This 35mm screening is part of the Push Play (Skateboarding) season at BFI Southbank and will feature a Q&A with artist, skateboarder and model Blondey McCoy.
Chicago Reader review: Robert Hamer’s 1949 film is often cited as the definitive black,
eccentric British comedy, yet it’s several cuts better than practically
anything else in the genre. Dennis Price, as a poor, distant relative of
the rich D’Ascoynes, must murder eight members of the family (all
played by Alec Guinness) to obtain the title and fortune he believes are
his right. Hamer’s direction is bracingly cool and clipped, yet he’s
able to draw something from his performers (Price has never been deeper,
Guinness never more proficient, and Joan Greenwood never more softly,
purringly cruel) that transcends the facile comedy of murder; there’s
lyricism, passion, and protest in it too. With Valerie Hobson and Arthur
Lowe. Dave Kehr
This double-bill is part of the Bleak Week season at the Prince Charles Cinema. Details here.
Prince Charles Cinema introduction: Spain in the early 1970s was a country in transition, with increasing
economic prosperity and the expectations of a growing middle class
put in direct conflict with the dying dictatorship regime of Franco,
where state surveillance, media censorship and social control was
still the norm. Inspired by mystery-horror anthology series such as
Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone, this unique period
in history is depicted with terrifying clarity and dark humour in
these two infamous television films: La cabina and El televisor. In
Antonio Mercero’s La cabina, a group of officials install a
telephone box outside a block of flats. After a man enters to make a
phone call, he finds himself unable to leave, attracting the
attention of fascinated locals as he grows increasingly desperate to
escape. A sensation upon release and a cultural touchstone in Spain
to this day, La cabina also developed a huge cult following in the UK
after regular screenings on late-night TV.
In El
televisor, a man living a dreary suburban life has a simple dream: to
possess his own television. When he finally gets his wish, the dream
soon becomes a dangerous, all-consuming obsession. Originally a
special episode of the hugely popular series Tales to Keep You Awake,
written and directed by Narcisco Ibanez Serrandor (Who Can Kill A
Child), El televisor’s escalating dread and shocking conclusion
still retains its power to shock over 50 years later. Released on
Blu-ray for the first time in the UK by Transmission on 22nd July,
this double bill will be released into UK cinemas on June 19th to
coincide with Bleak Week, and will receive its premiere screening at
the Prince Charles Cinema with an intro from Reece Shearsmith (Inside
No 9, The League of Gentlemen).
This 35mm screening is part of the 'Queer 60s' season at the Barbican. Details here. Tonight's presentation will by Lillian Crawford. The screening on Sunday 28th June will be introduced by the season's curator Alex Davidson.
There is a longer article on the film on the Senses of Cinema website here.
Barbican Cinema introduction:An actor (Umberto Orsini) recovering from a break-up and a 19-year-old man (Dino Mele)
with an unspoken trauma connect in off-season Capri, where the
restaurants close early in the evening, the rain is a frequent visitor
and the streets are practically deserted. Homoerotic fireworks explode – but the arrival of a woman (Françoise Prévost) on the island threatens to change everything. Griffi’s camera is in love with the beautiful Mele, who gives a great performance depicting the wild, untamed passion of youth. Il Mare
received little attention upon its release, but its reception has grown
over the decades, with director Derek Jarman even declaring it his
favourite film.
This 35mm screening is part of the Queer 60s season at the Barbican. Details here.
Barbican Cinema introduction: A
boy disappears in a rural Brazilian community and all fingers point
to a stranger in town in Carlos Hugo Christensen’s extraordinary
magical realist drama. To the horror of the locals of a small rural
Brazilian community, handsome engineer Jose (Ênio
Gonçalves), an accused child
murderer, is back in town and on trial following the disappearance of
teenager Zeca (Luiz Fernando
Ianelli). As homophobic lies and
accusations fly, we gradually learn more about the man and the boy,
and the latter’s extraordinary connection to the strong winds that
blow through the town. A plot synopsis of The
Boy and the Wind cannot do justice to
what follows, with incredible set pieces and an appropriately
dramatic conclusion. The film remains an outstanding, magical realist
depiction of queerness that still fascinates today.
Rio Cinema introduction: To celebrate RIO FOREVER, Rio Film Feminists returns to 1979/80 to
shine a light on the Rio’s first feminist film season, organised in
association with Hackney and Islington Socialist Feminist Group,
Hackney Black Women’s Group and Women in Entertainment. We have
picked to re-screen American writer/director Claudia Weill’s
landmark feminist indie Girlfriends (1978), which was presented in a
late-night double-bill with Rapunzel: Let Down Your Hair (1978) by
The London Women’s Film Group.
