Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 299: Sun Oct 30

Szyfry (Has, 1966): Close-Up Cinema, 8.15pm

This film is part of the Never on Snday season at Close-Up Cinema. Full details of past films here.

Close-Up Cinema introduction:
Championed for his intricate narratives and hypnotic imagery by people like Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, Luis Buñuel and Martin Scorsese, Wojciech Has uses a historical frame only to bend the notions of time and space. The result, Szyfry (The Codes), is one of the most complex Polish films about the moral dilemmas of Second World War. Made right after his international breakthrough, The Saragossa Manuscript, Szyfry is about a Second World War veteran returning to Warsaw from his long London exile to meet the wife and son he has left behind. His son, a former member of the resistance, open his father's eyes to the fate of the fourth member of their family, his disappeared brother, and the inconvenient truth that he might have been a Nazi collaborator. Featuring some of Has's most staggering dream/nightmare sequences, this rarely seen gem is one of the essential films of Polish cinema of the 1960s.”
Ehsan Khoshbakht

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 298: Sat Oct 29

Bram Stroker's Dracula (Coppola, 1992): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.30pm

This film, which also screens on October 19th with Sir Christopher Frayling introduction, is also at BFI Southbank on 23rd November and is part of the Gary Oldman season. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Most film versions of Dracula have been based not on the 1897 novel but on the 1927 stage adaptation. Francis Coppola’s ambitious 1992 version, written by coproducer James V. Hart, brings back the novel’s multiple narrators, leading to a somewhat dispersed and overcrowded story line that remains fascinating and often affecting thanks to all its visual and conceptual energy. (Some of this derives from musings about what was going on culturally in Europe at the turn of the century, including the decadent art of Beardsley, Klimt, and Huysmans and the birth of both movies and psychoanalysis.) Still the overreacher, Coppola suffers from a surfeit of ideas. But this is still a visual feast with those ideas, more disturbing than scary. Gary Oldman stars as the infamous count, and the costars include Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Sadie Frost, and Tom Waits (the latter two are especially good).
Jonathan Rosenabum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 297: Fri Oct 28

Meantime (Leigh, 1983): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 5.50pm

This film, also being ahown on October 17th, is part of the Gary Oldman season. You can find all the details here.

Chicago Reader review:
What produces a skinhead is the subtle subject of Mike Leigh’s powerful and mysterious feature for British TV, though it may take you most of the film to realize it. We’re treated to the bitter inertia of a family on the dole in a cramped high rise in London’s East End, with particular emphasis on a raspy layabout (Phil Daniels) who berates and undermines his nearly catatonic kid brother (Tim Roth, who played van Gogh in Vincent and Me); a street punk; a young woman in the neighborhood; and the boys’ aunt, who has married into the middle class. Watch for an interesting early performance by Gary Oldman, as well as contributions from Marion Bailey and Alfred Molina.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 296: Thu Oct 27

The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (Grau, 1974): Prince Charles Cinema, 4pm

This film is also being shown on October 6th. Full details here.

Time Out review:
'Although made in the Lake District with a mainly dubbed cast, Arthur Kennedy as a very American English policeman, and a plot indebted to Night of the Living Dead, this works against all the odds. Through intelligent handling of locations, England becomes a very bleak place indeed, full of sinister quietness. Hero and heroine, thrown together by chance, find themselves pursued by both police and an army of cannibalistic living dead through this increasingly nightmarish landscape. It's a film of unrelieved blackness, from the seedy photographer who snaps his junkie wife cowering in the bath to homicidal babies, from mongol child at a petrol station to Kennedy's brutal sergeant. It's all the more absurdly fatalistic for refusing to draw political, moral or social conclusions.'
Verina Glaessner

Here is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 295: Wed Oct 26

Manhunter (Mann, 1986): Prince Charles Cinema, 6pm

This 35mm presentation also screens on October 6th. Details here.

Time Out review:
'Michael Mann hits top form with this splendidly stylish and oppressive thriller adapted from Thomas Harris' Red Dragon. The plot is complex and ingenious: FBI forensics expert Will Graham (William Peterson), blessed (and tormented) by an ability to fathom the workings of the criminal mind through psychic empathy, is brought back from voluntary retirement to track down a serial killer, the 'Tooth Fairy'. Focused on the anxiety and confusion of the hunter rather than his psychotic prey, the film functions both as a disturbing examination of voyeurism, and as an often almost unbearably grim suspenser. Mann creates a terrifying menacing atmosphere without resorting to graphic depiction of the seriously nasty killings: music, designer-expressionist 'Scope photography, and an imaginative use of locations, combine with shots of the aftermath of the massacres to evoke a world nightmarishly perceived by Graham's haunted sensibility. The performances, too, are superior, most memorably Cox's intellectually brilliant and malevolent asylum inmate. One of the most impressive American thrillers of the late '80s.'
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 294: Tue Oct 25

The Decks Ran Red (Stone, 1958): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.30pm

This is a 35mm presentation as part of the Projecting the Archive strand.

BFI introduction:
First Officer Ed Rumill (James Mason) can’t turn down his first chance to helm a ship, even though it’s a rusty old freighter and the last captain died in mysterious circumstances. He soon realises that mutiny is brewing and enlists the help of the cook’s attractive young wife (Dorothy Dandridge) to save the ship. Dandridge, whose centenary is this November, holds her own among the testosterone-fuelled cast, giving a compelling performance that takes her character from femme fatale to action hero. With implausible plotting and over-the-top dialogue, the film is a rollercoaster ride of adventure and melodrama.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2022 — Day 293: Mon Oct 24

The Films of Andy Warhol 1963-65: Barbican Cinema, 6.15pm

Barbican introduction:
Across the important period of 1963 - 1965, when Andy Warhol would first begin to work with film, he created multiple seminal works, that would rank among his most iconic and celebrated films, including Sleep (1963) and Empire (1964). This event will provide a rare opportunity to see a number of the films on 16mm. After the screening we will be joined by esteemed curators and writers John G. Hanhardt  and Dr. Elena Gorfinkel who will discuss the creative approaches and conceptual innovations which this period of Warhol’s career was characterised by. Following this conversation, audience members will be invited to the cinema foyer for a wine reception. This special event coincides with the announcement of The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne - 1963-1965 being awarded the 2022 Kraszna-Krausz Book Award for best Moving Image Book.

Programme:

Jill and Freddy Dancing (16mm)  
US 1963 dir Andy Warhol 4 min

Eat (16mm)
US 1964 dir Andy Warhol 45 min

Restaurant (16mm)
US 1965 dir Andy Warhol 34 min

Here (and above) is an extract from Eat.