This 35mm presentation is part of the Bob Fosse season at the Prince Charles Cinemw. You can find the full details here.
Prince Charles Cinema introduction: Controversial comedian Lenny Bruce (Dustin Hoffman) begins his career telling bad jokes to bored audiences in the 1950s, but can't repress his desire to unleash edgier material. When he does, he begins a one-man campaign to break down social hypocrisy, and his groundbreaking stage act propels him to cult-hero status. When authorities ban Lenny's act for obscenity, he begins a downward spiral of drugs, sex and debt, aided by his bombshell wife, a stripper named Honey (Valerie Perrine).
This 35mm screening is presented in partnership with Club Des Femmes and introduced by So Mayer of Club Des Femmes & Melanie Iredale of Birds’ Eye View.
Chicago Reader review: Sally
Potter's surrealistic and metaphorical epic about women, gold, and
cinema—shot in ravishing black and white by Babette Mangolte on location
in Iceland—is a good deal wittier and more fun than its checkered
career would lead you to expect. Starring Julie Christie and Colette
Laffont, this feminist fantasy-musical, set in the past and the future,
was financed by the British Film Institute in 1983 and has a relatively
lavish budget for an experimental feature. What keeps it alive—apart
from the arresting music and uncanny, haunting images—is Potter's
imaginative grasp of film history: odd references to Chaplin's The Gold Rush and Kuleshov's By the Law are recalled in the mise en scene, but the ambience may also remind you a little bit of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. Not a film for everyone, but if you like it, chances are you'll like it a lot.
Chicago Reader review: Ken Russell first claimed attention with this 1970 adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel. In retrospect, it seems surprisingly sane and classy for him, though his themes of excess and abandon bubble beneath the surface. Though the plotting is largely shucked in favor of image and atmosphere, it remains Russell’s best-told film apart fromSavage Messiah. The delirious romanticism is not nullified, in Russell’s usual way, by a sour awareness of its absurdity, which may account for the film’s persistent popularity. Dave Kehr
This 35mm screening (also on July 3rd)) is part of the 'In the Black Fantastic' season at BFI Southbank. You can find the full details here.
Chicago Reader review: Souleymane
Cisse's extraordinarily beautiful and mesmerizing fantasy (1987) is set
in the ancient Bambara culture of Mali (formerly French Sudan) long
before it was invaded by Morocco in the 16th century. A young man
(Issiaka Kane) sets out to discover the mysteries of nature (or komo, the
science of the gods) with the help of his mother and uncle, but his
jealous father contrives to prevent him from deciphering the elements of
the Bambara sacred rites and tries to kill him. Apart from creating a
dense and exciting universe that should make George Lucas green with
envy, Cisse has shot breathtaking images and accompanies his story with a
spare, hypnotic, percussive score. Sublimely mixing the matter-of-fact
with the uncanny, this wondrous work provides an ideal introduction to a
filmmaker who is, next to Ousmane Sembene, probably Africa's greatest
director. Jonathan Rosenbaum
BFI introduction: Based on a novel by Mani Shankar Mukherjee, the second of Ray’s Calcutta trilogy follows Shyamal, an ambitious sales manager in a British company. Ray takes us on a tour of swinging Calcutta with its clubs, salons, race-courses, restaurants and cabaret dancers as Shyamal introduces his sister-in-law Tutul to ‘the good life’. When he engineers a strike in his firm and wins a promotion, Tutul (the conscience keeper) protests silently.
This 35mm presentation is part of the Jonny Greenwood season at the Genesis Cinema. You can find all the details here.
Chicago Reader review:
Paul Thomas Anderson's fifth feature (2007), a striking
piece of American self-loathing loosely derived from Upton Sinclair's Oil!,
is lively as bombastic period storytelling but limited as allegory. The
cynical shallowness of both the characters and the overall
conception—American success as an unholy alliance between a
turn-of-the-century capitalist (Daniel Day-Lewis) and a faith healer
(Paul Dano), both hypocrites—can't quite sustain the film's visionary
airs, even with good expressionist acting and a percussive score by
Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood. Day-Lewis, borrowing heavily from Walter
and John Huston, offers a demonic hero halfway between Thomas Sutpen in
Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and James Dean's hate-driven tycoon in Giant
(shot on the same location as this movie), but Kevin J. O'Connor in a
slimmer part offers a much more interesting and suggestive character.
