The Prince Charles Cinema continues its
full 007 Retrospective showing every James Bond movie over the coming
months. You can see all the details of the screenings here.
Chicago Reader review: For my money, still the best Bond, with a screwball plotline that keeps
the locales changing and the surprises coming—even when reason dictates
that the picture should be over. Lotte Lenya and Robert Shaw make a
creepy pair, and Daniela Bianchi embodies the essence of centerfold sex,
circa 1964. Dave Kehr
This famous silent film screens as part of the London Short Film Festival and full details of all the screenings can be found here. Tonight's ticket includes free entry to the 'Salt, Sweat, Sugar' night on the Hackney Attic dancefloor till 1am.
This is part of a Filmphonics season at Hackney Picturehouse, a series of live score screenings at Hackney Attic that bridge the
gap between sound and moving image, curating diverse nights that include
silent films brought to life by live scores, special screenings of
films about music, experimental collaborations and edgy live
performances.
Chicago Reader review: A silent curiosity made in Denmark in 1922, with an episodic, rhetorical
structure that would have appealed to Jean-Luc Godard. Director
Benjamin Christensen apparently intended his film as a serious study of
witchcraft (which he diagnoses, in an early pop-Freud conclusion, as
female hysteria), but what he really has is a pretense for sadistic
pornography. The film has acquired impact with age: instead of seeming
quaint, the nude scenes and scatological references now have a crumbly,
sinister quality—they seem the survivals of ancient, unhealthy
imaginations. Dave Kehr
This film, part of the Eric Rohmer season, also screen son 15 January. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review:
Eric Rohmer's droll and delicate comedy of language
(1969), about a devout Catholic (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who delivers an
all-night monologue on the philosophy of Pascal to escape being seduced
by the lovely atheist Maud (Francoise Fabian). Number three in Rohmer's
series of “Six Moral Tales,” it is probably the most pure: the plotline
transpires entirely in the central character's mind and is never
explicitly acknowledged by Rohmer's direction, which concentrates
instead on the elaborate gambits of a style of speech meant to do
anything but communicate. Dave Kehr
In
his stellar 22 year career, Elvis Presley was regarded as the most
popular singer the world had ever seen, but 37 years after his death, it
is easy to forget the importance of his many movies on his incredible
career. As Elvis stopped touring between 1958 and 1970, his films
were the only way for his immense worldwide fan base to see and hear
their hero in action. Although they were subject to much critical
mauling, his films were incredibly popular and included the very songs
that went on to become classics of his repertoire.
Illustrated
with clips from the King’s best flicks, Adrian Wootton, will recount the
history of Elvis’s extensive career on the silver screen from 1956 to
1973. Chicago Reader review: Vulgar, spirited, and neglected director George Sidney (Bye Bye Birdie, The Eddy Duchin Story, Kiss Me Kate)
meets his match with this 1964 Elvis Presley vehicle: Presley,
Ann-Margret, and Las Vegas itself are all ready-made for his talents,
which mainly have to do with verve and trashy kicks. Unfortunately not
as many sparks fly as one might hope. Still there's Presley as a race
car driver who doubles as a singing waiter, and, as critic Tom Milne
describes it, “Ann-Margret revs her chassis at him.” There's also
William Demarest and, among the songs, "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Jonathan Rosenbaum
This film is part of the Eric Rohmer season at BFI Southbank and also screens on 10 January. Full details here. Chicago Reader review: The fourth episode of Eric Rohmer's “Six Moral Tales” series (actually
the third in order of shooting, and the first of feature length).
Haydee, the “collector” of the title, is a young woman who hoards sexual
experiences, though she refuses to sleep with either of the two stuffy
males with whom she shares a villa. Rohmer's impossibly light, graceful
way of posing profound moral questions hasn't yet wholly coalesced,
though this 1966 film does have his soft, slow rhythm. With Patrick
Bauchau and Daniel Pommerulle. Dave Kehr
One of the best releases of 2014 is on an extended run at BFI Southbank. Details here.
BFI introduction: A huge audience-pleaser at festivals around the world, Manakamana is a
gentle pleasure, with humorous moments and serious themes. The
documentary was filmed entirely in a cable car transporting visitors and
locals to an ancient Nepalese mountaintop shrine. In journeys of 10
minutes – the length of a single reel of 16mm film – we witness 11
unedited encounters, from a trio of gossiping old ladies in traditional
costume to a group of teen rockers.
