March 28
MORNING GLORY
Breakfast television is the setting for this Roger
Michell romantic comedy with Harrison Ford as the retired anchor lured onto the
morning show with the lowest ranking by high-flying producer Rachel McAdams.
Diane Keaton is the long-time presenter who needs to smooth over the anchor’s
transition from hard news to no news. ‘Comedies open every week. This is the
kind I like best. It grows from human nature and is about how people do their
jobs and live their lives’ (Roger Ebert). ‘Every one of its cues might be
tele-prompted, but this is an assured, likable comedy. Ford is as good as he’s
been in ages’ (Empire). ‘Morning Glory
has a depressed, rancid air’ (New Yorker). ‘This production is a mess for many reasons, most
of them having to do with its frantic efforts to be funny’ (Wall Street
Journal).
ASTRA 2 Piazza Beccaria, tel. 055/2343666 – www.cinehall.it
For showtimes see Events
listing
March 29
RANGO
The first animated feature for Industrial Light &
Magic, directed by Gore Verbinski (The Pirates movies), follows the journey of Rango (voiced by Johnny
Depp), a chameleon with-what else?-an identity crisis. He accidentally winds up
in the gritty, gun-slinging town of Dirt, a lawless outpost populated by the
desert’s most wily and whimsical creatures. Welcomed as the last hope the town
has been waiting for, new Sheriff Rango is forced to play his new role to the
hilt until, in a blaze of action-packed situations and encounters with
outrageous characters, he starts to become the hero he once only pretended to
be. A hilarious spoof of Sergio Corbucci’s Django (1966). ‘No goggles, no
gloom. And no competition for the coolest, orneriest, funniest, best-looking
movie of early 2011′ (Time).
‘Rango is some kind of a miracle: An animated comedy for smart moviegoers,
wonderfully made, great to look at, wickedly satirical, and (gasp!) filmed in
glorious 2-D’ (Roger Ebert).
ASTRA 2 Piazza Beccaria, tel. 055/2343666 – www.cinehall.it
For showtimes see Events
listing
April 4
THE FIGHTER
Winner
of two Oscars for its supporting cast (Christian Bale and Melissa Leo), this is
the true story of boxer half-brothers Dicky Eklund (Bale) and Micky Ward (Mark
Wahlberg) whose mutual antagonism and, in spite of all, mutual love and respect
in downbeat situations sees a triumph against all the odds in Lowell, Mass. in
the 1980s. ‘A movie so rousing, so real and so full of complicated emotions
that it all feels brand-new’ (Salon.com).
‘An exhilarating fight-flick that, like its scrappy central character, is
impossible not to root for’ (Empire).
‘A rousing, compassionate, bare-knuckled ride powerful enough to score a KO,
while Bale, Wahlberg, Leo and Adams are all award-worthy excellent’ (Total
Film). ‘So like much of this film, the
viewer is turned into an observer. You never feel close enough to the action,
either in the ring or in the kitchens, living rooms and tough streets where the
story takes place. The characters engage you up to a point but never really
pull you in’ (Hollywood Reporter).
ASTRA 2 Piazza Beccaria, tel. 055/2343666 – www.cinehall.it
For showtimes see Events
listing
March 28, 8pm
ORLANDO
‘There are lots of intellectual traditions
vying for ascendancy in Potter’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 modernist
novel, but the joy is that the film comes over simply: a beautiful historical
pageant of 400 years of English history, full of visual and aural pleasures,
sly jokes, thought-provoking insights, emotional truths-and romance’ (Time
Out). Alexei
Rodionov’s cinematography, the production, art and costume design not to
mention Tilda Swinton’s extraordinary performance as the sex-changing time
traveller make Sally Potter’s exquisite film, like its inspiration, a charming
extended love letter to Woolf, the Bloomsbury ethos and English literary
culture. Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth I is a stroke of genius perfectly
attuned to the themes radiantly transferred to the screen. ‘Ms. Potter’s
achievement is in translating to film something of the breadth of Woolf’s
remarkable range of interests, not only in language and literature, but also in
history, nature, weather, animals, the relation of the sexes and the very
nature of the sexes. The book is feminist, but also much more. The movie …
directly and magnificently reflects Woolf’s concern for the look of things,
which, in prose, must be described in inexact if evocative words, and in
similes and metaphors that refer to something other… More than anything else,
though, Orlando is Ms. Swinton’s triumph. With the firmest but lightest of touches, she has
spun gossamer’ (Vincent Canby, New York Times).
The British Institute Lungarno Guicciardini, 9, tel. 055/267781 – www.britishinstitute.it
