The Beast Must Die (Chabrol, 1969): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm
Chicago Reader review:
Claude Chabrol’s 1969 adaptation of Nicholas Blake’s thriller The Beast Must Die.
Michel Duchaussoy and Jean Yanne star in a tale of a father obsessed
with discovering and murdering the hit-and-run killer of his son. One of
Chabrol’s most affecting, and chilling, studies of middle-class guilt
and the parameters of retribution. Not to be missed.
Don Druker
Here (and above) is the trailer.
The Missouri Breaks (Penn, 1976): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 12.10pm
This 35mm screening of a superb and rarely seen western is part of the Harry Dean Stanton season and is also being shown on September 16th (details here).
Time Out review:
A wonderfully quirky Western, brilliantly scripted by Thomas McGuane, which strips all the cute whimsy away from the Butch Cassidy
theme (outlaws on the run from a relentless lawman), replacing it with a
kind of pixillated terror. Playing the 'regulator' as a camp Buffalo
Bill with an Irish accent, Marlon Brando makes his entrance playing peekaboo
from behind his horse, and at one point even stalks his prey in a dress
and poke bonnet. But he is also a legalised killer, expert with a rifle
but preferring (as the flail of God) to use a harpoon shaped like a
crucifix. And as his gloating sadism shades into hints of bizarre
perversion when he dedicates a love song and a kiss to his horse, the
tone gradually darkens to a kind of horror. It's one of the few truly
major Westerns of the '70s, with a very clear vision of the historical
role played by fear and violence in the taming of the wilderness.
Tom Milne
Here (and above) is the trailer.
Wedding in Blood (Chabrol, 1973): BFI Southbank, NFT1 9pm
This is part of the Claude Chabrol season at BFI Southbank. Other screenings of the film (September 10th and 29th) during the season are detailed here.Chicago Reader review:
Yet another facet of Claude Chabrol’s view of the bourgeois life as a
facade behind which lurk extravagant, destructive, and often totally
ridiculous passions (1974). Like his idol Alfred Hitchcock, Chabrol
loves to work variations on the disintegration of an ordered world; but
unlike Hitchcock, who keeps his order and his chaos neatly separated,
Chabrol concentrates more on character, so that when the bottom drops
out, it does so precisely and inevitably. Stephane Audran and Michel
Piccoli star as adulterous lovers who never manage to realize that
there’s an easier way out of their predicament than murder. A smashing
work from a master craftsman.
Dan Druker
Here (and above) is an extract.
Ganja and Hess (Gunn, 1973): Rio Cinema, 6.30pm
Ashley Clark, the curatorial director at Criterion and the author of The World of Black Film: A Journey Through Cinematic Blackness in 100 Films, will be online from New York and will be discussing Gunn’s masterpiece with local filmmaker Dionne Edwards, who will host the screening in person.
Time Out review:
Bill Gunn's film maudit was the most
ambitious 'black movie' of its day and a milestone for indie film-making
in the US. Opening captions explain that academic Dr Hess Green (Duane Jones,
Night of the Living Dead) has been invulnerable and addicted to
blood since being stabbed (in a parody of Catholic dogma) with a dagger
from 'the ancient Black civilisation of Myrthia'. Affluent and (thanks
to discreet raids on a local blood-bank) comfortable, he avoids
murdering for sustenance until stuck with a new assistant (Gunn), who
turns out to be a suicidal alcoholic. Deliberately fragmented and
punctuated with disquieting cutaways to art works, the film charts his
growing sense that he is afflicted with a curse, across his marriage to
his assistant's widow Ganja (Marlene Clark) and his provision of a stud-victim
to feed her 'hunger'. Theological musings jostle with sexual-visceral
imagery in a mix which is still very potent.
Tony Rayns
Here (and above) is the trailer.
A one-of-a-kind serial killer lesbian love story set in the anonymous
motorways and service stations cafés of Northern England. A heady
cocktail of road movie, psychodrama, black comedy, and religious
allegory as we follow unpredictable schizophrenic Eunice (Amanda
Plummer) wandering through petrol stations in search of a mysterious
woman named Judith. Miriam (Saskia Reeves), her hard of hearing and
hopelessly in love companion, joins her on the road, becoming her lover,
caretaker, and murderous assistant. Compared to Thelma and Louise and Natural Born Killers,
Michael Winterbottom’s debut feature is a dreamlike, downbeat British
film – a jarringly uncomfortable ride through a British landscape rarely
travelled.
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2.50pm: Safe (1995) 35mm dir. Todd Haynes
A Todd Haynes masterpiece about middle-class suburban housewife Carol
(Julianne Moore), who contracts a mystery illness and gradually
descends into sickness and possibly madness. Described by Haynes as a “horror movie of the soul,” Carol’s
unexciting passionless existence is disrupted when she becomes
increasingly afflicted by the sounds, odours, and chemical substances of
her contemporary Los Angeles life. Haynes tracks her degeneration in
calmly distanced, perfectly composed scenes, recalling the work of
Stanley Kubrick. In Safe, everything is open to interpretation.
