Films in Helmdon’s Reading Room

We show a good selection of films… action, drama, biopic etc. in English and foreign languages. There are films which appeal to all age groups.

Our state-of-the-art equipment fills the Reading Room with sound, providing a great cinema experience.

The main aim is to have a good time watching with friends, and hopefully cover the costs, there may need to be adjustments to the refreshment charge if we don’t .

Venue: The Reading Room, 20 Church Street, Helmdon NN13 5QJ
Time: Doors open 7:15pm – Films begin 7.30pm
Refreshments and Raffle – £5 per person

For more information please email helmdonfilmandmusic@gmail.com

Film Programme 2024

Friday 5 January 2024 – Asteroid City
This showing was postponed from 29 December 2023.
Following a writer on his world famous fictional play about a grieving father who travels with his tech-obsessed family to small rural Asteroid City to compete in a junior stargazing event, only to have his world view disrupted forever. Director: Wes Anderson ..Stars: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks https://youtu.be/28xVCdcurj4?si=09m8ZPQLRE6A9tj8

Friday 26th January 2024 – Oppenheimer
Experience the breathtaking global phenomenon that has captivated audiences around the world.Written for the screen and directed by Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer thrusts audiences into the mind of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), whose landmark work on the Manhattan Project created the first atomic bomb. An unprecedented cinematic event, Oppenheimer features an all-star cast that includes Emily Blunt, Oscar® winner, Matt Damon, Oscar® nominee, Robert Downey Jr., Oscar® nominee, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, and Oscar® winners Casey Affleck, Rami Malek and Kenneth Branagh.
One of the top films of 2023….but also very long 3hrs +, so I propose an early start and a break in the middle.
https://youtu.be/uYPbbksJxIg?si=j3Ribm1MuJDMESQP

Friday 23rd February 2024 – The Great Escaper
In the summer of 2014, Bernard Jordan (Michael Caine) made global headlines. He had staged a “great escape” from his care home to join fellow war veterans on a beach in Normandy, commemorating their fallen comrades at the D-Day Landings 70th anniversary. It was a story that captured the imagination of the world as Bernie embodied the defiant, “can-do” spirit of a generation that was fast disappearing. But of course, it wasn’t the whole story. It was an inspirational but sanitised retelling of one man’s need to come to terms with the lasting trauma of war. Bernie’s adventure, spanning a mere 48 hours, also marked the culmination of his 60-year marriage to Rene (Glenda Jackson) – THE GREAT ESCAPER celebrates their enduring love but always with an eye to the lessons we might learn from the Greatest Generation.
https://youtu.be/dNWp8Kq5JgI?si=VY_NPUss9f3tWI-p

Friday 22nd March 2024 (not the last Friday of the month as that’s Good Friday) – The Miracle Club
Ballygar, Dublin, Ireland, 1968: close friends Lily (Maggie Smith), Eileen (Kathy Bates), and Dolly (Agnes O’Casey) win the trip of a lifetime – a pilgrimage to Lourdes. With each woman desperately in need of a personal miracle, the trip seems like an answer to all their prayers. But when they are joined by Chrissie (Laura Linney), returning to Dublin after decades in America, deep wounds from the past are re-opened and bitter truths exposed. As they confront one another and embrace their shared past, the group reckon with revelations that will change them forever. Directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan, The Miracle Club is a heartfelt story of friendship, family, and forgiveness.
https://youtu.be/Gp3ZFdklPCk?si=T1xowZO1pIFJMixq

Friday 26th April – Anatomy of a Fall
When her husband Samuel is mysteriously found dead in the snow below their secluded chalet, Sandra becomes the main suspect when the police begin to question whether he fell or was pushed. The trial soon becomes not just an investigation, but a gripping psychological journey into the depths of Sandra and Samuel’s complicated marriage. With conflicting evidence and inconsistent testimony, words are wielded like weapons and shocking truths come to light in this thrilling Palme d’Or winner.
https://youtu.be/_MdTMA0PetA?si=ewBcE7ah6oKXpJKw

Friday 31st May – Showing Up
Showing Up is a 2022 American comedy-drama film co-written and directed by Kelly Reichardt, in her fourth collaboration with actress Michelle Williams. The film follows a sculptor managing the competing attentions of her art, job, family, and friendships.Showing Up premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 27, 2022, where it was nominated for the Palme d’Or.
https://youtu.be/wELPTxJ2YZY?si=DgQWRsrdCMjc1RTe

Friday 28th June – Mothering Sunday
After watching the trailer several times before the last film….might be a bit spicy! On a warm spring day in 1924, house maid and foundling Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) finds herself alone on Mother’s Day. Her employers, Mr. and Mrs. Niven (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman), are out and she has the rare chance to spend quality time with her secret lover. Paul (Josh O’Connor) is the boy from the manor house nearby, Jane’s long-term love despite the fact that he’s engaged to be married to another woman, a childhood friend and daughter of his parents’ friends. But events that neither can foresee will change the course of Jane’s life forever.
https://youtu.be/fZ9StyWHZAc?si=fnjouV6MLtq0Vv-2

