Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 12: Sun Jan 12

Made in Hong Kong (Chan, 1997): ICA Cinema, 6pm


This is part of the ICA's 'Celluloid Sunday' strand and screens from 35mm.

Time Out review:
Bad things start happening to Moon, a kid from a housing estate, when he comes into possession of two bloodstained letters left behind by a schoolgirl suicide: his mother walks out, he starts having pesky wet dreams, his mentally handicapped best friend gets into trouble - and he falls for a girl who turns out to be seriously ill. The irresistibly named Fruit Chan, a long-serving assistant director in the film industry, got this indie feature made on a wing and a prayer: various industry figures (notably Andy Lau) helped out, hardly anyone got paid and the non-pro cast was recruited on the street. Much of it is fresh, truthfully observed and touching in its honesty, but the climactic escalation into triad melodrama and the several false endings suggest that old industry habits die hard. Nonetheless, a striking achievement.
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 11: Sat Jan 11

Hannie Caulder (Kennedy, 1971) & Extreme Prejudice (Hill, 1987):
Cinema Museum, 6pm

This is a Lost Reels 16mm double-bill. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review of Extreme Prejudice:
Walter Hill (48 HRS.) returns to familiar action turf (and almost to top form after bottoming out with Brewster’s Millions and Crossroads) with this story of an old-fashioned Texas lawman (Nick Nolte) who clashes with a special forces unit assigned to eliminate a Mexican drug dealer (Powers Boothe). Hill intends a familiar values-in-conflict story line (flattering, as usual, to tradition at the expense of unscrupulous modernity), but the real line of tension is the relation between Nolte and Boothe, once close friends, now sexual and moral rivals. Boothe comes on as pure 40s archetype, a brooding John Ford apparition in white suit and Stetson (the moral/visual paradox is obvious but mythically effective); he’s an odd, commanding figure, and Nolte, shrinking into his ranger outfit (huh?), really can’t compete. Still, the character interactions are strong, especially for this depleted genre, and Hill’s tight, efficient styling recovers a lot of lost formal ground: his framing and crosscutting are as sharp as ever, and the bloodbath finale is, improbably, a model of intelligent restraint, the classicist’s answer to Peckinpah baroque. With Michael Ironside. Maria Conchita Alonso, and Rip Torn in a scene-stealing cracker-barrel turn.
Pat Graham

Here (and above) is the trailer for Extreme Prejudice.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 10: Fri Jan 10

The Leopard (Visconti 1963): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.50pm

 
A bona fide masterpiece which grows in stature with the passing years and now in a remastered form 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.


This screening, part of the Luchino Visconti season at BFI Southbank, will be introduced by Adrian Wootton, Chief Executive, Film London and British Film Commission. There are other presentations of the film on January 4th and 26th.

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.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 9: Thu Jan 9

Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich, 1955): Prince Charles Cinema, 3.20pm


This 35mm presentation screens again on February 25th. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
The end of the world, starring Ralph Meeker (at his sleaziest) as Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (at his most neolithic). Robert Aldrich’s 1955 film is in some ways the apotheosis of film noir—it’s certainly one of the most extreme examples of the genre, brimming with barely suppressed hysteria and set in a world totally without moral order. Even the credits run upside down. This independently produced low-budget film was a shining example for the New Wave directors—Truffaut, Godard, et al—who found it proof positive that commercial films could accommodate the quirkiest and most personal of visions.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 8: Wed Jan 8

Night Beat (Huth, 1947): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.15pm


This is a 'Projecting the Archive' 35mm screening which will include an introduction by Josephine Botting, BFI Curator.

BFI introdcution:
Back on civvy street, a pair of demobbed soldiers decide on a career in the police force. But the austerity of post-war Britain makes it hard to resist the illicit ‘perks’ of the job and when one falls for a scheming nightclub singer, he’s drawn deeper into criminality. Christine Norden, in her film debut, is perfectly cast as the temptress and this screening celebrates the centenary of her birth on 28 December 1924. Though her film career was brief, she had an electric screen presence and could have been a leading British femme fatale if her potential had been realised.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 7: Tue Jan 7

Senso (Visconti, 1954): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6pm


This 35mm presentation is part of the Luchino Visconti season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Aptly titled—a lush, melodramatic portrait of seduction and betrayal, decadence and deceit in the midst of Italy's resistance to Austrian occupation in the mid-19th century, revealing Luchino Visconti at his most baroque and the Italian cinema at its most spectacular (1954). A fine tragic performance by Alida Valli and surprisingly good work by Farley Granger (imported for American box-office appeal) help overcome some of the obvious narrative gaps created by the Italian censors. Visconti's sinuous Marxism here begins to creep to the fore.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 6: Mon Jan 6

Rocco and His Brothers (Visconti, 1960): BFI Southbank NFT2, 1.30pm & 6.45pm

This film, which is on an extended run through January, is part of the Luchino Visconti season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

The screenings on Sunday January 5th (15:00 NFT1) and Saturday January 11th (17:30 NFT1) (+ intro by season curator and film critic Christina Newland) will screen on 35mm.

