The Prince Charles Cinema

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The Substance
2024 141mins USA (18) Horror
Directed by Coralie Fargeat Starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid

5 Academy Award Nominations – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay (Original), Best Make Up & Hair (Winner), Best Leading Actress

A fading celebrity decides to use a black market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.

Beau Travail
1999 93mins France (15) Drama
Directed by Claire Denis Starring Denis Lavant, Gregoire Colin, Michel Subor

Foreign Legion officer Galoup recalls his once glorious life, training troops in the Gulf of Djibouti. His existence there was happy, strict and regimented, until the arrival of a promising young recruit, Sentain, plants the seeds of jealousy in Galoup's mind.

The People's Joker
92mins USA (15) Comedy / Fantasy
Directed by Vera Drew Starring Vera Drew, Lynn Downey, Kane Distler

A law-breaking comedian who is grappling with her gender identity forms a new anti-comedy troupe with a friend and finds herself battling a fascistic caped crusader.

This revolutionary DIY parody film and hilarious reimagining of the classic autobiographical coming-of-age story follows an unconfident, closeted trans girl as she moves to Gotham City to make it big as a comedian by joining the cast of UCB Live - a government-sanctioned late night sketch show in a world where comedy has been outlawed. 

As mainstream success eludes our heroine, leading her to unite with a ragtag team of rejects, misfits, and a certain love interest named Mister J, "Joker the Harlequin" is born again as a confident (and psychotic) joker on a collision course with the city's fascist caped crusader. Vats of feminizing chemicals, sexy cartoon interludes, scarecrow psychiatrists, CGI Lorne Michaels, and psychedelic gender dysphoria all play supporting roles. 

Helmed by writer/director/editor/star Vera Drew and using her own life experiences as a basis for the film, THE PEOPLES JOKER is a deeply personal journey that's as much documentary as it is parody.

American Psycho
2000 101mins USA, Canada (18) Horror
Directed by Mary Harron Starring Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Reese Witherspoon, Jared Leto, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas, Chloe Sevigny

A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.

Daisies (Sedmikrásky)
1966 76mins Czechoslovakia, Slovakia (15) Comedy
Directed by Vera Chytilová Starring Jitka Cerhová, Ivana Karbanová

After realizing that all world is spoiled, Marie and Marie are committed to be spoiled themselves. They rip off older men, feast in lavish meals and do all kinds of mischief. But what is all this leading to?

Point Break
1991 122mins USA (15) Action / Crime
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow Starring Patrick Swayze, Keanu Reeves, Gary Busey

After a string of bizarre bank robberies in Southern California, with the crooks donning masks of various former presidents, a federal agent, Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), infiltrates the suspected gang. But this is no ordinary group of robbers. They're surfers -- led by the charismatic Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) -- who are addicted to the rush of thievery. But when Utah falls in love with a female surfer, Tyler (Lori Petty), who is close to the gang, it complicates his sense of duty.

Bound
1996 109mins USA (18) Film
Directed by Lana Wachowski|Lilly Wachowski Starring Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon, Joe Pantoliano

Sparks fly when Violet (Jennifer Tilly) sets eyes on Corky (Gina Gershon) in an elevator. Violet is the girlfriend of a violent gangster, Caesar (Joe Pantoliano), while Corky is fresh out of prison and doing renovations on the apartment next door. As the two women launch into a passionate love affair, they assemble an intricate plan for Violet to escape from Caesar, with two million dollars of the mob's money -- but the important part is to make it out alive.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
1975 202mins Belgium, France (15) Drama
Directed by Chantal Akerman Starring Delphine Seyrig, January Decorte, Henri Storck

Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig), the widowed mother of a teenage son, Sylvain (Jan Decorte), ekes out a drab, repetitive existence in her tiny Brussels apartment. Jeanne's days are divided between humdrum domestic chores -- shopping, cooking, housework -- and her job as an occasional prostitute, which keeps her financially afloat. She seems perfectly resigned to her situation until a series of slight interruptions in her routine leads to unexpected and dramatic changes.

