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Films

Our Next Film: The Nile Hilton Incident

Wednesday, 25 April 2018, 2:00 pm & 7:30 pm

2017, Sweden/Denmark/Germany, 106 minutes, (NR) subtitled
Director – Tarik Saleh

Set against the backdrop of the Egyptian Revolution, this thriller features a police officer who investigates the murder of a woman. What initially seems to be a killing of a prostitute turns into a more complicated case involving the very elite of Egypt.

TRAILER:

LINKS:
IMDb – The Nile Hilton Incident
Rotten Tomatoes – The Nile Hilton Incident

Audience Response

Audience Reaction: A Fantastic Woman

The Pontardawe Film Club audience rated A Fantastic Woman (Una Mujer Fantastica) as follows:

AUDIENCE REACTION:

  • 13 excellent
  • 11 very good
  • 2 good
  • 2 average
  • 1 poor

Giving an overall rating of 78%

COMMENTS:

  • Compassionate film about being transgender and prejudice – lovely voice
  • Brilliant, tragic, ugly, sordid, beautiful
  • A passionate and powerful resistance to prejudice
  • Fab film, nice venue, staff welcoming
  • Brilliant performance by Daniela Vega
  • Wonderful film and riveting performance by Daniela Vega. Stunning!
  • Parts moved me unbelievably other parts left me cold
  • An intriguing and moving film not as gripping as I had expected but I enjoyed the upbeat ending
  • A very powerful film  good music and use of lighting
  • Very engaging and sympathetic protagonist – put spotlight on prejudices and raised valuable questions
  • Performance was good, cinematography good , too long! Bored!
  • I wanted more from this film than I feel it ultimately delivered
Audience Response

Audience Reaction: The Shape of Water

The PontardaweFilm Club audice rated The Shape of Water as follows

AUDIENCE REACTION:

  • Excellent              31
  • Very Good          18
  • Good                     6
  • Average               3
  • Poor                      3

Giving an overall rating of 79%

COMMENTS:

  • Expensively made twaddle
  • Long and tedious.  Not really see the point…
  • Absolutely beautiful film
  • Interesting that the Russian spy becomes heroic
  • Not as amazing as Pans Labarinth but engaging adult fairy tale and quite beautiful imagery throughout– loved the homage to classic film
  • Beautifully done – took me through many emotions – a strange story but gorgeous despite the gory bits.
  • Really enjoyed it
  • Very well done – a real modern fairytale.
  • The grey selkie all over again.  Fab!
  • Deserving of the Oscar
  • A strange but good film
  • To my great surprise I loved it
  • Marvellous.  A great love story on many levels
  • Very enjoyable!  Very imaginative.  Very dramatic
  • Splash Noir!  Beautiful visual metaphoe and a classic Chekov’s gun
  • Seen and loved all his movies
Audience Response

Audience Reaction: The Florida Project

The Pontardawe Film Club audience reaction to The Florida Project was as follows:

AUDIENCE REACTION:

The Florida Project failed to hit the mark for film club

  • Excellent              8
  • Very Good          12
  • Good                     8
  • Average               3
  • Poor                      9

Giving an overall rating of 54%

COMMENTS:

  • Interesting.  Excellent performances from the cast.  Very engaging
  • The divide
  • Very good but very depressing
  • Very well acted
  • In a word – ‘WOW!’
  • Not the ‘We are poor but make our own fun’ film I was expecting
  • Easy to judge the mother for bringing up her child as a friend, but , who knows what background she had that ill-prepared her for motherhood
  • Brilliant film about awful people living in the most awful country in the world
  • Hell of a message and very dull in parts.  Desperate film about desperate situation
  • Engaging from start to the staggering finish – surely destined to be a classic!  More of this please
  • Random story line.  All over the place.  Irrelevant end!
  • Hard to see what the point of this film was – and impossible to tell what they were talking about most of the time.
  • Confusing finale
  • Too long, bored at times, moving at end
  • Awful end
Films

Film Club, Our Next Film: A Fantastic Woman

Wednesday, 11 April 2018, 2:00 pm & 7:30 pm

2017, Chile/Spain, 104 minutes, (R) subtitled
Director – Sebastian Lelio

Daniela Vega plays a transgender singer whose relationship with a much older man is brought abruptly to an end when he suffers a fatal aneurism. Instead of being treated with compassion she is faced with suspicion and contempt from the authorities and hostility from his family. An impressive exposition of courage and strength.

