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The Reel McCoy Film Group

Screening world cinema and forgotten gems since 1990

The Reel McCoy Film Group is a not-for-profit film society that since 1990 has been catering for people interested in cinema, particularly those who like to see timeless classics and overlooked gems at low cost.

Our membership fees are:

$50 for 12 months
$35 for 6 months
$20 for 3 months
Membership runs from the date of joining.

With very grateful support from



Canberra Museum and Gallery
Members of CMAG are welcome to join the Reel McCoy at a substantial discount:
membership for a year for only $20.


Screenings are held in the Theatre of Canberra Museum and Gallery (corner of London Circuit and City Square, Canberra City), usually on the second and last Sundays of each month at 12:30 pm.

Next screening:

Sunday, 27 October 2024 at 12:30 pm

CHUNKING EXPRESS
Hong Kong · 1994 · 98 min.
Director Wong Kar-Wai
Cast Brigitte Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung, Faye Wong

This film is made up of two connected stories about Hong Kong policemen recovering from failed romances and their encounters with other women. The first involves a cop (Kaneshiro) who meets a mysterious drug smuggler (Lin); the second involves a cop (Leung) roused from his gloom by a quirky snack bar worker (Wong). Writer-director Wong Kar-wai’s thrillingly distinctive visuals in this movie catapulted him to international prominence. He has been compared to Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s because of his unconventional editing techniques, freeze frames, jump cuts, voiceover, references to literature, and inclusion of pop culture.


For more information, e-mail us or come along to a screening

The Reel McCoy Film Group is a member of the Australian Film Societies Federation. Contact them to learn how to start and run a film society or group of your own.


Programme for the second half of 2024:


Sunday 11 February 2024

THE PHILADELPHIA STORY
USA · 1940 · 112 min.
Director George Cukor
Cast Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey, Virginia Weidler

A classic American film, based on the successful stage play by Philip Barry. A socialite daughter (Hepburn) of a rich, prominent Philadelphia family is getting married for the second time. The wedding of course attracts media attention and two reporters (Hussey and Stewart) from a gossip mag turn up for some interviews. Also interested, though pretending not to be, is the first husband (Grant). There is also a fabulously funny younger sister (Weidler) who asks awkward questions and plays inappropriate songs on the piano. It’s all very witty, very funny, and very pointed about the behaviour of the American moneyed class.


Sunday 25 February 2024

THE GETAWAY
USA · 1972 · 122 min.
Director Sam Peckinpah
Cast Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw, Ben Johnson, Al Lettieri, Sally Struthers

Carter "Doc" McCoy (McQueen) rots in the big house. Wife Carol (MacGraw) gets a crime boss to arrange his release on the condition that they rob a bank. They are double-crossed by their accomplices and head for the Texas/Mexico border; both the law and the mob chase them. Adapted by the author Jim Thompson from his novel about chancers taking on the world while struggling with their own issues of fidelity, The Getaway blends the narrative of classic film noir with the dry sensibility of the disaffected generation of the Vietnam era. Suspenseful and unsentimental it is a significant contribution to the crime genre.


Sunday 10 March 2024

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
USA · 1971 · 118 min.
Director Peter Bogdanovich
Cast Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Cybill Shepherd

Based on the evocative novel by Larry McMurtry, this wonderful film follows the lives of a number of residents of a small Texan town in the 1950s. The local picture theatre is closing down and this acts as a symbol for the passing of time and the changing of the guard: an older generation with some poignant memories and the younger people, reaching upwards and outwards and finding that life is not as easy as it looks. All the cast are superb, with Cybill Shepherd making her debut. Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman were deservedly rewarded with Academy Awards for their very moving performances.