Time Out review:
Luchino Visconti’s epic melodrama of social migration and moral decay was first released in 1960, when it was met with great scandal (a prosecutor threatened to charge the director with “disseminating an obscene object”) and even greater success. Today, distanced from ridiculous controversy and dislocated from the provincial politics that drive its story, this immaculately restored classic of post-WWII Italian cinema often feels like a new experience altogether. Set in the early ’60s, when Italy’s moneyed Northern classes were regularly exploiting the people of the South for cheap labor, Visconti’s shaggy tale begins with the hardscrabble Parondi family moving from rural Lucania up to industrial Milan, where recently widowed Rosaria (Katina Paxinou) and her four sons hope to find a better life. “My family arrived like an earthquake,” sighs Vincenzo, the eldest son who’s already in Milan, to his fiancĂ©e (a young Claudia Cardinale) after his mother and siblings crash their engagement party and interrupt the first strains of the flowing Nino Rota score that would earn the composer a gig on The Godfather. From there, Visconti paves the way for rollicking family sagas like 2003’s The Best of Youth, unspooling his tale across three brisk hours and five overlapping chapters, one for each of the Parondi boys. Over time, idealistic Rocco (Delon, magnetic even when dubbed by an actor who pronounces his character’s name as though it were spelled with eight rs), closeted older brother Simone (Salvatori) and local prostitute Nadia (Girardot, sensational) emerge as the true focal points. Stubbornly attached to the clannish virtues of his father’s generation, Rocco can’t help but forgive Simone even his most violent transgressions—including Nadia’s brutal semipublic rape—as his moral absolutism rots into something perverse as he tries to hold the family together. Watching the film so far removed from the time of its making underlines the tragedy of Rocco’s anachronistic nature and compensates for the increasing clumsiness of Visconti’s more topical subplots. “The world’s a one-way street,” Girardot’s character blithely declares, but Rocco still can’t see that he’s speeding toward a dead end.
David Ehrlich

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 5: Sun Jan 5

The Defiant Ones (Kramer, 1958): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 12.20pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the Sidney Poitier season at BFI Southbank and also screens on January 19th. Full details can be found here.

BFI introdcution:
Poitier’s first collaboration with director Stanley Kramer is an action-packed thriller that transformed the actor into the first bona fide Black movie star. He plays Noah Cullen, an escaped convict in the Deep South who is handcuffed to Tony Curtis’ embittered racist. To stay alive and out of reach of the authorities, they forge an embittered friendship. As a man seething with rage from a life of indignity, Poitier is superb. It earned him a landmark first Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 4: Sat Jan 4

No1: The Last Days of Disco (Stillman, 1998): ICA Cinema, 6pm


This Lost Reels presentation is from an original 35mm print, and will be followed by an in-person Q&A with writer/director Whit Stillman.

Time Out review:
Manhattan, the early '80s. Recent graduates from an upper crust college, Alice (Chloe Sevigny) and Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) - flatmates and friends of a sort - pass their days working as trainee publishing editors, and most of their nights discussing social niceties at a fashionable disco where assistant manager Des (Eigeman) courts the boss's disfavour by admitting the wrong kind of clientele. The girls hang out at the disco with a preppy bunch of Harvard admen and lawyers; rumour, rivalry and falling-out is rife and relationships are frequently at risk. The third comedy of manners in Whit Stillman's loose trilogy about the 'doomed bourgeois in love' again highlights the writer/director's expertise with naturalistically articulate dialogue whose idioms, ironies and absurdities provide vivid insights into the delusions, desires and often ludicrous tribal rituals of the young, privileged and, mostly, pretty ineffectual. Like Metropolitan and Barcelona, it's a brittle, sporadically brilliant film, very funny but rooted in social, political, historical and emotional realities. Beckinsale, especially, is a revelation, making Charlotte smug, spiteful, sexy and, underneath, rather sad, all with a spot-on accent.
Geoff Andrew

Here
(and above) is the trailer.

