Hyde Park On Hudson (12A)
Based on the true events of a weekend in 1939, Roger Michell’s comedy drama tells the tale of a meeting between the King and Queen of Great Britain and US President Franklin D Roosevelt.
The Royals travel to up-state New York (although the film was shot entirely in England) for the historic first visit of the British Monarchy to a President of the United States.
Bill Murray portrays Roosevelt with a lust for life as he navigates visiting royalty and an increasingly complicated relationship between his wife Eleanor (Olivia Williams), and his mistress (Laura Linney).
Samuel West and Olivia Coleman take on the royal roles of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth who are visiting as the monarchs of Canada ahead of the impending Second World War, which broke out just a few months after the historic visit.
At Derby QUAD.
Zero Dark Thirty (15)
Kathryn Bigelow follows up her huge Oscar success The Hurt Locker by mining similar territory with this excellent dramatic account of the hunt for Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
The film covers the hunt for Bin Laden which began just hours after the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001 and culminated in his death at the hands of Navy SEAL Team 6 at a compound in Pakistan in May 2011.
Jessica Chastain plays CIA agent Maya who leads the hunt in a Golden Globe winning performance, capturing the obsessive and combative nature of a woman obsessed with tracking down Bin Laden and prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to complete her mission.
The title echoes a military term for half-past midnight and is thematic of the long, dark passage of time between the initial vows to hunt Bin Laden and his actual death almost 10 years later.
Nominated for five Oscars.
At Derby QUAD
Also showing: Les Miserables (12A), Lincoln (12A), Sightseers (12A), Django Unchained (18), Life of Pi (PG), at Derby QUAD.
