Capital Celluloid 2021 — Day 30: Tue Jun 15

 HealtH (Altman, 1980): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.45pm

This 35mm presentation also screens on June 27th – full details here.

Time Out review:
Never released theatrically in Britain, and widely considered as exemplifying the trap into which Altman's free-wheeling, loosely structured social comedies were sooner or later destined to fall, Health none the less has its admirers who claim that the movie's incidental jokes justify the thinness of the storyline. It's about a health foods convention in Florida, where leading lights from the yoghurt and museli industries are competing for the presidency of the national organisation. Glenda Jackson does her butch number, complete with cigar; Lauren Bacall plays an 83-year-old virgin (!); James Garner contributes his engagingly wry Rockford persona; Henry Gibson is reliably wacky.

Capital Celluloid 2021 — Day 29: Mon Jun 14

Submarine (Ayoade, 2010): Prince Charles Cinema, 

This 35mm presentation is on an extended run until June 24th. Full details here.

Daily Telegraph review of Submarine:
The temptation to overpraise our new movie talent can induce an almost superstitious pang of anxiety, but here goes anyway: Richard Ayoade’s Submarine feels like the most refreshing, urgent and original debut the British film industry has seen in years. This coming-of-age story is set in Swansea and narrated by a teenage boy, but it thankfully gives a body-swerve to the tired clichés in which our industry routinely imprisons such subject matter. There’s no drab naturalism, sulky rebellion or political backdrop, and, best of all, no forced uplifting climax snatched from relentless adversity. Instead writer-director Ayoade, in adapting Joe Dunthorne’s novel, has fashioned an adolescent fantasia that astutely employs its own film-making techniques to represent the thought processes of its unlikely young hero. 
David Gritten

Here (and above) is the trailer for Submarine.

Capital Celluloid 2021 — Day 28: Sun Jun 13

Long Day's Journey Into Night (Bi Gan, 2018): Barbican Cinema, 2.30pm

This beautiful film, with a must-see and experience 3-D section, is part of the Barbican 'Return to the City' season. You can find the full details of the programme here.

Chicago Reader review:
Gorgeously designed and formally audacious, Bi Gan’s second feature (after Kaili Blues) is constructed around an hour-long tracking shot originally filmed in 3-D. This sequence, which occurs in the second half of the movie, takes viewers on quite a ride, both literally and metaphorically, as Bi moves the camera freely through space and presents clever ways to translate the language of dreams into cinema. (As dream-narrative films go, it’s as distinctive an achievement as The Blood of a Poet, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, or Eyes Wide Shut.) Before that, though, this is basically a mood piece; the scant plot concerns a detective (Huang Jue) searching for a missing woman whom he hasn’t seen in years. Bi creates a strong atmosphere out of familiar detective-movie and melodramatic elements, thanks largely to the inventive camerawork and charismatic performances (the cast also features Tang Wei and Sylvia Chang). My colleague Scout Tafoya has likened this to a Disney theme park attraction based on the films of Wong Kar-wai, and I’m inclined to agree.
Ben Sachs

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2021 — Day 27: Sat Jun 12

Quintet (Altman, 1979): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm

This 35mm presentation in the Robert Altman season at BFI Southbank also screens on June 30th. Full details can be found here.

Time Out review:
While certainly not one of Altman's most successful movies, this excursion into the sci-fi genre was unfairly criticised or neglected upon release. Set in a bleak landscape during a tough, inhospitable ice-age, it concerns a seal trapper (Paul Newman) and his wife (Brigitte Fossey) who wander into a strange, desolate city where they meet a group of people playing a mysterious game, for which the stakes gambled are life and death. Slow, humourless, and occasionally over-emphatic in its use of symbolism, it's nevertheless a fascinating film, which manages to work thanks to its absolute mastery of atmosphere.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2021 — Day 26: Fri Jun 11

Fargo (Coen, 1996): Prince Charles Cinema,  3.45pm

This 35mm presentation is on at the Prince Charles Cinema from June 11th to 20th. You can find the full details here.

Time Out review:
Car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) hires low-lifes Carl and Gaear (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife, hoping that her wealthy father will pay a ransom from which Jerry can cream a share. The abduction goes according to plan, but the kidnappers commit three murders as they drive by night through the snowy Minnesota wastes. Police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), a slow-talkin', smart-thinkin', pregnant housewife, investigates. Joel and Ethan Coen's beguiling film is both very funny and, finally, very moving. Performed to perfection by an imaginatively assembled cast, it displays the customary Coen virtues, at the same time providing a robust emotional core unaffected by the taint of mere technical virtuosity. The talk is more leisurely than usual, the camera largely static, the focus firmly on relationships, character, ethics. However banal the lives and aspirations of the leading figures, there's nothing condescending about the humour. Marge and her husband are genuinely good, ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events of, to them, unfathomable evil. Suspense, satire, mystery, horror, comedy and keen (if faintly surreal) social observation combine to prove yet again that (bar very few) the Coens remain effortlessly ahead of the American field.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2021 — Day 25: Thu Jun 10

3 Women (Altman, 1977): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 2.30pm

This film, part of the Robert Altman season at BFI Southbank, is also being screened on June 5th and 19th. You can find the full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Robert Altman often told journalists that he didn't want to make intellectual films, he wanted to make impressionistic films—the kind that didn't elicit discussion as much as emotion. This enigmatic mood piece is the closest he ever got to achieving such a thing, its much maligned aimlessness contributing to a subdued, haunting atmosphere. The barely-there narrative helps stitch together a tapestry of images and sounds, but otherwise plays a small role in the film's dreamlike design.
Drew Hunt

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2021 — Day 24: Wed Jun 9

For A Few Dollars More (Leone, 1965): Prince Charles Cinema, 5.40pm

This screening will be a 35mm presentation.

Chicago Reader review of For a Few Dollars More:
Sergio Leone followed up his international hit A Fistful of Dollars with this 1965 spaghetti western, continuing a trilogy that would end the following year with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. A nameless bounty hunter (Clint Eastwood) and a resolute ex-army colonel (Lee Van Cleef) team up to capture a scuzzy bandit who's planning to pull a bank job in El Paso. Leone's artful editing of close-ups to communicate the characters' spatial relationships is always a pleasure, and here he unveils his stylistic signature—extreme close-ups of the characters' eyes—as Van Cleef surveys the villain's wanted poster.
JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.