**************************

No2: La Terra Trema (Visconti, 1948): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 4.20pm

This presentation, which is also screened on January 16th, is part of the Luchino Visconti season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Time Out review:
Luchino Vsconti's second feature (five years after Ossessione in 1942) was an improvised drama produced by the Communist Party, filmed with and among Sicilian fishermen in the village of Aci-Trezza. An overwhelmingly stark chronicle of a family which strives but fails to break out of the poverty trap - they try to cut out the middlemen by embarking in what one might call 'free enterprise', with disastrous results - La Terra Trema
stands as a masterpiece of neo-realism, a social conscience cinema of proletarian ways and means. Yet, despite this, it's no less 'operatic' than the director's later decadent melodramas: it surges with great tides of emotion. The film is distinguished by its vivid camerawork, at once poetic and 'documentary'. (Francesco Rosi and Franco Zeffirelli, it may be noted, served as assistant directors.) Visconti only finished the film by selling some of his mother's jewellery and an apartment in Rome. Yet, true to his breeding, he brought home one of the boys from the film and installed him as his butler.
Tom Charity

Here (and above ) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 3: Fri Jan 3

The Way We Were (Pollack, 1973): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.15pm

This 4K presentation also screens on January 13th and 23rd and is part of the Big Screen Classics season (the 'Singers on Screen' strand) at BFI Southbank.

Vulture review:
The Way We Were is told in a series of flashbacks and montages, primed for maximum nostalgia and some truly gorgeous period costuming. The entire film is Hollywood confection from start to finish, opening with the lush, familiar croon of Barbara Streisand’s famous titular song, allowing Robert Redford to wear his navy whites for so long that he begins to look as though he’s emerged from a perfume ad. There are some scenes cut from the conclusion that make the timeline a little confusing, but The Way We Were does not endure because of its plot. It endures because of a fearsome, desirous performance from Streisand, and Redford’s cold beauty, and all the ways that it captures a one-sided desire many of us have felt.
Christina Newland

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 2: Thu Jan 2

New Jack City (Van Peebles, 1991): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6pm


This 35mm screening is part of the Big Screen Classics strand (the 'Singers on Screen' season) at BFI Southbank. Details here.

Time Out review:
Touted as a ground-breaking addition to the crime-on-the-streets genre, Mario Van Peebles' thriller is far more modest: a high-tech update on that old warhorse, a mobster's rise and fall. Ruthless Nino Brown (Wesley Snipes) lords it over a New York neighbourhood with an empire built on crack and violence. It's only when two disenchanted streetwise officers come together - African-American Scott Appleton (Ice T) and Nick Peretti (Judd Nelson) - that his domain is effectively threatened. The movie pays lip service to social analysis while delighting in the paraphernalia of violence. As such, it's a superior example of what used to be called blaxploitation, with Van Peebles piling on corruption and carnage for all he's worth.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 1: Wed Jan 1

Bellissima (Visconti, 1951): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.30pm


This 4K presentation, which is also screened on January 27th, is part of the Luchino Visconti season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Perhaps the most unjustly neglected of Luchino Visconti’s early films is this hilarious 1951 comedy, tailored to the talents of Anna Magnani, about a working-class woman who is determined to get her plain seven-year-old daughter into movies. A wonderful send-up of the Italian film industry and the illusions that it fosters, delineated in near-epic proportions with style and brio. With Walter Chiari and Alessandro Blasetti.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 357: Tue Dec 31

 Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922): BFI IMAX, 5.15pm


This is an IMAX screening.

Chicago Reader review:
A masterpiece of the German silent cinema and easily the most effective version ofDracula on record. F.W. Murnau's 1922 film follows the Bram Stoker novel fairly closely, although he neglected to purchase the screen rights—hence, the title change. But the key elements are all Murnau's own: the eerie intrusions of expressionist style on natural settings, the strong sexual subtext, and the daring use of fast-motion and negative photography.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 356: Mon Dec 30

Barking Dogs Never Bite (Bong Joon-ho, 2000): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6pm

This 4K presentation also screens on December 19th and is part of the the Golden Age of Korean Films season at BFI Southbank.

Time Out review:
This eloquent social comedy has a self-pitying professor hunting out the mutt who's been disturbing his sleep. He locks the creature in a closet in the basement of his apartment block and later stumbles across a janitor with a taste for dog soup (dog lovers might want to give this one a miss). The trouble is, he realises he put away the wrong hound. Ironies multiply. His pregnant wife drives him crazy. He throws the right dog from the roof of the building. His main rival for a top job is beheaded in a drunken subway accident. His wife buys a poodle. And so on. Beautifully directed, unsentimental and darkly funny.
Tom Charity

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 355: Sun Dec 29

Untold Scandal (E J-yong, 2003): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 3pm

This 35mm presentation, part of the Golden Age of Korean Film season, also scrrens on Decembner 20th. Full details here.

