Film Screening 15th November, 2003

Poster for A Mighty Wind

A Mighty Wind 

8:00 PM, 15th November, 2003

  • PG
  • 92 mins
  • 2003
  • Christopher Guest
  • Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy
  • Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, Harry Shearer, Bob Balaban, Michael McKean

"Back together for the first time, again." That's the tagline and boy, is this a great film. This is following on from Guest's other mockumentaries (films done in documentary style), Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. The movie's premise is that a legendary folk-musician manager, Irving Steinbloom, has died, and his son Jonathan (Balaban) attempts to mount a tribute concert in New York City's Town Hall. The featured acts are the Folksmen (the guys from This is Spinal Tap), the New Main Street Singers and Mitch & Mickey, onetime lovebirds who endured a bad breakup, and who have moved on to other things

This film works from the matter-of-fact absurdity of the characters. Their jokes are sometimes utterly subtle but play on so many aspects and levels that they are at once uproariously funny and make you simply grin. The music of the film is perfectly awful ((mdash)) being both awful and perfect ((mdash)) but it fits so well and has a power to these people. This movie loves its characters and they are played to perfection. There are so many things that make this movie sing. Or so you might realise, if you could only stop laughing long enough to notice

Steven Cain

Poster for The Nugget

The Nugget 

10:00 PM, 15th November, 2003

  • M
  • 97 mins
  • 2002
  • Bill Bennett
  • Bill Bennett
  • Eric Bana, Stephen Curry, Dave O'Neil, Belinda Emmett, Peter Moon

Three roadworkers (Bana, O'Neill and Curry) spend their weekends ostensibly gold-mining, but since they tend to take more beer than mining equipment, it's no surprise that they usually return home with nothing more than a hangover. That changes, however, when they find a gold nugget the size of a boulder. Suddenly the bonds of mateship are tested against a much more powerful emotion - greed

Described as a comic fable, The Nugget probably works more as a fable than a comedy - the laughs tending towards gentle chuckles rather than full-blown-belly-rattlers. But if you want to be charmed by a story of rough-but-good-hearted heroes triumphing over the odds and their own baser desires, with no particularly deep message beyond 'greed is kinda bad', then The Nugget will suit you just fine

Simon Tolhurst