UPCOMING SCREENINGS
Algonquin Theatre, Main Street Huntsville - 7pm for all films
MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2024
The Zone of Interest
Nominated for five awards at the 2024 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, Jonathan Glazer won the Academy Award for Best International Film and the Grand Prix at Cannes '23 for this chilling film about Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife, who quite literally live amongst the ashes of their actions.
Adapted from the novel of the same title by Martin Amis, The Zone of Interest centres on the domestic life of Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall) and Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), whose family home nestled between train tracks and gas chambers is spitting distance from Auschwitz, the infamous German concentration camp located in occupied Poland, where Rudolf serves as commandant.
Towards the final days of the Holocaust, we reside inside the family’s encampment, with background voices of ghost-like prisoners muffled by the perpetrator’s quotidian musings. Dispassionately examining the ordinary existence of people complicit in horrific crimes, The Zone of Interest forces us to take a cold look at the mundanity behind an unforgivable brutality.
Director:Jonathan Glazer
United Kingdom, Poland, United States of America | 2023 | 106 minutes
Language: German, Polish with English subtitles
Featuring:Sandra Hüller, Christian Friedel
Content advisory: mature themes
MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2024
Perfect Days
Nominated for the Best International Film Academy Award, Perfect Days is a poignant character study and emotionally charged journey into the soul of Tokyo. Radiating with charm, this unique mix of fiction and ordinary life finds an unusual, poetic angle to guide us: the architectural marvels of some of Tokyo’s public toilets.
Kôji Yakusho plays Hirayama, a cleaner of these toilets. Hirayama lives alone in a small house full of plants, his days going by according to quiet rhythms that never seem to change. Hirayama speaks very little and has a great passion for music, books, and the trees he loves to photograph. His structured routine is slowly interrupted by unexpected encounters that force him to reconnect with his past. Director Wenders follows his protagonist and discovers new places of the heart, creating a deeply moving, poetic reflection on finding beauty in the everyday world around us.
Director: Wim Wenders
Japan | 2024 | 124 minutes | Language: Japanese, English (very little dialogue)
Featuring: Kôji Yakusho, Min Tanaka, Tokio Emoto
Distributor: Elevation Pictures
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2024
Wicked Little Letters
Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley play neighbours who get on each other’s nerves in this dark mystery comedy about a small English town in the 1920s where residents start receiving anonymous, expletive-laden letters, igniting a scandal in their community.
Based on a stranger than fiction true story, the deeply conservative Edith (Colman) begins to receive wicked letters full of unintentionally hilarious profanities which assassinate her character with the most blue-tinged language imaginable. When they start to stack up, her autocratic, scripture-quoting father Edward (Timothy Spall) insists the culprit be found. With law enforcement reluctantly investigating, Edith bandies a pet theory that her neighbour Rose (Buckley) might mean her harm and the foul-mouthed Rose is charged with the crime.
The anonymous letters prompt a national uproar, and a trial ensues. However, as the town’s women begin to investigate the crime themselves, led by Police Officer Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan), they suspect that something is amiss, and Rose may not be the culprit after all. What begins as a village whodunnit suitable for the pearl-clutching set evolves into a profound statement about the stifling social confines around women’s behaviour and their possible tragic consequences.
Director: Thea Sharrock
United Kingdom | 2024 | 102 minutes
Featuring: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Timothy Spall
Distributor: Mongrel Media
Content Advisory: (Very!) coarse language and sexual material
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2024
Remembering Gene Wilder
This loving tribute to Gene Wilder celebrates his life and legacy as the comic genius behind an extraordinary string of film roles, from his first collaboration with Mel Brooks in The Producers and the enigmatic title role in the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, to his inspired on-screen partnership with Richard Pryor in movies like Silver Streak and more.
The film features a bevy of touching and hilarious clips and outtakes, never-before-seen home movies, and narration from Wilder’s audiobook memoir, including interviews with brilliant friends and collaborators like Mel Brooks and Carol Kane. Remembering Gene Wilder shines a light on an essential performer, writer, director and all-around mensch.
Director: Ron Frank | USA | 2024 | 92 minutes
Featuring: Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, Alan Alda, Carol Kane
Distributor:Kino Lorber (USA)
MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2024
Sweetland
The story of an endangered Newfoundland community and the struggles of one man determined to resist its extinction. Directed by Christian Sparkes, this haunting adaptation of the novel by Michael Crummey is distinguished by its beautiful cinematography and a formidable central performance from Mark Lewis Jones.
The scarcely populated town of Sweetland is in slow decline when the mainland government offers each islander a generous resettlement package. The sole stipulation is that everyone must leave. But enigmatic, retired fisherman Moses (Mark Lewis Jones) is one of the last hold-outs. He’s lived here his entire life, and he’s not ready to put his ghosts behind him. His outright refusal to accept the resettlement package antagonizes him against some of the other residents of his community, further isolating him as a result.
As he manages a diminishing food supply and battles the ravages of the weather, the border between the natural world and the supernatural world blur and he finds himself moved to acts of increasing desperation, only to be stymied again and again by the ruins of memory and the fierce will of nature.
Director: Christian Sparkes | Canada | 2024 | 105 minutes
Featuring: Sara Canning, Mark Lewis Jones, Mary Walsh
Distributor: Game Theory Films