New Yorker review: One of Girlfriends' many gentle astonishments was brought to mind by a viewing of Alex Ross Perry’s recently released feature “The Color Wheel”—namely,
that, for all the discussion of the directorial art of comic timing,
the art of knowing just how near or far to place the camera to an actor,
the art of comic distance, is equally important in calibrating the
humor of performance. Weill is psychically close to her protagonist, the
young photographer Susan Weinblatt (played by Melanie Mayron with an
audacious vulnerability), but doesn’t stay so visually close as to
short-circuit her humor—both the self-deprecating kind and the kind,
achieved with a hint of critical detachment, that Weill sees in her.
Even scenes of anguished, ambivalent commitment evoke Susan’s whimsical,
dialectical jousting, her blend of studied reticence and irrepressible
spontaneity. The movie catches a moment of new expectations for women,
when professional assertiveness and romantic fulfillment were more
openly in conflict, but it also catches the last days of an old New
York, a time when office buildings were not guarded fortresses but open
hives, and when—peculiarly similarly—the boundaries between professional
activity and personal involvement were less scrupulously guarded,
perhaps even undefined. One of the wonders of Weill’s movie is in its
intimate crystallization of the inchoate; it propels Susan Weinblatt and
a city of young women into the future, and it’s terribly sad that
Weill’s—and, for that matter, Mayron’s—own careers didn’t leap ahead in
the same way. Richard Brody
BFI introduction: Left with relatives while his parents ‘disappear’ during the
dictatorship, a football-obsessed boy finds community in a São Paulo
neighbourhood. Cao Hamburger filters political trauma through childhood
perception, blending humour and melancholy. It’s a tender coming-of-age
story shaped by absence, memory and solidarity, with the 1970 World Cup
as a national soundtrack.
This is a 35mm screening and part of the Flemish Film Classics strand. Details here.
Time Out review: Coming hot on the heels of Rosetta, another Belgian film which
takes a long hard look at the woes of a working class teenage girl.
Rosie (Aranka Coppens) also lives alone with her mum - or her 'sister', as
Irene (Sara de Roo) prefers to pretend in front of her boyfriends. At 13,
Rosie is a loner with a taste for the steamier sort of romantic fiction,
making her easy prey for a handsome delinquent like Jimi (Joost Wijnant),
who rocks her world with his petty thieving and joyriding. Out of a
warped and wounded kindness, Rosie picks up a crying baby and carries it
off, playing happy families with Jimi at the oil works in the old part
of town. Call me 'Mummy', she instructs the poor infant, louder and
louder. You want to give her a good shake, and then you want to hug her.
Somewhere in translation, Patrice Toye's movie has lost its original
subtitle, 'The Devil in My Head,' which gave a hint that this is not
just social realism, but something closer in spirit to the tortured
psychodramas of pulp crime novelist Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me; The Grifters).
Toye seems unsure just how much of a melodrama he wants to make - an
alert viewer will tease out the twists well before the end - but the
discrepancy between the flat, mundane treatment and the heightened
American narrative hovering in the background works quite effectively.
Pain in this film is too all-encompassing to be expressed in short,
sharp shocks; instead Rosie endures a dulled, mute suffering. If Ken
Loach had made Badlands it might have looked something like this: depressing, claustrophobic, not romantic, but innocent. Tom Charity
This screening will be introduces by Ketty Rodríguez, Founder & Artistic Director of the London Latino Film Festival.
Time Out review: This arresting early work by one of Cuba's foremost film-makers is a
black comedy about institutionalised bureaucracy at its most pedantic.
After a model factory worker is killed in an accident at work, he's
buried with his union card as a mark of eternal solidarity; trouble is,
when his wife applies for a pension, she's told she must present the
card before she can get any money - and there's a law forbidding
exhumation within the first two years of burial. It's a surprising piece
to have been made in the Cuba of the mid-'60s, but the laughs come as
much from a Buñuelian sense of absurdity as they do from any outright
criticism of Castro's regime. Trevor Johnston
Try
not to miss this ultra-rare screening of a key early Brian De Palma
film which the late, great critic Robin Wood described as “one of the
key American films of the 1970s”.
After ten years and a number of ambitious works (commercially successful and critically controversial) such as Carrie, Dressed to Kill and Blow Out, Sisters arguably remains Brian De Palma's most completely satisfying film. Like Dressed to Kill, it is an elaborate variation on Psycho; unlike
it, its attachment to the feminine viewpoint is much less compromised.
