The Mockingbird Cinema and Kitchen

Ad Astra

• 
• 2019
• US
• 2h 2min
• 12A

• Directed by: James Gray
• Cast: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland
• UK release: 18 September 2019

In the near future, Roy McBride (Pitt) is an astronaut searching for his father Clifford (Jones), himself a pioneering space explorer. But Roy’s classified mission turns deadly. Gray’s stellar third film is a huge step up, mixing horror and action with deeper themes and anchored by a dazzling turn from Pitt, who has never…

All Is Lost

• 
• 2013
• US
• 1h 46min
• 12A

• Directed by: JC Chandor
• Written by: JC Chandor
• Cast: Robert Redford
• UK release: 26 December 2013

After a sea-based collision, a sailor finds himself confronting his own mortality.

Beats

• 
• 2018
• UK

• Directed by: Brian Welsh
• Cast: Martin Donaghy, Laura Fraser, Rachel Jackson |
• UK release: 17 May 2019

Johnno (Ortega) and Spanner (Macdonald) are teenagers who plan to go to an illegal rave. The set-up betrays the film’s origins in screenwriter Hurley’s own play, and there’s nothing about the setting that merits the arty black & white photography, but it’s one of the few films that manages to successfully put on…

Depeche Mode: Spirits in the Forest

• 2019

Documentary featuring concert footage from Depeche Mode's Global Spirit Tour performance and fan interviews.

Dirty Dancing

• 
• 1987
• US
• 1h 40min
• 15

• Directed by: Emile Ardolino
• Written by: Eleanor Bergstein
• Cast: Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey, Jerry Orbach, Cynthia Rhodes

The plot – in the summer of 1963 bad boy Johnny (Swayze) meets good girl Baby (Grey) and teaches her hip grinding, eventually winning the respect of her parents. Sure it's full of stereotyping, bad dialogue and a pre-teen sugar coated prurience, but decades on Dirty Dancing still has the ability to send a generation of…

Ghostbusters

• 
• 1984
• US
• 1h 45min
• 12

• Directed by: Ivan Reitman
• Written by: Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis
• Cast: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts

Three disgraced parapsychology researchers team up to fight spooks. An efficiently-managed plot, solid jokes, a cast let off the leash – Murray in particular – and thrilling and imaginative effects combine in a masterful balance of respect for the sci-fi genre and mockery of it; sly humour and wide-eyed wonder; star…

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

• 
• 2010
• UK / US
• 2h 26min
• 12A

• Directed by: David Yates
• Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson

The seventh installment of the wildly popular wizard franchise is an atmospheric but emotionally hollow and rather rushed take on Rowling's original, with a strong performance from ever-dependable Grint but little else to recommend it other than as an appetiser for next summer's grand finale.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

• 
• 2005
• UK / US
• 2h 37min
• 12A

• Directed by: Mike Newell
• Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson

Harry and his mates get busy at the inter-school of magic TriWizard Tournament, only to be faced with the return of evil mastermind Lord Voldemort (Fiennes). Overlong but entertaining enough adaptation of fourth Potter book directed with by Brit Newell.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

• 
• 2009
• UK / US
• 2h 33min
• 12A

• Directed by: David Yates
• Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson

While the sixth installment in the Harry Potter franchise does venture into darker, more adult areas than its predecessors it also injects more humour and character development than previous encounters, which doesn't always make for a satisfying concoction. Yates picks up in the aftermath of a spectacular attack on London…

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

• 
• 2007
• UK / US
• 2h 18min
• 12A

• Directed by: David Yates
• Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson

With Harry's fifth return to Hogwarts comes the realisation that Voldemort's return to power is not the only factor that will trouble him and he is forced to confront a different force that matches his growing pains. Rowling's most complex and uneven book has proven to be the most difficult to adapt. Missing the talents…

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban

• 
• 2004
• US
• 2h 22min
• PG

• Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón
• Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson

It is the summer before Harry's third year at Hogwarts, and he has heard that it is Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), a renegade wizard, is the Prisoner of Azkaban. What Harry doesn't suspect is that Black has escaped and is coming after him. Expectations are riding high for Harry Potter 3, with a new director in Cuarón (Y Tu…

Hocus Pocus

• 1993
• US
• 1h 37min
• PG

• Directed by: Kenny Ortega
• Written by: David Kirschner/Mick Garris
• Cast: Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy, Omri Katz, Thora Birch, Vinessa Shaw
• UK release: 29 October 1993

Three 17th century witches are brought back to life in modern-day Salem, and go searching for young blood to keep them immortal. Max (Katz) is our hapless hero, helped out of one predicament to the next by resourceful heroine Allison (Vinessa Shaw). The story cracks along, the effects are moderate, the gags good, but it's…

The Irishman

• 
• 2019
• US
• 3h 30min
• 15

• Directed by: Martin Scorsese
• Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Anna Paquin
• UK release: 8 November 2019

