Time Out review; The series only ran from '79 to '82, but the cast of 'Galaxy Quest' are making a living of sorts on the fan convention circuit. Facing yet more dorky devotees hardly enthuses the show's alien and science officer, Alexander Dane (Rickman), communications officer Gwen DeMarco (Weaver), and commander Jason Nesmith (Allen). Still, they need the money, so they tag along when a dweeby-looking bunch inveigles them into visiting their mock-up of the programme's old vessel, the 'Protector'. But the twist is, this time the ship was actually crafted on a distant planet, where transmissions of 'Galaxy Quest' have been mistaken for historical documents, and the misguided extra-terrestrials have gambled on recruiting heroic Allen and crew to save their world from interstellar rivals. The actors have played this script before, but now it's for real. Gently satirising the Trekkie phenomenon, Parisot's movie works a treat because it's sufficiently knowing to have the references down pat, but affectionate enough to have a soft spot for just about everyone. Effects and production design are also splendidly integrated into the overall enterprise, which is even more enjoyable for being so unexpected. Trevor Johnston
This film is showing as part of the BFI Gothic season and also screens on November 20th. Tonight's screening will be introduced by Sara Karloff. Details here.
Chicago Reader: James Whale's quirky, ironic 1935 self-parody is, by common consent, superior to his earlier Frankenstein
(1931). Whale added an element of playful sexuality to this version,
casting the proceedings in a bizarre visual framework that makes this
film a good deal more surreal than the original. Elsa Lanchester is the
reluctant bride; Boris Karloff returns as the love-starved monster.
Weird and funny. Don Druker
Here and above is the great scene in which the monster meets the blind man.
Chicago Reader review: Harry Kumel's stylish Belgian vampire film with a cult reputation (1971)
is worth seeing for several reasons, not least of which is Delphine
Seyrig's elegant lead performance as a lesbian vampire who operates a
luxury hotel. The baroque mise en scene is also loads of fun; with
Daniele Ouimet and Andrea Rau. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here is the ICA introduction: The British science fiction film Quatermass 2 (Hammer Film
Productions, 1957) holds a particular significance for the fictional
protagonist of three of Patrick Keiller's films, whose exploits also
featured in the recent exhibition The Robinson Institute (Tate Britain, 2012) in which Quatermass 2 was displayed.
A
detail of the film (the feature-length adaptation of Nigel Kneale's
1955 six-part BBC television serial) appears to connote Professor
Quatermass's moon rocket base with the Spadeadam Rocket Establishment,
built in the late 1950s to test rocket motors for Blue Streak, the UK's
medium-range ballistic missile.
In the Robinson imagination, Blue
Streak's subsequent cancellation and replacement with the US-produced
Polaris figure as a crucial ‘moment' in the UK's post-WW2 history, the
repercussions of which continue today, while Quatermass 2's encounter
with an invading malevolent intelligence appears to offer both an
explanation for the UK's descent into neoliberalism as well as, perhaps,
some hope for an eventual recovery.
Join Patrick Keiller and Mark Fisher for a screening of Quatermass 2 followed by a discussion prompted by the film and by the histories explored in Keiller's films and in The View From the Train: Cities and Other Landscapes, Keiller's first collection of essays published by Verso Books (November 2013)
Patrick Keiller's films include the celebrated London (1994), Robinson in Space (1997), The Dilapidated Dwelling (2000), and Robinson in Ruins (2010); other works include the installations Londres, Bombay (Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, 2006) and The Robinson Institute (Tate Britain, London, 2012), the latter accompanied by a book The Possibility of Life's Survival on the Planet.
Formerly a research fellow at the Royal College of Art (2002-11), he
has taught in schools of art and architecture since 1974.
Mark Fisher is the author of the influential Capitalist Realism (Zer0, 2009) and the forthcoming Ghosts of my Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (Zer0, 2013). Since 2004, he has written the celebrated blog k-punk and is a regular contributor to publications including Frieze, The Wire and Film Quarterly. He lectures in Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths and is a Commissioning Editor for Zer0 books.
This film, part of the BFI Gothic season, is also screened on the 14th and 16th of November. All the details are here.
Chicago Reader review: As Dave Kehr originally described it, “a classic example
of the poetry of terror.” Georges Franju's 1959 horror film, based on a
novel by Jean Redon, is about a plastic surgeon who's responsible for
the car accident that leaves his daughter disfigured; he attempts to
rebuild her face with transplants from attractive young women he kidnaps
with the aid of his assistant. As absurd and as beautiful as a fairy
tale, this chilling, nocturnal black-and-white masterpiece was
originally released in this country dubbed and under the title The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus,
but it's much too elegant to warrant the usual “psychotronic”
treatment. It may be Franju's best feature, and Eugen Schufftan's
exquisite cinematography deserves to be seen in 35-millimeter. Jonathan Rosenbaum
This is screening as part of Iain Sinclair's 70x70 season, the film adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's famous novel, shown in an East End music hall.
