Capital Celluloid: 2020

Capital Celluloid intermission

Entertainment venues in the capital will be closed from Wednesday December 16 for the forseeable future owing to the latest coronavirus restrictions and thus we will be closing down Capital Celluloid for now. Keep safe and look forward to bringing you the best of the repertory London film scene when it’s wise to do so.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 134: Fri Dec 18

Entertainment venues will be closed from Wednesday so this screening will be cancelled.

A Christmas Story (Clark, 1983): Prince Charles Cinema, 1.30pm

This 35mm screening is of a quirky, popular holiday hit from the director behind Black Christmas and the excellent Murder By Decree. All in all, highly recommended.

Chicago Reader review:
As a follow-up to his excoriated Porky's and Porky's II, director Bob Clark teamed with nostalgic humorist Jean Shepherd for this squeaky clean and often quite funny 1983 yuletide comedy, adapted from Shepherd's novel In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. The bespectacled young hero (Peter Billingsley) lives with his parents and younger brother in northeast Indiana and craves a BB gun for Christmas; the old man (Darren McGavin in one of his best roles) wins a newspaper contest and insists on displaying his prize—a table lamp shaped like a woman's leg in fishnet stockings. Shepherd provides the voice-over of the grown hero narrating, and his prominence on the sound track forces Clark to focus on visual humor, resulting in some wild Our Gang-style slapstick.
JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 133: Thu Dec 17

Entertainment venues are closed from Wednesday so this screening will be cancelled.

Carol (Haynes, 2015): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.15pm

This beautifully crafted film is well worth catching in this 35mm presentation.

Chicago Reader review:
Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven (2002) slayed critics with its provocative presentation of modern racial and sexual issues through the lens of a high-Hollywood 50s melodrama. Haynes returns to that formula with this adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1952 novel The Price of Salt, which deals with a lesbian affair. Cate Blanchett is the title character, a New York wife and mother struggling to escape from her straight marriage, and her mix of bravado and vulnerability has seldom been used to greater effect; Kyle Chandler is moving as her anguished husband, who refuses to accept the truth about her sexuality and leverages custody of her daughter against her. Unfortunately their fine work is weighed down by Rooney Mara's inert performance as Carol's young lover, a countergirl at Bloomingdale's who suggests a doll with the battery removed. As a love story this left me unsatisfied, though I enjoyed the lush period trappings (from costumer Sandy Powell and production designer Judy Becker) and the flattering sense of how enlightened I am compared to people in the 1950s.
JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 132: Wed Dec 16

Entertainment venues will be closed from Wednesday so this screening will be cancelled.

Dance, Girl, Dance (Arzner, 1940): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6pm

This 35mm presentation (part of the Big Screen Classics season) is also being shown on December 21st. Full details here.

BFI Southbank introduction:
Focusing on the professional and romantic rivalry between two very different dancers – a cynical chorus girl working in a burlesque joint (Lucille Ball) and an idealistic aspiring ballerina (Maureen O’Hara) – this classic comedy-drama is at the same time a proto-feminist landmark in directly addressing the issue of the male gaze. Fine performances ensure that the film is far more than a simplistic statement.

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 131: Tue Dec 15

35 Shots of Rum (Denis, 2008): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.50pm

This 35mm presentation, which is also being screened on December 8th and 20th (details here), is part of the Big Screen Classics season at BFI Southbank (all the films can be found here).

Chicago Reader review: A handsome black widower (Alex Descas) and his lovely college-age daughter (Mati Diop) inhabit a self-contained world of tranquil domesticity and affection in a gray suburban high-rise outside of Paris. A goodhearted but insecure woman down the hall (Nicole Dogué) lives in the abject hope of winning the widower's heart, and a sweetly melancholic young man upstairs (Grégoire Colin) harbors similar feelings for the young woman. It's a given that the father-daughter bubble must eventually burst, but the smart writer-director Claire Denis (Beau Travail) has other, subtler things on her mind than Electra-complex melodrama. This 2008 feature is beautiful but very quietly so, and definitely not for the ADHD set. Cliff Doerksen

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 130: Mon Dec 14

Rancho Notorious (Lang, 1952): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.45pm

This 35mm presentation, which also screens on December 9th, is part of the Marlene Dietrich season at BFI Southbank (full details here).

