Films in English from Friday 25 February

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

The Godfather (1972) 50th Anniversary

Showing daily at Ocimax ...19.30

Showing on Wednesday at CineCiutat ...17.15
Showing on Saturday, Sunday and Monday at CineCiutat ...19.00

Plot summary: Fifty years on and it could be argued that Francis Ford Coppola’s film of Mario Puzo’s bestseller, The Godfather, is both an art movie and a commercial blockbuster as it marked the dawn of the age of the mega-movie. Appropriately, the film is about a similar transition in organised crime, as the understated yet sinister world of Don Vito (Marlon Brando) is eclipsed by the more brutal and expedient organisation represented by the doomed Sonny (James Caan) and the calculating Michael (Al Pacino). The ‘times past’ gangster movie is represented by Richard Conte and Sterling Hayden in bit parts, while Brando’s cotton-cheeked patriarch represents everything about old Hollywood that Coppola aspired to. The younger generation is represented by the then fresh, exciting talents who remain respected names in their profession (Pacino, Robert Duvall, Caan, Diane Keaton). This is a film that has entered popular culture: even if you’ve never seen it, you know the lines (“Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes”), and some of the scenes (the horse’s head) are unforgettable for all sorts of reasons. The Godfather has dated a lot less than most films of the early 1970s, as It paces itself deliberately, making its moments of action and horror more telling for the leisurely paths it weaves between them. With performances, style and substance to savour, this shows how it is possible to smash box office records without being mindless and puerile. If you haven’t seen it you must - if you have, see it once again on a big screen.

Starring: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and James Caan
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Duration: 2 hours and 55 minutes
Rated: 18

See above trailer

Death on the Nile (2022)

Showing daily at Rivoli ...16.00...18.30... 21.15

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

Uncharted (2022)

Showing daily at Ocimax ...15.30...18.00
Showing on Saturday and Sunday at Ocimax ...12.10

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

Belfast (2021)

Showing daily at Rivoli ...15.30

Showing on Thursday at Ocimax in Mahon (Minorca) ...20.00

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

Mothering Sunday (2021)

Showing on Friday and Tuesday at CineCiutat ...19.05
Showing on Wednesday at CineCiutat ...20.20
Showing on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday at CineCiutat ...21.25

Plot summary: There is nothing in life if there is no grief, Mothering Sunday seems to say. The period drama’s heroine, Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young), is an orphan – now a maid employed in the Berkshire household of Mr and Mrs Niven (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman). Most of its action takes place on a single day – March 20 1924, the Mothering Sunday of the title, when maids would typically be given the day off to visit home. All are living in the ashes of the First World War, grieving dead sons, fathers, and brothers. Jane alone seems to have been spared the pain. She spends the day visiting her secret lover, Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor), the only surviving son of a neighbouring family. Mothering Sunday marks the English-language debut of French director Eva Husson, working off an adaptation of Graham Swift’s 2016 novel by playwright Alice Birch, and there’s certainly a healthy dollop of Gallic sensuality here – first teased when Jane extends a delicate forefinger, swipes up a dollop of apricot jam from a kitchen jar, and places it teasingly in her mouth. Another maid has just asked her where she’s headed for the day. She’ll never tell!

Starring: Odessa Young, Josh O’Connor and Colin Firth
Director: Eva Husson
Duration: 1 hour and 44 minutes
Rated: 12

CODA (2021)

Showing on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Thursday at CineCiutat ...17.00
Showing on Wednesday at CineCiutat ...19.05
Showing on Friday and Tuesday at CineCiutat ...19.10...21.10

Plot summary: A coming-of-age comedy drama that’s crafted with sincerity & brims with authenticity, CODA covers the journey of the only hearing person in a culturally deaf family who finds herself torn between following her dreams & fear of abandoning her parents in pursuit of her passion. It is a simple, heartfelt & crowd-pleasing delight that’s further bolstered by its welcome inclusivity & emotional purity. Written & directed by Sian Heder, the premise is nothing new and the route it takes is also a familiar one but the emotional beats do strike the right chord with the heart and make it an endearing, arresting & heartwarming roller-coaster. Its portrait of deaf community in typical, day-to-day settings is carried out with care & understanding and the family dynamic is both relatable & thoroughly captivating. The small-town setting, radiant camerawork, intelligent wit, breezy pace & silent interplays add more exuberance to the experience but it’s the performances from its entire cast & the spot-on chemistry they share with one another that strengthens the picture from inside out.

Starring: Emilia Jones, Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur
Director: Sian Heder
Duration: 1 hour and 51 minutes
Rated: 12

The Lost Daughter (2021)

Showing daily at CineCiutat ...16.50
Showing on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Thursday at CineCiutat ...19.05
Showing on Friday and Tuesday at CineCiutat ...21.20

Plot summary: A rich, complex and fascinating performance from Olivia Colman is what gives this movie its piercing power: she has some old-school star quality and screen presence. Colman is the centre of a stylish feature debut from Maggie Gyllenhaal as writer-director, adapting a novel by Elena Ferrante. The result is an absorbingly shaped psychological drama, built around a single traumatising event from which the action metastasises. It takes place partly in the present and also in the lead character’s remembered past, triggered by a calamity that she witnesses and in which she decides, insidiously, to participate. These scenes aren’t simply flashbacks; they have their own relevance and urgency which run alongside the immediate action. The setting is a Greek island where Leonard Cohen is supposed to have hung out in the 1960s. A British academic arrives on holiday: this is Leda, played by Colman, a Yorkshire-born professor of comparative literature at Harvard, and she has clearly been looking forward to this break for ages, settling almost ecstatically into the vacation apartment into which her bags are carried by the property’s maturely attractive housekeeper Lyle (Ed Harris). Yes, but what happens next?

Starring: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley and Dakota Johnson
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Duration: 2 hours and 1 minute
Rated: 12