Daylesford’s Phoenix Cinema is offering something really special, a screening of the hugely popular `Chocolat’ with a chocolate tasting from Christina Tantsis, founder of Sisko Chocolate of Trentham.
On Friday, 4 September at 7pm guests will be taken through each chocolate tasting, sharing techniques, profiles and the stories behind artisan chocolates. Handcrafted chocolates will be on each seat.
The film stars Juliette Binoche who arrives in a repressed French village with her six-year-old daughter. Juliette opens a chocolaterie and the place is never the same.
A new release, “The Good Boy” (August 21, 7pm August 23 , 2pm, August 24, 7pm) is a black comedy thriller. A married couple abduct a 19-year-old criminal and try different ways to try to rehabilitate him.
Sean Connery and Michael Caine make a fine pair as they set off as ex-soldiers on the path of adventure in late 19th Century British India. `The Man Who Would Be King’ (August 21-22, 4.30pm). Adapted from Rudyard Kipling’s 1888 novella, this 1975 epic directed by John Huston sees one of the pair taken as a god and made king. There’s even a role for Kipling!
Proof that old toys can learn new tricks is shown in ”Toy Story 5” (August 22-23, 11am). There’s fun, some tugging of the heartstrings in a film resembling a family reunion.
A piano tuner with a finely tuned ear finds it useful to crack safes in “Tuner” (August 22, 7pm)
Raw intensity, relentless action and a stripped-down survival story make up “Badlands” (August 23, 4.30pm.
Spider Man is back for five screenings. This time it’s ”Spider-Man:Brand New Day”. After giving his life to protecting New York City, but he finds the demands are such that his existence is threatened, while a strange and powerful new pattern of crime emerges. (27 August, 7pm, 28 August 4.15, 29-30 August 11am, 31 August 1.30pm).
Also coming up are some of the best films of the 70s.
“Annie Hall” was the most celebrated film of 1977. It’ perhaps best described as a modern screwball comedy full of doubt, indecision and pop psychology. Marvellous performances by Diane Keaton and Woody Allen. (28 August 2pm, 29 August 4.30).
An unusual romantic comedy, ”One Night Only” centres on the idea of premarital sex being illegal, except for 12 hours once a year.
This new release screens at 7.15pm from August 28 to 31.
There’s outstanding direction by Robert Altman in the 1973 thriller “The Long Goodbye”. A private detective obliges an old mate with a ride to Mexico, only to be questioned by police back in Los Angeles about the death of his friend’s wife. Philip Marlowe, the detective, is messy and unkempt, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He’s the perfect sauce for this work. (29 August, 2pm).
Monday August 24 sees the showing at 4.30pm of the unforgettable “Deliverance” from 1972. Four suburban types embarking on a canoe trip in bush about to be destroyed by a new dam encounter savage local. A hideous assault follows and to survive the suburbanites must strike back.
“Deliverance” is especially memorable for a scene where a suburbanite plays duelling banjos with a withered man-child.
Probably no director except Mel Brooks could come up with the classic comedy “Blazing Saddles” from 1974. A corrupt politician engages a black sheriff in a small American town to drive away residents, but the effect is the opposite. Bizarre aspects include a loud horse fart, Count Basie’s appearance with `April in Paris’ and a Yiddish-speaking North American chief. One screening, (August 30, 2pm).
Anther once-only screening is the unusual and touching “Harold and Maude” from 1971. Harold is a young man obsessed with death. His perspective alters after he meets and falls in love with Maude, a lively, elderly woman who teaches him how to live life to the fullest. August 30, 4.30pm)
“Tabu” (August 24, 2pm) is a 2026 documentary exploring the life, psychology, and radical art of the early 20th Century Austrian painter Egon Schiele. Centred heavily on the hometown of Schiele’s mother, it has a narrative guided by debut actor Erika Carletto, through diary readings, folk songs and Schiele’s former spaces.
For more films or to book please go to Phoenix Cinema.