Like all De Palma's films, it invites a psychoanalytic reading (‘the
wound' as symbolic castration). Few Hollywood films (and perhaps no
other horror film) have explored so rigorously the oppression of women
under patriarchy and its appalling consequences for both sexes. Robin Wood
Chicago Reader review: After a hiatus of nearly a decade, the brilliant Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel (The Holy Girl, The Headless Woman)
returns with an entrancing 17th-century period drama. The title
character, a magistrate in rural Argentina, longs to return to his
native Spain so he can be reunited with his wife and children; waiting
on his deliverance, he idles away his time with native women and petty
political squabbles until he’s sent into the jungle on a suicide mission
to capture a violent bandit. As always with Martel, the story is opaque
but the atmosphere is rich and immersive, with meticulously designed
frames that balance one’s attention between the principal characters and
marginalized individuals (in this case women, slaves, and Native
Americans). The soundtrack is also characteristically vibrant, as Martel
conjures up a vivid world beyond the frame. Ben Sachs
BFI introduction: A migrant family and their dog cross the drought-stricken arid Sertão
region in a desperate bid to survive. Pereira dos Santos adapts
Graciliano Ramos’ acclaimed 1938 novel, one of Brazil’s key literary
works, employing stark landscapes and non-professional performances to
stunning effect. It is regarded as a foundational Cinema Novo work – a
devastating yet deeply humane portrait of poverty, endurance and
cyclical displacement.
This 35mm screening is part of the 'Projecting the Archive' strand at BFI Southbank. There will be an introduction by Jason Morell, actor and son of Joan Greenwood.
BFI introduction: When a young dancer has her career cut short by illness, she marries an
eminent sculptor whose cruelty drives her into the arms of another man.
This early role for Joan Greenwood sees her perfectly cast as the
fragile ballerina trapped in an abusive relationship. Sewell’s
atmospheric evocation of the fin de siècle decadence of bohemian Paris
is enhanced by the camerawork of silent horror veteran Günther Krampf.
Based on a French play, which the director adapted four times across his
career, this macabre tale exploring jealousy and spiritualism serves up
a shocking final twist.
Chicago Reader review: Howard Hawks's grand, brassy 1953 musical about two girls from Little
Rock—Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell—gone gold digging in Paris. The
male sex is represented by a bespectacled nerd (Tommy Noonan), a dirty
old man (Charles Coburn), and a 12-year-old voyeur (the unforgettable
George "Foghorn" Winslow), all of whom deserve what they get. The
opening shot—Russell and Monroe in sequins standing against a screaming
red drape—is enough to knock you out of your seat, and the audacity
barely lets up from there, as Russell romances the entire U.S. Olympic
team to the tune of "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?" and Hawks keeps
topping perversity with perversity. A landmark encounter in the battle
of the sexes. Dave Kehr
Chicago Reader review: The mood of Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1953 masterpiece is evoked by the English
translation most often given to its title, “Tales of the Pale and
Silvery Moon After the Rain.” Based on two 16th-century ghost stories,
the film is less a study of the supernatural than a sublime embodiment
of Mizoguchi’s eternal theme, the generosity of women and the
selfishness of men. Densely plotted but as emotionally subtle as its
name, Ugetsu is one of the great experiences of cinema. Dave Kehr
This film, which also screens on June 1st and 26th, is in the Big Screen Classics strand at BFI Southbank. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review: George Roy Hill’s 1969 film moves with steady, stupid grace from oozy
sentimentality to nihilistic violence; you have to admire the craft and
assurance of the thing even as its artificiality hits you in the face.
Paul Newman and Robert Redford are the romantic couple of the title;
Katharine Ross is the interloper. With Strother Martin, Jeff Corey,
Cloris Leachman, and Henry Jones. Dave Kehr
Time Out review: Rarely has a film’s content been as overshadowed by its context as
1961’s ‘The Misfits’, re-released this week as part of a Marilyn Monroe
retrospective at BFI Southbank. Director John Huston drank his
way through the production, falling asleep repeatedly during filming. As
her marriage to screenwriter Arthur Miller collapsed, leading lady
Monroe checked herself into rehab: her recovery was so rocky that all
subsequent close-ups had to be taken in soft focus. Two days after the
film wrapped, star Clark Gable died of a heart attack. Monroe would
follow 18 months later, having loathed the film and her performance in
it. Third lead Montgomery Clift survived for five more drink-fuelled
years: his final words, to a friend who asked him if he felt like
catching a late-night TV showing of ‘The Misfits’, were ‘absolutely
not! 'The tale of a down-on-her-luck divorcée (Monroe) who
shacks up with a grizzled-but-lovable Nevada cowboy (Gable) and his
rodeo-riding pal (Clift), ‘The Misfits’ is a problematic but provocative
piece of work. Miller’s dialogue is as theatrically fruity as it gets –
‘You’re three dear, sweet, dead men!’ – while his overall treatment of
Monroe’s character – dim, dizzy, innocent but oh-so-lively – feels
patronising. But there are powerful moments too: Eli Wallach’s
performance as Gable’s widowed buddy is pin-sharp, his transformation
from pitiable sidekick to soulless creep the most convincing thing in
the film. And the climax is simply magnificent, as matters come to a
head out at a remote salt flat and Monroe finally gives vent to her
frustrations with the entire male gender. Tom Huddleston
BFI introduction for UK premiere of digital restoration: When a US plane is shot down in occupied France, its pilot finds
shelter in a convent. He encounters a young novice who agrees to help
him escape the country, to save him and his secret cache of documents
from the Nazis. The night casts a veil of intimacy over the couple, who
develop a bond beyond physical love. Full of suspense and
expressionistic chiaroscuro, this transcendental drama remains striking
for its mix of thrill, torment and wonder. Restored in 4K by Universal Pictures and The Film Foundation at
NBCUniversal StudioPost laboratory, from the original 35mm negative
nitrate, a 35mm composite fine grain and the 35mm optical sound track
negative nitrate. Special thanks to Martin Scorsese and Steven
Spielberg.
