Films in English from Friday 11 February

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

Uncharted (2022)

Showing daily at Ocimax... 15.30...18.00...
Showing on Saturday and Sunday at Ocimax ...12.05
Showing on Thursday (17/2) at Ocimax Mahon... 20.00

Showing daily at Festival Park ...15.50...18.40...21.30
Showing on Sunday at Festival Park ..12.30

Plot summary: Street-smart thief Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) is recruited by seasoned treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) to recover a fortune lost by Ferdinand Magellan 500 years ago. What starts as a heist job for the duo becomes a globe-trotting, white-knuckle race to reach the prize before the ruthless Moncada (Antonio Banderas), who believes he and his family are the rightful heirs. If Nate and Sully can decipher the clues and solve one of the world’s oldest mysteries, they stand to find $5 billion in treasure and perhaps even Nate’s long-lost brother...but only if they can learn to work together. Some have compared the plot of this movie to the hugely popular ‘Indiana Jones’ franchise, which is some compliment if true! An impressive cast list might also persuade a person to see the movie, as all the lead males i.e. Holland, Wahlberg and Banderas are top box office at the moment.

Starring: Tom Holland, Sophia Ali and Mark Wahlberg
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Duration: 1 hour and 56 minutes
Rated: PG-13

See above trailer.

Licorice Pizza (2021)

Showing on Monday and Wednesday at Festival Park ...22.00
Showing on Tuesday and Thursday at Festival Park... 19.05

Plot summary: It’s 1973 and stuff happens in the San Fernando Valley as a twenty-something woman falls for a teenage boy. The plot for Paul Thomas Anderson’s new drama-comedy sounds inconsequential and even creepy. But give budding lovers Alana Kane (Alana Haim) and Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) a chance. You have not met their types before and the way in which they’re delicious is beyond sweet. In car-obsessed California, Alana is a photographer’s assistant who lacks drive. Gary is obsessed with sex and money. Alana, for so many reasons, decides he’s not boyfriend material. The leads, are perfection - 30 year old Haim, a member of the rock band Haim, is a natural. And it would be an understatement to say that Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, has inherited his dad’s talent. The director is also revisiting old themes. Licorice Pizza – is fascinated by how children are packaged for public consumption. The crucial fact about Gary is that he’s a former child actor, barely hanging onto his career. Anderson shows that being a celebrity at an early age, doesn’t have to screw you up. Gary, despite or perhaps because of all the showbiz madness he’s experienced is basically a good guy.

Starring: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman and Sean Penn
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Duration: 2 hours and 13 minutes
Rated: 12

The Eyes of Tammy (2021)

Showing daily (except Friday) at CineCiutat ...16.45...19.10
Showing on Friday at CineCiutat ...17.05...19.25...21.20
Showing on Saturday at CineCiutat ...21.00
Showing on Sunday at CineCiutat ...11.10
Showing on Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed & Thu at CineCiutat ...21.10

Plot summary: There’s a lot to be said about the extraordinary world of televangelism, and this biopic of Tammy Faye Bakker, one of its leading lights in the 1970s and 1980s, goes some way to interrogating the glitz, glitter and grungy reality behind the ministering. Tammy (Jessica Chastain) is a bubbly young idealist when she meets Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield) at Bible college. Soon they’re rising through the ranks of televangelism thanks to strokes of good fortune and, of course, God’s plan for them as they see it. But as the scale of their operations gets bigger and Jim starts taking financial shortcuts, their empire is put at risk. Tammy did some commendable things — she was a rare televangelist who actively embraced the LGBT+ community and reached out to AIDS patients at the height of that epidemic — but she also turned a wilfully blind eye to her husband’s corruption. Jessica Chastain does her best to show Tammy’s warm heart, her considerable contributions to the movement and her growing agony at her husband’s failings, but the woman still essentially defrauds the public so she can dress in furs.

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Andrew Garfield & Cherry Jones
Director: Michael Showalter
Duration: 2 hours and 6 minutes
Rated: 12

Belfast (2021)

Showing daily at Rivoli ... 15.45

Plot summary: A wondrously nostalgic look at his childhood, Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast is a heartfelt and emotionally powerful piece of cinema. Branagh has crafted a film where whimsy and realism sit side-by-side so the viewer can visit a Belfast which is as much a figment of the filmmaker’s 50 year-old memory as it is a document charting the start of Northern Ireland’s violence and civil unrest in the late 1960s. As a writer and director, Branagh wants to show his childhood from the perspective of his ten year-old self. The filmmaker’s on-screen proxy, Buddy (Jude Hill) shows us the story with wide-eyed wonder. Be that the moments of flash mob violence, to the joys of afternoon’s watching movies, there’s an exuberance to how young Buddy sees the world. Yes, there is danger, but Buddy never fully realises its true extent. With financial troubles and local violence on the rise, Buddy’s Ma and Pa (Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan) begin to believe that life might be better for their young family if they leave Belfast and start new lives elsewhere.This seems like a lot of upheaval for young Buddy who doesn’t want to leave his home or his grandparents (Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench). This imagery is perfectly accompanied by the choice selection of Van Morrison’s music which punctuates the onscreen action – the city’s most successful musical son and its most famous filmmaker working together. The film is never cloying and young Jude Hill manages to perfectly capture a wide-eyed sense of wonder. The adults in the cast also impress, all matching the tone that Branagh sets as director. A wonderful film.

Starring: Jude Hill, Lewis McAskie and Caitriona Balfe
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Duration: 1 hour and 38 minutes
Rated: 12

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Now showing daily at Rivoli... 21.00

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

Spider-man: No Way Home (2021)

Showing on Saturday and Sunday at Ocimax...12.05

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

New film coming next week: Death on the Nile (2022)

Tickets on sale now with multiple showings daily at Festival Park.

Plot summary: Long ‘coronavirally’ delayed, Kenneth Branagh’s latest Agatha Christie movie puffs effortfully into harbour. It’s the classic (and often filmed) whodunnit about a murder on a steamer making its way down the river in Egypt with an Anglo-American boatful of waxy-faced cameos aboard. The horrible homicide means that one of the passengers will have to spring into action, and this is of course the amply moustached Hercule Poirot, played by Branagh himself. It is Poirot who interviews suspects, supervises corpse-storage in the ship’s galley freezer cabinet and delivers the final unmasking – and all without the captain insisting that the Egyptian police should possibly get involved. Among the stars on the passenger list - Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders play lady’s-companion Mrs Bowers and her wealthy socialite-turned-socialist employer Marie Van Schuyler, and the presence of this venerable comedy duo makes the movie look weirdly like a version of the spoof they might have created for their erstwhile TV show. Russell Brand keeps his comedy stylings under wraps as the deadpan Dr Linus Windlesham. A good time could be had naming all those famous actors in minor walk on parts. Suffice it to say, you will what you’re getting if you choose to visit this movie!

Starring: om Bateman, Annette Bening and Kenneth Branagh
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Duration: 2 hours and 7 minutes
Rated: 12