Well, Spike Lee and Emma Thompson have seriously hit it out of the park!! Brilliant performances of both BlacKkKlansman and The Children Act meant a welcome late summer boom at the Watershed box-office. The bank holiday weekend has become a strong one for more art house fare ever since Almodovar’s All About My Mother performed so well in that slot and more recently 45 Years. I was certainly expecting up-market qualities of The Children Act to perform well, but was less certain about Spike Lee’s provocative but broad satire BlacKkKlansman and had put the latter in our medium sized screen and the former in our biggest. However, as it turned out the buzz around Lee’s film, plus the sterling promotion he has done on it, generated fantastic results, and whilst The Children Act could have played a couple of shows in the larger auditorium it was quite happy selling out in our medium sized. Positive word-of-mouth on both films suggest they have good holdover prospects.

New opener Sean McAllister’s A Northern Soul struggled amidst the profile of these two, which is a shame given the power of this documentary, but bank holiday weekend was always going to be a tough time for this film. Elsewhere, it is pleasing that The Guardians continues to get solid admissions on a show a day. This quietly absorbing drama has consistently received positive feedback.

• Mark Cosgrove, Cinema Curator, Watershed