Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 111: Wed Apr 20

Beat Girl (Greville, 1960): Regent Street Cinema, 6.30pm

This presentation will feature a Q&A with star Gillian Hills after the screening, in conversation with BFI curator of fiction cinema, Vic Pratt.

Here is the background to the DVD release of the film in April:
BFI Flipside is back! Edmond T Gréville’s legendary British 1950s juvenile delinquency flick Beat Girl is one of three British cult classics that will be released on the BFI’s Flipside label on 25 April 2016.

Remastered from original negatives, Beat Girl is presented in Dual Format Edition (DVD and Blu-ray discs) and packed with extras including three versions of the film, a new interview with the film’s star, Gillian Hills, three short films and an illustrated booklet.
Restless teen Jennifer (Gillian Hills, Blow-up, A Clockwork Orange) escapes her square papa (David Farrar, Black Narcissus) at Soho’s Off Beat coffee bar, rocking it with beatnik Dave (a super-cool Adam Faith), sensual singer Dodo (Shirley Anne Field) and icy-eyed Plaid Shirt (Oliver Reed). But a secret from Jennifer’s French stepmother’s past leads to the Les Girls strip joint, run by the sleazy Kenny King (Christopher Lee).

Beat Girl, which features John Barry’s fantastic first soundtrack, is released alongside two more new Flipside titles – Expresso Bongo (Val Guest, 1959) and Symptoms (José Ramón Larraz, 1974).
Here (and above) are the opening credits.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 110: Tue Apr 19

Possession (Zulawski, 1981): ICA Cinema, 8.40pm

This screening, introduced by musician Stephen Thrower, is part of the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival at the cinema. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Andrzej Zulawski's 1981 masterpiece opens with the messy separation of a middle-class couple (Sam Neill, Isabelle Adjani), then goes on to imagine various catastrophic breakdowns—of interpersonal relationships, social order, and ultimately narrative logic itself. The film can be hilarious one moment and terrifying the next, and Zulawski's roving camera only heightens the sense of unpredictability. Few movies convey so viscerally what it's like to go mad: when this takes an unexpected turn into supernatural horror, the development feels inevitable, as though the characters had been bracing themselves for it all along. Adjani won the best actress prize at Cannes for her dual performance (as an unfaithful wife and her angelic doppelganger), but the whole cast is astonishing, exorcising painful feelings with an intensity that rivals that of the filmmaking. Performed in English and shot in Berlin by an international crew, this also conveys a sense of displacement that's always been crucial to Zulawski's work.
Ben Sachs 

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 109: Mon Apr 18

King Lear (Brook, 1970): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6pm

This screening is part of the Shakespeare on Film season at BFI Southbank.

Time Out review:
Made on location in what looks like a perilously cold Denmark, Brook's only Shakespeare on celluloid found a similarly frosty reception, especially as it came out just after Kozintsev's grandly conceived Russian version. Peter Brook's filming is graceless - looming close-ups, perverse camera moves - but there are some remarkable performances (developed from his much praised stage production a few years before with Paul Scofield). The conception is consistent with the influential views of Jan Kott, who saw Lear as a precursor to Beckett's plays about human blindness and nothingness (a line reinforced by the casting of Jack MacGowran as the Fool, and Patrick Magee as the Duke of Cornwall). A bleak interpretation, in every sense.
David Thompson

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 108: Sun Apr 17

Boy Meets Girl (Carax, 1984): Cine Lumiere, 2pm

This is screening as part of the Sunday French Classics: Revisiting Cannes Film Festival’s Hits season at Cine Lumiere.

Chicago Reader review:
The revelation of the 1984 Cannes festival was this first feature by 23-year-old Leos Carax. In its fervor, film sense, cutting humor, and strong autobiographical slant, it suggests the first films of the French New Wave (there's something in the arrogant iconoclasm that specifically recalls Godard), yet this isn't a derivative film. Carax demonstrates a very personal, subtly disorienting sense of space in his captivating black-and-white images, and the sound track has been constructed with an equally dense expressivity. The hero is a surly young outsider who has just been abandoned by his girlfriend; as he moves through a nocturnal Paris, his adolescent disillusionment is amplified into a cosmic cry of pain. The subject invites charges of narcissism and immaturity, but Carax's formal control and distance keep the confessional element in a state of constant critical tension.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 107: Sat Apr 16

Knife in the Water (Polanski, 1962): Close-Up Cinema, 8pm

This screening, part of the Masters of Polish Cinema season at Close-Up Cinema, is being shown from a 35mm print.
 
