Impressive line-up of films on offer at Buckingham community cinema this month

Buckingham’s independent cinema The Film Place has in impressive selection of dramas lined up for the second half of April – starting with the compelling She Said on Friday, April 14.

This is the story of how two New York Times reporters broke the story of the decades of sexual abuse accusations against Harvey Weinstein. Their report helped to ignite the MeToo movement. But this film details just how the story came to be researched and eventually published.

In Empire of Light, on Saturday, April 15, Olivia Colman plays a cinema manager in a seaside town struggling with her own sanity, who is attracted to a new employee who shares her longing to escape daily adversity.

Sandra Hall in the Sydney Morning Herald says: “These are tricky scenes to bring off, but Mendes has written them with such care and Colman performs them with such a delicate awareness of just how far they should be taken that the swift changes in pace and tone don’t hit a false note.”

Watcher, on Friday, April 21, is a high-tension, quietly terrifying thriller set in Bucharest, in which a serial killer stalks the city. Julia, a young actress who just moved to the town, notices a mysterious stranger watching her from across the street.

Mike McCahill in the Guardian says: “This is a very solidly engineered Hitchcockian throwback… offering actual, genuine, old-fashioned thrills.”

Delores Quintana says: “Watcher is a gorgeous film of delicate tension. It’s an icy and elegant study of the constant state of fear that many women live in every day.”

Billed as a Hidden Gem, Juniper, on Saturday, April 22, is set in rural New Zealand, where a worldly former war correspondent is now bored in retirement, with a drinking problem and a newly fractured leg. Then her unruly grandson, grieving the death of his mother, is kicked out of boarding school.

After an unpromising start (“Give me my gin, you little shit!” and “I’m not looking after that old bitch”) they form an unexpected bond. Rex Reed in the Observer says: “Charlotte Rampling coming out of semi-retirement is an occasion that should be accompanied by fireworks".

The maliciously entertaining revenge drama The Menu, on Friday, April 28, sees a young couple travel to a remote island to eat at an exclusive destination restaurant where the acclaimed chef has prepared a lavish tasting menu, but there are some shocking surprises.

Peter Travers of ABC News says: “Foodie culture gets hilariously torched as a celebrity chef, acted to pretentious perfection by Ralph Fiennes, holds his customers, except for a deliciously defiant Anya Taylor-Joy, to the fire at his restaurant from hell. It’s all delectably unhinged.”

Kate Blanchett won the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Actress for her starring role in Tar, showing on Saturday, April 29.

Lydia Tar, the passionate, demanding, autocratic conductor of a major German orchestra is at the height of her career. She is preparing both a book launch and a much-anticipated live performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony.

And then her life begins to unravel – leading to a breathtaking climax during a performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto.

All films are screened at 7.30pm at the Vinson Centre. Tickets can be booked online via The Film Place website.