Sorry, but there will be no film for July2024

Friday 29th November 2024 – Joyride
JOYRIDE follows 12-year-old Mully (Charlie Reid), who, after fleeing his father, steals a taxi and is shocked to find a woman, Joy (Olivia Colman), in the back seat with a baby. Joy has decided to give her child away to a friend, and Mully needs some distance from his debt-ridden dad, who’s after the cash Mully has with him. And so two lovable rogues — a complicated middle-aged mother and a troubled adolescent — go on a journey across Ireland, gradually finding in each other the friendship, love and learning they never knew they needed.
https://youtu.be/lkVDCiJdGAg?si=mFei4rY9bVt3exJU

Film Programme 2025

Films are normally shown on the last Friday of the month – links in blue are to film previews. However, as we decided to skip December 2024, we have two films in January, on the 3rd, and 24th.

Friday 3rd January – The English Patient
A chance to see this classic on the big screen.
The sweeping expanses of the Sahara are the setting for a passionate love affair in this adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s novel. A badly burned man, Laszlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), is tended to by a nurse, Hana (Juliette Binoche), in an Italian monastery near the end of World War II. His past is revealed through flashbacks involving a married Englishwoman (Kristin Scott Thomas) and his work mapping the African landscape. Hana learns to heal her own scars as she helps the dying man.
https://youtu.be/Xk_LRcOFT0c?si=LsTaT9-SeRZsP5Kl

Friday 24th January – Licorice Pizza
Licorice Pizza is the timeless story of Alana Kane and Gary Valentine growing up, running around and falling in love in the San Fernando Valley, 1973. “This hypnotically gorgeous, funny, romantic movie freewheels its way around from scene to scene, from character to character, from setpiece to setpiece, with absolute mastery.
“* “Paul Thomas Anderson’s most lovable and magical work to date. The breakthrough performances from Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman are so magnetic and natural that they feel like some kind of miracle.
“** “Watching Licorice Pizza is like watching life with all the boring parts cut out and like watching movies with all the phony parts cut out.
” *** Featuring performances by Bradley Cooper, Sean Penn, Tom Waits and Benny Safdie.
https://youtu.be/ofnXPwUPENo?si=vd91WB0hCA7-GDzI

Film Programme Archive

November 2023 and earlier

Live Performances

These are well attended so please book early to be sure of a seat.
Details of the next performance will be added here…

Sunday 25th February 2024 at 7pm – Budapest Cafe Orchestra are appearing in the Reading Room. Everyone welcome. Not to be missed!

An amazing band of talented musicians playing great tunes on weird instruments …and the violin. They are also playing The Stables in Milton Keynes and The Mill in Banbury.

Tickets are only £20 available now from Steve Wheeler: helmdonfilmandmusic@gmail.com

Quint Starkie and Dorie Jackson – Evening of intimate acoustic-based music and storytelling
Helmdon Reading Room, Saturday 26 Aug 2023, 7:30pm.

Together with Dorie Jackson, Quint is doing a small number of ‘house’ concerts in August.

Originally from Accrington, singer songwriter Quint Starkie has been in the music business for many years, working as a session musician, composer, producer and live performer.

In 2001 he signed a publishing deal with EMI Music Publishing and wrote and produced over 150 songs. The song “Always You” composed by Quint, is on the soundtrack to “My Best Friends Wedding”.

Dorie is the daughter of David Jackson of Van der Graaf Generator fame. She started her professional singing career as a backing vocalist for Francis Dunnery. Francis introduced Dorie to many great musicians and writers, one of which was Chris Difford (Squeeze) and she has sung backing vocals on several albums with other great artists including William Topley, and Marti Pellow. She also has a solo album The Courting Ground.

The duo will perform songs from Quint’s albums Ghost in my Heart and Quintessential.
Contact: Steve Wheeler, helmdonfilmandmusic@gmail.com

The Budapest Café Orchestra is playing live at Helmdon Reading Room on Friday July 2nd 2021 at 7.30pm
The Budapest Café Orchestra will kick off the Helmdon Festival with an evening of eclectic music. They are a four-piece band touring extensively around Great Britain and we are the second venue on their tour! The BCO redeliver Balkan and Russian traditional gypsy and folk music in their own fresh surprising way. Admired for their artful distillations of masterpieces by the great Romantic composers. “The music is magic in their hands.” Sean Rafferty, BBC Radio 3.
Tickets £16 from Morag: morag@msn.com

Andy Lawrenson Trio “Golden Age of the Silver Screen”
Fun for all….evening of music in Helmdon Reading Room

Friday October 4th 2019, Helmdom Reading Room at 7:45pm.

Tickets £10 from Morag Underwood or collect from Old Hall Bookshop, Market Place, Brackley.

The Cafe Parisien
A Fabulous evening of music in Helmdon Reading Room. November 16th 2018 at 7:45

Tickets £10 available from Morag Underwood or collect from Old Hall Bookshop, Market Place, Brackley.

Live Performances Archive

Helmdon Presents Live Performances, 2007 to 2017 (on www.helmdonhistory.com)