Chicago Reader review: A perversely stylized western by Fritz Lang (1952), his last and best. The combination of unrestrained Technicolor and painted backdrops removes any sense of reality from the proceedings, which are set in a safe haven for gunslingers (operated by Marlene Dietrich. Arthur Kennedy arrives, looking for the man who killed his fiancee, as an insistently repeated theme song pounds out a quintessential Lang chorus of “hate, murder, and revenge.” Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 129: Sun Dec 13

The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles, 1942): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 3pm

This 35mm presentation (part of the Big Screen Classics season) is also being shown on December 18th and 22nd. Full details here.

Personally, this is my favourite film by Welles and my appreciation and understanding of its richness has been aided in no small part by two great books, This Is Orson Welles by Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, which contains a condensed version of the original script, and the BFI Film Classics monograph The Magnificent Ambersons by VF Perkins. The website Frequently Asked Questions About Orson Welles is well worth a look if you want to find out more about this film and the legends that have grown up around it.

Chicago Reader review:
Orson Welles's second completed feature (1942) and arguably his greatest film (partisans of Citizen Kane notwithstanding). By far his most personal creation, this lovingly crafted, hauntingly nostalgic portrait of a midwestern town losing its Victorian innocence to the machine age contains some of Welles's most beautiful and formidable imagery, not to mention his narration, a glorious expression of the pain of memory. A masterpiece in every way (but ignore the awkward ending the studio tacked on without Welles's approval).
Don Druker

Here is the famous snowride scene (and above is the trailer).

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 128: Sat Dec 12

James Bond all-dayers ... at Screen on Green Islington and all other Everyman Cinemas

Everyman Cinemas across London are celebrating a James Bond Takeover on Saturday December 12th and 13th. You can find all the details of all the films here.

The press reviews of the films don't capture the excitement of the Bond films and I am recommending the Blogalongabond series by Neil Alcock (aka @theincrediblesuit on Twitter). Here is his take on DR NO (screening at Screen on the Green on December 12th at 5.30pm)

Here (and above) is the Dr No trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 127: Fri Dec 11

Destry Rides Again (Marshall, 1939): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.05pm

This screening (also being presented on December 4th, 19th, 28th and 30th) is part of the Marlene Dietrich season runnign right through December at BFI Southbank (details here).

Time Out review:
Marvellous comedy Western, with Stewart's pacifist, reputedly wimpy marshal taming the lawless town of Bottleneck by means of words and jokes rather than the gun Donlevy's villain repeatedly provokes him to use. What is remarkable about the film is the way it combines humour, romance, suspense and action so seamlessly (with individual scenes - Dietrich singing 'See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have', Stewart's delicious parable about a homicidal orphan, Mischa Auer losing his pants - indelibly printed in the memory). Flawless performances, pacy direction and a snappy script place it head and shoulders above virtually any other spoof oater.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 126: Thu Dec 10

Witness for the Prosecution (Wilder, 1957): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 5.45pm

This screening (also being presented on December 17th and 27th) is part of the Marlene Dietrich season runnign right through December at BFI Southbank (details here).

Chicago Reader review:
Billy Wilder's 1957 adaptation of Agatha Christie's famous stage thriller. The artificial plotting is all Christie's, but the film eventually becomes Wilder's—thanks to a trick ending that dovetails nicely with a characteristic revelation of compassion behind cruelty. His theatrical mise-en-scene—his proscenium framing—serves the material well, as does Charles Laughton's bombastic portrayal of the defense attorney. With Tyrone Power (nicely feckless), Marlene Dietrich, and Elsa Lanchester.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 125: Wed Dec 9

Sebastiane (Jarman, 1976): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.55pm

This film is being screened (also on December 3rd and 13th) as part of the BFI"s Big Screen Classics season. Full details can be found here.

Time Out review:
Not exactly typical of the British independent cinema, this not only tackles an avowedly 'difficult' subject (the relationship between sex and power, and the destructive force of unrequited passion), but does so within two equally 'difficult' frameworks: that of exclusively male sexuality, and that of the Catholic legend of the martyred saint, set nearly 1,700 years ago. Writer/director Jarman sees Sebastian as a common Roman soldier, exiled to the back of beyond with a small platoon of bored colleagues, who gets selfishly absorbed in his own mysticism and then picked on by his emotionally crippled captain. It's filmed naturalistically, to the extent that the dialogue is in barracks-room Latin, and carries an extraordinary charge of conviction in the staging and acting; it falters only in the slightly awkward elements of parody and pastiche. One of a kind, it's compulsively interesting on many levels.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 124: Tue Dec 8

A Foreign Affair (Wilder, 1948): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 2.30pm

This screening (also being presented on December 12th, 18th and 28th) is part of the Marlene Dietrich season runnign right through December at BFI Southbank (details here).

