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Wed Oct 9th, 2024
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel 
Back To Black (15) - 122 mins

Back to Black is no sugar-coated biopic, but rather a truly sympathetic and overdue antidote to the harsh tabloid treatment Amy Winehouse often received in life. The director Sam Taylor-Johnson has chosen to focus on Amy’s relationships with her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, and her father Mitch. Marisa Abela is terrific as Amy, reminding us how young she was in spite of her tough image and extraordinarily mature voice. Remarkably, Abela did her own singing. Jack O’Connell is well-cast to portray the charisma of her much demonised husband Blake. Eddie Marsan gives us a bullish Mitch and the wonderful Lesley Manville plays Amy’s beloved nan.The score is by the great Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, adding a melancholic edge. 

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Wed Oct 16th 2024,
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Funny Cow (15) - 102 mins

Maxine Peake is superb in this unflinching drama about a standup comedienne on the 70s northern club circuit.

Stepping into the backstreets of her past, the now successful adult meets her childhood self. Having embraced her outsider status as a child, Peake’s misfit only feels at home on stage. “I can’t be a civilian,” she tells Alun Armstrong’s Lenny, the miserable “master of mirth” who assures her that “women aren’t funny”, and suggests she try singing or stripping instead.

Fleeing the nest, she moves in with angry and violent Bob (Tony Pitts), whom she faces with a deadpan defiance learned at the wrong end of her father’s belt - later picking up with the bookish Angus (Paddy Considine).

The supporting roles are solid, from Stephen Graham's twin turn as brutal father and cowed brother, to Lindsey Coulson’s heartbreaking performance as an increasingly lonely mum, driven to drink by the sheer coldness of life. There are some eye-catching cameos too, from comedians such as John Bishop and Jim Moir (AKA Vic Reeves).

It’s an intimate portrait of an often abrasive character - a challenging role to which Peake rises magnificently.

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Wed Oct 23rd, 2024,
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
The Fall Guy (12A) - 125 mins​

He's a stuntman, and like everyone in the stunt community, he gets blown up, shot, crashed, thrown through windows and dropped from the highest of heights, all for our entertainment. And now, fresh off an almost career-ending accident, this working-class hero (Ryan Gosling again in fine form) has to track down a missing movie star, solve a conspiracy and try to win back the love of his life while still doing his day job. What could possibly go right? 

From real life stunt man and director David Leitch, the blockbuster director of Bullet Train, Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw and the producer of John Wick, Nobody and Violent Night, comes his most personal film yet. A new hilarious, hard-driving, all-star apex-action thriller and love letter to action movies and the hard-working and under-appreciated crew of people who make them: The Fall Guy. 

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WED Nov 6th 2024, 7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Jackie (15) - 100 mins

Harris or Trump? Showing just hours after the US election, we bring you another piece of presidential history – after the assassination of John F Kennedy changed the course of American politics.

But this visually stunning and emotionally moving film isn’t as such about JFK. At its heart is an extraordinary performance by Natalie Portman as the iconic First Lady Jackie Kennedy, caught in the eye of a violent storm of grief, politics and media management. With her husband’s blood hardly dry on her clothes (scenes of Jackie removing grotesquely stained hosiery have a horrible intimacy), she must pack her bags, comfort her children and stage-manage a funeral that the whole world will be watching.

Jackie quickly realizes after the shock of the shooting that the next seven days will determine how history will define her husband's legacy - and how she herself will be remembered.

​

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WED 13th Nov 2024,
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Wilding (PG), 78 mins film, + 26 mins recorded Q&A

Based on Isabella Tree's best selling book of the same title, Wilding tells the incredible story of a couple that bets on nature for the future of their failing 400 year old estate.

The film follows them as they set to work with a ground breaking vision, battling entrenched tradition and major forces along the way, daring to place the fate of their farm into the hands of nature. 

Ripping down fences, they set the land back to the wild and entrust its recovery to a motley mix of animals both tame and wild.

It is the beginning of a grand project that will become one of the most significant experiments in Europe.

​

Director David Allen.

Run time 78 minutes.

Post-film: Recorded Q&A with Isabella Tree and Craig Bennett (CEO, Wildlife Trust) - courtesy of Met Film.

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WED 20th Nov 2024,
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Typist Artist Pirate King (12A) -106 mins

In a last-ditch mission to get recognition for her talent, a non-conformist, forgotten British artist – the late Audrey Amiss - persuades her psychiatric nurse to take her on a road trip back to where her story began. But with so many deviations into the past along the way, will they ever make it?

From acclaimed British filmmaker Carol Morley, this dark and funny exploration of the growing friendship between two women is filled with adventure, humour and compassion.