TRAILER:

LINKS:
IMDb – A Fantastic Woman
Rotten Tomatoes – A Fantastic Woman

AUDIENCE REACTION:

  • 13 excellent
  • 11 very good
  • 2 good
  • 2 average
  • 1 poor

Giving an overall rating of 78%

COMMENTS:

  • Compassionate film about being transgender and prejudice – lovely voice
  • Brilliant, tragic, ugly, sordid, beautiful
  • A passionate and powerful resistance to prejudice
  • Fab film, nice venue, staff welcoming
  • Brilliant performance by Daniela Vega
  • Wonderful film and riveting performance by Daniela Vega. Stunning!
  • Parts moved me unbelievably other parts left me cold
  • An intriguing and moving film not as gripping as I had expected but I enjoyed the upbeat ending
  • A very powerful film  good music and use of lighting
  • Very engaging and sympathetic protagonist – put spotlight on prejudices and raised valuable questions
  • Performance was good, cinematography good , too long! Bored!
  • I wanted more from this film than I feel it ultimately delivered

Films

Our Next Film: The Shape Of Water

Tuesday, 27 March 2018, 2:00 pm & 7:30 pm

2017, USA, 119 minutes, (15)
Director – Guillermo del Toro

An other worldy fairy tale set against the backdrop of the Cold War era in America. In a hidden high security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is trapped in isolation. Her life changes forever when she and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a classified experiment.

TRAILER:

LINKS:
IMDb – The Shape Of Water
Rotten Tomatoes – The Shape Of Water

AUDIENCE REACTION:

  • Excellent              31
  • Very Good          18
  • Good                     6
  • Average               3
  • Poor                      3

Giving an overall rating of 79%

COMMENTS:

  • Expensively made twaddle
  • Long and tedious.  Not really see the point…
  • Absolutely beautiful film
  • Interesting that the Russian spy becomes heroic
  • Not as amazing as Pans Labarinth but engaging adult fairy tale and quite beautiful imagery throughout– loved the homage to classic film
  • Beautifully done – took me through many emotions – a strange story but gorgeous despite the gory bits.
  • Really enjoyed it
  • Very well done – a real modern fairytale.
  • The grey selkie all over again.  Fab!
  • Deserving of the Oscar
  • A strange but good film
  • To my great surprise I loved it
  • Marvellous.  A great love story on many levels
  • Very enjoyable!  Very imaginative.  Very dramatic
  • Splash Noir!  Beautiful visual metaphoe and a classic Chekov’s gun
  • Seen and loved all his movies

Films

Our Next Film: The Florida Project

Wednesday, 14 March 2018, 2:00 pm & 7:30 pm

2017, USA, 111 minutes, (15)
Director – Sean Baker

Set over one summer, the film follows precocious six-year-old Moonee as she courts mischief and adventure with her ragtag playmates and bonds with her rebellious but caring mother, all while living in the shadows of Walt Disney World.

TRAILER:

LINKS:
IMDb – The Florida Project
Rotten Tomatoes – The Florida Project

AUDIENCE REACTION:

The Florida Project failed to hit the mark for film club

  • Excellent              8
  • Very Good          12
  • Good                     8
  • Average               3
  • Poor                      9

Giving an overall rating of 54%

COMMENTS:

  • Interesting.  Excellent performances from the cast.  Very engaging
  • The divide
  • Very good but very depressing
  • Very well acted
  • In a word – ‘WOW!’
  • Not the ‘We are poor but make our own fun’ film I was expecting
  • Easy to judge the mother for bringing up her child as a friend, but , who knows what background she had that ill-prepared her for motherhood
  • Brilliant film about awful people living in the most awful country in the world
  • Hell of a message and very dull in parts.  Desperate film about desperate situation
  • Engaging from start to the staggering finish – surely destined to be a classic!  More of this please
  • Random story line.  All over the place.  Irrelevant end!
  • Hard to see what the point of this film was – and impossible to tell what they were talking about most of the time.
  • Confusing finale
  • Too long, bored at times, moving at end
  • Awful end

Audience Response

Audience Reaction: The Death of Stalin

AUDIENCE REACTION: The Death Of Stalin

An intrepid audience braved the weather and turned up  to enjoy the latest Lannucci film – although it has to be said it was Siberian weather inside as well as outside last night – apologise from the Arts Centre – Theatre Genedlaethol were performing in the day and their 5 hour get-out necessitated the doors being open until after 6pm – the boilers just couldn’t manage to heat up the room is such a short time!

  • Excellent 24
  • Very good 7
  • Good 9
  • Average 1

Giving an overall rating of 82.9%

COMMENTS:

  • Laugh out loud and somewhat uncomfortably funny given the very brutal events portrayed
  • Glad I have seen it.  Fancy not recognising Simon Russell Beale   Some great lives.  However a bit of me agrees with critics  – it is no laughing matter.  Good film though.
  • It’s so surprising that we can laugh about such tragic events but yet we did.  So black and we laughed so much.
  • A very humorous look at life of the time of secret Russia – good acting
  • Superb.  Second time I’ve seen it.  Thank you
  • At times laugh out loud funny, though some of it was a bit tasteless.  General interesting and enjoyable
  • Light and dark – a highly amusing take on an ugly period in history
  • Very enjoyable but freezing cold
  • Wonderful film   horosho spasibo
Audience Response

Audience Reaction: Loving Vincent

A very popular choice with Loving Vincent and a huge response with 68 slips returned – and a load of walk ups!  Everyone happy.

