Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 304: Mon Nov 2

Down Terrace (Wheatley, 2009): Nickel Cinema, 6pm & 8.45pm

Introduction to a special evening of two screenings of Ben Wheatley's debut film:
'This is a F&TT&N 5 Launch screening! We celebrate the launch of Ben Wheatley's latest fanzine - film & television Thoughts & notes 5 - the Low Budget issue: with a special screening and Q&A with Ben of his debut feature DOWN TERRACE - made for less than £10K in 2009 Ben's latest fanzine unpacks some of the thoughts, processes and mistakes in making the film. It also features an interview with Charlotte Regan about making her debut feature Scrapper. Every ticket to this event comes with a copy of the fanzine. Be the first to get one - only at the Nickel.'

Time Out review:
The British gangster movie has taken a self-inflicted beating of late, but it’s not out for the count. Staying well clear of the usual parade of putdowns and punch-ups, ‘Down Terrace’ takes an unexpected approach to the genre, fusing the wry realism of Ken Loach with the blackly comic bloodlust of Ken Russell to produce perhaps the best homegrown movie of the year so far. The action is confined almost exclusively to one claustrophobic suburban house, where shiftless, insular dope dealers Karl (co-writer Robin Hill) and his petulant, paranoid dad, Bill (a stunning first-time performance from Hill’s father, Robert), are facing trouble with the law and a snitch in their midst. Everyone is in the frame: brooding matriarch Maggie (Julia Deakin), chubby, avuncular neighbour Garvey (Tony Way) and sadistic Irish thug Pringle (Michael Smiley) are all called upon to explain their actions, leading to rows, recriminations and, inevitably, bloodshed. Lots of it. What director Ben Wheatley and his writing partner, Hill – veterans of TV comedy shows like ‘Time Trumpet’ – manage to achieve in ‘Down Terrace’ is a mounting, sickening sense of a world in freefall, where morality has been compromised to the point of meaninglessness and where distrust leads to murder, even within the family unit. And while this does result in a few berserk plot diversions, particularly in the final act, Wheatley and Hill establish such an oppressive mood and construct their characters so meticulously that even in its most extreme moments, the film remains engrossing, not to mention consistently funny and even, at times, rather sweet.
Tom Huddleston

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 303: Sun Nov 1

Our Story (Blier, 1984): Cine Lumiere, 2pm

This 35mm presentation is also screened on November 11th and is part of the Nathalie Baye season at Cine Lumiere. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
A businessman with a hangdog face (Alain Delon) drinks too much beer on a train. “What will happen to him?” he asks aloud, then answers: “Absolutely nothing.” An affectless woman (Nathalie Baye) appears and tells him, “The story begins on a train.” A sexual encounter between them leaves him smitten. Begging her to use him “as a minor character,” he follows her home to the suburbs and installs himself in her easy chair to wallow in his infatuation and drink more beer, sometimes joining her friends and bathrobe-clad neighbors in parading from house to house. Bertrand Blier begins this enchanting 1984 burlesque of bourgeois marital manners in the self-reflexive spirit of Alain Robbe-Grillet, morphs it into a droll Bunuelian farce, then ends it on a surprisingly sentimental note. With Genevieve Fontanel.
Bill Stamets

