Films in English for Friday, April 8

To check for further information click on the locations here. Ocimax, Rivoli, CineCiutat and Augusta.

Tickets on sale for the premiere of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on May 6. To be screened at Ocimax in Palma. Watch this space for more details!

New film: Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Showing daily at Augusta ... 16.30 ... 19.25

Plot summary: The Secrets of Dumbledore is another very amiable and lovely-looking fantasy adventure with some great production design and visual effects, especially in the New York scenes. Mads Mikkelsen has been brought into the series to replace Johnny Depp in the role of Gellert Grindelwald, the evil wizard who once had a close relationship with Albus Dumbledore himself (played by Jude Law with a donnish manner and beard). The movie takes us into the world of 1930s Europe and Weimar Berlin; Grindelwald happens to be in prison and is planning to gain absolute control of the wizarding world when he gets out, by the accepted democratic route if that is convenient. Remind you of anyone? There is also Newt’s coolly patrician brother Theseus (Callum Turner), as competent and unfazed as a John Buchan character, and Professor Lally Hicks, stylishly played by Jessica Williams, provides the intellectual steel, wizard Yusuf Kama (William Nadylam) will further upset the applecart and Newt’s jolly-hockey-sticks assistant Bunty Broadacre (Victoria Yeates) has a bit of a non-serious crush on our hero. We meet famous Hogwarts teachers in their youth, although if we assume that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was happening around the end of the 20th century, we might pedantically ponder the fact that this would make key teaching staff at that time around 100 years old. Magic preserves youth, clearly.

Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law and Ezra Miller

Director: David Yates

Duration: 2 hours & 22 mins

Rated: 7

New this week: Cow (2021)

Showing on Friday and Monday at CineCiutat ... 19.00
Showing on Sunday at CineCiutat ... 17.00

Plot summary: In Andrea Arnold’s new documentary - Cow, shot over the course of four years, on an industrial dairy farm somewhere in the south of England, this largely wordless, 94-minute film allocates much of its runtime to the placid, but suggestive expressions of one cow, Luma. Yes, really! We watch the creature closely as she gives birth, as she chews her cud, and as she’s hooked up to a milking machine, its nozzles splayed out like the heads of hungry leeches. Then we watch those processes again. More birth; more milk. At one point, the cycle pauses, and Luma confronts us with a long, but heavily punctuated series of moos. A moo monologue, if you will! Perhaps she’s sharing with us her life story. Perhaps it’s a cry for help. While Cow might be Arnold’s debut non-fiction feature, and the first with a non-human protagonist the females who populate Arnold’s work always seem acutely aware of the ways their bodies are trapped in cycles of exploitation and exhaustion. Cow never wields morality as a weapon, and the farmers are allowed to blend into the background, their presence made known mostly through guiding hands and gentle whispers of “good girl” and “there we go”.

Starring: Lin Gallagher

Director: Andrea Arnold

Duration: 1 hour & 34 mins

Rated: 12

Mass(2021)

Showing on Sat, Sun, Mon and Tues at CineCiutat ...21.35

Plot summary: A film centred around a meeting between four people in a church room may not be something that arouses your interest. However, despite the low-key setting and talky nature of Fran Kranz’s directorial debut, the film is surprisingly dynamic. Sure, there are no action sequences but on an emotional level, this is a real gut-punch of a production. It takes place years after a violent act at a high school that took the lives of several children. The exact nature of the tragic event isn’t revealed immediately. Instead, we find ourselves introduced to two sets of parents – Reed Birney and Ann Dowd alongside Jason Isaacs and Marth Plimpton – who get together for a sit-down meeting at an Episcopalian church. They are polite with one another at first but as they sit down to talk, we learn more about why they have come to share the room with one another. As conversations take place, we learn that they are all grieving for their children. However, two are held to blame for what happened on the fateful school day when the act of atrocity took place. It later transpires that one of their children is the perpetrator of the murders. Prepare yourself for a unique phycological drama that will make you think seriously about the nature of evil

Starring: Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton and Ann Dowd.

Director: Fran Kranz.

Duration: 1 hr & 53 mins

Rated: PG-13

Morbius (2022)

Showing daily at Ocimax ... 20.30
Showing on Saturday and Sunday at Ocimax ... 12.05

Plot summary: Michael Morbius (Jared Leto), the inventor of artificial blood and a man so humble he turned down the Nobel Peace Prize, lives with a condition that requires three blood transfusions a day to survive. A fear of his own mortality corrupts him, so he flies to Costa Rica to seek out a rare type of blood-sucking bat. He mixes its DNA into human blood and – ‘bada boom’ – he’s now Nosferatu for the next generation. The film has attracted widely differing reviews so far and really can’t be described as the wild, untethered disaster that some were secretly hoping for, because that really wouldn’t be true. Elsewhere, the script largely submits to Leto’s overwhelming desire to act. He yells. He throws things. Morbius learns to control his powers without much effort and so eventually, he’ll have to start sipping on the red stuff. Around the film’s midpoint, it also lets Matt Smith, playing Morbius’s BFF Milo, do some acting, too. Blood is splattered across glass windows, lights flicker in a hospital corridor and grimly lit nightclubs. There’s even more violence as well – plenty of it, which is quite surprising for a prescribed ‘teen’ movie - but, in truth the target audience will not mind too much I’m sure. All in all, Morbius is a film that will divide opinion. And if superhero movies really are going to dominate modern cinema for the next decade or so, this film might well be a precursor to a darker portrayal of the genre.

Starring: Jared Leto, Michael Keaton and Adria Arjona.

Director: Directed Daniel Espinosa.
Duration: 1 hr & 48 mins.
Rated: PG-13.

The Batman (2022)

Showing daily at Augusta ... 17.10
Closed on Mondays and Tuesdays until further notice

Plot summary: Director and co-writer Matt Reeves has created a new Batman film phase, in which Robert Pattinson reinvents billionaire Bruce Wayne as an elegantly wasted rock star recluse, willowy and dandyish in his black suit with tendrils of dark hair falling over his face. However, Wayne magically trebles in bulk when he reappears in costume and mask as the Dark Knight, with his whole body transformed into a slab-like impassivity. And this of course is happening in the dark vastness of Gotham City, the brutal and murky world which Christopher Nolan originally pioneered with his Dark Knight trilogy. Intriguingly at first, The Batman feels like a serial killer, chiller, movie. For a time it promises a mystery plot relating to the theme of municipal corruption which is so important to the Batman franchise, and holds out hope of an unmasking with a satisfying narrative resolution. It is tremendously well designed, visually spectacular with great set pieces and juddering, body-shattering impacts coming at you in all directions out of the darkness. There are really good performances from Jeffrey Wright and John Turturro, and Zoë Kravitz is charisma personified. Nevertheless, to non Batman fans, this latest attempt could be described as a tad overlong - but, it probably delivers in spades what Batman fans want from their ever evolving cult hero.

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Jeffrey Wright

Director: Matt Reeves
Duration: 2 hours and 55 minutes
Rated: 12

Death on the Nile (2022)

Showing daily at Rivoli ...16.00

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

CODA (2021)

Showing on Friday at CineCiutat ... 20.45
Showing on Sunday and Monday at CineCiutat ... 19.10
Showing on Saturday and Tuesday at CineCiutat ... 19.15

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