Lost in Translation
2003 102mins USA (15) Film
Directed by Sofia Coppola Starring Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi

A lonely, aging movie star named Bob Harris (Bill Murray) and a conflicted newlywed, Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), meet in Tokyo. Bob is there to film a Japanese whiskey commercial; Charlotte is accompanying her celebrity-photographer husband. Strangers in a foreign land, the two find escape, distraction and understanding amidst the bright Tokyo lights after a chance meeting in the quiet lull of the hotel bar. They form a bond that is as unlikely as it is heartfelt and meaningful.

Je Tu Il Elle
1974 86mins France, Belgium (18) Drama
Directed by Chantal Akerman Starring Chantal Akerman, Niels Arestrup, Claire Wauthion

Akerman’s ambiguous triptych was based on her experiences hitchhiking from Paris to Brussels. A woman (played by the filmmaker) holes up in a room, obsessively eating sugar and rearranging furniture. Then we follow her hunt for love and connection – first with a truck driver, then an ex-lover. With its uninterrupted erotic-free ten-minute lesbian sex scene, this is one of the most radical and assured sequences in any feature debut from the 1970s.

The Matrix
1999 136mins USA (15) Science Fiction
Directed by Lana Wachowski|Lilly Wachowski Starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss

When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth--the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.

News From Home
1976 89mins Germany, Belgium, West Germany, France (U) Documentary
Directed by Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman’s epistolary film, shot in the grime of 70s New York, bridges the distance from Brussels through dictated letters from her mother.

Les rendez-vous d'Anna
1978 128mins France, Germany, Belgium (15) Drama
Directed by Chantal Akerman Starring Aurore Clément, Helmut Griem, Magali Noël

In one of Akerman’s most penetrating character studies, an accomplished filmmaker makes her way through a series of Western European cities to promote her newest release... passing through a succession of exquisitely shot brief encounters, meeting a succession of equally lost souls, which gradually reveal her emotional and physical detachment from the world. This semi-autobiographical film was a major step forward for the itinerant Akerman, mirroring her own, often turbulent, wanderings.

La Captive
2000 118mins France (15) Romance/Drama
Directed by Chantal Akerman Starring Sylvie Testud, Stanislas Merhar, Olivia Bonamy

‘That’s a story for me,’ said Akerman of Marcel Proust’s The Prisoner, when she remembered ‘there was that apartment, and the corridor, and the two characters’. This languorous, beguiling adaptation – where, again, Akerman resets our sense of time – probes possessive love. A wealthy young man obsesses over his girlfriend. But who is the captor asks Akerman, who considered a person could be a cage as much as a room.

Golden Eighties
1986 96mins Switzerland, Belgium, France (12A) Musical / Comedy
Directed by Chantal Akerman Starring Myriam Boyer, Delphine Seyrig, Fanny Cottençon

You can almost smell the hairspray in Akerman’s exuberant but subversive musical about the many romantic entanglements of salon workers in a shopping mall basement. Its natty 1980s style, witty song lyrics, rapturous dance sequences, not to mention a gloriously bitchy male-suited quartet, deliver all the joys of the genre. At the same time, Akerman critiques the consumerist ‘paradise’ around them, questioning whether love, if it’s tied to conformity, really is the answer.

River of Grass
76mins (15) Drama
Directed by Kelly Reichardt Starring Lisa Bowman, Larry Fessenden, Dick Russell

In a run-down small-town between Miami and the Everglades, Cozy (Lisa Bowman), a dissatisfied housewife, longs for an adventure. One night, at a nearby bar, she meets Lee Ray (Larry Fessenden), an equally disaffected handyman who’s never left home. As sparks fly between them, a gun accidentally goes off. Thinking they have committed murder, the pair decide to flee, but their naive natures and limited bank balances mean they don't get very far. Cleverly playing on procedural drama tropes, Kelly Reichardt’s remarkably assured debut feature showcases her keen eye for observing the unsaid in this story about the stories we tell ourselves to escape the banality of everyday life. 

Presentaion courtesy of RADIANCE FILMS.