Our news

With the latest news, blog posts, videos and interviews, our news channel is the best place to keep up to date with all things UPP

Fight Nights At The UPP

Fight Nights At The UPP

The gloves are off this November! Get ready for a knockout season of action movie classics, from Akira Kurosawa's epic rain-soaked samurai battles to the jaw-dropping martial arts of kung-fu king Bruce Lee. "Fight Nights at The UPP" ... Read more

Kafka On Film Season – October 2024

Kafka On Film Season – October 2024

This October, we have programmed a season of screenings and events linked with Oxford University’s city-wide project 'Kafka’s Transformative Communities' marking the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death. The season includes a rare outing for Hidden ... Read more

The End of the World as We Know It: Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove at 60

The End of the World as We Know It: Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove at 60

Whilst it was released 60 years ago, at the height of the cold war, with the Cuban Missile crisis a very recent memory for audiences at the time and with the similarly themed Sidney Lumet drama Fail Safe (which starred Henry Fonda and Walther ... Read more

Down in the Sewer: The Third Man at 75

Down in the Sewer: The Third Man at 75

Carol Reed is certainly one of the great British film makers. Up there with Powell and Pressburger, David Lean and Alfred Hitchcock although he is, arguably, less well-known. It was a trilogy of films in the mid 1940s which made him a force to ... Read more

National Cinema Day at the UPP (Sat 31st Aug)

National Cinema Day at the UPP (Sat 31st Aug)

On Saturday 31st August 2024, The Ultimate Picture Palace is celebrating National Cinema Day by offering audiences £4 tickets to all screenings that day. We have scheduled four screenings for Saturday, including: animated adventure Kensuke's ... Read more

Lone Star: Dead in the Heart of Texas

Lone Star: Dead in the Heart of Texas

“Lefty” filmmaker John Sayles wrote and directed an extraordinary run of intelligent, small-scale independent American movies in the 1990s and early 2000s. Not bad for a guy I first got to know as the scriptwriter of several low budget shockers ... Read more

Cinema closed for maintenance (Fri 2 – Thu 8 Aug)

Cinema closed for maintenance (Fri 2 – Thu 8 Aug)

The cinema will be closed for our annual summertime period of maintenance between Friday 2nd and Thursday 8th August. We will be open again as usual from Friday 9th August with a brand new programme of new releases, special events, and ... Read more

Will Heaven Fall Upon Us? Béla Tarr Retrospective

Will Heaven Fall Upon Us? Béla Tarr Retrospective

The undisputed master of European "slow cinema", and one of the greatest filmmakers of the 21st century. Join us this August as we celebrate the work of renowned Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr with this retrospective of his work, including brand ... Read more

The 1970s – Hollywood’s Second Golden Age

The 1970s – Hollywood’s Second Golden Age

They don’t call the 1970s, Hollywood’s “second” Golden Age, for nothing. Looking back upon the decade, it’s an extraordinarily rich period and one of the most interesting films from those golden years is playing in a re-mastered copy at the UPP ... Read more

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Tobe Hooper’s 1974 Bloodbath

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Tobe Hooper’s 1974 Bloodbath

“We are living in a land where sex and horror are the new Gods.” So pronounced Holly Johnson, lead singer of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, on the song Welcome to the Pleasure Dome, somewhere back in 1984 (an appropriate year for such a prophesy). ... Read more

SAFAR Film Festival 2024

SAFAR Film Festival 2024

The SAFAR Film Festival is the largest festival in the UK dedicated to cinema from the Arab world. Founded in 2012, SAFAR showcases the broad spectrum of film from the region by working with curators on themed programmes and inviting filmmakers ... Read more

The Cook, the Thief….an Acquired Taste

The Cook, the Thief….an Acquired Taste

I was wondering if everything you can think of, is better up on the big screen, in, you know, a movie? Sex, for sure. Sport, definitely. Landscapes? Perhaps. Faces? Maybe. Beauty? Absolutely. Food? Now, there’s an interesting one. The ... Read more

Magic Hour: Days of Heaven Returns

Magic Hour: Days of Heaven Returns

My students are often surprised to hear me say that there are a number of films I have seen well over 10 times at the cinema, in a lifetime devoted to the medium. And that’s not taking into account the numbers of viewings in a classroom, on ... Read more