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 302: Sat Oct 31

Nosferatu (Eggers, 2024): Everyman Screen on the Green, 4.45pm

This 35mm presentation also screens on October 29th and 30th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
No one denies it: F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is still the gold standard for Dracula onscreen. This 1922 silent German expressionist film—an unauthorized riff on Bram Stoker’s Dracula—harnessed the macabre tale of desire and despair from the 1897 novel. By turning Count Dracula into the grotesque Count Orlok and moving the story to a German town, Murnau created something entirely its own. Despite lawsuits and near extinction, Nosferatu survived—and its shadow still looms over every vampire film made since. An adaptation was previously undertaken by Werner Herzog (1979’s Nosferatu the Vampyre) and with The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019), and The Northman (2022) under his belt, director Robert Eggers daringly follows in these footsteps. Eggers’s Nosferatu is predictably stylized—a cryptic horror that gradually leverages its score and pallid lighting to cultivate a grand, disquieting epic. It does so with Ellen (the Mina Murray character from Stoker’s novel, played by Lily-Rose Depp) in the foreground. “Come to me,” Ellen calls out in a sleepwalking state. Her call is answered by a brutish voice, and in a second, a communion between the melancholic girl and a demon takes place in the outside garden. This nightmare haunts Ellen to the present—1838 in the fictional German port town of Wisborg. There, she’s comforted by her new husband, Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), a too-sincere property man. This comfort is cut short. Hutter’s boss, a certain suspicious Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), sends him to the Carpathian Mountains to help secure a property for Count Orlok in Wisborg. Bill Skarsgård’s rendition of the vampire is unlike any predecessor: he’s a brute with a bushy mustache who looms just out of focus for most of the film. A rising king of horror, Skarsgård makes sure to put his stamp on this legacy. The narrative unfolds with all the classic Dracula checkpoints—a feverish account from Hutter to the vampire’s trip on the Demeter. It’s interspersed with tributes to the yearning vampire in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and the fear of the plague featured in the original silent film. It’s fair to say Eggers is juggling a lot, and it’s these influences that pull the film apart at times; it often clumsily balances the absurdity and horror of its predecessors. Yet, it’s the actors who pull together Nosferatu. Thanks to a career-making performance by Depp, Ellen is at the heart of this forlorn nightmare—it’s a performance that pulls its audience deeply into this sinister love affair.
Maxwell Rabb

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 301: Fri Oct 30

Jennifer’s Body (Kusama, 2009): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.10pm

This 35mm screening is part of the National Film & Television School student-curated film seasons making their way across London cinemas in the next few months. Details here.

Time Out review:
Described by director Karyn Kusama (‘Girlfight’) as ‘a tribute to the fierce power of oestrogen’, this coming-of-age horror comedy typecasts beautiful ‘Transformers’ star Megan Fox as Jennifer, a high school alpha female in the ‘Heathers’ or ‘Mean Girls’ mould. However, by going against the grain of the ’80s horror movies to which it pays affectionate homage – ‘Carrie’, ‘Fright Night’, slasher movies in general – the script by ‘Juno’ writer Diablo Cody explores the toxic friendship between Jennifer and her nerdy, speccy bosom buddy, Needy (Amanda Seyfried). ‘Sandbox love never dies,’ so they are best friends forever. But when Jennifer’s encounter with a diabolical indie band ends with her being sacrificed and transformed into a literally maneating demon, Needy must see through her one-sided girl-crush in order to end Jennifer’s bloody reign of terror. A welcome antidote to the sexless romanticism of ‘Twilight’, Kusama and Cody’s female-driven horror comedy explores the premise that ‘hell is a teenage girl’. When the far from virginal Jennifer transforms, she simply becomes herself, but more so: her sexual power is magnified, she glows with health after feeding, and her cruel selfishness goes into overdrive. But not even Needy’s sensitive boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons) will believe that Jennifer’s body is now the embodiment of evil. There are weaknesses: Kusama’s set-piece scare scenes aren’t always frightening, Cody’s trademark teen slang is occasionally more forced than arch, and the mysterious psychic connection between Jennifer and Needy is never explained. But by tapping in to the same vein of ‘hormonal horror’ as the excellent ‘Ginger Snaps’, this offers a witty, subversive look at the darker side of teen friendship.
Nigel Floyd

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 300: Thu Oct 29

Dead of Night (Cavalcanti/Hamer/Dearden/Crichton, 1945): Castle Cinema, 6.45pm

This is a 16mm presentation from the great Cine-Real team and is also screened on October 25th. You can find the full details here.

