This 35mm presentation is part of the Luchino Visconti season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review: Aptly titled—a lush, melodramatic portrait of seduction and betrayal,
decadence and deceit in the midst of Italy's resistance to Austrian
occupation in the mid-19th century, revealing Luchino Visconti at his
most baroque and the Italian cinema at its most spectacular (1954). A
fine tragic performance by Alida Valli and surprisingly good work by
Farley Granger (imported for American box-office appeal) help overcome
some of the obvious narrative gaps created by the Italian censors.
Visconti's sinuous Marxism here begins to creep to the fore. Dave Kehr
Time Out review: Luchino Visconti’s epic melodrama of social migration and
moral decay was first released in 1960, when it was met with great
scandal (a prosecutor threatened to charge the director with
“disseminating an obscene object”) and even greater success. Today,
distanced from ridiculous controversy and dislocated from the provincial
politics that drive its story, this immaculately restored classic of
post-WWII Italian cinema often feels like a new experience altogether. Set in the early ’60s, when Italy’s moneyed Northern
classes were regularly exploiting the people of the South for cheap
labor, Visconti’s shaggy tale begins with the hardscrabble Parondi
family moving from rural Lucania up to industrial Milan, where recently
widowed Rosaria (Katina Paxinou) and her four sons hope to find a better
life. “My family arrived like an earthquake,” sighs Vincenzo, the
eldest son who’s already in Milan, to his fiancée (a young Claudia
Cardinale) after his mother and siblings crash their engagement party
and interrupt the first strains of the flowing Nino Rota score that
would earn the composer a gig on The Godfather. From there, Visconti paves the way for rollicking family sagas like 2003’s The Best of Youth,
unspooling his tale across three brisk hours and five overlapping
chapters, one for each of the Parondi boys. Over time, idealistic Rocco
(Delon, magnetic even when dubbed by an actor who pronounces his
character’s name as though it were spelled with eight rs),
closeted older brother Simone (Salvatori) and local prostitute Nadia
(Girardot, sensational) emerge as the true focal points. Stubbornly attached to the clannish virtues of his
father’s generation, Rocco can’t help but forgive Simone even his most
violent transgressions—including Nadia’s brutal semipublic rape—as his
moral absolutism rots into something perverse as he tries to hold the
family together. Watching the film so far removed from the time of its
making underlines the tragedy of Rocco’s anachronistic nature and
compensates for the increasing clumsiness of Visconti’s more topical
subplots. “The world’s a one-way street,” Girardot’s character blithely
declares, but Rocco still can’t see that he’s speeding toward a dead
end. David Ehrlich
BFI introdcution: Poitier’s first collaboration with director Stanley Kramer is an
action-packed thriller that transformed the actor into the first bona
fide Black movie star. He plays Noah Cullen, an escaped convict in the
Deep South who is handcuffed to Tony Curtis’ embittered racist. To stay
alive and out of reach of the authorities, they forge an embittered
friendship. As a man seething with rage from a life of indignity,
Poitier is superb. It earned him a landmark first Oscar nomination for
Best Actor.
This Lost Reels presentation is from an original 35mm print, and will be followed by an in-person Q&A with writer/director Whit Stillman.
Time Out review: Manhattan, the early '80s. Recent graduates from an upper crust college,
Alice (Chloe Sevigny) and Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) - flatmates and friends of a
sort - pass their days working as trainee publishing editors, and most
of their nights discussing social niceties at a fashionable disco where
assistant manager Des (Eigeman) courts the boss's disfavour by admitting
the wrong kind of clientele. The girls hang out at the disco with a
preppy bunch of Harvard admen and lawyers; rumour, rivalry and
falling-out is rife and relationships are frequently at risk. The third
comedy of manners in Whit Stillman's loose trilogy about the 'doomed
bourgeois in love' again highlights the writer/director's expertise with
naturalistically articulate dialogue whose idioms, ironies and
absurdities provide vivid insights into the delusions, desires and often
ludicrous tribal rituals of the young, privileged and, mostly, pretty
ineffectual. Like Metropolitan and Barcelona, it's a
brittle, sporadically brilliant film, very funny but rooted in social,
political, historical and emotional realities. Beckinsale, especially,
is a revelation, making Charlotte smug, spiteful, sexy and, underneath,
rather sad, all with a spot-on accent. Geoff Andrew Here (and above) is the trailer.