The story of mob enforcer and union official Frank Sheeran (De Niro) and his relationship with Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino) and Mafia string-puller Russell Bufalino (Pesci). The de-aging technology is easy to forgive thanks to the masterly filmmaking, and although there’s no room for a complex female character…

It Chapters One and Two (Double Bill)

• 2017 / 2019
• 15

• Directed by: Andy Muschietti
• Cast: Bill Skarsgård

IT: In the summer of 1989, a group of bullied kids band together to destroy a shape-shifting monster, which disguises itself as a clown and preys on the children of Derry, their small Maine town. IT Chapter 2: Twenty-seven years after their first encounter with the terrifying Pennywise, the Losers Club have grown up…

Joker

• 
• 2019
• US
• 2h 2min
• 15

• Directed by: Todd Phillips
• Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Zazie Beetz, Robert De Niro
• UK release: 4 October 2019

Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) is an unsuccessful clown who wants to be a comedian, but he gradually turns to evil. This dizzying origin story about Batman’s nemesis is like an ode to 1970s New York City; Phoenix is astonishing and Phillips’s grave vision never swerves. Unmissable.

The Lost Boys

• 
• 1987
• US
• 1h 37min
• 15

• Directed by: Joel Schumacher
• Written by: Janice Fischer, James Jeremias, Jeffrey Boam
• Cast: Corey Feldman, Jami Gertz, Corey Haim, Edward Herrmann, Barnard Hughes, Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, Dianne Wiest

Anaemic comic horror as a Santa Monica teen falls into bad company in the shape of a mad, bad and dangerous-to-know gang of vampires. Constant MTV visuals make this an altogether resistible affair.

Love Actually

• 
• 2003
• UK / US
• 2h 15min
• 15

• Directed by: Richard Curtis
• Written by: Richard Curtis
• Cast: Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley, Martine McCutcheon, Bill Nighy, Rowan Atkinson
• UK release: 21 November 2003

Curtis aims to prove the anodyne point that love is actually all around us with a huge cast and several different story strands. So we see Nighy, Thompson, Grant, Colin Firth, Martine McCutcheon, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley, Andrew Lincoln and Laura Linney all pop up to play out their roles. Lightweight and…

The Peanut Butter Falcon

• 
• 2019
• US
• 1h 33min
• 12A

• Directed by: Tyler Nilson/Michael Schwartz
• Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Dakota Johnson, Zack Gottsagen

Zak (Gottsagen) has Down’s Syndrome and dreams of becoming a wrestler; one night he sneaks out, meets crab fisherman Tyler (LaBeouf) and they go on the lam. It may sound contrived, but the Tyler-Zak relationship is incredibly sweet, and a cast of indie movie royalty make for a cockle-warming delight.

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

• 
• 2019
• US / Canada
• 1h 51min
• 15

• Directed by: André Øvredal
• Cast: Zoe Margaret Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush
• UK release: 23 August 2019

In Halloween 1968, a gang of teens visit a haunted mansion where they find a book that starts manifesting their fears. Flawed but lively horror flick with plenty going on even when the plot gets choppy, with a charged backdrop of political crisis, prejudice and gossip.

Shakira In Concert: El Dorado World Tour

• 2019

Relive Shakira's return to stages across the world on the big screen.

The Shining

• 
• 1980
• US
• 2h 26min
• 18

• Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
• Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelly Duvall, Philip Stone.

Kubrick's overwrought, overlong horror film dispenses with much of the psychic apparatus of Stephen King's novel to concentrate on the deeper horror of a family turning in on itself. Nicholson, with all the stops out, is bug-eyed and demonic as the writer cracking up violently in an isolated hotel, and the final scenes…

Sister Act

• 1992
• 1h 40min

• Directed by: Emile Ardolino
• Cast: Whoopi Goldberg, Maggie Smith, Kathy Najimy

Whoopi Goldberg stars as a club singer who witnesses a mob crime and is put under witness protection as a nun in a traditional convent.

A Star is Born

• 
• 2018
• US
• 2h 15min
• 15

• Directed by: Bradley Cooper
• Cast: Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, Sam Elliott
• UK release: 5 October 2018

Jackson (Cooper) is a famous musician, his best years behind him, who discovers young singer Ally (Gaga) in a bar one night. What could have been yet another remake is a revelation: Gaga sings up a storm and is nuanced and convincing, but Cooper is extraordinary as co-writer, producer, director and star. Smart, funny and…

Terminator 1 & 2 Double Bill

• 1984 / 199

• Directed by: James Cameron

A double bill of the classic action films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton.

The Thing

• 
• 1982
• US
• 1h 48min
• 18

• Directed by: John Carpenter
• Cast: Kurt Russell

Carpenter's excellent 1982 monster flick revived on digital big screen projection.