IN THE LOOP

IN THE LOOP is a smart new comedy and Sundance Film Festival hit from the acclaimed team behind the award-winning BBC TV comedy series THICK OF IT. The film is drawing instant comparisons to great political and absurdist comedies like DR. STRANGELOVE, WAG THE DOG, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING and MONTY PYTHON. With razor-sharp, truly laugh-out-loud dialogue the film pokes fun at the absurdity and ineptitude of our highest leaders. With everyone looking out for number one, and the fate of the free world at stake (but apparently incidental), the hilarious ensemble cast of characters bumbles its way through Machiavellian political dealings, across continents, and toward comic resolutions that are unforeseeable.

KES


A young, English working-class boy spends his free time caring for and training his pet falcon.
Named one of the ten best British films of the century by the British Film Institute, Ken Loach’s Kes, is cinema’s quintessential portrait of working-class Northern England. Billy (an astonishingly naturalistic David Bradley) is a fifteen-year-old miner’s son whose close bond with a wild kestrel provides him with a spiritual escape from his dead-end life. Kes brought to the big screen the sociopolitical engagement Loach had established in his work for the BBC, and pushed the British “angry young man” film of the sixties into a new realm of authenticity, using real locations and nonprofessional actors. Loach’s poignant coming-of-age drama remains the now legendary director’s most beloved and influential film. -CRITERION COLLECTION

CALVARY -R

Trailer for Calvary on TrailerAddict.

Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is a good priest who is faced with sinister and troubling circumstances brought about by a mysterious member of his parish. Although he continues to comfort his own fragile daughter (Kelly Reilly) and reach out to help members of his church with their various scurrilous moral – and often comic – problems, he feels sinister and troubling forces closing in, and begins to wonder if he will have the courage to face his own personal Calvary.
Calvary-The hill near Jerusalem on which Jesus was crucified. The name is Latin for “Place of the Skull”; it is also called Golgotha.

HISTORY BOYS – R

Trailer for The History Boys on TrailerAddict.

Bringing an entirely fresh and witty perspective to the cinematic tradition of inspirational classroom dramas such as The Dead Poet’s Society, Finding Forrester and The Emperors Club comes The History Boys, a sly, funny yet thought-provoking story about the real meaning and value of “getting an education.” Based on the play that won the hearts of Broadway audiences and garnered six Tony Awards this year, The History Boys follows an unruly bunch of sharp, talented but rough-edged British schoolboys whose worlds are changed forever when two teachers with opposing viewpoints on education engage in a battle to get them into Oxford and Cambridge.

It all begins at a small public boys’ school in industrial Northern England where an unprecedented eight students are about to pursue the ultimate British dream: to gain acceptance into one of England’s two legendary universities. Distracted by sex, sports and the chaos of growing up in the 1980s, the boys are helped, and sometimes hindered, in their quest by two teachers who are diametrically different in their methods. New to the school is the slick Irwin, a recent graduate of Oxford who has been hired by the ambitious Headmaster to whip the boys into exam-ready shape with his aggressive focus on strategy and “spin.” Then there is the maverick literature teacher Hector, who thinks himself a fool yet breaks all the rules in trying to help the boys discover their own wisdom. As both teachers vie for the boys’ loyalty, minds, and even hearts, they impart vital lessons and reveal their own human flaws.

Through biting wit and rapid-fire dialogue – not to mention music, song, vintage movie scenes, impassioned debates and moments of stark emotional truth – The History Boys humorously brings to the fore the serious subject of how one generation passes its wisdom on to the next.