Little White Lies review: It may sound trite to say so, but the film is about nothing and it's
about everything. It allows you to see as much or as little as you want.
Maybe some will see it as a quaint people-watching comedy which
explores facial expressions, age, beauty and stillness? Others might see
it as a being more of a cinematic work, posing questions about the
relationship between subject and camera, the relationship between
subject and director, and even whether this is a film in which the
industry term “director” is even valid? You could even ingest it as a
purely ambient work, and in the spirit of the passengers themselves,
take the practical option of using the time to allow life to gloss past
your eyes and meditate on other Earthly matters. Maybe even consider
what other Earthly matters are going through the heads of the people on
screen?
Perhaps this is a pessimistic view of things, but Manakamana feels most
enriching as a work about life and death. The people who sit in these
cars are whisked across what looks to be highly treacherous (albeit
breathtaking) terrain without the merest consideration for potential
mortality. Stunning beauty and fiery death buffet against one another as
we humans casually slip between the tiny slither of space that parts
them. Manakamana itself is a temple which sits at the top of this line,
and so the metaphor feels extended to one of life, death and
transcendence. David Jenkins
This film is part of the Passport to Cinema season at BFI Southbank and also screens on 3 January. Tonight's presentation is introduced by Richard Combs. Full details here.
This movie is a bona fide masterpiece which grows in stature with the passing years and seen in a remastered print on the best sccreen in London simply adds to the beauty of a magisterial work of cinema.
Hereis critic Dave Kehr on the film's history, it was butchered on release and only seen in a truncated form for many years, andhereis Martin Scorsese talking about his involvement in the restoration. The Leopard is one of the American director's favourite films as evidenced inthis list.
Chicago Reader review: 'Cut, dubbed, and printed in an inferior color process, the U.S. release of Luchino Visconti's epic didn't leave much of an impression in 1963; 20 years later, a restoration of the much longer Italian version revealed this as not only Visconti's greatest film but a work that transcends its creator, achieving a sensitivity and intelligence without parallel in his other films. Burt Lancaster initiated his formidable mature period as the aging aristocrat Don Fabrizio, who works to find a place for himself and his family values in the new Italy being organized in the 1860s. The film's superb first two hours, which weave social and historical themes into rich personal drama, turn out to be only a prelude to the magnificent final hour—an extended ballroom sequence that leaves history behind to become one of the most moving meditations on individual mortality in the history of the cinema. With Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale. In Italian with subtitles.' Dave Kehr Here (and above) is the BFI trailer.
Starting tonight the Prince Charles Cinema are running a full 007 Retrospective showing every James Bond movie over the coming months. You can see all the details of the screenings here.
The press reviews of the films don't capture the excitement of this retrospective for Bond fans and I am recommending the Blogalongabond series by Neil Alcock (aka @theincrediblesuit on Twitter). Here is his take on the first movie in the Bond franchise. Time Out review: The first Bond film, made comparatively cheaply but effectively
establishing a formula for the series - basically a high-tech gloss
repackaging of the old serials - and setting up a box-office bonanza
with its gleeful blend of sex, violence and wit. As memorable as
anything in the series (the arteries hadn't hardened yet) are modest
highlights like Bond's encounter with a tarantula, Honeychile's first
appearance as a nymph from the sea, the perils of Dr No's assault course
of pain.
Here is Bond's first introduction to the film-going public.
This film, part of the Maggie Smith season at the BFI Southbank, also screens on 9 January. Full details here. BFI Southbank preview: Alan Bennett’s brilliant Yorkshire comedy deals with a civic ‘do’ to
celebrate the Queen’s wedding in 1947, and the habits of an incontinent
pig smuggled away for the banquet. Michael Palin’s chiropodist uncovers a
conspiracy while Maggie Smith, the Lady Macbeth of Ilkley, aspires to her
rightful milieu: ‘Put me in a long dress and surround me with
sophisticated people, and I’d bloom.’
[the pig has been abducted]... Grand Hotel Manager:
'I can put my hands on two turkeys in Bradford.' Frank Lockwood the Solicitor:
'Two? TWO? We've got a hundred and fifty people coming! And Jesus isn't one of them!'