Time Out review:
Nearly 60 years on, Ealing's compendium of spooky tales remains scary as hell. The best of the five stories, which we see enacted as they're related in turn by guests at a country house, are Alberto Cavalcanti's 'The Ventriloquist's Dummy', with Michael Redgrave possessed by his deceptively lifeless little partner, and Hamer's 'The Haunted Mirror', with the splendid Googie Withers a reluctant participant as history repeats itself; least frightening, but amusing, are Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as typically obsessive sporting coves in Crichton's 'Golfing Story'. Best of all, however, is the overall narrative arc, with the framing story finally taking a headlong rush into a nightmarish realm almost surreal in its weird clarity and familiarity.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 299: Wed Oct 28

Brother (Kitano, 2000): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.15pm

This 35mm screening is part of the National Film and Television School student-curated film seasons making their way to cinemas across London over the few months. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
A yakuza chief who’s turned up in LA helps his brother form an alliance between Japanese and black gangsters, which rivals the city’s Italian Mafia only until the new syndicate clashes with the old. The chief, played by writer-director-editor Takeshi Kitano (aka Beat Takeshi), exhales self-parody and cool in the same breath. Though he bonds with local Omar Epps in the buddy configuration typical of action comedy, Kitano’s handling of this convention—and of extreme violence—is unique. The buddies are characterized by deceptively simple twists on acknowledged stereotypes, and their intimacy evolves gradually through an accumulation of small gestures. A wizard at manipulating time, Kitano introduces staccato elements that interrupt the meditative pace even as they help set it. And he uses this paradoxically peaceful tension to inspire in us a kind of spiritual response to the violence—a sensation that’s utterly different from the visceral reaction we have to most actioners, which we only hope is catharsis.
Pat Graham

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 298: Tue Oct 27

X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (Corman, 1963): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.30pm

This 35mm presentation (also screened on November 23rd) is part of the Roger Corman season at BFI Southbank. You can find the full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Scientist Ray Milland discovers a potion that gives him X-ray vision, and after becoming a freak he ends his days as a sideshow attraction promoted by Don Rickles, who gives a fine low performance. This queasy 1963 SF parable was directed—quickly and cheaply—by Roger Corman for American-International, drawing some of its strength from its tawdry drive-in overtones. Milland grows through his debasement, and the production offers plenty of it.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 297: Mon Oct 26

Bamako (Sissako, 2006): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm

This 35mm presentation is in the Big Screen Classics strand at BFI Southbank . The movie also screens on November 10th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
A large portion of this highly original 2006 feature from Mali by Abderrahmane Sissako (Life on Earth, Waiting for Happiness) consists of a hearing devoted to the operations of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Africa, with judge, black and white lawyers, and witnesses all played by nonactors who’ve written their own speeches, many of them angry. All this is set outdoors, in a backyard in a poor section of Bamako, the capital of Mali, and the remainder of the film is devoted to glimpses of everyday African life taking place around this event. Sissako scrupulously avoids making any facile connections between his two blocks of material, and his cast, even when silent, are always eloquent.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 296: Sun Oct 25

Ball Of Fire (Hawks, 1941): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 12.15pm

This 35mm presentation is in the Billy Wilder season at BFI Southbank. The movie also screens on November 6th. Full details here.

Time Out review:
Marvellous performance from Barbara Stanwyck, all snap, crackle and pop as the brassy nightclub entertainer Sugarpuss O'Shea who seeks refuge with seven crusty old professors (plus Gary Cooper) to escape unwelcome attentions from a gangster, and whose vocabulary (not to mention charms) excite delighted wonderment in the professors since they have just reached 'Slang' in the encyclopaedia they are compiling. Rather surprisingly, Hawks slightly muffs the sequence in which the gangster and his aides get their comeuppance; otherwise his handling of the sparkling Brackett-Wilder script and its subversions of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is pure joy.
Tom Milne

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 295: Sat Oct 24

Heat (Mann, 1995): Everyman Screen on the Green, 5pm

Rejoice! Screenings from prints are back at Everyman Screen where Michael Mann returns from September 25th to October 24th in a season dedicated to five unforgettable works from one of modern cinema's most influential filmmakers. This 35mm screening (also being shown on October 23rd and 25th) is part of a programme that included Collateral, Last of the Mohicans and Thief. Full details here.