"Brahm’s film is a minor classic, a
shotgun wedding of expressionism and surrealism: barrel organs, leering
pawnbrokers, cor-blimey-guv urchins. Linda Darnell enthusiastically
impersonates a knicker-flashing singer with flea-comb eyelashes and hair
in which you could lose a nest of squirrels. There are two mindblowing
sequences: the bonfire on which the faithless Netta is incinerated,
while a mob of Ensor devils howl and chant – and the concerto, when a
raving Bone hammers away at a blazing grand piano. Bernard Hermann,
Hitchcock’s composer of choice, soups up a fabulously pastiched score
that drives the whole nutty phantasmagoria along: a candlelit steamer
plunging over a frozen waterfall. The film has nothing to do with
Patrick Hamilton’s novel, apart from using that evocative title as the
excuse for a purgatorial nightmare of the kind the burnt-out writer
might have experienced in his last, glazed, dry-retch,
schoolgirl-fixated, beaten- with-cricket-bat, English seaside days." Iain Sinclair
There's very little in cinema quite like this movie. Here's the BFI introduction: A rare opportunity to see an intensely experimental vampire movie like
no other. Both jarring and atmospheric, it was shot guerrilla style on
set during production of Jess Franco’s Count Dracula using high contrast
b/w 16mm. Modern incursions such as the sight of a smoke machine,
Christopher Lee preparing for his staking scene and a brooding
electronic score, spin haunting new narratives around the classic
vampire tale, and connect it to the dictator-era Spain in which it was
made. Tonight's screening is introduced by writer and curator Mark Nash.
In a 2011 issue of Sight & Sound there's an appraisal of
Pere Portabella's oeuvre by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum in which he counts
tonight's film as his favourite work by the Catalan filmmaker. The
movie itself consists of a black and white film of Jesus Franco's "very
conventional colour movie Count Dracula (1970), starring Christopher
Lee," writes Rosenbaum. "The material is submitted to a great deal of
processing in visual textures and accompanied by a kind of musique
concrete by Carlos Santos, consisting of such elements as jet planes,
drills, operatic arias, kitschy muzak and sinister electronic drones."
Rosenbaum first saw Vampir Cuadecuc at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971 and reckoned it the highlight of that year's crop. "Vampir
was my favorite of all the films I saw at Cannes that year. I returned
to it several times, and described it afterwards in the Village Voice
as 'at once the most original movie at the festival and the most
sophisticated in its audacious modernism', says Rosenbaum in this essay on his website.
Time Out review: 'The recent, unironic adoption of Brian De Palma’s
furious, ludicrous crime epic by gangstas, playas and hippety-hoppety
bling merchants of all stripes is perhaps testament to the film’s
outrageous cojones, rather than any piercing insight into the criminal
psyche.
But there’s no denying that ‘Scarface’ is also a lot of fun, tracking homicidal Cuban homunculus Tony Montana (Al Pacino)
from his first footsteps on US soil to his operatic demise in a cloud
of AK-47 bullets and coke. In fact, cocaine-fuelled excess seems to
power the whole movie, from Oliver Stone’s overloaded, trashily self-aware script to Al Pacino’s
wildly unpredictable consonant-mangling mumble (‘Manolo, choot dis
piece a chit’), from De Palma’s magnificently indulgent Wellesian long
shots to the retina-scorching, high-kitsch set and costume design.
What’s
most impressive is Stone and De Palma’s unwillingness to cloak Tony’s
grotesque, voracious machine-gun capitalism with any sort of
‘Godfather’-style guff about honour and family: ‘Scarface’ is an
unashamed study of selfish, sadistic criminality, and all the better for
it.' Tom Huddleston
This film is screening as part of the BFI Gothic season and will be introduced by writer Xavier Aldana Reyes. The film will aslo be shown on November 16th. Details here.
Chicago Reader: This atmospheric 1935 chiller, a remake of the silent expressionist film The Hands of Orlac, was directed by the great cinematographer Karl Freund, who shot Metropolis, The Last Laugh, and a dozen other classics, then spent his twilight years shooting I Love Lucy.
Peter Lorre (in his first American role) plays a mad surgeon who grafts
the hands of a psychopath onto a crippled concert pianist. The film is
worth seeing for a number of reasons, but its latter-day reputation
rests on Pauline Kael's theory that Gregg Toland, the photographer, used
this film to try out the effects he later applied to Citizen Kane. Dave Kehr
The second part of Fassbinder's epic, first aired on German TV in 1980, and part of the year-long Iain Sinclair 70x70 season. See Saturday 9th Nov post here for full introduction.
Programme There are two opportunities to see the full Berlin Alexanderplatz programme: on the weekends of 9/10 and the 16/17 of November 2013.
