Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 330: Sat Nov 28

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Wilder, 1970): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 5.45pm

This 35mm presentation is in the Billy Wilder season at BFI Southbank. The movie also screens on November 15th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Billy Wilder, in an exceedingly mellow mood, portrays Holmes as a tortured man, trapped by his own legend and paying the price for his reputation of invincibility (1970). Robert Stephens is superb as a very real Holmes, and Colin Blakely is equally good as Watson. The cutting of more than 40 minutes from the original film hurts its initial continuity, but once the action begins, this takes on a magical quality that makes it one of Wilder's best efforts. Affectionately conceived, chock-full of marvelous subtleties, this meticulously constructed adventure-romance shouldn't be missed.
Don Druker

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 329: Fri Nov 27

Kiss Me, Stupid (Wilder, 1964): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.35pm

"It is difficult to evoke the tone and atmosphere of Kiss Me, Stupid in a phrase, but we would describe it as Pillow Talk ravaged by Psycho. It is a horror comedy ..." Adrian Turner & Neil Sinyard, Journey Down Sunset Boulevard, The Films of Billy Wilder

Chicago Reader review:
This vulgar Billy Wilder comedy scandalized the Legion of Decency and large segments of the American public when it came out in 1964. At the time Wilder pointed out that the film is about human dignity and the sanctity of marriage, but its undisguised contempt for the American hinterlands and the success ethic makes the sexual element seem dirtier than it actually is. Dean Martin plays a carousing parody of himself, stranded in the godforsaken town of Climax, Nevada, while a desperate songwriter (Ray Walston), hoping to sell him a tune, tries to get him shacked up with a prostitute (Kim Novak) impersonating the songwriter’s wife (Felicia Farr). This restoration includes the original ending, which originally played only in Europe, followed by the forced ending that played in the U.S. Both Martin and Novak are at their near best, and the undertone of small-town desperation in Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s script is effectively captured by Walston and his sidekick, Cliff Osmond.
Jonathan Rosenbaum 

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 328: Thu Nov 26

The Trip (Corman, 1967): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.40pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the Roger Corman season at BFI Southbank. You can find the full details here.

Time Out review:
An earlier Corman picture, The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, had uncannily predicted the rise and fall of a Timothy Leary-type hero, whose desire to see beyond human limits was punished by humiliation as a sideshow freak and by self-inflicted blindness. The Trip, a definitive commercial for acid scripted by Jack Nicholson, is in contrast boundlessly optimistic. Its advertising director hero, Fonda, takes a trip with no retribution at all: no death, no disillusionment, but much bikinied girls on sea shores, swirling psychedelia, and mumbling of 'Wow!' by the obligatory Dennis Hopper in the land of a thousand visual clichés. Despite the hedonistic panache, its lack of a comeuppance means it now lacks credence (as it once lacked a censor's certificate). Rich pickings for the pathologist of '60s life-styles, but it took Coppola to work out that the best movies were about bad trips, not good ones.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 327: Wed Nov 25

Fighting Elegy (Suzuki, 1966): Japan House, 6pm

This film is part of the season, ‘The maverick visionary: the cinematic world of Suzuki Seijun’ at Japan House and also screens on November 22.

Film Comment review: One of Suzuki’s most overlooked titles is the 1966 black-and-white, satirical antiwar film Fighting Elegy. Phalluses and crucifixes rule the imagination of Kiroku, a hyperactive student whose military training is continually interrupted by the sexual fantasies he has about the Catholic daughter of the family he’s staying with. While the country ramps up for war with China, militarism and adolescent sexuality are conflated by Suzuki and screenwriter Kaneto Shindo until the only way to practice abstinence is through violence, both personal and political. It’s one of Suzuki’s best films, and deserves a place among the finest works of cinema satire, alongside the best of Yasuzo Masumura, Robert Altman, or Billy Wilder. Marc Walkow

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 326: Tue Nov 24

Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (Kawashima, 1957): ICA Cinema, 8.30pm

This film is part of the Shōhei Imamura season at the ICA. Full details here.

ICA introduction: 
The ensemble comedy masterpiece directed by Imamura’s mentor Yūzō Kawashima, co-written with Imamura and Keichi Tanaka, takes place mostly within a high-class brothel in the Shinegawa district right before the end of the Shogunate. A critique of the Meiji Restoration period, the film exposes the encroachment of Westernisation in Japan, against rapidly dissipating ideas of honour and tradition, as sacred promises are ruptured, and deception offers the only turns to fortune. Imamura wrote about the making of the film: “When, during the writing of the screenplay, I asked him what the film was really about, Kawashima answered: ‘About the positive flight,’ but I didn't have the faintest idea what he meant by this. In any case, this film is essential for an understanding of Kawashima.” Although much has been written about Imamura’s working relationship with Ozu, experts including Audie Bock, Max Tessler and James Quandt have emphasised that Yūzō Kawashima’s off-beat, individualistic comedies have had a huge influence on Imamura’s style.

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 325: Mon Nov 23

Les Diaboliques (Clouzot, 1955): Nickel Cinema, 8.55pm

 This is a 16mm presentation.

Chicago Reader review:
The notoriously ruthless 1955 thriller by France's most neurotic director, Henri-Georges Clouzot (The Wages of Fear). Clouzot cast his own wife, Vera, as an invalid who plots the murder of her husband, assisted by his mistress (Simone Signoret). Set in the rotting confines of a private school for boys, the film is cruel, sour, and—unfortunately—very effective.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 324: Sun Nov 22

The Raven (Corman, 1963): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the Roger Corman season at BFI Southbank. You can find the full details here.

Time Out review:
The humour of Richard Matheson's well-calculated send-up of Poe's gruesome The Black Cat – as the middle story in Roger Corman 's Tales of Terror – went down so well that Matheson here used Poe's poem The Raven as the basis for a full-length parody. With Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre superbly funny as rival magicians - and Jack Nicholson turning up to give the most atrocious performance of his career as the juvenile lead - The Raven is one of the few fantasy comedies that hangs together as happily as a fairytale, and it climaxes with a suitably splendid duel of marvels between Karloff and Price.
David Pirie

Here (and above) is the trailer.