Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 124: Mon May 4

The Fallen Idol (Reed, 1948): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 3.20pm

This 35mm presentation, also screening on May 11th, is part of the British Postwar Cinema (1945-1960) season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Time Out review:
"I hate you," goes the most explosive line in Carol Reed's marvelously plotted murder mystery, all the more powerful for being spoken by an adorable eight-year-old in short pants. We've already seen curious Phillipe (Henrey) romping around the airy chambers of France's ambassadorial mansion in London (his dad's the often-absent diplomat) and bonding with his pet garden snake, MacGregor. Phillipe's true hero, and the idol of the title, is affectionate butler Baines (Richardson), whose stern head-maid wife nonetheless has it in for the boy to an almost pathological degree. So empathic is the movie toward its young dreamer that when complications arise, you wince on his behalf. Baines has a secret lover, Julie (Morgan), whom he meets for a chaste rendezvous in a pub; after Phillipe surprises them, Baines introduces the youngster to his "niece" and to the concept of private confidences—many of which are to follow, this being a thriller. Reed, of course, is better known for his next movie, The Third Man, also penned by novelist Graham Greene. But The Fallen Idol is arguably the superior film; both deal with the seasoning of naive innocents, but unlike Joseph Cotten's charmingly soused pulp novelist, young Phillipe actually deserves his time in happyland, making his awakening a true stab to the heart. And Reed's signature noirish side streets work even better as the scary vistas of a boy outdoors long after bedtime.
Joshua Rothkopf

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 123: Sun May 3

The Godfather (Coppola, 1972): Prince Charles Cinema, 7.30pm

This is a 35mm screening which is also being shown at the Prince Charles Cinema on April 29th and June 18th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
The ultimate family film. Francis Ford Coppola gives full due to the themes of clannish insularity that made Mario Puzo's novel a best seller, though his heart seems to be with Al Pacino's lonely, willful isolation. This 1972 feature is sharp, entertaining, and convincing—discursive, but with a sense of structure and control that Coppola hasn't achieved since. With Marlon Brando, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, and Diane Keaton.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) are some excerpts from the opening scenes.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 122: Sat May 2

Black God, White Devil (Rocha, 1964): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.10pm

This film (being shown on May 16th, 29th and 30th) is part of the Brazilian Cinema season at BFI Southbank. You can find the details here.

Time Out review:
Glauber Rocha's first major film introduced most of the methods, themes and even characters that were developed five years later in his Antonio das Mortes. Set in the drought-plagued Brazilian Sertao in 1940, it explores the climate of superstition, physical and spiritual terrorism and fear that gripped the country: the central characters, Manuel and Rosa, move credulously from allegiance to allegiance until they finally learn that the land belongs not to god or the devil, but to the people themselves. The film's success here doubtless reflects the 'exoticism' of its style, somewhere between folk ballad and contemporary myth, since the references to Brazilian history and culture are pervasive and fairly opaque to the uninitiated. But Rocha's project is fundamentally political, and completely unambiguous: he faces up to the contradictions of his country in an effort to understand, to crush mystiques, and to improve.
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 121: Fri May 1

We Are Brothers (Burle, 1949): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 3.20pm

The screening of We Are Also Brothers on Friday 1 May will be introduced by Dr Felipe Botelho Correa, King’s College London. This is part of the Brazilian Cinema season at BFI Southbank. You can find the details here. 

BFI introduction:
Two Black brothers opt for very different career paths in Rio. One pursues education and respectability, while the other is drawn into petty crime. Burle blends melodrama with social critique and uses his characters’ stories as a platform to confront Brazil’s myth of racial harmony. 

Here (and above) is an extract. 

