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I honestly never expected Steven Spielberg in a Criterion Channel series––certainly not one that pairs him with Kogonada, anime, and Johnny Mnemonic––but so’s the power of artificial intelligence. Perhaps his greatest film (at this point I don’t need to tell you the title) plays with After Yang, Ghost in the Shell, and pre-Matrix Keanu in July’s aptly titled “AI” boasting also Spike Jonze’s Her, Carpenter’s Dark Star, and Computer Chess. Much more analog is a British Noir collection obviously carrying the likes of Odd Man Out, Night and the City, and The Small Back Room, further filled by Joseph Losey’s Time Without Pity and Basil Dearden’s It Always Rains on Sunday. (No two ways about it: these movies have great titles.) An Elvis retrospective brings six features, and the consensus best (Don Siegel’s Flaming Star) comes September 1.

While Isabella Rossellini...

As detailed in his brilliant new Harpers essay, Martin Scorsese is not only continuing to make masterpieces along with highlighting and preserving all corners of world cinema—he’s fighting tooth and nail for the art form itself as media conglomerates further infantilize the medium with four-quadrant, homogenized “content.”

While his accurate comments have caused some backlash, our friends at Bright Wall/Dark Room put it succinctly, “Scorsese is a gate *opener* btw. He wants you to see movies, make movies, love movies, live movies. It’s kinda been his whole thing for 50 years.” The latest proof of this life-long mission has arrived courtesy of a list of new film recommendations.

Spurred on by Edgar Wright’s request during quarantine for more films to devour, Scorsese sent the fellow filmmaker nearly 50 recommendations of British films, including many overlooked ones, revealed in 3-hour conversation that Wright had with Quentin Tarantino on the Empire podcast.

During a three-hour discussion on a recent episode of “The Empire Film Podcast,” Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino revealed the existence of their makeshift quarantine movie club over the last 9 months. As Wright explained, “It’s nice. We’ve kept in touch in a sort of way that cinephiles do. It’s been one of the very few blessings of this [pandemic], the chance to disappear down a rabbit hole with the hours indoors that we have.” Tarantino added, “Edgar is more social than I am. It’s a big deal that I’ve been talking to him these past 9 months.”

A bulk of the film club was curated by none other than Martin Scorsese, who sent Wright a recommendation list of nearly 50 British films that Scorsese considers personal favorites. In the five months Wright spent in lockdown before resuming production on “Last Night in Soho” — and before he received the...

Sinister stabbings, women kicked and beaten, perverse hoodlums selling cocaine and murdering street-beat bobbies: what happened to civilized English crime? Cavalcanti’s vicious postwar Brit Noir shocked critics for The Times and was cut to ribbons for American distribution. A disillusioned, bored Raf hero turns to smuggling and skullduggery; this fully restored crime classic gives us Trevor Howard, Sally Gray and Griffith Jones in one of the best — and most brutal — crime pix of its day. Plus attractive Pi extras.

They Made Me a Fugitive

Region-free Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1947 / B&w / 1:37 flat full frame / 102 78 min. / I Became a Criminal / Street Date September 23, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Sally Gray, Trevor Howard, Griffith Jones, René Ray, Charles Farrell, Maurice Denham, Vida Hope, Peter Bull, Sebastian Cabot.

Cinematography:Otto Heller

Film Editors: Margery Saunders, Terence Fisher (uncredited)

Original Music: Marius-François Gaillard

Written by Noel Langley from a novel by Jackson Budd...

Author: Competitions

To mark the release of The Proud Valley on 27th March, we’ve been given 3 copies to give away on Blu-ray.

David Goliath (Paul Robeson), a charismatic African-American stoker, washes up in a small Welsh village where he finds work alongside the miners down the pit. A competent singer, Goliath’s roaring voice soon draws the attention of the local choir master Dick Parry (Simon Lack: The Silver Darlings, Enemy at the Door) and his son Emlyn (Edward Chapman: Convoy, It Always Rains on Sunday), who have ambitions of winning the national choir contest.

