An American Werewolf in London (Landis, 1981): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.30pm
A special evening for BFI members and guests as the cinema welcomes writer and director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot
Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) to introduce An American Werewolf in
London as the film that inspired him.
Time Out review:
It’d be interesting to see polling data on how many Brits recall John Landis’s
hysterical gore-spattered masterpiece as that all-important rite of
passage: their first 18. Well, the folks at the BBFC have ruined all
that: in reclassifying the film 15, they’ve made all our childhoods seem
that little bit less dangerous. Which is no reflection on the film:
horror-comedy is overfamiliar nowadays, with diminishing returns, but
this only makes Landis’s achievement more impressive. Not just gory but
actually frightening, not just funny but clever, ‘American Werewolf…’
has its flaws, but these are outweighed by the film’s many, mighty
strengths: the soundtrack is astounding, the characterisation is
marvellous and the one-liners are endlessly memorable (‘a naked American
man stole my balloons!’). A classic, no less.
Tom Huddleston
Here is the trailer.
Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 107: Wed Apr 17
Pieces (Piquer Simon, 1982): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm
This cult slasher movie is screening as part of the cinema's Good Bad Movie Club. More details here.
Ian Watson writing on Movies: So Bad They're Good takes up the tale: "There's a third world of films, unloved by critics, that yields some genuine pleasures, though they're unlikely to be mistaken for the work of, say, Bergman or Fellini. Whether you call them b-movies, schlock or guilty pleasures doesn't matter; their low budgets and often scrappy direction is enough for them to be labelled "bad", a term Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton, writing in Cult Cinema: An introduction, define as "poor and distasteful film-making..." Read more on Pieces on the blog here.
Here is the trailer.
This cult slasher movie is screening as part of the cinema's Good Bad Movie Club. More details here.
Ian Watson writing on Movies: So Bad They're Good takes up the tale: "There's a third world of films, unloved by critics, that yields some genuine pleasures, though they're unlikely to be mistaken for the work of, say, Bergman or Fellini. Whether you call them b-movies, schlock or guilty pleasures doesn't matter; their low budgets and often scrappy direction is enough for them to be labelled "bad", a term Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton, writing in Cult Cinema: An introduction, define as "poor and distasteful film-making..." Read more on Pieces on the blog here.
Here is the trailer.
Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 106: Tue Apr 16
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.30pm
This is screening as part of the cinema's Classic Films season. More details here.
Time Out review:
'A sprawling, discursive fresco: three stories bookended by a prologue and epilogue. In the first story, a mobster (John Travolta) is charged with looking after the irresponsible wife (Uma Thurman) of his vengeful boss. In the second, a washed-up boxer (Willis) tries to trick the Mob by failing to throw a fight. And in the third, two hitmen (Travolta and Jackson) carry out a job, only to call on the services of a 'cleaner' (Harvey Keitel) when it gets messier than planned. It's the way Tarantino embellishes and, finally, interlinks these old chestnuts that makes the film alternately exhilarating and frustrating. There's plenty of sharp, sassy, profane dialogue, and there are plenty of acute, funny references to pop culture, though the talk sometimes delays the action, and the references sometimes seem self-consciously arch. And there are, too, the sudden lurches between humour and violence - shocking, but without moral depth. What writer/director Tarantino lacks, as yet, is the maturity to invest his work with anything that might provoke a heartfelt emotional response to his characters. Very entertaining, none the less.'
Geoff Andrew
Here is the trailer
This is screening as part of the cinema's Classic Films season. More details here.
