Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 303: Tue Nov 5

Mikey and Nicky (May, 1976): Garden Cinema, 3.30pm

The screening on Saturday the 2nd of November will include a welcome by season programmer Alice Pember and an introduction to the movie by film journalist Christina Newland.

Chicago Reader review:
Elaine May’s 1976 film, dumped by Paramount on first release, is one of the most innovative, engaging, and insightful films of that turbulent era of American moviemaking. John Cassavetes is a small-time hood on the run from a powerful syndicate boss; he calls on boyhood friend Peter Falk to help him in his hour of need, but he can’t be sure of his loyalties—Falk works for the same outfit. May allows the improvisational rhythms of her actors to establish the surface realism of the film, but beneath the surface lies a tight, poetically stylized screenplay that leads the two characters, as they pass a fearful, frenzied night together, back over the range of their lives, from infancy to adulthood. At every step May tests the two men’s affection against the conflicting demands of making a living and finding a measure of security in a brutal, unstable world; what emerges is a profound, unsentimental portrait of male friendship—and of its ultimate impossibility.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 302: Mon Nov 4

Following (Nolan, 1998): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.30pm

This film also screns on November 22nd at the Prince Charles. Details here.

Time Out review:
Shot at weekends on a shoestring, Christopher Nolan's 16mm b/w feature is more Shallow Grave than Shane Meadows. Blocked writer Bill (Jeremy Theobald) takes to following strangers through the streets of Soho, ostensibly to kickstart his fiction. One day, one of his 'targets' bites back: Cobb (Alex Haw) introduces himself as a burglar skilled at 'reading' people's identities from rifling through their possessions, and he insists that Bill should tag along to experience the thrill for himself. A complicated time structure (the film flashes backwards and forwards) signals that more is going on here than meets the eye. Sure enough, the denouement involves two double crosses, a femme fatale, a murder and a crowning triple cross. The generic pay off is a little disappointing after the edgy, character based scenes of exposition, but the film is acted and directed confidently enough to work well as a wry mystery thriller.
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 301: Sun Nov 3

Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968): Cinema Museum, 7.30pm

This is screening from an original 35mm print.

Chicago Reader review:
George Romero's gory, style-setting 1968 horror film, made for pennies in Pittsburgh. Its premise—the unburied dead arise and eat the living—is a powerful combination of the fantastic and the dumbly literal. Over its short, furious course, the picture violates so many strong taboos—cannibalism, incest, necrophilia—that it leaves audiences giddy and hysterical. Romero's sequel, Dawn of the Dead, displays a much-matured technique and greater thematic complexity, but Night retains its raw power.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 300: Sat Nov 2

The Circus Tent (Aravindan, 1978): Barbican Cinema, 3.45pm

This film is part of the 'Rewriting the Rules: Pioneering Indian Cinema after 1970' season at Barbican Cinema. Full details here.

Barbican introduction:
A visually stunning and poetic exploration of the inner lives of a travelling circus trope in which old age, loneliness and regret becomes magnified through Govindan Aravindan’s salient observation. In the dialogue-free opening to The Circus Tent, we follow a truck as it meanders its way through the costal landscape of Kerala, coming to a stop at a local town where the children come running excitedly to greet the travelling circus. The arrival of the circus feels ritualistic, celebratory, but more importantly an outlet for the local people, an enthralling spectacle they can escape into for a short time. The Circus Tent is hailed by many as Keralan filmmaker Govindan Aravindan’s masterpiece. The restoration of The Circus Tent in 2021 by the Film Heritage Foundation, India, brings to life the extraordinary pictorial sensibilities of a film that has thankfully been reclaimed and is now being rediscovered by a new generation of filmgoers.

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 299: Fri Nov 1

Gilda (Vidor, 1946): Prince Charles Cinema, 12.30pm

The great film noir, which also screens at the Prince Charles on November 3rd, is perhaps most famous for Rita Hayworth's central performance and John Patterson has written about her smouldering display here in the Guardian.

Time Out review:
When Gilda was released in 1946, striking redhead Rita Hayworth had already starred in a series of musicals that made her America’s pin-up, yet here she delivers the same va-voom (in sundry shoulderpad-tastic Jean Louis outfits) while always hinting at the anxieties beneath the ‘love goddess’ surface. It was the defining role of her career, yet it says a lot about the rest of the movie that Hayworth’s fire never overwhelms it. There’s an element of ‘Casablanca’ exoticism in the Buenos Aires setting, where moody leading man Glenn Ford plays a drifter taken under the wing of casino owner George Macready – a silky-voiced character actor who always brought an element of sexual ambiguity to the screen. When the latter marries Hayworth on the spur of the moment, Ford bristles because he has previous with this femme fatale and is still feeling it. ‘Hate,’ as the pearly dialogue has it, ‘can be a very exciting emotion.’ From then on, homoerotic undertones, atmospheric black-and-white camerawork, Ford’s fight not to let bitterness get the better of decency and Hayworth’s ever-present heat combine in one of the great films noirs, softened just a little by the moralising censorship strictures of the time. See it.
Trevor Johnston

This is Hayworth's extraordinary first appearance in the movie.

 

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 298: Thu Oct 31

A Night to Dismember (Wishman, 1983): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.20pm

This screening will be followed by Dr. Elena Gorfinkel and Stephen Thrower in conversation with BFI National Archive curator William Fowler.

BFI introduction:
It was a surprising moment when, in the 1980s, long-term sexploitation legend Doris Wishman made a slasher. It’s just a shame things didn’t go better – the processing lab destroyed the film reels. As a solution, Wishman incorporated found footage to paper over the cracks. Released from hospital, back into the family home, psychotic Vicki struggles to resists the powers of a sinister ancestral curse. The public greeted the film with disinterest. But the public can be wrong! Jagged, cut-up, even post-modern in shape, the incredibly weird, psychotronic A Night to Dismember distils the core tropes of the slasher genre while appearing hallucinogenically avant-garde. Dr. Gorfinkel, Thrower and Fowler discuss Wishman, her film and the links between horror and experimental film as part of the event.

Chicago Reader review:
Exploitation filmmaker Doris Wishman made her first foray into slasher flicks with this bloody, incoherent, but sometimes quite funny 1983 feature starring soft-core porn star Samantha Fox. Reportedly assembled from outtakes after a disgruntled employee destroyed the negative, it flirts with self-parody, incorporating every horror cliche from the not-very-scary graveyard scenes of Ed Wood to the unconvincing bloodbaths of Herschell Gordon Lewis. The story, recounted in flashback by a deep-voiced private detective, involves a great many knives, axes, and ice picks but never manages to be very frightening; the awful dubbing and numerous mismatched shots are hilarious, but whether that’s intentional is a matter of debate.
Jack Heilberg

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 297: Wed Oct 30

Save the Green Planet (Jang Joon-hwan, 2003): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 5.50pm

This film, which also screens on November 30th, features a Q&A with the director, is part of the Golden Age of Korean Films season at BFI Southbank.

Chicago Reader review:
This genre-busting 2003 debut feature by writer-director Jang Jun-hwan flopped in his native South Korea, where it was misleadingly pitched as a date movie. Convinced the earth is under siege by extraterrestrials, a troubled young man and his acrobat girlfriend abduct a corporate executive they believe to be an undercover alien and set about torturing him at a mountain hideaway; meanwhile an over-the-hill cop and an eager rookie are closing in. Punk graphics and a snaking camera add zest to the story, which is alternately heartbreaking, suspenseful, and darkly funny. 
Andrea Gronvall

Here (and above) is the trailer.