Time Out review: Frank Borzage's admirers - and who'll not claim at least associate membership
of that circle? - will find this movie to be in a familiar case. The
writing suggests melodrama at its most mechanical and life cheapening,
yet the director infuses individual scenes with such warmth and
spontaneity as to ensure that the affections are celebrated even as
they're being betrayed. This time the love affair is explicitly
non-sexual, since the plot is to do with shot down flyer Ray Milland and
virginal nun Britton pretending to be husband and wife while on the run
in occupied France - a situation requiring fancy footwork from all
concerned to keep the censors at bay. It's salutary to watch the usually
tight-lipped Milland transformed into a model Borzage hero,
enthusiastic and brimming with tenderness.
The
Prince Charles are showing this classic movie from 70mm in a season
that continues throughout May and the beginning of June. You can find the full details here.
Chicago Reader review: David
Lean's 1962 spectacle about T.E. Lawrence's military career between
1916 and '18, written by Robert Bolt and produced by Sam Spiegel,
remains one of the most intelligent, handsome, and influential of all
war epics. Combining the scenic splendor of De Mille with virtues of the
English theater, Lean endeared himself to English professors and action
buffs alike. The film won seven Oscars, including best picture and
direction, yet the ideological crassness of De Mille and most war movies
isn't so much transcended as given a high gloss: the film's subject is
basically the White Man's Burden—despite ironic notations—with Alec
Guinness, Anthony Quinn, and Omar Sharif called upon to represent the
Arab soul, and Jose Ferrer embodying the savage Turks. The all-male cast
helps make this one of the most homoerotic of all screen epics, though
the characters' sexual experiences are at best only hinted at. Jonathan Rosenabum
'This is the LAST screening from the people behind THE MACHINE THAT KILLS BAD PEOPLE!* After eight
years, the series is coming to a close with the launch of a book
containing all the essays specially commissioned for each screening. As
always, two towering films. But at this final event, the film club will
reveal the secret rule that has governed their programming all along.'
*(The Machine That Kills Bad People is held bi-monthly in the ICA Cinema
and is programmed by Erika Balsom, Beatrice Gibson, María Palacios Cruz,
and Ben Rivers.)
Time Out review: Flora Tristan was a 19th century utopian socialist feminist, notorious
in her day, now largely forgotten. A young historian (Rebecca Pauly) leaves
husband and child to seek traces of Tristan in contemporary Lyons.
Disillusioned with the records-and-monuments methods of historians, she
roams the streets recording sounds Tristan may have heard. A film about
the impossibility of knowing the past; the camera looks and looks but
only yields implacably closed images. Sound's the thing, and in the
final, long-held shot of the woman ecstatically playing her violin, the
film's complex and compelling themes come together. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader review: As
close to a classic as anything New Hollywood produced, Alan Pakula's
1971 film tells of a small-town detective who comes to New York in
search of a friend's killer. The trail leads to a tough-minded hooker
who can't understand the cop's determination. Donald Sutherland works
small and subtly, balancing Jane Fonda's flashy virtuoso technique. Dave Kehr
Time Out review: Bobby is a struggling black actor. The few roles offered by white movie
writers and producers reek of artifice: punks, pimps, sassy soul
brothers and Eddie Murphy clones. What's a man to do? Townsend's satire
may be gentle, but more often than not it's spot on. As Bobby (Townsend)
escapes the sad reality of racial stereotyping through daydreams that
expose the absurdity of whites telling blacks how to be Black, we're
treated to visions of a Black Acting School (learn how to play a
yodelling butler Stepin Fetchit-style), a truly noir TV-noir (Sam Ace in Death of a Breakdancer),
and best of all, a Bros' version of a Bazza Norman-type movie round-up.
Despite the film's conspicuously minuscule budget and shaky narrative
structure, it is funny. If you value enthusiasm and imagination more
than glossy sophistication, you'll laugh. Geoff Andrew
Robert Altman made a number of groundbreaking films in the 1970s (MASH,
The Long Goodbye, Nashville and McCabe and Mrs Miller). This one has
slipped through the net but is no less innovative and is a must-see for
anyone interested in the director's work.
