Movies and Music This week

Every week each of our Movies and Music Library Team will be bringing you the best of what we're watching and listening to so you can enjoy it too.

Don's Picks

Weirdly in movies there is a phenomenon of kids being in movies that they, themselves are too young to see.  However, all these movies are genuinely great pieces of cinema and worth checking out as a grown up!

Jodie Foster was 12 years old when she took the supporting part of Iris in Martin Scorsese's hyper violent Taxi Driver.  Foster played a young woman surviving on the streets of New York, who   title character feels protective towards.  Both Foster and De Niro received plaudits and Oscar nominations for their performances here.

With depictions of adultery, abuse, and betrayal, Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander is no one's idea of a kid friendly movie despite starring characters that are eight and ten.  While this description is bleak, the film is also filled with beauty (Oscar winning Sven Nykvist's most bewitching film) and leaps of the imagination.  One of Bergman's warmest and most full hearted films.

Nicolas Roeg's dark and thrilling Don't Look Now features a young girl as a central part of a mystery that a bereft couple is caught in while staying in Venice.  The film's adult tone and controversial content made a sensation at the time of its release and it remains a haunting and controversial film.

A young boy seeing the rise of fascism and cruelty around him in the grown up world of 1925 Germany, refuses to grow any older and so experiences the atrocities of the 1930's and 1940's Germany, beating his drum whenever things become unbearable in Volker Schlöndorff's Oscar winning The Tin Drum.

RL's Picks

As a child, my parents never exposed me to any adult themed movies or music. Some of my other family members, however, just brought me along to the films they were watching. They should have had the same mindset as my parents: No Kids Allowed!

Gangs were really in style back in the early 90's. In 1991 my much older sister took me to see American Me. We saw Boyz N the Hood in 1992. By 1993 eight-year-old me was packing finger guns, and my pants got really big and saggy after seeing Menace II Society, Blood In, Blood Out and being introduced to N.W.A by an uncle that year.

I was such an impressionable child, but fortunately I went from delinquency to indecency when my Auntie Anna took me to a midnight screening of John Waters' Pink Flamingos. Pink Flamingos celebrates its 50^th anniversary this year and the Criterion Collection released a beautiful, director-approved Blu-ray special edition of Pink Flamingos. The 4K digital restoration looks amazing, but just remember: No Kids Allowed!

Terye's Picks

You love the cartoons your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews watch, but you'd like to be able

to watch other animations films without the endless questions from the kids in your life.

Here are some great short animation films perfect to see after the kids are asleep, or back at their own home.

Stash Short Film Festival - Comedy

Spanning a spectrum of filmmaking styles, tones, and techniques, these seven films all have one common goal: to lighten your day with humor.

Stash Short Film Festival - Comedy 2

This second collection of comedy shorts from the editors of Stash Magazine delivers seven more blasts of fun designed to keep you smiling.

Stash Short Film Festival - Comedy 3

Stash Magazine's latest comedy collection picks up where the previous two compilations left off, with six more hilarious short films guaranteed to make your day!

Here's a fairy tale for you…

Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty 

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short, Granny tells the story of Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the elderly fairy who intends to get her revenge for not being invited to the Royal Christening.

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Debra's Picks

Don't be confused!  These fairy tale movies are not kid-friendly:

The Little Mermaid:

The Little Mermaid This ballet is a very dark version, with an unhappy ending. Fantastic for adults though!

The Little Mermaid  It's not Hans Christian Andersen

Red Riding Hood  She's a grown woman in love with a brooding type of guy. Werewolves.

Freeway  True, she's on her way to grandma, but in this twisted version she's a juvenile delinquent on the run, being followed by a serial killer. Prostitution, drugs and killers. A dark comedy, with a young Reese Witherspoon - I want to see this one! On dvd and streaming.

The Company of Wolves Like the original, this werewolf horror story is a warning to young girls not to stray from the path. Wolves, nightmares and the great Angela Lansbury as Granny. Written by Angela Carter, this is a mysterious, dreamlike film. On dvd and streaming.

Snow White and the Huntsman Snow White (Kristen Stewart) fights back. Scary and violent. Charlize Theron is a great evil queen.

Snow White: a tale of terror (look at the subtitle) Set during the Crusades, this extremely dark and bloody version features Sigourney Weaver doing a great job as the evil, unhinged stepmother.

Blancanieves Silent black and white but not old movie (2011) transports the tale to 1920s Seville, Spain. Beautiful, great score, flamenco, bullfighters. One of the best movies ever! On dvd/bluray and streaming.

Sleeping Beauty  It's in the adult section - don't confuse it with the fairy tale. Not for kids! Also streaming.

Sleeping Beauty (a gothic romance )ballet There are plenty of kids (I was one) who would enjoy the ballet set to Tchaikovsky's great music, but this is the choreographer Matthew Bourne's version - when Beauty wakes up she's in the modern era. Innovative, probably not so interesting for kids.

 La Belle et la Bete Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast is a gorgeous black and white French film (1946) with amazing eerie special effects. The beast is captivating and much more attractive than the prince he becomes at the end. This Criterion edition has the Philip Glass opera score and commentaries. On dvd/bluray and streaming.

Beauty and the Beast  (1987-88) and Beauty and the Beast (2012-2016) These are tv shows about a homicide detective and a man/beast.

Pinocchio is a faithful adaptation of the rather frightening 1883 Italian story by Carlo Collodi, retaining much of the weirdness and harshness of the book. As a child who was scared even by the Disney version, I think this would be terrifying for young children, but older kids might love it in spite of, or because of, some rather disturbing scenes. On dvd/bluray and streaming.

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