Following a deadly explosion, the pits are closed, leaving the villagers out of work and struggling to make ends meet. Wanting to help the community that welcomed him so generously, David rouses a group of activists to march to London in the hope of reopening the mine in time to serve the...

There's nothing more earnest than an English national epic, and this is a valiant expedition that becomes a low-key disaster. Told straight and clean, it's a primer on how to behave in the face of doom. Scott of the Antarctic Region B Blu-ray Studiocanal (UK) 1948 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 110 min. / Street Date June 6, 2016 / Available from Amazon UK £ 14.99 Starring John Mills, Derek Bond, Harold Warrender, James Robertson Justice, Kenneth More, Reginald Beckwith. Cinematography Osmond Borradaile, Jack Cardiff, Geoffrey Unsworth Editor Peter Tanner Original Music Vaughan Williams Written by Walter Meade, Ivor Montagu, Mary Hayley Bell Produced by Michael Balcon Directed by Charles Frend

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

English film companies fell on hard times during the postwar austerity period. But the relatively small Ealing Studios maintained its creative underdog brand even after it was taken over by Rank, and is still celebrated for wartime greats like Went the Day Well?, the singular masterpiece Dead of Night,...

Most British crime films of the '40s and '50s have been slow crossing the pond, but Olive Films has a winner here, a gloss on Yank gangster pix from an earlier era. Just clear of prison, a tough criminal vows to punish the gang that abandoned him, and carries it out a ruthless revenge. But I think it was a mistake for him to involve that dance hall girl... Appointment with Crime Blu-ray Olive Films 1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 91 min. / Street Date June 21, 2016 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98 Starring William Hartnell, Herbert Lom, Joyce Howard, Robert Beatty, Raymond Lovell, Alan Wheatley. Cinematography Gerald Moss, James Wilson Film Editor Monica Kimick Original Music George Melachrino Produced by Louis H. Jackson Written and Directed by John Harlow

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Ask today's American film fan about old British crime films, and he'll probably not be able to...

Barbican, London

A season of films about London reveals how fog, rain and gloom of all kinds add to the mystique of the capital

I've been told that London's reputation for fog is not only due to the fact that it used to be foggy. It was also because cash-strapped postwar film-makers found it convenient to shroud their scenes in mist because they wouldn't have to build so much of the set – just one or two house fronts instead of a street. If this story is an urban myth, no matter, as it tells a truth about London on film. The city's greatest gift to the movie camera is its atmospherics, its fog, rain and darkness.

In ordinary daylight it is obstinately factual. If cinema likes to make cities into dream versions of themselves, London doesn't join in. The brick terraces, the railings, pavements, bollards and postboxes remain themselves. They...

★★★★☆ Coinciding with the BFI's Ealing: Light and Dark season, It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) - given a pristine digital restoration by the National Archive - stands as a remarkable example of the films Ealing made that were somewhat overshadowed by their more popular, overtly comedic titles. Directed by Robert Hamer (who went on to helm perhaps the studio's most acclaimed feature, 1949's Kind Hearts and Coronets) and based on the novel of the same name by Arthur La Bern, the film is a soapy kitchen sink crime drama set amongst the working-class denizens of East London, and tells a tale of hidden desire suppressed by societal conformity.

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By Pd Smith

In this scholarly but lively survey of British crime films from the 1940s to the present day, Forshaw tracks down the ways in which the genre has offered "keen insights into the society of the day". Films such as Robert Hamer's It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) present an "unvarnished picture of crime and lives lived in quiet desperation", while the more recent Kidulthood (2005) by Noel Clarke shows that "alienated, disenfranchised youth" remains as central to the genre as in the 50s. From police corruption, dealt with in David Greene's The Strange Affair (1968), to paedophilia – the subject of Cyril Frankel's Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (1960) – crime films have consistently tackled subjects that mainstream film-makers have avoided: it is, argues Forshaw, "the cinema of the unacceptable". He considers class divisions, sexual taboos, censorship, corporate crime and violence, as well as the "grimly urban" settings of many of the films,...

