Paramount Cinema Schedule

25 Courtenay Place, Po Box 6232 Wellington. Ph 384 4080. Fax 384 4408.www.paramount.co.nz

PROGRAMME 12th February – 18th February Thu
12th Fri
13th Sat
14th Sun
15th Mon
16th Tue
17th Wed
18th
FROST/NIXON (M- coarse language) 122 minutes 3.00pm 3.00pm 8.40pm 3.00pm 8.40pm
HUNGER (R16- nudity & content that may disturb ) 103 minutes 1.15pm
6.50pm 1.15pm
6.50pm 1.15pm
6.50pm 1.15pm

6.50pm 1.15pm
6.50pm 1.15pm
6.50pm
SON OF A LION (PG- violence & infrequent drug use) 99 minutes 1.00pm
6.45pm* 1.00pm
6.45pm* 1.00pm*
6.45pm* 1.30pm
7.15pm
6.45pm 1.00pm
7.10pm 1.00pm
6.45pm
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (R16- violence & content that may disturb ) 121 minutes 3.00pm
8.40pm 3.00pm
8.40pm 3.00pm
8.40pm 3.00pm
6.50pm

THE MAP READER (M- violence & sexual references ) 97 minutes 1.00pm
6.45pm 1.00pm
6.45pm 1.00pm
6.45pm 1.00pm
6.45pm 2.45pm 1.00pm
6.45pm 1.00pm
6.45pm
SPARKLE (M- offensive language & sexual themes) 107 minutes 2.45pm
8.30pm 2.45pm
8.30pm 2.45pm
8.30pm 2.45pm 6.45pm 2.45pm
8.30pm 2.45pm
8.30pm
MY BROTHER IS AN ONLY CHILD (M violence, sexual references, offensive language) 107 minutes 4.45pm 4.45pm 4.45pm 5.15pm 4.45pm 4.45pm
IN BRUGES (R16- violence, drug use, offensive language) 114 minutes Oscar Nominated: Best Original Screenplay 2.45pm
8.45pm 2.45pm
8.45pm 2.45pm
8.45pm 3.15pm 2.45pm 2.45pm
8.55pm 2.45pm
8.30pm
WALTZ WITH BASHIR (R16- violence, sex scenes, offensive language & content that may disturb ) 97 minutes Oscar Nominated: Best Foreign Language Film 5.10pm 5.10pm 5.10pm 5.10pm 5.10pm 5.10pm 5.10pm
THE VISITOR (M- offensive language ) 109 minutes Oscar Nominated: Best Actor Richard Jenkins 4.45pm 4.45pm 4.45pm 4.45pm 4.45pm 4.45pm 4.45pm

* Q & A WITH FILM MAKER BENJAMIN GILMOUR

HUNGER Winner of the Camera d’Or at Cannes 2008, Turner prize-winning artist Steve McQueen’s debut feature is an outstanding piece of cinema, well deserving of its many accolades. Set in Belfast’s Maze prison in the early 1980s, the film outlines the final six weeks in the life of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. Michael Fassbender plays Sands with unnerving honesty and dedication as he battles a brutal system and clashes with the prison’s Catholic priest.