Time Out review:
Ennui and overexposure in the sexual arena are key stimuli for the libertines in Choderlos de Laclos’ ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’, and after ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, ‘Valmont’, ‘Cruel Intentions’ and more, any filmmaker attempting another adaptation runs the risk of incurring similar sensations in the audience. This Korean remake re-spins the story in the late-nineteenth century twilight of the country’s Chosun dynasty, and arranges the tale’s erotic strife as a contest not only between the precepts of official high-Confucian morality and its trustees’ decadence, but also between that local-grown hypocrisy and the threat of religious puritanism imported from abroad. Thus Laclos’ chaste Madame de Tourvel becomes the persecuted Catholic Lady Chong (Jeon Do-Yeon), and her would-be corruptor Cho-Won (Korean TV star Bae Yong-Jun, genially rakish) must feign theological dissidence as well as personal virtue to conquer her. Not that the film pushes such points. A prologue alerts us not to take it as historical gospel: ‘The men and women who appear here are lecherous and immoral beyond belief,’ it promises. ‘One is led to doubt whether they indeed existed.’ In the event, it’s a shame that the film takes itself increasingly seriously as it proceeds. Rarely outright salacious, it unfolds its intrigue with a certain dramatic equanimity and visual period splendour – it’s richly shot by Kim Byeong-Il, Park Chan-Wook’s cinematographer on ‘Sympathy for Mr Vengeance’. But that much good work done, the film runs out of ideas, and the endgame plays out as doggedly prosaic. It’s hard not to pine for the nudie-painting, virgin-breaking Cho-Won in the full flower of his pre-comeuppance mischief.
Nicholas Barber

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 354: Sat Dec 28

Naked Lunch (Cronenberg, 1991): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm

This film also screens on January 7th. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
This David Cronenberg masterpiece (1991) breaks every rule in adapting a literary classic—maybe “On Naked Lunch” would be a more accurate title—but justifies every transgression with its artistry and audacity. Adapted not only from William S. Burroughs’s free-form novel but also from several other Burroughs works, this film pares away all the social satire and everything that might qualify as celebration of gay sex, yielding a complex and highly subjective portrait of Burroughs himself (expertly played by Peter Weller) as a tortured sensibility in flight from his own femininity, proceeding zombielike through an echo chamber of projections (insects, drugs, typewriters) and repudiations. According to the densely compacted metaphors that compose this dreamlike movie, writing equals drugs equals sex, and the pseudonymous William Lee, as politically incorrect as Burroughs himself, repeatedly disavows his involvement in all three
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is te trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 353: Fri Dec 27

Cure (Kurosawa, 1997): Prince Charles Cinema, 12.25pm


This screening is part of a two-film tribute to Kiyoshi Kurosawa at the Prince Charles Cinema. Cure also screens at other times in December and January while PULSE (2001) is being shown on February 11th. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
The prolific Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been at work for nearly two decades, sometimes making straight-to-video features but more recently receiving some belated international recognition. The engrossing Cure (1997) stars Koji Yakusho (Shall We Dance?, The Eel) as a troubled detective exploring a series of murders committed through hypnotic suggestion (as in The Manchurian Candidate), and while its creepy mystery plot is easy enough to follow even when it turns metaphysical, it’s unsatisfying as a story precisely because it aspires to create a mounting sense of dread by enlarging questions rather than answering them. Like other recent thrillers by this director, it’s fairly grisly, though Kurosawa’s frequent long shots impart a cool, detached tone to the cruelty and violence. Stylistically it’s the most inventive Japanese feature I’ve seen in some time, much more unpredictable than Takeshi Kitano’s recent yakuza exercises.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) ios the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 352: Thu Dec 26

The Holdovers (Payne, 2023): Prince Charles Cinema, 5.15pm


This great modern Christmas film is part of the Christmas season at the Prince Charles Cinema and is also being screened on December 5th. Full details here.