Time Out review:
Investigating a bold armed robbery which has left three security guards dead, LA cop Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), whose devotion to work is threatening his third marriage, follows a trail that leads him to suspect a gang of thieves headed by Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro). Trouble is, McCauley's cunning is at least equal to Hanna's, and that makes him a hard man to nail. Still, unknown to Hanna, McCauley's gang have their own troubles: one of their number is a volatile psychopath, while the businessman whose bonds they've stolen is not above some rough stuff himself. Such a synopsis barely scratches the surface of Mann's masterly crime epic. Painstakingly detailed, with enough characters, subplots and telling nuances to fill out half a dozen conventional thrillers, this is simply the best American crime movie - and indeed, one of the finest movies, period - in over a decade. The action scenes are better than anything produced by John Woo or Quentin Tarantino; the characterisation has a depth most American film-makers only dream of; the use of location, decor and music is inspired; Dante Spinotti's camerawork is superb; and the large, imaginatively chosen cast gives terrific support to the two leads, both back on glorious form.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 294: Fri Oct 23

The Devils (Russell, 1971): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.45pm

This is a 35mm restoration print of Ken Russell's cult movie and is being screened for a week ending its run on October 29th. You can find the full details here. The new director's cut was a great success at the London Film Festival and these 35mm presentations seem sure to prove very popular.

Time Out review:
There's plenty here that's still incredibly shocking. The scenes of plague are truly vile, as are the climatic torture scenes. But what horrifies most is Ken Russell's nihilistic view of the world in general, and humanity in particular: almost without exception, we are shown to be vain, lustful, perverse, self-serving, murderous, disease-ridden, exploitative, decadent, deluded creatures unworthy or incapable of salvation. Approach with extreme caution.
Tom Huddleston

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 293: Thu Oct 22

No 1: Stolen Desire (Imamura, 1958): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm

This is the opening night of the Shōhei Imamura season at the ICA. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Shohei Imamura’s first feature (1958), shot in black-and-white ‘Scope, deals with a form of working-class Kabuki that attracted him as a college student, but its story about an itinerant troupe performing a striptease version of the form near Osaka isn’t very inspired. Nevertheless, Imamura characteristically finds some vitality in vulgarity—though his more prosaic working title, “Tent Theatre,” was rejected by the production company.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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No 2: Rosemary's Baby (Polanski, 1968): Genesis Cinema, 6pm

This film will be followed by a group discussion in the bar area with Nick Walker of the Cult Classic Collective.

Chicago Reader review:
The treacherous-mate theme that has been a staple of “women's pictures” since Gaslight gets its ultimate, most agonizing development in this 1968 story about a young woman (Mia Farrow) who discovers her husband has sold her body for use by a witches' coven. The horror is more clinical than supernatural, as Polanski transforms Ira Levin's story into a metaphor for the loss of identity induced by pregnancy. A very sophisticated, very effective piece of work spun from primal images, with an excellent cast that includes John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Ralph Bellamy, Maurice Evans, Patsy Kelly, and Elisha Cook Jr.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 292: Wed Oct 21

The Mad Bomber (Gordon, 1972): Nickel Cinema, 8.55pm

This is a 16mm presentation.

Time Out review:
Detective Vince Edwards hunts Los Angeles for dynamiter Chuck Connors (a nicely quirky characterisation), who is writing to the papers to explain that his bombs are punishments meted out to society. The victims include a high school, a hospital, a Women's Lib group...and aid comes from the unlikely quarter of a pathetic rapist (Brand, another fine performance). Shoddily assembled, but brightly conceived and very well acted, it has a genuine 'B' movie vitality. (From a story by Marc Behm).

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 291: Tue Oct 20

Détective (Godard, 1985): Cine Lumiere, 6.20pm

This is a 35mm screening (which is also being shown on Sunday October 18th) and part of the Nathalie Baye season at Cine Lumiere. Full details here.

Time Out review:
A mini-masterpiece, this is a cross between a ‘Grand Hotel’ for the 1980s and film noir: a crumbling Paris hotel houses four groups of people whose paths occasionally cross. One is the group around detective Terzieff, still trying to solve a murder of years ago; another is the entourage of boxer Tiger Jones, in training with his manager (Johnny Hallyday); another is a couple on the verge of breaking up; and the last is the Mafia. Much of it, especially Léaud (Terzieff’s nephew-aide) and Cuny as a Godfather who judges men by their toilet habits, is riotously funny. Built on the charisma of its stars and on memories of the great thrillers of the ’40s, tenuously held together by Jean-Luc Godard’s romantic pessimism, curiosity and sense of humour, it’s co-dedicated, sensibly, to Clint Eastwood.
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 290: Mon Oct 19

Machine Gun Kelly (Corman, 1958): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.40pm

This film (also screened on November 14th) is part of the Roger Corman season at BFI Southbank. You can find the full details here.

