Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 202: Tue Jul 21

Margaret (Lonergan, 2011): Prince Charles Cinema, 7.50pm

This film was famously buried by Fox studios and there was just one late press screening in Britain. I wrote about the tortured pre-release history here. But Kenneth Lonergan's follow up to the excellent You Can Count On Me gained a second life thanks to critics enthused by one of the best American film in recent years championing this superb movie.

Here the film screens in the full extended version.

This is Peter Bradshaw's review from the Guardian to the time of release:
Since 2000, when he made his mark with a tremendous debut, You Can Count on Me, Kenneth Lonergan has been absent from the radar as a director. The reason turns out to have been years of acrimonious studio argument over the length of his followup project, a post-9/11 New York drama in a world of trauma, rage, blame, overtalking and interrupting. Originally conceived as a three-hour movie, it has been allowed into cinemas in a two-and-a-half hour cut. Perhaps Lonergan is content with this and perhaps not, but the resulting movie is stunning: provocative and brilliant, a sprawling neurotic nightmare of urban catastrophe, with something of John Cassavetes and Tom Wolfe, and rocket-fuelled by a superbly thin-skinned performance by Anna Paquin. Its sheer energy and dramatic vehemence, alongside that raw lead performance, puts it way ahead of more tastefully formed dramas. Paquin plays Lisa, the daughter of divorced parents: a mouthy, smart-but-not-that-smart teen at private school, sexy but emotionally naive, self-absorbed and scarily hyper-articulate in the language of entitlement and grievance. She may have inherited drama-queen tendencies from her mother Joan (J Smith-Cameron), a Broadway stage star, with whom she lives in New York. One day, after an encounter of pouting defiance with her exasperated mathematics teacher (Matt Damon), Lisa takes it into her head to buy a cowboy hat. She sees a bus driver wearing one she likes: he is played by Mark Ruffalo. With a teenager's heedless disregard for the consequences, she flirtatiously runs alongside his bus, waving wildly, asking where he got it. He smiles back at her, taking his eyes off the road – with terrible results. Lisa is overwhelmed with ambiguous emotion at having contributed to a disaster and then participated in a coverup, and, compulsively driven to do something, draws everyone into a whirlpool of painful and destructive confrontations. But is that emotion guilt or righteousness? Or a sociopathic convulsion, a need to create a huge redemptive drama with herself at the centre, to lash out against her mother and the entire adult world; or to enact vengeance against a man who, without trying, has placed her in a position of weakness – at the very point at which she considers she should be attaining her adult, queen-bee status? Paquin creates that rarest of things: a profoundly unsympathetic character who is mysteriously, mesmerically, operatically compelling to watch.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 201: Mon Jul 20

Kes (Loach, 1969): Prince Charles Cinema, 12.15pm

This is a 35mm screening.

Chicago Reader review:
In 1969 Ken Loach took time out from an acclaimed television career to direct this quietly powerful narrative feature, a classic of British social realism. Based on a novel by Barry Hines but shot like a documentary, with a hardscrabble industrial setting and a cast that blends professionals and amateurs, the film tracks an introverted Yorkshire lad (David Bradley) who's abandoned by his father and bullied by his coal-miner brother (Freddie Fletcher). A failure in the classroom and on the soccer pitch alike, the boy finds his wings when he adopts and trains a fledgling kestrel. Working in the style of cinema verite, cinematographer Chris Menges captures the petty tyrannies of the provincial working class and the inchoate joys of a youngster stumbling toward the greater world.
Andrea Gronvall

For a change (from the footy) here's the pub scene.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 200: Sun Jul 19

3 Bad Men (Ford, 1926): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 3.10pm

This is the UK premiere of the 4K restoration of one of John Ford's early magnificent westerns. The screening features an introduction by Bryony Dixon, Rosie Taylor and Makeda Doyal and a live accompaniment by Ashley Valentine.

MOMA review:
John Ford’s first epic western, the 1925 The Iron Horse, helped to establish Fox as a major studio and Ford as Fox’s most prominent director. Granted an even larger budget and creative independence for his 1926 return to the genre, 3 Bad Men, Ford created perhaps the most fully achieved of his silent features, a historical pageant that never overwhelms its foreground characters. Establishing the theme that would define his work for decades to come – the outsider who sacrifices himself for the good of the group that has excluded him – Ford creates three lovably eccentric outlaws (played by the early western star Tom Santschi; Allan Dwan regular Frank Campeau; and the first of Ford’s elfin Irishman, J. Farrell MacDonald) who resolve to protect a young homesteader (Olive Borden) and her fiancé (George O’Brien) from the violence surrounding the opening of the Dakota Territory. Villainy, in the form of the territory’s gambling boss, is provided by the colorful Lou Tellegen, a Dutch-born actor who made his film debut opposite his romantic partner Sarah Bernhardt in the 1912 Film d’Art production La Dame aux camelias. Ford costumes Tellegen against convention in dazzling white with a 20-gallon hat, likely a sly reference to the extravagant costumes of Fox’s reigning cowboy star, Tom Mix. A cascading series of action climaxes – including a land rush filmed with (or so the studio claimed) 2,400 extras, 1,800 horses and 450 covered wagons – leads to the first of Ford’s haunting diminuendo endings, which finds the young couple settled into an Edenic ranch with their first child, still protected by the spirits of the baby’s three godfathers. Paradoxically, 3 Bad Men would prove to be Ford’s last western until he returned to the genre, with far greater self-consciousness, with Stagecoach in 1939.
Dave Kehr 

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 199: Sat Jul 18

Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953): Prince Charles Cinema, 2.30pm

This is a 35mm screening.

