BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Holdovers

It’s been a long wait for followers of Alexander Payne since the extraordinarily dark eco-satirical science-fiction epic Downsizing in 2017. That film sharply divided critics and viewers (though ma...

January 19, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is a story with a beginning and an end; or at least, being based on a historical case, it feels as if it...

January 19, 2024 | RE-RELEASES

Rock ‘n’ Roll Cinema

Since teenagers ripped up the seats to Bill Haley and his Comets at screenings of Rock Around the Clock in 1956, cinema and pop music have been instrumental in disaffected and rebellious youths dis...

January 18, 2024 | EVENT

The Holdovers

+ Q&A with director Alexander Payne and actors Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph It’s been a long wait for followers of Alexander Payne since the extraordinarily dark eco-satirical scienc...

January 16, 2024 | PREVIEW

The Beast

When Walerian Borowczyk’s erotic fable The Beast was first released in France in August 1975 it marked a decisive moment in the critical evaluation of the Polish-born filmmaker. Previously heralded...

January 16, 2024 | SCALA
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL CINEMA

A Serious Man

In 25 years of filmmaking, Joel and Ethan Coen have established themselves as a major international voice, a postmodern sensibility overcome with cosmic jokiness. If No Country for Old Men, in all ...

January 15, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Woyzeck

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Consistent in nothing if not his eccentricity, Werner Herzog has only in his two most recent features (his eighth and ninth) bothere...

January 13, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

The Thing

When John Carpenter’s The Thing was unleashed into cinemas in 1982, it received an almost unanimous critical drubbing on both sides of the Atlantic. Critic after critic griped about weak characteri...

January 13, 2024 | SCALA
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL CINEMA

Song of the Sea

If you set out to assess the global state of play for feature animation, you might come up with three creative hot spots. The US west coast, home to the likes of Pixar, Disney and DreamWorks, is an...

January 13, 2024 | CARTOON SALOON AT 25

Looking for Mr. Goodbar

Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a film about women’s lib that owes as much to Erica Jong as it does to received wisdom from the male establishment. It exists in a curious margin of late-1970s American c...

January 13, 2024 | SCALA
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL CINEMA

Scala!!!

+ intro by co-director Ali Catterall Fasten your seatbelts for the return of the homegrown hit of this year’s LFF, featuring John Waters along with John Akomfrah, Adam Buxton, Caroline Catz, Mat...

January 12, 2024 | RELAXED SCREENING

The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady bestows on the world one of the greatest heroines in fiction. As read by Campion’s film, Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) is a gauche and difficult young American on the brink o...

January 12, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Pee-wee's Big Adventure

The screening on Friday 12 January will be introduced by Ben Roberts, BFI CEO Pee-wee Herman, the on-screen persona of comedian Paul Reubens, is perhaps the most consistently developed comic crea...

January 12, 2024 | SCALA
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL CINEMA

Nosferatu the Vampyre

A contemporary review Given the current fashion for remakes, together with the bubbling revival of German film production, it’s to be expected that the Caligari era, stretching gloriously from Rye’...

January 12, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

Grizzly Man

Timothy Treadwell is an unusual protagonist for a Herzog film: he has a high, squeaky voice, a mildly effeminate manner and a stridently sentimental impulse towards animals. This seems unlikely in ...

January 12, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom

Pasolini’s hopes, energies and talent were focused on resistance to the sameness of culture, to the homogenising, consumerist demands of capital, its creation of (false) desires and the politico-so...

January 9, 2024 | SCALA
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL CINEMA

8½

Taking its title from the number of films Fellini had completed up to this point, 8½ features filmmaker Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) being besieged by sycophants and collaborators as he struggles t...

January 9, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Sunset Blvd.

Gloria Swanson on ‘Sunset Blvd.’ When we started Sunset Blvd. we had only 26 pages of script. [Screenwriter Charles] Brackett and Wilder were determined I should do it. I didn’t want to. Because in...

January 8, 2024 | SENIORS

Stroszek

Herzog’s second film with lead actor Bruno S. (following The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser) was written specifically as a vehicle for the unusual performer’s rough-edged naivety. Having reneged on a prom...

January 8, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

California Split

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In the remarkable unbroken panning shot at the beginning of Thieves like Us – with the convicts glimpsed at the start of its parabol...

January 8, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Holdovers

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Rock ‘n’ Roll Cinema

The Holdovers

The Beast

A Serious Man

Woyzeck

The Thing

Song of the Sea

Looking for Mr. Goodbar

Scala!!!

The Portrait of a Lady

Pee-wee's Big Adventure

Nosferatu the Vampyre

Grizzly Man

Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom

8½

Sunset Blvd.

Stroszek

California Split

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