Ayr Film Society: Ayr Show Sunday Funday Films

Free, drop-in family events, Sunday 8 September 2024
Ayr Town Hall, 21-29 New Bridge Street, Ayr KA7 1J

To celebrate the International Ayr Show Festival of Flight. Ayr Film Society invites you to enjoy a Sunday filled with aviation-themed films at Ayr Town Hall to celebrate the International Ayr Show Festival of Flight.

Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines | Showtime: 1pm

In 1910, just seven years after the first heavier-than-air flight, aircraft are fragile and unreliable contraptions, piloted by “intrepid birdmen”. Pompous British newspaper magnate Lord Rawnsley (Robert Morley) forbids his would-be aviatrix daughter, ardent suffragette Patricia (Sarah Miles), to fly. Aviator Richard Mays (James Fox), a young army officer and (at least in his own eyes) Patricia’s fiancé, conceives the idea of an air race from London to Paris to advance the cause of British aviation and his career. With Patricia’s support, he persuades Lord Rawnsley to sponsor the race as a publicity stunt for his newspaper.

​“…part slapstick, part spectacle, and part adventure, but most of all it’s sweet, lighthearted fun.”

Rawnsley, who takes full credit for the idea, announces the event to the press, and invitations are sent to leading aviators all over the world.

Director : Ken Annakin
Starring : Stuart Whitman , Sarah Miles, James Fox
Duration: 2 hr 18 min    

Paper Planes | Showtime: 4.15pm

When a student teacher comes to school, 12 year-old Dylan discovers he has an unusual hidden talent for making great paper planes. Despite difficulties at home, with the support of his eccentric granddad and funny friends, Dylan eventually makes it to the junior championships. Competing with the world’s best he learns to make new friends, build better planes and starts to figure out how to get along with his dad now that his mum has gone. This is an uplifting family drama with an imaginative premise and some hilarious moments.

Terry Norris steals the show as the irrepressible grandpa who has little intention of putting his rakish fighter-pilot past behind him.”

Director : Robert Connolly
Starring : Sam Worthington, Ed Oxenbould, Deborah Mailman
Duration: 1 hr  36 min    

Sully | Showtime: 7pm

There’s a great performance at the center of Sully, Clint Eastwood’s film about Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who miraculously landed a US Airways jet loaded with 155 passengers and crew in the middle of the Hudson River on a frigid January day fifteen years ago and did not lose a single soul in the process. That performance is, of course, by Tom Hanks as Sully, a white-haired reserve of composure and practicality who almost never loses his cool even when he’s attempting an unprecedented water landing. Underneath that calm exterior, however, Sully is roiled by self-doubt after the incident: could he have done it differently? Could he have made it to one of the nearby airports as instructed?

He’s also plagued by nightmares in which he doesn’t make it and the plane plows into skyscrapers along the Manhattan skyline, an unsettling image which Eastwood deploys over and over again. The idea is that New York found a kind of healing in Sully’s achievement, some eight years after 9/11, with a character saying at one point, “It’s been a while since New York had news this good — especially with an airplane in it.” It’s a message that’s especially moving during the film’s single best segment after the landing itself — an extended sequence in which New York workers from a ferry captain to first responders make their way into the icy waters of the Hudson and rescue the passengers as the plane slowly disappears below the surface.

“Great story that shows how ordinary people ,”just doing their jobs”, can become heroes.”

Director : Clint Eastwood
Starring : Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney
Duration: 1 hr  36 min