New and Improved Annual Membership

New and Improved Annual Membership

We're revamping our Annual Membership to offer you an array of brand new perks to choose from. Starting this Friday (22nd March) you'll have the opportunity to select from three tiers of membership, tailored to suit your preferences and ... Read more

Maona presents African Cinema at the UPP

Maona presents African Cinema at the UPP

Maona is an organization founded by Tatenda Jamera, a filmmaker and curator, in response to the lack of authentic African stories being exhibited on the big screen. The name "Maona," meaning "you have seen" in the Shona language from Zimbabwe, ... Read more

Orson Welles Bows Out in Style

Orson Welles Bows Out in Style

1941’s masterful Citizen Kane, unsurprisingly turned out to be a tough act to follow. Orson Welles, a child prodigy and star of theatre and radio was already well known to audiences across the world when he first arrived in Hollywood and was ... Read more

Elaine May’s A New Leaf

Elaine May’s A New Leaf

Now 91 (and long may she last), Elaine May is a fascinating 1970s Hollywood figure and one of the few (only?) mainstream women directors from the period – 1971’s A New Leaf (which is screening at the UPP in March, as part of the Oxford ... Read more

The Man Who Ate His Shoe

The Man Who Ate His Shoe

Cinema lovers will continue to celebrate 2024 in style when the UPP screens a selection of films directed by the “none more maverick” German film director Werner Herzog in February. The season, which ties in with Radical Dreamer, the new BFI ... Read more

Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024

Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024

The UK’s largest festival of Japanese cinema, the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme (JFTFP24), returns with its biggest showcase ever and, this year, is coming to The Ultimate Picture Palace. Since 2004, the Japan Foundation, London ... Read more

The Rise and Fall of the Coolest of the Cool

The Rise and Fall of the Coolest of the Cool

Few other actors crashed and burned quite as spectacularly as 80s homme du jour Mickey Rourke who, lest we forget, was not only one of the most exciting actors to emerge in that decade but was also, for a while, the coolest (and probably ... Read more

UPP Staff and Volunteers Films of 2023

UPP Staff and Volunteers Films of 2023

Every year we poll our team to find out which new releases screened at the UPP that they enjoyed the most. In a year in which we’ve seen symphonic scandals, Alpine mysteries, and the arrival of a tiny walking, talking sea shell – let’s take a ... Read more

Powell & Pressburger: Paying for the Truth

Powell & Pressburger: Paying for the Truth

There is a generally held assumption about British cinema that, in this country, we are very good at making gritty, realist and naturalistic cinema (which we are). Think Ken Loach (whose uncharacteristically disappointing swansong The Old Oak ... Read more

Our December 2023 programme is now on sale!

Our December 2023 programme is now on sale!

A gothic ghost story, deadpan comedy from Finland, an epic historical drama, and a season of classics celebrating the work of two of Britain’s greatest ever filmmakers. Our December programme is now on sale! You can download a PDF version by ... Read more

The Wicker Man: A Modern Idyll With Ancient Roots

The Wicker Man: A Modern Idyll With Ancient Roots

The darkest days of December might not be the obvious time to visit a mythical Scottish island called Summerisle but any chance to see the 1973 cult British folk horror masterpiece The Wicker Man up on the big screen is not an opportunity to be ... Read more

Lars But Not Least

Lars But Not Least

Before he fell from grace so spectacularly, there was a time when Danish auteur and enfant terrible Lars Von Trier was turning out some of the most exciting movies to ever be made in Europe and now, guess what? He’s back (time tends to be a ... Read more

Demme & Byrne Makes Total Sense

Demme & Byrne Makes Total Sense

Although he won an Oscar for his 1991 hit The Silence of the Lambs, American director Jonathan Demme, who died at 73 in 2017, never quite made the movie brat list, even though he began his career like so many others of the American New Wave ... Read more

Serpico: Adult Entertainment

Serpico: Adult Entertainment

Whilst Hollywood’s second Golden Age (the 1970s) may well be rightfully derided for its politics (especially its attitude towards gender and ethnicity) it is also, arguably, a period of American cinema when the acting was about as good as it ... Read more

Vertigo: Pure Cinema

Vertigo: Pure Cinema

Regular readers will know that I took umbrage when the most recent BFI list of the greatest films proclaimed that Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce was now “officially” the “best film” of all time. Obviously there is no such ... Read more

On the Road…again!

On the Road…again!