Chicago Reader review:
'Written with Jerzy Skolimowski (Moonlighting), this 1962 production was Roman Polanski's first feature film, and there are those who would still call it his best. A middle-aged married couple, intrigued by a young blond hitchhiker, invite him to spend a weekend on their yacht. The sexual tensions build slowly and subtly, and when they explode into violence, it seems to be the desired result.'  
JR Jones

Here is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 106: Fri Apr 15

Repulsion (Polanski, 1965): Close-Up Cinema, 8pm

This screening, part of the Masters of Polish Cinema season at Close-Up Cinema, is being shown from a 35mm print.

Chicago Reader review:
'Roman Polanski's first film in English (1965) is still his scariest and most disturbing—not only for its evocations of sexual panic, but also because his masterful employment of sound puts the audience's imagination to work in numerous ways. Catherine Deneuve gives an impressive performance as a quiet and quietly mad beautician living with her older sister in London and terrified of men. When the sister and her boyfriend take off on a holiday, her fears and her isolation in the apartment are allowed to fester along with the uncooked food, with increasingly violent and macabre results. As narrative this works only part of the time, and as case study it may occasionally seem too pat, but as subjective nightmare it's a stunning piece of filmmaking.'
Jonathan Rosenabum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 105: Thu Apr 14

The Shout (Skolimowski, 1978): Barbican Cinema, 6.30pm

Awarded the Special Jury Prize in Cannes, The Shout is the second feature produced in Great Britain by Jerzy Skolimowski, after Deep End. The Barbican are screening this movie as part of ther Kinoteka Film Festival at the cinema. Full details here. Tonight's presentation will feature an introduction and Q&A with producer Jeremy Thomas.

Chicago Reader review:
An airy allegory (from a Robert Graves story) held to earth by some scathing sexual passion. Alan Bates is the traveling madman who holds a composer (John Hurt) and his wife (Susannah York) in thrall. Sexuality triumphs over civilization through a series of small betrayals, each registered with appalling, pinpoint accuracy by Jerzy Skolimowski's camera. Though Skolimowski had backed off from his formal ambitions somewhat (he once seemed a real rival to Godard), this 1978 feature is shrewd, imaginative moviemaking, a trance thriller that beats Peter Weir on his own turf.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 104: Wed Apr 13

NOTFILM (Lipman, 2015): ICA Cinema, 6.20pm

Here is the ICA introduction to this documentary (on at the cinema from April 13th to 17th) screening which will show with the Samuel Becket film, FILM:
In this extensive kino-essay, Ross Lipman examines the literary, cinematic and personal history surrounding the production of FILM, Samuel Beckett’s only screenplay for cinema. A fascinating exploration of Beckett’s ideas and their genesis, NOTFILM is packed with references and clips from the work of Buñuel, Vertov, Vigo, Eisenstein (and many more) which will enthral even the most casual cinephile.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 103: Tue Apr 12

New York, New York (Scorsese, 1977): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.10pm

This rarely seen film, screening from a 35mm print, is part of the Martin Scorsese season at the Prince Charles. Details here.

Time Out review:
Scorsese's tribute/parody/critique of the MGM musical is a razor-sharp dissection of the conventions of both meeting-cute romances and rags-to-riches biopics, as it charts the traumatic love affair between irresponsible but charming jazz saxophonist De Niro (dubbed by George Auld) and mainstream singer Minnelli. On an emotional level, the film is a powerhouse, offering some of the most convincingly painful rows ever shot; as a depiction of changes in American music and the entertainment world, it is accurate and evocative; and as a commentary on showbiz films, it's a stunner, sounding echoes of Minnelli's own mother's movies and career (particularly A Star Is Born) as well as other classics like On the Town and the first A Star Is Born (in which Stander also appeared). Superbly scored, beautifully designed by Boris Leven to highlight the genre's artificiality, and performed to perfection.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 102: Mon Apr 11

M (Lang, 1931): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.15pm 

Chicago Reader review:
Peter Lorre stars in Fritz Lang's sympathetic and terrifying story of a child murderer, filmed in Germany in 1931. The underworld joins forces with the police in tracking down Lorre's plump, helpless maniac because his atrocities have interrupted the course of crime-as-usual. The moral issues are complex and deftly handled: Lorre is at once entirely innocent and absolutely evil. Lang's detached, modified expressionist style gives the action a plastic beauty: the geometry of the images is reflected in the geometry of the plot, as every piece of film clicks together on its way to the inevitable climax. Two lines meet, and Lorre is at the center. 
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 101: Sun Apr 10

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul, 2010):
Tate Modern, 4pm

This is part of the series Tate Film Pioneers: Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Mirages which runs at the Tate from April 8th to 10th.
There's a special all-night screening of Weerasethakul's output on April 9th and you can find all the details here.

