As the weather warms up, so does the programming: one of the year’s hottest films arrives this month, with Luca Guadagnino’s sizzling Challengers arriving on our screens. As if that wasn’t enough, we’re also going to be screening The Fall Guy, which stars Ryan Gosling as a worse-for-wear stuntman, alongside a host of independent titles. Read on to see what’s coming up this May!
LA CHIMERA arrives Friday 17 May
Director Alice Rohrwacher’s (Happy as Lazzaro) penchant for magical realism (I would put magic realism rather than magical) shines through in La Chimera, which sees Arthur, a British archaeologist (Josh O’Connor - also heating up the Lexi screen in Challengers this month!) become involved with a band of tombaroli: robbers of prized Etruscan artefacts. Suffused with dreamy mysticism and mythology, we’re transported to rural Italy in the 1980s, where an assortment of rogues lead Arthur through the worlds of both the living and the dead, as they search for wealth - and he for his long lost love, Beniamina. View showtimes.
CHALLENGERS lands on Friday 3 April
Ah yes, the time-honoured combination of sexual tension and ... tennis. Really, though, this is a summery joy of a film which sees Zendaya star as Tashi, a tennis prodigy turned star coach, who’s trying to revive her washed-up tennis-playing husband’s champion status. His final hurdle? Beating his ex-best friend (who’s also Tashi’s ex-boyfriend, awkwardly). Inevitably, a love triangle emerges, as the pair vie for Tashi’s affections on and off the pitch. Beneath it all is a simmering study of not just lust, but also the nature of competition itself, be it in the form of tennis grand slams or romance. Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) directs this effervescent new feature, which also stars Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist. View showtimes.
Catch THE FALL GUY at The Lexi From Friday 10 May
It’s the bleach blonde Ryan Gosling renaissance, and we’re here for it. Following his frankly enthralling performance as Ken in last year's smash hit Barbie, Gosling is back on the big screen in another very entertaining role, in action-comedy (with a heavy sprinkle of romance) The Fall Guy. Gosling stars as Colt Seavers, a washed up stuntman, who is called back into action when a major studio movie faces a small snag: its director, who happens to be Colt’s ex, Jody Moreno (played by Emily Blunt) has gone missing, and it’s up to Colt to track her down. View showtimes.
LOVE LIES BLEEDING arrives on Friday 17 May
Wildly entertaining, sometimes violent, and often steamy, Love Lies Bleeding is an 80s fever dream of a movie, complete with outrageous mullets and questionable gym wear, and it's all topped off with rampant steroid use. Anyway, if that's got you hooked in, Rose Glass' (Saint Maud) sophomore effort follows gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart), whose romance with ambitious bodybuilder Jackie leads to the pair being drawn into an explosive entanglement with Lou's criminal father. It’s a grimy rollercoaster of a film. Ed Harris plays Lou’s murderous red neck father in one of the most fun / horrible performances we’ve seen in a while. View Showtimes.
TIGER STRIPES screens from Friday 24 May
Puberty is hardly pleasant at the best of times. Tiger Stripes takes that fact to the extreme, as director Amanda Nell Eu combines Southeast Asian folklore, horror, and occasional humour to craft a fearsome realisation of the violent changes that mind and body undergo as we come of age. 11-year-old Zaffan is carefree, the natural leader among her group of friends. But when she becomes one of the first to hit puberty, she discovers a terrifying, gruesome secret about her body. She's ostracised by her village and her peers, and through a ferocious trial by fire, she comes to recognise that she'll have to embrace the body that she's grown to fear, if she wants to emerge as a strong young woman. Tiger Stripes is the first ever Malaysian film to win the Critics' Week Prize at Cannes, and it's easy to see why. In the words of Alissa Simon, for Variety, it's 'deliciously subversive'. View showtimes.
BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD BLACKBERRY plays from Friday 24 May
Adapted from a novel by Georgian activist Tamta Melashvili, Elene Naveriani directs Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, a bittersweet, romantic drama, following 48-year-old Etero’s unexpected sexual - and existential - awakening. There’s two things that Etero, a woman living in a small village in Georgia, holds in high esteem: cake, and freedom. While this might seem like a pretty reasonable set of values, Etero’s unmarried status is often the cause of gossip in the village. Yet unexpectedly - and most certainly not because of the gossip - Etero finds herself falling into a passionate affair with a man, triggering an unexpected reconsideration of her life’s solitary philosophy. Suddenly, Etero’s not quite so lonely. Yet she finds herself torn between retaining her fiercely independent way of life, or sharing her life with another. This is a wonderful film. View showtimes.
Gen Sandle
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