Thursday, May 5
WORLD INVASION: BATTLE LOS ANGELES
As
cities around the world fall to alien invaders a marine staff
sergeant who has just had his retirement approved is called back to
the front line in order to assist a 2nd lieutenant and his platoon in
the fight to reclaim the city of Los Angeles. Routine sci-fi action
thriller, loud, explosive and relentless. ‘The city’s skyline is
blown to bits. Burning, broken, blackened bits. So if that’s what
you’re in the mood for, that is what the film delivers, endlessly,
but in that cheesy-campy way that can make a bad movie good fun’
(Los
Angeles Times).
‘Here’s a science-fiction film that’s an insult to the words
“science” and “fiction,” and the hyphen in between them. You
want to cut it up to clean under your fingernails’ (Roger Ebert).
Odeon Original Sound
Piazza Strozzi, 2
tel. 055/214068
Saturday, May 7
SOUND OF NOISE
(in
Swedish with English subtitles)
Tone-deaf
police officer Amadeus Warnebring attempts to track down a group of
six guerrilla percussionists whose anarchic public performances are
terrorizing the city. These are no ordinary musicians: they use
anything they can find to make music out of the urban noise,
channelling the banal, the repetitive, the acoustic mush into four
movements of glorious harmony. Based on the filmmakers’ 2001 short
Music
for One Apartment and Six Drummers (see
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8000409016826512649&hl=en#).
Odd Festival-pleasing film with an agenda to kill muzak. ‘Brilliantly
conceptualized and faultlessly executed. The editing and sound mix
are snappy, and delightful animations perk up the film visually.
Sound
of Noise may be small in scope, but, in terms of imagination, it’s huge
(Hollywood
Reporter).
Odeon Original Sound
Piazza Strozzi, 2
tel. 055/214068
Monday, May 9
TILVA ROS
(in
Serbian with English subtitles)
Toda
and Stefan, two 19 year-old drop-outs, spend their time in an
abandoned copper mine filming themselves, Jackass style. The return
of Dunja jeopardises their friendship, but their involvement in the
union protests sweeping the city of Belgrade brings them together.
Developed from the video the protagonists themselves made and posted
on YouTube.
(athttp://www.filestube.com/ebac1d3dcf5843bd03e9,g/Crap-Pain-Is-Empty.html).
Big hit at the Sarajevo Film Festival, but Variety doesn’t like it: Young first-time director Lezaic ‘aspires to say
something about contempo Serbian life [but] his reliance on US
subcultures and indie pop songs speaks more to the globalisation of a
certain brand of American idiocy… [Some audiences] may enjoy
watching stupid people do stupid things…’
Odeon Original Sound
Piazza Strozzi, 2
tel. 055/214068
Tuesday, May 10
AMADEUS
Milos
Forman’s famous 1984 movie based on Peter Shaffer’s play tells
the story of the vulgar, playful and sublime Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
from the embittered and ultimately insane point of view of Salieri,
convincingly outshone by the God-given genius he so admired. The
director’s cut (longer by 20 minutes) makes one of the most
successful and important musical epics even better. ‘Shaffer’s
play is one of the best ever to grace the stage. Its visual-and
aural-translation to the screen offers glittering details and
dizzying depths’ (Empire).
‘Milos Forman’s grandiose masterpiece from 1984 still holds up
well in this “director’s cut”-though distending its already
substantial and stately form to three hours is pushing it’ (The
Guardian).
‘It binds up introductory lessons in music appreciation, Freudian
psychology, and fanciful history with a pulp thriller plot’
(Chicago
Reader).
Odeon Original Sound
Piazza Strozzi, 2
tel. 055/214068
Wednesday, May 18 to Sunday, May 22
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON
STRANGER TIDES
In
the fourth Pirates movie, Captain Jack Sparrow crosses paths with
Angelica, a woman from his past, and is unsure if she wants him for
herself or as a means to find the fabled Fountain of Youth. When she
forces him aboard the formidable pirate Blackbeard’s ship, Queen
Anne’s Revenge, Jack finds himself on an unexpected adventure in
which he doesn’t know who to fear more: Blackbeard or Angelica.