The Queen enjoys vintage royal footage, while Derek Jacobi's Sidney Turtlebaum character is set to ride again

Royal album

Trash was thrilled to witness the Queen visiting BFI Southbank last week as the old place celebrated its 60th birthday. The Queen appeared to enjoy the film presentation in the venerable National Film Theatre and, dressed in elegant purple coat and hat, flashed a satisfied smile at me – or so I like to think – as she walked along the aisle to the exit. She had just been treated to some lovely stuff from the BFI archive, including Scenes at Balmoral (1896), the first known filmed images of a British monarch, which depicted Queen Victoria and Tsar Nicholas II in the grounds of the Scottish castle.

Her Majesty – it's "Ma'am as in jam", according to the protocol instructions I received – must have then been very moved to see home cine footage from...

Ealing Studios' name is synonymous with comedy largely because of three films released on consecutive weeks in 1949: Passport to Pimlico, Whisky Galore! and Kind Hearts and Coronets. Before then it was associated with the form of realism created by the documentarists Alberto Cavalcanti and Harry Watt, brought in by Michael Balcon early in the second world war to give his studio a greater authenticity. The finest movie in this mode is It Always Rains on Sunday, made in 1947 in grimy, Blitz-scarred east London and being revived in a new print as an example of the darker side of Ealing in the BFI Southbank's Ealing retrospective. Superbly photographed by the great Douglas Slocombe in the Picture Post manner, a style radically different from the elegant Kind Hearts and Coronets, it's 24 hours in the life of Bethnal Green, cleverly dovetailing the lives of some 20 characters ranging from spivs, petty crooks...

Skyfall (12A)

(Sam Mendes, 2012, UK/Us) Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, 143 mins

It starts with a bang, but ends with a poignant whimper. This is supposedly a smarter Bond, you see, giving you first-class action and breathtaking imagery, but also a Freudian look into the secret agent's psyche. A pity, then, that the plot is utter nonsense. Bardem's Joker-ish baddie isn't interested in world domination; he has a personal score to settle, and an unfeasibly cunning plan…

Elena (12A)

(Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2011, Rus) Nadezhda Markina, Andrey Smirnov. 109 mins

The Return director finds form with a penetrating look at class resentment in money-obsessed modern Russia, perfect conditions for a noir-ish drama. Markina is magnificent as a hard-up divorcee, who does what she has to when her wealthy partner begins to ail.

Room 237 (15)

(Rodney Ascher, 2012, Us) 102 mins

This investigation into the myriad interpretations of Kubrick's The Shining goes far deeper than anyone needed,...

Xan Brooks, Peter Bradshaw and Catherine Shoard round up this week's cinema releases. Daniel Craig is back for a third helping of martinis and espionage as James Bond in Skyfall; the mysteries of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining are probed in Room 237; enigmas of a more domestic kind are explored in Russian drama Elena; and a re-release of the 1947 Ealing classic It Always Rains on Sunday

Xan BrooksPeter BradshawCatherine ShoardElliot SmithPhil Maynard...

★★★★☆ A key part of the BFI's Ealing: Light and Dark season and rereleased this Friday, Robert Hamer's It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a much-underrated kitchen sink crime drama set over one dreary Sunday, telling a tale of working-class life set within London's East End. Based on the novel by Arthur La Bernby, the story concerns the family life of Rose Sandgate (Googie Withers), a typical East End housewife married to the much older George (Edward Chapman) and living with his two young daughter Vi (Susan Shaw) and Doris (Patricia Plunkett) and their own young son, Alfie (David Lines).