Time Out review:
Roger Corman's first gangster movie is one of the most ambitious and rewarding of his '50s quickies: not because it transcends any of its inherent limitations, but rather because it indulges them recklessly. Apparently modelling itself on Siegel's Baby Face Nelson, it sees Kelly (Charles Bronson) as a child-like thug with a pathological fear of death, helplessly dominated by his moll Flo (Susan Cabot, Corman's favourite femme fatale until Barbara Steele came along). The post-Freudian motifs aren't imposed on the dime-novel material; they grow with a hysteria all of their own from the sleazy settings and one-note performances. The movie reveals Corman as a director entirely in touch with his audience, and Floyd Crosby as one of the most prodigiously resourceful cameramen in Hollywood history.
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 289: Sun Oct 18

I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning (Barnard, 2026): Curzon Soho, 12pm/BFI Southbank, 11.30am

70th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (7th - 18th October 2026) DAY 12

With its date at the end of the year, London is a "festival of festivals", as the Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin put it in one of his previews, so the films shown have mostly been seen and commented on by critics who have watched the features at such high-profile festivals as Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Sundance and Berlin.

So I'm making it simple with one recommendation a day. I will be concentrating on the repertory choices but I've also read the reviews of the contemporary releases and talked to and listened to the trusted critics all year and I am as confident as I can be that this is the pick of the movies within the parameters I have set. Firstly, there's no point highlighting the major gala films - they will be sold out quickly. Secondly, there is little to be gained in paying the higher Festival ticket prices to see films that are out in Britain soon. I will be returning to the London Festival films worthy of seeing and set to be released in the coming months on this blog as and when they get a general release in London.

Here then (from October 7th to October 18th) are the films you are likely to be able to get tickets for and the movies you are unlikely to see in London very soon unless you go the Festival. Here is the LFF's main website for the general information you need. Don't worry if some of the recommended films are sold out as there are always some tickets on offer which go on sale 30 minutes before each screening. Here is the information you need to get those standby tickets.

This film is also screened at BFI Southbank on Friday October 16th. Details here.

BFI introduction:
Adapted from Kieran Goddard’s novel, this intoxicating yet compassionate film by the director of The Selfish Giant and Ali & Ava is propelled by a superb ensemble cast and the euphoric pulse of club music. As moments of youthful joy gradually give way to disillusionment, the film offers a piercing portrait of contemporary Britain, exposing exploitative social structures and widening inequality as forces that have deeply marked its characters’ lives.
Hyun Jin Cho

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 289: Sat Oct 17

Paper Story (Gray, 2026): Prince Charles Cinema, 3pm

70th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (7th - 18th October 2026) DAY 11

With its date at the end of the year, London is a "festival of festivals", as the Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin put it in one of his previews, so the films shown have mostly been seen and commented on by critics who have watched the features at such high-profile festivals as Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Sundance and Berlin.

So I'm making it simple with one recommendation a day. I will be concentrating on the repertory choices but I've also read the reviews of the contemporary releases and talked to and listened to the trusted critics all year and I am as confident as I can be that this is the pick of the movies within the parameters I have set. Firstly, there's no point highlighting the major gala films - they will be sold out quickly. Secondly, there is little to be gained in paying the higher Festival ticket prices to see films that are out in Britain soon. I will be returning to the London Festival films worthy of seeing and set to be released in the coming months on this blog as and when they get a general release in London.

Here then (from October 7th to October 18th) are the films you are likely to be able to get tickets for and the movies you are unlikely to see in London very soon unless you go the Festival. Here is the LFF's main website for the general information you need. Don't worry if some of the recommended films are sold out as there are always some tickets on offer which go on sale 30 minutes before each screening. Here is the information you need to get those standby tickets.

This film is also screened at Southbank Centre, Royal Festival Hall on Saturday October 10th and Sunday 11th. Full details here.