Sunday 31 March 2024

THE LAST DAYS OF CHEZ NOUS
Australia · 1992 · 93 min.
Director Gillian Armstrong
Cast Lisa Harrow, Bruno Ganz, Kerry Fox, Miranda Otto, Bill Hunter

Beth (Harrow in an AFI Award-winning performance) is a modern matriarch doing her best to raise her teenage daughter Annie (Otto) whilst enjoying the best of an easy-going marriage to Frenchman JP (Ganz). When younger sister Vicki (Fox) returns from abroad and moves into the household she is instantly drawn to the ideal family structure and develops a longing for what is missing in her own life. Nominated for 10 AFI Awards and with an original and nuanced script by Australian writer Helen Garner, this Australian drama delves into the lives of a family dealing with emotional intricacies amidst shifting relationships.


Sunday 14 April 2024

REBECCA
USA · 1940 · 130 min.
Director Alfred Hitchcock
Cast Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson, George Sanders

A naïve young woman (Fontaine) marries a charming English aristocrat with A Past (Olivier), and when she goes to live at his mansion she finds herself constantly tripping over and running into this past, especially the memory of his former wife, Rebecca. Alfred Hitchcock launched his American career with this work, a gothic romance – a style slightly foreign to him, which he never again perfected to this degree – and directed his only film to win the Best Picture Oscar®. The great Australian actress, Judith Anderson, is wonderful as the ominous Mrs Danvers.


Sunday 28 April 2024

THE AMERICAN FRIEND
Germany · 1977 · 127 min.
Director Wim Wenders
Cast Dennia Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer, Gerard Blain, Nicholas Ray, Samuel Fuller

Adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel, the film follows the enigmatic friendship between a terminally ill picture framer (Ganz) and a mysterious American art dealer (Hopper) drawn into the world of contract killing. Bruno Ganz (The Last Days of Chez Nous and Wings of Desire) gives an extraordinary performance. Set against a backdrop of existential dread and moral ambiguity, the movie unfolds a suspenseful tale marked by haunting cinematography and intense performances. Wenders crafts a mesmerising noir thriller, blending European arthouse sensibilities with the tension of American cinema. This is as introspective and psychologically tangled as thrillers come, and is all the more compelling for it.

Followed by our
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Come along and have your say


Sunday 12 May 2024

ELECTION
USA · 1999 · 99 min.
Director Alexander Payne
Cast Reese Witherspoon, Matthew Broderick, Chris Klein

Reese Witherspoon, in a breakthrough starring role, plays a peppy schoolgirl obsessed with winning the presidency of her high school's student council. Her civics teacher (Broderick) is appalled at her naked ambition and the inevitability of her success as the sole candidate. He attempts to manipulate the process while his private life becomes unhinged. Alexander Payne's film was unsuccessful on release but has since become a cult classic both as a black comedy satirising American morals and as a skewering of US politics by analogy. This study of ruthless ambitions makes it an appropriate screening for this US election year.


Sunday 26 May 2024

HEATWAVE
Australia · 1982 · 91 min.
Director Phillip Noyce
Cast Judy Davis, Richard Moir, Chris Haywood

As Sydney endures an especially oppressive summer, architect Stephen West (Moir) is hired to design an ambitious redevelopment project in the inner city. Working-class residents of the area resist their displacement by ambitious Cockney builder Peter Houseman (Haywood) and are mobilised by idealistic activist Kate Dean (Davis). Architect and activist clash but form a relationship. Inspired by the real-life murder of socialite Juanita Nielsen, Heatwave relates aspects of the still unsolved crime, blends neo-noir sensibilities with the radical politics of the 1970s, and commemorates a world that has since been utterly erased by gentrification.


Sunday 9 June 2024

THE PRODUCERS
USA · 1967 · 88 min.
Director Mel Brooks
Cast Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shaw, Kenneth Mars

A theatre producer and his accountant scheme to get rich by fraudulently overselling interests in a stage musical designed to fail. And surely nothing will flop harder than a sentimental musical about Adolf Hitler – right? This film (Mel Brooks’s directorial debut) is anchored by superb performances from Mostel and Wilder, and the film’s sharp humour and witty storytelling. Controversial in its day, The Producers is now held by many to be Brooks' finest work. The film remains a classic that inspired a musical which went on to become a film itself.