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Ealing: Light And Dark, London

Over the years, Ealing has become a byword for quintessentially British comedy, as with familiar classics such as The Ladykillers and The Lavender Hill Mob, but this two-month retrospective shows just how much more there was to the studio. You'll find fine noir thrillers embedded in the landscape of austerity Britain, such as East End tragedy It Always Rains On Sunday, Next Of Kin or Cage Of Gold, in which Jean Simmons is led astray by an homme fatal.

BFI Southbank, SE1, Mon to 30 Dec

Africa In Motion, Edinburgh & Glasgow

Between Nollywood and the Arab spring, there are plenty of stories to tell in African cinema right now. However, in addition, this growing festival brings you African sci-fi, children's and art movies, including 20 British premieres, and films from Libya, Rwanda, Burkina Faso and Congo. Africa is literally in motion in festival closer Restless City, a...

It always rained for the Ealing Studios director, but with the reissue of a lost noir classic, it's time his talent was recognised

Robert Hamer was the odd man out at Ealing Studios. He wasn't the only falling-down drunk there, and I daresay he wasn't the only unhappily closeted homosexual, but his work as a writer and director has a sharpness and bite lacking in the genial comedies we associate with the studio.

The revival of Hamer's almost forgotten kitchen sink noir classic from 1947, It Always Rains On Sunday, may come as a shock to those who know Hamer only through his comic masterpiece Kind Hearts And Coronets. Kind Hearts lacks exactly that titular quality, being a spiritedly mean-minded account of multiple murder by a spurned minor aristocrat. Likewise Hamer's last film, School For Scoundrels, which was completed by others as Hamer was by then often battling terrifying Dt hallucinations.

Pitt was one of a number of A–listers voicing forthright opinions in the last few days

The big story

"My drug days have long since passed," said Brad Pitt in an interview this week. "But I could probably land in any American city and within 24 hours find whatever you want."

His comments came during a promotional stint for The House I Live In. The Pitt–produced documentary suggests that efforts by the Us government to fight drug trafficking are doomed to failure, and that a new approach should be adopted.

Labeling the Us "war on drugs" as a "charade," he said: "It's a backward strategy. It makes no sense and we keep going on the path like we're winning, when it perpetuates more drugs being used."

The actor has made no secret of his former drug use. Earlier this year he told the Guardian that he made the decision...

While New Yorkers have plenty of opportunity to see classic films on the big screen, you'll be hard pressed to find a lineup as front to back awesome as the Film Society Of Lincoln Center's "15 For 15: Celebrating Rialto Pictures."

The series honors the reknowned arthouse distribution shingle founded in 1997 that has brought some of the best known (and previously unknown) classics of cinema to American audiences. And the selection here by programmers Scott Foundas, Eric Di Bernardo and Adrienne Halpern represents the breadth and scope of the films Rialto has put their stamp on, ranging from the French New Wave ("Breathless") to film noir ("Rififi") to comedy ("Billy Liar") and more. There is something here for everybody and with the series kicking off tonight, we've got a special prize for some lucky readers.

Courtesy of Film Society Of Lincoln Center, we've got a copy of the excellent Rialto DVD...

A couple of months ago I wrote about the British artist Edward Bawden and his posters for Ealing Studios. The other day I stumbled upon this evocative and quite unusual poster for the 1947 Ealing noir It Always Rains on Sunday. Though I know the film I’d never seen the poster before and it started me looking into the story of its artist, one James Boswell. Like Bawden, Boswell not only did a handful of posters for Ealing but he also was stationed in Iraq during World War Two and produced a significant body of work from his time there. Whereas Bawden was an official war artist, however, Boswell, because of his famously left-wing sympathies and anti-war philosophy, was not. In fact, a book of his Iraq and other wartime paintings is called James Boswell: Unofficial War Artist.

Born in New Zealand in 1906, Boswell came to Britain to study painting...

