Film Screening 27th February, 2016

Poster for The Good Dinosaur

The Good Dinosaur 

7:00 PM, 27th February, 2016
No Guests

  • PG
  • 101 mins
  • 2015
  • Peter Sohn
  • Meg LeFauve
  • Raymond Ochoa, Frances McDormand, Anna Paquin, Sam Elliott

Pixar released two films in 2015, both wonderful but completely different in their own special way. First up was the fantastic Inside Out: abstract, colourful, and set in the mind of a child. In contrast, the vast and varied wilderness of prehistoric Northern America, where nature’s extremes – electrical storms, raging rivers, mountain peaks and the looming heavy winters – provide the stark setting for The Good Dinosaur.

The film is set in an alternate history where the giant asteroid destined to collide with earth – bringing about the extinction of the dinosaurs – misses, thus allowing the dinosaurs to evolve and eventually work the land as farmers and ranchers, while the human caveman remains primal and animalistic.

This sweet coming-of-age film follows runt of the litter, Arlo, the son of farmers, who becomes lost in the wilderness. Alone and afraid, he must struggle to not only come to terms with his physical and emotional limitations, but also to survive the harsh cruelty of nature and find his way home.

Elyshia Hopkinson

Poster for She’s Funny That Way

She’s Funny That Way 

8:51 PM, 27th February, 2016

  • M
  • 93 mins
  • 2014
  • Peter Bogdanovich
  • Peter Bogdanovich, Louise Stratten
  • Owen Wilson, Imogen Poots, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Aniston

Forget love triangles, She’s Funny That Way has a love pentagon.

The director is married to the star but sleeping with the call girl who’s dating the playwright who just broke up with the therapist. Broadway director Arnold Albertson, alias ‘Derek’ (Wilson), pays handsomely to put his decision to engage an escort behind him. But when the escort/thespian Izzy (Poots) wins a role in his play their lives turn into a classic bedroom farce.

If you don’t like spoilers, you might want to skip the next paragraph – but you just might need it to navigate the labyrinthine relationships in play.

Izzy takes Arnold’s money then wins the part of a call girl role in his play. The play stars Seth Gilbert (Ifans) who is infatuated with his co-star, Arnold’s wife Delta (Kathryn Hahn). Playwright Joshua Fleet (Will Forte) as previously mentioned is seeing the therapist Jane (Aniston), who is treating both Izzy and a respected Judge (Austin Pendleton). The Judge hires a private detective (George Morfogen) to tail Izzy with whom he is obsessed, thanks to Jane’s indiscrete revelations. That gumshoe also happens to be Joshua’s dad.

In summary, everybody knows who everybody is in love with, related to, or trying to hide from. And everyone is pretty. It’s hilarious when it works and “A Grecian Evening”, the play within the play, provides some delightfully Shakespearean recursion. You could try to fathom the deeper relationships and the plausibility of the characters or you could just sit back and have a giggle.

Julie Roediger