The ambiguous nature of Carol’s affliction and lack of concrete
solutions slowly increase our uncertainty and horror.
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6pm: Girlfight (2000) 35mm dir. Karyn Kusama + online Q&A with Karyn Kusama
Karyn Kusama’s debut feature follows a rebellious Latina teenager (a
star-making turn for Michelle Rodriguez) who channels her aggression
into boxing. It successfully combines urban social drama, romance,
coming-of-age, and sports action to create a rewarding, uplifting, and
emotionally satisfying whole. Inner-city locations and boxing sequences are shot with gritty
authenticity, based on Kusama’s own experiences. The performances are
first rate, particularly Rodriguez (who at times resembles a young
Brando) and Jaime Tirelli as her trainer and surrogate father, Hector.
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8.30pm: Kissed (1996) 35mm dir. Lynne Stopkewich + Guest Introduction
A hauntingly beautiful and breathlessly romantic film about necrophilia is a tricky proposition, but that’s exactly what writer-director Lynne Stopkewich delivers. The film concerns a young woman, Sandra (Molly Parker) who is fascinated by death. As a child she dances around the bodies of dead animals and as an adult studies biology, taking a job at a funeral home to be near the recently deceased. She studies embalming, eventually consummating her forbidden passion. Sharing her secret with Matt (Peter Outerbridge), they embark on a doomed romance. Kissed is filled with jaw-dropping surprises among them a squirm-inducing embalming session with her creepy mortician boss.
Casino Royale (Campbell, 2006): Olympic Studios, Barnes, SW3, 12midday-11.20pm
A one-off event this one even for the most committed James Bond fan.
Event introduction:
Following the recent celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of GoldenEye, and as Casino Royale
celebrates its landmark 20th anniversary, there has never been a more
fitting moment to celebrate the extraordinary filmmaker responsible for
introducing not one, but two James Bonds to the world.
007GB – The British James Bond Fan Club is absolutely delighted to welcome in person at OPERATION: ROYALE, acclaimed director Martin Campbell as the 2026 recipient of a Bond & Beyond Lifetime Achievement Award, recognising his outstanding contribution not only to the James Bond franchise, but to cinema as a whole.
Time Out review:
Bond: ‘A vodka martini, please.’ Casino barman: ‘Shaken or stirred?’
Bond: ‘Do I look like I give a damn?’ It’s a sharp and knowing line –
probably penned by Paul Haggis, the talented, final scriptwriter of this
highly enjoyable ‘back-to-basics re-boot’ of the 007 franchise – that
not only simultaneously acknowledges and confounds audience
expectations, but also neatly confirms that Daniel Craig’s intriguing and charismatic tyro agent is cut from quite different cloth to his Savile Row-tailored predecessors. Ian
Fleming’s titular 1953 Cold-War source novel presented a proto-Bond;
and it’s interesting how much licence Martin Campbell’s confidently directed
action thriller takes with it. Gone is the RN commander; as the jagged,
handheld, monochrome opening sequence of Craig drowning his first ‘kill’
in a blood-strewn public toilet shows, this Bond’s a tough,
no-nonsense, Mondeo-driving product of the ‘who dares wins’ SAS school
rather than the snobby naval wardroom, and he has some of the social
contempt as well as the pumping thighs, bulging pecs and inflated ego to
prove it. Cobra-baiting in Madagascar, car-chases in Nassau,
Montenegro, Miami – there’s enough globe-trotting to please the purists.
But, notwithstanding the fine CGI/special effects, best used in the
climactic set-piece involving a disintegating Venetian palazzo, Campbell
has cut down the gadgets and gizmos (not to mention ‘Q’) to inject some
needed ‘realismo’ back into the action sequences, steering a neat line
between romance and thrills. Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd – a government accountant assigned to keep an eye on the millions Bond stakes in the crucial poker game with Mads Mikkelsen’s
pleasingly sadistic terrorist-banker, Le Chiffre – proves a sexy
sparring equal to the increasingly smitten and vulnerable Bond, having
been donated an audacious amount of screen time. The politics are coy,
David Arnold’s score is maybe underwhelming and Phil Meheux’s
cinematography merely efficient, but otherwise ‘Casino Royale’ kicks new
life (literally as well as metaphorically) into the ageing hero.
Wally Hammond
Here (and above) is the trailer.
La Femme infidèle (Chabrol, 1969): BFI Southbank, NFT2 2.30pm & 8.30pm; NFT1 6.10pm
This digital restoration is the centrepiece of the Claude Chabrol season Other screenings of the film, which is on an extended run during the season, are detailed here.Chicago Reader review:
Claude Chabrol’s richly ironic 1969 melodrama, in which it is shown that
nothing revitalizes a dried-up marriage quite like murder. Not the
least of the ironies is that the point is made sincerely and
responsibly: when the film’s smug, tubby hero kills his wife’s lover, he
genuinely becomes a richer, worthier individual. The observation of
bourgeois life (as practiced in France, where it was perfected) is so
sharp and funny that the film often feels like satire, yet its
fundamental seriousness emerges in a magnificent last act, and an
unforgettable last shot.
Dave Kehr
Here (and above) is the trailer.