Time Out review: Luchino Vsconti's second feature (five years after Ossessione
in 1942) was an improvised drama produced by the Communist Party,
filmed with and among Sicilian fishermen in the village of Aci-Trezza.
An overwhelmingly stark chronicle of a family which strives but fails to
break out of the poverty trap - they try to cut out the middlemen by
embarking in what one might call 'free enterprise', with disastrous
results - La Terra Trema‚ stands as a masterpiece of neo-realism,
a social conscience cinema of proletarian ways and means. Yet, despite
this, it's no less 'operatic' than the director's later decadent
melodramas: it surges with great tides of emotion. The film is
distinguished by its vivid camerawork, at once poetic and 'documentary'.
(Francesco Rosi and Franco Zeffirelli, it may be noted, served as
assistant directors.) Visconti only finished the film by selling some of
his mother's jewellery and an apartment in Rome. Yet, true to his
breeding, he brought home one of the boys from the film and installed
him as his butler. Tom Charity
Vulture review: The Way We Wereis
told in a series of flashbacks and montages, primed for maximum
nostalgia and some truly gorgeous period costuming. The entire film is
Hollywood confection from start to finish, opening with the lush,
familiar croon of Barbara Streisand’s famous titular song, allowing
Robert Redford to wear his navy whites for so long that he begins to
look as though he’s emerged from a perfume ad. There are some scenes cut
from the conclusion that make the timeline a little confusing, butThe Way We Weredoes
not endure because of its plot. It endures because of a fearsome,
desirous performance from Streisand, and Redford’s cold beauty, and all
the ways that it captures a one-sided desire many of us have felt. Christina Newland
This 35mm screening is part of the Big Screen Classics strand (the 'Singers on Screen' season) at BFI Southbank. Details here.
Time Out review: Touted as a ground-breaking addition to the crime-on-the-streets genre,
Mario Van Peebles' thriller is far more modest: a high-tech update on that old
warhorse, a mobster's rise and fall. Ruthless Nino Brown (Wesley Snipes) lords
it over a New York neighbourhood with an empire built on crack and
violence. It's only when two disenchanted streetwise officers come
together - African-American Scott Appleton (Ice T) and Nick Peretti
(Judd Nelson) - that his domain is effectively threatened. The movie pays lip
service to social analysis while delighting in the paraphernalia of
violence. As such, it's a superior example of what used to be called
blaxploitation, with Van Peebles piling on corruption and carnage for
all he's worth. Geoff Andrew
Chicago Reader review: Perhaps the most unjustly neglected of Luchino Visconti’s early films is
this hilarious 1951 comedy, tailored to the talents of Anna Magnani,
about a working-class woman who is determined to get her plain
seven-year-old daughter into movies. A wonderful send-up of the Italian
film industry and the illusions that it fosters, delineated in near-epic
proportions with style and brio. With Walter Chiari and Alessandro
Blasetti. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader review: A
masterpiece of the German silent cinema and easily the most effective
version ofDracula on record. F.W. Murnau's 1922 film follows the Bram
Stoker novel fairly closely, although he neglected to purchase the
screen rights—hence, the title change. But the key elements are all
Murnau's own: the eerie intrusions of expressionist style on natural
settings, the strong sexual subtext, and the daring use of fast-motion
and negative photography. Dave Kehr
Time Out review: This eloquent social comedy has a self-pitying professor hunting out the
mutt who's been disturbing his sleep. He locks the creature in a closet
in the basement of his apartment block and later stumbles across a
janitor with a taste for dog soup (dog lovers might want to give this
one a miss). The trouble is, he realises he put away the wrong hound.
Ironies multiply. His pregnant wife drives him crazy. He throws the
right dog from the roof of the building. His main rival for a top job is
beheaded in a drunken subway accident. His wife buys a poodle. And so
on. Beautifully directed, unsentimental and darkly funny. Tom Charity
This 35mm presentation, part of the Golden Age of Korean Film season, also scrrens on Decembner 20th. Full details here.