BFI introduction:
Irwin Pearl (Miles Teller, on top form) is an engineer and family man living in Queens. When his brother, a showboating ex-police officer (a magnetic Adam Driver), enlists him for a high paying job, things rapidly take a turn for the worse. Channelling the spirit of Sidney Lumet and Michael Mann, Gray’s own, distinctive directorial style is on full display in this instant classic of American crime cinema.
Diana Cipriano

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 288: Fri Oct 16

Panelstory (Chytilova, 1979): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.35pm

70th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (7th - 18th October 2026) DAY10

BFI introduction:
A tragicomic gallery of characters composes this satirical fresco of a hellish housing estate. In this dysfunctional, endless chaos, people try to get on with their lives amongst the rubble and the mud of this new socialist nightmare. After being blacklisted for years, Věra Chytilová returns to her radical style with a film that still resonates in a society of individuals living in crowded isolation.
Giulia Saccogna

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 287: Thu Oct 15

La Dérive (Delsol, 1964): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.45pm

70th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (7th - 18th October 2026) DAY 9

BFI introduction:
Jacquie, a beautiful 20-year-old, experiences various encounters with men in the south of France, where she returns to her family after leaving Paris. A young woman becoming the target of male predators is always a relevant topic. It’s presented here with a fresh approach: Jacquie is an unburdened wanderer rather than a desperate one, and her search for independence inebriating and joyful.
Giulia Saccogna

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 286: Wed Oct 14

Mouse (O'Sullivan/Thompson, 2026): Vue West End Epic 2, 8.30pm

70th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (7th - 18th October 2026) DAY 8

This film is also screened at the prince Charles Cinema on October 16th. Details here.

Lifelong friends Callie and Minnie are like ying and yang: one loud and popular, the other shy and quiet. Abruptly forced out from her friend’s shadow, it’s finally time for Minnie to figure out who she is on her own terms. Kupferer and Okonedo’s performances drive this beautiful film that’s guaranteed to have audiences alternating between crying and laughing out loud.
Grace Barber-Plentie

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 285: Tue Oct 13

The Meltdown (Martelli, 2026): Vue West End Epic 1, 8pm

70th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (7th - 18th October 2026) DAY 7

This film is also screened at Curzon Soho on October 14th. Details here.

BFI Southbank introduction:
It is 1992 and while watching the comings and goings in her family’s hotel, nine-year-old Inés befriends Hanna, one of the German skiers training in the area. When Hanna goes missing, Inés observes the local community closing ranks without quite understanding what is happening. Focussing on what lies unsaid, Martelli (1976, LFF 2022) expertly captures the tensions of a society as it transitions to democracy.
Maria Delgado

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 284: Mon Oct 12

Clarissa (Arie and Chuko Esiri, 2026): Vue West End Epic 1

70th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (7th - 18th October 2026) DAY 6

This film is also screened at BFI Southbank on October 13th and 17th. Full details here.

BFI introduction:
It’s the day of Clarissa’s garden party. Just as she’s set to reunite with old friends, she finds herself reflecting on a summer that shaped the course of their lives. Virginia Woolf’s beloved novel is the jumping-off point for this rich and captivating look at class and gender in contemporary Nigerian society.
Grace Barber-Plentie

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 283: Sun Oct 11

La Gradiva (Atlan, 2026): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 3.05pm

70th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (7th - 18th October 2026) DAY 5

This film is also screened at Curzon Soho on Friday October 9th. Full details here.

BFI introduction:
Toni, James, Suzanne and their classmates travel to Naples with their Latin teacher. Raw emotions, desire and power dynamics collide against the backdrop of a city with a history stretching back thousands of years. Joyous and tragic in equal measures, cinematographer Marine Atlan’s impressive first feature vividly captures the spirit and the drama of youth, and revels in the intoxicating aura of an ancient metropolis.
Laure Bonville

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 282: Sat Oct 10

The Dreamed Adventure (Grisebach, 2026): ICA Cinema, 5.30pm

70th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (7th - 18th October 2026) DAY 4

This film is also screened at Curzon Soho on Sunday October 11th. Full details here.

