Welsh Film Club by

Sleep Furiously

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 14:58:26 UTC

Review

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 15:17:27 UTC

'This delicate, tonally complex film by Gideon Koppel is a documentary love-letter to Trefeurig, the Welsh farming community in Ceredigion where he grew up, and where his parents found refuge from Nazi Germany during the second world war. It is a rural society, outwardly placid and at one with a landscape of stunning beauty, but in fact in crisis. Koppel's film takes as its starting point the closure of the local school, a definitive, calamitous loss for a place where shops and bus services have already vanished. The movie pays tribute to the grit of a people who may yet revive their economy, but it acknowledges a darker possibility, for which the sentimental note of an "elegy" is not appropriate. Slowly, but surely, Trefeurig appears to be dying, and Koppel's camera captures the consequent ripples of loss and regret.' --Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

WFC Rating:

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 15:20:08 UTC

4/5: 'Cerys Matthews' (Upgraded on 01.03.24)

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 15:25:52 UTC

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 15:28:21 UTC

Set in a former mining village in Wales, against the backdrop of the current recession, Dark Horse is the inspirational true story of a group of friends from a working men's club who decide to take on the elite 'sport of kings' and breed themselves a racehorse. Raised on a slagheap allotment, their foal grows into an unlikely champion, beating the finest thoroughbreds in the land, before suffering a near fatal accident. Nursed back to health by the love of his owners - for whom he's become a source of inspiration and hope - he makes a remarkable recovery, returning to the track for a heart-stopping comeback.

Reviews

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 15:30:50 UTC

"A triumph. Emotional, funny, heart-warming and up there with the great underdog stories"--Total Film

"Inspiring and emotive"--Daily Telegraph

"A rousing real-life fairy tale made with both heart and humour"--The Independent

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 15:37:11 UTC

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 15:39:52 UTC

In the stark beauty of 19th Century Snowdonia a young girl tries desperately to hold her home together. Struggling with her mother's mysterious illness, her father's absence and a ruthless mining company encroaching on their land. A growing darkness begins to take grip of her home, and the suspicious local community turns on Gwen and her family.

Trailer

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 15:46:45 UTC

Review

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 15:48:03 UTC

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 15:52:58 UTC

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 15:57:33 UTC

A WAY OF LIFE centres on teenage mother Leigh-Anne Williams (Stephanie James); her brother Gavin (Nathan Jones), a seventeen year old desperately chasing love, and her two friends Robbie (Gary Sheppeard), a seventeen year old determined to move beyond his dead-end community and Steven (Dean Wong), a fifteen year old yearning for a Welsh identity. All of them function along the margins of society...until one day, paranoia, boredom, frustration and anger form a lethal combination. When her baby girl's future appears threatened, Leigh-Anne's Turkish Muslim neighbour becomes the target of pent up anger and humiliation. A ferocious murder takes place which is seemingly driven by racial hatred and in a moment, the four teenages seal their fate. A violent yet powerful story of a young mother and her child, of teenage romance and friendship. A WAY OF LIFE draws you into a world of poverty, love, tenderness and hurt...a world which will challenge the way you look at life.

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 15:59:20 UTC

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 16:03:31 UTC

Join James, Miles, Davy and Bill on a raucous roadtrip with a serious purpose: giving James the time of his life however little time that may be. THIRD STAR wrestles with camping nightmares, surreal moments and rocking good times building up to an emotionally ravaging revelation.

A road movie with a heart, THIRD STAR will take you one step further from the past and toward a brave new world of courage, dignity and beauty.

Trailer

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 16:04:18 UTC

Trailer

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 16:13:24 UTC

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 16:16:37 UTC

Trailer

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 16:20:09 UTC

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 16:24:14 UTC

It s the long hot British summer of 1976 and Viv (Minnie Driver) has left London and her thespian aspirations, to work as a drama teacher in the local high school of her south Wales home town. Determined to fire up her hormonal, apathetic teenage charges, she sets about staging a rock musical based on Shakespeare s The Tempest for the school s end of year show. Battling the summer teenage distractions of love, lust and the local lido, Viv perseveres and rallies the group to express themselves through music and drama.

Trailer

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 16:33:15 UTC

Trailer

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-06 16:34:36 UTC

Special St David's Day celebration, 2024

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-27 14:11:18 UTC

Useful facts about St David, or Dewi Sant:

Like Mick O'Sullivan, his birthday is a mystery
He was born in a storm
He was teetotal and vegetarian
Like Lynn Ferguson, he had healing powers. He cured his tutor of blindness and waters in a well that sprung up during his birth have healing properties
Like Coldplay and Jeremy Corbyn, he visited Glastonbury
His shrine was so important that Pope Callistus decreed 2 pilgrimages to St David's to be worth one to the Vatican

Welsh Film Club rating System

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-27 14:16:12 UTC

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-27 15:54:35 UTC

Film Club Business

St David’s Eve Menu

fergusonlm — 2024-02-27 20:23:41 UTC

Welsh Lamb Chops

Potato and leek gratin

A selection of Welsh cheeses

Artisan Welsh Cakes by renowned small batch baker The Bad Welshman

St David’s Eve Preparations

fergusonlm — 2024-02-29 11:34:49 UTC

Festive bunting ready to festoon the halls!!!

I have invited my cousins round to sing to us in traditional dress

simonbeer1 — 2024-02-29 13:36:41 UTC

Beverages

fergusonlm — 2024-02-29 14:30:12 UTC

The finest Wales has to offer

Mick in the Mood

fergusonlm — 2024-02-29 17:51:16 UTC

Mick in the Mood

fergusonlm — 2024-02-29 17:58:01 UTC

WFC Rating:

simonbeer1 — 2024-03-01 09:02:00 UTC

1/5 Bonnie Tyler (technically 1.33)

Mick O'Sullivan: Critical reaction

simonbeer1 — 2024-03-01 09:07:38 UTC

Mick: basically shit but it told a story about hopelessness. Captured the economic relations between farmers and quarry owners. I framed it around Welsh proletariat, which earned it a second point.

simonbeer1 — 2024-10-02 09:54:11 UTC

WFC Rating: THREE stars

simonbeer1 — 2024-10-02 09:55:43 UTC

A worthy Shirley Bassey of a film - old fashioned, low on innovation but comfortingly predictable -you know what you're getting

Reviews

simonbeer1 — 2024-10-02 09:57:51 UTC

Reviews

simonbeer1 — 2024-10-02 10:00:44 UTC

premiere

simonbeer1 — 2024-10-02 10:04:07 UTC

what the critics said

simonbeer1 — 2024-10-02 10:07:11 UTC

" So then, this is a story with as much dramatic potential as any other boxing drama or biopic, which makes it all the more frustrating that the finished article falls so flat. The blame for this state of affairs must sadly fall on all concerned, with John Noble possibly the only one getting away with his reputation intact. Brennan is a pretty good likeness for Winstone and gives a good account of himself in the fight sequences, but he is sadly out of his depth (punching above his weight?) when it comes to the dramatic heavy-lifting, struggling to effectively convey the emotional tensions, frustrations and pain of his character."

Reviews

simonbeer1 — 2024-10-02 10:08:09 UTC

SOMETHING WE LEARNED DURING THIS FILM

simonbeer1 — 2024-10-02 12:32:17 UTC

In the 1970s Mick O'Sullivan was surprisingly not good at snooker