Time Out review: Ennui and overexposure in the sexual arena are key stimuli for the
libertines in Choderlos de Laclos’ ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’, and after
‘Dangerous Liaisons’, ‘Valmont’, ‘Cruel Intentions’ and more, any
filmmaker attempting another adaptation runs the risk of incurring
similar sensations in the audience. This Korean remake re-spins the
story in the late-nineteenth century twilight of the country’s Chosun
dynasty, and arranges the tale’s erotic strife as a contest not only
between the precepts of official high-Confucian morality and its
trustees’ decadence, but also between that local-grown hypocrisy and the
threat of religious puritanism imported from abroad. Thus Laclos’
chaste Madame de Tourvel becomes the persecuted Catholic Lady Chong
(Jeon Do-Yeon), and her would-be corruptor Cho-Won (Korean TV star Bae
Yong-Jun, genially rakish) must feign theological dissidence as well as
personal virtue to conquer her. Not that the film pushes such
points. A prologue alerts us not to take it as historical gospel: ‘The
men and women who appear here are lecherous and immoral beyond belief,’
it promises. ‘One is led to doubt whether they indeed existed.’ In the
event, it’s a shame that the film takes itself increasingly seriously as
it proceeds. Rarely outright salacious, it unfolds its intrigue with a
certain dramatic equanimity and visual period splendour – it’s richly
shot by Kim Byeong-Il, Park Chan-Wook’s cinematographer on ‘Sympathy for
Mr Vengeance’. But that much good work done, the film runs out of
ideas, and the endgame plays out as doggedly prosaic. It’s hard not to
pine for the nudie-painting, virgin-breaking Cho-Won in the full flower
of his pre-comeuppance mischief. Nicholas Barber
This film also screens on January 7th. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: This David Cronenberg masterpiece (1991) breaks every rule in adapting a
literary classic—maybe “On Naked Lunch” would be a more accurate
title—but justifies every transgression with its artistry and audacity.
Adapted not only from William S. Burroughs’s free-form novel but also
from several other Burroughs works, this film pares away all the social
satire and everything that might qualify as celebration of gay sex,
yielding a complex and highly subjective portrait of Burroughs himself
(expertly played by Peter Weller) as a tortured sensibility in flight
from his own femininity, proceeding zombielike through an echo chamber
of projections (insects, drugs, typewriters) and repudiations. According
to the densely compacted metaphors that compose this dreamlike movie,
writing equals drugs equals sex, and the pseudonymous William Lee, as
politically incorrect as Burroughs himself, repeatedly disavows his
involvement in all three Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader review: The prolific Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been at work for
nearly two decades, sometimes making straight-to-video features but more
recently receiving some belated international recognition. The
engrossing Cure (1997) stars Koji Yakusho (Shall We Dance?, The Eel) as a troubled detective exploring a series of murders committed through hypnotic suggestion (as in The Manchurian Candidate),
and while its creepy mystery plot is easy enough to follow even when it
turns metaphysical, it’s unsatisfying as a story precisely because it
aspires to create a mounting sense of dread by enlarging questions
rather than answering them. Like other recent thrillers by this
director, it’s fairly grisly, though Kurosawa’s frequent long shots
impart a cool, detached tone to the cruelty and violence. Stylistically
it’s the most inventive Japanese feature I’ve seen in some time, much
more unpredictable than Takeshi Kitano’s recent yakuza exercises. Jonathan Rosenbaum
This great modern Christmas film is part of the Christmas season at the Prince Charles Cinema and is also being screened on December 5th. Full details here.
Time Out review: Loneliness, Vietnam-era alienation and a sourpuss Paul Giamatti
aren’t, on paper, the things of which cockle-warming yuletide classics
are typically made – any more than teams of hi-tech thieves sticking up
Japanese corporations. But like Die Hard,
Alexander Payne’s wintry story of human connection is an unexpected
Christmas gem. It even plays a tiny bit like a 1970-set version of ‘A
Christmas Carol’, with Giamatti’s cranky ancient history teacher
learning uncomfortable truths about himself in a redemption arc that
gives the film a genuine glow. Payne’s old Sideways star
is, as ever, a curmudgeonly delight as Paul Hunham, a universally
unpopular member of the teaching staff at New England’s Barton Academy.