Time Out review:
'A sprawling, discursive fresco: three stories bookended by a prologue and epilogue. In the first story, a mobster (John Travolta) is charged with looking after the irresponsible wife (Uma Thurman) of his vengeful boss. In the second, a washed-up boxer (Willis) tries to trick the Mob by failing to throw a fight. And in the third, two hitmen (Travolta and Jackson) carry out a job, only to call on the services of a 'cleaner' (Harvey Keitel) when it gets messier than planned. It's the way Tarantino embellishes and, finally, interlinks these old chestnuts that makes the film alternately exhilarating and frustrating. There's plenty of sharp, sassy, profane dialogue, and there are plenty of acute, funny references to pop culture, though the talk sometimes delays the action, and the references sometimes seem self-consciously arch. And there are, too, the sudden lurches between humour and violence - shocking, but without moral depth. What writer/director Tarantino lacks, as yet, is the maturity to invest his work with anything that might provoke a heartfelt emotional response to his characters. Very entertaining, none the less.'
Geoff Andrew
Here is the trailer
Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 105: Mon Apr 15
Brick (Johnson, 2005) & Looper (Johnson, 2012) double-bill: Prince Charles Cinema, 6.50pm
Director Rian Johnson will be in attendance for a Q&A following this double-bill screening.
Chicago Reader review of Brick:
For his debut feature Rian Johnson meticulously re-creates Dashiell Hammett's brand of gumshoe noir but transplants the blind-alley mystery and rat-a-tat dialogue to a modern SoCal suburban high school. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (a sitcom veteran who's been quietly building up an impressive body of work in movies) stars as a world-weary student trying to unravel the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, and Lukas Haas is his nemesis, a ruthless, clubfooted heroin dealer who does business out of a paneled den in his parents' basement. It's a limited conceit—gone is the noir sense of being trapped by bad life choices—but it's worth seeing for the tightly coiled plot, well-realized characters, and novel take on rapacious teen culture.
JR Jones
Here is the trailer.
********************
Chicago Reader review of Looper:
This noirish time travel saga by Rian Johnson (Brick, The Brothers Bloom) brims with visual detail and imaginative camera set-ups, though it doesn't leave much of an aftertaste. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a contract killer in the mid-21st century whose targets are sent back to him from 30 years in the future; things get hairy when his latest victim turns out to be an older version of himself, played by Bruce Willis in his rueful hangdog mode. The dystopian setting, in which all U.S. infrastructure has eroded and everyone has a price on his head, makes for some bold cultural commentary, but as usual with Johnson, the engaging ideas feel like affectations rather than products of a fully developed sensibility.
Ben Sachs
Here is the trailer.
Director Rian Johnson will be in attendance for a Q&A following this double-bill screening.
Chicago Reader review of Brick:
For his debut feature Rian Johnson meticulously re-creates Dashiell Hammett's brand of gumshoe noir but transplants the blind-alley mystery and rat-a-tat dialogue to a modern SoCal suburban high school. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (a sitcom veteran who's been quietly building up an impressive body of work in movies) stars as a world-weary student trying to unravel the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, and Lukas Haas is his nemesis, a ruthless, clubfooted heroin dealer who does business out of a paneled den in his parents' basement. It's a limited conceit—gone is the noir sense of being trapped by bad life choices—but it's worth seeing for the tightly coiled plot, well-realized characters, and novel take on rapacious teen culture.
JR Jones
Here is the trailer.
********************
Chicago Reader review of Looper:
This noirish time travel saga by Rian Johnson (Brick, The Brothers Bloom) brims with visual detail and imaginative camera set-ups, though it doesn't leave much of an aftertaste. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a contract killer in the mid-21st century whose targets are sent back to him from 30 years in the future; things get hairy when his latest victim turns out to be an older version of himself, played by Bruce Willis in his rueful hangdog mode. The dystopian setting, in which all U.S. infrastructure has eroded and everyone has a price on his head, makes for some bold cultural commentary, but as usual with Johnson, the engaging ideas feel like affectations rather than products of a fully developed sensibility.
Ben Sachs
Here is the trailer.
Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 104: Sun Apr 14
Theorem (Pasolini, 1968): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.30 & 8.45pm
This film, part of the Pier Paolo Pasolini season, is on an extended run from April 12th to May 9th. More details here.
