Friday Mar 4 to Thursday Mar 10, 2016

"It's 16 years since Maggie Smith last played cantankerous Mary Shepherd in Alan Bennett’s hit play about his real-life nuisance neighbour. Since then the veteran actress has carefully honed the art of the acidic one-liner in Downton Abbey and two 'Marigold Hotel' films.

"An African American track-and-field athlete who grew up in near-poverty in Alabama and Cleveland, Jesse Owens became a veritable sensation during his tenure at Ohio State University. By the time he had qualified for the Olympics, Owens has set so many speed records, the media had dubbed him the world's fastest man.

"The Lacey women, wrote Irish novelist Colm Toibin in his 2009 book BROOKLYN, could do everything, 'except say out loud what it was they were thinking.' In John Crowley’s lovely film made from the novel, Saoirse Ronan ('Atonement') provides a master class in showing, not saying, what her character Eilis Lacey is thinking.

"In the beautifully acted drama '45 Years,' a marriage lives and dies; we watch its agonized struggle, like a butterfly impaled on a pin. It’s a quiet movie, taking place over a week in the lives of Kate and Geoff Mercer (Charlotte Rampling, Tom Courtenay), a retired British couple happily anticipating a party for their 45th anniversary.