Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 274: Thu Oct 11

Silence is Golden (Clair, 1947): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6pm

62nd LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (10th-21st October 2018) DAY 2

Every day (from October 10th to October 21st) I will be selecting the London Film Festival choices you have a chance to get tickets for and the movies you are unlikely to see in London very soon unless you go to see them at the Festival. Here is the LFF's main website for the general information you need. Don't worry if some of the recommended films are sold out by the time you read this as there are always some tickets on offer which go on sale 30 minutes before each screening. Here is all the information you need about the best way to get tickets.

Silence is Golden also screens at Cine Lumiere on October 14th. Full details here.

LFF review:
Set in a meticulously recreated Paris of 1906, Silence is Golden stars Maurice Chevalier (superb) as silent-movie director Émile, who teaches the art of seduction to his timid assistant, unaware the lad’s honing his skills on a girl to whom Émile has taken an unfortunate shine. Both this problematic triangle and the early filmmaking milieu make for much affectionate humour, but the film, ironic yet serious, also excels in its wise depiction both of the practised deceits of romantic pursuit and of the transient niceties of life.

Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 273: Wed Oct 10

Asako I & II (Hamaguchi, 2018): ICA Cinema, 6pm

62nd LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (10th-21st October 2018) DAY 1

Every day (from October 10th to October 21st) I will be selecting the London Film Festival choices you have a chance to get tickets for and the movies you are unlikely to see in London very soon unless you go to see them at the Festival. Here is the LFF's main website for the general information you need. Don't worry if some of the recommended films are sold out by the time you read this as there are always some tickets on offer which go on sale 30 minutes before each screening. Here is all the information you need about the best way to get tickets.

'Asako I & II' also screens at BFI Southbank on October 11th. Full details here.

Mubi review:
A Shigeo Gochō photography exhibit titled “Self and Others” offers the starting point for a brief romance between Asako (Erika Karata) and Baku Torii (Masahiro Higashide) in her hometown of Osaka, before he disappears without a trace; two years later, Asako meets a sake salesman, Ryohei, who looks exactly like Baku. As in his sprawling, but finely tuned Happy Hour, Hamaguchi demonstrates a pop-inflected sensibility, and an attention to relationships and narrative developments that wouldn’t be out of place in an urban TV melodrama, which may account for why Asako I & II feels so thrillingly open. Like Karata’s unexpected performance, the film is opaque in ways both confounding and thrilling, as if internalizing one character’s advice not to over-interpret. Equally adept with subtle, naturalistic sketches (a visit to a seafood festival in a far-flung town) and well-timed bursts of emotion (an offered hand and a rising auto-tuned anthem to stop your heart), Hamaguchi observes as Asako navigates her relationships across an elliptical seven or so years. “Asako, you haven't changed at all,” a friend tells her, a statement that renders the notion of constancy in a threatening light. (In that regard, the film obliquely recalls Kim Ki-duk’s more scabrously-toned, high-concept Time.) A cutting betrayal and jarring reversal occasion a ravishing image: of Asako’s visage flashing in and out of inky blackness to melancholy, electric shades of blue. Innocence and experience, constancy and change are the twin poles of every relationship: Will this person be there when I wake up? Will they be the same? The resounding final shot—a conclusion rooted in a re-marriage template—looks squarely into an uncertain future.
Lawrence Garcia

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 272: Tue Oct 9

Phantasm (Coscarelli, 1979): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.30pm

This 35mm presentation at the prince Charles is part of the 'Horroctober' season at the cinema. You can find full details of the season here.

Time Out review:
A sparkling newrestoration for this cult horror classic. By the early ’80s, the home video boom had fuelled a tidal wave of American horror. But with proper financial backing and almost total creative freedom, these films were a world away from the cheapo grit of the grindhouse: directors like Stuart Gordon, Frank Henenlotter and Don Coscarelli had the funding to realise visions which would have been impossible a few years before, resulting in some of the most idiosyncratic movies in the horror canon. ‘Phantasm’ is the film that kickstarted it all, combining inventive DIY horror with a berserk plot involving homicidal space midgets, heroic ice-cream men, flying spheres which drill into the brain and of course the terrifying ‘Tall Man’. Over the course of three wild sequels, Coscarelli expanded his bizarre universe in a variety of imaginative and deliriously entertaining ways – but the original set the standard.
Tom Huddleston

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 271: Mon Oct 8

Bullet Boy (Dibb, 2004): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 9pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the Working Class Heroes season at BFI Southbank. You can find the full details of the season here.