The Green Ray, the centrepiece of the BFI Southbank Eric Rohmer season, starts an extended run today and runs till 18 January. You can find all the details here. Chicago Reader review: Eric Rohmer's fifth installment in his "Comedies and
Proverbs" cycle is as conversationally obsessed as ever (which is quite
all right with me), though as always in Rohmer's ironic universe, talk
is less the moral equivalent of action than the rationalizing substitute
for it. A jilted secretary pining away the summer in Paris decides to
take a vacation on her own; unfortunately, the more she travels the
lonelier she becomes as her rationalizing search for the ideal food, the
ideal romance, the ideal traveling companion drives her more and more
toward narcissistic nullity. I suspect Rohmer sees in his heroine an
ironic reflection of his own aesthetic temper—the lighter and airier she
gets, the more she threatens to evanesce completely—and at times this
1986 film comes perilously close to duplicating the girl's predicament.
Fortunately, there's more to Rohmer's subtle strategy than idle
distillations, and the marvelous epiphany at the end provides whatever
justification is needed for the precarious formal balancing: it's a
moment of emotional complexity and revelation based, appropriately
enough, on a trivial optical illusion. With Marie Riviere, Lisa Heredia,
Eric Hamm, and an appealingly contentious Beatrice Romand. Pat Graham
This film, also being shown on 6 January, screens as part of the Eric Rohmer season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.
BFI Southbank preview: Rohmer’s earliest extant feature still feels remarkably raw and modern
as he blends fiction with documentary footage of Paris in summer,
through which his feckless hero treks in search of money to survive on
after taking a legacy for granted. A caustic cautionary tale, laced with
dark ironies, sharp insights and appearances by Resnais, Melville and
(most memorably) Godard.
Time Out review: 1977: cynical womaniser Harry (Crystal) and clean-living would-be journo
Sally (Ryan) are thrown together on an 18-hour trip to New York. They
don't exactly hit it off, but ten years later, having suffered the
traumas of break-up and divorce, they meet again and find they can offer
mutual support. Will their friendship move from platonic to romantic?
It seems likely, but there's a problem: Harry is reluctant to commit
himself, while Sally won't countenance one-night stands. Reiner's Woody
Allen-ish comedy is, for all its up-front discussion of matters sexual,
disarmingly old-fashioned. A mite too pat, it never really probes or
challenges Harry and Sally's attitiudes; but Nora Ephron's
extended, slightly sentimental, and none-too-original meeting cute
scenario includes enough funny one-liners to hold the attention of all
but the most jaded viewer. As ever, Reiner clearly likes his characters,
and elicits sturdy performances from a proficient cast (Kirby and
Fisher are especially fine as friends and confidants to the pair). Geoff Andrew
Time Out review: In Reiner's superior slice of teen nostalgia, Dreyfuss is the now
middle-aged writer, looking back at the dear dead days beyond recall
when he and a group of young friends ventured into the local woods where
they believed a corpse was buried. Based on an (apparently)
semi-autobiographical story by Stephen King, the film covers similar
territory to countless other rites-of-passage dramas. The Ben E King
theme song and all the imagery of tousled adolescents preening
themselves like miniature James Deans rekindle memories of old jeans
commercials, but the film is so well-observed and so energetically acted
by its young cast that mawkishness is kept at bay. Geoffrey Macnab
This is part of the Prince Charles Cinema's 'While We Sweat Water and
Blood' season devoted to films by female directors. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review:
The grisly murders in this modest proposal (2000), set in 80s Manhattan,
are inspired by envy and ennui, and their perpetrator is a suavely
pathetic solipsist and independently wealthy executive (Christian Bale).
The slick satire cleverly equates materialism, narcissism, misogyny,
and classism with homicide, but you may laugh so loud at the protagonist
that you won't be able to hear yourself laughing with him. Guinevere
Turner and director Mary Harron adapted Bret Easton Ellis's novel; with
Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, Samantha Mathis, Reese Witherspoon, and
Jared Leto. Lisa Alspector
Here's a chance to see one of the movies destined to be one of the big films of 2015.
Chicago Reader review: A washed-up Hollywood star (Michael Keaton), famous for
playing a winged superhero in a multimillion-dollar action franchise,
tries to stage a comeback as a serious actor on Broadway, writing,
directing, and starring in a stage adaptation of Raymond Carver's story
"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." Given Keaton's
identification with the title character in Batman (1989), his
role here might seem like the ultimate stunt casting. Yet before playing
the Caped Crusader, he'd already distinguished himself in both comedy (Beetlejuice) and drama (Clean and Sober),
and he more than holds his own in a cast that includes Edward Norton,
Naomi Watts, Emma Stone, Andrea Riseborough, and Zach Galifianakis.
Alejandro González Iñárritu, director of such ethereal dramas as Babel and 21 Grams,
counterbalances the wicked backstage comedy with surreal flights of
fancy, pondering the gulf between dubious celebrity and artistic
immortality.