Premiering at Cannes May 11; worldwide release May 18/19.
Odeon Original Sound
Piazza Strozzi, 2
tel. 055/214068
Thursday, May 12
LIMITLESS
Fuelled
by new designer drug NZT, out-of-work writer Eddie Morra (Bradley
Cooper), rejected by his girlfriend and without much of a future,
launches himself at 100 percent capacity, all his faculties enhanced,
into business with Carl Van Loon (Robert de Niro) to maximise
potential and make a profit. Inevitably, competition complicates the
situation.
‘A
loopy joy from start to finish, Bradley Cooper proves that he’s the
real deal’ (Empire).
‘An energetic, enjoyably preposterous compound-it’s a paranoid
thriller blended with pseudo-neuro-science fiction and catalyzed by a
jolting dose of satire’ (New
York Times).
‘Without a complex thought about narcissism, merit, or addiction,
Limitless is content to be an empty, one-note, satire-free fairy tale
of avarice and corporate-political ambition’ (Village
Voice).
Astra2
Piazza Beccaria, tel. 055/2343666
Monday, May 16
THOR
Thor
spans the Marvel Universe from present day Earth to the realm of
Asgard. At the centre of the story is the mighty Thor, a powerful but
arrogant warrior whose reckless actions reignite an ancient war. Thor
is cast down to Earth by his father Odin and is forced to live among
humans, becoming their finest defender when Asgard attacks. It is a
comic book adaptation by Kenneth Branagh. ‘A burly slab of
bombastic superhero entertainment that skitters just this side of
kitschy to provide an introduction befitting the mighty god of
thunder. It’s a noisy, universe-rattling spectacle full of sound
and fury with a suitably epic design, solid digital effects and a
healthy respect for the comic-book lore that turned a mythological
Norse god into a founding member of the superhero team known as The
Avengers’ (The
Hollywood Reporter).
Astra2
Piazza Beccaria, tel. 055/2343666
Nicolas
Roeg Retrospective
Wednesday, May 11, 8pm
DON’T LOOK NOW
Adapted
from a short story by Daphne du Maurier, what must now be considered
Roeg’s masterpiece is a disturbing occult thriller, set mostly in
Venice and celebrated not least for its then extremely explicit but
troubling sex scene, as well as its intensely unsettling presences,
natural and supernatural. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie
struggle painfully with bereavement: clairvoyance and precognition
may ease the pain. The psychology of grief intersects with horror and
the unexplained in this wonderfully evocative, deeply affecting
movie, ‘a movie whose every glorious frame is bursting with
meaning, emotion and mystery, and which stands as the crowning
achievement of one of Britain’s true iconoclasts and masters of
cinema’ (Time
Out).
The British Institute
Lungarno Guicciardini 9.
tel. 055/267781
Wednesday, May 18, 8pm
THE MAN WHO FELLTO EARTH
‘You
know Tommy, you’re a freak. I don’t mean that unkindly. I like
freaks. And that’s why I like you.’ Tommy is Thomas Jerome Newton
(David Bowie, in his first starring film role), the extraterrestrial
come to earth to find water for his drought-stricken planet. Plunged
into the world of corporate finance, patent lawyers and government
hit squads, the alien is alienated, and, his mission failed, reduced
to an alcoholic half-life, rejected even by Mary-Lou, who so liked
his freakishness. Another of Roeg’s movie that has gained in
reputation over the years and earned its cult status, with esoteric
imagery and a mellifluous and eerie soundtrack (not by Bowie), the
movie is profoundly meditative. Bowie is mesmerising, too.
The British Institute
Lungarno Guicciardini 9.
tel. 055/267781