Time Out review:
The feature debut of TV documentary-maker Saul Dibb has rejected the usual flashy, clichéd and unhelpful trappings of teens-and-guns tales to tell a tragic story of how a family is destroyed when guns enter their otherwise unexceptional lives. Absent from Dibb’s narrative are drugs, crime (bar the firearms themselves) and gangs. Instead, we spend a few days on the estate with Ricky and Wisdom – two lads who employ guns to protect themselves when a minor row escalates into a bloody, inescapable beef. ‘If he’s going to kill me, why shouldn’t I kill him? If he’s going to do me, why shouldn’t I do him?’ So runs the wisdom of Wisdom, displaying the sad heart of this impressive film. Thankfully, Dibb and screenwriter Catherine Johnson pay more than lip-service to Ricky’s family, so allowing for a credible and illuminating portrait of the boy’s life beyond the bravado of the streets. We witness the effect of his behaviour on his mother Beverley (Claire Perkins) and his easily influenced brother. ‘Everything’s flopped,’ moans Ricky when his desire to go straight fails – and in the most bloody fashion. Ultimately, we’re left with an overwhelming feeling of just how fine the line is between success and failure, life and death in the world that Ricky inhabits. For this, Dibb is to be congratulated. He has produced a work of superior, committed and responsible storytelling.
Dave Calhoun

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 270: Sun Oct 7

Face (Bird, 1997): BFI Southbank, NFT, 3.10pm

This 35mm presentation, which is also being shown on September 22nd, is part of the Working Class Heroes season at BFI Southbank. You can find the full details of the season here.

Time Out review:
Ray (Robert Carlyle), a lapsed East End communist, has long since given up the common good for private gain. Still, even he's shocked when his brothers-in-arms turn their guns on each other after persons unknown steal the stash from their latest raid. The suspects are limited: there are five in the gang, and Ray knows at least he's staunch. After Antonia Bird's unhappy Hollywood venture, Mad Love, this heist-gone-wrong picture reclaims lost ground on home turf, and shares with Bird's BBC films Safe and Priest a determination to get in where the action is. It's muscular, raw, and aggressive. These un-English qualities make for rough edges, but also for vividly authentic popular cinema and plenty to argue about in the pub afterwards. Ronan Bennett's hard-boiled script keeps the tension simmering, the excellent Carlyle and a knockout cast somehow make you care, and there's a palpable sense of London in the dark days of winter, dog eat dog, and time running out.
Tom Charity

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 269: Sat Oct 6

2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968): Prince Charles Cinema, 5pm

This 70mm presentation, from an unrestored print, is on an extended run at the Prince Charles Cinema from September 30th. Full details here.

"For the first time since the original release, this 70mm print was struck from new printing elements made from the original camera negative. This is a true photochemical film recreation. There are no digital tricks, remastered effects, or revisionist edits. This is the unrestored film - that recreates the cinematic event that audiences experienced fifty years ago." - Christopher Nolan

Time Out review:
Both ‘Interstellar’ and ‘Gravity’ took us out of this world, but the reputation of Stanley Kubrick’s classic – now re-released – is safe. It’s not that ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ doesn’t look dated – it does, a bit – but it remains as intelligent and provocative as ever, bearing years of conceptual dreaming. Until today’s equivalent of novelist Arthur C Clarke commits a hefty chunk of time to envisioning the beginning of human civilisation, as well as the far future, there will be no new film to supplant it. Though it was showered with praise for its technical achievements, ‘2001’ lingers more potently in the mind as a tall, black riddle: where are the new bones, the new tools, that will take us higher? Douglas Rain’s clammy voice work as Hal 9000, the murderous machine, remains one of Kubrick’s snazziest pieces of direction.
Joshua Rothkopf

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 268: Fri Oct 5

Autumn Leaves (Aldrich, 1956): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.30pm

This film, which is also being shown on September 27th, is part of the Joan Crawford season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Robert Aldrich's 1956 melodrama is a dry run for his later and much more extreme Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Joan Crawford stars as a lonely middle-aged woman who gives in to the advances of a handsome young man (Cliff Robertson), only to discover after their marriage that he isn't all he seems to be. Even in this antipathetic context, Aldrich manages to find room for his characteristic intimations of breakdown and approaching chaos. With Vera Miles and Lorne Greene.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is an extract.