Saturday 11am - 1.30pm
1) The Punishment Begins
2) How is One to Live if One Doesn’t Want to Die? 2.15pm - 5.15pm
3) A Hammer Blow to the Head Can Injure the Soul
4) A Handful of People in the Depths of Silence
5) A Reaper with the Power of Our Lord 6pm - 8pm
6) Love Has Its Price
7) Remember — An Oath can be Amputated
Sunday 11am - 2pm
8) The Sun Warms the Skin, but Burns it Sometimes Too
9) About the Eternities Between the Many and the Few
10) Loneliness Tears Cracks of Madness Even in Walls 2.45pm - 4.45pm
11) Knowledge is Power and the Early Bird Catches the Worm
12) The Serpent in the Soul of the Serpent 5pm - 8pm
13) The Outside and the Inside and the Secret of Fear of the Secret
14) My Dream of the Dream of Franz Biberkopf by Alfred Döblin, An Epilogue
Berlin Alexanderplatz, dir Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979/80
This
screening is part of Iain Sinclair's 70x70 project in which the author
curates a season of 70 classic films throughout his 70th birthday year.
This masterwork from Fassbinder, first aired on German TV in 1980, is part of the year-long Iain Sinclair 70x70 season. See Sunday 9th November post here for details of full programme.
Here is the ICA introduction: Writer and filmmaker Iain Sinclair presents Rainer Werner Fassbender's seminal 1980 television series Berlin Alexanderplatz, screened from the original 35mm prints. There are two opportunities to see the full Berlin Alexanderplatz programme:
on the weekend of 9/10 November with an introduction by Iain Sinclair
and Chris Petit, and also on 16/17 of November 2013.
The physical momentum of the prose in Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz is exhilarating, like the rush of Walter Ruttmann’s film from the same period, Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt.
Language and image cut fast. Trains. Bars. Songs. Black marketeers.
Whores of all sexes. Surgeons. Detectives. Berlin in the late-Twenties
was the world city, city of war-damaged grotesques out of George Grosz
and Otto Dix.
How dynamic Döblin’s book now seems, an outgrowth of the
energies of place, and how muted, in comparison, how lightweight and
strategically charming, the Berlin snapshots of Christopher Isherwood,
which were laid out between 1930 and 1933
Isherwood’s material
lends itself to Hollywood schmaltz, with his English girl, Sally Bowles,
swallowed alive by a full-throttle Liza Minnelli. Berlin Alexanderplatz
is scrupulously, sweatily, reimagined and composed afresh by Rainer
Werner Fassbinder: a tapeworm epic for our own times, funded by new
German 70x70 television money in Cologne.
Actors, taken to the edge,
perform miracles of choreographed self-exposure. They are crushed but
not obliterated by the claustrophobic sets that contain them. And by the
troubling memory of a book more honoured than read in a Europe that is
not quite prepared to revive it.
Catch director George A Romero in conversation before this seminal movie, which screens as part of the BFI Southbank Gothic season.
Chicago Reader review: George Romero's gory, style-setting 1968 horror film, made for pennies
in Pittsburgh. Its premise—the unburied dead arise and eat the living—is
a powerful combination of the fantastic and the dumbly literal. Over
its short, furious course, the picture violates so many strong
taboos—cannibalism, incest, necrophilia—that it leaves audiences giddy
and hysterical. Romero's sequel, Dawn of the Dead, displays a much-matured technique and greater thematic complexity, but Night retains its raw power. Dave Kehr
BFI introduction: Eschewing monochrome shadows in favour of garish colour, Argento’s
phantasmagoric journey into the occult is a case of Gothic at its most
vibrant. Aspiring ballerina Suzy Banyon enrols at a prestigious European
dance academy, only to uncover the terrifying mysteries kept hidden by
its faculty. Co-written with actress Daria Nicolodi, the plot follows a
disorienting dream logic that is perfectly complemented by a hyper-real
visual style, blending operatic violence with a fairy-tale twist. –
Michael Blyth
Chicago Reader review: Who would have guessed that a grisly and upsetting serial-killer police
procedural (1995) costarring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as detectives,
written by a Tower Records cashier (Andrew Kevin Walker), and directed
by David Fincher (Alien) would bear a startling
resemblance to a serious work of art? One can already tell that this
film is on to something special during the opening credits, which
formally echo several classic American experimental films and
thematically point to the eerie kinship between the serial killer and
the police—not to mention the kinship between murder and art making that
the movie is equally concerned with. The detectives are trying to solve
a series of hideous murders based on the seven deadly sins, and the
sheer foulness and decay of the nameless city that surrounds them, which
makes those of Taxi Driver and Blade Runner seem almost
like children's theme parks, conjures up a metaphysical mood that isn't
broken even when the film moves to the countryside for its climax.