Chicago Reader review:
The dead speak with the living, animals speak to humans, and—thanks to a dense sound mix suggesting musique concrete—the northern Thai jungle just won't shut up in this hypnotic 2010 feature by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady). The title character is a tranquil landowner in his mid-60s, attended to by an assistant and family members both living and dead as he slowly dies of kidney failure. In some previous films Weerasethakul used a two-part structure to convey his Buddhist belief in reincarnation; here he moves between worldly and spiritual realms with an eerie fluidity reminiscent of Alain Resnais. As is to be expected, Weerasethakul frequently abandons the story for trancelike contemplations of nature, but never before in his work has the device felt more purposeful. This isn't likely to convert those who find his work boring, but others may find the movie's spell comparable to prayer or peaceful dreaming.
Ben Sachs

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 100: Sat Apr 9

Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997): Close-Up Cinema, 8pm

Chicago Reader review:
A middle-aged man who's contemplating suicide drives around the hilly, dusty outskirts of Tehran trying to find someone who will bury him if he succeeds and retrieve him if he fails. This minimalist yet powerful and life-enhancing 1997 feature by Abbas Kiarostami (Where Is the Friend's House?, Life and Nothing More, Through the Olive Trees) never explains why the man wants to end his life, yet every moment in his daylong odyssey carries a great deal of poignancy and philosophical weight. Kiarostami, one of the great filmmakers of our time, is a master at filming landscapes and constructing parablelike narratives whose missing pieces solicit the viewer's active imagination. Taste of Cherry actually says a great deal about what it was like to be alive in the 1990s, and despite its somber theme, this masterpiece has a startling epilogue that radiates with wonder and euphoria.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is New York Times critic AO Scott's video review.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 99: Fri Apr 8

Ran (Kurosawa, 1985): BFI Southbank, Studio 6pm

The newly restored Akira Kurosawa classic Ran is on an extended run at BFI Southbank from April 1st. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Akira Kurosawa's 1985 film is slightly marred by some too obvious straining toward masterpiece status, yet it's a stunning achievement in epic cinema. Working on a large scale seems to bring out the best in Kurosawa's essentially formal talents; Kagemushaseems only a rough draft for the effects he achieves here through a massive deployment of movement and color. Both landscape and weather seem to bend to his will as he constructs an imaginary 16th-century Japan out of various locations throughout the islands, which seems to re-form itself to reflect the characters' surging passions as the violent tale progresses. It's loosely adapted from King Lear: an aging warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai, in a performance that approaches a Kabuki stylization) decides to step down as the head of his clan, which unleashes a power struggle among his three sons. As in Kagemusha, Kurosawa envisions the only alternative to rigid oppression as apocalyptic chaos, yet the bleak proposal is put with infinitely more immediacy and personal involvement.
Dave KehrHere (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 98: Thu Apr 7

Respectable: The Mary Millington Story (Sheridan, 2016):
Regent Street Cinema, 7.30pm

A special preview screening of forthcoming documemntary on 1970s sex movies star, Mary Millingon, with a Q&A with director Simon Sheridan after the film.

Here (and) above is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 97: Wed Apr 6

Danton's Death (Clarke, 1978): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.40pm

This TV play screeniong is part of the complete Alan Clarke retrospective at BFI Southbank. You can find all the details here.  

Here is the BFI introduction:
A passionate fan of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, Clarke was invited by the BBC to mount the playwright’s other masterwork, and produced this thoughtful adaptation with Stuart Griffiths. Designer Stuart Walker provided elegant studio sets, framed by Clarke with long lenses for a chilly tableaux effect. Norman Rodway and Ian Richardson excel as the feuding Danton and Robespierre.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 96: Tue Apr 5

Made in Britain (Clarke, 1982): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.15pm

This controversial TV film is part of the complete Alan Clarke retrospective at BFI Southbank. You can find all the details here.  
The screening on Wednesday 13 April will be followed by a Q&A with Tim Roth.