JR Jones
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
The Everyman Screen on the Green have restarted their midnight movie season. Full details here.
Time Out review: Director Roger Vadim kicks off his adaptation of Jean-Claude Forest's 'adult' comic
strip by stripping Jane Fonda starkers. From there on it's typically vacuous
titillation as Barbarella takes off for the mysterious planet Sorgo in
40,000 AD, there to survive attack by perambulating dolls with vampire
fangs, receive her sexual initiation from a hairy primitive, fall in
love with a blind angel, be whisked off to an alarming Lesbian encounter
with the tyrannical Black Queen, etc. But Terry Southern's dialogue
occasionally sparkles, and the imaginative designs, as shot by Claude
Renoir, look really splendid. Tom Milne
This greatest of all Christmas films is on an extended run at the Prince Charles. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: 'The film Frank Capra was born to make. This 1946 release marked his
return to features after four years of turning out propaganda films for
the government, and Capra poured his heart and soul into it. James
Stewart stars as a small-town nobody, on the brink of suicide, who
believes his life is worthless. Guardian angel Henry Travers shows him
how wrong he is by letting Stewart see what would have happened had he
never been born. Wonderfully drawn and acted by a superb cast (Donna
Reed, Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell, Lionel Barrymore, Gloria Grahame)
and told with a sense of image and metaphor (the use of water is
especially elegant) that appears in no other Capra film. The epiphany of
movie sentiment and a transcendent experience.' Dave Kehr
Cinemas are closed today but you can catch my twitter
recommendations for great movies on the television over the holiday
period via my twitter handle @tpaleyfilm #bestxmasholidayfilmonTVtoday
The best film of the year? Under The Skin, on a short run at the ICA, was my pick. Full details of the ICA screenings, which start on December 21, can be found here.
Time Out review: ET landed in the cosy American suburbs and wanted to go home. Now
Scarlett Johansson – or something that looks like her – lands in modern
Glasgow and thinks about sticking around in Jonathan Glazer’s creepy,
mysterious and bold ‘Under the Skin’. One can only guess that the
weather is beyond dire on her side of the galaxy. The film is an
adaptation of Michel Faber’s 2000 novel and the first in nearly a decade
from the director of ‘Sexy Beast’ and ‘Birth’. It’s an intoxicating
marvel, strange and sublime: it combines sci-fi ideas, gloriously
unusual special effects and a sharp atmosphere of horror with the
everyday mundanity of a woman driving about rainy Scotland in a battered
transit van. Dave Calhoun Here (and above) is the trailer.
Time Out review: 'Comedy legend Bob Newhart
immediately raises a smile as the elderly elf framing the story of
Santa's biggest little helper. Buddy (Will Ferrell) is different because he's
a human, brought back to the North Pole as a baby when he strayed into
the old boy's sack during the Christmas run. He's been raised in the
traditional elfin ways of industrious good humour, but now it's time for
him to venture to distant New York and discover his real father is a
grumpy publisher (James Caan), who naturally thinks his 'son' is a dangerous
loony. Must be the tights and the pointy hat. What follows is a fairly
predictable 'fish out of water' romp with seasonal bells on.
Nevertheless, Favreau delivers the cornball sentiments with an adept
balance of irony and sincerity, sprinkling felicities in the margins -
cult crooner Leon Redbone voicing a stop-motion snowman, indie fave Zooey Deschanel
as the department store helper giving Ferrell understandable tingles,
and a particularly successful running gag enshrining the significance of
etch-a-sketch in elf culture. Some humour might sail over the heads of
the very young, but there's a higher chuckle rate for the grown-ups than
much dread 'family' fare.' Trevor Johnston
This film, part of the BFI sci-fi season, also screens on 29 December. Details here.
Time Out review: In September 1970, a British war correspondent (Paterson) is distracted
from his coverage of the bloody conflict between Palestinians and
Jordanians when he rescues a young lady (Swinton) from a PLO patrol.
Simply named Friendship, she claims to be an extraterrestrial robot sent
to Earth on a peace mission and accidentally diverted from her original
destination, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Is she insane, a
spy, or telling the truth? Wollen's film comes across as a two-set Dr Who
for adults, complete with political, philosophical and more pettily
personal problems; the use of the alien outsider's way of seeing the
world is perceptive and provocative, the plentiful ideas counterbalance
the lack of extravagant spectacle. Best of all, the film displays a
droll wit (Friendship viewing a typewriter as a distant cousin, or
concocting a surreal thesis on the big toe's importance in the
oppression of women) and a surprising ability to touch the heart. With
two impressive central performances, Wollen at last proves himself able
to direct actors, and has made by far his most rewarding movie to date. Geoff Andrew
This film, part of the BFI sci-fi season, also screens on December 27. Details here.