BFI introduction:
In the verdant Bulgarian mountains, Veska crosses paths with Saïd, an old acquaintance whose car has been stolen. Offering help, she takes him to the excavation site where she works as an archaeologist. But as they reconnect, Veska is drawn into Saïd’s shady business world. Western writer-director Valeska Grisebach’s film is a skilfully directed drama with a strong feminist spine.
Julie Pearce

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 281: Fri Oct 9

The Devils (Russell, 1971): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.40pm

70th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (7th - 18th October 2026) DAY 3

This film is also screened at the Prince Charles Cinema on Monday October 12th at 6pm. You can find the details here.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 280: Thu Oct 8

The Beloved (Sorogoyen, 2026): Southbank Centre, Royal Festival Hall, 5.45pm

70th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (7th - 18th October 2026) DAY 2

This film is also screened at BFI IMAX on Sunday October 11th and Curzomn Soho on Thursday October 15th. Details here.

BFI London Film Festival introduction:
Esteban is an Oscar-winning director. His daughter Emilia a struggling actor. He returns to Spain to make a film about the country’s exploitation of Western Sahara and offers her the lead role. The film shoot that follows isn’t a straightforward experience, demonstrating the unresolved tensions that still haunt their relationship. Guilt, resentment and forgiveness all intersect to powerful effect in this tense drama.
Maria Delgado

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 279: Wed Oct 7

Gone To Earth (Powell & Pressburger, 1950): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6pm

70th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (7th - 18th October 2026) DAY 1

Today is the opening day of the London Film Festival. With its date at the end of the year, London is a "festival of festivals", as the Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin put it in one of his previews, so the films shown have mostly been seen and commented on by critics who have watched the features at such high-profile festivals as Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Sundance and Berlin.

So I'm making it simple with one recommendation a day. I will be concentrating on the repertory choices but I've also read the reviews of the contemporary releases and talked to and listened to the trusted critics all year and I am as confident as I can be that this is the pick of the movies within the parameters I have set. Firstly, there's no point highlighting the major gala films - they will be sold out quickly. Secondly, there is little to be gained in paying the higher Festival ticket prices to see films that are out in Britain soon. I will be returning to the London Festival films worthy of seeing and set to be released in the coming months on this blog as and when they get a general release in London.

Here then (from October 7th to October 18th) are the films you are likely to be able to get tickets for and the movies you are unlikely to see in London very soon unless you go the Festival. Here is the LFF's main website for the general information you need. Don't worry if some of the recommended films are sold out as there are always some tickets on offer which go on sale 30 minutes before each screening. Here is the information you need to get those standby tickets.

Time Out review:
A film much maligned in its time, not least by producer David O Selznick, who issued an American version retitled The Wild Heart, incorporating additional footage directed by Rouben Mamoulian and running only 82 minutes. Mary Webb's 1917 novel was the archetypal bodice-ripper - wicked squire, pious yokels, adultery and redemption - out of which Powell and Pressburger made a visually spellbinding romance. Christopher Challis' photography evokes Shropshire and the Welsh borders so that you can smell the earth. Menace, the bloodlust of the chase (of the fox or the outcast sinner), is omnipresent as trees bend and wild creatures panic before an unseen primal force. Cruelty besides beauty sweeps these pastoral vistas. Forget Jennifer Jones' rustic English (Kentucky? Australian?) and the melodramatic clichés (boots trampling posies): the haunting, dreamlike consistency recalls that other fairy story of innocence and menace, The Night of the Hunter.
Martin Hoyle

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 278: Tue Oct 6

The Girl Cut in Two (Chabrol, 2007): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6pm

This screening, which will be introduced by the director's daughter and the film’s scriptwriter, Cécile Maistre-Chabrol is part of the Claude Chabrol season at BFI Southbank. There is another screening on October 3rd (details here).

