From Allelujah to Seven Samurai: What’s on at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse in March and April
Sponsored feature | Our film critic, Mark Walsh, looks ahead to what is showing on the big screen.
Allelujah
The NHS and the healthcare system in this country are facing greater pressures than at possibly any time during its existence, so this adaptation of Alan Bennett’s play about a geriatric ward in a Yorkshire hospital facing closure could not be more timely.
Bennett’s play was well received on its release in 2018, and has been brought to the screen in her debut film by skilled adapter and writer Heidi Thomas (TV’s Cranford, Ballet Shoes, Little Women) and directed by theatre veteran Richard Eyre, whose 2001 film Iris won Jim Broadbent an Oscar and also gained Judi Dench a nomination.
Dench and Eyre are reunited here; she’s a former librarian who’s a patient on the ward, and whose interests laid more in the cataloguing of the books rather than the books themselves. Her fellow patients on the ward include Derek Jacobi and Julia McKenzie, but their residence is under threat from Department of Health consultant Colin (Russell Tovey).
He sees them only as an avoidable cost, rather than a necessary expenditure, and that includes his own father Joe (David Bradley), also a patient on the ward and the fractious relationship between the two doesn’t help matters.
Hope lies with the medical staff on the ward, with Dr Valentine (Bally Gill) still able to find caring in the crisis; he’s backed up by ward sister Jennifer Saunders as Sister Gilpin.
When a concert is put together in honour of the hardworking sister, the locals sense the opportunity to get the press involved to see if there’s still any way to save the ward before it’s too late. While the play is only five years old, a lot’s changed since then and so Thomas and Eyre have added a Covid-related coda to keep Bennett’s play relevant, while seeking to retain his trademark wit and wisdom.
Allelujah opens on Friday, March 17.
Seven Samurai (reDiscover Season)
Chances are, if you haven’t seen Akira Kurosawa’s three-hour plus action epic then you may well have seen one of the versions of the Magnificent Seven that were inspired by it. It’s no wonder that the film, one of the most iconic ever to come out of Japan, has been remade in such a way after it drew comparison to Westerns upon its original release.
When their village faces a threat from a gang of bandits, the local residents decide they need protection, so they recruit a group of samurai warriors to help defend their territory.
The warriors and villagers form a complex bond, but they face an uphill battle to be ready for the bandits’ attack. Kurosawa crafted the most expensive film made in Japan at the time, with a complete set constructed for the village and a shooting period that took almost a year, making what turned out to be the longest film of his career but also one of the best received and it now makes regular appearances in all-time greatest film lists.
Members get the chance to enjoy it for free, as with all of the reDiscover season releases.
Seven Samurai is showing on Sunday, March 19.
Your Name/Weathering With You
Once, Japanese animation that made it to screens in the UK was just the province of Studio Ghibi and a very occasional manga, but two of the best non-Ghibli animations of recent years are making their way to the Picturehouse this Easter for a double bill, and a chance to either reconnect with – or experience for the first time – two animations that demonstrate not only their visual craft but their storytelling prowess.
Both films are written by Makoto Nitsu, who as well as writing and directing these and many other films in a 20-year career is also an author and manga artist.
Your Name is the film which became his breakthrough, and still stands as the third highest grossing anime of all time.
It follows the lives of two high school students, Mitsuha and Taki. After she wishes to be a Tokyo boy one day, Mitsuha finds herself in Taki’s body and vice versa, a swap that subsequently happens a number of times.
While they try to work out what’s going on, they discover that they can leave messages for each other, sometimes by writing on their own skin before they swap back.. As they learn more about each other’s lives, they also discover that their situation is more complicated than they first thought, and that their body swapping may be the key to surviving danger from fragments of a passing comet.
Nitsu followed his success up in 2019 with Weathering With You, this time about a young high school student with a difficult home life who meets a girl who can control the content of the skies by praying. Both films deal with the difficulties of adolescence in a sensitive manner, but Nitsu’s gift for character and drama keeps them accessible to all ages.
A wonderful chance to catch these superlative animations on the big screen once again.
The Your Name / Weathering with You Double Bill is showing on Saturday, April 8.
Ringu (25th anniversary edition) - plus special introduction from the Evolution of Horror podcast
Alongside some of the greatest action and anime to ever come out of Japan, the Picturehouse this month also gives customers a chance to witness a defining moment in another very strong genre for Japanese cinema: horror.
Hideo Nataka’s seminal 1998 film-inspired both sequels and remakes, but it’s the original which retains such an unnerving power.
It stars Nanako Matsushima as Rekio, a journalist investigating rumours of a cursed videotape that may be connected to the death of her niece.
When she watched the tape and then gets a phone call that consists only of the same screeching sounds heard on the tape, Reiko becomes convinced that she’s cursed and now has just days to free herself from the curse.
Nakata taps into timeless themes of curses that locate the film alongside classic folk horrors, but with a more contemporary spin, and creates imagery that sears itself inside your mind for days.
The film comes with an introduction from the Evolution Of Horror podcast created by Mike Muncer that dissects a different horror film in each edition.
Ringu is showing on Friday, March 31.