Time Out review:
Loneliness, Vietnam-era alienation and a sourpuss Paul Giamatti aren’t, on paper, the things of which cockle-warming yuletide classics are typically made – any more than teams of hi-tech thieves sticking up Japanese corporations. But like
Die Hard, Alexander Payne’s wintry story of human connection is an unexpected Christmas gem. It even plays a tiny bit like a 1970-set version of ‘A Christmas Carol’, with Giamatti’s cranky ancient history teacher learning uncomfortable truths about himself in a redemption arc that gives the film a genuine glow. Payne’s old Sideways star is, as ever, a curmudgeonly delight as Paul Hunham, a universally unpopular member of the teaching staff at New England’s Barton Academy. In fact, his outsider status at the prep school is such that he’s given up trying to charm his students or colleagues, instead embracing his own pain-in-the-arse misanthropy, self-parody (he’s always ready with an Aeneas reference) and self-limiting horizons. ‘You can’t even dream a whole dream, can you?’ chides a colleague. So when someone is needed to babysit a handful of ‘holdovers’ over the holidays, pupils whose parents have more or less abandoned them during Christmas, it’s Paul who is stuck with the job. Spending the festive period with the gawky, sharp-tongued and inwardly raging Tully (Dominic Sessa), a young man abandoned by his mum and grieving his dad, immediately feels like hell for all concerned. What follows is a coming-of-age story for Tully and Paul, and a reminder that the sure-to-be-awards-bound Giamatti deserves to be top of the bill far more often, instead of being lumbered with supporting roles in so-so blockbusters like Jungle Cruise and San Andreas. Few other actors could inhabit this rumpled, embittered man and make you root for him so wholeheartedly. The Holdovers is a triumphant comeback story for Alexander Payne, too. The director bounces back from 2017’s misfiring Downsizing to find his tone – a rare kind of jaded hopefulness – with all his old assurance. He adds another string to his bow here in spotting the talented Sessa. The newcomer is Giamatti’s equal in a volatile odd-couple dynamic that ebbs and flows before the pair finally begin to understand each other. Props, too, to Da'Vine Joy Randolph (Only Murders in the Building), who hits all the film’s major keys as the school’s bubbly but blunt cook, and some of the most touching minor ones, too. The death of her son in Vietnam haunts The Holdovers as much as that of Tully’s dad. All three characters are nursing broken hearts but their path to solidarity is never straightforward or predictable. David Hemingson’s screenplay makes every moment of reluctant connection feel earned. And I loved that The Holdovers isn’t just set in the 1970s; it feels like it was made then too. From the desaturated cinematography, captured with vintage lenses, to the lived-in production design, you could be watching a Hal Ashby movie (the film’s trailer even has an old-school voiceover). It’s a bittersweet callback to a golden age when there were a whole lot more movies like this one.
Phil De Semlyen

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 351: Wed Dec 25

 HAPPY CHRISTMAS

The repertory cinemas are closed today but you can catch my recommendations for great movies on television over the holiday period via my 'X' handle @tpaleyfilm or on Bluesky @tpaleyfilm.bsky.social with the hashtag #bestxmasholidayfilmonTVtoday.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 350: Tue Dec 24

It's A Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946): Prince Charles Cinema, 5.30pm


Christmas Eve and It’s A Wonderful Life on 35mm at the Prince Charles is always one of the best screenings of the year. Don’t worry if you can’t get along on December 24th their are plenty of other screenings of this bona fide great film (regardless of Christmas or not). You can find the full details here (of screenings from 35mm and digital).

Chicago Reader review: 
The film Frank Capra was born to make. This 1946 release marked his return to features after four years of turning out propaganda films for the government, and Capra poured his heart and soul into it. James Stewart stars as a small-town nobody, on the brink of suicide, who believes his life is worthless. Guardian angel Henry Travers shows him how wrong he is by letting Stewart see what would have happened had he never been born. Wonderfully drawn and acted by a superb cast (Donna Reed, Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell, Lionel Barrymore, Gloria Grahame) and told with a sense of image and metaphor (the use of water is especially elegant) that appears in no other Capra film. The epiphany of movie sentiment and a transcendent experience.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 349: Mon Dec 23

Memento Mori (Kim Tae-yong/Min Kyu-dong, 1999): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.45pm

This 4K presentation is part of the Golden Age of Korean Films season at BFI Southbank.

Time Out review:
When Park Ki-Hyung declined to make a sequel to his surprise hit Whispering Corridors, producer Oh had the smart idea of offering the challenge to two recent graduates from the Korean Film Academy who had already collaborated on the excellent shorts Seventeen and Pale Blue Dot. They came up with a very different take on a haunting in a high school for girls: a convoluted tale of teenage lesbian feelings, telepathy, sexual rivalry, spirit possession and unwanted pregnancy. Intricately structured and made with great technical brio, the film falters in its final reel in which the entire school is terrorised by the spirit of a wronged girl driven to suicide. But when it forgets about grandstanding and concentrates on the intimate feelings of its protagonists, it's quite something.
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 348: Sun Dec 22

Gremlins (Dante, 1984): Regent Street Cinema, 2.40pm


This is a 35mm presentation.

Chicago Reader review:
E.T. with the lid off (1984). At the center of this horror comedy is a tidy family parable of the kind so dear to the heart of producer Steven Spielberg: the cute little whatzits who turn into marauding monsters when they pass through puberty (here gooily envisioned as “the larval stage”) are clearly metaphors for children, and the teenager (Zach Galligan) whose lapse of responsibility unleashes the onslaught is a stand-in for the immature parents of the 80s (Poltergeist). But Spielberg's finger wagging is overwhelmed by Joe Dante's roaring, undisciplined direction, which (sometimes through sheer sloppiness) pushes the imagery to unforeseen, untidy, and ultimately disturbing extremes. Dante is perhaps the first filmmaker since Frank Tashlin to base his style on the formal free-for-all of animated cartoons; he is also utterly heartless. With Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, and more movie-buff in-jokes than Carter has pills.
Dave Kehr


Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 347: Sat Dec 21

The Muppet Christmas Carol (Henson, 1992): Regent Street Cinema, 2.40pm


This is a 35mm presentation.

