What's on at the flicks this week.
It’s chuffing freezing, the clocks have gone back and there’s the slightest tremor of fear in the air as everyone prepares to grind to a screaming skidding halt at the merest mention of the word Snow. You might think, with the hot hot heat of the blockbuster season well behind us, that big releases would have slowed down to one a week.
And they have. Exactly that. Last weekend we got a fresh taste of the hammer with Thor 2: Darkworld plus a couple of horror flicks to satisfy the convention, but there are so few movies about Bonfire Night that it doesn’t bare thinking about (watch V for Vendetta I suppose if you’re that desparate.) so this week we’re looking at one HUGE movie and two way smaller ones.
This is how the year will end. Not with a bang, but with a bang and then two quiet whispers.
GRAVITY (08/11)
Already named Movie of the Year after a short time out in the states, Alfonso Cuaron’s tense space drama is released on Friday and looks like it might blow you right out of your socks, seat, county and then shortly thereafter, atmosphere. Sandy Bullock and George Clooney are a pair of astronautical types who get sent spinning into the inky blackness of the universe when their shuttles gets wrecked up by debris. Drifting further and further from Earth, and each other, the two must rely on one another’s voices to stay sane and survice. It. Looks. Ace!
SEDUCE & ABANDONED (08/11)
Director James Toback and actor Alec Baldwin are trying to get a movie financed at the Cannes Film Festival, but they’re having some trouble. This documentary, by Toback, explores their efforts to secure funding for the movie as well as taking us on a behind the workings journey through film financing itself. How do movies get made? Who pays for them? Why is it so frigging hard to get anything done?! With portraits of legendary film makers like Scorcese and Coppola, Seduced & Abandoned pulls back the curtain on a piece of movie-making so far unexplored and yet so very important.
HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE (08/11)
Further documentary viewing here, but a good deal more serious as How to Survive a Plague chronicles the efforts of two groups, ACT UP and TAG, as they fight with all the tools they can possibly scrape together to lobby the US Government, infiltrate big drug companies and protest all over the place to try and stem the wave of destruction caused by the AIDS virus. David France follows the groups as they do everything they can to re-raise awareness of an illness mostly forgotten by modern media and politicians. Heavy stuff, but absolutely worthy of your time.
There we go. Now, get yourself a coat and some gloves on and sheen down to the pictures why don’t you?
Words by Gazz Wood