Chicago Reader review:
An archetypal Billy Wilder plot, pitting idealism (a naive Iowa congresswoman, played by Jean Arthur) against cynicism (an ex-Nazi chanteuse, embodied, of course, by Marlene Dietrich) in the ruins of postwar Berlin. Caught between is John Lund, an American officer. Wilder's strategy is to play a bubbly romantic comedy in a mise-en-scene of destruction and despair. As usual, it's more clever than meaningful, but this 1948 film is one of his most satisfactory in wit and pace. With Millard Mitchell.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 123: Mon Dec 7

Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 1999): Genesis Cinema, 8.15pm

Here's one of the great films set during Christmas, and an opportunity to see Stanley Kubrick's much-underrated final movie in the run-up to the season of goodwill. The film is also being shown on December 10th. Details here.

If you're interested in reading more about this film I can recommend two BFI publications - Michel Chion's Modern Classics monograph on Eyes Wide Shut and the chapter on the film in James Naremore's book titled On Kubrick.

Chicago Reader review:
Initial viewings of Stanley Kubrick's movies can be deceptive because his films all tend to be emotionally convoluted in some way; one has to follow them as if through a maze. A character that Kubrick might seem to treat cruelly the first time around (e.g., Elisha Cook Jr.'s fall guy in The Killing) can appear the object of tender compassion on a subsequent viewing. The director's desire to avoid sentimentality at all costs doesn't preclude feeling, as some critics have claimed, but it does create ambiguity and a distanced relationship to the central characters. Kubrick's final feature very skillfully portrays the dark side of desire in a successful marriage; since the 60s he'd been thinking about filming Arthur Schnitzler's brilliant novella "Traumnovelle," and working with Frederic Raphael, he's adapted it faithfully--at least if one allows for all the differences between Viennese Jews in the 20s and New York WASPs in the 90s. Schnitzler's tale, about a young doctor contemplating various forms of adultery and debauchery after discovering that his wife has entertained comparable fantasies, has a somewhat Kafkaesque ambiguity, wavering between dream and waking fantasy (hence Kubrick's title), and all the actors do a fine job of traversing this delicate territory. Yet the story has been altered to make the successful doctor (Tom Cruise) more of a hypocrite and his wife (powerfully played by Nicole Kidman) a little feistier; Kubrick's also added a Zeus-like tycoon (played to perfection by Sydney Pollack) who pretends to explain the plot shortly before the end but in fact only summarizes the various mysteries, his cynicism and chilly access to power revealing that Kubrick is more of a moralist than Schnitzler. To accept the premises and experiences of this movie, you have to be open to an expressionist version of New York with scant relation to the 90s (apart from cellular phones and AIDS) and a complex reading of a marriage that assumes the relations between men and women haven't essentially changed in the past 70-odd years. This is a remarkably gripping, suggestive, and inventive piece of storytelling that, like Kubrick's other work, is likely to grow in mystery and intensity over time.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 122: Sun Dec 6

High Sierra (Walsh, 1941): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 2.50pm

This 35mm presentation, also screening on 14th and 29th December, is part of the Big Screen Classics season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
The 1941 film in which Humphrey Bogart became Humphrey Bogart, under the guiding hand of Raoul Walsh. It's not the best work of either artist—John Huston's script talks too much, and Joan Leslie's clubfooted innocent is pretty hard to take—but it's fascinating to watch the outlines of Bogart's persona come into focus. With Ida Lupino as the good bad girl, and the indispensable Arthur Kennedy.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 121: Sat Dec 5

Knight Without Armour (Feyder, 1937): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 2.50pm

This 35mm screening (also being presented on December 19th) is part of the Marlene Dietrich season runnign right through December at BFI Southbank (details here).