Admittedly, designer unpleasantness is a hallmark of our era, and this
movie may be more concerned with wallowing in it than with illuminating
what it means politically. Yet the filmmakers stick to their vision with
such dedication and persistence that something indelible comes
across—something ethically and artistically superior to The Silence of the Lambs
that refuses to exploit suffering for fun or entertainment and leaves
you wondering about the world we're living in. With Gwyneth Paltrow,
Richard Roundtree, John C. McGinley, R. Lee Ermey, and Kevin Spacey. Jonathan Rosenbaum
This film, part of the Gothic season at BFI Southbank, also screens on November 12th (with introduction by Richard Combs) and November 15th. Details here.
Time Out review: 'More accessible than Lynch's enigmatically disturbingEraserhead, The Elephant Man has much the same limpidly moving humanism as Truffaut's L'Enfant Sauvage in
describing how the unfortunate John Merrick, brutalised by a childhood
in which he was hideously abused as an inhuman freak, was gradually
coaxed into revealing a soul of such delicacy and refinement that he
became a lion of Victorian society. But that is only half the story the
film tells. The darker side, underpinned by an evocation of the steamy,
smoky hell that still underlies a London facelifted by the Industrial
Revolution, is crystallised by the wonderful sequence in which Merrick
is persuaded by a celebrated actress to read Romeo to her Juliet. A
tender, touching scene ('Oh, Mr Merrick, you're not an elephant man at
all. No, you're Romeo'), it nevertheless begs the question of what
passions, inevitably doomed to frustration, have been roused in this
presumably normally-sexed Elephant Man. Appearances are all, and like
the proverbial Victorian piano, he can make the social grade only if his
ruder appendages are hidden from sensitive eyes; hence what is
effectively, at his time of greatest happiness, his suicide. A
marvellous movie, shot in stunning black-and-white by Freddie Francis.' Tom Milne Here (and above) is an extract from the film.
Time Out review: Woody Harrelson's Roy Munson, the 1979 Odor Eaters Ten-Pin Bowling Champion,
has been 17 years on the skids, paying off the bubo-encrusted landlady
of his verminous flophouse with vomit-inducing bouts of sex. If he's
lucky. Only with the arrival of fright-wigged con artist Ernie McCracken
(Bill Murray, gleefully camp) do things look up, McCracken teaching him to
make money hustling ten-pin, until he's abandoned to a bunch of rednecks
who twig to him and slash off his bowling hand. Undaunted, he happens
upon Randy Quaid's Ishmael Boorg, an ingenuous Amish and fellow bowling
natural, and they take off for the National Championships in Reno,
pausing only to pick up mini-skirted 'personal companion' Claudia
(Vanessa Angel). There's something arresting in the sheer commitment the
Farrelly brothers bring to the naff gags, pratfalls and ritual
humiliations these three go through. More beguiling still is their
warts-and-all depiction of low life, so upfront it ends up quite
affectionate; equally, the keen observations quash charges of cynicism.
Dumbfounding. Wally Hammond
Here's the Cigarette Burns introduction: End the long Hallowe'en week with a roast followed by a free film buzzing out of the glorious old projector - no digital here.
A long overlooked gem of the evil child genre. Featuring a young Brooke Shields in her first role, and a downright nasty Paula E. Sheppard in the title role. Definitely a rare opportunity to catch this on film, or even a public screening.
The print is the original US print with the title COMMUNION, before it
was rereleased under ALICE, SWEET ALICE or later still as HOLY TERROR.
This film, which is in the Gothic season at BFI Southbank, is also being screened on October 28th when it will be introduced by writer Roger Luckhurst. Details here. BFI introduction: Telling of a New Orleans hotel built upon one of the seven gateways to
Hell, The Beyond eschews genre conventions in favour of confrontational
surrealism and gore. Lucio Fulci’s Gothic classic is a fragmented
fever-dream of striking set-pieces (in which eyes are gouged out and
faces melted with acid). It is memorable for its violence and atmosphere
but also for Fabio Frizzi’s remarkable score and its stylish
cinematography. – James Blackford
The BFI are screening a new uncut 35mm print of the English version of the film. Here (and above) is the trailer.
1. TOP SENSATION:All on-board as Filmbar70 and Camera Obscura start with the long lost grail of Euro sexploitation/ political/ allegorical/Italo-rash cinema – ‘Top Sensation’
1969 – a period of cultural transition. As cinema began the long road to a freedom freed from the fetters of censorship, so myriad mutations began to form. ‘Top Sensation’, positioned between sleaze-mongering and anti-bourgeoisie baiting, is a particularly succulent morsel to digest. Replete with over the top sex and the overwhelming belief that excess is very, very bad, this tale of innocence defiled by commerce proves that you can have your cake and eat it.
2. THE LADY IN RED: Then, listed by no less than Quentin Tarantino as one of his favourite grindhouse films, Lewis Teague's The Lady in Red (presented by Savage Cinema club) purports to tell the scintillating truth behind the death of legendary gangster John Dillinger. Told through the eyes of his last girlfriend Polly (Pamela Sue Martin), the film explores the Depression-era crime syndicate, from bank robberies to whore houses to bloody gangland shootouts.
