Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 232: Tue Aug 22

Out Of Sight (Soderbergh, 1998): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm

This 35mm screening is part of the Cinematic Jukebox season at the Prince Charles Cinema. You can find full details of the season here.

Time Out review:
A splendid reminder of just how assured, intelligent and involving Soderbergh's movies can be. Working from Scott Frank's exemplary adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel, the director deftly mixes suspense, comedy and romance, and generates considerable erotic tension. Bank robber George Clooney and ambitious federal marshal Jennifer Lopez - whose first brush with each other comes when he holds her hostage in a car trunk while escaping from prison - circle one another irresistibly but warily, both knowing she'll put him away if she can. This evidently ill-starred relationship is the pulsating heart of the film, but there are more than enough subplots involving a host of vividly drawn characters to prevent the unlikely pair's courtship from becoming cute, obvious or overbearingly smart. All the performances are first rate, while the pace, wit and low key concern with questions of honour, professionalism and loyalty are wholly in keeping with Leonard's perky, deceptively effortless style. Most impressive, though, is how Soderbergh keeps every ingredient simmering enticingly while sacrificing none of his storytelling subtlety. The finest Leonard adaptation to date, and a rare example of a Hollywood film that's adult, ambitious and terrific entertainment.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 231: Mon Aug 21

Guelwaar (Sembene, 1993): Close-Up Cinema, 7.30pm

This 35mm screening is part of the Ousmane Sembene season at Close-Up Cinema. You can find all the details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Alternately wise and very funny in its treatment of tribalism and in its grasp of neocolonial corruption, Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene's seventh feature (1992, 115 min.) has so much to say about contemporary Africa that you emerge from it with a sense of understanding an entire society from top to bottom. A political activist and Catholic figurehead known as Guelwaar (which means “the noble one”) dies from a beating after delivering an impassioned speech against foreign aid and its attendant corruptions, and when friends and family gather for his funeral they're shocked to discover that his body is missing. It emerges that he was accidentally buried in a Muslim cemetery, and the tribal, political, and cultural disputes that arise from this constitute the remainder of this beautifully told story. (A lot of significance is attached to when the characters speak French and when they speak Wolof, the principal language of Senegal.) In French and Wolof with subtitles.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 230: Sun Aug 20

Camp de Thairoye (Sembene & Sow, 1987): Close-Up Cinema, 7pm

This screening is part of the Ousmane Sembene season at Close-Up Cinema. You can find all the details of the season here.

Chicago Reader review:
It's possible that a good half of the greatest African movies ever made are the work of novelist-turned filmmaker Ousmane Sembene (Black Girl, Xala, Ceddo). Camp Thiaroye, his first feature in 11 years, co-written and co-directed by Thierno Faty Sow, recounts an incident that actually occurred in 1944. Returning from four years of European combat in the French army, Senegalese troops are sent to a transit camp, where they have to contend with substandard food and other indignities. An intellectual sergeant major (Ibrahima Sane) gets thrown out of a local bordello when he goes there for a drink; mistaken for an American soldier, he is arrested and beaten by American MPs, which provokes his men into kidnapping an American GI. Then when the Senegalese troops discover that they're about to be cheated out of half of their back pay, they launch a revolt. Leisurely paced, with some talky stretches devoted to debates among the soldiers, this lengthy feature is neither a simple tract nor a loose, undisciplined fresco, but a novelistic (and often witty) treatment of a complex subject in which all the characters get their due. Sane is especially fine, but the other characters--including a mute and traumatized Senegalese survivor of Buchenwald and a sympathetic if naive white officer--are delineated with comparable depth. The film as a whole offers a multifaceted commentary on colonialism and a nuanced history lesson, and the subtle direction is masterful throughout.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the opening.

Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 229: Sat Aug 19

Point Break (Bigelow, 1991): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm

Finally, this cult movie is being screened in 35mm. How hard could that be? Read Sophie Brown's article to see why it has been so difficult before now.

