What's new at Odeon's this week : Thursday 5th May 2022.

The seventh edition of the Frames of Representation festival takes place in the UK from 5th through until 12th May. This years festival which is centred around the theme of 'Communality', includes eight days of screenings, discussions, workshops, experiments in sound, live performances, and other activities that all explore the idea of communality through different fields of practice. Through the focus on communality, it offers a stage for both engagement and reflection, and looks at documentation and representation as an ensemble of practices through which audiences can shape and elicit their own meanings, causes and effects. Frames of Representation is the Institute of Contemporary Art’s annual film festival, dedicated to foregrounding transgressive, unruly ‘cinema of the real’, which lies at the intersection of fiction and non-fiction.

This years line up of films are as detailed below :-

* Opening Night : 'Dry Ground Burning' from Brazil and Portugal - Adirley Queiros and Joana Pimenta explore the turbulence of contemporary Brazil through the prism of an all-female gang who hijack a pipeline for the sake of their community.

* 'We, Students' - UK Premier from the Central African Republic and France - Rafiki Fariala follows a group of students of the University of Bangui in the Central African Republic, portraying their reflections on political activism and generational conflicts.

* 'The Delights' - UK Premier from Argentina - Eduardo Crespo’s camera observes young students of the Las Delicias agrotechnical boarding school.

* 'American Journal' - UK Premier from France - Arnaud des Pallieres’s latest work unfolds as the four-month diary of an anonymous narrator in an unspecified year, weaving together images and narratives from the USA in the 20th century.

* 'Riotsville' - UK Premier from the USA - the new film from Sierra Pettengill explores the treacherous militarisation of the US Police from the late 1960's up to the present day.

* 'The Dust of Modern Life' - UK Premier from Germany and France - Franziska von Stenglin’s debut feature follows Liem and his friends as they leave their homes in the Highlands of Vietnam to embrace the forest, aiming to maintain the ancient traditions.

* 'Myanmar Diaries' - from Myanmar - Directed by a collective of filmmakers, this film documents life in the country after the violent military coup of February 2021.

* 'My Two Voices' - UK Premier from Canada - Colombian-Canadian filmmaker Lina Rodriguez poetically and empathetically explores the migrant experience through the stories of three Latin American women.

* 'This House' - UK Premier from Canada - Miryam Charles's debut feature investigates the passing of a fourteen year-old girl in the form of an imaginary dialogue with a young girl who can no longer speak for herself.

* 'Brotherhood' - UK Premier from the Czech Republic and Italy - filmed over four years, Francesco Montagner’s feature portrays the aspirations of three brothers to escape from the traditional values imposed on them by their parents and elders in contemporary Bosnia.

* Closing Night : 'When There Is No More Music to Write and Other Roman Stories' - from France and Italy, this latest work from Franco-American artist and filmmaker Eric Baudelaire is fabricated from a variety of materials and sources, exploring the process of creation as a radical act of resistance amid political instability.

This week we have four new cinematic offerings to tease you out to your local movie theatre, kicking off with the 28th film in the MCU that sees this Master of the Mystic Arts open up a door way to various alternate dimensions that results in a threat to the whole of humanity. Next up, we have a British biographical drama film about a much loved children's books author, his marriage to a Hollywood starlet and the tragedy that befell them from which they drew courage to go on to accomplish perhaps their greatest works. Then we turn to an Aussie historical drama set at the end of the 19th century about a heavily pregnant woman living in a remote region with her four children who will go to any lengths to protect her children and her homestead. And we close our the week with a French fantasy drama about a young girl who has just lost her grandmother and is helping her parents clean out her mother's childhood home, and as she explores the house and the surrounding woods she meets a girl her same age building a treehouse.

Whatever your taste in big screen film entertainment is this week - be it any of the four latest release new films as Previewed below, or those doing the rounds currently on general release or as Reviewed and Previewed in previous Blog Posts here at Odeon Online, you are most welcome to share your movie going thoughts, opinions and observations by leaving your relevant, succinct and appropriate views in the Comments section below this or any other Post. We'd love to hear from you, and in the meantime, enjoy your big screen Odeon outing during the week ahead.

'DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS' (Rated M) - is an American Superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of Doctor Stephen Strange and is the sequel to 2016's 'Doctor Strange' which grossed US$668M off the back of a production budget of circa US$200M and is the 28th feature film and part of Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This film is Directed by Sam Raimi who replaced Director Scott Derrickson from the first instalment. Originally slated for release in early May 2021, it was pushed back to early November 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, before it was further shifted to the end of March 2022, and in October 2021, it was shifted once more to its current May 2022 date with the World Premier on 2nd May and its world wide release this week. 

Set a few months following the events of 'Spider-Man : No Way Home' Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) with the help of both new and old mystical allies casts a forbidden spell that opens the doorway to the multiverse, including alternate versions of himself, whose threat to humanity by way of a mysterious new adversary is too great for the combined forces of Strange, Wong (Benedict Wong), and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen). Also starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Xochitl Gomez, Michael Stuhlbarg, Rachel McAdams and Patrick Stewart. 

'TO OLIVIA' (Rated M) - this British drama film was previously titled 'An Unquiet Life' is Directed and Co-Written for the screen by John Hay whose previous feature film credits take in the likes of 'The Steal' in 1995, 'There's Only One Jimmy Grimble' in 2000, 'The Truth About Love' in 2005 and 'Lost Christmas' in 2011. This film is based on Stephen Michael Shearer's biography about the American stage and screen Actress Patricia Neal titled 'An Unquiet Life'. In 1962, Roald Dahl (Hugh Bonneville) was an upcoming children's author, his wife, Patricia Neal (Keeley Hawes), was a Hollywood movie star. This unlikely pairing retreated to the English countryside to bring up their expanding young family, only for their lives to be turned upside down when their seven year old daughter Olivia (Darcey Ewart) contracted encephalitis due to the measles virus and died. Her death devastated the couple, yet, their shared grief became a source of redemption and strength, Neal going on to win an Oscar (for 'Hud' as Best Actress opposite Paul Newman) and Dahl writing the book which made him a household name ('Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'). Also starring Geoffrey Palmer in his final role as Geoffrey Fisher with Sam Heuhgan as Paul Newman, and Conleth Hill as Martin Ritt the American film Director who Directed Neal and Newman in 'Hud'. The film was released in the UK in mid-February, in the US in mid-April and has garnered mixed or average Reviews along the way. 

'THE DROVERS WIFE : THE LEGEND OF MOLLY JOHNSON' (Rated MA15+) - this Australian historical drama is Directed, Written, Co-Produced and stars Leah Purcell as Molly Johnson, and is based on the 1892 short story 'The Drovers Wife' by Henry Lawson. Originally slated for a release in October last year and then delayed due to the cancellation of the in-person Melbourne International Film Festival, the film saw its World Premier screening at SXSW and is finally released this week in Australia. Set in a remote Snowy Mountains township in 1893, the heavily pregnant Indigenous Molly is left to raise her four children alone, protecting the family homestead from floodwaters, intruders and deadly creatures while her drover husband Joe works away for months at a time. Welcoming strangers to her property with 'I’ll shoot you where you stand and I’ll bury you where you fall', she does however, give refuge to an Aboriginal man Yadaka (Rob Collins), a travelling storyteller accused of a terrible crime and on the run from colonial authorities. Initially committed only to the safety of her children and family homestead, over the course of a few days a series of events occur which will change their lives forever. The film has generated largely positive critical reviews.

'PETITE MAMAN' (Rated PG) - is a French fantasy drama film Written and Directed by Celine Sciamma whose previous films include 'Water Lilies' in 2007, 'Tomboy' in 2011, 'Girlhood' in 2014 and 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' in 2019. This film had its World Premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in early March 2021, was released in France in early June 2021 and only now is it released in Australia, having garnered universal critical acclaim along the way and picking up six award wins and a further thirty nominations from around the awards and festivals circuit. Following the death of her beloved grandmother (Margot Abascal), eight-year-old Nelly (Josephine Sanz) accompanies her parents to her mother's childhood home to begin the difficult process of cleaning out its contents. As Nelly explores the house and nearby woods, she is immediately drawn to a neighbour her own age building a treehouse, Marion (Gabrielle Sanz). What follows is a tender tale of childhood grief, memory and connection as Nelly bonds with her mother (Nina Meurisse).

With four new release movie offerings this week to tempt you out to your local Odeon, remember to share your movie going thoughts with your other like minded cinephile friends afterwards here at Odeon Online. In the meantime, I'll see you sometime somewhere at your local Odeon in the coming week.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-