Four American soldiers combine to liberate a missing shipment of gold in the chaos of Iraq after the first Gulf War.
This is a bold, even brazen attempt to get to grips with the complexities and hypocrisies of the US intervention in Iraq in the early 90s. David O Russell’s stinging film marries anarchic black comedy, action adventure tropes, and cutting edge technique. Plus a big dose of star power.
Do the mercenary motivations of George Clooney and his Desert Stormers function as a metaphor for wider political imperatives? How could they not? Certainly there is nothing reassuring about the Americans’ racist attitudes to the Iraqis. This was the most vivid portrait of the new theatre of war Hollywood had produced to that point: impersonal, high-tech, highly mediated and little understood. It’s a high point in Russell’s erratic but always ambitious career, which went on to include Silver Linings Playbook, The Fighter and American Hustle.
The screening on Sunday Aug 23 will conclude with a free screening of Werner Herzog’s 54-minute documentary Lessons of Darkness (1992)
Some kind weird masterpiece, a screw-loose war picture that sends action and humor crashing head-on into each other and spinning off into political anger
Roger Ebert
It remains the most caustic anti-war movie of this generation.
David Edelstein, The New York Times
Russell not only has designed an action-adventure laced with incendiary humor but a movie that wants to explore race, politics, war, the media and U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. In large measure, he pulls it off with breathtaking aplomb.
Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter
Media Partner
David O Russell
George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze
USA
1999
English
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Credits
Producer
Charles Roven, Paul Junger Witt, Edward L. McDonnell
Screenwriter
David O. Russell, John Ridley
Cinematography
Newton Thomas Sigel
Editor
Robert K. Lambert
Original Music
Carter Burwell
Production Design
Catherine Hardwicke
90s, Baby!
Ten years. 11 weeks. 90 films from the 1990s. This summer, 90’s Baby! takes a deep dive into a defining decade of cinema.
Casino
Revisiting the wise guy milieu for the third (but not the final) time, Scorsese tells the story of Ace Rothstein and Nicky Santoro (Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci), two New York hoodlums who become major players in the history of Las Vegas.
Ghost in the Shell
This seminal anime which inspired James Cameron and the Wachowskis, anticipates how AI technology encroaches on the human domain in ways we can scarcely comprehend. "A work of profound and melancholic beauty." Daily Telegraph
La Haine
This angry French thriller about alienated kids (a skinhead, an Arab, and an African) in the working class outskirts of Paris plays like a cross between Do the Right Thing and Mean Streets. French cops turned their backs on the red carpet at Cannes.
Crash
Sex drive, David Cronenberg-style. The car-crash fetishists who orbit Cronenberg's metrosexual Toronto (they include James Spader, Holly Hunter, and Deborah Unger) obsessively seek a fusion of metal and flesh... Fender bender as the ultimate orgasm.
Trainspotting
Danny Boyle's blistering movie was a sensation in 1996: a kick in the teeth of old school British kitchen sink realism, it fearlessly transformed the dire circumstances of Edinburgh heroin addicts into an experience by turns exhilarating and devastating.
Fargo
Have the Coen brothers ever made a more satisfying movie than Fargo? This grisly comedy pits one of cinema's most pure-hearted cops (Frances McDormand's pregnant cop, Marge Gunderson) against the machinations of weak and mercenary men.
Lone Star
John Sayles's modern day Western is a murder mystery which draws sheriff Chris Cooper to investigate two of his predecessors, the notoriously corrupt Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson), and his own father, Buddy (Matthew McConaughey).
90s Mystery Movie + Trivia Night
And now for a shot in the dark... We're not announcing the Mystery Movie in advance, so you'll have to take a leap of faith. We can say it was released between January 1990 and January 2000, and it's not already showing elsewhere in this series. As an added enticement we're going to throw in a 90s movie trivia night with your ticket — plus prizes!
Princess Mononoke
A mystical fight between humans and the Animal Gods of the forest. Ashitaka, the last prince of a dying race, struggles to find a way for both sides to co-exist. But the fighting only becomes more and more bloody and all hope seems to be lost…
Gummo
Harmony Korine was just 24 when he made Gummo. It's become a cult favourite as much for its singularity as anything else: it's a strange, misshapen beast, a slice of beat poetry translated into experimental film.
Jackie Brown
Take half a dozen characters who know they're in a fix, and give them half a million dollars to fight over. Tarantino's crime movie (his best) transcends genre in large part because in Pam Grier and Robert Forster it gives us people we truly care about.
The Big Lebowski
The Coens' whacky, warped slacker generation riff on Raymond Chandler, a shaggy dog story which delights in going sideways at every turn. Jeff Bridges is the Dude, and what he really wants is to get his rug back...