Time Out review:
Acted to the parsimonious hilt by the human Scrooge (Michael Caine), and framed by author-narrator Charles Dickens (the Great Gonzo) addressing his rodent audience (Rizzo the Rat), the story survives. Well, it would: it's the same story of redemption that powers Stallone movies. All the pen-pushing glovesters in Scrooge's office run on fear of dismissal, a topical note, with Bob Cratchit (Kermit the Frog) negotiating but nervous. Not so his wife Miss Piggy, ready to have a go at Scrooge, but mindful of the needs of their family, a brood as mixed as you would expect from pigs and frogs, which explains the medical condition of Tiny Tim, a froglet with a cough on crutches. The three ghosts of Christmas are wonderful. Elsewhere, Fozzie Bear bears a resemblance to Francis L Sullivan in the David Lean Dickens adaptations, and there's a shop called Micklewhite. As an actor, Kermit can corrugate his forehead vertically. Good fun.
Brian Case

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 346: Fri Dec 20

In Praise of Love (Godard, 2001): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm

This is part of a mini Jean-Luc Godard season (details here) at the ICA Cinema.and screens from a 4K restoration.

Chicago Reader review:
Jean-Luc Godard’s 2001 feature, his best since Nouvelle Vague (1990), is in some respects as difficult as that film, though visually it’s stunning and unique even among Godard’s work. The first part, set in contemporary Paris, was shot in black-and-white 35-millimeter, while the second, set in Brittany two years earlier, is in floridly oversaturated color. A young man (Bruno Putzulu) interviews men and women for an undefined project called “Eloge de l’Amour,” which will involve three couples (young, adult, and old) experiencing four stages of love (meeting, physical passion, separation, and reconciliation). One young woman he spends time with is the granddaughter of a couple he’s met earlier, former members of the French resistance negotiating to sell their story to a Hollywood studio. As in his magnum opus, Histoire(s) du Cinema, Godard is centrally concerned with the ethics of true and false representation and with the lost promise of cinema, which leads to some anti-American reflections ranging from reasonable to over-the-top. This is a twilight film, dark and full of sorrow, yet lyrical and beautiful as well.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the New Yorker's Richard Brody's video discussion of a key scene.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 345: Thu Dec 19

Notre Musique (Godard, 2004): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm


This is part of a mini Jean-Luc Godard season (details here) at the ICA Cinema.

Chicago Reader review:
Jean-Luc Godard isn’t being as hard on his audience this time around, and it seems to have paid off: I’ve yet to encounter any hostile critical response to this feature, a mellow and meditative reflection on the ravages of war. Set in Sarajevo and structured in three parts after Dante’s Divine Comedy, this beautiful film (2004) centers on a young French-Jewish journalist based in Israel who’s attending the same literary conference as Godard. The wars it contemplates through a montage of documentary and archival footage include ones waged in Algeria, Vietnam, Bosnia, and the Middle East; Native American victims also make an appearance in Sarajevo, alongside certain others.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 344: Wed Dec 18

No 1: Christmas in August (Hur Jin-ho, 1988): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the Golden Age of Korean Films season at BFI Southbank. The screening of Christmas in August on Wednesday 4 December 20:55 NFT1 will be introduced by Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham, authors of Film Korea: The Ghibliotheque Guide to the World of Korean Cinema.

Time Out review:
A likeable, understated movie about facing up to death, from a first time director. Jung-Won (Han, Korea's coolest young actor) is a pro photographer with his own shop in a suburb of Seoul; only he and his immediate relatives know that he has just a few months to live. Nothing 'dramatic' happens. He runs into his childhood sweetheart and regrets that her life hasn't worked out better. He goes to a friend's funeral. He makes a point of seeing other old friends. And he develops a slightly abrasive friendship with a young woman traffic warden, which leaves her wanting to know him better and not understanding why he isn't 'there' for her. Hur conjures up quotidian rhythms very plausibly, and draws fine performances from his whole cast. It was the last film shot by the great Yoo Young-Kil, to whose memory it's dedicated.
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is an extract.


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No2: It's A Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946): Mildmay Club, 7pm


This is a 16mm presentation from the folks at Cine-real.

Chicago Reader review: 
The film Frank Capra was born to make. This 1946 release marked his return to features after four years of turning out propaganda films for the government, and Capra poured his heart and soul into it. James Stewart stars as a small-town nobody, on the brink of suicide, who believes his life is worthless. Guardian angel Henry Travers shows him how wrong he is by letting Stewart see what would have happened had he never been born. Wonderfully drawn and acted by a superb cast (Donna Reed, Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell, Lionel Barrymore, Gloria Grahame) and told with a sense of image and metaphor (the use of water is especially elegant) that appears in no other Capra film. The epiphany of movie sentiment and a transcendent experience.
Dave Kehr


Here (and above) is the trailer.


Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 343: Tue Dec 17

No 1: Numero Deux (Godard, 1975): ICA Cinema, 8pm

This is part of a mini Jean-Luc Godard season (details here) at ICA Cinema, and is part of a double-bill with the director's 1976 film Coment Ca Va.

Chicago Reader review:
Often juxtaposing or superimposing two or more video images within the same 'Scope frame, Jean-Luc Godard's remarkable (if seldom screened) 1975 feature—one of the most ambitious and innovative films in his career—literally deconstructs family, sexuality, work, and alienation before our very eyes. Our ears are given a workout as well; the punning commentary and dialogue, whose overlapping meanings can only be approximated in the subtitles, form part of one of his densest sound tracks. Significantly, the film never moves beyond the vantage point of one family's apartment, and the only time the whole three-generation group (played by nonprofessionals) are brought together in one shot is when they're watching an unseen television set. In many respects, this is a film about reverse angles and all that they imply; it forms one of Godard's richest and most disturbing meditations on social reality. The only full 'Scope images come in the prologue and epilogue, when Godard himself is seen at his video and audio controls. 
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here is the trailer.

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No 2 Gremlins (Dante, 1984): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm


This is part of the Christmas season at the Prince Charles Cinema and is also being screened on December 6th and 20th. Details here. There's also a 35mm screening of the film at Regent Street Cinema on December 22nd.

Chicago Reader review:
E.T. with the lid off (1984). At the center of this horror comedy is a tidy family parable of the kind so dear to the heart of producer Steven Spielberg: the cute little whatzits who turn into marauding monsters when they pass through puberty (here gooily envisioned as “the larval stage”) are clearly metaphors for children, and the teenager (Zach Galligan) whose lapse of responsibility unleashes the onslaught is a stand-in for the immature parents of the 80s (Poltergeist). But Spielberg's finger wagging is overwhelmed by Joe Dante's roaring, undisciplined direction, which (sometimes through sheer sloppiness) pushes the imagery to unforeseen, untidy, and ultimately disturbing extremes. Dante is perhaps the first filmmaker since Frank Tashlin to base his style on the formal free-for-all of animated cartoons; he is also utterly heartless. With Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, and more movie-buff in-jokes than Carter has pills.
Dave Kehr


Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 343: Mon Dec 16

The Brighton Strangler (Nosseck, 1945): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.35pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the 'Projecting the Archive' strand at BFI Southbank and will feature an extended introduction by curator Ehsan Khoshbakht.

BFI introduction:
When a theatre is bombed in wartime London, a famous actor loses his memory and assumes the personality of the character he’s been playing on stage: The Brighton Strangler. British expat stars John Loder and June Duprez bring authenticity to their roles – much needed to counterbalance the Hollywood depiction of Britain’s south coast. Director Max Nosseck was a colourful character, best-known for making low-budget crime dramas across different countries, of which this is a deliciously melodramatic example. Taking place over the theatre’s Christmas closure, this RKO B-movie makes a perfect alternative seasonal offering.

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 342: Sun Dec 15

Les Cousins (Chabrol, 1959): Cine Lumiere, 2.40pm


This 35mm presentation, also screening on December 18th, is part of the excellent Claude Chabrol season at Cine Lumiere. Full details here.

Time Out review:
The town mouse and his country cousin. Or, the story of two students, one who was very, very good, and one who was very, very bad; but the bad one passed his exams, got the girl (when he wanted her), and survived to live profitably ever after. A fine, richly detailed tableau of student life in Paris, and Chabrol's first statement (in his second film) of his sardonic view of life as a matter of the survival of the fittest. The centrepiece, as so often in the early days of the nouvelle vague, is an orgiastic party climaxed, as the guest sleeps it off next morning, by a sublimely cruel and characteristic 'joke' by the bad cousin (Jean-Claude Brialy) when he performs an eerie Wagnerian charade with candelabra and Gestapo cap to wake a Jewish student into nightmare.
Tom Milne

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 341: Sat Dec 14

Mother and a Guest (Shin Sang-ok, 1961): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 12.40pm

This film, which also screens on December 1st, will be shown from an archive 35mm print. The prersentation is part of the Golden Age of Korean Films season at BFI Southbank.

BFI introduction:
Six-year-old Ok-hee lives with her widowed mother and stern grandmother-in-law in a rural village. When the kindly Mr. Han arrives to stay as a boarder, Ok-hee watches with curiosity and delight as feelings develop between her mother and the father figure she always longed for. Shin Sang-ok and his actor wife Choi Eun-hee were two key figures in the Golden Age. Mother and a Guest is considered among their finest achievements.

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 340: Fri Dec 13

Black Christmas (Clark, 1974): Picturehouse Central, 8.15pm

This Christmas movie horror classic is on across Picturehouse cinemas in London tonight and also Saturday 14th and Monday 16th. Full details here.

