After a week off spent organising our copious Laserdisc collection, the Repertory Film Round-up is back to sift through the silver screen classics that London offers the discerning cineaste.
Thursday: Hot-foot it to Highgate tonight for the You're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat film quiz, which this time is themed around "Blockbusters" - a subject the Rep Film Round-up confesses to being less than au fait with. Entry is two quid, and it begins promptly at 8.30pm.
Friday: China's Olympic year has seen renewed attention brought to the plight of Tibet and the Dalai Lama, so in that spirit Riverside Studios in Hammersmith screening Martin Scorcese's 1997 film Kundun, which tells in moving (if hagiographic) detail the life of the young Tenzin Gyatso and his flight from the Lhasa monastery to his current government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India. 6pm start, tickets £7.50 / £6.50 concessions, and it includes entry to Mongol: The Rise to Power of Genghis Khan straight after.
Saturday: The BFI's Clint Eastwood season serves up a triple serving of spaghetti westerns today in the form of the "Dollars trilogy": A Fistful of Dollars at 6.15pm, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly at 4.20pm and 7.40pm, and For A Few Dollars More at 8.30pm. The Sergio Leone-helmed trio, with their distinctive Ennio Morricone scores, sent Eastwood's Man With No Name on the trail of varmints and ne'er do wells across a beautifully photographed landscape.
Sunday: With that posthumous Oscar seemingly sewn up following the overwhelming praise for his Joker, remind yourself of a time when Heath Ledger wasn't synonymous with Batman's nemesis. Borough's Roxy will be showing a Ledger double-header: A Knight's Tale (5pm), the somewhat silly if enjoyable rock-pomp romp through the jousting days of yore, and Brokeback Mountain (8pm), the supremely well-acted cowboy love story that sealed the late actor's reputation as one of the finest performers in the world. £3 covers both films.
Also Sunday: we were none too kind about Wong Kar Wai's first American film the other week, so if you've yet to form your own opinion, here's another chance - the Rio in Dalston is showing My Blueberry Nights at 12.45 in a double bill with the Rat Pack-packed Some Came Running.
Seasons, festivals, etc:. It's Julie Delpy week! Okay, not quite. But you can make your own journey around the French actor/directors work, as by a happy coincidence three of her films are playing this week. On Sunday, the Phoenix in Finchley is screening Delpy's second film as director, Two Days In Paris, at 4.15. On Monday, Riverside Studios has a double-bill of Richard Linklater's decade-spanning duo, Before Sunrise (6.45) and Before Sunset (8.45). For fans of ambulatory tours of Paris by day and night accompanied by cod-psychoanalysis and the slow burn of true love, it's a good week.
