I went to Reading Film Theatre last night to see The Lunchbox. Once I'd got over the inflation (now £7.50, up from £5.50 the last time I went) I enjoyed the film. From the opening credits it's not entirely clear to what extent it's an Indian film; the funding seemed to come mostly from France and Germany. It was bizarre, but seemed quite plausible ( Read more... )

Last night we went to see Quartet at Reading Film Theatre. We were, without question, the youngest members of the audience. Ahem. I did rather enjoy the performances of Billy Connolly and Tom Courtenay; it was difficult to engage with Maggie Smith's or Michael Gambon's characters particularly sympathetically. At least they all got to be drama ( Read more... )

Like buses, the interesting films seem to have come all at once just now. Last night we went to see A Dangerous Method. Cronenberg isn't a director that would draw me to a film; rather, I thought this was an interesting subject. As part of Reading Science Week, there was a talk before the film, which highlighted inter alia the different ethical ( Read more... )

We went to see Weekend at Reading Film Theatre last night. In a nutshell, it's a film about a weekend-long gay romance. It draws attention to the way gay people interact with each other and the rest of society, never going too deep but marking out some clear thoughts. I rather doubt it would be Cardinal O'Brien's cup of tea, but I enjoyed it for ( Read more... )

2011 was not a good year personally, but in looking through my journal there have been some good things nevertheless.

Best of the year:

• Fiction - The Road Home, by Rose Tremain
• Non-Fiction - Red Plenty, by Francis Spufford (if you file it as non-fiction ... I find it a bit difficult to classify)
• Music - Bernard Haitink and Emanuel Ax's Brahms ( Read more... )

We went to see Hugo today. On the face of it, a story about a young boy living in the walls of a Paris railway station in the 1930s sounds like a plot that should have been given to Jean-Pierre Jeunet rather than Martin Scorsese, although then it would have been in French, and union bye-laws would have required that Audrey Tatou play the part of ( Read more... )

Yesterday I went to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I've read the book several times, and of course I've got the BBC adaptation with Alec Guinness on DVD, and it's impossible to set them aside. ( Potentially spoilerish, then )

Our Hero is a political prisoner who will escape with a number of associates, including criminals, fleeing a tyrannical regime against all odds. This is the basic plot of The Way Back (obviously, not to be confused with The Way Back).

( Possible spoilers )

Last night I went to see The Concert, an enjoyable piece of light relief from the rather hectic goings-on at work over the past few weeks. The plot revolves around a conductor branded an "enemy of the people" during Brezhnev's rule in the Soviet Union, who, 30 years later, is an office cleaner at the Bolshoi. He happens to intercept a fax inviting ( Read more... )

Continuing my write-up of last week, on Thursday we went to Reading Film Theatre to see Micmacs. I was interested in seeing another Jean-Paul Jeunet film, but the commentary I'd seen a month or two ago in the newspapers didn't inspire - the story of a man whose father is killed by a land mine and who himself is injured by a stray bullet, seeking ( Read more... )