2014 - Dir Morton Tyldrum - 1 hour 44 minutes. Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 28th November, 2015
This is, incredibly, the first English language film to be directed by Mortem Tyldum, hitherto best known for his Norwegian thriller Headhunters. It’s a directing masterclass down to the smallest details. A cracklingly taught thriller mixing searing tension with raw emotion - and pivoting on the hot property actor of the moment. In days gone by movie heroes were dashing, handsome, womanising hunks who in the main played themselves. Here we have a classical actor with a strange name playing an oddball genius - and a gay oddball at that - in an incredibly popular film. How times have changed…
There has been much debate in the press about the accuracy of the Enigma story but the fact remains that this is a superb portrayal of a man who did his utmost to make it possible for the allies to win the war, saving thousands, if not millions, of lives in the process - and who, when it was all over, was shamefully treated by the authorities. It would be comforting to think that it couldn’t happen now.
NOT MANY PEOPLE KNOW THAT….
● Benedict Cumberbatch and Alan Turing are actually related in real-life. the two are 17th cousins with family relations dating back to the 14th century. Both are said to be related to John Beaufort, the first Earl of Somerset.
● Alex Lawther, who plays the young Turing, and Benedict Cumberbatch wear dentures in the film which are exact copies of Alan Turing's own 60-year old set of false teeth.
● Alan Turing is shown running on various occasions and although it’s never mentioned in the movie, he was a world class distance runner with a personal marathon time of 2:46:03, achieved in 1946.
● This film went on general release in the UK on November 14th. Coventry was blitzed by the Luftwaffe on the same day in 1940. It is thought that plans for the attack had been discovered by the Bletchley Park code breakers but no action was taken to stop it because the Government were worried that such action would disclose the fact that the Enigma code had already been broken.
(Aimer, Boire et Chanter) 2014 - Dir Alain Resnais - 1hr 48min. Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on 20th November, 2015
What a paradox this is! A film made by a veteran French director, written by a distinguished English playwright, spoken in French…but set in Yorkshire. It could be a recipe for disaster but when the distinguished French director is Alain Resnais and the playwright is Alan Aykbourn there is a more than a glimmer of hope that the result will be rather special.
This is M.Resnais’ final film. He died at the age of 92 soon after its first showing. He left us this gentle, muted swansong: an adaptation of the stage-play “Relatively Speaking”, by Alan Ayckbourn – an English author to whom Resnais was as attached as Claude Chabrol was to Ruth Rendell.
A trio of couples are united in shock and anxiety as they hear that their old friend, George Riley, is terminally ill, with just a few months left. All of the women have some emotional or sexual history with Riley (who, like Godot, remains absent from the stage) and when they sentimentally invite him to take part in an amateur drama production they’re involved with, these long-submerged tensions rise to the surface.
The setting is deliberately theatrical - the characters are rehearsing for the local amateur dramatic show and their on stage characters mix with their off stage “real” characters. Perhaps emphasizing that “all the world’s a stage” and that, despite all our farcical machinations, we’re only here until the great stage manager in the sky decides that the curtain must fall.
1955 - Dir Charles Laughton - 1 hour 32 minutes. Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 31st October, 2015
Oh, how the Americans hated this! A limey director, a maverick star and a horror film that was short of graphic horror… but still had the power to terrify. The studio didn’t know how to handle it. Somebody decided it should be publicised as a B movie shocker but that’s exactly what it wasn’t. It’s one of the cinema’s abiding tragedies that the directing career of one of our greatest actors was cut short by the bad handling of this, his one and only, directorial effort. Mr Laughton retired, mortified by the experience, not to the bottle (as popular myth would have it) but to the stage and radio. There’s no doubt that this is one of the strangest films ever to come out of Hollywood and we have to warn you that it’s not, even after all of these years, a comforting tale. Nobody who sees it ever forgets it - or the menace of Robert Mitchum’s performance… Take care on your walk home.. Children…
1995 - Dir Christopher Monger - 1hr 42min. Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on 16th October, 2015
The British love characters in their films - eccentrics, oddities and quaint folk. They’re not so good at tolerating them in real life but, as long as they’re up there on the screen, they’re OK. This film abounds with them - and, even better, most of them are Welsh - which makes them even funnier!
Her Majesty's Ordnance Survey Office has for more than a century been mapping the British Isles down to the smallest lane, hill and footpath. Country walkers can buy a map so detailed it includes clumps of trees. These maps are of incalculable importance to the people whose lands they detail, since they touch on old wounds: feuds, battles, disputed place-names, historical perceptions. The film begins as two surveyors for the O. S. arrive in a small village in Wales. Their purpose: To measure the local "mountain," Mountains must be at least 1,000 feet high. Anything smaller is a large hill.
The lengths to which the villagers will go to prove that their hill is a mountain makes for classic British film comedy - gently daft community action by “ordinary” people - think “Passport to Pimlico”, “Whisky Galore” and “Waking Ned” . Those who remember Feckenham’s brief, but glorious, spasm of civil disobedience when The Square (the village green) was threatened will know that this spirit lives on in real life - we still haven’t discovered who it was that “accidentally dropped” a mixer full of quick setting concrete on the Vicarage drive….
2014 - Dir Morton Tyldrum - 1 hour 44 minutes. Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 28th November, 2015
