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12 November
Chinatown (15) Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen
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15 November
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After years of slapdash sequels and waning fandom, the Camp Miasma slasher franchise is handed over to an enthusiastic young director for resurrection. But when she visits the original's star, a now-reclusive actress shrouded in mystery, the two women fall into a blood-soaked world of desire, fear, and delirium.
“Everything is a remake of a remake, Schoenbrun tells us, but Miasma is an utterly unique, exhilaratingly entertaining vision, both blood-drenched and beautiful” 5/5 Empire Magazine
A friend of small-town detective John Klute has disappeared. The only clue is a connection with a Manhattan call girl, Bree Daniels. Klute puts her under surveillance, gradually being drawn further into a world he's never experienced. But while Klute searches, someone is stalking Bree.
Jane Fonda took home the Academy Award for her haunting portrayal of the high-priced call girl being stalked by a psychopath. Master filmmaker Alan J. Pakula (All the President's Men, Sophie's Choice, Presumed Innocent) directed this romantic detective-thriller/character study and the screenplay received an Academy Award nomination. You can see two more of Pakula's films in our Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen season, paranoia thriller The Parallax View on Thursday 15 October and a 50th anniversary screening of All the President's Men on Monday 14 December. The Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen Season is a themed run of films exploring how power can be misused, how corruption develops, and how truth can be manipulated.
Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a wealthy family and what seems like a straightforward case quickly spirals into a labyrinth of gambling debts, missing persons, murder, corruption and deception. Humphrey Bogart stars as PI Philip Marlowe in this classic American film noir directed by Howard Hawks. Lauren Bacall stars as Vivian Rutledge.
The Big Sleep, now 80 years old, is part of the Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen season as Hawks' brilliant noir exposes how wealth, influence and social status conceal criminality and moral decay and where every character is hiding something...
There are no adverts or trailers with this screening of The Big Sleep.
An ambitious reporter (Warren Beatty) gets in way-over-his-head trouble while investigating a senator's assassination which leads to a vast conspiracy involving a multinational corporation behind every event in the worlds headlines.
You can see two more of Pakula's films in our Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen season, Oscar-winning thriller Klute on Thursday 8 October and a 50th anniversary screening of All the President's Men on Monday 14 December. The Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen Season is a themed run of films exploring how power can be misused, how corruption develops, and how truth can be manipulated.
The ever popular French Film Festival returns to the RBC with a classic thriller from 1995. France’s master of suspense, Claude Chabrol, relishes every malevolent, icily controlled shot of this perfectly constructed thriller, right up to its terrifying, violent climax.
Adapted from Ruth Rendell's classic thriller, A Judgement in Stone, Chabrol transposes it to a remote French village. This iconic film has left a lasting mark on the cinematic landscape. Its influence transcends borders, shaping contemporary masterpieces like Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite. In French with English subtitles.
"Creates a palpable sense of unease that fully justifies the shockingly violent finale." - Time Out
You can see two other films by Claude Chabrol as part of the Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen season, La Femme infidèle and Le Boucher, thrillers which explore moral, rather than political, corruption and where polite society and dark secrets entwine to murderous effect.
Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, a paranoid, secretive surveillance expert who has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the couple he is spying on will be murdered.
Francis Ford Coppola's brilliant paranoia thriller The Conversation was filmed in between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II and is part of our Power, Corruption and Lies on Film Season featuring a series of films based around the abuse of power, the manipulation of truth, and the consequences of secrecy.
You can also see Gene Hackman in another film in the Power, Corruption and Lies on Film season, 1975's Night Moves in which he plays a Los Angeles private investigator hired by a client to find her runaway teenage daughter only to stumble upon something much more intriguing and sinister. Thursday 29 October.
Adapted from Colleen Hoover's best-selling novel, this seductive, psychological thriller follows renowned author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) and Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), a struggling writer who relocates to the remote Crawford estate to ghostwrite for Verity. After Lowen uncovers what appears to be Verity's chilling autobiographical notes, she wrestles with the disturbing and twisted confessions about Verity’s husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), and finds it hard to separate fiction from reality, manipulation from attraction, and opportunity from obsession.
Adapted from Colleen Hoover's best-selling novel, this seductive, psychological thriller follows renowned author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) and Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), a struggling writer who relocates to the remote Crawford estate to ghostwrite for Verity. After Lowen uncovers what appears to be Verity's chilling autobiographical notes, she wrestles with the disturbing and twisted confessions about Verity’s husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), and finds it hard to separate fiction from reality, manipulation from attraction, and opportunity from obsession.
