Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

Living

Living began rather serendipitously. One night, when author Kazuo Ishiguro and producer Stephen Woolley were having dinner, Bill Nighy dropped by for a drink. ‘[They] are film nerds,’ laughs Nighy ...

December 19, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Day of the Dead

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review Although Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead were supposed to be the first two thirds of a trilogy, ...

December 19, 2022 | IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS

Meet Me in St. Louis

The closer you look at most famous Hollywood productions, the harder it is to see how they turned out all right – let alone to believe that anyone was in charge. Just as on any set the crew trusts ...

December 18, 2022 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

The Woman King

+ intro and Q&A The Agojie were an all-female unit of warriors who protected the African kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s. The story follows the emotionally epic journey of General Nanisca who ...

December 17, 2022 | AFRICAN ODYSSEYS

She Said

Two-time Academy Award® nominee Carey Mulligan (Promising Young Woman, An Education) and Emmy nominee Zoe Kazan (The Plot Against America, The Big Sick) star as New York Times reporters Megan Twohe...

December 17, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Scrooged

Bill Murray’s Frank Cross is a modern-day Scrooge. An unpleasant TV executive, he pushes his team to the limit when he plans a live production of A Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve, expecting them ...

December 17, 2022 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

Scrooge

Although there will always be dispute over which is Alastair Sim’s finest screen performance, there’s little doubt as to which is the best known. His 1951 characterisation of Charles Dickens’ notor...

December 17, 2022 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

Häxan

Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan is sort of a documentary, and it’s the ‘sort of’ that makes it unlike any other film. The Swedish silent melds historical fact and folk superstition to explore ideas ab...

December 17, 2022 | IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS

Carol

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Adapted from a Patricia Highsmith novel, Haynes’ typically elegant yet acerbic movie charts the intense (yet hesitant and furtive) r...

December 17, 2022 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

Triangle of Sadness

Ruben Östlund on ‘Triangle of Sadness’ Let’s start with the title: what does ‘triangle of sadness’ refer to? It’s a term used in the beauty industry. A friend sat next to a plastic surgeon at a p...

December 16, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Tangerine

On Christmas Eve, a couple of transgender sex workers meet-up at a donut shop in Hollywood. From there, the evening pans out, encompassing discovered infidelity, police interference, an impressive ...

December 16, 2022 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

One Cut of the Dead

It’s impossible to discuss Shin’ichirô Ueda’s One Cut of the Dead in any meaningful way without giving away vital plot twists and this review is no different. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop here ...

December 16, 2022 | IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS

Experimenta Mixtape
Secret Santa Edition

W: Hi everybody, we hope you enjoyed the Experimenta Mixtape Secret Santa edition. Kristina and I have put together a whole load of different material which of course you’ve just seen. So today you...

December 16, 2022 | EXPERIMENTA

Decision to Leave

Decision to Leave begins with the detective Hae-joon investigating the death of a man who fell from a mountaintop. When he meets the deceased man’s wife Seo-rae, he starts to suspect her at the sam...

December 16, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Dead of Night

+ intro Horror films or stories of the supernatural were little attempted in British cinema prior to the days of Hammer in the 1950s. There are the exceptions of course, such as The Ghoul (1933) a...

December 16, 2022 | SENIORS

The Banshees of Inisherin

The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Lieutenant of Inishmore… In titling his gritty, west coast Irish dramas, Martin McDonagh certainly has a type. All three aforementioned pl...

December 16, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Ghosts Christmas Special

We are pleased to welcome the following guests for a Q&A following tonight’s screening: Lolly Adefope, Mathew Baynton, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard, Charlotte Ritchie, Kiel...

December 15, 2022 | TV PREVIEW

The Babadook

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Post-millennial horror has proven to be particularly accommodating to women directors, from the Soska Sisters, Jen and Sylvia (Dead ...

December 15, 2022 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA

Twelve Monkeys

Dangling in mid-air, the bald man works diligently, sifting through clues to a monumental puzzle, piece by piece. Across one wall of a forbidding 21st century archive he has pasted the headlines of...

December 14, 2022 | MEMBER PICKS

Arrebato

A key movie from the movida madrileña, the explosion of countercultural creativity that erupted in Spain in the years following the death of Franco, Iván Zulueta’s second film is a radical, unpredi...

December 14, 2022 | IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS

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