With its memorable tagline “A man went looking for America...and couldn’t find it anywhere,” Dennis Hopper’s 1969’s “head classic” Easy Rider has a lot to answer for and is often considered to be the defining example of what has subsequently ... Read more

They’re Here! Robots, AI and Sci-fi

They’re Here! Robots, AI and Sci-fi

Whilst society has a habit of “catching up with” Science Fiction it rarely heeds the genre’s warnings. The forthcoming short season of films chosen to reflect the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence which have been dominating the ... Read more

Soundtracks: Built to Last

Soundtracks: Built to Last

The recent acclaim meted out to Hauschka (AKA Volker Bertelmann) for his Academy Award winning, incongruous but effectively doomy soundtrack to Edward Berger’s Netflix funded All Quiet on the Western Front in 2022, would suggest that there’s ... Read more

The Three Colours Trilogy and other missing pieces

The Three Colours Trilogy and other missing pieces

As regular readers will know, I have been a Film and Media teacher for nearly 40 years and was, in fact, one of the very first students in the country to gain a Degree in the subject in the early 1980s. As you can imagine, this means that in a ... Read more

Scorsese: Cinema’s Last Man Standing

Scorsese: Cinema’s Last Man Standing

There are not many film directors who have shaped my life since the early 1970s and still continue to do so to this day. Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, Ken Loach and Martin Scorsese are about the only ones who spring to mind, so it is an absolute ... Read more

Best International Feature Nominees – Oscars 2023

Best International Feature Nominees – Oscars 2023

Throughout February and March, we’re showing all five films nominated for Best International Feature at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony. From Jerzy Skolimowski’s Polish drama about a lone donkey’s journey across Europe, to Belgian filmmaker ... Read more

UPP Ticket Price Update

UPP Ticket Price Update

As an independent, community-owned business we are always mindful of the need to carefully balance the requirements of the business and those of our customers. Over the past year, due to the rising costs of utilities as well as increased fees ... Read more

Outlaw Lovers on the Run: Badlands

Outlaw Lovers on the Run: Badlands

The famous Bonnie and Clyde tagline: “They’re young. They’re in love. They kill people.” could have easily been applied to Terrence Malick’s 1973 unforgettable debut Badlands which is, like every other movie released that year, now celebrating ... Read more

Bringin’ in the 2023 Cheer

Bringin’ in the 2023 Cheer

One of the longer lasting effects of the Covid lockdowns is the fact that increasing numbers of people are choosing to stay at home and watch movies on streaming “platforms” rather than go to the cinema and increasing numbers of films (to ... Read more

The UPP’s Top Ten Films of 2022

The UPP’s Top Ten Films of 2022

Welcome to the UPP’s Top Ten Films of the 2022! A couple of weeks ago, we asked our staff and volunteers to vote for their favourite new releases from the past twelve months. Whether you’re a fan of documentaries, romantic dramas, action-packed ... Read more

Why We Love These Christmas Classics

Why We Love These Christmas Classics

With the Christmas season well and truly here, it's natural for us to find solace in mince pies, mulled wine, and a feast of festive films to indulge in at the cinema! Our season of Christmas classics is now on sale – running between Saturday ... Read more

Enigmas and Ellipsis – Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract

Enigmas and Ellipsis – Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract

If loving going to the cinema has taught us anything (and in my case that’s probably a great deal) then one thing is obvious: movies, like all other art forms, can alter their meaning to audiences over time. Some films (like most westerns, for ... Read more

Arvo Pärt Festival Screenings at the Ultimate Picture Palace

Arvo Pärt Festival Screenings at the Ultimate Picture Palace

Originally conceived to celebrate the composer’s 85th birthday in 2020, Music At Oxford are this year hosting the largest UK festival of his music to date, right here in Oxford, in collaboration with the Estonian Embassy in London, Arvo Pärt ... Read more

Pre-Code Hollywood: the Rules are Made to be Broken

Pre-Code Hollywood: the Rules are Made to be Broken

Listen up, all you dirty rats and hot dames. Let us transport you back to Hollywood’s savage years, when the restrictive censorship of the Hays Code wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Before the Hollywood censors decided to enforce the ... Read more

Gliding Across the Screen: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

Gliding Across the Screen: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

There have been a lot of great horror movies but rarely do these films appear in lists of great films. In fact, if you don’t include Psycho or David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, which hardly count as “horror” films anyway, then the BFI greatest ... Read more

