Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

Gladiator

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The Encyclopaedia Britannica imperiously dismisses the Roman philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius as ‘an historically overrated figur...

September 13, 2025 | Ridley Scott
Building Cinematic Worlds

Alien

In 1977, a heavily revised script optioned by Twentieth Century-Fox entitled Alien went through the hands of several Hollywood directors. Peter Yates passed on it. Robert Aldrich passed on it. The ...

September 13, 2025 | Ridley Scott
Building Cinematic Worlds

Black Rain

After discovering the Black Rain screenplay by Craig Bolotin and Warren Lewis, Michael Douglas brought the project to producers Stanley R. Jaffe and Sherry Lansing, who had worked with him on the h...

September 12, 2025 | Ridley Scott
Building Cinematic Worlds

Bad Education

Two children, Ignacio and Enrique, discover love, cinema and fear in a religious school at the start of the 60s. Father Manolo, the school principal and their literature teacher, is witness to and ...

September 12, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

Thelma & Louise

In the summer of 1991, Thelma & Louise was a much talked-about movie, sparking a broad public debate about women, men, guns and the fate of women who break the law. A generation later, we could...

September 10, 2025 | Ridley Scott
Building Cinematic Worlds

Someone to Watch Over Me

Director Ridley Scott established himself as a filmmaker with an extraordinary eye for beauty in his first film The Duellists. With each subsequent film he has enhanced his reputation as one of the...

September 9, 2025 | Ridley Scott
Building Cinematic Worlds

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Leslie Harris’ ultra-low-budget Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., a cautionary comedy about teenage pregnancy, opened in the US in Fe...

September 9, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

Good Morning, Boys!

Good Morning, Boys! was the first comedy Will Hay made with director Marcel Varnel and what was later to become his stock company of technicians and writers: Guest, Edgar, Crabtree, Vetchinsky and ...

September 6, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

Blade Runner - The Final Cut

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Philip K. Dick died three months before the US release of Blade Runner, the film based on his 1968 science-fiction novel Do Androids...

September 6, 2025 | Ridley Scott
Building Cinematic Worlds

American Gangster

The legend of heroin smuggler/family man/death dealer/civic leader Frank Lucas was first chronicled in a New York Magazine article by journalist Mark Jacobson. In 2000, executive producer Nicholas ...

September 6, 2025 | Ridley Scott
Building Cinematic Worlds

A Good Year

Peter Mayle is a native Brit who abandoned a successful advertising career and reinvented himself as a best-selling author and novelist. He has been writing about the good life in the South of Fran...

September 5, 2025 | Ridley Scott
Building Cinematic Worlds

Battleship Potemkin

Marking the film’s 100th anniversary, Eisenstein’s legendary drama of rebellion and revolution returns to the big screen with a celebrated score from the Pet Shop Boys. During the Russian Revolutio...

September 5, 2025 | Re-releases

Être et avoir

Nicolas Philibert on ‘Être et avoir’ In Spring 2000, I began thinking about a project about rural life, and I began my research by having meetings with farmers on the edge of bankruptcy… But, in t...

September 1, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

Electra Glide in Blue

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

August 21, 2025 | Moviedrome
Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen

White of the Eye

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

August 20, 2025 | Moviedrome
Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen

Central Station

In 1991 the renowned director Hector Babenco declared that ‘Brazilian cinema is dead’. Argentine-born, but a naturalised Brazilian citizen, Babenco was lamenting a calamitous turn of events for his...

August 15, 2025 | Re-releases

A New Leaf

+ intro by Aga Baranowska, BFI Contextual Events Programmer Elaine May is nobody’s idea of obscure. This birdlike woman began pecking away at American mores in the 1950s as part of a hip, witty do...

August 13, 2025 | Seniors

Mishima - A Life in Four Chapters

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

August 13, 2025 | Moviedrome
Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen

The Wrong Arm of the Law

The set-up for The Wrong Arm of the Law is a familiar one, with comic thieves conflicting with an equally comic police force. Nevertheless, this is a genuinely imaginative film, upholding a brisk c...

August 12, 2025 | In Character
The Films of Peter Sellers

Performance

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

August 9, 2025 | Moviedrome
Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen

FEATURED TAGS
Drama Comedy Documentary Horror Thriller Period Crime Animation Romance Sci-Fi Fantasy Talks Music Musical Adventure Experimental Talk Action Shorts War Television Biopic Western Film Noir Children Mystery Satire Silent Gangster Sport Events Art Family Martial Arts Essay Films Road Movies Short Biblical Cinema Dance Essay Film Factual Film Martial Art Melodrama Multimedia Performance Political Sci-fi Sex TALK VR