Cinema Updates

Monday, December 12, 2011
Yi Yi (2001) at Cinema El Fourn, Darb 17 18, 8:00 PM
English subtitles
Taiwan, Director: Edward Yang

A wedding and a grandmother's illness reveal fault lines in the lives of one Taipei family in Edward Yang's extraordinary film. Yi Yi is built from deceptively simple elements that together create a complex, warm, and utterly convincing portrait of family life. NJ Jian is a businessman facing bankruptcy, but he has to juggle his financial problems with family strife when his mother-in-law falls into a coma. NJ's wife, Min-Min, brings her mother home, and each family member--including daughter Ting-Ting and her delightful little brother Yang-Yang--spends hours talking to the old lady. These conversations become confessionals and the characters gradually re-evaluate their relationships. There are no catastrophic conflicts, only the ordinary, sometimes troubled, unfolding of lives. Yang enhances the film's sense of reality by frequently holding the camera back from the action. The use of long shots and unexpected angles makes it seem like the audience is eavesdropping, catching glimpses of lives passing by. Whether chronicling middle-age father NJ’s tentative flirtations with an old flame or precocious young son Yang-Yang’s attempts at capturing reality with his beloved camera, the filmmaker deftly imbues every gorgeous frame with a compassionate clarity. Warm, sprawling, and dazzling, this intimate epic is one of the undisputed masterworks of the new century..



Wednesday, December 14, 2011
The Royal Tenenbaums at Cinema El Fourn, Darb 17 18, 8:00 PM
English subtitles
(2001) – USA, Director: Wes Anderson

A comedic masterwork that ripples with inventive, richly emotional substance. Because of the all-star cast, hilarious dialogue, and oddball characters existing in their own, wholly original universe, it's easy to miss the depth and complexity of Anderson's brand of comedy. Here, it revolves around Royal Tenenbaum, the errant patriarch of a dysfunctional family of geniuses, including precocious playwright Margot, boyish financier and grieving widower Chas, and has-been tennis pro Richie. All were raised with supportive detachment by mother Etheline, and all ache profoundly for a togetherness they never really had. The Tenenbaums reconcile somehow, but only after Anderson puts them through a compassionate series of quirky confrontations and rekindled affections. Not for every taste, but this is brilliant work from any perspective


Saturday, December 17, 2011

THE YOUNG VICTORIA (2009) at the Cairo Opera House, 7:30 PM
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée
Featuring Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend and Paul Bettany
Runtime: 105 min. English with Arabic subtitles.

A dramatization of the turbulent first years of Queen Victoria's rule, and her enduring romance with Prince Albert.