In fact, his outsider status at the prep school is such that he’s given
up trying to charm his students or colleagues, instead embracing his own
pain-in-the-arse misanthropy, self-parody (he’s always ready with an
Aeneas reference) and self-limiting horizons. ‘You can’t even dream a
whole dream, can you?’ chides a colleague. So when someone is needed to babysit a handful of ‘holdovers’ over
the holidays, pupils whose parents have more or less abandoned them
during Christmas, it’s Paul who is stuck with the job. Spending the festive period
with the gawky, sharp-tongued and inwardly raging Tully (Dominic
Sessa), a young man abandoned by his mum and grieving his dad,
immediately feels like hell for all concerned. What follows is a coming-of-age story for Tully and Paul, and a
reminder that the sure-to-be-awards-bound Giamatti deserves to be top
of the bill far more often, instead of being lumbered with supporting
roles in so-so blockbusters like Jungle Cruise and San Andreas. Few other actors could inhabit this rumpled, embittered man and make you root for him so wholeheartedly. The Holdovers is a triumphant comeback story for Alexander Payne, too. The director bounces back from 2017’s misfiring Downsizing
to find his tone – a rare kind of jaded hopefulness – with all his old
assurance. He adds another string to his bow here in spotting the
talented Sessa. The newcomer is Giamatti’s equal in a volatile
odd-couple dynamic that ebbs and flows before the pair finally begin to
understand each other. Props, too, to Da'Vine Joy Randolph (Only Murders in the Building),
who hits all the film’s major keys as the school’s bubbly but blunt
cook, and some of the most touching minor ones, too. The death of her
son in Vietnam haunts The Holdovers as
much as that of Tully’s dad. All three characters are nursing broken
hearts but their path to solidarity is never straightforward or
predictable. David Hemingson’s screenplay makes every moment of
reluctant connection feel earned. And I loved that The Holdovers isn’t
just set in the 1970s; it feels like it was made then too. From the
desaturated cinematography, captured with vintage lenses, to the
lived-in production design, you could be watching a Hal Ashby movie (the
film’s trailer even has an old-school voiceover). It’s a bittersweet
callback to a golden age when there were a whole lot more movies like
this one. Phil De Semlyen
The
repertory cinemas are closed today but you can catch my recommendations for great movies on television over the holiday
period via my 'X' handle @tpaleyfilm or on Bluesky @tpaleyfilm.bsky.social with the hashtag #bestxmasholidayfilmonTVtoday.
Christmas Eve and It’s A Wonderful Life on 35mm at the Prince Charles is always
one of the best screenings of the year. Don’t worry if you can’t get along on December 24th their are
plenty of other screenings of this bona fide great film (regardless of
Christmas or not). You can find the full details here (of screenings from 35mm and digital).
Chicago Reader review: The
film Frank Capra was born to make. This 1946 release marked his return
to features after four years of turning out propaganda films for the
government, and Capra poured his heart and soul into it. James Stewart
stars as a small-town nobody, on the brink of suicide, who believes his
life is worthless. Guardian angel Henry Travers shows him how wrong he
is by letting Stewart see what would have happened had he never been
born. Wonderfully drawn and acted by a superb cast (Donna Reed, Beulah
Bondi, Thomas Mitchell, Lionel Barrymore, Gloria Grahame) and told with a
sense of image and metaphor (the use of water is especially elegant)
that appears in no other Capra film. The epiphany of movie sentiment and
a transcendent experience. Dave Kehr
Time Out review: When Park Ki-Hyung declined to make a sequel to his surprise hit Whispering Corridors,
producer Oh had the smart idea of offering the challenge to two recent
graduates from the Korean Film Academy who had already collaborated on
the excellent shorts Seventeen and Pale Blue Dot. They
came up with a very different take on a haunting in a high school for
girls: a convoluted tale of teenage lesbian feelings, telepathy, sexual
rivalry, spirit possession and unwanted pregnancy. Intricately
structured and made with great technical brio, the film falters in its
final reel in which the entire school is terrorised by the spirit of a
wronged girl driven to suicide. But when it forgets about grandstanding
and concentrates on the intimate feelings of its protagonists, it's
quite something. Tony Rayns
Chicago Reader review: E.T.
with the lid off (1984). At the center of this horror comedy is a tidy
family parable of the kind so dear to the heart of producer Steven
Spielberg: the cute little whatzits who turn into marauding monsters
when they pass through puberty (here gooily envisioned as “the larval
stage”) are clearly metaphors for children, and the teenager (Zach
Galligan) whose lapse of responsibility unleashes the onslaught is a
stand-in for the immature parents of the 80s (Poltergeist).
