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2020 eh? If this wasn’t the most punishing year for all of us…

As the year draws to a close we’re returning to our annual celebration of all things cinema – The Truffles: The HeyUGuys Alternative Movie Awards. Since 2009 we’ve been championing the films and performances that remind us why we dedicate ourselves to the seventh art.

Now more than ever we need to rally around cinemas, and shout as loud as possible about our shared love of the cinematic experience. In this spirit, as we look back on our favourite moments in film from 2020 we’ll be focusing fully on the positive.

Here at HeyUGuys we want to wish you a very happy Christmas, a peaceful holiday season and a far, far better New Year.

Cai Ross The ‘John Malkovich in Rounders’ Award for Most Bewildering Accent of The Year.

Robert Downey Jr in Dolittle.

Having twice diced...

As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.***"One of the truly outstanding incompetents" may have been Orson Welles's hilarious verdict on Franco-Irish director and madman John Guillermin, and looking at something like King Kong (1976) or God help us King Kong Lives (1986) one can't help but sense some justice in this, but in his earlier career, the energetic Guillermin showed some promise. His films throughout the fifties were solid and stolid in the way of too much British cinema of the time, but Rapture (1965) is a crazily stylish tour-de-force of excessive, out-of-control camera lurches and assaults which even Welles might have admired.The previous year Guillermin had made Guns at Batasi, a 99% British feature, but produced by...

Alec Guinness transfers an acting challenge from the stage to the screen, in this account of a Cardinal forced to knuckle under to a Communist regime — instead of extracting a confession with torture, Jack Hawkins’ Inquisitor uses psychology to find his prisoner’s weakness. The picture is uneven but its key performances are choice, with a special assist from Wilfrid Lawson as a jailer.

The Prisoner

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1955 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date March 12, 2019 / 39.95

Starring: Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Wilfrid Lawson, Kenneth Griffith, Jeanette Sterke, Ronald Lewis, Raymond Huntley, Percy Herbert.

Cinematography: Reginald Wyer

Film Editor: Frederick Wilson

Original Music: Benjamin Frankel

Written by Bridget Boland from her play

Produced by Vivian Cox

Directed by Peter Glenville

Is this an anti-Communist piece, or simply a story about human convictions and human weakness? Believe it or not, some interpreted it as anti-Catholic in 1955. European film festivals may have...

Fathom Events, Turner Classic Movies and Warner Bros. are bringing one of the most visually spectacular motion-picture epics of all time back to the big screen: Ben-hur, which celebrates its 60th anniversary with this two-day-only presentation. This is a must-see if you’ve never seen it in the theaters – especially for the heart-pounding chariot race.

Sunday, April 14, 2019 – 1:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. (local time)

Wednesday, April 17, 2019 – 1:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. (local time)

Director William Wyler’s classic received 11 Academy Awards, more than any other film to that point (and still tied with Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King).

The production encompassed 300 sets, nine sound stages and consumed 1.1 million feet of film, yet never loses sight of its compelling story of Jewish prince (Charlton Heston) who vows revenge when he is enslaved by his Roman childhood friend (Stephen Boyd). Jack Hawkins,...