Produced by Roger & Julie Corman and boasting a crackerjack screenplay by future indie filmmaking legend John Sayles, The Lady in Red features a top-form cast, including then-recent Oscar winner Louise Fletcher, Christopher Lloyd, exploitation legends like Dick Miller and Mary Woronov as well as a memorable uncredited cameo by a certain Oscar nominee/recent Breaking Bad guest star.
Savage Cinema will precede the film with a range of classic Corman trailers, as well as clips from the documentary Roger Corman: Hollywood’s Wild Angel (1976).
3. LINK:And finishing with the classic 80’s British monkey horror / thriller Link (presented by Aorta Burst). A youngElizabeth Shue and Terence Stamp star (and get upstaged by) Locke the ape in a crazy story about a professor and his assistant looking after and studying after 3 chimpanzees. It’s not going to end well…
Another excellent choice for a late nighter in the midnight movie season at the Rio. Check out all their screenings here.
Time Out review: 'Like Bob Rafelson, a director similarly
obsessed with the trials and tribulations of the children of the rich,
Ashby forever treads the thin line between whimsy and absurdity and
'tough' sentimentality and black comedy. Harold and Maude is the
story of a rich teenager (Cort) obsessed with death - his favourite
pastime is trying out different mock suicides - who is finally liberated
by his (intimate) friendship with Ruth Gordon,
an 80-year-old funeral freak. It is most successful when it keeps to
the tone of an insane fairystory set up at the beginning of the movie.' Phil Hardy
This film is part of the BFI's Gothic season and continues on an extended run at the Southbank venue until November. Details here. Chicago Reader review: Werner Herzog's 1979 remake of F.W. Murnau's classic vampire film is a
flop as a horror movie, but it works as a string of Herzogian epiphanies
centered on death and the apocalypse. The acting is too eccentric and
the narrative drive too weak to satisfy fans of the genre, but Herzog's
admirers will find much in the film's animistic landscapes and clusters
of visionary imagery. The largely superfluous cast includes Klaus Kinski
as the decaying count, Isabelle Adjani as the pure-hearted heroine, and
the excellent Bruno Ganz as the paralyzed hero.
Dave Kehr
This film is screened as part of a Euro Horror day at the ICA which brings together film historians, programmers and
academics to discuss this cinematic tradition, critical category and
marketing label.
This one-day event seeks to examine the critical
intersections and interactions between various fields of cultural
production – fan discourses, discourses of connoisseurship, academic
discourses, spaces for dissemination – to map out a richer picture of
the cultural history of Euro Horror, which more often interlocks with
global histories of exploitation, sexploitation or psychotronic cinema.
The event closes with a 35mm screening of La Notte che Evelyn usci dalla tomba / The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (Emilio P. Miraglia, 1971)
Speakers
include film historian Jonathan Rigby, film genre programmer Josh Saco,
Professor Peter Hutchings, Associate Professor Ian Olney, and Dr
Antonio Lázaro-Reboll.
11.05am - From Caligari to [•REC] Jonathan Rigby, film historian
The development of Euro Gothic from the silent era to the 21st century.
11.50am - Euro Horror as Possession/Possession in Euro Horror Ian Olney, York College of Pennsylvania
The ways in which Euro Horror upends the conventions of American Horror.
12.30pm - Lunch
1.30pm - Putting the Brit into Euro-Horror (and vice versa) Peter Hutchings, University of Northumbria The connections between British Horror and Euro Horror.
2.25pm – A Psychotronic Encyclopedia, A Perfectionist’s Guide, and A European Trash Journal on Euro-Horror Antonio Lázaro-Reboll, University of Kent The role of alternative publications in shaping narratives of Euro Horror film.
3.20pm - Genre Film Exhibition and Rep Cinema Josh Saco, Cigarette Burns film programmer The pitfalls and complexity of championing celluloid presentations in a world riddled with HD home entertainment centres.
4pm – Film Screening on 35mm La Notte che Evelyn Uscì Dalla Tomba / The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (dir Emilio P. Miraglia, Italy 1971)
This rarely seen Budd Boetticher movie is part of the year-long 70x70 season. London
writer, filmmaker and 'psychogeographer' Iain Sinclair celebrates his
70th birthday year, with the showing of 70 films, handpicked for their
association with his work and shown in venues all over London. Here is a full list of the excellent programme.