Elliott Gould (slumbering through the decade in his inimitable style)
and George Segal are excellent in the lead roles. It's funny and
poignant and undoubtedly the best film I've seen on the subject of
gambling as the pair take the well-worn road from casino to racetrack to
card hall, ending up in Reno.
Chicago Reader review: Robert Altman's masterful 1974 study of the psychology of the
compulsive gambler. Elliott Gould, loose, jocular, and playful, and
George Segal, neurotic, driven, and desperate, are really two halves of
the same personality as they move from bet to bet, game to game, until
they arrive for the big showdown in Reno. As in all Altman films,
winning is losing; and the more Altman reveals, in his oblique,
seemingly casual yet brilliantly controlled way, the more we realize
that to love characters the way Altman loves his, you have to see them
turned completely inside out. Don Druker
This is part of the excellent Rio Forever season at the Rio Cinema.
Time Out review: Thirty-year-old New Yorker Desiree Akhavan writes, directs and stars in
this indie feature. She plays Shirin, an Iranian-American hipster trying
to recover from a break-up with her girlfriend. There are shades of
‘Girls’ here (Akhavan and Lena Dunham are buddies in real life, and the
rising star appears in the new season). But ‘Appropriate Behaviour’
isn’t all knowing LOLs; there’s a satisfying depth and heart here that’s
more in line with ‘Annie Hall’. In flashbacks we watch Shirin’s
relationship with her ex sputter into life and run a wobbly course to
its ignominious end (‘You’re ruining my birthday! You’re ruining my
twenties!’). Shirin’s awkwardness may be fashionable, but it’s not
affected – she’s genuinely scared to confess her bisexuality to her
conservative Iranian parents, and doesn’t remotely fit in at her family
circle’s Persian parties, any more than she suits the supposedly
confidence-boosting bustier she’s coaxed into wearing at a fancy
lingerie store. For all the brazen charms of this warm and funny
debut, though, its quieter moments signal a profundity that’s really
worth getting excited about. Sophie Harris
This is part of the Jewish Culture Month season at Curzon cinemas. Details here.
Time Out review: Josh and Benny Safdie, the indie filmmaking brothers whose New York
City movies shudder with attitude, tell fast and grubby stories that
harken back to the 1970s, when Sidney Lumet ruled sets. Their vigor is
an instant rush: why creep a camera down a hallway when you can fling it
behind equally unhinged characters? In ‘Heaven Knows What’, the Safdies turned uptown heroin junkies into wild, unkempt angels. Then, in ‘Good
Time’, they gave Robert Pattinson all the confusion he could handle as a
Pacino-like Queens hustler out of his depth. There’s no nostalgia to
these films, no cuteness, only the mania of urban survival, improvised
on the fly with a side of trash talk. ‘Uncut Gems’, the Safdies’ electrifying and abrasive latest
drama, flirts with becoming a headache. (For some, it will feel like
more than flirting.) But the film gets closer than the brothers ever
have to developing a genuine affection for their various schemers, and
that makes all the difference. Tenaciously, it follows a week in the
2012 life of a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants Diamond District dealer,
Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler, channeling his obnoxiousness into something
magically right, even moving). You may be overwhelmed by the Safdies’s
spiky sound design – filled with yelling, sports betting, the jewelry
shop’s constantly buzzing security door and an overcaffeinated,
Tangerine Dream–like synth score – but Howard thrives in this chaos.
It’s his normal. Beyond his bling salesmanship, Howard dreams of a big score, which
arrives by messenger from Ethiopia: a gleaming chunk of opal-encrusted
rock which he hopes to auction off for a fortune. (It’s ‘real old-school
Middle-earth shit’, he tells the hypnotized NBA star Kevin Garnett,
playing himself with self-deprecating charm.) The various whereabouts of
this stone will become a plot spine for ‘Uncut Gems’, but
that’s just an excuse to ping-pong Howard between a kaleidoscopic
cross-section of sharply etched neurotics: pawnshop kibitzers, menacing
debt collectors (led by a spookily intense Eric Bogosian), a
semi-estranged wife (Idina Menzel, seeping fury from every pore) and a
brassy mistress, also his shop’s counter clerk, who may be falling in
love with him (Julia Fox, making a stellar debut). Gamblers at heart, the Safdies have a palpable love of gamesmanship,
of arguments pushed to the brink, verbal beatdowns and courtside
chatter. (Gifted cinematographer Darius Khondji, a master of
reflections, gives ‘Uncut Gems’a sheen that
visually counterbalances.) Something else is going on here, too: a
lovably pronounced American Jewishness in terms of tone and touchstones,
from Billy Joel’s showbizzy ‘The Stranger’, heard during a car ride
back to Long Island, to a family’s Passover seder rife with marital
tensions and kids running around searching for theafikomen.