Divided into 3 distinct parts, the film shows the various stages of Sand’s ordeal. The first part introduces us to the prison and the initiation of passive resistance by IRA activists who demand to be treated as political prisoners rather than criminals. The second part, hinging on an intense 22 minute scene, shows Sands and his priest debating the merits of the planned hunger strike. The third part shows Bobby’s physical decline as he wastes away. Condensed into a short period, this section is so beautifully captured by actor and director that it is almost painful to watch. McQueen is an unconventional artist and this is an unconventional film, both in style and structure. Yet it is also visually and thematically compelling as it takes us far out of our comfort zone and leaves us there throughout the film’s length SON OF A LION The Pashtun people are an ethnic Afghan group who received positive press in the West while ousting the Soviets from Afghanistan and are now reviled for being Taliban. The film centres on a father and son living in this remote area. Niaz is eleven-years-old and painfully aware of his illiteracy. His widowed father is proud to have fought the Soviets and is determined to bring up his sonunder strict Islamic law. Niaz works in his father’s gun shop, but shows little enthusiasm for the work, preferring to visit the local poet who reads him letters sent from the big city by his cousin Anousha. Niaz wants desperately to go to school, but is afraid to confront his father and receives little support from his grandmother. It is only Anousha’s father who is open-minded enough to take up Niaz’s cause. Gilmour’s screenplay is sensitively written and was fine tuned in collaboration with the largely unprofessional cast. This gives the film veracity and provides an insight into the reality of the world these characters live in. Niaz’s father and other village men discuss the state of the world in barber shops and tea houses, expressing differing opinions on Osama Bin Laden, the war on terror and the role of the US in the region.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN Forget Twilight. The vampire movie to see this summer is Let the Right One In, an oddly sweet Swedish story of two outcasts who are drawn to one another. Oskar is twelve years old. His parents are divorced and barely have time for him. He is bullied relentlessly at school and fantasizes revenge on his tormentor. His hobby is cutting out newspaper articles about local murders which have left the neighbourhood on edge.. Then Eli moves in next door. She is apparently the same age as Oskar and the two strike up a tentative friendship which grows gradually more intense. There are overtones of first love here, but it is a chaste love. The one flaw is that Eli is a vampire. All the vampire conventions are here; she must drink blood to survive, can’t bear the daylight and must be invited to cross the threshold. But while these are indelible parts of her character, her vampiric nature is not made a big deal of. As their friendship deepens, Eli encourages Oskar to fight back against the bullies who torment him, and Oskar finds inner strength he never knew he had. MY BROTHER IS AN ONLY CHILD This is a sweet, funny, sad film set in Italy during the ‘60s and ‘70s. Accio and Manrico are brothers growing up in a crumbling small town outside Rome. Accio is the younger brother, constantly at odds with his family. He has been attending a seminary but loses his faith and leaves suddenly, only to become taken with local fascists who are still beholden to Mussolini’s vision of Italy. Part of the reason for Accio’s devotion to the noxious group of fascists is that his older brother Manrico is an ardent communist. As the two boys grow up, Accio rejects the fascists’ violence while Manrico becomes more deeply entrenched in left wing politics and gets himself involved in acts of terrorism. Accio shifts his political viewpoint to that of his brother, but is not the activist that Manrico is. As the pair become involved with the same woman, the differences in their personalities and approaches to life, love and politics becomes apparent.

WALTZ WITH BASHIR After speaking to an old friend in a bar and hearing him recount his recurring nightmare rooted in his experiences during his time in the Israeli Army, Ari Folman realised his own memory of this period was almost completely gone. In order to try and piece together the events and his own involvement in them, he went to speak to friends and acquaintances who shared his experience to try and uncover these repressed memories. Rather than being a straightforward documentary of his journey and discoveries, Folman’s film is a visually arresting animation in a style reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s Waking Life. The story he uncovers is so dark and disturbing that it has the power to leave the viewer shattered. SPARKLE From the writer/director team that brought us the super smart British film Lawless Heart comes Sparkle. Their second feature has a much bigger cast of characters linked by coincidence. Jill is a woman living out her faded show-business dreams with a karaoke act she takes around pubs and restaurants. Her twenty-something son Sam has inherited her ambition and longs for the bright lights of London. So when he gets the opportunity to look after an empty London flat, he jumps at it. But Jill insists on coming too, to further he own career. Vince is a neighbour and develops a soft spot for Jill and Sam, and Sam has an affair with and older woman but thinks about leaving her for a younger one.

THE MAP READER Michael is sixteen and lives in a small New Zealand town. To escape the realities of his small town existence, Michael escapes into a world of maps. When two young women enter his world, his seemingly happy isolation is shattered. Twenty year old Mary has been bind from birth and is on the verge of going out into the world alone. Alison is the same age as Michael, a cool, graceful girls who is harbouring dark secrets. Beside them both is Michael’s single mother, Amelia. Amelia loves her son and is fiercely protective of him even as she is pushing him away. This is a touching coming of age story with a fresh twist to it. Michael’s journey teaches him about learning to love and cherish the time you have with people as relationships are often transitory.

IN BRUGES One of the funniest and most original films of 2008, In Bruges is the directorial debut of Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. The set up is simple: two hit men, Ray and Ken have messed up and are sent to Bruges to hide out and await further instructions from their boss. Ray is a brash, young newcomer to the game while Ken is his older, more experienced partner. Expected to lie low, Ken suggests sightseeing in the beautiful, medieval town but Ray is bored by this and is looking for action.
THE VISITOR Walter Vale is a professor at a Connecticut college, and has pretty much given up trying since the death of his pianist wife. Under duress he agrees to go to New York and present a paper he co-authored. Upon arriving at his little used NYC apartment, he discovers two illegal immigrants living there. Shocked, he initially kicks them out, but then relents and asks them to stay as long as they need to find a new place. And thus begins Walter’s transformation from a man barely living, to a man fully embracing all that life has to offer.

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