Here is the BFI introduction:
Trevor is a 16-year-old skinhead with a fierce intellect, soured by bitter racism. As he angrily stomps from Job Centre to juvenile detention, the biggest threat to the system is that sometimes Trevor’s right. Making his screen debut, Tim Roth is astoundingly good in what’s undoubtedly one of Clarke’s finest films, written by David Leland and superbly shot on Steadicam by the brilliant Chris Menges.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 95: Mon Apr 4

The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969): Regent Street Cinema, 7.30pm

Chicago Reader review:
Sam Peckinpah's notorious western depicted an outlaw gang, made obsolete by encroaching civilization, in its last burst of violent, ambiguous glory. By 1969, when the film was made, the western was experiencing its last burst as well, and in retrospect Peckinpah's film seems a eulogy for the genre (there is even a dispassionate audience—Robert Ryan's watchful Pinkerton man—built into the film). The on-screen carnage established a new level in American movies, but few of the films that followed in its wake could duplicate Peckinpah's depth of feeling. With William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Strother Martin, and Albert Dekker; scripted by Walon Green and Peckinpah from a story by Green and Roy N. Sickner, and photographed by Lucien Ballard. 
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 94: Sun Apr 3

On The Waterfront (Kazan, 1954): Regent Street Cinema, 4pm

This classic screens in a double-bill with recent documentary on Brando, Listen to Me Marlon. You can find the full details here.

Time Out review:
Superb performances (none more so than Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy, the ex-boxer unwittingly entangled in corrupt union politics), a memorably colourful script by Budd Schulberg, and a sure control of atmosphere make this account of Brando's struggles against gangster Lee J Cobb's hold over the New York longshoremen's union powerful stuff. It is undermined, however, by both the religious symbolism (that turns Malloy not into a Judas but a Christ figure) and the embarrassing special pleading on behalf of informers, deriving presumably from the fact that Elia Kazan and Schulberg named names during the McCarthy witch-hunts. Politics apart, though, it's pretty electrifying.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 93: Sat Apr 2

The Fog (Carpenter, 1981): Prince Charles Cinema, 9pm

This classic 80s horror flick screens as part of the John Carpenter Selectrospective at the Prince Charles Cinema. You can find all the details here.

Time Out review:
The Fog will disappoint those expecting a re-run of the creepy scares from Halloween. Instead, expanding enormously on the fantasy elements of his earlier films, Carpenter has turned in a full-scale thriller of the supernatural, as a sinister fog bank comes rolling in off the sea to take revenge on the smug little town of Antonio Bay, N. Calif. No shotguns pumping; no prowling of dark corners; no tricksy dry-ice chills. Instead you'll find a masterful simplicity of style, a lonely and determined group of characters under siege, and a childlike sense of brooding fear that almost disappeared in the '70s. Carpenter's confidence is outrageous; the range of his models even more so (from Poe to RKO); and the achievement is all his own, despite ragged moments and occasional hesitations.
Chris Auty

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 92: Fri Apr 1

Scum (Clarke, 1977): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6pm 

A rare opportunity to see the original BBC Play for Today version of the Alan Clarke-directed Scum, which was banned and not shown on television until 1991.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 91: Thu Mar 31

As Tears Go By (Kar-wai, 1988): Barbican Cinema, 8.45pm

This film, the directorial debut of Wong Kar-Wai, is part of the Hong Kong Crime season at the Barbican. You can find the full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
A low-level hood (Andy Lau) tries to maintain his equilibrium as he's pulled in one direction by his stable, provincial cousin (Maggie Cheung) and in another by his volatile pal (Jacky Cheung). This 1988 Hong Kong drama was the directing debut of Wong Kar-wai (In the Mood for Love), and though many have compared it to Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, the stylistic flights of fancy are all Wong's: the clouds drifting heavenward on a bank of TV tubes, the stuttering slow motion and glistening light of a back-alley knife fight, the repeated posing of the young woman at the foot of steps or stairs. Some of the editing has a giddy, overeager quality, the natural excess of a young prodigy, but when the action and the tempo align, the results are exhilarating: an early brawl in a pool hall fairly leaps off the screen.
JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 90: Wed Mar 30

The Firm (Clarke, 1989): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.15pm

Part of the Alan Clarke season at BFI Southbank, this is a recently discovered cut of the director’s masterful study of psychopathy. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Clarke's  daughter and other guests, which at present include producer David Thompson, writer David Leland and actor Ray Winstone. The post-film discussion will be chaired by Danny Leigh.

