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2 weeks ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Stephen Dalton |Josephine Botting |Katie Granger |Henry Barnes
A gritty rags-to-riches rock musical with a strikingly sour aftertaste, Slade in Flame was a surprisingly bleak cinematic star vehicle for West Midlands glam-pop crowd-pleasers Slade. The film was a box office flop in 1975, but some critics praised its depth and sophistication. Over the last two decades, director Richard Loncraine’s debut feature has earned a growing cult reputation as an unsung classic, a potent blend of tender lyricism and bruising cynicism.
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1 month ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Kevin Harley |Emily Maskell |Josephine Botting
Throughout his career, Toronto-born film composer Howard Shore has combined mainstream reach with the modernist rigour and range of his influences. Educated at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, his inspirations have included Toru Takemitsu, Ornette Coleman, Nino Rota and John Cage. From 1969 to 1972 he played in jazz-fusion band Lighthouse, before flexing his repertory instincts as music director for Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1980.
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2 months ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Brogan Morris |Geoff Andrew |Josephine Botting
Explosions, lens flares and VFX galore... On his 60th birthday, explore Michael Bay's action-packed filmography to venture into an identifiable stylistic Bayhem. 17 February 2025To many critics and cinema connoisseurs in the 1990s through to the 2010s, no director represented all that was crass and ugly about Hollywood more than Michael Bay.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
bfi.org.uk | Josephine Botting |Jez Stewart |Michael Gray |Alex Barrett
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Anna Neagle was one of Britain’s most popular film stars. The peak of her fame came after World War II thanks to her pairing with Michael Wilding in a string of post-war musicals directed by her husband Herbert Wilcox, bringing her a huge and devoted audience. An all-round entertainer, she exuded a wholesome girl-next-door persona, although she and Wilcox were romantically involved long before he divorced his first wife.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
bfi.org.uk | Adam Scovell |Jan Asante |Alex Ramon |Josephine Botting
Richard Linklater’s ‘Before trilogy’ is concerned with walking and talking. Following many years in the lives of Parisian Céline (Julie Delpy) and American Jesse (Ethan Hawke), the three films show the ups and downs of a relationship as well as how such relationships interact with the exploration of places on foot.
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Dec 20, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Josephine Botting
The story of Christine Norden’s road to fame is a publicist’s dream. While queuing to see a Ray Milland film in the Edgware Road in August 1945, this glamorous daughter of a Sunderland bus driver was spotted by a trio of Hungarian film figures. They brought her to the attention of movie mogul Alexander Korda, who gave her a screen test and signed her immediately to his company London Film.
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Nov 1, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Blake Simons |Leigh Singer |Josephine Botting |Jez Stewart
Amazon Prime’s new crime series Like a Dragon: Yakuza is a live-action adaptation of Sega’s cult video game franchise, which itself took some moves from the yakuza movies of Takeshi Kitano, Takashi Miike and more. 1 November 2024A man in a grey suit stands beneath the glowing red archway of a bustling street lined with stores, clubs, places to be. The man is stoic yakuza-of-the-people Kiryu Kazuma and the street is red light district Kamurochō, modelled on real-life Kabukichō, Tokyo.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Andrew Male |Nick James |Jessica Kiang |Josephine Botting
It’s pure fantasy for critics to call Shōgun the new Game of Thrones, but 3 Body Problem might just fit the bill. 15 April 2024By Andrew MaleThe Independent has called Shōgun “the next Game of Thrones”. US trade weekly Variety went with “the most transportive TV epic since Game of Thrones”, while Entertainment Weekly called Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks’s ten-part historical drama “another piece of ‘prestige TV’ in the same vein as Game of Thrones”.
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Apr 11, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Nick James |Jessica Kiang |Josephine Botting |Mar Diestro-Dópido
Kapadia’s heartbreaking documentary about Amy Winehouse presents a complex picture of someone who is both more canny and more intimidated than we could ever have imagined. From our July 2015 issue. 12 April 2024By Nick JamesThe scene is some ordinary flat-pack London lounge at the turn of this century. A petite but gawky teenaged girl with flappy fingers – all fidgety overspill – is eyeballing the lens of a videocam; there’s insistence and pleading in those eyes.
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Apr 10, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Jessica Kiang |Josephine Botting |Mar Diestro-Dópido |Bruno Savill De Jong
Looking back at American cinema’s banner year, fifty years later10 April 2024By Jessica KiangIn April 1974 when Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation opened and Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul shuffled on to US screens wearing his perpetual plastic raincoat and his perpetual peevish frown, there had not yet been much evidence that this would be a particularly unusual year. Notable things happened – in February, Bruce Balick and Robert L.