This was the environment in which the Safdies grew up; their film isn’t
merely an outstanding portrait of a charming fate-tempter who goes a
bit too far, but a kind of autobiography (as was their 2009
breakthrough, ‘Daddy Longlegs’). It’s made with so much
love, care and enthusiasm – plus no small amount of risk – you thrill to
think that they’re just getting started. Joshua Rothkopf
This 35mm screening, introduced by Professor Melanie Williams, is part of the excellent British Post-War Cinema season at BFI. Details here. The film is also being shown on May 14th.
BFI introduction: This neorealist-influenced story of three women, who are released from
jail and into the cold indifference of London, is vividly captured by
Geoffrey Unsworth’s stunning cinematography. This film alone attests to
Lee’s underrated place in cinema, showcasing his sensitive, occasionally
sensual approach, continental flair and remarkably assured pacing.
This is the UK premiere of the 4K restoration of the film.
BFI introduction: The corpses of the opponents of a tyrannical regime fill the streets
of Milan – left unburied by the repressive state as a warning to the
population. Amid indifference, a modern-day Antigone finds help from an
enigmatic stranger to bury her brother. Filmed in the revolutionary
climate of post-’68 Milan by a filmmaker who made a profound mark on the
history of cinema, this tale of resistance against totalitarianism
revisits Greek dramatist Sophocles, resulting in a chillingly relevant
and provocative work.
Time Out review: Made directly after Galileo, whose strengths director Liliana Cavani enlarges and
develops, this also postulates a primacy of human and emotional response
over the nihilism of The Night Porter (made four years later). In this modern day reworking of Antigone,
Cavani's striking visual sense illuminates her subject sufficiently to
overcome doubts about some of the '60s conceits. Where she manages to
evoke her Fascist state as exceptionally normal, the film works
exceptionally well. Verna Glaesner
Time Out review: An adaptation of Emlyn Williams' potboiling play Someone Waiting, about a young man wrongly convicted of murder (Alec McCowen), and the last-minute hunt for the real killer by his dipsomaniac father (Michael Redgrave). This was the first time Losey had filmed under his own name since the trauma of the blacklist, and it shows in the overstatement: the persistent play with clocks, for instance, indicating not just that Redgrave is racing against a 24-hour deadline to uncover the truth, but that his alcoholism was a way of making time stand still by shutting out his responsibilities (to his son, to society). By shifting the emphasis from thriller to anti-capital punishment pleading, Losey also strains the structure almost to breaking point. An undeniably powerful film, all the same, superbly shot by Freddie Francis and conceived with a raw-edged brilliance, right from the brutal opening murder, that accommodates even the symbolism of a Goya bull, with the real killer (Leo McKern) finally cornered. Tom Milne
This is also screened at Close-Up Cinema on May 31st. Details here.
BFI introduction: Whilst renovating his dilapidated home, Aston (Robert Shaw) invites an irritable and devious vagrant (Donald Pleasance) to stay. But, when his ill-tempered brother Mick (Alan Bates) returns, an ominous yet darkly comic power struggle between the trio commences. A play that changed the face of modern theatre and made Harold Pinter's name, The Caretaker remains one of Pinter’s most famous works. Featuring original production cast members Pleasance and Bates and sensitively directed by Clive Donner and shot by Nicolas Roeg, this study of shared illusion, tragic dispossession and the fraternal bond of unspoken love, combines mesmerising performances and the magic of Pinter's dialogue into a spellbinding film.
This film is introduced by the ‘Pink Floyd on Film’ series curator Sophia Satchell-Baeza.
Chicago Reader review: 'Though Michelangelo Antonioni's only American film was very poorly received when it was released in 1969, time has been much kinder to it than to, say, La Notte, which was made a decade earlier. Antonioni's nonrealistic approach to American counterculture myths and his loose and slow approach to narrative may still put some people off—along with the uneven dialogue (credited to Fred Gardner, Sam Shepard, Tonino Guerra, Clare Peploe, and the director)—but his beautiful handling of 'Scope compositions and moods has many lingering aftereffects, and the grand and beautiful apocalyptic finale is downright spectacular. With Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin, and Rod Taylor.' Jonathan Rosenbaum
This is part of the Rio Forever season at the cinema and is a 35mm screening.
