Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 128: Fri May 8

The Godfather Part II (Coppola, 1974): Rio Cinema, 7pm

This is a 35mm screening and is part of the Rio Forever season. More details here.

Director and Rio Patron Asif Kapadia (Senna, Amy, Diego Maradona, 2073) will introduce the film, discussing its importance to him both as a director and film lover.

Here is an excellent article by John Patterson in the Guardian on the movie.

Time Out review:

It’s worrying that 1974’s ‘The Godfather Part II’ is now best known for being the film-lover’s kneejerk answer to the question ‘which sequel is superior to the original’? It’s a pointless discussion, because both films are damn close to perfect: two opposing but complementary sides of the same coin. If ‘The Godfather’ was a knife in the dark, its sequel is the long, slow death rattle; if the first film lusted after its bloodthirsty antiheroes, the second drowns itself in guilt and recrimination. Two stories run in parallel in ‘Part II’. In the first, a young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) rises to power in New York, fuelled by vengeance and brute, old-world morality. In the second, set 50 years later, his son Michael (Al Pacino) struggles to reconcile his father’s ideals with an uncertain world, and finds himself beset on all sides by treachery and greed. This is quite simply one of the saddest movies ever made, a tale of loss, grief and absolute loneliness, an unflinching stare into the darkest moral abyss.
Tom Huddleston

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 127: Thu May 7

Honeysuckle Rose (Schatzberg, 1980): Prince Charles Cinema, 12.20pm

This 35mm screening is on sale at £1 for Prince Charles Cinema.

Time Out review:
Jerry Schatzberg might be a very urban cowboy (Panic in Needle Park, Puzzle of a Downfall Child, Sweet Revenge, etc), but there's no evidence here of slick, Altman-style condescension to country 'n' western culture. Instead there's an unforced equation of the upfront emotional currency of C&W lyrics with a simple triangular plotline pared down from Intermezzo (singer Willie Nelson and wife Dyan Cannon almost come apart over the lure of the road and one more infidelity). Nothing new under the sun - but the easy-going fringe benefits are well worth the ticket: Nelson's a natural, and the duets with Cannon are pure gold.
Paul Taylor

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 126: Wed May 6

Private Worlds (La Cava, 1935): Cinema Museum, 7.30pm

This 16mm screening is introduced by Gregory La Cava researcher Annabel Jessica Goldsmith.

Chicago Reader review:
With this 1935 film, Gregory La Cava turned his talent for ensemble improvisation (My Man Godfrey, Stage Door) to melodrama rather than comedy, and the result is a tearjerker of unusual sobriety and heft. The setting is a mental hospital, where the new director (Charles Boyer) is resented by the staff for his scientific detachment, while doctor Claudette Colbert tries to extricate herself from an overly warm working relationship with a married colleague (Joel McCrea). While the drama seeks to define precise emotional distances, La Cava’s camera adheres to his actors with a respectful mobility that still seems strikingly modern.
Dave Kehr

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 125: Tue May 5

Seconds (Frankenheimer, 1966): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.15pm

This is a Funeral Parade screening. Full details of the strand can be found here.

Time Out review:
Hemmed in by an arid marriage, paunchy middle-aged banker John Randolph grasps another chance at life when a secret organisation transforms him into hunky Rock Hudson and gives him a new start as an artist in Californian beach-front bohemia. Freedom, however, turns out to be a rather daunting prospect, and the struggle to fill the blank canvas comes to typify Hudson's unease with his new existence. Saul Bass' unsettling title sequence sets the scene for the concise articulation of fifty-something bourgeois despair, as visualised by James Wong Howe's distorting camerawork and the edgy discord of Jerry Goldsmith's excoriating score. After that, the film's uptight view of the hang-loose West Coast feels like a slightly forced argument, until Frankenheimer regroups and the jaws of the narrative shut tight on one of the most chilling endings in all American cinema. Little wonder it flopped at the time, only to be cherished by a later generation, notably film-makers Siegel and McGehee who drew extensively on its themes and visuals in their debut Suture. (This downbeat sci-fi thriller completed Frankenheimer's loose 'paranoid' trilogy - earlier instalments being The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May).
Trever Johnston

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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.