Turn up the hi-fi this May for a 25th anniversary screening of High Fidelity, the romantic comedy-drama based on Nick Hornby’s beloved novel. John Cusack leads a cast full of excellent cameos and a story full of great music, with a breakout turn from Jack Black straddling both. For the first time at a Vintage Screening, we’ll be pairing it with some wines inspired by music…!
Join us as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator with a wine and pasta night fit for an emperor! This special Vintage Screening will be serving up six Italian wines to taste alongside the film, as well as a meal during the interval courtesy of Toff’s Pasta. It promises to be an epic evening.
As the summer comes to a close, we’re turning up the heat with a 25th anniversary screening of the cult crime classic Sexy Beast. Jonathan Glazer’s tale of a safe-cracker forced out of retirement is full of shocks, thrills, pitch-dark comedy, and Ben Kingsley’s scariest turn as a psychotic mob boss. In honour of the film’s iconic opening scenes on the Costa del Sol - and to toast the end of summer - we’ll be pairing it with a tasting of Spanish wines.
Regulars will know that we have a fond spot for some of the older movie musicals, and we’re delighted to present a Vintage Screening of Annie Get Your Gun for its 75th anniversary! Based on Irving Berlin’s musical and starring Betty Hutton as the titular sharpshooter - plus Howard Keel in his Hollywood debut - it’s a rootin’ tootin’ musical misadventure! In keeping with the setting, we’ll be pairing the film with wines from the frontiers of the Wild West – but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be American…
Join us as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator with a wine and pasta night fit for an emperor! This special Vintage Screening will be serving up six Italian wines to taste alongside the film, as well as a meal during the interval courtesy of Toff’s Pasta. It promises to be an epic evening.
ROUND UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS FOR THIS SLICK AND TWISTING CRIME THRILLER
Our October Vintage Screenings start with a bang on 10th October with a 30th anniversary screening of The Usual Suspects. This compelling crime thriller is packed with twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the very last minute - and to honour that, we’ll be doing the same with another blind tasting evening, giving you subtle clues to help you pick the odd wine out before the evening is up…!
A PIONEERING ANTHOLOGY OF CHILLING TALES FROM A BELOVED BRITISH STUDIO
Our October Vintage Screenings continue with a chilling warm-up (or perhaps chill-down?) for Halloween, Dead Of Night. One of Ealing Studios’ rare horror outputs and helping to set the tone for British horror for the rest of the century, this anthology of eerie tales turns 80 in 2025. We’ll be pairing it with a wine flight inspired by some of the stories that it tells, in a spine-tingling celebration of the macabre.
Our weekend of horror-tinged sci-fi at the Planetarium starts with a 25th anniversary double bill of futuristic frightfests from 2000. First up is the action-packed chiller Pitch Black, which introduced the world to Vin Diesel’s antihero Riddick, as he battles for survival on a planet where what you can’t see can really, really hurt you…!
Our double bill of futuristic frightfests from 2000 concludes with Paul Verhoeven’s thriller Hollow Man, which features Kevin Bacon as you’ve, erm, never seen him before, fulfilling the mad scientist role as the creator of an invisibility drug who can’t handle the consequences of his creation, with murderous results for his peers…
This November we’re presented a trio of Hitchcockian Vintage Screenings to mark some major anniversaries of some of his finest films. Our first screening is the haunting adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, which turns 85 this year. This was Hitchcock’s only film to win Best Picture at the Oscars, and it’s a glorious Gothic psychological thriller. We’ll be pairing it with some suitably Gothic wines inspired by the film’s character and characters…
This November we’re presented a trio of Hitchcockian Vintage Screenings to mark some major anniversaries of some of his finest films. Our second screening is Spellbound, which turns 80 this year; this brooding psychological thriller sees Ingrid Bergman face off against Gregory Peck, a man who isn’t who he seems and can’t be sure of who he’s supposed to be… We’ll be pairing it with wines that each have a Hitchcockian twist to them that make them unusual in their respective categories… Intrigued? We hope so!
Our trio of Hitchcock Vintage Screenings in November concludes with a 90th anniversary screening of the espionage thriller The 39 Steps. Showing just in time for St Andrew's Day, you can choose either a wine tasting or opt for a Scotch whisky tasting flight in honour of both the seminal film's setting and patron saint. Slainté!
With kind permission from Hammer Films, we’re thrilled to bring a 70th anniversary screening of The Quatermass Xperiment to the Planetarium this November. Based on the BBC serial, this chilling story of extraterrestrial threat and body horror was a major influence on cult director John Carpenter, and this digitally restored print will be a treat on the big screen once more for all fans of sci-fi and vintage horror!
We’re celebrating another milestone of dystopian sci-fi this November with a 30th anniversary screening of Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys. It’s a mind-bending time-travel misadventure featuring Bruce Willis as the convict trying to save humanity from its own fate, plus Brad Pitt in an Oscar-nominated, memorable turn as a psychiatric inmate.
As part of a double bill of dystopian international cinema, Battle Royale is coming to the Planetarium for a 25th anniversary screening. This controversial Japanese film about schoolkids forced to fight to the death by a totalitarian regime has influenced Tarantino, The Hunger Games, Squid Game and much, much more - it’s still a shocking and exhilarating watch, with satire, action, pathos et al for those who can stomach it!
As we move into December, we’re presenting a 20th anniversary screening of War Of The Worlds. Steven Spielberg masterfully adapts the seminal H.G. Wells novel for the 21st Century, bringing the scale of the alien invasion to life without losing sight of the existential dread of the source material. Harrowing and haunting, it’s another example of Spielberg’s proficiency in producing PG-13 horror (or 12-rated for us Brits!).
Our final night at the Planetarium in 2025 begins with a 20th anniversary screening of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge Of The Sith. The final film of the prequel trilogy details Anakin Skywalker’s tragic turn to the Dark Side of the Force, and the origins of one of cinema’s all-time greatest villains… It’s a space opera spectacle for the ages!
