Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 8: Tue Jan 8

Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda, 1962): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.20pm

Chicago Reader review:

'Agnes Varda's 1961 New Wave feature—recounting two hours in the life of a French pop singer (Corinne Marchand) while she waits to learn from her doctor whether she's terminally ill—is arguably her best work, rivaled only by herVagabond (1985) and The Gleaners and I (2000). Beautifully shot and realized, this film offers an irreplaceable time capsule of Paris, and fans of Michel Legrand won't want to miss the extended sequence in which he visits the heroine and rehearses with her. The film's approximations of real time are exactly that—the total running time is 90 minutes—but innovative and thrilling nonetheless. Underrated when it came out and unjustly neglected since, it's not only the major French New Wave film made by a woman, but a key work of that exciting period—moving, lyrical, and mysterious.'

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 7: Mon Jan 7

Rumble Fish (Coppola, 1983): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.25pm

Master of Cinema review:
'Rumble Fish was Francis Ford Coppola’s (Apocalypse Now; The Conversation) second adaptation of one of author S.E. Hinton’s novels, coming right off the heels of wrapping production on the previous adaptation for The Outsiders. Doing a complete 180 in tone, Coppola’s Rumble Fish was a surreal examination of urban decay, misspent youth, and brotherhood shot in black and white with occasional blips of color. Laden with symbolic imagery of lost time, allusions to Greek mythology and even the post-war philosophical ramblings of the Beat Generation (“California’s like a beautiful wild girl on heroin who’s high as a kite thinking she’s on top of the world, not knowin’ she’s dyin’ even if you show her the marks”), the film is focused on the relationship between the two brothers Rusty James (Matt Dillon; Crash; The Outsiders) and The Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke; Immortals; Passion Play; The Expendables; The Wrestler). The younger Rusty dreams of being a gang leader like his brother while the recently returned The Motorcycle Boy, a philosophizing hero amongst the local gangs, seems world weary, tired of his former life. The acting isn’t exactly the highlight of this 1980s peculiarity as much as the dreamlike state evoked by the beautiful, angular camera shots, extreme close-ups, time lapse photography and film noir inspired cinematography of Stephen H. Burum. With that being said, the cast assembled by Coppola is one of the great ones that perhaps only a director of his caliber could assemble, consisting of those he previously worked with like Dennis Hopper and Laurence Fishburne as well as numerous individuals who would go on to become Hollywood staples, such as the aforementioned Matt Dillon, Nicolas Cage, and Chris Penn. Also of note is former drummer for The Police Stewart Copeland’s evocative film score that is both eclectic and fittingly syncopated.'

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 6: Sun Jan 6

Chronicle of a Love Affair (Antonioni, 1950): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.15pm

This excellent early film from Michelangelo Antonioni is part of the director's season at BFI Southbank. The movie also screens on January 2nd and 19th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Michelangelo Antonioni's haunting first feature (1950)—a remarkable formal effort involving a detective, an adulterous trio, a murder plot, a choreographic mise en scene, and an extended flashback—qualifies in many ways as an Italian noir, set in the milieu of the Milanese upper classes; with Lucia Bose (The Lady Without Camellias) and Massimo Girotti. 
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 5: Sat Jan 5

Drunken Angel (Kurosawa, 1948): Prince Charles Cinema, 4pm

This 35mm screening is part of the Akira Kurosawa ‘Selectrospective’ at the Prince Charles. You can find full details of the season here.

Time Out review:
Akira Kurosawa quotes this, his seventh feature, an atmospheric noir-inflected low life melodrama, as the first in which he felt truly himself as director. Casting the moody 28-year-old Mifune, in the first of their 16 collaborations, as the violent gangster whom boozy doctor Shimura diagnoses as suffering from TB ('a hole in the heart,' says the sour 'angel', ruefully), entailed major rewrites as his part was gradually increased. The movie breathes the polluted air of post-war pessimism, dissipation and poetic fatalism, symbolised in the shots of the oily, malaria-ridden swamp of a Tokyo dockside, but it is dramatically qualified by Mifune's suggested redeemability and Shimura's stoical humanism, the quality he epitomised almost 20 years later in the marvellous Redbeard. Fascinating, highly enjoyable and filled with great scenes - not least the slippery battle to the death in a paint-filled corridor.
Wally Hammond

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 4: Fri Jan 4

The Passenger (Antonioni, 1975): BFI Southbank, 2.30pm NFT3, 6pm & 8.35pm NFT1

The Passenger is on an extended run (more details here) from January 4th at BFI Southbank as part of the Michelangelo Antonioni season at the cinema.

