BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Enys Men

A cross between folk horror and nature documentary, Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men is as idiosyncratic as his acclaimed first feature, Bait. Told through poetic visuals, it is similarly shot on grainy 16mm...

January 13, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

A Matter of Life and Death

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A most peculiar and potent cocktail of romance, theology, global bridge-building and national tub-thumping, this thoughtful drama ab...

January 12, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Chungking Express

‘I can honestly say, probably more than any other movie in the last two years, no movie spoke to me, got under my skin, just made me fall in love with it. I’ve seen Chungking Express several times,...

January 12, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Penda's Fen

There has to be an Alan Clarke film in this season. Although it’s a real outlier in terms of his body of work, this was a touchstone when I was developing Enys Men. I’d be lying if I said I fully k...

January 11, 2023 | MARK JENKIN’S THE CINEMATIC DNA OF ENYS MEN

Kagemusha

This magisterial epic of 16th-century Japan was Akira Kurosawa’s great homecoming movie after a decade either working abroad or in the doldrums following the critical drubbing faced by his 1970 fil...

January 11, 2023 | KUROSAWA

The Gleaners and I + La Jetée

Agnès Varda describes The Gleaners and I as a ‘wandering road documentary’. While it covers some of the same ground as Vagabond – for instance, rural poverty and subsistence living – it returns to ...

January 11, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Parasite

Last year at Cannes, Lee Chang-dong held up a magnifying glass to Korean society and unveiled his critique on the one per cent vs the 99 per cent in Burning. Now it’s Bong Joon-ho’s turn. Of course...

January 9, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Sátántangó

A monumental cinematic achievement, Sátántangó bears testimony to the purity of the director’s artistic vision and the perfection of his craft. On a canvas that is both dark and deep, Béla Tarr pai...

January 8, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Journey to Italy

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Quite simply, Journey to Italy is a very, very great film. A landmark in many respects. One of those masterpieces which feels as if...

January 8, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Haunters of the Deep

Haunters of the Deep One of the later Children’s Film Foundation adventures. I must have seen this around the time it came out. Enys Men shares many of the same locations in West Cornwall. Having ...

January 8, 2023 | MARK JENKIN’S THE CINEMATIC DNA OF ENYS MEN

Céline and Julie Go Boating

No film has brought me more joy than Céline and Julie Go Boating. It’s funny, playful, full of tiny details that you only notice on subsequent viewings. It’s rather like a bedtime story invented on...

January 8, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Tropical Malady

Tropical Malady was the title under which the artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2004 feature was distributed in the UK and elsewhere. Its original Thai title, Sud Pralad, in fact mea...

January 7, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Spirited Away

Spirited Away sets its intimations of mortality, the decline of a culture and the loss of nature against one of the most sumptuous and dazzling mises en scène ever created in cinema – in the bathho...

January 7, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Histoire(s) du cinéma

A contemporary review Almost twenty years ago, Godard stated what we can now see as a first draft of Histoire(s) du cinéma. His so-called ‘Introduction to a veritable history of cinema and televisi...

January 7, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Empire of Light

Academy Award® winner Sam Mendes (1917, Revolutionary Road, Road to Perdition, Jarhead, American Beauty) writes and directs Empire of Light: ‘For most people, their most formative period is their t...

January 7, 2023 | PREVIEW

Blue Velvet

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Contemporary reviews In terms of David Lynch’s work, Blue Velvet marks a huge leap forward, almost magically establishing him as the...

January 7, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Symptoms

Despite being full of visual clichés and horror tropes, this feels entirely unique; it must be down to the command Larraz has over the medium, crafting a haunting and unnerving descent into madness...

January 6, 2023 | MARK JENKIN’S THE CINEMATIC DNA OF ENYS MEN

The Shining

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away most of the plot. A contemporary review Jack Torrance applies for the job as caretaker at the Overlook Hotel high in the Colorado Rockies during the w...

January 6, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Rashomon

Unreliable narration is taken to a new level in this landmark film, one of Akira Kurosawa’s finest, which introduced post-war Japanese cinema to international audiences. A murder takes place in a ...

January 6, 2023 | RE-RELEASES

Lost Highway

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. I came to this one late, as I’d always been led to believe that it was one of David Lynch’s lesser works. Maybe it was the lack of e...