What's new in Odeon's this week : Thursday 8th September 2016.

This week sees the release of Clint Eastwood's 35th feature film as Director. Of those 35 films he has Co-Produced 27, starred in 23 of those and mostly in the lead role, composed the music score for six, and either performed the song or written the words and/or music for sixteen of them. Certainly multi talented and still going strong after seven decades in the acting business having gained his first credited acting role in 1955. For his efforts he won the Best Picture and Best Director Academy Awards for 'Unforgiven' and for 'Million Dollar Baby' plus he has seven other Oscar nominations together with his total awards haul of 140 other wins and 143 nominations for Acting, Directing, Producing and music. A genuine movie making all-rounder. Below is a summary of his Directing credits to date :-

 * 1971 - 'Play Misty for Me' - starring Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter and Donna Mills
 * 1973 - 'High Plains Drifter' - starring Clint Eastwood, Verna Bloom and Marianna Hill
 * 1973 - 'Breezy' - starring William Holden
 * 1975 - 'The Eiger Sanction' - starring Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy
 * 1976 - 'The Outlaw Josey Wales' - starring Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke
 * 1977 - 'The Gauntlet' - starring Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke
 * 1980 - 'Bronco Billy' - starring Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke
 * 1982 - 'Firefox' - starring Clint Eastwood and Freddie Jones
 * 1982 - 'Honkeytonk Man' - starring Clint Eastwood and Kyle Eastwood
 * 1983 - 'Sudden Impact' - starring Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke
 * 1985 - 'Pale Rider' - starring Clint Eastwood and Michael Moriarty
 * 1986 - 'Heartbreak Ridge' - starring Clint Eastwood and Marsha Mason
 * 1988 - 'Bird' - starring Clint Eastwood and Forest Whitaker
 * 1990 - 'White Hunter, Black Heart' - starring Clint Eastwood and Jeff Fahey
 * 1990 - 'The Rookie' - starring Clint Eastwood and Charlie Sheen
 * 1992 - 'Unforgiven' - starring Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman
 * 1993 - 'A Prefect World' - starring Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner and Laura Dern
 * 1995 - 'The Bridges of Madison County' - starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep
 * 1997 - 'Absolute Power' - starring Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman and Ed Harris
 * 1997 - 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' - starring John Cusack and Kevin Spacey
 * 1999 - 'True Crime' - starring Clint Eastwood, James Woods and Isaiah Washington
 * 2000 - 'Space Cowboys' - starring Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland
 * 2002 - 'Blood Work' - starring Clint Eastwood, Jeff Daniels and Angelica Houston
 * 2003 - 'Mystic River' - starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins
 * 2004 - 'Million Dollar Baby' - starring Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman
 * 2006 - 'Flags of Our Fathers' - starring Ryan Phillippe and Barry Pepper
 * 2006 - 'Letters from Iwo Jima' - starring Ken Watanabe
 * 2008 - 'Changeling' - starring Angeline Jolie and Amy Ryan
 * 2008 - 'Gran Torino' - starring Clint Eastwood and Bee Vang
 * 2009 - 'Invictus' - starring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman
 * 2010 - 'Hereafter' - starring Matt Damon
 * 2011 - 'J.Edgar' - starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Judi Dench
 * 2014 - 'Jersey Boys' - starring Christopher Walken and John Lloyd Young
 * 2014 - 'American Sniper' - starring Bradley Cooper
 * 2016 - 'Sully' - starring Tom Hanks and Aaron Eckhart.

Turning to the week ahead, we have six new movie offerings coming to an Odeon near you. Kicking off with a superhero film of a different kind that sees a mere mortal father with strong beliefs living well & truly off the grid with his six kids in remote woodland that eventually have to confront the real world with lasting consequences on them all. Then another hero story based on real events surrounding a quick thinking pilot, a flock of geese and the chilly waters of a major waterway; a quirky Australian coming of age drama; and then a couple of documentaries - one into a weird and wacky Church that seems swathed in secrecy and hell bent on covering up its antics, and the next about a campaign to bring about equality and gay marriage rights in a country that you would least expect to blaze such a trail. And then we wrap up with an animated feature of domestic animals doing their own thing when their owners and human friends are out from 9-5.

With another big selection of diverse cinematic content to choose from in the coming week, plus those other films as Reviewed and Previewed between these humble pages that are still doing the rounds on general release, you are invited as always to share your thoughts, opinions and observations by leaving your own Comments below this or any other Post. We'd love to hear from you, and in the meantime, enjoy your film.

'CAPTAIN FANTASTIC' (Rated M) - no, this is not a Marvel or DC Extended Universe offering up there with 'Captain America' or another reboot of 'The Fantastic Four', but instead an independently produced comedy drama film Directed and Written by Matt Ross that has garnered much critical acclaim since its release. Having premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January this year, screened in competition at Cannes in May in the 'Un Certain Regard' category and won the Best Director Prize, and released in early July in the US, this film now arrives at a cinema near you and calls for your attention.

