Capital Celluloid - Day 47: Wednesday Feb 16, 2011

Showgirls: Deptford Film Club, Birds Nest Pub, Deptford Church Street, London SE8 4RZ, 7.30pm

Tonight BFI Southbank screen Land of the Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 1955), which tops Martin Scorsese's guilty pleasure list. Showgirls is pretty much near the top of mine. Le Cool website (a daily guide to what's cool in London) have this screening as their selection for tonight - and quite right too. A lot of people hate this film and it's often nominated for film turkey awards but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Director Paul Verhoeven is incapable of making a boring movie and this picture with Elizabeth Berkley as a wild-eyed ingénue who takes the Las Vegas exotic-dance scene by storm has energy to spare. It is also a somewhat subversive movie as Jonathan Rosenbaum points out in his Chicago Reader review.

Here is an extract.

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