But Spielberg's finger wagging is overwhelmed by Joe Dante's roaring,
undisciplined direction, which (sometimes through sheer sloppiness)
pushes the imagery to unforeseen, untidy, and ultimately disturbing
extremes. Dante is perhaps the first filmmaker since Frank Tashlin to
base his style on the formal free-for-all of animated cartoons; he is
also utterly heartless. With Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, and more
movie-buff in-jokes than Carter has pills. Dave Kehr Here (and above) is the trailer.
Time Out review: Acted
to the parsimonious hilt by the human Scrooge (Michael Caine), and framed by
author-narrator Charles Dickens (the Great Gonzo) addressing his rodent
audience (Rizzo the Rat), the story survives. Well, it would: it's the
same story of redemption that powers Stallone movies. All the
pen-pushing glovesters in Scrooge's office run on fear of dismissal, a
topical note, with Bob Cratchit (Kermit the Frog) negotiating but
nervous. Not so his wife Miss Piggy, ready to have a go at Scrooge, but
mindful of the needs of their family, a brood as mixed as you would
expect from pigs and frogs, which explains the medical condition of Tiny
Tim, a froglet with a cough on crutches. The three ghosts of Christmas
are wonderful. Elsewhere, Fozzie Bear bears a resemblance to Francis L
Sullivan in the David Lean Dickens adaptations, and there's a shop
called Micklewhite. As an actor, Kermit can corrugate his forehead
vertically. Good fun. Brian Case
This is part of a mini Jean-Luc Godard season (details here)
at the ICA Cinema.and screens from a 4K restoration.
Chicago Reader review: Jean-Luc Godard’s 2001 feature, his best since Nouvelle Vague
(1990), is in some respects as difficult as that film, though
visually it’s stunning and unique even among Godard’s work. The
first part, set in contemporary Paris, was shot in black-and-white
35-millimeter, while the second, set in Brittany two years earlier,
is in floridly oversaturated color. A young man (Bruno Putzulu)
interviews men and women for an undefined project called “Eloge de
l’Amour,” which will involve three couples (young, adult, and
old) experiencing four stages of love (meeting, physical passion,
separation, and reconciliation). One young woman he spends time with
is the granddaughter of a couple he’s met earlier, former members
of the French resistance negotiating to sell their story to a
Hollywood studio. As in his magnum opus, Histoire(s) du Cinema,
Godard is centrally concerned with the ethics of true and false
representation and with the lost promise of cinema, which leads to
some anti-American reflections ranging from reasonable to
over-the-top. This is a twilight film, dark and full of sorrow, yet
lyrical and beautiful as well. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is the New Yorker's Richard Brody's video discussion of a key scene.
This is part of a mini Jean-Luc Godard season (details here) at the ICA Cinema.Chicago Reader review: Jean-Luc Godard isn’t being as hard on his audience this time around,
and it seems to have paid off: I’ve yet to encounter any hostile
critical response to this feature, a mellow and meditative reflection on
the ravages of war. Set in Sarajevo and structured in three parts after
Dante’s Divine Comedy, this beautiful film (2004) centers on a
young French-Jewish journalist based in Israel who’s attending the same
literary conference as Godard. The wars it contemplates through a
montage of documentary and archival footage include ones waged in
Algeria, Vietnam, Bosnia, and the Middle East; Native American victims
also make an appearance in Sarajevo, alongside certain others. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Time Out review: A likeable, understated movie about facing up to death, from a first
time director. Jung-Won (Han, Korea's coolest young actor) is a pro
photographer with his own shop in a suburb of Seoul; only he and his
immediate relatives know that he has just a few months to live. Nothing
'dramatic' happens. He runs into his childhood sweetheart and regrets
that her life hasn't worked out better. He goes to a friend's funeral.
He makes a point of seeing other old friends. And he develops a slightly
abrasive friendship with a young woman traffic warden, which leaves her
wanting to know him better and not understanding why he isn't 'there'
for her. Hur conjures up quotidian rhythms very plausibly, and draws
fine performances from his whole cast. It was the last film shot by the
great Yoo Young-Kil, to whose memory it's dedicated. Tony Rayns
This is a 16mm presentation from the folks at Cine-real.
