GERRINGONG PICS AND FLICKS

Next Film:   FRIDAY NOVEMBER 2 NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN   Review by David Stratton Jonah, RYAN KWANTEN, lives in an inner-city house with friends Stevie, SARAH SNOOK, and Gus, RYAN CORR. They earn spare cash by hosting parties at weekends and Jonah, particularly, lives a hedonistic lifestyle, though he misses ex girlfriend Ava, BOJANA NOVAKOVIC. One night his latest girlfriend, KATHRYN BECK, discovers a lump the size of a pea in a very intimate place - it's diagnosed as testicular cancer, and requires treatment as soon as possible. But that means Jonah will be sterile and he suddenly decides he needs to be a father. What lifts this Australian romantic-comedy above the level of most of its Hollywood counterparts is the reality of the characters and the situations and the honesty of the film's approach. Once you accept the fact that Jonah has this strong desire for parenthood, everything falls into place. Based on a screenplay by Michael Lucas, based in part on his own ex...

SCREENING FRIDAY OCTOBER 5, 2012 Pics and Flicks presents A ROYAL AFFAIR 4 Star- Margaret Pomeranz Review by ABC At The Movies Margaret Pomeranz The Danes are riding high on the international film scene at the moment with MADS MIKKELSEN winning best actor in Cannes recently. He stars in a new release here, A ROYAL AFFAIR, about a possibly little-known historical event in Denmark in the 18th Century. A young English princess, Caroline - ALICIA VIKANDER - travels to Copenhagen to be married to the Danish king Christian - MIKKEL BOE FOELSGAARD.She's horrified to discover that her young husband is mentally unstable. When Johann Struensee, Mikkelsen, is appointed to be his personal physician, a dangerous closeness develops between the young Queen and the doctor. When the Queen and Struensee become involved in politics, trying to reform some of iniquities in Danish society, they enter even more dangerous territory.This has been beautifully directed by Nikolai Arc...

PLEASE NOTE SPECIAL DATE  FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14  (due to council elections) WISH YOU WERE HERE CREDITS:  Directed by  Kieran Darcy-Smith  and starring  Teresa Palmer ,  Joel Edgerton , Felicity Price  and  Antony Starr . DETAILS:  (MA15+), 89 mins, In Cinemas 26 April 2012,  Australia , English SYNOPSIS:  Four friends lose themselves in a carefree South-East Asian holiday. Only three come back. Dave and Alice return home to their young family desperate for answers about Jeremy's mysterious disappearance. When Alice's sister Steph returns not long after, a nasty secret is revealed about the night her boyfriend went missing. But it is only the first of many. Who amongst them knows what happened on that fateful night when they were dancing under a full moon in Cambodia? GENRES:  Drama ,  Mystery WISH YOU WERE HERE REVIEW   /   SIMON FOSTER  (SBS) RATING RELATED Wish You Wer...

SHOWING ON FRI AUGUST 3, 2012 - 8pm LE HAVRE (French subtitles) In this warmhearted portrait of the French harbor city that gives the film its name, fate throws young African refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) into the path of Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a well-spoken bohemian who works as a shoeshiner. With innate optimism and the unwavering support of his community, Marcel stands up to officials doggedly pursuing the boy for deportation. A political fairy tale that exists somewhere between the reality of contemporary France and the classic cinema of  Jean-Pierre Melville and Marcel Carné, Le Havre is a charming, deadpan delight. ( Rotten Tomatoes ) 4 out of 5 stars says The Guardian " a wonderful blend of beautiful framing/lighting/cinematography blended with Tati-esque comedy and Fassbinder-type acting create a surreal world where problems are always around the corner... with the solutions never trailing too far behind. Also a celebration of film,  actual  film ...

The ARTIST    Friday July 6 at 8pm The Artist, an utterly beguiling silent, black-and-white celebration of early Hollywood won Best Picture at the Oscars 2012. PG cert, 100 min Dir: Michel Hazanavicius; starring Jean Dujardain, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell It turns out they do make ’em like they used to.   The Artist, the final film to be released in 2011 and also the most heart-swellingly joyful one, is a silent movie, screened in black and white and projected in the old-fashioned boxy Academy ratio, with its occasional lines of dialogue printed on intertitle cards. It falls into the long tradition of movies about the movies, and centres on an established film star and a beguiling young actress in late Twenties and early Thirties Hollywood, during the rise of the talkies. But, while the plot and setting instantly bring to mind Singin’ in the Rain, this film pulls in the opposite direction to Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s visua...