Here is the BFI introduction:
We’re proud to screen the recently discovered director’s cut of Alan Clarke’s swansong – a masterful study of psychopathy. A well-to-do estate agent (Oldman) is also the ‘top boy’ in a gang of brutal football hooligans who set up pitch battles with like-minded ‘tribes’ from other clubs, all getting off on the buzz of blood and violence. It’s a deeply unsettling and powerful film. Following the screening, critic and broadcaster Danny Leigh will host a discussion on Clarke’s uncompromising style, mercurial talent, legacy and the many filmmakers he’s inspired. 

Here (and above) is writer David Leland introducing the film.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 89: Tue Mar 29

Network (Lumet, 1976): Regent Street Cinema, 8.20pm

Chicago Reader review:
Good campy fun from the combined talents of Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet; Chayefsky was apparently serious about much of this shrill, self-important 1976 satire about television, interlaced with bile about radicals and pushy career women, and so were some critics at the time. Peter Finch, in his last performance, effectively plays a network news commentator who blows his top and his mind on the air and quickly becomes a self-styled messiah; William Holden plays the wizened TV executive who has the Truth, which pushy, nihilistic program director Faye Dunaway wants; and Robert Duvall, Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty, and Beatrice Straight are around for comparably juicy hyperbole.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 88: Mon Mar 28

The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 5.30pm

Big Screen Classics is a new season at BFI Southbank. You can find details of the other two 35mm screenings of this film on 30th March and 2nd April here.

Chicago Reader review:
A very good movie (1946), and by far the best Raymond Chandler adaptation, but it isn't one of Howard Hawks's most refined efforts—it lacks his clarity of line, his balance, his sense of a free spirit at play within a carefully set structure. What you remember here are moments: Bogart's line about Martha Vickers (“Ain't she been weaned yet?”), Dorothy Malone in the bookshop, the broken roll of quarters pouring from a hood's fist, Bogart and Bacall's racetrack dialogue, the romance that is charted in the borrowing, lighting, and puffing of cigarettes. If you can figure out who killed the chauffeur, the world is waiting for the answer. With John Ridgely, Regis Toomey, and Elisha Cook Jr.; from a script by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman.
Dave Kehr
Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 87: Sun Mar 27

No Country For Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2007): Close-Up Cinema, 8pm

The best Coen brothers film, in my humble opinion, is part of a mini-season devoted to the film-maker brothers at Close-Up. You can find the full details here. This one screens from 35mm.

Chicago Reader review:
A major Coen brothers movie drawn from a minor Cormac McCarthy novel, this is a highly accomplished thriller (2007) that's also rather hypocritical when it tries to get moralistic about its bloodbaths. (Even more than its source, it taps into fundamentalist religious despair as an alibi for the violence.) Javier Bardem plays a psycho killer with a cattle stun gun, and Tommy Lee Jones costars as a Texas sheriff nearing retirement who wonders what the world's coming to. Josh Brolin is a welder who stumbles upon $2 million left in the wake of a blown drug deal and gets tracked by Jones, Bardem, and Woody Harrelson (a hired gun and comic relief). The storytelling is fluid, especially when directors Joel and Ethan Coen start eliding some of the murders and ask us to imagine them for ourselves.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 86: Sat Mar 26

Big Trouble in Little China (Carpenter, 1986): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.20pm

This 70mm presentation at the Prince Charles Cinema is on an extended run. Details here.

Time Out review:
'Ready, Jack?' asks Kurt Russell's Chinese buddy before another fraught round of mayhem beneath the streets of San Francisco's Chinatown. 'I was born ready', comes back the growled response; and it is this level of conscious self-mockery which saves the John Wayne posturing and genre high kicks from being just another climber on the Raiders of the Lost Ark band wagon. Russell is the T-shirted bozo trucker, who only has to fire his gun into the ceiling for the plaster to fall on his head. Down the mean catacombs and underground streams of Chinatown he goes, in search of something or other and encountering every Chinese cliché known to man: devil women, 900-year-old sages, water tortures, black magic monsters. The icing on all this cake is a load of kung-fuey, which in spite of three nifty warlords who come equipped with their own static electricity and interesting hats, isn't really up to the mark established in the meanest of Hong Kong martial arts movies. Carpenter has always been a skilful genre mechanic, breathing life into old forms; if he stubs his toes up against the bamboo curtain this time, there is still more enjoyable sly humour than in most slug-fests.
Chris Peachment

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 85: Fri Mar 25

La Piscine (Deray, 1969): Regent Street Cinema, 6.30pm

This film is being screened in a double-bill with the excellent 2015 remake, A Bigger Splash. You can find the full details here.