Chicago Reader review: The
film Frank Capra was born to make. This 1946 release marked his return
to features after four years of turning out propaganda films for the
government, and Capra poured his heart and soul into it. James Stewart
stars as a small-town nobody, on the brink of suicide, who believes his
life is worthless. Guardian angel Henry Travers shows him how wrong he
is by letting Stewart see what would have happened had he never been
born. Wonderfully drawn and acted by a superb cast (Donna Reed, Beulah
Bondi, Thomas Mitchell, Lionel Barrymore, Gloria Grahame) and told with a
sense of image and metaphor (the use of water is especially elegant)
that appears in no other Capra film. The epiphany of movie sentiment and
a transcendent experience. Dave Kehr
This is part of a mini Jean-Luc Godard season (details here) at ICA Cinema, and is part of a double-bill with the director's 1976 film Coment Ca Va.
Chicago Reader review: Often juxtaposing or superimposing two or more video images within the
same 'Scope frame, Jean-Luc Godard's remarkable (if seldom screened)
1975 feature—one of the most ambitious and innovative films in his
career—literally deconstructs family, sexuality, work, and alienation
before our very eyes. Our ears are given a workout as well; the punning
commentary and dialogue, whose overlapping meanings can only be
approximated in the subtitles, form part of one of his densest sound
tracks. Significantly, the film never moves beyond the vantage point of
one family's apartment, and the only time the whole three-generation
group (played by nonprofessionals) are brought together in one shot is
when they're watching an unseen television set. In many respects, this
is a film about reverse angles and all that they imply; it forms one of
Godard's richest and most disturbing meditations on social reality. The
only full 'Scope images come in the prologue and epilogue, when Godard
himself is seen at his video and audio controls. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader review: E.T.
with the lid off (1984). At the center of this horror comedy is a tidy
family parable of the kind so dear to the heart of producer Steven
Spielberg: the cute little whatzits who turn into marauding monsters
when they pass through puberty (here gooily envisioned as “the larval
stage”) are clearly metaphors for children, and the teenager (Zach
Galligan) whose lapse of responsibility unleashes the onslaught is a
stand-in for the immature parents of the 80s (Poltergeist).
But Spielberg's finger wagging is overwhelmed by Joe Dante's roaring,
undisciplined direction, which (sometimes through sheer sloppiness)
pushes the imagery to unforeseen, untidy, and ultimately disturbing
extremes. Dante is perhaps the first filmmaker since Frank Tashlin to
base his style on the formal free-for-all of animated cartoons; he is
also utterly heartless. With Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, and more
movie-buff in-jokes than Carter has pills. Dave Kehr Here (and above) is the trailer.
This 35mm presentation is part of the 'Projecting the Archive' strand at BFI Southbank and will feature an extended introduction by curator Ehsan Khoshbakht.
BFI introduction: When a theatre is bombed in wartime London, a famous actor loses his
memory and assumes the personality of the character he’s been playing on
stage: The Brighton Strangler. British expat stars John Loder and June
Duprez bring authenticity to their roles – much needed to counterbalance
the Hollywood depiction of Britain’s south coast. Director Max Nosseck
was a colourful character, best-known for making low-budget crime dramas
across different countries, of which this is a deliciously melodramatic
example. Taking place over the theatre’s Christmas closure, this RKO
B-movie makes a perfect alternative seasonal offering.
Time Out review: The town mouse and his country cousin. Or, the story of two students,
one who was very, very good, and one who was very, very bad; but the bad
one passed his exams, got the girl (when he wanted her), and survived
to live profitably ever after. A fine, richly detailed tableau of
student life in Paris, and Chabrol's first statement (in his second
film) of his sardonic view of life as a matter of the survival of the
fittest. The centrepiece, as so often in the early days of the nouvelle vague,
is an orgiastic party climaxed, as the guest sleeps it off next
morning, by a sublimely cruel and characteristic 'joke' by the bad
cousin (Jean-Claude Brialy) when he performs an eerie Wagnerian charade with
candelabra and Gestapo cap to wake a Jewish student into nightmare. Tom Milne
BFI introduction: Six-year-old Ok-hee lives with her widowed mother and stern
grandmother-in-law in a rural village. When the kindly Mr. Han arrives
to stay as a boarder, Ok-hee watches with curiosity and delight as
feelings develop between her mother and the father figure she always
longed for. Shin Sang-ok and his actor wife Choi Eun-hee were two key
figures in the Golden Age. Mother and a Guest is considered among their
finest achievements.