Sunday 30 June 2024

THE NAKED CITY
USA · 1948 · 96 min.
Director Jules Dassin
Cast Barry Fitzgerald, Don Taylor, Dorothy Hart, Howard Duff

A model is found dead in her bathtub and two detectives are assigned to a murder case, the veteran detective (Fitzgerald) and the novice (Taylor). The film details the work of the police force as they follow a trail that leads all over New York. The Naked City is a landmark film directed by Jules Dassin, a master of film noir. It is famous for being filmed almost entirely on location in New York. It also revolutionised the genre by incorporating documentary style techniques. The cinematography of William H. Daniels won a well-deserved Oscar®.


Sunday 14 July 2024

THE LION IN WINTER
UK, USA · 1968 · 134 min.
Director Anthony Harvey
Cast Katharine Hepburn, Peter O'Toole, Anthony Hopkins

English king Henry II (O'Toole) gathers his family together in his Chinon château for Christmas in 1183. The guests include his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine (Hepburn), temporarily freed from house arrest, accompanied by her sons, Richard, Geoffrey, and John. When Phillip II of France and his sister are included in the guest list the proceedings deteriorate into complex power plays over inheritance of lands and the throne. In the 1969 Academy Awards, the film had 7 nominations and won 3 Oscars®: Katharine Hepburn for best actress, John Barry for his regal musical score, and John Goldman for his adapted screenplay.


Sunday 28 July 2024

LADY FOR A DAY
USA · 1933 · 96 min.
Director Frank Capra
Cast May Robson, Warren William, Glenda Farrell, Jean Parker

Apple Annie (Robson), a streetside fruit vendor in New York, has been lying to her daughter back in Spain, pretending to move high in the city’s upper social circles. Now her daughter is coming to New York with her aristocratic fiancé, in front of whom she must appear to really be a lady – for a day. And her only chance of doing so rests with a local gangster, who considers Apple Annie to be a good-luck charm. Frank Capra made this film on the eve of hitting the big time, and it’s clear why he was about to.


Sunday 11 August 2024

DEPARTURES
Japan · 2008 · 131 min.
Director Yojiro Takita
Cast Masahiro Motoki, Ryoko Hirosue, Tsutomu Yamazaki

A moving film which won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It opens with a passionate cello player losing his job as his orchestra plays to another almost empty concert hall. Disheartened, he returns to his home town, and needing work, he applies for a job at a company called Departures. He thinks it’s a travel firm, but it’s not and he is in for a surprise. Exquisitely directed, photographed, and acted, the film is both comical and profound. It looks at the difficult subject of dying and finds beauty, meaning, and love. There is also some exceptional cello playing.


Sunday 25 August 2024

BLOW OUT
USA · 1981 · 108 min.
Director Brian de Palma
Cast John Travolta, Karen Allen, John Lithgow

In this neo-noir thriller, Travolta is a sound technician gathering sound effects for a film when he hears a tyre blow out and sees the resulting fatal car crash. It transpires that the victim was a promising presidential candidate. Odd characteristics of the sound recording lead him to suspect that the crash was no accident. The film was not successful at release but has gained cult status, particularly following its enthusiastic endorsement by Quentin Tarantino. Notable features of the film are the cinematography by the late, great Vilmos Zsigmond, and the insight the film gives into the mechanics of filmmaking.


Sunday 8 September 2024

LILI
USA · 1953 · 80 min.
Director Charles Walters
Cast Leslie Caron, Mel Ferrer, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Zsa Zsa Gabor

This lush, late Technicolor MGM musical sees a naïve French teenage girl lost and abandoned in a town far from home, alternately dismissed and taken advantage of, and ultimately rescued by a carnival puppeteer. He’s prickly and misanthropic but can relate to her through the puppet characters in his act – which is also the only way she can relate to him. After being discovered by Gene Kelly for An American in Paris two years earlier, Leslie Caron plays her first true leading role, and does a marvellous job of carrying an unashamedly sentimental story.