Iain Sinclair on A Time for Dying: 'A
potent late discovery in a Hastings charity pit where last movies rub
shoulders with CGI slaughter excesses and botched exorcisms. Classic
Boetticher is front-cover Cahiers du Cinema. Is namechecked in
Breathless. Pared-down journeying with Randolph Scott, Karen
Steele, and superior heavies like Richard Boone, Henry Silva, Lee Van
Cleef, James Coburn. By 1969, the situation was complicated:
cross-border time, rows with the wrong people. A lack of interest
in the pure western form. Which elects this one straight into the
anti-pantheon, post-cinema purgatory. When nobody cares, interesting
things happen. The actors are like promoted extras hoping for television. Boetticher takes the writing credit, but it feels like they
made it up as they went along. Lucien Ballard was still around to shoot
it. A truly posthumous artefact. And better for it. Audie Murphy takes a
production credit and drifts in as Jesse James.'
This rarely seen Dennis Hopper movie is part of the year-long 70x70 season. London
writer, filmmaker and 'psychogeographer' Iain Sinclair celebrates his
70th birthday year, with the showing of 70 films, handpicked for their
association with his work and shown in venues all over London. Here is a full list of the excellent programme.
Here are some of Sinclair's musings on this unique movie: 'I like endgames. And final commissions. And films that make no
sense, shot long after there is any space for them in the world.
Hopper’s The Last Movie – which I’ve never seen, or felt the
need to chase down – is in sympathy with Asylum. With elements of
Herzog. With the Wurlitzer version of Peckinpah. With Budd Boetticher’s
terminal charity-shop DVD, A Time for Dying. (A money-laundering exercise for Audie Murphy, who was in hock to the Mafia.)
A
cast that includes Sam Fuller, Kris Kristofferson, Peter Fonda and
Dean Stockwell is opening too many of heaven’s gates. ‘Persistently
sabotages its own resolution.’ Great. That period of Hollywood (money)
was about finding ways of subverting the possible. From the
descriptions I’ve read – indistinguishable from the synopsis of a
Wurlitzer novel – The Last Movie is the finish of American Smoke I wish I’d been capable of writing.
'The
narrative extracted from all those bad journeys made Chile seem like
the place to which I should aspire, but never achieve. No skies as pure
as the dome above the Atacama Desert. Where the dialogue between origin
and extinction is manufactured by monkish, rumpled men, and women with
the courage to sift the gritty sand for years, hoping for fragments of
bones from the disappeared. A foot in a ruined boot becomes a
venerated relic. At this distance from the centres of wealth
generation, capitals of greed, the outlines of the story are smoothed
and given force.'
Chicago Reader review:
The least that can be said for Dennis Hopper's 1971 drama
is that no other studio-released film of the period is quite so formally
audacious. After Easy Rider, Hopper was given carte blanche by
Universal Pictures to make this disjointed epic in Peru; although it was
given a special prize at the Venice film festival, the film was
withdrawn from circulation in the U.S. after a couple of weeks and has
rarely been screened since. After working in a western directed by
Samuel Fuller (playing himself), during which one of the lead actors
(Dean Stockwell) has been killed, an American stunt man (Hopper) remains
behind with a Peruvian woman. He is eventually drafted into an
imaginary movie being made by the Indian villagers and is also enlisted
in a scheme to find gold in the mountains. The curious thing about this
freewheeling allegory is that it is simultaneously about many things
(the fakery of moviemaking, mutual exploitation, ugly Americans in the
third world, Hopper as Jesus) and nothing at all. Jonathan Rosenbaum Here (and above) is the opening of The Last Movie.
This rarely seen Jean Luc-Godard movie is part of the year-long 70x70 season. London
writer, filmmaker and 'psychogeographer' Iain Sinclair celebrates his
70th birthday year, with the showing of 70 films, handpicked for their
association with his work and shown in venues all over London. Here is a full list of the excellent programme.
Time Out review: The film that was made for and then banned from London Weekend TV.
Essentially a documentary, it's a genuine political artefact in which
Godard contrives to assault the British sensibility with a series of
images and provocations (the slogans flashed on the screen are sometimes
humorous and always to the point). The parts where people just talk
really work; when Ford Dagenham workers discuss the company-employee
situation, the effect is simple and uncluttered but devastatingly
effective. Sometimes, however, the control vanishes - the sequence with
Essex students making posters, for instance - and this confirms the
impression that revolution in Britain will only come from the industrial
army who need it, not the middle class academics who play it. Here is an extract.
This is part of the Tate season devoted to the experimental film-maker Warren Sonbert. More details of the full retrospective can be found here.
Chicago Reader review: 'In contrast to his earlier sound films, Friendly Witness is obviously
edited in relation to the music. But the editing never becomes a slave
to the music's beat, and the images never become illustrations for the
word of the songs. Instead the relationship between the image and music,
particularly in the rock section, is not unlike the relationships
Sonbert creates between images. At times the words of the songs seem to
relate directly to the images we see (we hear "my little runaway" while
seeing a motorcycle jumper); at other times words and images seem to be
working almost at cross-purposes or relating only ironically. Similarly,
at times the image rhythm and music rhythm appear to dance together,
while at others they go their separate ways.
