Films in Abingdon
75 years on from its release, this is film noir at its best. Insurance salesman Walter Neff [Fred Mac Murray] and LA housewife Phyllis Dietrichson [Barbara Stanwyck] plot the murder of her husband. Wilder’s crisp direction and dialogue by novelist Raymond Chandler are faultless in this much copied story of avarice and ruthless intent.
Dir: Billy Wilder, USA 107mins, 1944
From the opening scenes of this vibrant Kenyan film the viewer is immersed in the small town life of two teenage girls on the brink of life’s discoveries. Tomboy Kena [Samantha Mugatsia] has aspirations to go to university but her attention is caught by Ziki [Sheila Munyiva] and a love affair develops in this socially conservative society where homosexuality is illegal. Director Wanuri Kahiu, following great acclaim at the Cannes film festival, was given a short dispensation to screen the film in Kenya – to full audiences – before it was banned.
“Kahiu gives the film a brightness and vibrancy that works to counterbalance the perilous waters into which Kena and Ziki are venturing.”
Steve Pond, TheWrap
Dir: Wanuri Kahiu, Kenya, 83mins, 2018
Based on the true life memoir of US police officer Ron Stallworth, director Spike Lee takes every opportunity to expose the irony of the infiltration by a black undercover cop into the Colorado branch of the white supremacist organisation Ku Klux Klan. Stallworth [John David Washington] while dealing with the KKK leader David Duke [Topher Grace], needed a white frontman to pose as him, whereupon colleague Flip Zimmermann [Adam Driver] further witnessed the anti-semitism of the organisation.
“Hell, this thing is so mainstream it feels like the start of a franchise. And yet, that mass appeal is a huge part of what makes this funny and righteously furious American film so powerful.”
David Ehrlich, IndieWire.
Dir: Spike Lee, USA, 128mins, 2018