This week our film is Wash Westmoreland’s take on Colette's early life; she meets Willy, author of many (often ghost written) novels, marries him and becomes his most successful ghost-writer, before branching out on her own.
"All the affairs and scandals that a French literary genius could wish for, with the bonus of a modern heroine and a story that acknowledges the diversity that has always been with us." - Empire
This weekend, Widows should give us all enough twists and turns and plots within plots to satisfy the best thriller-lovers, whilst also being an indictment of the US political system...all with a feminist slant. Directed by the great Steve McQueen and featuring many big stars, what’s not to like? After '12 Years a Slave', a feminist heist movie comes as a big surprise to the world, but "McQueen largely succeeds at something few directors even try: to set a satisfyingly twisty crime plot in the broader social context of political corruption and systemic racial and gender bias" - Dana Stevens, Slate.
Watch out for a car scene with the camera facing out: "The external view is both striking and damning, turning a piece of expositional dialogue into something approaching agitprop; this is the world Veronica and her team are operating in, one where the heist has been ongoing for decades, at an institutional level. It's the clearest use of the blunt-force power of visual filmmaking I've seen in a while, in one of the best films of the year" – David Sims, The Atlantic.
"Playing like a badass big sister to the dizzy 'Ocean’s 8', this riveting thriller...fashions a female-driven heist from a heady intersection of violence, intimacy, political hypocrisy, patriarchy and power" - Sarah Stewart, New York Post.
Adapted from the Lynda La Plante TV series, we can't wait to see what it looks like with McQueen's magic touch.
An eight year old boy - Waru - has been killed by the person supposedly caring for him. The local Maori community is devastated by the loss. The producers of Waru, Kerry Warkia and Kiel McNaughton charged eight female directors with the remit to produce a ten minute vignette each, to be shot in real time in no more than one day; put together, each vignette is a chapter in the community's reaction.
"Joined together, the shorts are a powerful chorus of female Maori voices united in finding a way to protect all that is vulnerable" - Gayle MacDonald, Globe and Mail.
Another Member's Choice this week, 1945, a thriller which appears to be a mix between 'Once Upon a Time in the West' and a Hungarian holocaust movie - this time looking at the complicity of the locals rather than the Nazis themselves.
A train pulls into town and two men dressed in black get out, with two large crates. In the summer heat, they begin their long, slow walk into town...If there was music in the background by Ennio Morricone, you might think this was a American western, but instead the music is by Tibor Szemzö and we are in Hungary in August '1945'. The two men are Orthodox Jews: Where are they heading? Have they come to exact their revenge on the town for its betrayal of Jewish residents during the Nazi occupation? Many in the town soon think so.
"The filmmakers appear to be aiming for something mythic or tragic as the Jewish men walk toward their mystery destination and as their presence results in dramatic events...the stellar movie succeeds as a portrait of cowardice and collective complicity in vile times" - Anita Katz, San Francisco Examiner.
We're back in the UK for Anchor and Hope this Sunday (although the film is actually Spanish). Two women, Eva and Kat, are living an idyllic bohemian life on a canal boat in London. What happens when Eva decides she wants a baby and Kat disagrees? Maybe nothing, but when Kat’s best friend Roger turns up and agrees to be the father, and then moves in too, it is fair to expect some problems arise! This comedy drama follows the events set in the cramped space of the canal boat where the (now) threesome try to work out what they want while they plan for the fourth to arrive.
