The Review - AT THE MOVIES with DAN CARRIER Published: 6 August 2009
Pick of the Indies
MANY of the buildings can still be seen in new guises, such as the Prince of Wales Road cinema that now doubles up as a community law centre and a carpet warehouse. Others have become nightclubs, but most have simply disappeared, unsympathetically redeveloped, faded away as quickly as the print films they used to show in the 1930s.
But now the lost local cinemas are due to be kept alive – if only in memory. Film student Rebecca Davies, who is completing a masters at University College London, wants to speak to people in Camden who remember visiting picture houses during the 1940s. Contact Indies at dcarrier@camdennewjournal.co.uk or call 020 7419 9000 for details of how to share your memories of the period.
* MEXICAN film Sin Nombre is a highly dramatic thriller that has scooped awards at the Sundance and Edinburgh Film festivals. It is tipped for an Oscar next year – and now you’ve got the chance to watch the drama and quiz the director at the Kilburn Tricycle.
Cary Joji Fukunaga has created a wonderful epic following the travails – and travels – of three teenagers as they trek their way to the United States border in search of a new life.
It is beautiful to watch and incredibly moving.
The screening of Sin Nombre is on Wednesday August 12 at 8.30pm. The question and answer will follow.
Certificate 15. Tickets: £13/12
• MESRINE: Killer Instinct (L’Instinct De Mort) surprisingly failed to get rave reviews in Cannes earlier this year.
But the first part of director Jean-Francois Richet’s dramatisation of the life of 1970’s Parisian “Robin Hood”, Jacques Mesrine, strikes a blow for France’s wham-bam genre.
Mesrine, a man of many guises, is played by the eternally edgy Vincent Cassel, the not-so loveable rogue from the excellent Eastern Promises. Beards, long-hair, short-hair and glasses can’t get in the way of Cassel’s on-screen menace.
At times a cinematic Guess Who?, it tells the tale of the notoriously evasive Mesrine. Cassel, who apparently felt the original script gave Mesrine too much kudos, is surely guaranteed cult status. Even if it isn’t in his native France.
Tant pis. Russell Handy