What makes Friendly Witness such a rich masterpiece, & multiple
viewings so rewarding, is that its whole
structure is based not on a single organizational principle but on many,
some of them almost contradictory. Some films are organized primarily
as a series of metaphors, or by connecting images more abstractly
through common shapes or movements, or by using images for their
narrative possibilities--but Sonbert uses all these methods and more. He
thus produces a cinema of multiple attractions based on dissonance as
well as rhyme, fissure as well as connection, irony as well as rapture.' Fred Camper
This screening is aprt of the BFI Gothic season. The film is also being shown on October 22nd and November 4th. More details here.
Chicago Reader review: John Landis's 1981 attempt to recast the classic horror film into the flip, self-mocking style of his Animal House
while retaining the thrills and chills. It's a failure, less because
the odd stylistic mix doesn't take (it does from time to time, and to
striking effect) than because Landis hasn't bothered to put his story
into any kind of satisfying shape. It's the Blues Brothers
syndrome again: a lot of dissociated segments left hanging in midair.
Still, this may be one of Landis's most personal films: passages of
adolescent sexual fantasy alternate with powerfully expressed guilt over
dirtier fantasies of family murder and rape. The director may be more
in tune with the Freudian subtext of the werewolf fable than his
carefully maintained surface cool might indicate. With David Naughton,
Griffin Dunne, and Jenny Agutter. Dave Kehr
The screening of this brilliant Douglas Sirk film is part of the Warren Sonbert season at Tate Modern.
Here is the Tate Modern introduction:Tarnished Angels, based on William Faulkner’s Pylon,
is a Depression-era story set during the New Orleans Mardi Gras of the
1930s. Rock Hudson plays a reporter fascinated by the marginal lives of a
fairground pilot and his wife, played by Robert Stack and Dorothy
Malone. Shot in lush, sweeping black-and-white CinemaScope, the camera
follows with fluid sweeps and pans the tragic plight of these passionate
lost souls caught in a downward spiral of obsession jealousy,
self-destruction and defeat. In 1975 Warren Sonbert described Sirk’s
cinema as follows:
The fetid taste of intrinsic imperfection, of behavioural mistakes
endlessly repeated from generation to generation, find expression in the
staggeringly demonic visual motifs recurring throughout Sirk’s films of
the merry-go-round, the amusement park ride, the circular treadmill,
the vehicle that really goes nowhere, insulated hopeless activity, the
Western frame of mind, people struggling to get outside cages of their
own building yet encased by their own unique palpable qualities.
Sonbert was known not only for his films and opera reviews but he was
also a noted film critic. His writings about feature films are amongst
his more extraordinarily profound and insightful creations. In them, he
expressed admiration for a pantheon of American directors working within
the studio system, including Alfred Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray, and
notably Douglas Sirk who appears in Sonbert’s film Noblesse Oblige
(1981). He deeply admired Sirk’s ability to expose the ‘hollow cupidity
and superficiality of middle class ideals’ and to accentuate the forces
of destruction rent upon the nuclear family structure of the 1950s.
This film is screening as part of the BFI Gothic seaaon and is also being shown on October 31st. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: 'The greatness of Carl Dreyer's first sound film (1932, 83 min.)
derives partly from its handling of the vampire theme in terms of
sexuality and eroticism and partly from its highly distinctive, dreamy
look, but it also has something to do with Dreyer's radical recasting
of narrative form. Synopsizing the film not only betrays but
misrepresents it: while never less than mesmerizing, it confounds
conventions for establishing point of view and continuity, inventing a
narrative language all its own. Some of the moods and images conveyed
by this language are truly uncanny: the long voyage of a coffin, from
the apparent viewpoint of the corpse inside; a dance of ghostly shadows
inside a barn; a female vampire's expression of carnal desire for her
fragile sister; an evil doctor's mysterious death by suffocation in a
flour mill; a protracted dream sequence that manages to dovetail eerily
into the narrative proper. The remarkable soundtrack, created entirely
in a studio (in contrast to the images, which were all filmed on
location), is an essential part of the film's voluptuous and haunting
otherworldliness. (Vampyr was originally released by Dreyer in
four separate versions—French, English, German, and Danish; most
circulating prints now contain portions of two or three of these
versions, although the dialogue is pretty sparse.) If you've never seen
a Carl Dreyer film and wonder why many critics, myself included,
regard him as possibly the greatest of all filmmakers, this chilling
horror fantasy is the perfect place to begin to understand.' Jonathan Rosenbaum
This film is screening as part of the BFI Southbank Gothic season and is also being shown on October 29th and November 26th. Details here. Tonight's presentation will be preceded by a special appearance from director Roger Corman. Details of that event can be found here.
Chicago Reader review: Roger Corman's second go at Edgar Allan Poe (1961) appears
just a bit labored, with Poe's tale of psychological torture during the
Inquisition tacked on to Richard Matheson's original screenplay. But
this team, the same Corman group that made House of Usher and
went on to establish Corman as the cinema's chief interpreter of Poe,
shows a genuine flair for the gothic cinema that is still a delight.