Blood & Celluloid: Vampire Film Festival (Sat 15 Oct)

Blood & Celluloid: Vampire Film Festival (Sat 15 Oct)

Join us on Saturday 15th October 2022, between midday and midnight, for an all-day celebration of classic vampire films. Supported by the BFI, Blood and Celluloid: Vampire Film Festival features five films exploring different themes within the ... Read more

Celebrate National Cinema Day with £3 tickets (Sat 3rd Sept)

Celebrate National Cinema Day with £3 tickets (Sat 3rd Sept)

On Saturday 3rd September, we are thrilled to participate in this year's National Cinema Day. Launched by the UK Cinema Association (UKCA), National Cinema Day unites cinemas across the country, from multiplexes to independent venues, to offer ... Read more

Cronenberg: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Cronenberg: Something Wicked This Way Comes

It is highly unlikely that many of us, emerging slightly soiled and perturbed from a double bill of Shivers and Rabid, back in 1977, would have predicted that over 40 years later, as he approached 80, Canadian film maker David Cronenberg would ... Read more

Job Vacancy: Cleaner (P/T Morning)

Job Vacancy: Cleaner (P/T Morning)

We are now accepting applications for a part-time morning Cleaner at Oxford’s oldest and only independent cinema. The successful applicant will join our small team of staff and volunteers to help maintain the functionality and cleanliness of ... Read more

Lights, Community, Action! Campaign Is A Success

Lights, Community, Action! Campaign Is A Success

Everyone who’s had a part in securing the future for The Ultimate Picture Palace – including its new community owners – can celebrate the exciting news that their beloved cinema will now be community-owned cinema and are looking forward to an ... Read more

Seven Days Left to #OwnTheUPP

Seven Days Left to #OwnTheUPP

Our campaign to become a community-owned cinema has entered its final week, and there’s still time for you to buy community shares and become a co-owner of the Ultimate Picture Palace. Last week was an extraordinary week as we smashed ... Read more

Richard Curtis Supports #OwnTheUPP Campaign

Richard Curtis Supports #OwnTheUPP Campaign

BAFTA Award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter Richard Curtis is the latest among the ranks of notable names, as well as more than 950 investors, to join in the campaign to secure the future of The Ultimate Picture Palace. Our campaign, ... Read more

Lights, Community, Action! Special Events

Lights, Community, Action! Special Events

With our "Lights, Community, Action!" campaign to become community-owned cinema underway, we have partnered up with various Oxford organisations to bring you a series of special events, including classics, special-guest Q&As, and even some ... Read more

May-June 2022 Classics

May-June 2022 Classics

With our new programme now online (full listings here), take a look at some of the classic films we’ll be showing throughout May and June 2022, including a couple of Westerns with legendary musical scores, family-friendly films for half-term, ... Read more

UPP Membership Screening Days – May 2022

UPP Membership Screening Days – May 2022

Thursday 5th May & Wednesday 11th May As part of our “Lights, Community, Action!” share offer campaign to make the Ultimate Picture Palace a community-owned cinema (more information on that here: uppcinema.com/owntheupp) we wanted to ... Read more

Lights, Community, Action! Launch Weekend

Lights, Community, Action! Launch Weekend

Friday 29th April – Sunday 1st May Celebrate the launch of our "Lights, Community, Action!" campaign to become a community-owned and community-run cinema this weekend. From Friday 29th April, join us for drop-in sessions, free screenings, ... Read more

Love Like Blood – Cries and Whispers 50th Anniversary

Love Like Blood – Cries and Whispers 50th Anniversary

The main reason why you need to catch Bergman’s fifty year old but beautifully restored (by the BFI) melodrama Cries and Whispers is to experience the genius of its Oscar winning cinematography by Sven Nykvist on the big screen. This is a ... Read more

Charity Screening of Olga in Support of Ukraine

Charity Screening of Olga in Support of Ukraine

UK cinemas have united in support of Ukraine with a series of preview charity screenings of Olga. From each ticket sold, a donation will be made to support Ukraine via the British Red Cross Disasters Emergency Committee.  Read more

Oxford International Women’s Festival 2022

Oxford International Women’s Festival 2022

This year we have teamed up with The Oxford International Women’s Festival to bring you a special season of classic films written and directed by women. Read more