If you are interested in reading more about this fascinating movie, Martin Walsh's article in a 1975 issue of Jump Cut (which you can link to here) is highly recommended.

Chicago Reader review:
A masterpiece, one of Michelangelo Antonioni's finest works (1975). Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider star as a journalist who trades one identity for another and the woman who becomes his accomplice (and ultimately the moral center of his adopted world). Less a thriller (though the mood of mystery is pervasive) than a meditation on the problems of knowledge, action for its own sake, and the relationship of the artist to the work he brings into being. Next to this film, Blowup seems a facile, though necessary, preliminary. By all means go.
Don Druker

Here (and above) is the new BFI trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 3: Thu Jan 3

The Lady Without Camelias (Antonioni, 1953): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.30pm

This excellent early film from Michelangelo Antonioni is part of the director's season at BFI Southbank. The movie also screens on January 12th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Perhaps the most unjustly neglected of Michelangelo Antonioni's early features, La Signora Senza Camelie (1953) is a caustic Cinderella story about a Milanese shop clerk (Lucia Bose) who briefly becomes a glamorous movie star. One of the cruelest and most accurate portraits of studio filmmaking and the Italian movie world that we have, it's informed by a visually and emotionally complex mise en scene that juggles background with foreground elements in a choreographic style recalling Welles at times. Though it's only Antonioni's third feature, and its episodic structure necessitates a somewhat awkward expositional method, this is mature filmmaking that leaves an indelible aftertaste.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 2: Wed Jan 2

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

This 35mm presentation is part of the Prince Charles Cinema's 'Scorsese Selectrospective'. 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 2019 - Day 1: Tue Jan 1

The Ghost Goes West (Clair, 1935): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.40pm

This 35mm screening is part of the Alexander Korda season at BFI Southbank. Full details here. This movie is also being shown on January 13th. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
French director Rene Clair made his English-language debut with this 1936 Alexander Korda production, about an American millionaire (Eugene Pallette) who ships an old Scottish castle to his estate in Florida for reassembly and finds that he's acquired the family ghost (Robert Donat) along with the family home. Clair never regained his footing after leaving France (he didn't return until the end of World War II), but, though hardly up to Le million or A nous la liberte, this is one of his more successful expatriate efforts, graced by a wit that would eventually become toothless whimsy.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 355: Mon Dec 31

When Harry Met Sally (Ephron, 1989): Prince Charles Cinema, 6pm

This film will be screened from a 35mm print.

Time Out review:
1977: cynical womaniser Harry (Crystal) and clean-living would-be journo Sally (Ryan) are thrown together on an 18-hour trip to New York. They don't exactly hit it off, but ten years later, having suffered the traumas of break-up and divorce, they meet again and find they can offer mutual support. Will their friendship move from platonic to romantic? It seems likely, but there's a problem: Harry is reluctant to commit himself, while Sally won't countenance one-night stands. Reiner's Woody Allen-ish comedy is, for all its up-front discussion of matters sexual, disarmingly old-fashioned. A mite too pat, it never really probes or challenges Harry and Sally's attitiudes; but Nora Ephron's extended, slightly sentimental, and none-too-original meeting cute scenario includes enough funny one-liners to hold the attention of all but the most jaded viewer. As ever, Reiner clearly likes his characters, and elicits sturdy performances from a proficient cast (Kirby and Fisher are especially fine as friends and confidants to the pair).
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 354: Sun Dec 30

Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975): BFI Southbank, 2pm

Chicago Reader review:
All of Stanley Kubrick's features look better now than when they were first released, but Barry Lyndon, which fared poorly at the box office in 1975, remains his most underrated. It may also be his greatest. This personal, idiosyncratic, melancholy, and long (three hours) adaptation of the Thackeray novel is exquisitely shot in natural light (or, in night scenes, candlelight) by John Alcott, with frequent use of slow backward zooms that distance us, both historically and emotionally, from its rambling picaresque narrative about an 18th-century Irish upstart (Ryan O'Neal). Despite its ponderous, funereal moods and pacing, the film is a highly accomplished piece of storytelling, building to one of the most suspenseful duels ever staged. It also repays close attention as a complex and fascinating historical meditation, as enigmatic in its way as 2001: A Space Odyssey. With Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Kruger, and Leonard Rossiter; narrated by Michael Hordern.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 353: Sat Dec 29

