Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 114: Fri Apr 25

Altered States (Russell, 1980): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.05pm

This film is part of the Ken Russell season at the Prince Charles Cinema and is also screened on May 28th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
This Ken Russell film (1980) is just as much a camp joke as Lisztomania or Mahler, but this time nobody’s laughing, perhaps because Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay provided the first recognizably realistic context for Russell’s obsessions since Women in Love. Chayefsky, who had his name removed from the credits, may have thought it was about the agony and ecstasy of scientific investigation, but in Russell’s hands it becomes another nutball Neoplatonic allegory, riddled with Catholic epiphanies. There isn’t a lucid moment in it (and much of the dialogue is rendered unintelligible by Russell’s subversive direction), but it has dash, style, and good looks, as well as the funniest curtain line since Some Like It Hot.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 113: Thu Apr 24

Turang (Siagain, 1960): Barbican Cinema, 6.30pm

Barbican introduction (screening as part of the Cinema Restored series):
Directed by Bachtiar Siagian, this neorealist gem captures the turbulence and resilience of a community caught in the fight for independence. The story follows Rusli, a wounded freedom fighter who finds sanctuary in a remote, Dutch-occupied village. As he heals under the care of Tipi and her father, the village chief, bonds of loyalty, love, and courage emerge amidst the unrest. A powerful reflection on solidarity and survival, Turang offers a rare cinematic insight into the spirit of a nation striving for liberation. Don't miss this beautifully restored classic, a vital part of Indonesia's film heritage.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 112: Wed Apr 23

Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 1999): Prince Charles Cinema, 2.20pm

Here's one of the great films of recent times and an opportunity to see Stanley Kubrick's much-underrated final movie in an original 35mm print. The movie is also screened on May 10th.

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. And also Robert P Kolker and Nathan Abrams' illuminating 2019 book Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film.

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 2025 — Day 111: Tue Apr 22

Katzelmacher (Fassbinder, 1969): Prince Charles Cinema, 12.45pm

This screening is part of a Reiner Werner Fassbinder season at the Prince Charles. Details here.

Time Out review: Fear and loathing in the mean streets of suburban Munich, where all behaviour obeys the basest and most basic of drives, and fleeting allegiances form and re-form in almost mathematically abstract permutations until disrupted by the advent of an immigrant Greek worker (played by Fassbinder himself; the title is a Bavarian slang term for a gastarbeiter, implying tomcatting sexual proclivities) who becomes the target for xenophobic violence. Fassbinder's sub-Godardian gangster film début, Love is Colder than Death, was dismissed as derivative and dilettanté-ish; this second feature, based on his own anti-teater play, won immediate acclaim. It still seems remarkable, mainly for Fassbinder's distinctive, highly stylised dialogue and minimalist mise-en-scène that transfigures a cinema of poverty into bleakly triumphant rites of despair. Sheila Johnston

Here (and above) is the trailer.