  • Good             3
  • Very good    7
  • Excellent      58

Giving an overall rating of 95.2%

Could be up for Ponty Award!

COMMENTS:

  • It was just as well that this film’s speculative detective-mystery ‘plot’ — which  I found not only difficult to follow but didn’t even say very much about Vincent the man — was largely irrelevant, since it was the astonishing technical achievement of the production that led me finally to give it a rating of ‘Very Good’. (That said, I do generally prefer to be able to gaze long at paintings, including those by Van Gogh!)
  • Nit-picking department: all the locals in Auvers-sur-Oise (a village 20 miles from Paris) spoke with vaguely Lancashire accents, which might have been an eccentric choice but at least showed consistency (the marked exception of the Irish boatman apart!). What was totally improbable, however, was that Armand (the yellow-coated ‘detective’) and his postman Dad, both of whom were born and raised just outside Arles should speak so differently: Armand sounding like a Sahf London wide-boy, while his father was yet another Irishman.   
  • Inspirational.  What a clever concept
  • Very innovative
  • Lovely experience and I had lunch in the café.  When’s the next one
  • Stunning
  • Masterpiece.  Just like his art.  As moving as gazing at his many works
  • An amazing achievement and totally beautiful
  • Brilliant, outstanding and very moving.  This is the first time I have written a comment
  • I was intrigued by the concept of the painted film.  I felt it did well to sorting the ambiguity of his death as it is an often untold story.  Very good art and moving scenes – I cried.
  • Unable to take my eyes of the screen.  Every single moment was worth pausing over.  Changed my appreciation of both painting and film
  • What a banquet of colour.   Thank you for putting this film on  it the most beautiful film I’ve seen in years.   Bravo!
  • Fantastic film.  Diolch
  • Beautiful art!  Absolutely amazing.  So well portrayed.  So moving.  A real masterpiece to appreciate.  So tragic.  A must see!!
  • Clever and uplifting.  Van Goch’s paintings from the inside out.
  • Once can see why it tool so long to film.  Excellent content and artistic impressions
  • Marvellous.  Thank you  Dreamy5
  • Unique
  • Quite nice to look at, but was the narrative that strong?
  • Brilliant film.  So glad you put it on.  We came from Swansea to see it.  Thanks
  • Amazing, mesmerising, beautiful.  I loved the way the paintings rippled and all the detail.
  • Thought provoking.  Excellent portrayal of the artist.  Thanks
  • I had problems with the dialogue quality.  Fortunately I have read most of Van Gogh’s letters.
  • Beautiful – visually difficult to get used to at first but when I settled to it , it became easy to watch
  • Absolutely fabulous.  The work that went into the cartoon was exceptional.  Wish all cartoons were done in this style instead of CGI
  • Been waiting to see it for ages.  I will watch it without the sound next time so my brain can absorb the visuals
  • Made me nostalgic for his work
Films

Our Next Film: The Death Of Stalin

Wednesday, 28 February 2018,  7:30 pm only

2017, France/UK, 106 minutes, (15)
Director – Armando Iannucci

A satirical take on the Soviet dictator’s last days and depicts the chaos of the regime after his death.

TRAILER:

LINKS:
IMDb – The Death Of Stalin
Rotten Tomatoes – The Death Of Stalin

AUDIENCE REACTION:

An intrepid audience braved the weather and turned up  to enjoy the latest Lannucci film – although it has to be said it was Siberian weather inside as well as outside last night – apologise from the Arts Centre – Theatre Genedlaethol were performing in the day and their 5 hour get-out necessitated the doors being open until after 6pm – the boilers just couldn’t manage to heat up the room is such a short time!

  • Excellent 24
  • Very good 7
  • Good 9
  • Average 1

Giving an overall rating of 82.9%

COMMENTS:

  • Laugh out loud and somewhat uncomfortably funny given the very brutal events portrayed
  • Glad I have seen it.  Fancy not recognising Simon Russell Beale   Some great lives.  However a bit of me agrees with critics  – it is no laughing matter.  Good film though.
  • It’s so surprising that we can laugh about such tragic events but yet we did.  So black and we laughed so much.
  • A very humorous look at life of the time of secret Russia – good acting
  • Superb.  Second time I’ve seen it.  Thank you
  • At times laugh out loud funny, though some of it was a bit tasteless.  General interesting and enjoyable
  • Light and dark – a highly amusing take on an ugly period in history
  • Very enjoyable but freezing cold
  • Wonderful film   horosho spasibo