Jackie Brown (Tarantino, 1997): Screen on the Green, 11.30pm

Time Out review:
A pretty faithful adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch, Tarantino's finest, most mature movie to date centres on airline steward Jackie (Grier), picked up by the Feds at LAX with cash and drugs destined for gun trader Ordell (Jackson). Reluctant to do time and aware that Ordell tends to murder anyone he suspects might turn informer, she decides to play cops and criminals - not only Ordell, but his former cellmate Louis (De Niro) and pothead girlfriend Melanie (Fonda) - against each other, confiding only in Max (Forster), the world-weary bail bondsman Ordell hired to get her out of jail in the first place. What's immediately rewarding is that Tarantino forgoes flash patter, stand-offs and stylistic flourishes in favour of a closer focus on character (women included), relationships, motives and mood. Also crucial to our actually coming to care about these people is the terrific acting (Grier and Forster make you wonder where they've been all these years). But perhaps most surprising and welcome is that this is a subtle poignant account of middle-aged people trying to come to terms with failing faculties, fading looks, diminishing options and a need to make their lives count somehow. 
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 352: Fri Dec 28

Invention for Destruction (Kerman, 1958): Close-Up Cinema, 7pm

Film Society of Lincoln Centre review:
In this delightfully imaginative mix of live action and animation, pirates kidnap a professor to steal his formula for explosives and take over the world. Czech legend Karel Zeman brings his 19th-century Jules Verne tale to life as if it’s a book with engraved illustrations, using live sets, stop-motion, cel animation, matte backgrounds, and enough line patterns to rival a piece of Op Art. The tale stirs together Verne’s flights of fancy – including that wondrous submarine and a volcano hideout – with a droll sense of gallantry and derring-do. It’s also known as [The Fabulous World of Jules Verne], but by any name, its playful details are best appreciated on the big screen.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 351: Thu Dec 27

Maniac (Lustig, 1980): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.45pm

This film is part of the 'Terror Vision' strand at BFI Southbank. You can find details of all the regular strands at the cinema, including Terror Vision here.

BFI Southbank introduction:
One of the grubbiest of all 80s slashers, William Lustig’s visceral shocker about a disturbed psychopath stalking the New York streets for unsuspecting female victims has lost none of its power to provoke and unsettle. Dripping in insidious atmosphere and unrelenting dread, this grim character study is arguably more cerebral (but no less incendiary) than its reputation would have us believe.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 350: Wed Dec 26

From Russia With Love (Young, 1963): Prince Charles Cinema, 6pm

The press reviews of the films don't capture the excitement of the Bond films and I am recommending the Blogalongabond series by Neil Alcock (aka @theincrediblesuit on Twitter). Here is his take on From Russia With Love.

Chicago Reader review:
For my money, still the best Bond, with a screwball plotline that keeps the locales changing and the surprises coming—even when reason dictates that the picture should be over. Lotte Lenya and Robert Shaw make a creepy pair, and Daniela Bianchi embodies the essence of centerfold sex, circa 1964.
Dave Kehr

Here is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 349: Tue Dec 25

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

The cinemas, apart from the West End Odeon picturehouses, are closed today but you can catch my twitter recommendations for great movies on the television over the holiday period via my twitter handle @tpaleyfilm and the hashtag #bestxmasholidayfilmonTVtoday.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 348: Mon Dec 24

Die Hard (McTiernan, 1988): Prince Charles Cinema, 6pm

Is Die Hard a Christmas film? Don't start! The Prince Charles Cinema have a season of this modern holiday favourite screened from a 70mm print. You can find the details here.

Time Out review:
A hi-tech thriller with a human heart, offering slam-bang entertainment on a par with Lethal Weapon or Aliens. On Christmas Eve, visiting New York cop McClane (Willis) enters the high-rise LA office block where his estranged wife works, not realising that it has already being taken over by sadistic smoothie Hans Gruber (Rickman) and his ruthless terrorists. Inside the building, having taken wife (Bedelia) and celebrating colleagues hostage, the gang tries to crack open the Nakotomi corporation's computerised vault; outside, LA cops and FBI agents squabble over jurisdiction, while opportunistic TV reporters gather like jackals; it's up to McClane, having established a chance radio link with a passing patrolman (Veljohnson), to use the building's 39 empty floors, lift shafts, and heating ducts to improvise diversionary tactics. McTiernan excels in the adrenalin-inducing action scenes, staging the murderous mayhem and state-of-the-art violence as if he were born with a camera in one hand and a rocket launcher in the other ...
Nigel Floyd

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 347: Sun Dec 23

The Leopard (Visconti 1963): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 4.10pm

A bona fide masterpiece which grows in stature with the passing years and now in a remastered print which simply adds to the beauty of a magisterial work of cinema. Here is critic Dave Kehr on the film's history, it was butchered on release and only seen in a truncated form for many years, and here is Martin Scorsese talking about his involvement in the restoration. The Leopard is one of the American director's favourite films as evidenced in this list.