Time Out review:
Reality never held much sway at Alexander Korda's Denham studios, least of all during the making of this lavishly preposterous melodrama of Russian life before and after the 1917 Revolution. Marlene Dietrich is the cool, fur-swathed Countess Vladinoff, who strips down for two titillating baths during her protracted rush to freedom organised by much-bearded Robert Donat, who pretends to be a Russian Commissar but is actually AJ Fothergill, British secret agent. Jacques Feyder's typically stylish direction raises the film way above its subject matter, almost at times towards art.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 120: Fri Dec 4

The Happy Life (Lee Joon-ik, 2007): Genesis Cinema, 6.10pm

This film (being screened from 35mm) is part of the Korean Film Festival. You can find all the details of the festival here.

Korean Film Festival introduction: Three middle-aged men, all struggling in life, gather together at the funeral of their old classmate. As university students they had all been members of the same rock group, a not-entirely-successful endeavour called ‘Active Volcano’. After losing themselves in memories for a time, the jobless Ki-young (Jung Jinyoung) suddenly blurts out, “Let’s re-form the band!”. To his friends, and especially to Ki-young’s wife and teenage daughter it sounds like an absurd, crazy idea. But sometimes crazy ideas have a way of picking up steam. Master storyteller Lee Joon-ik takes what seems like a dubious concept and turns it into an unexpectedly engaging and inspiring film about friendship. Helped along by an outstanding ensemble cast, the film is at its best in quieter moments, which impart a realistic edge. Ultimately, the film’s title is both ironic and heartfelt at the same time.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 119: Thu Dec 3

Shanghai Express (Dietrich, 1932): BFI Southbank, 8.40pm

This day heralds the opening of the Marlene Dietrich season (details here) at BFI Southbank. This film screens on December 7th, 23rd, 27th and 29th (all times here).

Chicago Reader review: More action oriented than the other Dietrich-Sternberg films, this 1932 production is nevertheless one of the most elegantly styled. The setting, a broken-down train commandeered by revolutionaries on its way to Shanghai, becomes a maze of soft shadows and shifting textures, through which the characters wander in a philosophical quest for something—anything—solid. The screenplay, by Jules Furthman and an uncredited Howard Hawks, has a quality of wisecracking wit unusual in Sternberg's films: when someone asks Dietrich why she's going to Shanghai, she retorts, "To buy a new hat." Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 118: Wed Dec 2

Diego Maradona (Kapadia, 2019): Screen on the Green, 7.30pm

This promises to be a great evening as Asif Kapadia, the director, hosts a Q&A and screens his superb documentary on the late footballer who died in what could now be controversial circumstances last week.

Time Out review: Like an anatomist, you can pretty much break down Argentinian soccer superstar-turned-tabloid-villain Diego Maradona into his composite parts: the wand-like left foot, capable of conjuring magic in the tightest of corners; the stocky thighs and jutting chest, source of his explosive power on the pitch; the left hand that cheated England in the 1986 World Cup; and the nostrils through which passed industrial quantities of cocaine – even at the height of his footballing powers.

Director Asif Kapadia (‘Senna’, ‘Amy’) covers each of them in this spellbinding, empathetic documentary. He also brings to the fore a less obsessed-about piece of the Maradona anatomy: his heart. ‘Diego Maradona’ has the football and the drugs – think ‘Scarface’ with screamers – but it’s a surprisingly emotional ride too. In the spirit of all good docs, it’ll make you reappraise your feelings about the man and the myths around him.

Wisely, Kapadia keeps his focus tight, overlaying unseen interviews conducted with ex-teammates, girlfriends and journalists – as well as with the man himself, recorded at his home in Dubai – over endlessly compelling archive footage. Of course, there’s plenty of football: pitch-side footage captures his balletic qualities in artful slow motion. But there’s a lot more than football to a story bookmarked by a childhood as a ‘shitty little block kid’ in the slums of Buenos Aires and later-life struggles with addiction. But the meat of it charts his seven years in Naples, where he fled after an ill-fated spell at FC Barcelona. There, he helped turn Serie A strugglers Napoli into world beaters and himself into first a playboy, then an addict.

