Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 82: Fri Mar 25

Made in Hong Kong (Chan, 1997): Genesis Cinema, 8.50pm

This film is part of the Hong Kong Film Festival. Full details of the season here.

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. None the less, a striking achievement.
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 81: Thu Mar 24

The Hurt Locker (Bigelow, 2008): Genesis Cinema, 8.55pm

This is a 35mm presentation.

Chicago Readert review:
Kathryn Bigelow’s heart-stopping Iraq war drama (2009) follows a U.S. army bomb squad around Baghdad as it defuses IEDs, a job that places the men in potentially deadly situations a dozen times a day. After the squad’s explosives expert is killed in action, he’s replaced by a shameless cowboy (Jeremy Renner) whose needless risk-taking infuriates his two partners (Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty). He’s a true warrior, but Bigelow defines that in terms of addiction; as one of the other soldiers points out, he doesn’t mind endangering them to get his daily “adrenaline fix.” The war has already produced some excellent fiction films (The Lucky Ones, In the Valley of Elah), but this is the first to dispense with the controversy surrounding the invasion and focus on the timeless subject of men in combat. It’s the best war movie since Full Metal Jacket.
JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 80: Wed Mar 23

The Godfather Part II (Coppola, 1974): Screen on the Green, 10.30am

This 35mm screening is part of a 70s season screening from prints. The Godfather Part II also screens on March 19th at 10.30pm. Details here.

 

Here is an excellent article by John Patterson in the Guardian on the movie. 

Time Out review:
It’s worrying that 1974’s ‘The Godfather Part II’ is now best known for being the film-lover’s kneejerk answer to the question ‘which sequel is superior to the original’? It’s a pointless discussion, because both films are damn close to perfect: two opposing but complementary sides of the same coin. If ‘The Godfather’ was a knife in the dark, its sequel is the long, slow death rattle; if the first film lusted after its bloodthirsty antiheroes, the second drowns itself in guilt and recrimination. Two stories run in parallel in ‘Part II’. In the first, a young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) rises to power in New York, fuelled by vengeance and brute, old-world morality. In the second, set 50 years later, his son Michael (Al Pacino) struggles to reconcile his father’s ideals with an uncertain world, and finds himself beset on all sides by treachery and greed. This is quite simply one of the saddest movies ever made, a tale of loss, grief and absolute loneliness, an unflinching stare into the darkest moral abyss.
Tom Huddleston

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 79: Tue Mar 22

Birdman  (Inarritu, 2014): Genesis Cinema, 8.55pm

This film is part of the 'One and Done' season at the Genesis Cinema. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
A washed-up Hollywood star (Michael Keaton), famous for playing a winged superhero in a multimillion-dollar action franchise, tries to stage a comeback as a serious actor on Broadway, writing, directing, and starring in a stage adaptation of Raymond Carver's story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." Given Keaton's identification with the title character in Batman (1989), his role here might seem like the ultimate stunt casting. Yet before playing the Caped Crusader, he'd already distinguished himself in both comedy (Beetlejuice) and drama (Clean and Sober), and he more than holds his own in a cast that includes Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone, Andrea Riseborough, and Zach Galifianakis. Alejandro González Iñárritu, director of such ethereal dramas as Babel and 21 Grams, counterbalances the wicked backstage comedy with surreal flights of fancy, pondering the gulf between dubious celebrity and artistic immortality.
JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 78: Mon Mar 21

The Master (Anderson, 2012): Prince Charles Cinema, 2.50pm

70mm screenings of The Master are on an extended run at the Prince Charles. Details here.

Chicago Reader review: A self-destructive loner (Joaquin Phoenix), discharged from the navy after serving in the Pacific in World War II, flounders back in the States before coming under the wing of a charismatic religious leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman) transparently based on L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. This challenging, psychologically fraught drama is Paul Thomas Anderson’s first feature since the commanding There Will Be Blood (2007), and like that movie it chronicles a contest of wills between an older man and a younger one, as the troubled, sexually obsessed, and often violent young disciple tries to fit in with the flock that’s already gathered around the master. This time, however, the clashing social forces aren’t religion and capitalism but, in keeping with the era, community and personal freedom—including the freedom to fail miserably at life. The stellar cast includes Amy Adams, Laura Dern, and Jesse Plemons. JR Jones

Here is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 77: Sun Mar 20

Madame Sata (Ainouz, 2020): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 5.30pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the BFI Flare season. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Thirty or 40 years ago Brazilian films were as political as any in the world; today most carefully avoid social conflicts and contradictions. Of course there are exceptions, and Madame Sata is one. The story of an immensely strong drag queen in Rio in the 1930s—a legendary rebel, thief, and eventual murderer who was also generous and loyal to the limit—it describes more than an early South American Stonewall. Joao Francisco dos Santos, whose character is carefully built by director Karim Ainouz and wonderfully acted by Lazaro Ramos, is the incarnation of a certain ethic of resistance. Black, poor, and gay in a country that even today doesn’t acknowledge that racism is a dominant force, Madame Sata fights back, becoming a role model rather than an object of pity. This is an important film.
Quintin

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 76: Sat Mar 19

Diamonds Are Forever (Hamilton, 1971): Prince Charles Cinema, 2.25pm

The Prince Charles Cinema continues its full 007 Retrospective showing every James Bond movie over the coming months. You can see all the details of the screenings here.

The press reviews of the films don't normally capture the excitement of this retrospective for Bond fans and I have been recommending the Blogalongabond series by Neil Alcock (aka @theincrediblesuit on Twitter). Here is his take on tonight's movie.

Here's Xan Brooks with an excellent critique of Diamonds Are Forever for the Guardian series My Favourite Bond film:
No doubt each era gets the Bond it deserves. Cubby Broccoli's franchise started out in the early 60s fired by a sleek moral certitude, prowling a world of clearly defined good and evil before slipping into jokey self-parody during the mid-to-late 70s. Diamonds, though, is the missing link, the crucial transition; ideally placed at the turn of the decade and implicitly haunted by noises off in the nation at large. It's a Bond film in which the old glamour has lost its sparkle and the resolute hero has lost his way. It's jaded, uncertain and disillusioned. It's vicious, mordant, at times blackly comic. It's oddly brilliant, the best of the bunch: the perfect bleary Bond film for an imperfect bleary western world.
You can read the full article here.

The influential American critic Andrew Sarris also loved the film and wrote a most readable review which you can find here.

Here (and above) is the trailer.