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1 month ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Christopher Nolan |Werner Herzog |Bong Joon Ho |Thomas Flew
“At the time, [In the Mood for Love] was one of the most difficult productions I’d ever done. But now, when I think back, what I remember are the small moments. Time has a way of softening the edges of memory. Perhaps [it endures] because the film isn’t really about 1960s Hong Kong, but about something more fundamental – how we connect with each other, how we navigate desire and restraint, how we construct narratives to make sense of our lives.
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Nov 14, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Lou Thomas |Sinead Gleeson |James Bell |Thomas Flew
From stoned rabbit to Scottish octopus, vampire to the voice of a goose, policeman to zombie stepdad, Bill Nighy’s storied career has seen him play a diverse mix of parts. His performance as a cancer-stricken town planner in Living (2022) – a wistful remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 classic Ikiru – garnered a best actor Oscar nomination. His latest role sees him tackle another refined older gent under pressure, the pioneering obstetrician Patrick Steptoe.
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Nov 5, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Sinead Gleeson |James Bell |Thomas Flew |Georgia Korossi
The actor’s first film since Oppenheimer is a quiet, pained drama about the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, where young pregnant women were sent to work and their babies were sold for adoption. Updated: 5 November 2024After the huge success of Oppenheimer, which has included Oscar, Bafta, Sag and Golden Globe wins for Cillian Murphy, many were curious to know where the actor would go next.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Thomas Flew |Georgia Korossi |Nick Bradshaw |Thomas FlewInterviews
There is something otherworldly about Andrea Arnold’s Bird, and it’s Franz Rogowski. As free spirit Bird, he hops, skips, spins his way into town – we’re in Kent, just down the road from where Arnold grew up – and into the life of young Bailey (newcomer Nykiya Adams).
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Aug 26, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Stephanie Bunbury |Philip Concannon |Guy Lodge |Thomas Flew
Debut director Saule Bliuvaite contrasts the bleakness of a Lithuanian town with the hopes of young teens who get involved with a sinister modelling agency in this richly cinematic Locarno prizewinner. Updated: 25 August 2024Reviewed from the 2024 Locarno Film FestivalIt’s difficult to find anything new to say on the subject of teenage girls and body anxiety. But this debut film from Lithuania shakes up that women’s magazine staple with the eeriness of a fable.
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Aug 22, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Philip Concannon |Guy Lodge |Thomas Flew |Pamela Hutchinson
Zoë Kravitz shows great promise as a director, but this elaborate satire about a nightmare holiday with a billionaire CEO feels both overwritten and frustratingly vague.
22 August 2024Blink Twice begins with an apology. Frida (Naomi Ackie) is watching disgraced tech CEO Slater King (Channing Tatum) express remorse in an interview for his past actions. We never learn what transgressions he committed, but Tatum nails the performatively humble delivery and therapy-speak of the celebrity mea culpa.
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Aug 1, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Rory Doherty |Sam Wigley |Thomas Flew
As a narrative device, shipwrecks have an anchored position in fiction because of how frequent the danger of them used to be. For as long as boats have been crossing oceans, passengers and sailors have been terrified of being swept into harsh, unknown waters, perpetually lost at sea, and subject to a watery grave. It’s an anxiety born from the real, uncontrollable elements that faced unprepared and unsophisticated vessels for centuries.
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Jul 26, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Sam Wigley |Thomas Flew |Brogan Morris
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide, including BFI SouthbankJane Schoenbrun made a splash during the pandemic era with We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021), their unnerving portal into a world of creepypasta and extremely-online gameplay. The non-binary filmmaker has now returned with the next part of their ‘screen trilogy’, in which it’s now a late-night TV show called The Pink Opaque which holds Schoenbrun’s latest alienated young protagonists in its grip.
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Jul 25, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Thomas Flew |Sam Wigley |Brogan Morris |John Berra
In France, in the 1890s, two of contemporary culture’s most enduring entities were born: cinema and the modern Olympic Games. The former would find a happy bedfellow in the latter – what could be more cinematic than the human form pushed to its limits? It was inevitable, then, that films would be made of the Olympics, not least due to their importance as cultural phenomena. But in an alternate reality, it’s not impossible that filmmaking would have been an Olympic discipline too.
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May 23, 2024 | 
bfi.org.uk | Rory Doherty |Sam Wigley |Thomas Flew
Trainspotting is once again pulling in to British cinemas to remind established fans and new audiences how Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge translated Irvine Welsh’s bitter, uncompromised literary vision of a Scotland in crisis. Many films in the new millennium have emulated Boyle’s urgent style, and nearly every Scottish crime film since has owed its dark humour or bare-toothed edge to Welsh’s cult classic.
