Bones and All... what’s coming up at Cambridge Arts Picturehouse - with trailers

Sponsored feature Our film critic, Mark Walsh, looks ahead to the what is showing at the Cambridge Art Picturehouse at the end of November and early December.

Bones and All

Luca Guadagnino’s career has certainly been anything but predictable; his last three films have include a coming-of-age romantic drama produced by James Ivory, a remake of an Italian giallo horror and an action thriller. So if you had predicted “teenage cannibal road trip movie” for Guadagnino’s latest effort, then please send me all of this weekend’s lottery numbers immediately.

Bones And All reunites the Italian director with some of his key collaborators from those previous films, including screenwriter David Kajganich (A Bigger Splash, the Suspiria remake) and the young star of Call Me By Your Name, Timothée Chalamet.

Chalamet stars alongside Canadian actress Taylor Russell in an adaptation of Camille De Angelis’ novel. Russell plays Maren, a teenager growing up at the tail end of Reagan-era middle America with a compulsion for human flesh abandoned by her father when she reaches adulthood, causing her to set out to find her mother in the hope of obtaining some answers about her deadly addiction.

While serving as an allegory for the difficulties of youth and personal identity, Bones And All isn’t afraid to confront the realities of its subject matter, but like so many of the best movies with the horror label loosely attached, Luca’s latest isn’t really about what’s on the menu, but those grappling with why they’re choosing it.

The supporting cast includes another Guadagnino regular Michael Stuhlbarg and Mark Rylance as people the young couple encounter who share similar culinary desires. And Guadagnino’s next? Look out next year for a romantic comedy set in the world of tennis…

Bones And All opens on Friday, November 25.

Tori and Lokita

Darlings of the arthouse circuit for over three decades, the Dardenne brothers are one of a rare group to have collected the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival more than once, and the only Belgians to have picked up the Palme D’or as well.

As well as the awards for Rosetta and L’Enfant, their 2011 film The Kid With A Bike picked up the festival’s Grand Prix, they were named best directors there for 2019’s Young Ahmed and their latest picked up a 75th anniversary prize at this year’s festival on La Croisette.

Luc and Jean-Pierre’s fondness for intimate stories, often shot with handheld cameras and natural light, has offered a variety of perspectives on life in their native Belgium.

Tori (Pablo Schills) and Lokita (Mbundu Joely) offer a look from the outside into their nation, immigrants from Benin who end up in a children’s home and who have to claim to be brother and sister to get their residence.

They become separated and are forced to engage in criminal activity to make ends meet, struggling to find ways to maintain the bond that’s formed between them. The Dardennes find a rare warmth – at least within their own filmography - in the relationship between the possible siblings, but also an anger at the system which they perceive to be failing and the inevitability and futility of their situation.

Tori and Lokita opens on Friday, December 2.

Neil Young - Harvest Time

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Neil Young’s Harvest album, which became the best selling album in America in the year of its release and which gave him a top 10 hit in this country and a number one in the States with Heart Of Gold.

Harvest Time is a documentary which charts the development of the album, including footage from the first nine months of 1971 while the album was being recorded, as well as a modern introduction to the film from the legendary singer.

The film’s journey starts at Young’s farm in Northern California where the first “Harvest Barn” sessions took place, and ends at Nashville where the tracks began to be brought together into an album. On the way, he works with a number of other iconic musicians, including previous partners Crosby, Stills and Nash, as well as Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. His journey also takes him to London, where the London Philharmonic Orchestra help to record two of the tracks.

The documentary features both rehearsal and performance footage and covers most of the album’s memorable songs, which also include A Man Needs A Maid, Alabama and Old Man. Young acknowledges now what a significant influence the album has had on his life, so don’t miss the chance to catch this on the big screen, with the big speakers also the best way to enjoy Young’s blend of folk rock and country rock.

Harvest Time is showing on Sunday, December 4 only.

Christmas Stories

Fed up of the usual Christmas fare at the cinema like It’s A Wonderful Life and Die Hard? You can, if you feel the need, catch both of those on the Arts Picturehouse screens over Christmas (and if you haven’t ever done so, you very much should; indeed, compare and contrast and you will determine that both are definitely Christmas films), but the city centre screens have a trilogy of rarer delights ready to unwrap for you this festive season.

On December 4, you can catch A Christmas Story, a perennial Yuletide favourite across the Atlantic but less familiar here.

Adult Ralphie Parker narrates the story of his tenth Christmas when everyone from his mother to a department store Santa Claus tries to warn him away from wanting an air rifle for Christmas, for fear of the possibly disastrous consequences. Interspersed with this are a series of other short adventures involving the young boy and his family.

December 11 is your chance to catch Fanny And Alexander, Ingman Bergman’s semi-autobiographical tale based on his upbringing in Sweden.

His family produce a Nativity play each year, but their lives are changed irrevocably when his father dies and his mother marries a puritanical Bishop who punishes Alexander for his vivid imagination.

Finally, the following day is your chance to enjoy Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton’s dark fantasy with Johnny Depp as the creation of Vincent Price’s inventor whose sharp appendages are both a help and a hindrance when he is forced to integrate with a suburban lifestyle.