Sunday 29 September 2024

MO' BETTER BLUES
USA · 1990 · 130 min.
Director Spike Lee
Cast Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Wesley Snipes, Giancarlo Esposito, Robin Harris

Talented trumpeter Bleek Gilliam (Washington) is obsessed by his music and indecisive about his girlfriends Indigo (Joie Lee) and Clarke (Cynda Williams). But when he is forced to come to the aid of his manager and childhood friend Giant (Spike Lee), Bleek finds his world more fragile than he ever imagined. After the success of his hit Do the Right Thing Spike Lee was able to fulfil his long-time ambition to make a film about jazz. He trades his usual social issues for a parable and fills it with stars such as Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, and Giancarlo Esposito.


Sunday 13 October 2024

FLIRTING
Australia · 1990 · 100 min.
Director John Duigan
Cast Noah Taylor, Thandie Newton, Nicole Kidman, Bartholomew Rose, Naomi Watts

After the success of his film The Year My Voice Broke (1987), Australian director John Duigan followed up with this sequel which also proved popular with the public and critics. The film follows the young Noah Taylor character who leaves the Braidwood countryside to go to boarding school. He meets a Ugandan girl (Newton) from a nearby school, and, still the shy, romantic teenager he was in the first film, he falls in love with her. The film is a gentle, subtle study of the joys and pains of adolescence, its charm enhanced by some beautiful ensemble acting by a cast including Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts.


Sunday 27 October 2024

CHUNKING EXPRESS
Hong Kong · 1994 · 98 min.
Director Wong Kar-Wai
Cast Brigitte Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung, Faye Wong

This film is made up of two connected stories about Hong Kong policemen recovering from failed romances and their encounters with other women. The first involves a cop (Kaneshiro) who meets a mysterious drug smuggler (Lin); the second involves a cop (Leung) roused from his gloom by a quirky snack bar worker (Wong). Writer-director Wong Kar-wai’s thrillingly distinctive visuals in this movie catapulted him to international prominence. He has been compared to Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s because of his unconventional editing techniques, freeze frames, jump cuts, voiceover, references to literature, and inclusion of pop culture.


Sunday 10 November 2024

A FACE IN THE CROWD
USA · 1957 · 126 min.
Director Elia Kazan
Cast Andy Griffith, Walter Matthau, Patricia Neal, Lee Remick

The face in the crowd is Larry Rhodes, dubbed "Lonesome Rhodes" by the radio interviewer who discovers him when doing a story from a rural Arkansas jail. She invites him to sing a song, which he does, and something clicks with audiences, who can’t get enough of him: he’s catapulted from radio, to television, to politics. But the interviewer who gave him his big break soon finds she’s made a terrible mistake. Rhodes is at once loathsome and fascinating, and the film, while it may be among Elia Kazan’s most blistering, is also perhaps his most entertaining.


Sunday 24 November 2024

THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES
USA · 1941 · 92 min.
Director Sam Wood
Cast Jean Arthur, Robert Cummings, Charles Coburn

This witty, delightful comedy has Jean Arthur as a saleswoman in the shoe section of Neely's department store, part of the corporate empire of an aloof, curmudgeonly tycoon. The tycoon, played beautifully by Charles Coburn, discovers that a union organiser (Robert Cummings) is attempting to recruit the disgruntled staff of Neely's and resolves to go undercover to ferret out those trouble-makers calling in the union. Fate has it that he's employed as junior sales staff member in the shoe department. His experiences teach him some hard truths about people and the lives they live at the bottom of his empire.


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Please note that programme details are subject to change without notice


List of films screened by Reel McCoy Film Group and Big House Film Society,
2000 - 2022 (PDF format)


Copyright © 2024 Reel McCoy Film Group

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