A striking presence on stage and in the great days of British film, she played the prison governor of TV's Within These Walls

Followers of postwar cinema may well recall Googie Withers's striking presence in It Always Rains On Sunday, an unusually intense film for the Ealing Studios of 1947. A bored wife, she gives shelter to an ex-lover, now a murderer on the run, played by John McCallum, soon to be her real-life husband. The lovers were shown as unsympathetically as they might have been in French film noir, and the weather was bad even by British standards.

What Withers, who has died aged 94, brought to that performance was to define her strength in some of her most powerful roles. Too strong a face and too grand a manner prevented her being thought conventionally pretty, but she was imposingly watchable because of an obvious vigour and sexuality. Thus equipped,...

To celebrate the DVD release of The Halfway House available on DVD now, Optimum Home Entertainment have given us three copies of the movie to give away on DVD. The movie was directed by Basil Dearden and stars Mervyn Johns, Glynis Johns and Sally Ann Howes.

2011 sees the centenary of the birth of Ealing stalwart Basil Dearden, who directed more Ealing films than any of his peers – 18 – including The Blue Lamp, Saraband for Dead Lovers and The Halfway House. He was also the director of the ground-breaking Victim, starring Dirk Bogarde.

The Halfway House is an enjoyable mystery tale of a group of strangers driven to take shelter at a remote Welsh Inn during a storm. Each has a personal problem to hide, but they are soon brought together by unsettling events perhaps precipitated by their hosts, the enigmatic innkeepers. Starring Mervyn Johns and real-life daughter Glynis, The Halfway House...

"He's a chin." Such was Josef von Sternberg's summation of Clive Brook, delivered when Marlene Dietrich asked what her leading man in Shanghai Express(1932) was like. Since Brook had already given a sympathetic and subtle performance for Sternberg in Underworld (1927), and since he was one of the few actors who actually liked Sternberg, this remark should perhaps be taken less as an insult, and more as a statement of intent: in Shanghai Express, Sternberg reduces his chum to a chin, rigid and inexpressive.

The real Brook was different, as his sole film as director attests. On Approval (1944) climaxed Brook's acting career (he returned to the screen in 1963 for John Huston, in The List of Adrian Messenger: the rest is silence) and serves as a definitive rebuttal to Sternberg's put-down, as it's a gay, wildly creative, consistently funny comedy. Being based on a play that was then fifty years...

It might be derided as 'poverty porn', but social realism provides British film-makers with a poetic – and relatively cheap – way to make truly great cinema

The sight of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach soaking up the plaudits at Cannes should have been omen enough. Then, with impeccable timing, came this week's sun-kissed announcement of the long-pending first round of government cuts, Tory chancellor George Osborne ushering in the new age of penury. For the observer of British cinema, these twin signs could mean only one thing: an imminent new wave of social realism, a gold rush of movies about dole claims, manky flats, smack habits and black eyes. I can see you wincing from here.

But personally, should such a thing arise, I'll welcome it. For one thing, in contrast to, say, the CGI-laden blockbuster, social realism has always been something British cinema is actually good at. Invariably cheap to...

Actor husband of Googie Withers, he co-created Skippy the bush kangaroo

The ruggedly handsome Australian actor John McCallum, who has died aged 91, enhanced the golden era of postwar British cinema with his extrovert muscularity. He starred in films such as The Loves of Joanna Godden and It Always Rains On Sunday (both 1947), then returned to Australia with his wife and frequent co-star, Googie Withers, to become an impresario in theatre, film and television. His TV hits included the popular series Skippy (1966-68), developed with the producer Lee Robinson, which followed the escapades of a daredevil kangaroo which McCallum had first named Hoppy. More than 90 episodes were filmed, and the series became one of the best known Australian TV exports.

McCallum's Scottish grandparents emigrated as farmers but edged their son into the role of a church organist in Brisbane. His father moved on to concert management and built the 3,000-seat Cremorne theatre in Brisbane,...