Chicago Reader review: The Wachowskis, who scripted Assassins, wrote and directed this
adroit and sexy 1996 crime thriller about the hot romance between a
gangster’s moll (Jennifer Tilly) and the ex-con who’s her neighbor (Gina
Gershon). Eventually they concoct an elaborate scam to rip off the
gangster (Joe Pantoliano)—a money launderer for the mob who temporarily
has a couple million dollars. (The laundering here involves literally
washing blood off bills.) This gets very suspenseful (as well as fairly
gruesome) in spots, and if it never adds up to anything profound, it’s
still a welcome change to have a lesbian couple as the chief
identification figures. Jonathan Rosenbaum
BFI introduction: Ozualdo
Candeias was a truck driver who loved movies and decided to make his
own. He did so in a very idiosyncratic style that didn’t care to conform
to anyone’s idea of cinema. His first feature, The Margin, often
suggests a São Paulo rereading of Mario Peixoto’s great avant-garde
classic Limite (1931). It’s a sort of love story set among a group of
desperate and abandoned characters. The
movie takes place around the banks of the Tietê river, which stands as a
promise and a limit for everyone’s lives. While Peixoto was in dialogue
with the European modern art he knew well, Candeias draws heavily from
the poverty around him. The movie has barely any dialogue, and the
filmmaker finds a lot of beauty in the middle of the harshness. Brazil’s
underdevelopment would remain Candeias’s great source of inspiration,
and from The Margin onwards, no other filmmaker did more to give
it representation.
Time Out review: There’s a superb and important early
scene in Ang Lee’s absorbing spy
romance, set on a stylised (studio-shot) Hong Kong tram in 1939, as a
young troupe of Chinese actors board, flushed with the rousing success
of that night’s patriotic play. (The Japanese have already occupied
their homeland, British-run Hong Kong is soon to fall.) The exhilarated
lead character Wong Chia Chi (a remarkable, film-dominating debut
performance by newcomer Wei Tang) thrusts her head out the window to
taste the rain, as if to make physical and personal the night’s small
triumph. You see in that moment how the innocent young actress may be
persuaded, in patriotic duty, to adopt an alias, spy on and seduce, in
order to kill Tony Leung’s collaborationist chief of police. You
could call Lee’s Chinese-language version of Eileen Chang’s novella a
revisionist wartime thriller. Its sub-Brechtian moments are muted, but
it is more than happy to pay self-conscious attention to the period
setting, design and clothes to highlight, in echo of David Hare’s
‘Plenty’, the seductive role of dress as disguise and mask. Like Hare
(with his OAS volunteer, Kate Nelligan), Lee is interested in applying
an emotional and psychological realism to his heroine’s incredible
bravery. It seems, in wartime, some are able to assume grave
responsibilties, but – as Lee’s film quietly and provocatively suggests –
the actions of those that do make mockery of conventional, sex-based,
notions of what constitutes courage, honour, love or even patriotism
itself. In this sense, the real battlefield, the genuine theatre of
truth, in ‘Lust, Caution’ is the bed – the sex – in the arranged flat
three years later in Shanghai, something of a last tango wherein Leung’s
previously almost obsequiously mannered ‘traitor’ shows his true
colours, and Miss Wong, under her alias Mrs Mak, is transformed by the
ever-present knowledge that discovery is death. It’s not a companionable
film – Lee’s directorial discipline, objectivity and lack of
expressionist touch in the use of either Rodrigo Prieto’s camerawork or
Alexandre Desplat’s score can push the viewer close to outsider-dom or
voyeurism – but its dark romanticism lingers in the mind. Wally Hammond
The 'Reece Shearsmith presents' choices at BFI Southbank have been excellent and this is no exception. The actor will introduce the film.
Chicago Reader review: Roger Donaldson’s film of the classic tale of discipline and revolt in
the British navy (1984) is far better than its predecessors, despite the
dim wattage of Anthony Hopkins (as Captain Bligh) and Mel Gibson (as
Mister Christian). Robert Bolt’s screenplay was originally prepared for
David Lean, and it contains a lot of Bolt-ish/Lean-ish disquisition on
the question of civilization versus savagery. But Donaldson brings it
alive by applying the agonizing rhythm of tension and release,
suppression and explosion, that governed his superb New Zealand film Smash Palace.
Hardly another filmmaker in the 80s could leap from smooth classicism
to dynamic modernism with such agility and expressiveness. The appalling
electronic score, by Chariots of Fire‘s Vangelis, is the film’s only grating flaw. Dave Kehr
This is a £1 for members screening at the Prince Charles Cinema.
Time Out review: America's homeboy comedy of the year is about basketball only in the sense that writer-director Ron Shelton'sBull Durhamwas
about baseball. It's a truly terrific piece of entertainment propelled
by the magic and dynamism of its stars. Sidney Deane (Wesley Snipes)
meets Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson) on a public court where the game is
played as a mix of macho combat, stand-up comedy and con-artistry. The
jokes and banter are wonderful. But this is also a most unlikely buddy
movie, where the black/white pair team up as hustlers floating around
the rougher areas of Los Angeles, turn on each other, and finally bury
the hatchet to get Billy out of hock to some surprisingly obliging
hoods. Sadly, in doing so, the duo alienate Billy's long-suffering
Hispanic girlfriend (Rosie Perez), who dreams of the straight life and
spends her time memorising trivia in hopes of a TV game show break.
