THE DUKE

Fri, July 21 at 7:30 ♦ Sat, July 22 at 4:30 and 7:30 ♦ Sun, July 23 at 4:30 and 7:30

Fri, July 28 at 7:30 ♦ Sat, July 29 at 4:30 and 7:30 ♦ Sun, July 30 at 4:30 and 7:30

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Co-feature: The Thief Collector

Buy a ticket to The Duke and get a free ticket to The Thief Collector

The Duke is set in England in 1961 and is the true story of Kempton Bunton, a 60-year old taxi driver, who stole Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. It was the first (and remains the only) theft in the Gallery’s history. Kempton sent ransom notes saying that he would return the painting on condition that the government agreed to provide television for free to the elderly. (This was long before the advent of Netflix and Hulu. If Kempton were planning his heist today, he’d have to steal a dozen Goyas to cover the cost of streaming platforms.)

What happened next became the stuff of legend. Only 50 years later did the full story emerge – a startling revelation of how a good man set out to change the world and in so doing saved his son and his marriage. Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren star. The Duke is directed by Roger Mitchell, who died last year, and has been compared to the classic British Ealing comedies of the 1950s.

All rise for The Duke, a scrappy underdog yarn that makes a powerful case for the rackety English amateur, the common man who survives by his wits with the odds stacked against him. What a lovely, rousing, finally moving film this is. – The Guardian