Time Out review:
Four characters. A Mediterranean villa. Sun, sex and… suspicion. The ingredients are fairly simple in this star-powered psychological thriller which has remained underexposed outside of France. This is a deliciously languid, slinkily unsettling affair. Romy Schneider is all feline elegance and sphinx-like intelligence as the girlfriend of brooding wastrel Alain Delon. Their erotically charged St Tropez sojourn is interrupted by the arrival of flamboyantly smug Maurice Ronet with teenage jail-bait daughter Jane Birkin in tow. Little is said, but past indiscretions hang in the air. The ’60s trappings and jazz-meets-psychedelia score are treasure enough in themselves, but it’s Deray’s beady concentration on the pointed silences and angled looks which really turn the screw. Bourgeois-scum Claude Chabrol territory, essentially, but done with a more commercial eye for showing off Schneider and Delon’s bronzed curves.
Trevor Johnston

Here (and above) is the trailer.

 

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 84: Thu Mar 24

Mean Streets (Scorsese, 1973): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm

This 35mm screening is part of a mini-Martin Scorsese season at the Prince Charles Cinema. You can find the full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Martin Scorsese's intrusive insistence on his abstract, metaphysical theme—the possibility of modern sainthood—marks this 1973 film, his first to attract critical notice, as still somewhat immature, yet the acting and editing have such an original, tumultuous force that the picture is completely gripping. Harvey Keitel is the young mobster on the rise; Robert De Niro is his brutish, irresponsible nemesis, whom he's determined to love.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 83: Wed Mar 23

The Lavender Hill Mob (Crichton, 1951): Regent Street Cinema, 8.15pm

This British classic is screened in a double-bill with Passport to Pimlico. Details here.

Time Out review:
Remember when the words ‘British crime comedy’ didn’t inspire a sense of creeping dread? It may not be as smart and savage as ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’, as scabrously political as ‘The Man in the White Suit’ or as downright bloody-minded as ‘The Ladykillers’, but ‘The Lavender Hill Mob’ might be the archetypal Ealing comedy. It’s got everything the studio is famous for – loveable crooks, class conflict, London streets, avuncular bobbies, pratfalls, slapstick, tea, buns and Alec Guinness – but with a Hitchcock-inspired thriller plot that makes it the most pacily enthralling of their features. Guinness and Stanley Holloway play the bumbling suburbanites whose plot to hijack a van full of gold bullion and smuggle it abroad disguised as Eiffel Tower paperweights leads to all manner of hijinks and hysteria. Charles Crichton’s direction is subtle but inventive – check out the snaking, near-single-take opening in a Rio cabana – and the performances, writing and plotting are faultless.
Tom Huddleston

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 82: Tue Mar 22

In Jackson Heights (Wiseman, 2015): Barbican Cinema, 7pm

The fortieth documentary from legendary director Frederick Wiseman focuses on the radically and ethnically diverse neighbourhood of Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. Wiseman will be present after the movie for a ScreenTalk after the screening.

Chicago Reader review:
In Jackson Heights is the most joyful feature by master documentary maker Frederick Wiseman, celebrating not only the title neighborhood in Queens but American life in all its diversity. The film’s design evokes that of a sprawling patchwork quilt, with scenes focusing on the immigrant experience, LGBT activism, municipal governance, the serenity of old age, working life, and more. Wiseman touches on such dark topics as police brutality and the exploitation of migrants, yet he manages to put a positive spin on them, recording citizens’ groups as they look for constructive solutions. Rarely do movies present the democratic process with such warmth and optimism. Wiseman inspires affection for many of his subjects, and this generous feeling gains in intensity as the community portrait grows richer. These people are interdependent, gaining from their diversity.
Ben Sachs

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 81: Mon Mar 21

Son of Saul (Nemes, 2015): Picturehouse Central 2pm, 4.30pm, 7pm & 9.30pm

This is a special 35mm preview screeening of one of this year's most anticipated films.

Chicago Reader review:
The debut feature of Hungarian writer-director László Nemes is easily the most exciting new film I've seen over the past year, and a casual look at the prizes and accolades it's received over the past eight months, starting with the Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes, shows that I'm far from alone in feeling this way. Even my colleagues who dislike or dismiss the film concede that it's a stunning technical achievement. But the moment one starts to describe what the film does, or even what it's about, a certain amount of dissension sets in. 
Jonathan Rosenabaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.