Snipes and Harrelson bounce off the screen like Michael Jordan, while
Shelton and cinematographerRussell Boydperfectly capture the agile thrills of the game itself. A double-whammy slam-dunker of a movie. Steve Grant
BFI introduction: This first-class thriller follows a salesman, brilliantly played by
Todd, whose quest to recover his stolen car leads him into the hands of a
brutal London gang, led by a cast-against-type Sellers. Guillermin’s
brassy precision, revealing his fascination with characters driven by
obsession and psychopathy, is heightened by John Barry’s score and Ralph
Sheldon’s fast, riotous editing.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with League of Gentleman actor Steve Pemberton.
Chicago Reader review: A British black comedy/horror film (1973) about a demented
Shakespearean actor (Vincent Price) having his revenge in the most
macabre ways on eight critics: Ian Hendry, Robert Morley, Robert Coote,
Harry Andrews, Jack Hawkins, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, and Coral
Browne. Gory, imaginative, wildly melodramatic—good fun. With Diana Rigg
as Price's helpful daughter. Dan Druker
Here (and above) are the gorgeous opening credits.
Rio Cinema introduction: The second screening of Category H horror film club’s Rio Forever/Rio Never Ever season is Ladies Night, a double bill of THE STEPFORD WIVES X TEETH. Dedicated to women in horror taking charge of the narrative and fighting back against the corrupt men who surround them, we present two controversial feminist horror films. Join us this 15th May, 23:30, for a night of misandry to remember and a Ladies Night like no other.Kicking off the evening is the rarely screened THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975). Inspiration to Jordan Peele, THE STEPFORD WIVES is a searing satire of the American aspirational middle class. After being persuaded to move to a suburban town by her husband, Joanna begins to notice that there is something uncanny about the other women of Stepford. They don’t talk about anything other than their households, their facial expressions are moulded in a sinister smile, there’s just something not right about them. Aided by her one ally, fellow Stepford wife outcast Bobbie, she attempts to get to the bottom of the conspiracy at the heart of the suburbs and falls into a labyrinth of power she might never be able to escape from.Afterwards, settle in for the 00s sleepover classic, a film whispered about in school corridors as the “one where she’s got teeth in her vagina”, the infamous TEETH (2007). President of her school's abstinence club, Dawn’s world is turned upside down when the proud virgin discovers her body can bite! She harnesses her newfound jaws in a refreshing horror comedy in which women bite back, literally. Category H is excited to give TEETH the big screen treatment it deserves, showing this modern classic at the Rio Cinema for the first time.
This is a 'Members Picks' screening (at just £8 for BFI patrons).
Time Out review: In the future, geneticists will design test-tube babies to be
disease-free. Physical perfection will become the norm, and those flawed
specimens born the old-fashioned way will form the new underclass - the
'in-valids'. Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke), an in-valid with a heart defect,
is only taken seriously in the powerful Gattaca space programme when he
assumes the identity of Jerome (Jude Law), a 'valid' who supplies blood,
tissue and urine samples in return for shelter (he himself having been
crippled in a car accident). The subterfuge is successful - until a
murder draws unwelcome scrutiny from the authorities. Self-consciously
at a remove from the trashy B-movie sensibilities which have dominated
science-fantasy movies in recent times, this harks back to the
vacuum-packed, classically alienated dystopia of Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. Chilly, elegant, and a little bloodless. Tom Charity
At the Prince Charles Cinema there is a requests board and I have been requesting this movie (which I haven’t seen on the big screen since it was shown at Manchester Cornerhouse in the late 1980s) regularly for many months. Don’t miss the chance to see a great early example of Brian De Palma’s work and luxuriate in Bernard Herrmann’s haunting score.
Chicago Reader review: One of Brian De Palma’s better thrillers (1976)—perhaps because its true auteur is neither De Palma nor screenwriter Paul Schrader but composer Bernard Herrmann, who contributed one of his last scores to the film. It was Herrmann who insisted on cutting the third act of Schrader’s already excessive script (a rather tortured hommage to Hitchcock’s Vertigo), about a businessman (Cliff Robertson) who feels responsible for the death of his wife (Genevieve Bujold) in a kidnapping plot, and who meets and marries her double 15 years later. There’s nothing in the aesthetic and neo-Freudian delirium within hailing distance of Vertigo, and the plot’s often more complicated than complex, but Herrmann’s overpowering score and De Palma’s endlessly circling camera movements do manage to cast a spell.Jonathan Rosenbaum