A SEPARATION Screening Friday June 1 Doors open 7.30pm Movie shows 8pm A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease. Margaret:   David:  Asghar Farhadi's film A SEPARATION arrives in this country with a reputation, a good one. This multi-award winning film begins with a couple addressing the camera . Simin, LEILA HATAMI, is seeking a divorce from Nader, PAYMAN MOADI, because he won't leave his Alzheimer-afflicted father to live overseas on a visa that is rapidly running out. Denied a divorce, she goes to live with her mother while he returns home to his father and their daughter Termeh, SARINA FARHADI. Into their household comes Razieh, SAREH BAYAT, a woman from a conservative, religious working class background. She arrives each day with her daughter to help look after the old man. An incident happen...

FLICKERFEST  COMES TO GERRINGONG   Friday May 4, 8pm:  Best of Australian Sat May 5, 5.30pm:  Flickerkids Sat May 5, 8pm:  Best of International $10 adult per session/ $5 child 5-7 (under 5 free) Free entry for Pics and Flicks members   “Bite Size Chunks Of Great Cinema”   Celebrating 21 years of short film excellence Flickerfest Australia’s leading short film festival will be presenting another award winning programme of the best of Australia’s and the worlds short films.  Flickerfest remains Australia’s only Academy® Accredited and BAFTA recognised short film festival ensuring that we continue to present an A-list class short film competition recognised amongst the best in the world.   A record 2200 entries were received for Flickerfest 2012, and a selection of the top 100 shorts were selected in official competition, all handpicked to represent the most innovative, creative and cutting edge short films b...

OF GODS AND MEN - Screening Friday April 13, 2012 Eight French Christian monks live in harmony with their Muslim brothers in a monastery perched in the mountains of North Africa in the 1990s. When a crew of foreign workers is massacred by an Islamic fundamentalist group, fear sweeps though the region. The army offers them protection, but the monks refuse. Should they leave? Despite the growing menace in their midst, they slowly realize that they have no choice but to stay... come what may. This film is loosely based on the life of the Cistercian monks of Tibhirine in Algeria, from 1993 until their kidnapping in 1996. Rotten Tomato Reviews 4 1/2 stars The Guardian Review : " A profound and immaculately acted movie explores the eternal questions of faith and human strengths and weaknesses." Margaret and David Review : Margaret:   MARGARET: I'm giving it three and a half stars. I think there's some wonderful stuff in it. David:  ...

WOMAN ON THE 6TH FLOOR (French with English Subtitles) Friday March 2, 2012, 7.30pm for 8pm start. Review by Margaret Pomeranz Fabrice Luchini is a French actor that always engages, although his ability to play contained uptight men who meet their own comeuppance is fast becoming a cliché. In this he is a stockbroker, Jean-Louis, who adheres to a rigid schedule of a perfectly cooked egg before he sets off to work. His wife Suzanne (Sandrine Kiberlain) is running up against their maid, a left-over from the regime of his mother who died only a short time ago. In the dust-up the old maid quits which leaves this bourgeois house devoid of anyone to do the real work. Suzanne's friends recommend one of the many Spanish women who are floating around Paris in the early 1960's, refugees from Franco's oppressive regime. No sooner are Jean-Louis' eggs cooked perfectly by Maria (Natalia Verbeke) than he becomes involved in the lives of the serving women who live...

"GASLAND" SPECIAL SHOWING FRIDAY FEBRUARY 17, 2012  Pics and Flicks is assisting Transition Towns Kiama to bring this highly acclaimed documentary to the community. Starts 7.30pm Gerringong Town Hall  Entry is by gold coin donation. Pics and Flicks membership does not cover this film.   Coal Seam Gas Extraction has become a major issue worldwide as this form of mining spreads rapidly in rural and residential areas. This issue has immediate relevance for Kiama and the Illawarra as extensive Gas Exploration leases cover much of the Illawarra area.  "GasLand' presents the effects of coal seam gas mining and how this impacted on certain American communities. THE DOCUMENTARY: The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the US. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a "Saudia Arabia of natural gas". But is gas drilling safe?  Wh...

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 3: This Australian film received fourteen nominations for AACT awards and won the cinematography award. THE HUNTER Rated M Review by David Stratton Martin David, WILLEM DAFOE, a modern-day soldier of fortune, rendezvous in Paris with a mysterious man, Jacek Koman, who hires him to travel to Tasmania and attempt to locate a Tasmanian Tiger - although the animal is believed to be extinct, there are rumours that one has been sighted - and its DNA, whether the animal is dead or alive, represents a fortune to vested interests. In a remote part of the island state, Martin moves into a room in the home of Lucy Armstrong, FRANCES O'CONNOR, mother of two small children; Lucy is still grieving over the fact that her husband, Jarrah, went missing some time ago. While Martin sets about methodically setting traps for the tiger, Lucy and her children are watched over in a possessive way by their neighbour, Jack Mendy, SAM NEILL. Based on a novel by Julia...