Films in English for this Friday (21 January)

To check for further information click on the locations here. Ocimax, Rivoli, Festival Park and CineCiutat. Also showing in Minorca.

King Richard (2021)

Showing daily at *Augusta... 19.25
*Augusta is open Wednesday to Sunday

Showing on Sunday at Festival Park... 12.10
Showing on Tuesday at Festival Park... 18.55

Showing daily at CineCiutat... 16.25... 18.20
Showing on Friday at CineCiutat...21.10
Showing on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at CineCiutat... 20.00

Plot summary: An arrogant man full of self belief and he definitely passed that quality onto his daughters. King Richard is the story of a father who devoted his time to coaching his daughters to be the two of the best tennis players ever. And that against all odds as the movie references the racial roadblocks and challenges they encountered both from inside and outside their Los Angeles, Compton ghetto. This is a feel good story about a man and his five daughters who are on an adventure. A man who is trying to help his daughters have better futures outside of the ghetto. A man who is trying to teach them humility and life values and as well as drive them on to be the best in the world. Will Smith is very good in this fine movie. His devotion to his daughters is likeable but he is also a very frustrating man whose company you do not always particularly want to be in. He always knows best and interferes with the coaches. When he is convinced they will make it, he begins to fear that success will be damaging for them and starts to encourage them to have fun. Many tennis players have pushy parents - Andy Murray for example (although his mother Judy denies this) and it is interesting to learn more about how the story behind the Williams sisters. We all know how the story ends but many of us did not know how it starts and that is what this movie does.

Starring: Will Smith, Aunjanue Ellis and Jon Bernthal.

Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green

Duration: 2 hours and 24 minutes

Rated: PG-13

See above trailer

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Now showing daily at Rivoli... 17.00... 20.00.
Showing on Thursday at Mahon (Minorca)... 20.00

Showing on Tuesday at Festival Park... 18.20

Showing daily at CineCiutat...19.00... 21.00
Showing on Friday at CineCiutat... 16.10
Showing on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at CineCiutat... 17.10

Plot summary: By the time Bradley Cooper utters his first line of dialogue as Stan Carlisle, several minutes into Guillermo del Toro’s lavishly configured take on “Nightmare Alley,” we’ve already seen the character drag a corpse and set a house on fire. A fugitive, not yet from the law but from his own unresolved resentment, the man lands at a 1930s traveling sideshow populated with curious acts of benign mentalism and bizarre cautionary tales.Those first words said with hesitation are aimed towards the operation’s geek, an alcoholic man dehumanised for vicious entertainment, on the loose from his captor inside a disturbing attraction that warns visitors of damnation. What Stan can’t foresee from this point in the arc of his hasty rise to top-billing enchanter and thunderous downfall, is that he is in fact looking at a mirror. That we can infer exactly where Stan’s road leads isn’t just because of Edmund Goulding’s 1947 film adaption of the original novel. His “Nightmare Alley” is a movie of psychological tunnels and downward spirals. In entering them, Stan risks getting lost and never coming out the other side. If you have ever seen one of Guillermo de Toro’s movies, you will know exactly what to expect from Nightmare Alley - if you haven’t, you will either love this film or hate it. No middle way!

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett & Toni Collette

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes

Rated: R

The 355 (2022)

Now showing on Tuesday at Festival Park... 19.30

Plot summary: At the film’s start, Chastain’s hotheaded CIA operative, Mason “Mace” Brown, and her partner pose as newlyweds to meet up in Paris with the Colombian intelligence agent who claims to have the mysterious, but deadly ‘The 355’ device. Chastain and Stan, who previously worked together on “The Martian,” are supposedly best friends who are secretly in love with each other. Kruger, as bad-ass German operative Marie, intercepts it instead, leading to one of the movie’s many dizzying action sequences. Mace brings in her reluctant former MI6 pal, the brilliant hacker Khadijah, to trace its location. But Cruz, as the Colombian psychologist Dr. Graciela Rivera, also gets dragged into the fray; she was sent into the field to find Ramirez’s character and bring him home. Eventually it becomes clear that all of these women must set aside their differences and team up to find the secret device: “They get this, they start World War III,” Mace says to Khadijah in one of the movie’s many examples of high tension. But first, a fistfight between Mace and Marie involving frozen seafood, which apparently isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds. And the moment in which they all stand around, screaming and pointing guns at each other before reaching an uneasy détente. The 355 has had ‘mixed’ reviews - but, that sometime proves absolutely nothing. Go see for yourselves.

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz and Bingbing Fan

Director: Simon Kinberg

Duration: 2 hours and 2 mintues

Rated: PG-13

Spider-man: No Way Home (2021)

Now showing daily at Ocimax...*12.05...16.00
*Saturday and Sunday only

Showing on Tuesday at Festival Park... 18.30

Plot summary: The best of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” reminded me why we all used to love comic books, especially the ones about a boy named Peter Parker. There was a playful unpredictability to them that has often felt was lacking from modern superhero movies in the way they feel so precisely calculated. Yes, of course, “No Way Home” is incredibly calculated, a way to make more headlines after killing off so many of its event characters in Phase 3, but it’s also a film that’s often bursting with creative joy. Director Jon Watts and his team have delivered a true event movie, a double-sized crossover issue of a comic book that the young me would have waited in line to read first, excitedly turning every page with breathless anticipation of the next twist and turn.

Starring: Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Holland

Director: Jon Watts

Duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes

Rated: 7

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Now showing daily at *Augusta .... 19.40
*Augusta is open Wednesday to Sunday

Plot summary: For a good while, The Matrix Resurrections is fabulously batty. It’s cheeky and sly, comprising endless onion-layers, it’s funny and weird and witty and mad and even, at points, quite moving. Certainly we’ve never seen anything like it, not on this scale, not in a Hollywood blockbuster, not like this. The action scenes are fine — occasionally inspired, sometimes familiar; if you’re hoping for Resurrections to change the genre game again, you might want to temper your expectations. Some of the overtly CG stuff, feel like video-game cut-scenes. And, alas, some of the pomposity of those earlier limp sequels is resurrected too. Which is a shame, when it’s front-loaded with so much delightful good fun - It is also romantic and sentimental and sometimes touching. As they say nowadays, there is joy here, and a couple of gobsmacking ideas (one of them outstandingly morbid). So In all, ‘Resurrection’ is the best of the ‘follow-ons’ and well worth a visit.

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

Director: Lana Wachowski

Duration: 2 hours and 28 minutes

Rated: 16

West Side Story (2021)

Now showing daily at Rivoli...16.30

Plot summary: Director Steven Spielberg’s much awaited re-make of West Side Story is quite brilliant. Most remakes aren’t usually up to the standard of the original - but this is a revelation. Like its 1961 former self, it is set in a derelict part of New York City with the teen gangs - the Jets and the Sharks up against each other. This being said, West Side Story was, and always has been, a love story - full stop. Spielberg catches the exuberance of the original and adds a little local reality to the storyline. In fact, this cinematic version of Romeo & Juliet reflects William Shakespeare’s pen in its romantic drive that often has audience members fiddling with hankies at certain times as the ‘star-crossed’ lovers’ embark on their doomed relationship. If the music is sing-along great, the dancing is bold and colourful with high colour intensity and swooping cameras making the best out some sensational choreography. It’s possibly wrong to pick out one star performance amongst many - but, Rachel Zeglar as the lovelorn Maria, does have a lovely voice to go with her latino beauty. Enjoy!

Starring: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose

Director: Steven Spielberg

Duration: 2 hours and 36 minutes

Rated: 12