This Christmas movie horror classic is on across Picturehouse cinemas in London tonight and also Saturday 14th and Monday 16th. Full details here.
Popcorn Horror website review: What’s
so terrifying about Black Christmas is its own history. If you’re a
film buff you’re probably aware of this film’s existence: “that
Christmas themed horror”/”the first slasher”. It's this status as one of
the earliest slashers that sets up a false sense of security. Unlike the
standard template however, the antagonist is not a lumbering threat.
The fact he stays hidden in the shadows of the house means his
omnipresence (an idiom Black Christmas does conform to) is
verisimilitudinous without resorting to fantastical devices. Something
is a little unsettling about Black Christmas. It’s a little too
confined, the players somewhat more trapped, the playing field is that
bit smaller. There’s the traditional set-up but then, early on are the
phone-calls. Not calls that Scream hoped to parody; Scream would be
lucky if it could capture something as revolting as these. The calls in
the movie are genuinely some of the most horrifying, deranged audio ever
committed to film. It’s something that will stand out and stay with
you. This helps build the palpable tension and star Olivia Hussey is a
grand scream queen. But
the best thing about Black Christmas? The plot goes in a direction that
will leave you thinking for days , if not weeks. Yes, there are huge
leaps in logic (why do the girls stay in the sorority house after
several murders? Why do the police not have someone next to the phone
24/7?) It doesn’t matter, this remains utterly original and raw. Thanks
to the performances and brutality of the story, this continues to be a
terrifying movie to all but the most cynical; and frankly if this
picture doesn’t make your skin crawl, it’s on too tight. RJ Bayley
This film is screening as part of the 'Film Wallahs' strand at BFI Southbank showcasing new South Asian and world cinema. Full details here.
BFI introduction: In this adaptation of AJ Cronin’s The Citadel, we follow a young,
idealistic doctor as he moves to a small village with intentions of
making a difference. But life soon finds him compromising his values.
When a tragedy befalls him and his new bride, the bitterness in the
doctor exacerbates his pursuit of wealth and power. But it comes at a
price. We are delighted to welcome Vijay Anand’s son to introduce the
restored version of this riveting classic.
Chicago Reader review: There
are no Art Deco nightclubs, shimmering silk gowns, or slamming bedroom
doors to be seen, but this 1940 film is one of Ernst Lubitsch's finest
and most enduring works, a romantic comedy of dazzling range that takes
place almost entirely within the four walls of a leather-goods store in
prewar Budapest. James Stewart is the earnest, slightly awkward young
manager; Margaret Sullavan is the new sales clerk who gets on his
nerves—and neither realizes that they are partners in a passionate
romance being carried out through the mails. Interwoven with subplots
centered on the other members of the shop's little family, the romance
proceeds through Lubitsch's brilliant deployment of point of view,
allowing the audience to enter the perceptions of each individual
character at exactly the right moment to develop maximum sympathy and
suspense. With Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, Sara Haden, and Felix
Bressart. Dave Kehr
Time Out review: Sparky indie feature in four chapters, two previously shown as shorts in
their own right. The chapters are deliberately varied in style
(ciné-vérité, horror-noir, etc), but linked into a loose
narrative. Seok-Hwan (Ryoo himself) provokes a pool hall fight between
rival student gangs in which one guy dies. Seven years later he's become
a cop and his kid brother is drifting into crime. Meanwhile the
accidental murderer Sung-Bin (Park) is released from jail and
universally ostracised. Haunted by the ghost of the boy he killed, he
becomes a crimelord's enforcer and eventually revenges himself on
Seok-Hwan by putting his brother in danger. By the end everyone is dead,
dying or merely irredeemable. Basically an excuse for Ryoo and friends
to show off their stunt action skills, it says all the obvious things
about macho values and delinquency, but comes up fresh and watchable
thanks to its play with form. A version trimmed by 3 to 4 minutes was a
surprise hit in Korea. Tony Rayns
This film is part of the Golden Age of Korean Films season and also screens on December 14th. Full details here. Tonight's screening will be introduced by Professor Jinhee Choi, King’s College London.