Chicago Reader review:
The film that introduced Yasujiro Ozu, one of Japan's greatest filmmakers, to American audiences (1953). The camera remains stationary throughout this delicate study of conflicting generations in a modern Japanese family, save for one heartbreaking moment when Ozu tracks around a corner to discover the grandparents, alone and forgotten. A masterpiece, minimalist cinema at its finest and most complex.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 198: Fri Jul 17

Blood (Milligan, 1973): Rio Cinema, 11.30pm

This film is part of the Category H’s late night Rio Forever season.

Category H introduction:
Where strange inhabitants commit unspeakable deeds or where past inhabitants can’t quite seem to put their bad habits to rest, even from beyond the grave. Blood (1973), directed by cult filmmaker Andy Milligan, is a sprawling tale of multiple monsters who move into a new home in order to conduct scientific experiments. Led by one Dr Orlofski and his beautiful sunlight hating wife Regina, the monsters attempt to find ways to make their strange family work in a hostile new town. Blood plays as a strange melodrama featuring constant injections, arguments and the odd carnivorous plant, creating an entertaining completely one of a kind film. Screening at the Rio for the first time X years, leave any ideas of typical plot development at the door and prepare to be injected with Milligan’s infectious cinematic world. After a short break, we will return to the cinema for Bones (2001). Bones is a truly original 00s horror film that was sorely overlooked upon release, and which we cannot wait to bring to the Rio Cinema for the first time. Starring Snoop Dogg and featuring Pam Grier, Bones is a ghost story tinged with giallo. Twenty years after his unlawful death, former man of the people Jimmy Bones’s ghost remains haunting his now run down neighborhood. After a group of teenagers acquire his old house and plan to turn it into a nightclub, they accidentally summon his vengeful spirit who is looking to take revenge on those who have ruined his beloved former home. Featuring incredible practical effects and excellent performances, Bones is a film ripe for reappraisal. 

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 197: Thu Jul 16

Sleepers (Levinson, 1996): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.35pm

This is a 35mm screening.

Prince Charles Cinema introduction:
Four teenage friends from Hell's Kitchen end up being sent to reform school after almost killing a man. There they are brutalized by the guards. John (Ron Eldard) and Tommy (Billy Crudup) grow up to be hit men who recognize their abuser years later and kill him. Their trial is prosecuted by another member of their gang, who is now the assistant DA.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 196: Wed Jul 15

The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012): Screen on the Green 7.45pm

This 35mm screening is part of the Nolan in 35mm season at the Screen on the Green from June 20th to July 15th. Full details here.

Time Out review:
It’s been a summer of great expectations. First there was ‘The Avengers’, which ticked all the right geeky boxes and made a truckload of dosh. Then ‘Prometheus’, which disappointed most but still managed to ring a few tills. Now here comes the biggie. Can Christopher Nolan see out his Bat trilogy in style? Can he make that so-far-elusive five-star superhero movie, the one which gets the blend between action, emotion, plot and character just right? Can he at least live up to the eyepopping standard he set with 2008’s ‘The Dark Knight’? The answers are yes, no, and mostly. As its running time suggests, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is a sprawling, epic feast of a movie, stuffed to the gills with side characters, subplots and diversions. So if the balance skews in favour of grandstanding action rather than emotional resonance, of statuesque icons rather than real people, we can let it slide. There’s nothing here to match the intensity of Heath Ledger’s Joker, and the movie feels weaker for it. But that was a one-off, and the show must go on. We’re reintroduced to Bruce Wayne, aka Batman (Christian Bale), living as a recluse, holed up in the east wing of Wayne Manor while Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) presides over a relatively crime-free Gotham City. But when marauding, mask-wearing psycho Bane (Tom Hardy) muscles in with the intention of kickstarting a popular revolution, Bruce must don the cape and cowl once again. This is just the central thread in an increasingly tangled story: there’s also Anne Hathaway as a slinky, burgling Catwoman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a square-jawed beat cop and lots of confusing financial shenanigans with the shareholders of Wayne Enterprises. As in the previous films, Nolan and his co-writer, his brother Jonathan, draw on real-world issues to spice up the fantasy, and with dubious results: with its rampaging Occupy Gotham anarchists, philanthropic billionaires and decent cops who ignore due process, this is so staunchly right-wing it’ll thrill all those Fox News anchors outraged by ‘The Muppets’. But when the Bat flies, such considerations go out the window. Sublimating CGI in favour of real crowd scenes and massive cityscapes, Nolan creates a grand, dirty, engrossing world, and his action sequences just hum. The way the various strands tie up is a mite predictable, but it’s satisfying nonetheless. And as our heroes swoop off into the sunset, we realise we’ve been witness to something truly impressive: a seven-year cinematic adventure which combined the epic and the personal in dizzying, inventive, sometimes perplexing, often enthralling, always imaginative ways.
Tom Huddleston

Here (and above) is the trailer.