This has loads of swagger, but for stylistic audacity I prefer
Anderson's more scattershot Magnolia.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
This film (being shown throughout July) is part of the Marlene Dietrich season at the Garden Cinema. You can find the full details here.
New Yorker review: Ernst Lubitsch serves medicinal bitters in the champagne flutes of this terse, elliptical, comedy-tinged yet pain-seared romance, from 1937. Marlene Dietrich plays Maria Barker, the neglected wife of the aristocratic Frederick (Herbert Marshall), a British diplomat. While he’s crisscrossing Europe for the League of Nations, she heads to a Parisian salon-cum-brothel in search of new friends, and she finds one—a playboy named Anthony Halton (Melvyn Douglas), with whom she has a night of anonymous adventure before slipping home to London. A few days later, the two men meet in high-society circles, and when Anthony dines at Frederick’s mansion he embarrassingly meets his onetime lover again. Lubitsch sees the round of coincidences as a game of cruel destiny, albeit one that’s played on the world stage against a backdrop of looming war. He contrasts Frederick’s sexless gravity with Anthony’s seductive frivolity; with suavely piercing touches of erotic wit, he points ahead to the modern audacities of “Belle de Jour” and “Last Tango in Paris,” and to the higher irresponsibilities that make life worth living. In Lubitsch’s world, all politics is sexual. Richard Brody
BFI introduction: Elizabeth (Jackson) is in a mundane relationship with Lewis (Caine), a popular novelist, and decides to travel to Germany on a trip of self discovery. There, she meets a mysterious younger man and unwittingly puts herself and her family in danger the closer she gets to him. This psychological drama is a mature, enthralling piece written by Tom Stoppard and Thomas Wiseman (whose novel this is based on).
This film is part of the Stanley Kubrick on 35mm season at the Prince Charles. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review: Stanley
Kubrick shares with Orson Welles and Carl Dreyer the role of the Great
Confounder—remaining supremely himself while frustrating every attempt
to anticipate his next move or to categorize it once it registers. This
odd 1987 adaptation of Gustav Hasford's The Short-Timers,
with script-writing assistance from Michael Herr as well as Hasford,
has more to do with the general theme of colonization (of individuals
and countries alike) and the suppression by male soldiers of their
female traits than with the specifics of Vietnam or the Tet offensive.
Elliptical, full of subtle inner rhymes (for instance, the sound cues
equating a psychopathic marine in the first part with a dying female
sniper in the second), and profoundly moving, this is the most tightly
crafted Kubrick film since Dr. Strangelove, as well as the most horrific; the first section alone accomplishes most of what The Shining failed to do. Jonathan Rosenbaum Here (and above) is the trailer.
Time Out review: The abbreviated title of this Brut production (transposing Nunn's Royal Shakespeare Company staging of Ibsen's play) is the clue: leaving out theGablerimplies a Woman's Picture and the plastic surface of high-class soap opera. So it is for much of the time, with close-ups ofGlenda Jacksonreacting archly to the out-of-focus figures in the background. Luckily the supporting cast is outstanding; so that once the nods to opening out the play have been made, the film settles into its hypnotic story of manipulation and sexual tensions, with no fancy angles to obscure the power of Hedda's climactic burning of the Lovborg manuscript. Andrew Nickolds
This 35mm presentation is part of the Satyajit Ray season at BFI Southbank (details here)
BFI introduction: Ray adapted Tagore’s short stories to mark the latter’s centenary year. In The Postmaster, a young lad from the city is sent to a remote village where a young orphan girl is his domestic help. Samapti marks Aparna Sen’s delightful debut as a tomboy who breaks all rules as a young bride but has a change of heart as she reaches adolescence.
