Cranleigh Arts Centre will show four films in April.
Loving Vincent Thursday 5th April, 8pm. This is a hand painted animation work about the great artist’s last days. 100 artists worked on this in a pastiche of Van Gough’s style. It proposes a theory about the artist’s end which has a boy shooting him which he did not support, perhaps because suicide is a more glamorous end. We learn little about the real man and the effect could surely have been achieved more easily with CGI?
Paddington 2 will be shown twice on Friday 13th April, at 2pm and 8pm to service families with different aged children. This has been rated the best reviewed film ever which has already succeeded internationally taking over £100 million. Perhaps its immigrant allegory resonates in this post Brexit/Trump world? It repeats the charm and fun of the first film and brings in Hugh Grant as the new villain which adds brilliant quality to the bear and marmalade set pieces.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is on Thursday 19th April , 8pm at CAC and can also be seen at Shere Cinema on Sunday 15 April, at 8pm. The film is based on Peter Turner’s book about his affair with film actress Gloria Grahame, and her sad death from breast cancer. Annette Bening gives an award worthy performance as the doomed star of many famous film noir of the 1940s/50s where she was the femme fatale or the gangster’s moll. Perhaps a film about her early career will be made so her true stature can be appreciated.
Roman Holiday is on the programme for Saturday 28th April at 2.00pm, as part of the “Spring into Cranleigh” celebrations. This sublime romantic comedy secured a best actress Oscar for Audrey Hepburn which resulted in Hepburn , Rome and motor scooters become the epitome of post war chic. She plays a princess and Gregory Peck a reporter showing her around the Eternal City. The uncredited script by Dalton Trumbo says much about personal freedom- a delightful classic.
Shere Cinema is presenting the new Murder On The Orient Express on 5 April 8pm. This is a remake of the very good 1974 version directed by Sidney Lumet with Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot. The new version directed by Kenneth Branagh has an all star cast which matches the original and Branagh plays the great detective with a larger moustache. The Agatha Christie story of the murder in which all 12 stranded passengers are suspects is so well known the suspense is missing but not the fun. Cranleigh Arts Centre will be showing the film twice on Saturday 12 May at 2pm and 8pm.
Cranleigh Film Club is screening Marshland on 26 April at 7.30pm. This is a 2014 film directed and written by Alberto Rodriguez and Rafael Cobos. The period of the main events is the post Franco time around 1980 when political and social upheavals were in process in Spain. The region where two detectives from Madrid are investigating the disappearance and murders of teenage girls is the Andalusian hinterland, in which local behaviour is a challenge. The policemen are contrasting types, an older fascist and a younger liberal and the relationship resembles the one in True Detective. Political differences ultimately provide the answer to how the mystery is resolved.
All the information about the venues and arrangements for the above films can be found on the websites of Cranleigh Film Club, Cranleigh Arts Centre and Shere Village Cinema.