Time Out review:
‘French society may be drifting towards Puritanism or decadence,’ says deciduous, sixtysomething, Goncourt-winning author Charles Saint-Denis (a marvellously offhand François Berléand) in a mock-channel TV interview in this nonchalantly acidic, upper-class-baiting delight by approaching-nonagenarian director Claude Chabrol. Charles is clearly a fully paid-up member of the decadent party: holed up in splendid isolation in his modernist manse in the Lyon countryside, the old married roué, gourmand, aphorist and erotomane is dubbed affectionately ‘the Marquis de Sade’ by his well-preserved publisher Capucine (Mathilda May). He’s moved to join the despised Parisian ‘media circus’ having smelled fresh blood in Ludivine Sagnier’s honest-hearted, less socially favoured weather girl, who he subjects to a series of ‘free-love’ humiliations and abasements in his upmarket brothel. Meanwhile, the unfortunate woman is assailed, in the equally threatening second half of a destructive pincer-movement, by the manic attentions of idle, arrogant, unstable, fatherless – and puritan – millionaire Paul (Benoít Magimel) intent on marriage and possession. An immaculate script, written with his long-term collaborator Cécile Maistre, reinvents the celebrated 1906 White murder case as a barbed anti-French-establishment anti-fairy tale (Sagnier’s weather girl is named Deneige – ‘snow’). Beautifully lit and crisply shot by Eduardo Serra, and directed with a confidence and seeming ease that stems from (and quotes) some 60 years of post-New Wave cinematic mastery, Chabrol’s latest comedy of manners is a minor stylistic and tonal triumph. Eschewing explicit moral condemnation in favour of a scabrous Buñuelian cool, humanised by a marvellously affecting central performance by Sagnier, and surrounded intriguingly by satellite performances which play riskily and amusingly with the edges of self-parody, this is one of Chabrol’s most elegant, acerbic and heartfelt entertainments in years.
Wally Hammond

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 277: Mon Oct 5

Wake in Fright (Kotcheff, 1971): Prince Charles Cinema, 3.15pm

This screening is the theatrical English premiere of the new 4K Restoration, courtesy of Arrow Video.

Chicago Reader review:
Ted Kotcheff (First Blood, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) directed this forgotten Australian masterpiece (1971) about an arrogant Sydney schoolteacher (Garry Bond) who's slowly driven mad after a prolonged stay in the Yabba, a desolate mining town in the middle of the Australian outback. After gambling away every dollar he has, Bond succumbs to the aggressive hospitality of the locals, and they condition him to their brutish lifestyle, which seems to consist mostly of constant drinking, random fistfights, anarchic destruction of other people's property, and kangaroo hunting. A Conradian parable of a man succumbing to the wild, the film is remarkable for its raw, pointed depiction of human behavior. Push a man too far, Kotcheff suggests, and you'll find the beast concealed behind the mask of propriety.
Drew Hunt

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 276: Sun Oct 4

No 1: Blanche (Borowczyk, 1971): ICA Cinema, 4pm

The screening will be introduced by Daniel Bird, Co-founder of Friends of Walerian Borowczyk, a non-profit association based in Paris that manages the rights to the painter, sculptor and filmmaker. He will discuss Borowczyk’s association with Contemporary Films, and will be joined by Kathleen Wallfisch, Music Supervisor for film and TV, to talk about the music of the film and how it is arranged and presented on screen. This is part of the Contemporary Films season across London. Details here.

Time Out review:
In this remarkable film, Walerian Borowczyk, through his commitment to ambiguity (notably in his framing, which forever denies the foreground/background opposition) and his belief in almost entomological observation, transforms his 13th century characters - a foolish old Baron, an overproud King, a lecherous page and a stupidly handsome lover, all of whom are in love with and/or lust after the simple Blanche, the Baron's young wife - into tragic figures caught up in a dance of death over which they have no control. In exactly the same way, the castle and its decor, photographed by Borowczyk as though it were living and its inhabitants were mere dolls for the most part, is seen as the backdrop to a happy fairytale, and at the same time as the root of all evil, as rooms and bizarre machines are opened and set in motion.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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No 2: The Colour of Lies (Chabrol, 1999): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 3.10pm

This film is part of the Claude Chabrol season at BFI Southbank. The other screening of the film on September 26th is detailed here.

BFI Southbank introduction:
When a young girl is found murdered in a small Breton coastal town, suspicion falls on a local painter – a man of volatile temperament and uncertain alibi – as the community begins to turn on itself. Fans of Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt will recognise much here. However, Chabrol is less interested in identifying the killer than in capturing the poisonous social atmosphere that the crime unleashes: the rumour, the prejudice and the quiet savagery of village life.

Here (and above) is the trailer.