Film Screening 3rd August, 2007

Poster for Running with Scissors

Running with Scissors 

8:00 PM, 3rd August, 2007

  • MA
  • 116 mins
  • 2006
  • Ryan Murphy
  • Annette Bening, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Alec Baldwin

A dramatisation of Augusten Burroughs bestselling memoir, Running With Scissors is moving, shocking and hilarious all at the same time. If you're expecting a light-hearted comedy from this film (as I happened to be) I suggest you change your mind immediately. Instead, expect the most odd adolescence you've ever heard about to unfold before you. Augusten is his mother's strength, inspiration, and constant companion through her marriage to alcoholic Norman (Baldwin). That is, until it starts to fall apart and she begins to see crackpot psychiatrist Dr Finch, whose offices come complete with a masturbatorium to relieve his stress. In order to allow his mother to recover from her neuroses, Augusten trades one dysfunctional family for another and is sent to live with the eccentric Finches.Despite its excellently interesting basis, this film fails to reach the heights achieved by the book. It becomes very performance driven, but luckily it's not let down, with amazing work from Annette Bening as Augusten's narcissistic mother. Brian Cox and Jill Clayburgh also do their part as Dr. and Mrs Finch, with the last scene of the movie particularly moving through Clayburgh's performance.This film has the same feel as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou or The Royal Tenebaums: deeply odd, but enjoyably so. Definitely worth watching just to discover the weird things that occur in the Finch household and in Augusten's adolescence.'

Kirsten Gottschalk

Poster for Holiday

Holiday 

10:56 PM, 3rd August, 2007

  • G
  • 93 mins
  • 1938
  • George Cukor
  • Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Doris Nolan, Lew Ayres

Johnny Case (Grant) is a hardworking chap whos fallen for a beautiful girl, Julia Seton (Nolan). Even better, he's just discovered her family is incredibly wealthy. But should he really marry a girl who describes herself as "the great woman behind every great man", or should he go for her more freethinking sister, Linda (Hepburn)? Well, if any of you have seen a movie before, do you really think he's going to pick the one played by the less famous actress?Made before the better-known The Philadelphia Story, this has a lot of the same crew (same director, same screenwriter, based on a play by the same playwright) and a lot of the same charm, as the idle rich fall in love and try to balance work and play. Grant gets a rare chance to show off his ability at physical comedy, Hepburn is her usual classy self, and all in all it's a stylish, funny comedy with one or two more ideas than you might be expecting.'

Simon Tolhurst