Time Out review:
Undercover FBI agent Keanu Reeves strips for action and gets into some serious male bonding when he infiltrates the Californian surfing fraternity in search of a gang of bank robbers who call themselves the Ex-Presidents. During the course of the investigation, however, Reeves is seduced by 'spiritual' surfer Patrick Swayze's cosmic talk about one-ness with the sea, and becomes addicted to the adrenalin rush of life on the edge. Despite this theme of Faustian redemption, the distinction between good and evil is far from black and white, Swayze's reckless craving for danger filling an elemental void in Reeves' hollow soul. There are times when the dialogue is a shade comic, others when the brilliantly staged action set pieces become almost abstract. Plausibility, though, has never been director Bigelow's strong suit, and there's precious little to be found here. Even so, there's enough high-octane, heart-racing excitement for a dozen movies.
Nigel Floyd

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 228: Fri Aug 18

Black Girl (Sembene, 1966): Close-Up Cinema, 7.30pm

This 35mm screening (which also screens on August 23rd) is part of the Ousmane Sembene season at Close-Up Cinema. You can find all the details here. The film is being shown on a double-bill with the short Borom Sarret.

Chicago Reader review: 
The 1966 first feature of Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene. A girl from a lower-class district in Dakar goes to work as a maid for a French couple and accompanies them on a vacation to France, where her newfound sense of freedom gradually turns into feelings of isolation and invisibility. Sembene keeps his metaphors under control, and the result is a message movie with an unusual depth of characterization. 
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Borom Sarret (dir: Ousmane Sembene)
1964 | 19 min | B/W | 35mm

“Sembene’s first film, Borom Sarret (“cart owner”) chronicles a day in the life of a beleaguered horse-cart driver in Dakar. In spite of the material limitations of the production - if not because of the challenges they posed – Borom Sarret manages to create a powerful social statement as it combines simple means with complex observations on bureaucracy, religion, and the anonymity of the modern city. Compressing his narrative into a mere nineteen minutes, Sembene conveys the condition of Senegal’s urban poor as he situates their experience in the larger social panorama of post-independence Africa.” – Harvard Film Archive

Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 227: Thu Aug 17

Chinatown (Polanski, 1974): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.30pm

This film (which is also being shown on August 6th, 27th and 28th) is part of the Big Screen Classics season at BFI Southbank. You can find full details of the season here.

Time Out review:
'The hard-boiled private eye coolly strolls a few steps ahead of the audience. The slapstick detective gets everything wrong and then pratfalls first over the finish line anyway. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is neither - instead he's a hard-boiled private eye who gets everything wrong. Jake snaps tabloid-ready photos of an adulterous love nest that's no such thing. He spies a distressed young woman through a window and mistakes her for a hostage. He finds bifocals in a pond and calls them Exhibit A of marital murder, only the glasses don't belong to the victim and the wife hasn't killed anyone. Yet when he confronts ostensible black widow Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) with the spectacular evidence, the cigarette between his teeth lends his voice an authoritative Bogie hiss. Throughout, Gittes sexes up mediocre snooping with blithe arrogance and sarcastic machismo. It's the actor's default mode, sure, but in 1974 it hadn't yet calcified into Schtickolson, and in 1974 a director (Roman Polanski), a screenwriter (Robert Towne) and a producer (Robert Evans) could decide to beat a genre senseless and dump it in the wilds of Greek tragedy. 'You see, Mr Gits,' depravity incarnate Noah Cross (John Huston) famously explains, 'most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything.' As is Chinatown. The last gunshot here is the sound of the gate slamming on the Paramount lot of Evans' halcyon reign, and as the camera rears back to catch Jake's expression, the dolly lists and shivers - an almost imperceptible sob of grief and recognition, but not a tear is shed.'
Jessica Winter

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 226: Wed Aug 16

Xala (Sembene, 1974): Close-Up Cinema, 7.30pm

This 35mm screening (which is also being shown on August 25th) is part of the Ousmane Sembene season at Close-Up Cinema. You can find all the details here.

Time Out review:
An invigorating film which tells, in leisurely fashion, of a middle-aged Dakar businessman whose social standing begins to slip when he takes a third wife and finds that he's lost his touch in bed ('xala' means impotence). There's no sniggering humour, though; instead, Sembene aims satirical thrusts at the Senegalese bourgeoisie, who impotently ape the worst aspects of their former colonial masters, particularly their corruption and extravagance (our hero, for instance, uses imported mineral water to wash his car). The jokes and details are delightful, yet there's real anger behind them, and it bursts spectacularly into view in the concluding frames.
Geoff Brown

Here (and above) is the trailer.