This film is part of the Satyajit Ray season at BFI Southbank (details here). The 35mm presentation is also being screened on July 24th. Details here.
Time Out review: Although Satyajit Ray's later films saw him moving away from his early gentle humanism towards something more concerned with the political and economic problems facing modern India, they remain primarily descriptive rather than works of intense political commitment. Here he deals with a university graduate forced to enter the world of commerce: his confidence eroded by the experience of being interviewed for jobs for which there are literally thousands of applicants, he eventually sets himself up as someone who buys and sells anything. Meanwhile he finds himself reduced to compromising his ideals more and more. Beautifully performed, blessed with Ray's customary sense of balance, and wittily satirising the absurdity of bureaucracy run riot, it makes absording viewing. Geoff Andrew
This presentation is part of the Barbara Streisand sesason. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review: Barbra Streisand stars in her second feature as a director (afterYentl), an adaptation of Pat Conroy’s best-selling novel about the adulterous relationship that develops between the twin brother (Nick Nolte) and the New York psychiatrist (Streisand) of a tortured southern poet who attempts suicide (Melinda Dillon); Conroy and Becky Johnston collaborated on the script, and Blythe Danner, Kate Nelligan, Jeroen Krabbe, and Jason Gould (Streisand’s real-life son, here playing her movie son) costar. For better and for worse, Streisand’s directorial style calls to mind Delmer Daves in the 60s (Spencer’s Mountain,Youngblood Hawke), both in her delirious crane shots and in her willingness to place most of the emotional climaxes into the filmic equivalent of italics (which often means overproduced magazine-cover settings and soaring music). The results may seem overripe and dated in spots, but she coaxes a fine performance out of Nolte, and the other actors (herself included) acquit themselves honorably (1991). Jonathan Rosenbaum
This film is part of the Stanle Kubrick on 35mm season. Full details here.
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
This film (showing across Picturehouse Cinemas in London and elsewhere) is part of the Ennio Morricone season.
Picturehouse Cinemas introduction to the Morricone season: Ennio Morricone is il maestro of the movies. As bravura as he was prolific (more than 400 scores for film and TV over six decades), the late Italian composer’s work enlivened film music with insidious earworms, innovative instrumentation (think whip cracks and whistling) and an unerring gift to speak directly to the emotions. This Picturehouse Re-Discover season showcases some of his masterpieces and unsung gems, celebrating perhaps the most original, distinctive voice in film music.
Time Out review: Growing in stature as the years pass, the bleak majesty of Sergio
Corbucci’s dark, complex meditation on the human cost of progress
threatens to outstrip the bleached, hallucinatory, hyper-violent
‘Django’ as his crowning achievement. Set in Utah during the Great
Blizzard of 1899, it follows the mute Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a
hired gun with a particular interest in the state-sanctioned bounty
hunters – exemplified by Klaus Kinski’s mannered, controlled, entirely
deadly Loco – who are clearing the land of anyone who doesn’t have their
finger in the pie. Though overflowing with theological subtext and
social indignance, it’s an uncommonly reserved film by spaghetti western
(and Kinski) standards, but when that silence is broken, the noise and
fury are truly something to behold. Adam Lee Davies
This rarely screened film is part of the Satyajit Ray season at BFI Southbank (details here). The 35mm presentation is also being shown on July 10th.
BFI introduction: This crime thriller, adapted from Saradindu Bandopadhyay’s popular detective series, sees matinee idol Uttam Kumar play detective Byomkesh Bakshy – offering a perfect bonanza for the Bengali audience. When a new client, an ex-judge, is murdered, the detective investigates and stumbles upon a menagerie of criminals, singing stars and suspects camouflaged in a rose colony.
This 35mm screening (also on July 6th) is part of the 'In the Black Fantastic' season at BFI Southbank. You can find the full details here.