Vincent Price gives one of his better performances, and Barbara Steele
(who is to the British gothic movie what Vera Hruba Ralston was to
Republic Pictures) is there to add authenticity. Refreshingly
good-humored, and marked by Corman's delirious visual sense. Don Druker
This screening is part of the BFI Soutbank's Gothic season. Tonight's screening is introduced by Kevin Jackson and the film is also being screened at the cinema until November 7th. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: 'A
masterpiece of the German silent cinema and easily the most effective
version of Dracula on record. F.W. Murnau's 1922 film follows the Bram
Stoker novel fairly closely, although he neglected to purchase the
screen rights—hence, the title change. But the key elements are all
Murnau's own: the eerie intrusions of expressionist style on natural
settings, the strong sexual subtext, and the daring use of fast-motion
and negative photography.' Dave Kehr Hereis an extract. Above you can get a taste of this great movie.
Tonight's movies are being screened as part of the BFI Southbank's Gothic season. This double-bill can also be seen on 33rd, 27th and 31st October. Details here.
Chicago Reader reviews of: Dracula: Universal's classic from 1931, directed by Tod Browning. The opening
scenes, set in Dracula's castle, are magnificent—grave, stately, and
severe. But the film becomes unbearably static once the action moves to
England, and much of the morbid sexual tension is dissipated. Browning
remains one of the most intriguing directorial enigmas of the 20s and
30s: he could be flat, dull, and clumsy, but once he connected with the
underlying perversities of his screenplays, his films lit up with a
diabolical grace. Dracula is disappointing next to Freaks and The Devil-Doll,
but it still offers the highly satisfying spectacle of Bela Lugosi
packing six volumes of innuendo into the line “I never drink . . .
wine.” Dave Kehr
and...
The Mummy: Karl Freund, former cameraman for Lang and Murnau in
Germany, directed and photographed this creditable 1932 entry in the
Universal horror cycle. The drama may be clumsy, but Freund's lighting
is a wonder. The charmingly egregious Boris Karloff stars, with support
from Zita Johann, a first-rate actress who never really made it in the
movies, thanks mainly to roles like this one.
Dave Kehr
This is a specially curated screening by Iain Sinclair.
Iain Sinclair will be in conversation with filmmaker John Smith after the screening.
London psycho-geographical writer Iain Sinclair celebrates his 70th birthday year with the showing of 70 films he handpicked that relate to his work. Here are the full listings.
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The Girl Chewing Gum is a 1976 British short film directed by John Smith. The film is widely acknowledged as one of the most important avant-garde films of the 20th century.
'In The Girl Chewing Gum an authoritative voice-over pre-empts
the events occurring in the image, seeming to order not only the
people, cars and moving objects within the screen but also the actual
camera movements operated on the street in view. In relinquishing the
more subtle use of voice-over in television documentary, the film draws
attention to the control and directional function of that practice:
imposing, judging, creating an imaginary scene from a visual trace. This
'Big Brother' is not only looking at you but ordering you about as the
viewer's identification shifts from the people in the street to the
camera eye overlooking the scene. The resultant voyeurism takes on an
uncanny aspect as the blandness of the scene (shot in black and white on
a grey day in Hackney) contrasts with the near 'magical' control
identified with the voice. The most surprising effect is the ease with
which representation and description turn into phantasm through the
determining power of language.' - from Michael Maziere, John Smith's Films: Reading the Visible' Undercut 10/11.
'John Smith's improbable treatise on representation has deservedly become a Co-op classic.' Ian Christie, Time Out.
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Hackney Marshes was adocumentary commissioned by Thames Television for the series Take Six.
Smith says: ‘Shown at 6 o’clock in the evening – how things have changed!’ John Wyver wrote the review in Time Out. ‘The dual subjects are the inhabitants of tower blocks in Hackney and the components and conventions of filmmaking. Interviews with the former are cut against a limited sequence of compositions, which illustrate and question the soundtrack in a number of distinct ways… Its success demonstrates the necessity for many TV film-makers to begin to rethink their safe approaches and accepted techniques.’
This rare screening of Arthur Penn's New Wave-influenced film is part of the BFI Passport to Cinema season and is also being shown on August October 29th. Tonight's showing is introduced by the excellent Richard Combs. More details here. Chicago Reader review: This 1964 film is so obscure that contemporary critics dismissed it as a
colossal bit of self-indulgence by director Arthur Penn and star Warren
Beatty. Scripted by Alan Surgal, it's a variation on Kafka's The Trial,
with Beatty as a second-rate nightclub comic on the run from a nameless
threat (which may or may not involve the syndicate and some gambling
debts). Quintessential Penn, far easier to read now than it was then,
and even funny in spots. Don Druker
