Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 178: Sat Jun 28

Queen of Diamonds (Menkes, 1991): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.15pm

This film, also being screened on June 19th, is part of the Wanda and Beyond season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
One of the most jarringly original independent films of the 1990s, Nina Menkes’ lost underground classic reemerges in a gorgeous new restoration. In a neon-soaked dream vision of Las Vegas, a disaffected blackjack dealer (played by the director’s sister Tinka Menkes) drifts through a series of encounters alternately mundane, surreal, and menacing, while death and violence hover ever-present in the margins. Awash in lush, hallucinatory images, Queen of Diamonds is a haunting study of female alienation that “may become for America in the 90s what Jeanne Dielman was for Europe in the 70s—a cult classic using a rigorous visual composition to penetrate the innermost recesses of the soul”
Berenice Reynaud

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 177: Fri Jun 27

Milano Calibro 9 (Di Leo, 1972): Nickel Cinema, 7pm

Here is a Cigarette Burns film club introduction to a previous screening of the film in 2012:
Eurocrime. An over-the-top, short-lived, Italian action filled, crime thriller genre, and still one of the few undiscovered genres ... until recently. When the fantastic documentary EUROCRIME screened at this year's Frightfest, it sent film geeks scurrying off to hunt down these still quite obscure films, hungry for more. Few have been transferred to a digital format, leaving many only available on VHS, so the hunt is on. A great introduction to the genre is MILANO CALIBRO 9, fist fights, car chases, double-crossing and dripping with 70s slickness, this Fernando DiLeo-directed masterpiece follows recently released con, Ugo (Gastone Moschin), as he tries to escape his previous life, all the elements from his past conspire against him, convinced that he still has the missing $300,000. Caught between the police, his old crime bosses, his psychotic ex-mate, the brutal Rocco (Mario Adorf), and his love for his girlfriend, played by the stunning Barbara Bouchet, there doesn't appear to be much hope for Ugo... This is truly a fantastic film.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 176: Thu Jun 26

Benny's Video (Haneke, 1992): Genesis Cinema, 6.20pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the Michael Haneke season at the Genesis Cinema (details in the full What’s On guide here). Virtually all the films are being shown from prints.

Chicago Reader review: People seem divided by the second film (1992) in Michael Haneke’s deadpan, low-key Austrian trilogy (after The Seventh Continent, before 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance), about affectless contemporary violence. Some consider it an essential document of our time, while others (myself included) regard it as a letdown after its predecessor—overly familiar in its themes, though still somewhat potent in its depiction of an alienated 14-year-old boy from a well-to-do family who’s preoccupied with video technology and winds up commiting a monstrous act. In some ways, the portrait of his parents is even more chilling. Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 175: Wed Jun 25

The Unknown (Browning, 1927): Nickel Cinema, 8pm

This is a 16mm presentation with live score by Fiscal Harm.

Chicago Reader review:
Before Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, before John Wayne and John Ford, Lon Chaney and director Tod Browning forged an ongoing collaboration–nine films from 1920 to ’29–whose macabre stories and carny/underworld settings mocked the bright lights of the Jazz Age. Their most delirious project was The Unknown (1927), a perverse melodrama about an armless circus performer (Chaney) and a beautiful bareback rider (18-year-old Joan Crawford) with a phobia of men’s hands. With its undercurrents of frigidity and castration anxiety, the story was excellent material for Browning, and the film races along with the awful momentum of a bad dream.
Don Druker

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 174: Tue Jun 24

Full Moon in Paris (Rohmer, 1984): Prince Charles Cinema, 3.25pm

This film, which also screens on August 27th, is part of the Eric Rohmer season at the Prince Charles Cinema. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Eric Rohmer's shift from a subjective to an objective viewpoint for his “Comedies and Proverbs” series brought with it a gradual darkening of tone: his characters no longer live in a world colored by their personal attitudes and expectations, but are trapped in a universe that blankly refuses to take their desires into account. Full Moon in Paris (1984), the fourth in the series, is bleaker than any of its predecessors: the heroine (Pascale Ogier) lives with a lover in the suburbs of Paris, but takes a small apartment in town as a way of asserting her freedom. But no one is truly free in the network of relationships Rohmer sketches around her, and by asserting her independence she upsets the delicate equilibrium that has provided her with a measure of happiness. With Fabrice Luchine (Rohmer's Perceval), Tcheky Karyo, and Christian Vadim.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 173: Mon Jun 23

Chimes At Midnight (Welles, 1965): Prince Charles Cinema, 3.30pm

This film also screens on June 5th at the prince Charles Cinema. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Orson Welles's 1966 version of the Falstaff story, assembled from Shakespearean bits and pieces, is the one Welles film that deserves to be called lovely; there is also a rising tide of opinion that proclaims it his masterpiece. Restrained and even serene (down to its memorably muddy battle scene), it shows Welles working largely without his technical flourishes—and for those who have never seen beyond his surface flash, it is ample proof of how sensitive and subtle an artist he was. With Keith Baxter, John Gielgud, Margaret Rutherford, and Jeanne Moreau.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 172: Sun Jun 22

A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes, 1974): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 3.10pm

This 35mm presentation, which is also screening on June 28th, is part of the Wanda and Beyond season (full details here) at BFI Southbank.

Chicago Reader review:
John Cassavetes's 1974 masterpiece, and one of the best films of its decade. Cassavetes stretches the limits of his narrative—it's the story of a married couple, with the wife hedging into madness—to the point where it obliterates the narrator: it's one of those extremely rare movies that seem found rather than made, in which the internal dynamics of the drama are completely allowed to dictate the shape and structure of the film. The lurching, probing camera finds the same fascination in moments of high drama and utter triviality alike—and all of those moments are suspended painfully, endlessly. Still, Cassavetes makes the viewer's frustration work as part of the film's expressiveness; it has an emotional rhythm unlike anything else I've ever seen. With Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.