Also screening at BFI Southbank on December 29th in NFT1. Don’t miss - details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Cut, dubbed, and printed in an inferior color process, the U.S. release of Luchino Visconti's epic didn't leave much of an impression in 1963; 20 years later, a restoration of the much longer Italian version revealed this as not only Visconti's greatest film but a work that transcends its creator, achieving a sensitivity and intelligence without parallel in his other films. Burt Lancaster initiated his formidable mature period as the aging aristocrat Don Fabrizio, who works to find a place for himself and his family values in the new Italy being organized in the 1860s. The film's superb first two hours, which weave social and historical themes into rich personal drama, turn out to be only a prelude to the magnificent final hour—an extended ballroom sequence that leaves history behind to become one of the most moving meditations on individual mortality in the history of the cinema. With Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale. In Italian with subtitles.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the original trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 346: Sat Dec 22

Meet Me in St Louis (Minnelli, 1944): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 3.30pm

This classic Christmas film is also being screened, on December 16th, 18th and 28th at BFI Southbank. You can find all the details here.

There are numerous articles and features on this film, including an excellent one by Richard Dyer in the January 2012 edition of Sight & Sound. Dyer refers to work by Andrew Britton on the film which has been reproduced in the recent publication of his complete film criticism and by Robin Wood in his collection Personal Views. Both are well worth seeking out.

And here is an excellent piece by the Guardian's John Patterson on Minnelli to coincide with a previous re-release of today's film. 

Time Out review: 
In 1939, rosy-cheeked chanteuse Judy Garland trumpeted the cosy, all-American proverb that ‘there’s no place like home’ in ‘The Wizard of Oz’. She returned five years later to reaffirm those beliefs in Vincente Minnelli’s musical masterpiece, ‘Meet Me in St Louis’, a Technicolor ode to the joys and tensions of living side-by-side with your fellow man. In a snow globe rendering of St Louis, Missouri circa 1903, the affluent Smith clan must face the prospect of ripping up their ancestral roots to chase future fortunes. The film has only a whisper of a plot, preferring to amass the simple pleasures of life (flirting with neighbours, riding the trolley, Christmas with the folks) into a single romantic vision of a perfect society. Framed as a sepia-tinted postcard come to life, Minnelli’s panoramic city symphony examines the meanings of nostalgia and memory while offering a sweetly ironic depiction of Middle American conservatism where sex is taboo, dinner is at six, money is evil and father knows best. A heavenly slice of brassy Hollywood romanticism that’ll still have you swooning all the way to the trolley stop.
David Jenkins

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 345: Fri Dec 21

Tout Va Bien (Godard, 1972): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.10pm

This film is part of the Jane Fonda season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.


Chicago Reader review:
Yves Montand, a former New Wave filmmaker, and his wife, Jane Fonda, get involved in a factory takeover in this 1972 self-styled “commercial” film by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin. Actually, it's only a slight step back from Godard's hard-core political tracts, but the few concessions he does make—characters and a story, of sorts—go a long way toward making the rhetoric accessible. Jerry Lewis's famous cutaway set from The Ladies' Man is recycled to expose the factory's power structure; long lateral tracks across a bank of supermarket checkout lanes make a wry comment on the ethics of consumerism.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 344: Thu Dec 20

Antichrist (Von Trier, 2009): Genesis Cinema, 6.35pm

The Genesis Cinema’s monthly Cult Classic Collective screening with Nick Walker of Rochester Kino returns with a 35mm presentation of this infamous Lars Von Trier film. The screening will be introduced by Nick and will be followed by a salon discussion upstairs at the bar.