The film opens with what seems to be a Jason Bourne-like car chase but turns out to be his raucous journey to Napoli’s stadium to be introduced to his new fans. All 85,000 of them. The relationship between man and city – a febrile, combustible chemistry that would eventually blow up in the Argentinian’s face – offers a fascinating, sharp-edged subplot. There’s a sense of romance in this once-poor kid from the slums finding a city full of soulmates, and Napoli’s rise is a great sports story, but the film expertly communicates a sense of it all being too much: too much pressure, too much responsibility, too much adulation. The malign influence of the Camorra, Naples’ crime lords, is never far away either.

The footage Kapadia has unearthed is remarkable. We see the newly signed Diego entering his new stadium through its concrete catacombs, like a gladiator preparing for combat. Later, there’s home video of him delighting in defeating his girlfriend at tennis (‘I’ve won Wimbledon!’ he whoops). The picture is clear: he’s a man on the pitch, a wide-eyed child off it.

That boyishness, his passion for his chosen sport and an endearingly mischievous streak make him hard to dislike. He’s immature – his treatment of the women in his life is capricious to the point of cruelty – and wildly egotistical, but Kapadia teases the idea that the Atlas-like pressure on his shoulders contributed to his retreat into hedonism and drugs, without ever excusing his worst excesses.

If aspects of Maradona’s life feel slightly glossed over, in particular the son he initially refused to acknowledge, it’d be impossible to shoehorn this tumultuous life into a single film. Instead, Kapadia gives us a fevered, joyous, melancholy and sometimes toxic Neapolitan love story that presents the man in all his contradictions and complexity. He was the block kid who found a new home, but somehow lost his soul. What a way to complete a hat-trick of documentaries.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

CLOSEDOWN TILL DECEMBER 2

Entertainment venues will be closed until December 2 at least owing to the latest coronavirus restrictions and thus we will be closing down Capital Celluloid for now. Keep safe and look forward to bringing you the best of the repertory London film scene when it’s wise to do so.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 117: Sat Nov 7

Entertainment venues will be closed from Thursday so this screening will be cancelled.

Gummo (Korine, 1997): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 5.20pm

This is the recommendation for Saturday November 7th and more details will be provided once we get more official news about the proposed lockdown as it could be that cinemas won’t be open next week.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 116: Fri Nov 6

Entertainment venues will be closed from Thursday so this screening will be cancelled.

Crash (Cronenberg, 1996): Prince Charles Cinema, 12.10pm

This great David Cronenberg film is on a wide re-release and you can find all the details here. The Prince Charles is showing the film on the 10th and 11th November. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
David Cronenberg wrote and directed this 1996 film, a masterful minimalist adaptation of J.G. Ballard's 1973 neo-futurist novel about sex and car crashes, and like the book it's audacious and intense—though ultimately somewhat monotonous in spite of its singularity. James Spader meets Holly Hunter via a car collision, and they and Spader's wife (Deborah Kara Unger) become acquainted with a kind of car-crash guru (Elias Koteas) and his own set of friends (including Rosanna Arquette). Sex and driving are all that this movie and its characters are interested in, but the lyrical, poetic, and melancholic undertones are potent, the performances adept and sexy, the sounds and images indelible. If you want something that's both different and accomplished, even if you can't be sure what it is, don't miss this.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the original trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 115: Thu Nov 5

Entertainment venues will be closed from Thursday so this screening will be cancelled.

The Happy Life (Lee Joon-ik, 2007): Genesis Cinema, 6.20pm

This film (being screened from 35mm) is part of the Korean Film Festival. You can find all the details of the festival here.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 114: Wed Nov 4

Boyz n the Hood (Singleton, 1991): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.30pm

This great film about black American life is being screened from a 35mm print.

Time Out review: ‘Increase the peace’ pleads the final frame of John Singleton’s angry, era-defining 1991 story of young black manhood on the streets of Los Angeles. In this era of Black Lives Matter and #Oscarssowhite it may feel like little has changed – the peace has notably failed to increase. But that just makes this re-release, part of the Black Star season at BFI Southbank, all the more relevant.

‘Boyz n the Hood’ opens in 1984, as ten-year-old Tre is sent to live with his dad Furious Styles (Laurence Fishburne) in South Central LA and falls in with a gang of local kids. Seven years later Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr, who really does look a lot older than 17) is struggling to find his own path. His best friend Ricky (Morris Chestnut) hopes for footballing glory and neighbour Doughboy (Ice Cube) just wants to be a gangsta.

