Odeon
Piazza Strozzi, 2
tel. 055/295051
www.cinehall.it, www.odeon.intoscana.it
For showtimes,
see the events listing.
May 10
THE AVENGERS
Nick Fury and the international agency S.H.I.E.L.D.
bring together a team of super humans to form The Avengers to help save the
Earth from Loki and his various-membered army. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Marvel
comic book superheroes hit the big screen in a big way. ‘Every time the movie
hints at something rich and evocative, Whedon undercuts it with a punchline-his
instincts as a big-picture storyteller crippled by his short-term need to
please the crowd’ (Village Voice).
May 14, 15
BEL AMI
Robert Pattinson in his first post-Twilight role plays
Georges Duroy in this adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s novel about a handsome
young man’s rise to status through his manipulation of the women who love him
in nineteenth-century Paris. ‘Robert Pattinson has to do an awful lot of
hollow-eyed smouldering in this hammily enunciated French period drama’ (The
Guardian).
May 16
ZABRISKIE POINT
Antonioni’s portrait of America in the 1960s is set in
the desolate landscape of Death Valley-the location where the destinies of
Mark, a fugitive in a stolen aeroplane and Daria meet in a bout of
love-making.’ The counterculture manifesto of escape from the consumer society
turns out to be an impossible dream. Music by Pink Floyd, amongst others.
May 21, 22
THE RUM DIARY
American journalist Paul Kemp takes on a freelance job
in Puerto Rico for a local newspaper during the 1950s and struggles to find a
balance between island culture and the expatriates who live there. Bruce
Robinson’s return to filmmaking celebrates Hunter S. Thompson’s early story. ‘A
fitting tribute to Hunter and the demise of the American Dream, but first and
foremost a thrilling and funny snapshot of a country on its knees and a writer
finding his feet’ (Empire).
May 22
FIGHT CLUB
An anonymous narrator attends support groups of all
kinds as a way to ‘experience’ something within his unfeeling, commercial
existence. On a business trip, he meets Tyler Durden who encourages them to
form a fight club as a release for their latent aggressive tendencies. ‘The
most incendiary movie to come out of Hollywood in a long time. It’s a mess, but
one worth fighting about’ (Newsweek).
The British
Institute
Lungarno
Guicciardini 9
tel. 055/267781
For showtimes,
see the events listing.
The series All Things Shining is a retrospective of
legendary American director Terrence Malick, who, in a career spanning four
decades, has made only five films.
May 16
DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978)
‘An inspired American pastoral … In the early years of
the 20th century, Richard Gere and Brooke Adams are Bill and Abby, a Chicago
couple on the run from the law who pose as brother and sister to find itinerant
farm-work in the Texas prairie …The film, with its transcendentally beautiful
visuals and mysterious and detached narration from Bill’s actual younger sister
Linda (Linda Manz), who tags along with them, is a rich and rewarding
experience, then as now celebrated for its intricacy and slowness …In Days of
Heaven there’s the idea developed further in The Thin Red Line and The Tree of
Life: nature’s colossal, terrifying indifference to humanity’ (The Guardian).
‘Theirs is a tale of almost biblical profundity: a furtive love allowed to
bloom momentarily in this glowing, golden paradise before commerce,
responsibility, law and violence put a heartbreaking end to their innocent
bliss. Visually and thematically, it’s still one of the most beautiful films
ever made’ (Time Out). ‘A dramatically moving and technically
breathtaking American art film, one of the great cinematic achievements of the
1970s’ (Variety).
May 23
THE THIN RED LINE (1998)
‘Malick’s masterpiece, a stunning piece of work from
one of cinema’s true visionaries. Typically for Malick, the story, adapted from
James Jones’ novel, is simple and straightforward, charting the fortunes of a
US army platoon as they attempt, against all odds, to wrest control of
Guadalcanal from the Japanese …But while Malick is not overly preoccupied with
plot, the film’s three hours are far from empty: thematically, philosophically
and spiritually, no war movie has been so profoundly rich. For it’s not just an
essay on the hellish madness of war or a tribute to courage under fire, but a
mythic, almost pantheist meditation on the role of conflict, violence and death
in nature. With its multiple voice-overs representing the thoughts and feelings
of men facing death, its imagery of flora and fauna, its philosophical, religious
and literary allusions, and its cogent central metaphor of paradise lost, it’s
a genuinely epic ciné-poem that essentially sidesteps history, politics and
conventional ethics to deal with war as an absolute, inevitable and eternal
facet of existence’ (Time Out). ‘An epic aestheticization of World War
II, a movie at once bold and baffling, immediate and abstract’ (Entertainment
Weekly).