Chicago Reader review:
This grueling 2009 psychodrama by Lars von Trier (Dogville, Breaking the Waves) is the sort of movie that dares you not to take it seriously—it's dedicated to the Soviet metaphysical filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, and the end credits cite research assistants in theology, mythology, misogyny, and the horror movie. If you're easily cowed by that sort of thing, then this is a masterpiece exposing the divide between human intellect (equated here with male oppression) and nature (defined as "Satan's church"); if you're not, then it's a grisly fuck fest with a library card. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg are a couple whose toddler tumbles out a window to his death while they're boffing in the bathroom (a scene that transpires in slow-motion black and white to a moody string score). A professional shrink, Dafoe decides that Gainsbourg can overcome her crippling grief only by confronting her fear of the forest, so he takes her out to a remote cabin in the woods and all hell breaks loose. I can't deny this is filled with powerfully primal images, but at least one of them—an eviscerated fox that bellows at Dafoe, "Chaos reigns!"—made me burst out laughing.
J.R. Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 343: Wed Dec 19

The Bishop’s Wife (Koster, 1947): Regent Street Cinema, 12pm & 3.30pm

Time Out review:
Samuel Goldwyn-produced whimsy, cashing in on the success of '40s angelic fantasies such as Here Comes Mr Jordanand It's a Wonderful Life. Angel Grant responds to a bishop's plea for help after his devotion to his plans for a new cathedral has alienated him from family and parishioners. Cary's charm works as successfully upon audiences as it does upon the film's characters, and his relaxed wit plus Loretta Young's delicate loveliness makes for a frothily touching comedy.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 342: Tue Dec 18

Through A Glass Darkly (Bergman, 1961): Close-Up Cinema, 8.30pm

Chicago Reader review:
The first part of Ingmar Bergman's trilogy (with Winter Light and The Silence), elaborating his search for a new interpretation of "God" apart from the conventional one on which he was raised. Elaborately rhetorical at the end, this 1961 film nevertheless develops its theme lucidly and with some of Bergman's most unforgettable sequences, such as the slow descent of the helicopter as Harriet Andersson screams "God is a spider!" With Gunnar Bjornstrand and Max von Sydow. In Swedish with subtitles.
J.R. Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 341: Mon Dec 17

Reflections of Evil (Packard, 2002): Close-Up Cinema, 7pm

This film is part of the Sick Monday strand at Close-Up Cinema. Sick Monday is a film programme curated by artists, Dean Kenning, Vanessa Scully & Liam Scully, commissioning radical new moving image works by a range of visual artists. Reflections of Evil is curated by Liam Scully, the third in a trilogy of programmes by Sick Monday.

Chicago Reader review:
Underground filmmaker Damon Packard slouches toward Hollywood in this self-financed, self-distributed 2002 feature, which is framed as a TV movie from the early 70s but veers into all manner of nightmarish reverie. As the lumpish hero, Packard peddles wristwatches on the angry streets of downtown LA and nurses a feverish love-hate relationship with the fantasy factories of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. (One sequence, shot guerrilla style at the Universal Studios theme park, imagines an attraction called Schindler's List: The Ride.) Meanwhile a ghost in a billowing nightgown—the hero's sister, who's died of a PCP overdose—drifts down the fake streets of the Universal back lot. The movie is a shapeless melange of ideas, every one of them run into the ground, but Packard's vision of mass-media purgatory is defiantly personal.
J.R. Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 340: Sun Dec 16

The Prestige (Nolan, 1996): Rio Cinema, 12 noon

Rio Cinema introduction to this special screening with IGN UK Podcast:

If you've listened to any of the IGN UK podcast in the last two years you will have witnessed us accidentally become the world's best podcast all about The Prestige. We love the film and want to celebrate that by watching it with YOU awesome people. So come experience a screening of The Prestige and then stick around for a live IGN UK podcast. Of course, if you'd like to just come for the screening that is absolutely fine too. We'll also be heading to The Loading Bar in Dalston afterwards for some drinks/knot tying discussions.

Chicago Reader review:

The premise of this Victorian drama—a London theatrical magician (Hugh Jackman) tries to fend off a more cunning rival (Christian Bale)—weirdly parallels the predicament of director Christopher Nolan, whose movie opened in the long shadow of Neil Burger's The Illusionist. That movie also centers on a 19th-century magician, and the elegant contours of its story are even more impressive compared with Nolan's clutter of double and triple crosses. A substantial subplot here involves Jackman developing a secret project with pioneering electrical engineer Nikola Tesla (a delectably arch David Bowie); it doesn't really add anything, but Tesla's high-voltage coils throw off a lot more lightning than Scarlett Johansson as Jackman's sultry stage assistant. With Michael Caine, Piper Perabo, and Rebecca Hall.

JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.