Northwest Film Event Highlights – August 2015

Enjoy movies but don’t want to miss the August summer sun? Route 66 Drive-In Cinema (just off Mosley Road, Trafford Park, in Manchester, and Waterloo/Regent Road, Atlantic Park, Liverpool) may have the solution, inviting you to park up and tune in to an outdoor cinema experience that harks back to the days before eye-popping IMAX and 3D tomfoolery. Here, you’ll be able to experience director Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four, a big-screen reboot of Marvel’s first family that takes the subtle, grounded approach to blockbuster action. Catch it from 8 Aug either in a car or up a tall tree. Preferably the former.

Costumed heroes not your thing? HOME have a more down-to-earth story to tell with 52 Tuesdays (4 Aug), a revelatory drama that was shot one day a week, every week for a year. Director Sophie Hyde used this unusual shooting method to explore the shared journeys of a mother undergoing a gender transition and the impact this has on her teenage daughter Billie. Hyde will be sticking around for a post-screening Q&A too.

The Small Cinema group have two events for you. In Moston they’re screening Blood Cells (8 Aug), a quiet-epic following a young man’s struggle to pick up the pieces when an epidemic decimates his rural family life. In Liverpool, David Cronenberg’s visceral horror Videodrome returns to the screen (27 Aug), offering up a commentary on 80s TV media, political manipulation and censorship with a healthy dose of slippery blood and guts thrown into the mix for good measure.

Also in Liverpool, FACT have a trio of retro-aces planned that are sure to please Droogs, romantics and Neo Maxi Zoom Dweebies alike. John Hughes’s teen classic The Breakfast Club kicks off the fun (3 Aug), followed by Kubrick’s twisted A Clockwork Orange (16 Aug) and the legendary Casablanca (23 Aug).

Liverpool will also host a collection of Secret Garden Cinema events, with Reservoir Dogs (1 Aug), Fight Club (6 Aug), Pulp Fiction (7 Aug), Dirty Dancing (8 Aug), Stand By Me (13 Aug), The Dark Knight (14 Aug), The Hangover (15 Aug), Casino Royale (20 Aug) and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (22 Aug) screening at the open air cinema atop Queen Square carpark. As if all that wasn’t enough, they’re even throwing in a viewers' choice evening (21 Aug), the generous lot.

And finally, those Retro and Dangerous guys have gone Cage crazy with their CAGEFEST: A Nicolas Cage All-Dayer (9 Aug, Gorilla, Manchester). Here you’ll find Raising Arizona, Con Air, Face/Off, The Wickerman and some of the most exquisite acting known to humankind. Unmissable.