for a live question-and-answer period following the film – with thanks you to Modern Films.
Featuring Max Eigenmann, Jaeden Paige Boadilla, Leanne Best
Dir Paris Zarcilla | 2023 | UK | 99 min | 15 | English, Tagalog
When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend. Through Priscilla’s eyes, Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla’s long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland, in this deeply felt and ravishingly detailed portrait of love, fantasy, and fame.
Starring Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi
Dir Sofia Coppola | 2023 | Italy / USA | 113 min | 15 | English language
This lively biography of the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein eschews a simple approach in favour of showing us episodes that illustrate what mattered most about his life. In large part this revolves around the lifelong relationship he had with his wife Felicia, but also gives us sparkling insights into the compulsive curiosity that sparked his creativity, and the bisexuality that he largely tried to hide. A score featuring Bernstein’s own music and superb performances from Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan power a stirring, passionate and fascinating film.
Starring Bradley Cooper, Casey Mulligan, Matt Bomer
Dir Bradley Cooper | 2023 | USA | 129 min | 15 | English language
The Adamant is a unique day care centre: it is a floating structure on the Seine in the heart of Paris, half Mississippi riverboat, half art studio. It welcomes adults suffering from mental illness, offering them counselling and art therapy.
The team running the facility are forward-thinking and progressive, while acknowledging the role of conventional treatment in making their approach possible. This compassionate, warm and sympathetic documentary gives us privileged access to The Adamant and its endlessly fascinating cast of staff and patients.
Monica, a transgender woman, returns home to the Midwest to care for her ailing mother, Eugenia, who disowned her twenty years ago. Eugenia, fearing death is near, is abrupt and abrasive, but finds comfort from the arrival of her daughter, whose identity she is not told, and young grandchildren.
Monica still resents how she was once treated but cannot help but feel tenderness for her ill mother. As Eugenia slowly works out who Monica is, the two women begin to repair their broken relationship in a moving, moody and stylish drama.
In modern-day Helsinki, two lonely souls meet by chance in a local karaoke bar. Seeing an opportunity to find love, they each try to turn their initial spark into something more meaningful. However, the pair’s path to happiness is beset by numerous obstacles, from lost phone numbers and incorrectly noted addresses to alcoholism, via a charming stray dog.
A quietly witty script and perfectly deadpan performances from the leads ensure that this slender, unmelodramatic film is ultimately a compassionate, moving and funny tale that epitomises everything that make Kaurismäki’s films so special.
Eileen is a peculiar young woman, aloof and unfazed by the gloomy nature of her job at the local youth prison. But something in her changes the day that a new counsellor, Rebecca arrives. She is instantly captivated by Rebecca’s glamorous, enigmatic presence. As the two women grow closer, Eileen is inspired to explore new facets of her own personality and desires. But her metamorphosis turns on a more sinister path when Rebecca reveals a dark secret. A captivating, twisty, strangely beautiful thriller.
Starring Anne Hathaway, Thomasin McKenzie
Dir William Oldroyd | 2023 | USA / UK | 97 min | 15 | English language
Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, Gracie and her husband Joe (twenty-three years her junior) brace themselves for their twins to graduate from high school. When a Hollywood actress comes to spend time with the family to better understand Gracie, who she will be playing in a film, family dynamics unravel under the pressure of the outside gaze. Based on a true story, this is an exploration of truth, storytelling, and the difficulties of fully understanding another person.
Starring Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton.
Dir Todd Haynes | 2023 | USA | 117 min | 15 | English language
Social documentary photographer and trailblazer Tish Murtha dedicated her life to documenting the north-east working-class communities of the 1970s and 1980s in which she lived. Her work showed the reality of unemployment and deprivation in communities that Westminster was happy to sacrifice on the altar of free market capitalism, but also the humour, optimism and refusal to be cowed of her subjects. Murtha’s daughter Ella presents this superb, humane tribute to a great artist whose career never benefited from the advantages of her middle class contemporaries.
The film will be followed by a live question and answer period with narrator and Tish’s daughter Ella Murtha and film’s producer Jen Corcoran. Thank you to Modern Films for arranging their attendance!
The film is followed by a Q&A.
Na Young and Hae Sung are constant childhood companions and deeply connected friends until Na Young’s parents emigrate to Canada. Over the years they keep in contact as they grow up and start careers, Hae Sung as an engineer, Na Young as a successful playwright in New York, where she has changed her name to Nora. Then Hae Sung spontaneously decides to visit Nora, and their sudden reunion forces them to confront notions of memory, destiny, love, and the choices that make a life, in this heartrending modern romance.
Starring Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro
Dir Celine Song | 2023 | USA / South Korea | 105 min | 12A | Korean, English, Mandarin with English subtitles
Julie, a filmmaker, takes her elderly mother Rosalind on a weekend break in a seemingly deserted country house hotel. The building was once a family home, and their time together becomes haunted by a mysterious presence as memories of Rosalind’s unhappy childhood as a wartime evacuee are uncovered.
Featuring a towering, deeply moving performance by Tilda Swinton, acclaimed filmmaker Joanna Hogg’s beguiling latest film is a brilliant and captivating exploration of parental relationships and the things we leave behind.
Movie Nights every Sunday from 6pm until the film ends!
Free entry. Popcorn and sweets provided!