Starring Viggo Mortensen as father of six Ben Cash who lives with his family well and truly off the grid in the Pacific Northwest in remote Washington State. His wife Leslie (Trin Miller) has a history of mental illness and is hospitalised with bipolar disorder and then he receives news that she has committed suicide. Having brought up their six children Bodevan - 18 (George Mackay), twins Kielyr - 15 (Samantha Isler) and Vespyr -15 (Annalise Basso), Rellian - 14 (Nicholas Hamilton), Zaja - 8 (Shree Crooks) and Nai - 6 (Charlie Shotwell) in isolation of the outside world, schooled at home in the ways of critical thinking, physical training, mental agility, being an one with nature and living without any 21st century conveniences or technology, he must embark on a road trip to New Mexico to attend the funeral. This however, means taking his children into the outside world for the first time,  and confronting Leslie's parents who threaten him with arrest if he attends the funeral. Their journey of discovery and the ways the children respond differently to it and what they encounter en route, causes Ben to re-evaluate the choices made in their upbringing and his own beliefs. Also starring Frank Langella and Anne Dowd as Leslie's parents, and Kathryn Hahn and Steve Zahn as Ben's sister and her husband respectively.

'SULLY' (Rated M) - this is real life story of Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger who captained the US Airways Flight 1549 on January 15th 2009 that soon after departing New York's LaGuardia Airport bound for Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, hit a flock of geese crippling both engines of the Airbus A320. Three minutes into the flight, still at low altitude and with no airport to divert to quickly Sully (Tom Hanks) and his First Officer Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) make the decision to ditch the stricken aircraft in the near freezing waters of the Hudson River saving every one of the 155 passengers and crew on board. This against the odds story tells how 'The Miracle on the Hudson' as it came to be known unfolded, how Sully is made a hero in the press and in the media, but soon afterwards an investigation unfolds that sees Sully's life turn upside down as he must defend his actions on that day, his family and his reputation. Directed and Co-Produced by Clint Eastwood with Lara Linney starring as Sully's wife Lorraine. This film is based on Sully's autobiography 'Highest Duty'.

'GIRL ASLEEP' (Rated M) - this little Australian coming of age drama was filmed in Adelaide, South Australia and premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2015 where it took out the Audience Award for Most Popular Feature Film being bestowed upon Director Rosemary Myers and Producer Jo Dyer. It also won the Grand Jury Prize at the Seattle International Film Festival, and has garnered much critical praise around the festival circuit before arriving back home for a general, albeit fairly limited release. This tells the story of Greta Driscoll (Bethany Whitmore) who is about to turn fifteen sometime during the mid-70's in Australian suburbia. She is content to live in the shadows, be the underdog, and let life pass her by as she clings onto the last vestiges of childhood where there is familiarity, safety, belonging and all the comforts she is used to. She meanders around with her only friend Elliott (Harrison Feldman) until her parents throw a surprise birthday party and invite just about anyone and everyone within the school and whereupon she is flung into a parallel world where we journey through the whimsical, scary, beautiful mind of a young teenage girl.

'MY SCIENTOLOGY MOVIE' (Rated M) - quirky and brave documentarian Louis Theroux has sought for a number of years to make a doco about the Church of Scientology but was refused access, permission and any right to do so by Church officials. In 2011 Theroux and his Producer, Simon Chinn, got together with Director John Dower and started planning this film, but not in the traditional talking heads and archival footage sense. Here we see Theroux combine with former senior Scientologist Mark Rathburn to create dramatic reconstructions of incidents and actions using Actors as Church Officials. Here they portray claims of violent behaviour by the Head of the Church David Miscavige at its international headquarters at Gold Base in Riverside County, California. It is not long however, before the Church retaliates on Theroux and his film making crew with their own camera surveillance as though turning the film making tables on the film maker, in a kind of Mexican camera stand-off, which is all documented here, together with supposedly accurate and faithful reconstructions Directed by Scientology Whistleblower Rathburn for authenticity. The funny, revealing and absurd film premiered at the London Film Festival last October and is likely to leave you asking more questions than those answered into exactly what are they hiding?

'THE QUEEN OF IRELAND' (Rated M) - another documentary this time charting the life and times of world renowned Irish drag queen and LGBTIQ rights activist Panti Bliss aka Rory O'Neill, as Written and Directed by Conor Horgan. As Panti fights for equality in her native Ireland, we join her on the campaign trail which ultimately led to the country becoming the first in the world to sanction gay marriage as voted by the people in early 2015, which would have been an unimaginable concept ten years ago. As she becomes a passionate, powerful and persuasive public figure at a time that Ireland perhaps needed it the most, the message within this film is likely to resonate in particular with Australian audiences who are engaged in much debate about the very same topic. When the film opened in Ireland in October 2015, it had the highest grossing opening weekend for an Irish documentary film ever.

'THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS' (Rated G) - this animated feature from Illumination  Entertainment was Directed by Chris Renaud, released in the US in early July, cost US$75M to make and has so far grossed US$767M making it the highest grossing non-Disney original animated feature film, ever! In a nutshell, the film tells the story of the things our beloved pets get up to when us adults and kids are out at work or at school during the day. Featuring an impressive voice cast that includes Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Albert Brooks, Steve Coogan and Louis C.K. You can be sure that this includes the latest in animation design, sight gags, a witty script, loveable creatures, annoying critters,  pesky animals and adorable pets that is sure to please the child in us all.

With six very different films to choose from this week, there is something for just about everyone, so no excuses - get yourself out to your local movie theatre, watch a film, and share your views here at Odeon Online. In the meantime, I'll see you at the Odeon.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-