BFI introduction: A murdered daughter-in-law returns as a vengeful spirit. While the film
adheres to the classic Korean horror tropes, it also absorbs influences
from Hollywood and Japanese horror. Lee Yong-min’s distinctive style
deftly captures the tension between Western modernity and pre-modern
Korean traditions, coexisting and interacting in the shifting space of a
rapidly changing society.
The film, part of the Celluloid Sunday strand at the cinema, is presented on a 35mm print from the ICA Archives.
ICA introdcution: The sophomore feature by Chen Kaife (King of Children, Farewell My Concubine, Killing Me Softly),
regarded as one of China’s most important directors and a leading
filmmaker of the Fifth Generation of Chinese cinema, follows a group of
military cadets on a grueling training programme to prepare for a parade
celebrating the 35th anniversary of the founding of the People's
Republic. Criticized both by the anti-military youth, in which
they saw the glorification of the martial spirit, and by the Chinese
authorities, which banned it after completion, the film was presented at
the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 1988 from a heavily
cut and censored version, and remains rarely seen on the big screen to
this day.
BFI introduction: When newlywed Hae-soon loses her fisherman husband to the sea, she joins
the company of villagers left widowed by the forces of nature. But when
she becomes the target of an aggressive courtship, Hae-soon is forced
to leave her home. Adapted from the novel by Oh Yeong-su, Kim Soo-yong’s
drama deftly captures the rhythms of rural life, the communal bond
between women and human resilience in the face of an unforgiving natural
world. Here (and above) is the trailer.
Time Out review: No pigs or wells in sight in Hong Sang-soo's justly acclaimed first feature,
which looks at the lives of five very recognisable urban types as if all
of them were witnesses at the scene of some freak accident. These men
and women make mistakes and suffer frustrations in the ways we all do: a
failed novelist blames everyone but himself for his inability to keep a
relationship going; a woman dreams of divorcing her husband and pins
her hopes on a lover who has already moved on; a generally faithful
husband impulsively rents a hooker while on a business trip and catches
an STD. Part of the pleasure here comes from the skill with which Hong
interweaves these seemingly unconnected lives; the rest comes from the
excellence of the images, sounds and performances and from Hong's warm
but unsentimental engagement with his characters. Tony Rayns
Chicago Tribune review: Given a
free hand to create the sequel to Batman, director Tim Burton has
come up with a far more personal film than his 1989 original. There
are flashes of commercially oriented action and humor, but the overall
feeling is one of a languid depression sprung straight from the heart of
its author. In fact, ''Batman Returns'' is so personal that it owes much more to ''Edward
Scissorhands,'' Burton`s 1990 Christmas fantasy about a lonely young
man with knifeblades for fingers, than it does to the comic book hero
created by Bob Kane. Not
only is the theme identical-that of the misunderstood man-boy, whose
knowledge of the dark side of life has made him unlovable, he fears, to
other human beings-but so are the tattered leather costumes, the
exaggerated, expressionistic set design, the swelling, highly emotional
score by Danny Elfman, and many of the more self-pitying lines of
dialogue. Dave Kehr
Time Out review: Re-teaming actorJack Lemmon, scriptwriter Iz Diamond and directorBilly Wildera
year after ‘Some Like It Hot’, this multi-Oscar winning comedy is
sharper in tone, tracing the compromises of a New York insurance drone
who pimps out his brownstone apartment for his married bosses’ illicit
affairs. The quintessential New York movie – with exquisite design byAlexandre Traunerand
shimmering black-and-white photography – it presented something of a
breakthrough in its portrayal of the war of the sexes, with a sour and
cynical view of the self-deception, loneliness and cruelty involved in
‘romantic’ liaisons. Directed by Wilder with attention to detail and
emotional reticence that belie its inherent darkness and melodramatic
core, it’s lifted considerably by the performances: the psychosomatic
ticks and tropes of nebbish Lemmon balanced by the pathos of Shirley MacLaine’s put-upon ‘lift girl’.
Here's
one of the great films set during Christmas, and an opportunity to see
Stanley Kubrick's much-underrated final movie in an original 35mm print. The film, part of the Christmas season at the Prince Charles, is also being shown on December 6th, 13th and 18th and you can find all the 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