In the Mood for Wong Kar-Wai

In the Mood for Wong Kar-Wai

With our World of Wong Kar-Wai season taking place throughout February, UPP Duty Manager & Projectionist Martina Bani writes about why we fall in love with his movies. Read more

Our Top Ten Films of 2021

Our Top Ten Films of 2021

We've only been able to open for six months this year, but those six months were crammed with excellent films! Check out our top ten films of 2021 as voted by our staff and volunteers. Read more

Directorial Debuts Classics Season

Directorial Debuts Classics Season

Join us in January for a classic season of stunning directorial debuts, from genre-defining crime-noirs to incredible visionary tales of youth by some of cinemas greatest filmmakers. Read more

Christmas Classics Season 2021

Christmas Classics Season 2021

Join us throughout December for a season of festive classics to help you get in the mood for Christmas. Read more

Next Steps Towards Recovery

Next Steps Towards Recovery

Just as we have taken a careful and cautious approach to building our business back up we've seen you take a similar careful approach to returning to cinemas like ours and we want to share what our next steps are. Read more

UPP Presents: Japan 2021

UPP Presents: Japan 2021

This November we will be taking part in the BFI’s extensive Japan 2021 Season. We are incredibly excited to be showing 12 classic films across four consecutive weekends this November, each weekend focussing on a theme celebrating the brilliance of Japanese cinema. Read more

Monday 19th July: Covid-19 Update

Monday 19th July: Covid-19 Update

Thinking of each other – some changes at The Ultimate Picture Palace. As you probably know, the Government have confirmed that England will move to the final stage of easing lockdown restrictions on Mon 19 July. We wanted to let you know what ... Read more

Artist Callout: Film Poster Project

Artist Callout: Film Poster Project

Are you a local artist/designer with a passion for cinema? If so, we want to work with you on an upcoming project linked to our re-opening in May and beyond! We are looking to commission 6 artists/graphic designers to each design an original, ... Read more

UPP Re-opening in May 2021

UPP Re-opening in May 2021

It’s been a while since we’ve all been able to sit inside an auditorium and lose ourselves in the magic cinema, but - fingers crossed - that day isn’t too far away. Closed since December, cinemas have been eagerly looking ahead to the date ... Read more

Dispatches from the Glasgow Film Festival and ICO Screen Days

Dispatches from the Glasgow Film Festival and ICO Screen Days

Cinemas may still be in lockdown, but the film industry is slowly beginning to wake up again. With Monday 17th May earmarked as the day in which cinemas in the UK could possibly return, it’s good to see studios and distributors starting to ... Read more

Happy 110th Birthday Ultimate Picture Palace

Happy 110th Birthday Ultimate Picture Palace

The Ultimate Picture Palace opened in 1911 as the Oxford Picture Palace, the city’s first purpose-built cinema, at a time when this was a hugely exciting and popular new form of entertainment. In this blog cinema volunteer and local historian Liz Woolley writes about that fateful year in which the UPP opened it's doors to the public. Read more

What's on

Tomorrow (Sunday 13th October)

14:00

Lee 15
1h 57m
Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, a former model turned renowned photographer, captured some of the most iconic and haunting images of the Second World War. In this captivating biopic, Oscar-winner Kate Winslet brings Miller’s extraordinary story to life.

Book here

16:45

The Goldman Case 12A
1h 56m | French w/ English subtitles
An electrifying dramatisation of the trial of left-wing activist Pierre Goldman, who was accused of armed robbery and murder in 1970s France. Winner of Best Actor (Arieh Worthalter) at the 2024 César Awards.

Book here

19:30

Megalopolis 15
2h 18m
A visionary artist seeking to guide humanity toward a utopian future faces opposition from regressive, greedy politicians. 40 years in the making, Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited philosophical sci-fi epic finally arrives on the big screen.

Book here


Monday 14th October

18:00

The Substance 18
2h 21m
In a bid to revive her career, a former TV star takes a black-market drug that transforms her into a younger version of herself. Demi Moore gives a career-best performance in this award-winning body horror critiquing toxic industry beauty standards.

Book here

21:00

After Hours 15
1h 37m
Legendary American director Martin Scorsese's frantic screwball comedy following an uptight office worker's late-night odyssey on the streets of New York as he tries to get home with no money.

Book here


Become a member

Our community of UPP members get exclusive discounts including 2 free tickets, a free drink at our cosy bar and £2 off the price of tickets.