Chicago Reader review:
Apart from his final feature, Salo, this is probably Pier Paolo Pasolini's most controversial film, and to my mind one of his very best, though it has the sort of audacity and extremeness that send some American audiences into gales of derisive, self-protective laughter (1968). The title is Italian for “theorem,” in this case a mythological figure: an attractive young man (Terence Stamp) who visits the home of a Milanese industrialist and proceeds to seduce every member of the household—father, mother (Silvana Mangano), daughter (Anne Wiazemsky), son, and maid (Laura Betti). Then he leaves, and everyone in the household undergoes cataclysmic changes. Pasolini wrote a parallel novel of the same title, part of it in verse, while making this film; neither work is, strictly speaking, an adaptation of the other, but each deals with the same elements, and the stark poetry of both is like a triple-distilled version of Pasolini's view of the world—a view in which Marxism, Christianity, and homosexuality are forced into mutual and scandalous confrontations. It's an “impossible” work: tragic, lyrical, outrageous, indigestible, deeply felt, and wholly sincere.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here is the BFI trailer.
This film, part of the Pier Paolo Pasolini season, is on an extended run from April 12th to May 9th. More details here.
Chicago Reader review:
Apart from his final feature, Salo, this is probably Pier Paolo Pasolini's most controversial film, and to my mind one of his very best, though it has the sort of audacity and extremeness that send some American audiences into gales of derisive, self-protective laughter (1968). The title is Italian for “theorem,” in this case a mythological figure: an attractive young man (Terence Stamp) who visits the home of a Milanese industrialist and proceeds to seduce every member of the household—father, mother (Silvana Mangano), daughter (Anne Wiazemsky), son, and maid (Laura Betti). Then he leaves, and everyone in the household undergoes cataclysmic changes. Pasolini wrote a parallel novel of the same title, part of it in verse, while making this film; neither work is, strictly speaking, an adaptation of the other, but each deals with the same elements, and the stark poetry of both is like a triple-distilled version of Pasolini's view of the world—a view in which Marxism, Christianity, and homosexuality are forced into mutual and scandalous confrontations. It's an “impossible” work: tragic, lyrical, outrageous, indigestible, deeply felt, and wholly sincere.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here is the BFI trailer.
Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 103: Sat Apr 13
The Canterbury Tales (Pasolini, 1972): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.40pm
This film, part of the Pier Paolo Pasolini season at the BFI, also screens on April 15th and 25th. More details here.
Time Out review:
Like The Decameron, a broad canvas on which is writ large and bawdy the life of the people. We are again plummeted into a world of lecherous ladies, ugly old husbands, willing and ready pages, ending with a superb final fling in a gaudy red Sicilian hell, accompanied by a salvo of farts. As usual Pasolini creates visual magic where other directors would never see beyond the banal, and the humour is as rich as ever; but there is a distinct feeling of strain, not to say waste, about this film. The best tales are of course the blacker ones: Franco Citti as the Devil, in the Friar's tale, blackmailing sexual offenders; or the Steward's tale, a neat variation on one of the hoariest sex gags around.
A 'U' certificate trailer for an X certificate film.
This film, part of the Pier Paolo Pasolini season at the BFI, also screens on April 15th and 25th. More details here.
Time Out review:
Like The Decameron, a broad canvas on which is writ large and bawdy the life of the people. We are again plummeted into a world of lecherous ladies, ugly old husbands, willing and ready pages, ending with a superb final fling in a gaudy red Sicilian hell, accompanied by a salvo of farts. As usual Pasolini creates visual magic where other directors would never see beyond the banal, and the humour is as rich as ever; but there is a distinct feeling of strain, not to say waste, about this film. The best tales are of course the blacker ones: Franco Citti as the Devil, in the Friar's tale, blackmailing sexual offenders; or the Steward's tale, a neat variation on one of the hoariest sex gags around.
A 'U' certificate trailer for an X certificate film.
Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 102: Fri Apr 12
The Godfather Trilogy (Francis Ford Coppola)
The Godfather (1972); The Godfather Part II (1974) & The Godfather Part III (1990)
Prince Charles Cinema, 9pm
Chicago Reader review of The Godfather:
The ultimate family film. Francis Ford Coppola gives full due to the themes of clannish insularity that made Mario Puzo's novel a best seller, though his heart seems to be with Al Pacino's lonely, willful isolation. This 1972 feature is sharp, entertaining, and convincing—discursive, but with a sense of structure and control that Coppola hasn't achieved since.
Dave Kehr
Here is the trailer.
*********************
Chicago Reader review of The Godfather Part II:
Three hours and 20 minutes of Al Pacino suffering openly, Robert Duvall suffering silently, Diane Keaton suffering noisily, and (every so often) Robert De Niro suffering good-naturedly is almost too much, but Francis Ford Coppola pulls it off in grand style. This 1974 sequel never bores, though Gordon Willis's lights-in-your-face cinematography (with its heavy overhead lighting and all those browns and yellows) gets to you after a while, and Coppola's preoccupation with religious ritual almost spoils some quietly effective scenes.
Dan Druker
Here is the trailer
*********************
Chicago Reader review of The Godfather Part III: Francis Ford Coppola's tragic and worthy (if uneven) conclusion to his Godfather trilogy (1990), which he wrote in collaboration with Mario Puzo, represents a certain moral improvement over its predecessors by refusing to celebrate and condemn violence and duplicity in the same breath, or at least to the same degree. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino at his best) seeks absolution for his past sins, and although a cardinal grants it at one point (in a powerful confession scene), the film itself refuses to. While some of the allegorical implications persist (crime equals capitalism, Mafia equals family, both equal America), the decline of America in a world market where both European money and the Vatican are made to seem as corrupt as the Corleones leads to an overall change of focus. The episodic construction yields a strong first and third act and a sagging middle, and one regrets the absence of Robert Duvall, whose character provided a crucial link between crime and business in the first two parts.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here is the trailer.
The Godfather (1972); The Godfather Part II (1974) & The Godfather Part III (1990)
Prince Charles Cinema, 9pm
Chicago Reader review of The Godfather:
The ultimate family film. Francis Ford Coppola gives full due to the themes of clannish insularity that made Mario Puzo's novel a best seller, though his heart seems to be with Al Pacino's lonely, willful isolation. This 1972 feature is sharp, entertaining, and convincing—discursive, but with a sense of structure and control that Coppola hasn't achieved since.
Dave Kehr
Here is the trailer.
*********************
Chicago Reader review of The Godfather Part II:
Three hours and 20 minutes of Al Pacino suffering openly, Robert Duvall suffering silently, Diane Keaton suffering noisily, and (every so often) Robert De Niro suffering good-naturedly is almost too much, but Francis Ford Coppola pulls it off in grand style. This 1974 sequel never bores, though Gordon Willis's lights-in-your-face cinematography (with its heavy overhead lighting and all those browns and yellows) gets to you after a while, and Coppola's preoccupation with religious ritual almost spoils some quietly effective scenes.
Dan Druker
Here is the trailer
*********************
Chicago Reader review of The Godfather Part III: Francis Ford Coppola's tragic and worthy (if uneven) conclusion to his Godfather trilogy (1990), which he wrote in collaboration with Mario Puzo, represents a certain moral improvement over its predecessors by refusing to celebrate and condemn violence and duplicity in the same breath, or at least to the same degree. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino at his best) seeks absolution for his past sins, and although a cardinal grants it at one point (in a powerful confession scene), the film itself refuses to. While some of the allegorical implications persist (crime equals capitalism, Mafia equals family, both equal America), the decline of America in a world market where both European money and the Vatican are made to seem as corrupt as the Corleones leads to an overall change of focus. The episodic construction yields a strong first and third act and a sagging middle, and one regrets the absence of Robert Duvall, whose character provided a crucial link between crime and business in the first two parts.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here is the trailer.
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