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Each week, we round up the most exciting film events happening in London over the coming week, from pop-ups and one-offs to regular film clubs, outdoor screenings and festivals. Here’s this week’s top five…
Bechdel Test Fest: Nora Ephron’s Last Supper
Pay tribute to the much-missed queen of the romcom with two (ironically not that romantic) movies, plus a slap-up supper inspired by her work. First up it's ‘Heartburn’, in which Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson play Ephron and her then-husband, Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein. It’s followed by ‘Julie and Julia’, a time-hopping story set both in post-war Paris where Julia Child (Streep again) learns French cooking and in post-9/11 Queens where Julie Powell (Amy Adams) cooks and blogs her way through Child’s book.
Rio, 107 Kingsland High St, E8 2PB. Sun May 29, 1pm. £42.
1994 All-Nighter
Take a trip 22 years back in time with the Prince Charles’s tribute to a vintage year for film. The choices range from the sublime (Quentin Tarantino’s thunderous portmanteau ‘Pulp Fiction’) to the wildly overrated (Luc Besson’s daft and creepy ‘Leon’), via a bumper crop of good old-fashioned crowd pleasers: Keanu Reeves takes the bus in ‘Speed’, Jim Carrey mugs like a maniac in ‘Dumb and Dumber’, Arnie battles some wacky Islamic terrorists in the defiantly pre-9/11 ‘True Lies’ and Kevin Smith makes a promising debut with ‘Clerks’.
Prince Charles Cinema, 7 Leicester Place, WC2H 7BP. Sat May 28, 9pm. £20.
Folk Horror Film Club: ‘The Devil Rides Out’
This new film club explores the rustic underbelly of Britain’s horror movie canon. Tonight’s choice is Hammer oddity ‘The Devil Rides Out’, a film whose reputation has grown enormously over the years. Christopher Lee has never been better than as the grim opponent of Satanism, and the night in the pentacle during which the forces of evil mobilise an epic series of cinematic temptations rediscovers aspects of mythology which the cinema had completely overlooked.
Genesis Cinema, 93–95 Mile End Rd, E1 4UJ. Tue May 24, 7.30pm. £8.50.
Shakespeare on Screen: ‘10 Things I Hate About You’
‘The Taming of the Shrew’ relocated to American suburbia (‘Padua’, a suburb of Seattle) may not sound a great idea. Julia Styles’s snooty riot grrrl as Kate/Katharina? Heath Ledger’s impoverished Jim Morrison clone as Patrick/Petruchio? But this is an unexpected classic, a study in female distemper that makes the original look mean-minded. Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo + Juliet’ was a more spectacular, hungry make-over, but for gentle, cheeky wit this has the edge.
BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, SE1 8XT. Sun May 29, 6.20pm. £8.35–£11.75.
The VITO Project: ‘Polyester’
This free LGBT film and discussion group finally gets around to John Waters, with one of his most monstrous classics. Divine plays a Baltimore housewife, spurned by an unfaithful husband, a contemptuous disco-queen daughter and a glue-sniffing son with a vicious bent towards foot fetishism, who relives the dreams of all ’50s queens and finds solace in the arms of Tab Hunter. OK, so it's not ‘The Cherry Orchard’, but who could resist a film where a massive drive-in billboard proclaims 'Now Showing – Three Great Marguerite Duras Hits'?
The Cinema Museum, 2 Dugard Way, SE11 4TH. Wed May 25, 7pm. FREE.
For the full list, go to Time Out’s film events page.