Employing a loose, episodic structure, Singleton’s script is a masterclass in making complex social and political issues easy to digest and audience-friendly – remarkable for a writer-director who was just 23 when the film was released. The characterisation is sharp, the plot basic but compelling and it’s all lightened up with lots of creative swearing. The central performances are strong too: Gooding is a pouty, relatable teenage hero and Fishburne an icon of self-contained masculinity. But it’s Ice Cube in his acting debut who steals the show as the loose, unpredictable gangbanger with mommy issues.

‘Boyz n the Hood’ hasn’t aged perfectly. Despite the occasional ‘I ain’t no ho!’ outburst, there’s clearly a problem with women, who tend to be mouthy and troubled or maternal and saintly. The supporting actors struggle a bit, and despite a great hip hop soundtrack, the jazz-tinged score is shockingly syrupy. Still, this is an important film for a reason: one of the first to lay out the truth about black American lives, it remains politically astute and fiercely entertaining. Tom Huddleston

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 113: Tue Nov 3

Mr Smith Goes to Washington (Capra, 1939): Prince Charles Cinema, 5.30pm

This Frank Capra classic is being screened from a 35mm print.

Chicago Reader review: "Boy Ranger" leader Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), appointed junior senator, battles corrupt senior senator Claude Rains and protofascist industrialist/media magnate Edward Arnold in Frank Capra's 1939 vindication of simple virtues and barefoot American democracy. Capra's films in the 30s—the screwball comedies that he nearly single-handedly created—reconciled the irreconcilable; bridged the rural/urban divide; showed love, decency, and neighborliness ascendant; and demonstrated conclusively that America was a land of perfect unity where all social classes were one. Capra's populist heroes—Longfellow Deeds, Jefferson Smith, John Doe—deflated pomposity at home and defeated the shadowy undemocratic forces threatening the globe. This is classic Capracorn, with the greatest girl cynic of the 30s, Jean Arthur. Dan Druker

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 112: Mon Nov 2

Middle of Nowhere (DuVernay, 2012): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.45pm

This Sundance Festivak hit is part of the Women Make Film season at BFI Southbank curated by Mark Cousins.

Chicago Reader review: Those of us who head west to Sundance every year and still cling to old-school notions regarding independent cinema—that it can flourish as a forum for alternative viewpoints, that low production values and high-quality storytelling aren’t mutually exclusive, that independent isn’t just a label but also an ethos—often leave Park City experiencing a crisis of faith. But every so often, the festival midwifes a film that reminds us that a sense of discovery still exists on the margins of American moviemaking. Half Nelson, Compliance and Take Shelter are perfect examples; Ava DuVernay’s extraordinary chronicle of a marriage interrupted is another.

Ruby (Emayatzy Corinealdi, a true find) is introduced as the equivalent of a penal-system widow, comforting her convict spouse (Omari Hardwick) with the notion that this will all be over soon. Cut to four years later, and time—as well as the ensuing familial disappointments, financial burdens and false hopes—has taken its toll on both of them. A friendly bus driver (The Paperboy’s David Oyelowo) offers a second chance at happiness, but can Ruby let go of something that may be beyond repair? There’s every reason to think that DuVernay’s tale of a woman trying desperately to stand by her incarcerated man might fall prey to the cloying earnestness and clunky clichés that infect too many Amerindie dramas. But this character study’s refusal to pander by sensationalizing its central social issue skirts such pitfalls with amazing grace; this is humanistic drama done right. David Fear

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2020 — Day 111: Sun Nov 1

Shaun of the Dead (Wright, 2004): Prince Charles Cinema, 3.50pm

This excellent spoof zombie horror film is screened from 35mm.

Chicago Reader review: George Romero's zombie trilogy has generated an endless parade of remakes and rip-offs, but this clever British spoof comes closer than many to the bitter satire that makes his movies so distinctive. TV writers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright fully exploit the core gag of most horror comedy, as the title hero (Pegg), a feckless electronics salesman, remains stubbornly oblivious to the gathering danger. But they've twisted this conceit into something much wittier: in a workaday London populated by shuffling, pale-faced drones, Shaun can be excused for not recognizing genuine zombies when he sees them. Pegg and Wright are out of their depth in the second half, when they try to engage the more disturbing elements of Romero's movies, but their disaffected slacker take on the genre is a welcome alternative to the usual bloodbaths. JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.