My first visit to a cinema since 2019 and my first visit to the Riverside Studios cinema since it re-opened.
The cinema is downstairs with a dedicated bar. It is much smaller than the old cinema – just four rows of comfy seats and a good sound system. Now they need to curate some good movies.
We saw First Cow, an elegiac film about nothing much. A Western shot lovingly in Oregon, a favourite haunt of director, Kelly Reinhardt. A buddy movie between a cook and a Chinese immigrant on the run from Russian trappers one of whom he has killed. A heist film in which the buddies steal the Chief Factor’s milk. Like all Westerns there has to be a baddy and that’s the Chief Factor played by Toby Jones. He has the only cow in Oregon, a beautiful Jersey with limpid eyes, called Evie. She is producing milk because she had a calf that died. The best line goes to the Chief Factor savouring a biscuit, unbeknownst to him, made from his stolen milk: “it tastes of South Kensington”.