Popcorn Horror website review:
What’s so terrifying about Black Christmas is its own history. If you’re a film buff you’re probably aware of this film’s existence: “that Christmas themed horror”/”the first slasher”. It's this status as one of the earliest slashers that sets up a false sense of security. Unlike the standard template however, the antagonist is not a lumbering threat. The fact he stays hidden in the shadows of the house means his omnipresence (an idiom Black Christmas does conform to) is verisimilitudinous without resorting to fantastical devices.
Something is a little unsettling about Black Christmas. It’s a little too confined, the players somewhat more trapped, the playing field is that bit smaller. There’s the traditional set-up but then, early on are the phone-calls. Not calls that Scream hoped to parody; Scream would be lucky if it could capture something as revolting as these. The calls in the movie are genuinely some of the most horrifying, deranged audio ever committed to film. It’s something that will stand out and stay with you. This helps build the palpable tension and star Olivia Hussey is a grand scream queen.
But the best thing about Black Christmas? The plot goes in a direction that will leave you thinking for days , if  not weeks. Yes, there are huge leaps in logic (why do the girls stay in the sorority house after several murders? Why do the police not have someone next to the phone 24/7?) It doesn’t  matter, this remains utterly original and raw. Thanks to the performances and brutality of the story, this continues to be a terrifying movie to all but the most cynical; and frankly if this picture doesn’t make your skin crawl, it’s on too tight.
RJ Bayley
Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 339: Thu Dec 12

Tere Mere Sapne (Ananad, 1971): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.30pm

This film is screening as part of the 'Film Wallahs' strand at BFI Southbank showcasing new South Asian and world cinema. Full details here.

BFI introduction:
In this adaptation of AJ Cronin’s The Citadel, we follow a young, idealistic doctor as he moves to a small village with intentions of making a difference. But life soon finds him compromising his values. When a tragedy befalls him and his new bride, the bitterness in the doctor exacerbates his pursuit of wealth and power. But it comes at a price. We are delighted to welcome Vijay Anand’s son to introduce the restored version of this riveting classic.

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 338: Wed Dec 11

The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.15pm


This is
part of the Christmas season at the Prince Charles Cinema and is also being screened on December 17th. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
There are no Art Deco nightclubs, shimmering silk gowns, or slamming bedroom doors to be seen, but this 1940 film is one of Ernst Lubitsch's finest and most enduring works, a romantic comedy of dazzling range that takes place almost entirely within the four walls of a leather-goods store in prewar Budapest. James Stewart is the earnest, slightly awkward young manager; Margaret Sullavan is the new sales clerk who gets on his nerves—and neither realizes that they are partners in a passionate romance being carried out through the mails. Interwoven with subplots centered on the other members of the shop's little family, the romance proceeds through Lubitsch's brilliant deployment of point of view, allowing the audience to enter the perceptions of each individual character at exactly the right moment to develop maximum sympathy and suspense. With Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, Sara Haden, and Felix Bressart.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 337: Tue Dec 10

Die Bad (Ryoo Seung-wan, 2000): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm


This film is part of the Golden Age of Korean Films season and also screens on December 27th. Full details here.

Time Out review:
Sparky indie feature in four chapters, two previously shown as shorts in their own right. The chapters are deliberately varied in style (ciné-vérité, horror-noir, etc), but linked into a loose narrative. Seok-Hwan (Ryoo himself) provokes a pool hall fight between rival student gangs in which one guy dies. Seven years later he's become a cop and his kid brother is drifting into crime. Meanwhile the accidental murderer Sung-Bin (Park) is released from jail and universally ostracised. Haunted by the ghost of the boy he killed, he becomes a crimelord's enforcer and eventually revenges himself on Seok-Hwan by putting his brother in danger. By the end everyone is dead, dying or merely irredeemable. Basically an excuse for Ryoo and friends to show off their stunt action skills, it says all the obvious things about macho values and delinquency, but comes up fresh and watchable thanks to its play with form. A version trimmed by 3 to 4 minutes was a surprise hit in Korea.
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is an extract.

 

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 336: Mon Dec 9

A Bloodthirsty Killer (Lee Yong-min, 1965): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.40pm

This film is part of the Golden Age of Korean Films season and also screens on December 14th. Full details here. Tonight's screening will be introduced by Professor Jinhee Choi, King’s College London.

BFI introduction:
A murdered daughter-in-law returns as a vengeful spirit. While the film adheres to the classic Korean horror tropes, it also absorbs influences from Hollywood and Japanese horror. Lee Yong-min’s distinctive style deftly captures the tension between Western modernity and pre-modern Korean traditions, coexisting and interacting in the shifting space of a rapidly changing society.

Here (and above) is an extract.