Former footballer and present private detective Harry Moseby gets hired on to what seems a standard missing person case, as an aging Hollywood actress whose only major roles came thanks to being married to a studio mogul wants Moseby to find and return her stepdaughter. Harry travels to Florida to find her, but he begins to see a connection with the runaway girl, the world of Hollywood stuntmen, and a suspicious mechanic when an unsolved murder comes to light.
Starring Gene Hackman and Melanie Griffiths in her film debut, Night Moves was written by Scottish screenwriter Alan Sharp. Sharp was one of Scotland’s greatest screenwriters and one of its most important transnational writers. The adopted son of a Greenock shipyard worker, he became a bestselling novelist, a leading playwright, a record-breaking Hollywood screenwriter and the central figure of a new Scottish national film industry. Today, however, his books, television plays and screenplays are forgotten. Come and see Night Moves as part of our Power, Corruption and Lies on Film season, a film that, like Sharp, is little known, seriously under-rated and deserves to be revalued.
With guest introduction by RBC customer Gerron Stewart.
A leading member of the French New Wave, who came to be regarded as the 'French Hitchcock', for many years Claude Chabrol's classic thrillers have been missing from UK screens. A mid-career masterpiece within Chabrol's remarkable run of bourgeois psychological thrillers, La Femme infidèle traces the fallout following a husband’s discovery of his wife’s affair and his quiet, unnerving and devastating act of revenge. In French with English subtitles.
La Femme infidèle is part of the Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen Season, a themed run of films exploring how power can be misused, how corruption develops, and how truth can be manipulated. Alongside classics like The Big Sleep and All the President's Men the season brings together three of Chabrol’s most disturbing works, from La Femme infidèle, 1970's impeccable Le Boucher and 1995's La Cérémonie (based on Ruth Rendell's novel A Judgement in Stone), these are thrillers which explore moral, rather than political, corruption and where polite society and dark secrets entwine to murderous effect.
A private investigator uncovers a conspiracy that reaches from municipal planning to the very foundations of power in Los Angeles. Widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, Chinatown is a defining statement on corruption—where truth is elusive, justice is compromised, and power always wins. Chinatown was nominated for 11 Academy Awards at the 47th Academy Awards (1975), tying for the most nominations that year but won only Best Original Screenplay for screenwriter Robert Towne.
The Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen Season is a themed run of films exploring how power can be misused, how corruption develops, and how truth can be manipulated.
A leading member of the French New Wave, who came to be regarded as the 'French Hitchcock', for many years Claude Chabrol's classic thrillers have been missing from UK screens. Chabrol’s most celebrated and sinister film sees a tender friendship between a schoolteacher and local butcher darken as a series of murders unsettles life in their village. In French with English subtitles.
Le Boucher is part of the Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen Season, a themed run of films exploring how power can be misused, how corruption develops, and how truth can be manipulated. Alongside classics like The Big Sleep and All the President's Men the season brings together three of Chabrol’s most disturbing works, from 1969's La Femme infidèle and 1995's La Cérémonie (based on Ruth Rendell's novel A Judgement in Stone), these are thrillers which explore moral, rather than political, corruption and where polite society and dark secrets entwine to murderous effect.
Carl Reiner's comedy-mystery stars Steve Martin as private detective Rigby Reardon who is hired by Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward) to investigate the death of her father, a scientist who was working on a mysterious project. As the case unfolds, Reardon encounters Nazis, espionage, murder and a bizarre plot involving mind control.
Masterfully incorporating clips from classic noir films, digitally inserting Steve Martin into scenes with legendary actors such as Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, James Cagney and Ingrid Bergman, the film is both a loving tribute to and a parody of 1940s film noir.
A playful but precise homage to classic noir, Carl Reiner’s film creates a detective story built from cinema itself. Beneath the humour lies an affectionate critique of noir tropes—reminding us that even the myths we tell ourselves about crime, power and truth are constructed.
There are no adverts or trailers with this screening.
In the run-up to the 1972 elections, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward covers what seems to be a minor break-in at the Democratic Party National headquarters. He is surprised to find top lawyers already on the defense case, and the discovery of names and addresses of Republican fund organizers on the accused further arouses his suspicions. The editor of the Post is prepared to run with the story and assigns Woodward and Carl Bernstein to it. They find the trail leading higher and higher in the Republican Party, and eventually into the White House itself. The brand-new 4K restoration of Alan J. Pakula's timely political thriller is back in cinemas for its 50th anniversary.
All the President's Men is also part of our Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen Season, a themed run of films exploring how power can be misused, how corruption develops, and how truth can be manipulated. You can see two more of director Alan J. Pakula's 70s thrillers in Klute and The Parallax View as well as rereleases of thrillers by legendary French director Claude Chabrol.