Time Out review: A mute, black extra-terrestrial fetches up in Harlem to be greeted first with bewildered hostility, then with a certain casual friendliness. The slim, episodic, but thoroughly enjoyable story shoots off like a firework in numerous directions: droll comedy among a group of cheery, bleary barflies; unforced intimations of a streetwise messiah as Bro's peculiar powers put paid to a drugs ring; delicate insights into Harlem's social mores, wrapped up in unpretentious fashion without a trace of stereotyping. Central to the film's deft balancing act between shaggy dog humour and something just a little more serious is Joe Morton's expressive performance as the alien, though the rest of the cast also plays admirably. Geoff Andrew
This 16mm presentation is from the Cine-Real team.
Chicago Reader review: Bela Lugosi died during the making of this low-budget science fiction programmer, but that didn’t faze director Edward Wood: the Lugosi footage, which consists of the actor skulking around a suburban garage, is replayed over and over, to highly surreal effect. Wood is notorious for his 1952 transvestite saga Glen or Glenda? (aka I Changed My Sex), but for my money this 1959 effort is twice as strange and appealing in its undisguised incompetence. J. Hoberman of the Village Voice has made a case for Wood as an unconscious avant-gardist; there’s no denying that his blunders are unusually creative and oddly expressive. With Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Joanna Lee, and, of course, Lyle Talbot. Dave Kehr
BFI introduction: The latest work from Charlie Shackleton (Beyond Clueless and BFI London Film Festival prize-winning short Lasting Marks) is a mesmerising and sweeping collage of moments from early cinema and performances of screen actors who are no longer with us. It offers a beautiful and spiritual journey, especially when combined with the knowledge that The Afterlight itself only exists as a single 35mm film print: further eroding every time it screens, it will eventually disappear. Don’t miss your chance to experience this special film on the first stop of its UK tour. An
immersive cinematic collage assembled from early 20th century cinema,
The Afterlight documents the physical presence of over three hundred
actors who are no longer alive and must reconcile themselves to a life
lived solely through the performances they committed to celluloid. This
ghostly atmosphere is reflected in the materiality of the work itself; each projection gradually yields
itself to an organic cycle of deterioration and death. Shackleton has crafted an intricate and provocative
piece of work which pays homage both to the affective power and the
inherent fragility of cinema.
Chicago Reader review: Rainer Werner Fassbinder has a genius for detailing the pain of
suppressed emotional states, and even at its most achingly deliberate,
his style in dealing with the petit bourgeois mentality is a source of
endless fascination. This 1971 feature, originally shot for German
television, chronicles the struggles of a fruit peddler to build a
semblance of a life for himself and his wife—with whom he maintains only
the barest contact—in postwar Germany. With Hans Hirschmuller, Irm
Hermann, and Hanna Schygulla. Don Druker Here is an extract.
Lost Vampires are screening this Alan Clarke film from a 35mm print. Prince Charles Cinema introduction: This
rarely screened cult musical is one of the boldest and strangest
films ever to emerge from the UK, a unique collaboration between
director Alan Clarke, writer Trevor Preston and composer George
Fenton. Up-and-coming snooker player, Billy Kid (Phil Daniels) is
manipulated by his debt-ridden manager, T.O. (Bruce Payne) into a
high-stakes grudge match with The Vampire - world champion Maxwell
Randall (Alun Armstrong) – the loser agreeing never to play the
professional game again. With a rousing musical score performed in
surreal theatrical settings, the drama builds to a truly nail-biting
snooker game climax. Part gangster parody, part rock opera, part
social commentary, critic Peter Wollen described it as “arguably
[Alan Clarke’s] best film” and Anne Billson proposed it was one
of the “most undervalued and underseen” films of the 1980s.
This film is part of the Ennio Morricone season at Picturehouse Cinemas. Details here.
Picturehouses Cinema introduction to their Ennio Morricone season: Ennio Morricone is il maestro of the movies. As bravura as he was prolific (more than 400 scores for film and TV over six decades), the late Italian composer’s work enlivened film music with insidious earworms, innovative instrumentation (think whip cracks and whistling) and an unerring gift to speak directly to the emotions. This Picturehouse Re-Discover season showcases some of his masterpieces and unsung gems, celebrating perhaps the most original, distinctive voice in film music.
