-
Sep 27, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Sam Wigley |Pasquale Iannone |Tom Jones |Anton Bitel
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide, including BFI IMAXA review on Letterboxd memorably calls Francis Ford Coppola’s latest, grandest folly the “season finale of American cinema”, and for anyone who’s been gripped by that particular show, it’s quite the send-off.
-
Sep 27, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Pasquale Iannone Lists |Pasquale Iannone |Tom Jones |Anton Bitel
‘The King of Europe’ – this is how actor Faye Dunaway describes him in the recent HBO documentary on her life and career, Faye (2024). The man she’s talking about – her former partner Marcello Mastroianni – would undoubtedly have shrugged off this kind of (affectionate) hyperbole, just as he would roll his eyes when the press continued to refer to him as Italy’s ‘Latin lover’ in the wake of his starring role as an elegantly jaded journalist in Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960).
-
Sep 26, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Tom Jones |Anton Bitel |Sam Wigley |Pasquale Iannone
Hot on the heels of his sexually charged tennis drama Challengers, Luca Guadagnino unveiled his new film Queer at the Venice Film Festival in September. Starring Daniel Craig, it’s an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ autobiographical novel, which documents the writer’s queer experience in Mexico City during the 1940s. Burroughs’ experimental writing, with its unreliable narrators and ‘cut-up’ texts, has had a huge influence on film, literature and music.
-
Sep 23, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Anton Bitel Lists |Anton Bitel |Sam Wigley |Pasquale Iannone
In Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, fallen Tinseltown star Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) agrees, at age 50, to undergo a back-alley treatment which promises to create a better, rejuvenated version of her. In fact, she painfully births ‘Sue’ (Margaret Qualley), and finds herself time-sharing her life with a younger, more in-demand woman who wants it all, even at the expense of her other, older self.
-
Sep 20, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Sam Wigley |Pasquale Iannone |Omar Ahmed |David Morrison
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide, including BFI SouthbankCoralie Fargeat’s outrageous new body-horror burlesque riffs on those two great 1950 showbiz satires about ageing stars – All About Eve and Sunset Blvd – as it gives us a career-comeback Demi Moore playing a fading celebrity who turns to a black-market stem-cell-generating drug to help restore her youth.
-
Sep 20, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Pasquale Iannone |Omar Ahmed |David Morrison |Pasquale Iannone Lists
Anna Magnani, Gina Lollobrigida, Silvana Mangano, Claudia Cardinale, Monica Vitti… Italy has certainly produced more than its fair share of world-class female stars. Towering above them all – in terms of longevity, but especially in terms of international renown – is Sophia Loren. From her humble beginnings in Naples, Loren rose rapidly from local beauty queen to national icon to major Hollywood star.
-
May 6, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Adam Scovell |Stuart Isaac Burnside |Chloe Walker |Pasquale Iannone
We visit the town and college where Lindsay Anderson shot his revolutionary public school satire If.... to find how out how they look today. 6 May 2024By Adam ScovellFew images capture the tempestuous spirit of the late 1960s as effectively as actor Malcolm McDowell firing a sub-machine gun from the rooftops of a boarding school in Lindsay Anderson’s astonishing film If…. (1968). In spite of being only the second feature for the critic turned director, after This Sporting Life (1963), If….
-
Apr 30, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Stuart Isaac Burnside |Chloe Walker |Pasquale Iannone |Philip French
Lost in the Wasteland? Getting your Pip-Boy’s muddled with your Ghouls? Here's an explainer of the world of Fallout, the post-apocalyptic TV sensation, spun off from Bethesda Game Studios’ video games. 30 April 2024By Stuart BurnsideThe Last of Us, Twisted Metal, and now Fallout – live action adaptations of post-apocalyptic video games are a hot commodity on streaming services. Fallout, the most recent, is based on Bethesda’s long-running role playing video game series of the same name.
-
Apr 30, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Chloe Walker |Pasquale Iannone |Philip French |Michael Balcon
This article gives away plot details of Rome, Open CityItalian neorealism was meant to be a genre populated by non-professional actors, but Anna Magnani was the exception that proved the rule. Despite her stardom, her bawdy ebullience, earthy intensity and resolute lack of glamour made her the perfect emblem for a cinematic movement centred around ordinary Italians dealing with the tough realities of life in the shadow of the Second World War.
-
Apr 25, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Pasquale Iannone |Stuart Isaac Burnside |Chloe Walker |Philip French
One glance at the bookshelf of volumes dedicated to Italian neorealism might lead us to assume that there is very little left to say about what Martin Scorsese has called “the most precious moment in film history”.
