Today's idea - Four Lions

Tonight we recommend Four Lions directed by Chris Morris of Brass Eye and Nathan Barley fame in his first film. As the latest British political comedy that's as "tasteless as it is timely" it's also written by Peep Show's writing team of Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong - can it be anything but brilliant?

"Following four Islamic terrorists from the north of England, Morris's film depicts the transition of a group of young Muslim men from boisterous radicals to would-be suicide bombers.

This being Chris Morris, the jokes are razor-sharp and wryly tongue-in-cheek, as two of the men embark on an ultimately calamitous covert mission to Pakistan to train as bombers, while the other two recruit a fifth member and go about plotting their own martyrdom."



Starring: Riz Ahmed, Kayvan Novak, Arsher Ali, Nigel Lindsay
Information and booking: here
Location: Duke of York's

Today's idea - Psycho at the Duke of York's

Our hundredth post today! Mother's Day visits the lovely Duke of York's Picturehouse in the form of a re-release of Psycho today. Noted as "perhaps the most influential of all horror films," Hitchcock's famous tale of gruesome murders and sly verbal sparring at the Bates Motel is added to with Bernard Hitchcock's famed all-strings score. It provides some of the most famous music in cinema history, with innovative, nerve-jangling, violent 'screams' alongside the infamous murder scene. One to take your Mum to.

It's on at 6pm today. Find the Duke of York's here, and a map here.

Today's idea - Brazil at Duke of York's Picturehouse (Brighton Science Festival)

Today, in the name of The Brighton Science Festival, The Duke of York Picturehouse are showing Brazil; Terry Gilliam's surreal masterpiece. You may know it - and it's absolutely fantastic, and one of my favourite 80s Sci Fi films (if it has a twist, I'm easily won over). Here's some blurb if you haven't seen it, and IMDB makes it sound appealing in every fashion.

Short blurb:

"A bureaucrat in a retro-future world tries to correct an administrative error and himself becomes an enemy of the state."

More interesting blurb:

"Terry Gilliam’s blackly comic futuristic fantasy is set in an Orwellian world of all-pervasive bureaucratic suppression and lumbering 1940s technology, where Jonathan Pryce’s timid, contented underachiever pursues the girl of his dreams and falls murderously foul of the system. BRAZIL is funny, cruel, and relentless, and is filmed with tremendous visual invention and an almost fetishistic attention to the minutiae of its imagined world. Screenplay by Gilliam and Tom Stoppard. Striking cameo roles from De Niro, Bob Hoskins & Michael Palin."

The Duke of York's picturehouse, compared to the dear local Odeon, is a traditional cinema; a lovely yellow, alcohol-providing, building filled with velvety seats. You could watch Avatar and feel art-house in it. Tonight you can pretend film watching is in the name of intellectual science, and the film's brilliant!

It's on at 6pm, it's a 15 so you must be 15 or wear stilts. Adults cost £7.20, and concessions and kids are less. See the Duke of York's website or Twitter @DukeofYorks

Catch the last day of the Cinecity Festival

The Cinecity festival has been taking place at art houses, theatres and film bars since November and today sees its last day. The festival's full of documentaries and world film, (some amateur and some not) which I'd be a bit wary of recommending without having seen. Perhaps I just have a fear of amateur documentaries.

Anyway, one film stands out quite a bit and plays today at The Duke of York picturehouse. 'Prophet' comes from Cannes Film Festival with ravings, a shiny award called the Grand Prize, and it's been likened to Scarface and The Godfather. So if like me, you're an unadventurous film buff this may be your thing. If you're already into Artsy Worldly cinema, then it may be of some use to mention that it comes from the Director of 'The Beat That My Heart Skipped', Jacques Audiard, and ex-convicts were brought in for choreography.

"Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, blistering crime drama A Prophet demonstrates Audiard's (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) ability to rise beyond a genre to exceptional heights of emotional intensity. Malik (Tarik Rahim) lands himself in jail at 19. After a violent crash course in the ways of the ruling gang, he slowly begins, through his self-education, to challenge the prison power structures. And as the long years of his sentence roll on, he uses his ruthless cunning to establish himself as a major new player. A Prophet moves fluidly from art-house subtlety to genre pyrotechnics in an endlessly powerful and absorbing tapestry of criminal life, which has all the epic human drama of such classics as Scarface and The Godfather."

It shows at 6:39pm with adult tickets costing £7.20 and students at £6.20. The Duke of York serves alcohol (which may or may not influence your decision).

You can find the trailer here.