This screening is part of the 80s Cinema Late Nights season in 35mm at Screen On The Green (full list of films here). It's also screened on June 29th. Details here.
Time Out review: Although nominally based on journalist Cameron Crowe's investigative study of high school kids, this is essentially a straight sex'n'fun exploitation movie. There's the usual array of school stereotypes (the lecher, the stoned surfer, the hustler), a rock score, and endless attention to the rituals of dating and mating. Taken purely on this level, it's a relatively witty example of its kind, with an enjoyable performance from Penn as the stoned surfer, and some good lines. But it lacks the frenzied energy which allowedPorky'sto beat all competitors in its field. David Pirie
This 35mm presentation is part of the Terror Vision strand at BFI Southbank. Full details here.
BFI introduction: Join us to celebrate the life of Norman J Warren on what would have been his 80th birthday, with a screening of his masterpiece of effective low-budget filmmaking. An ancient witch’s curse is unleashed on an unsuspecting group of partygoers – and what follows is a series of striking horror set-pieces as each victim meets an imaginatively gory end. Special guests will be on stage to share memories of a much-loved figure in British cinema.
This film, part of the monthly 16mm Cine-Real events at the Castle Cinema, will also be screened on June 26th. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review: The
key film in the Bogart myth (1941). I don't want to knock it, but what
John Huston does with Bogart's personality and the hard-boiled genre in
general has always struck me as pale compared to the Howard Hawks films
that followed (To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep). The Maltese Falcon is
really a triumph of casting and wonderfully suggestive character
detail; the visual style, with its exaggerated vertical compositions, is
striking but not particularly expressive, and its thematics are limited
to intimations of absurdism (which, when they exploded in Beat the Devil, turned out to be fairly punk). But who can argue with Bogart's glower or Mary Astor in her ratty fur? Dave Kehr
This 35mm screening is presented by the Kennington Noir film club.
Chicago Reader review: It isn’t his best, but this 1953 feature may be the archetypal Sam Fuller film, a condensation of his themes and techniques with the steam still rising. As Fuller’s typically perverse, pigheaded hero—a pickpocket who accidentally lifts a roll of top-secret microfilm—Richard Widmark draws on the snickering, psychotic style that first made him a star as a heavy. Fuller’s didacticism is fully vented, as is his flair for chunky, racking violence: the film contains an unforgettable image of a thug’s chin being bounced rhythmically down a flight of stairs. There’s an excellent, layered performance from Thelma Ritter, an actress generally given to cartoonishness. With Jean Peters and Richard Kiley. Dave Kehr
This screening is part of the Rainer Werner Fassbinder season at the Prince Charles. Full details here. The film is also being shown on June 23rd. Here is the link with all the information.
Chicago Reader review: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1971 film about a movie crew trapped in a Spanish seaside hotel, waiting first for the star (Eddie Constantine) to arrive and then for the director (Lou Castel) to find his inspiration. This edgy, violent, impacted movie was based on incidents that occurred during the shooting of Fassbinder’sWhity, and survivors claim that it more or less accurately records the paranoia and desperate needfulness that reigned on Fassbinder’s sets. It was also the last film of his ragged avant-gardist period; with the subsequentAli: Fear Eats the Soul, he moved into an emulation of a Hollywood director’s distance and control. With Hanna Schygulla, Ulli Lommel, and Magdalena Montezuma. Dave Kehr
This 35mm presentation is also being screened on June 23rd. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: Nicholas Ray's moving 1955 tale of teenage romanticism thwarted by an
adult world of televisions and atomic bombs established James Dean as
America's first underage icon. Dean's alienation is perfectly expressed
through Ray's vertiginous mise-en-scene: the suburban LA setting becomes
a land of decaying Formica and gothic split-levels. An unmissable film,
made with a delirious compassion. With Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim
Backus, Corey Allen, Edward Platt, and Dennis Hopper. Dave Kehr