The excellent Monica Dolan stars as Audrey, who spent large periods of her life in psychiatric units, often against her will and following arrests for civil disturbance. Dolan, whose theatrical, film and TV range is immense – and we’ve just seen in her chilling role as Ann Branson in the acclaimed BBC series Sherwood – plays the misunderstood Audrey with pathos and humour. Kelly Macdonald (from Trainspotting to Anna Karenina etc etc) is her perfect foil.

Top critic Mark Kermode calls the film unmissable.

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Wed Nov 27th, 2024
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
The Outrun (15)  -118 mins

The Outrun is a brutally honest drama about addiction and recovery, strength and survival, mental health and the ability of the sea, the land and of people to restore life and renew hope.

After a decade away in London, 29-year-old Rona returns home to the Orkney Islands. Sober but lonely, she tries to suppress her memory of the events which set her on this journey of recovery. Slowly the mystical land enters her inner world and - one day at a time - Rona finds hope and strength in herself among the heavy gales and the bracingly cold sea.

The film stars four-time Oscar-nominee Saoirse Ronan, alongside Paapa Essiedu, Saskia Reeves and Stephen Dillane, and was highly rated at this year's Edinburgh Film Festival. It's directed by Nora Fingscheidt from a screenplay written jointly by her and Amy Liptrot.

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Wed Dec 4th, 2024
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
A Royal Night Out (12A) - 97 mins

On V.E. Day in 1945, as peace extends across Europe, the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret are allowed out to join the celebrations. It is a night full of excitement, danger, and the first flutters of romance.

A Royal Night Out is a real treat - a little fantasy inspired by that true story. 

Margaret is the first to slip away from her escort. She's befriended by a Royal Naval officer seeking to take advantage of what he believes is just an ordinary girl, and is led into a world of nightclubs, gambling and spiked drinks. 

Elizabeth and working-class Jack are thrown together by chance, and have  to make their way through London on this crazy, unbelievable night. And they've both got secrets.

In her actual diary, the future Queen Elizabeth wrote: "Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly, Pall Mall, walked simply miles. Ate, partied, bed 3am!"

This romantic comedy adventure is a nostalgic British affair - and a bit of rollicking fun!

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Wed 11th Dec 2024, 7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel.
Thelma (12A)  - 97 mins

A funny and endearing pastiche to stunt-fuelled action cinema. Thelma Post is a senior grandmother who loses $10,000 to a con artist pretending to be her grandson on the phone. Actually aged 94, actress June Squibb gives an excellent performance as the tough Thelma, riding across town on a mobility scooter borrowed from her gentleman admirer, played by the late Richard Roundtree.

Tom Cruse himself is an indirect inspiration for the lead character - Squibb insisted on performing most of her own stunts!

Wholesome comedy at its best.

​

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Wed 18th Dec 2024, 7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel.
Finding Your Feet (12A)  - 110 mins

Led by a charming pairing of Imelda Staunton and Celia Imrie, this British retiree rom-com (with a warm side-order of death and dementia!) is by turns a film with happiness, sadness, joy and disappointment.

Staunton and Imrie lead as long-estranged sisters Sandra and Bif. When Sandra, a suburban toff, surprises her husband mid-clinch with his mistress, she grabs her fancy luggage and lands at the door of bohemian Bif’s cluttered council flat. Within days, Sandra is joining Bif’s dance class, smoking her weed and making eyes at a two-stepping retiree named Charlie (the wonderful Timothy Spall).

Spall and Staunton in particular are tremendous. Her girlish pleasure when she rediscovers her joy in dancing lights up her face from the inside; his quiet grief, as he realises that his cherished visits to his dementia-stricken wife are causing her confusion and pain, is heart-wrenching.

Watch out too for a gloriously vampy Joanna Lumley.

This is a great film about growing older and learning to enjoy it - and is perfect for our Christmas movie night.

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Wed 22nd Jan 2025,
7.30pm,
at Hermon Chapel.
Ama Gloria (12A) - 84mins

Cléo (an exceptional performance by six-year-old Louise Mauroy-Panzani) loves her nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego) more than anything. When Gloria suddenly has to return home to Cape Verde to look after her own children, Gloria invites Cléo to visit her and the two have to make the most of their last summer together.

Marie Amachoukeli’s outstanding feature was the opening film of Cannes Critics’ Week 2023 and has been an audience favourite at film festivals across Europe including London and Dublin. It is produced by Céline Sciamma’s regular producer Bénédicte Couvreur (Petite Maman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Girlhood).

French (subtitled)

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