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 120: Thu Apr 30

Super 8½ (La Bruce, 1994): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.05pm

This is part of the Trash season at BFI Southbank and also screens on April 18th. You can find all the details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Despite its self-deprecating camp and convoluted plot, there is an appealing honesty to Bruce LaBruce’s Super 8 1/2. The director plays Bruce, an over-the-hill porn star trying to restart his flagging career, in part by acting in a documentary about him by an up-and-coming lesbian filmmaker. We see footage from his porno loops and scenes from the film in progress and hear comments on Bruce’s own “unfinished” epic, “Super 8 1/2.” The title’s two obvious references are to Fellini’s famous film about his problems making a film and to the low-budget medium of Super-8. But a third meaning is supplied by a woman who suggests that it’s Bruce’s own overoptimistic view of his own endowment. In the explicit sex scenes, LaBruce moves beyond narcissism to its opposite. As one “critic” suggests in a pretentious voice-over analysis of one of the porn films, Bruce’s performances acknowledge the camera, and his self-consciousness suggests a kind of emptiness that works against any sex appeal he might have. The way the film constantly turns back on itself, with its films-within-films and comments on them, leaves the viewer without any firm ground, suggesting the void behind self-absorption. Bruce’s agonized cries, heard after the final credits, perhaps acknowledge the terror of that void.
Fred Camper

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 119: Wed Apr 29

Body Double (De Palma, 1984): Castle Cinema, 9pm

This screening is part of Violet Hour’s City of Angels season, where we peel back the silver screen and gaze into the sordid underworld of Los Angeles. A city of duality, this season is an ode to the ultimate American nightmare masquerading as a dream. Violet Hour showcases the dark, transgressive and enigmatic side of the screen. Exploring the darker aspects of life through cinema, they screen and discuss works that "unsettle, undo us and challenge our perceptions."

If you want to read more about this movie there's Susan Dworkin's Double De Palma, an on-the-set account of the making of the film, plus a very thoughtful chapter in Misogyny in the Movies: the De Palma Question by Kenneth Mackinnon. Manuela Lazic has also written about the movie in a recent blog piece for The Film Stage. 

Chicago Reader review:
It pains me to say it, but I think Brian De Palma has gotten a bad rap on this one: the first hour of this thriller represents the most restrained, accomplished, and effective filmmaking he has ever done, and if the film does become more jokey and incontinent as it follows its derivative path, it never entirely loses the goodwill De Palma engenders with his deft opening sequences. Craig Wasson is an unemployed actor who is invited to house-sit a Hollywood Hills mansion; he becomes voyeuristically involved with his beautiful neighbor across the way, and witnesses her murder. Those who have seen Vertigo will have solved the mystery within the first 15 minutes, but De Palma's use of frame lines and focal lengths to define Wasson's point of view is so adept that the suspense takes hold anyway. De Palma's borrowings from Hitchcock can no longer be characterized as hommages or even as outright thievery; his concentration on Hitchcockian motifs is so complete and so fetishized that it now seems purely a matter of repetition compulsion. But Body Double is the first De Palma film to make me think that all of his practice is leading at least to the beginnings of perfection.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 118: Tue Apr 28

Timecode (Figgis, 2000): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.45pm

This film is part of the intriguing 'Cinema and Sound' programme curated by Mark Jenkin. Here are the full details of the season. 

Time Out review:
Depending on how you look at it, Mike Figgis' fascinating film is the story of an alcoholic movie producer on the verge of a nervous breakdown; or it's about a two-timing lesbian starlet who gets her first big break; or it's a critical day in the life of a fledgling film production company; or it's a portrait of spurned wives, lovers and actresses on the LA scene. Four movies in one, Timecode splits the screen on a horizontal and a vertical axis to showcase simultaneously four unbroken shots, each 93 minutes long. The initial dizzying sensory overload doesn't last. An ingenious sound mix and the familiar faces of Stellan Skarsgård, Selma Hayek, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Julian Sands, Holly Hunter and Saffron Burrows invite you to conspire order from the chaos. Characters from the top left screen bump into their neighbours from bottom right, while at two o'clock they're bitching about those assholes screwing them at eight. Like a riff on Robert Altman's Short Cuts and The Player, it adds up to a properly jaundiced satire of Hollywood on the rocks. The movie is a stunt, a conceptual in-joke; or it's a portent of cinema to come; or it's a brilliant but hollow technical exercise; or it's a dynamic if erratic ensemble improv. Make of it what you will, it's certainly something to see.
Tom Charity

Here (and above) is the trailer.