Get Ready For All Night At The Oscars
As we near the end of another exhausting term at our favourite university, the return of the hallowed Imperial cinema All-Nighter also rapidly approaches. In a year of unusually high caliber for Oscar nominated films, we’ve selected the crème de la crème of the Oscar crop just for you.
As we near the end of another exhausting term at our favourite university, the return of the hallowed Imperial cinema All-Nighter also rapidly approaches. In a year of unusually high caliber for Oscar nominated films, we’ve selected the crème de la crème of the Oscar crop just for you. You’ll laugh, you’ll certainly cry and you’ll experience the transcendental magic of cinema.
Imperial Cinema
Dallas Buyers Club – 18.00
For all his winsome Southern charm and charisma, Matthew McConaughey has always been seen as a bit of a Hollywood joke owing to him being a permanent fixture in mediocre romantic comedies co-starring Kate Hudson. One day, he suddenly seemed to decide to show the world that yes, even Matthew McConaughey could be a serious acteur and damn does he prove this in his Oscar-winning Best Actor role in Dallas Buyers Club. He plays a homophobic, AIDS-stricken real-life cowboy Ron Woodroof. Unhappy with the inadequate medication on offer he begins importing unapproved drugs from Mexico. What starts out as a desperate bid for his own survival turns into something more altruistic as he meets other marginalised AIDS victims such as Rayon, a drug addicted trans woman (Jared Leto in an Oscar-winning role) whom he works in partnership with. In the wrong hands, Dallas Buyers Club could have been nothing more than a not-so-subtle PSA, but director Jean-Marc Vallée crafts a sensitive film that never patronises its characters or audience by delving into over-sentimentality.
12 Years a Slave – 20:45
What 12 Years A Slave depicts is more shocking than any horror film. The institutional enslavement based on race has largely been consigned to history but still slavery is seen as a dirty word; references to it by people of colour are often met with eyerolls and seen as unnecessary attempts to guilt trip white people. Just because wide-scale slavery has come and gone does not mean its effects are not still felt. Racial inequality is still very pertinent and one of the more important ways to try and understand how this has come to be, is from watching this harrowing portrayal of Solomon Northup’s torment which serves as a hideous microcosm for the experience of millions for hundreds of years.
The performances of Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon and Lupita Nyong’o as slave Patsey feel more like documentations of suffering. Both express unimaginable pain without saying a word. Director Steve McQueen’s regular collaborator Michael Fassbender plays twisted slave owner Edwin Epps. Although Epps is sadistic beyond belief, it is not simple enough to say that he is evil. The enforcement of slavery degrades him as a human being as well and he is driven insane by his sexual desire for Patsey.
McQueen is relentless in his camera shots and he does not give us, the audience respite from the horrors on screen. However uncomfortable this film makes us feel, don’t look away, instead of watching from a safe distance in a screening room amongst your friends, try to imagine what it must have been like to endure an existence as one of these characters. We must always remember how important it is to never normalize atrocity.
The Wolf of Wall Street – 00:00
In a slight change of tone, we have Martin Scorsese’s latest with his usual partner-in-crime Leonardo DiCaprio as they depict the dramatic rise and fall of the excessively moneyed but morally bankrupt stockbroker Jordan Belfort. The film opens with dwarfs being thrown against a bulls eye in a crowded room of coked up bankers; to say the film is heavy on the excess is a slight understatement. Welcome to a trippy three hours of pure testosterone-laden hedonism and more cocaine than Danniella Westbrook on a mad one. Despite Scorsese’s protestations to the contrary, the film doesn’t exactly read as a denunciation of amoral self-indulgence but we’ll let you guys make up your own mind. In any case, be prepared for a rollicking good time!
Philomena – 03:15
In this comedy-drama, Judi Dench stars as the eponymous title character who as an impressionable young woman in 1950s Ireland, was forced to give up her child born out of wedlock. Cynical journalist Martin Sixsmith (played by screenwriter Steve Coogan) decide to team up with her to track down her long lost son. Along the way they encounter a web of lies stemming from corruption within the catholic church. Always engaging, Philomena has a powerful message about injustice and sees Dench and Coogan give superb performances.
Nebraska – 05:15
Director Alexander Payne is an expert in incisively depicting Americana with acerbic wit. His films toe a fine line between biting satire and earnest sincerity and Nebraska is no different. Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) is a cantankerous septuagenarian alcoholic who has been scammed into believing that he’s won a $1 million mail prize to be collected in Lincoln, Nebraska. Even though everyone else in the family knows that this is a con, out of exasperation at Woody’s insistent attempts to retrieve the imaginary money, his son David (Will Forte), decides to drive him there anyway. Forced to spend time with each other, David learn more about the past and hard-hitting emotional truths about his father. Nebraska revisits the much-loved archetype of the dysfunctional American family with hilarious results and charming performances.
The All-Nighter is on March 25
Tickets for individual films are £3 each
All-Nighter tickets: £10 online or £12 on the door (subject to capacity)
£5 extra for hot food and drink all night
Buy tickets here: tickets.imperialcinema.co.uk
