Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 15: Sunday Jan 15

The Private Files of J Edgar Hoover (Cohen, 1978) & Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941):
Rio Cinema, 1.45 & 4pm

This is tagged as a 'Megalomania USA Double Bill' and features the highlight of the week with a very rare screening of Larry Cohen's Hoover bio-pic. Get that Clint.

Time Out review of The Private Files of J Edgar Hoover: 

'Rattling compulsively along through myth and history like some factoid TV mini-series, but constantly informed by a radical intelligence and humour, Cohen's analytical biopic surprisingly resolves into a complex investigation of the forces of realpolitik and sexual politics which created an arch-villain/monster from a moralist boy-scout lawyer. The movie may have the look of tabloid sleaze, but it never trades in the simplistic put-down or facile political optimism. If the idea of Hoover as a tragic figure hardly squares with the '70s consensus, then the playing, especially of Broderick Crawford as Hoover, does much to shift the prejudice; while at the point where post-Watergate cinema would usually present us with a revelatory crusader, Rip Torn's uptight FBI agent (our narrator) peters out into confused impotence. Genre fans can take comfort, however, since some expectations are happily served... Dillinger dies again.'
Paul Taylor  

Here is the trailer


===============================================================

Chicago Reader review of Citizen Kane:

'What can you say about the movie that taught you what movies were? The first time I saw Kane I discovered the existence of the director; the next dozen or so times taught me what he did—with lights and camera angles, cutting and composition, texture and rhythm. Kane (1941) is no longer my favorite Orson Welles film (I'd take Ambersons, Falstaff, or Touch of Evil), but it is still the best place I know of to start thinking about Welles—or for that matter about movies in general.' 
Dave Kehr

Here is the trailer.

No comments:

Post a Comment