Time Out review:
'Though
it lacks the awesome allegorical ambiguousness of the 1956 classic of
sci-fi/political paranoia (here paid homage in cameo appearances byKevin McCarthyandDon Siegel), Kaufman and screenwriterWD Richter's
update and San Francisco transposition of Jack Finney's novel is a far
from redundant remake. The extraterrestrial pod people now erupt into a
world where seemingly everyone is already 'into' changing their lives or
lifestyles, and into a cinematic landscape already criss-crossed by an
endless series of conspiracies, while the movie has as much fun toying
with modern thought systems (psychology, ecology) as with elaborate
variations on its predecessor. Kaufman here turns in his most Movie
Brattish film, but soft-pedals on both his special effects and knowing
in-jokiness in a way that puts De Palma to shame; even extra bit
appearances byRobert Duvall(Kaufman's Jesse James inThe Great Northfield Minnesota Raid) and Hollywood archivistTom Luddyare given a nicely take-it-or-leave-it dimension.' Paul Taylor
This film is part of the BFI sci-fi season and also screens on 30 December. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: Although Andrei Tarkovsky regarded this 1972 SF spectacle in 'Scope as
the weakest of his films, it holds up remarkably well as a soulful
Soviet “response” to 2001: A Space Odyssey, concentrating on the
limits of man's imagination in relation to memory and conscience. Sent
to a remote space station poised over the mysterious planet Solaris in
order to investigate the puzzling data sent back by an earlier mission, a
psychologist (Donatas Banionis) discovers that the planet materializes
human forms based on the troubled memories of the space
explorers—including the psychologist's own wife (Natalya Bondarchuk),
who'd killed herself many years before but is repeatedly resurrected
before his eyes. More an exploration of inner than of outer space,
Tarkovsky's eerie mystic parable is given substance by the filmmaker's
boldly original grasp of film language and the remarkable performances
by all the principals. In Russian with subtitles. 165 min.
Jonathan Rosenabum
Chicago Reader review: After the remarkable one-two punch of Crumb and Ghost World,
Terry Zwigoff eases into the mainstream with this R-rated holiday
comedy (2003) about an alcoholic thief (Billy Bob Thornton) working as a
department store Santa. He and his partner, a caustic dwarf (Tony Cox),
show up in a different city every year and rip off the store safe on
Christmas Eve, but their scam is complicated this time when a miserable
fat kid (Bret Kelly) attaches himself to the bitter, foulmouthed
Thornton. Joel and Ethan Coen wrote the story, using the ancient gag of
the toxic Santa as a vehicle for their patented brand of misanthropy. With Bernie Mac, Lauren Graham, and John
Ritter in his last film. JR Jones
Time Out review: 'Comedy legend Bob Newhart
immediately raises a smile as the elderly elf framing the story of
Santa's biggest little helper. Buddy (Will Ferrell) is different because he's
a human, brought back to the North Pole as a baby when he strayed into
the old boy's sack during the Christmas run. He's been raised in the
traditional elfin ways of industrious good humour, but now it's time for
him to venture to distant New York and discover his real father is a
grumpy publisher (James Caan), who naturally thinks his 'son' is a dangerous
loony. Must be the tights and the pointy hat. What follows is a fairly
predictable 'fish out of water' romp with seasonal bells on.
Nevertheless, Favreau delivers the cornball sentiments with an adept
balance of irony and sincerity, sprinkling felicities in the margins -
cult crooner Leon Redbone voicing a stop-motion snowman, indie fave Zooey Deschanel
as the department store helper giving Ferrell understandable tingles,
and a particularly successful running gag enshrining the significance of
etch-a-sketch in elf culture. Some humour might sail over the heads of
the very young, but there's a higher chuckle rate for the grown-ups than
much dread 'family' fare.' Trevor Johnston Here is the Santa announcement scene.
This film is part of the BFI sci-fi season and also screens on 22 & 28 December. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: In John Carpenter's witty and stylish 1974 sci-fi satire, the Dark Star
is an intergalactic bomber wandering through the universe on a vaguely
Nixonian mission to destroy unpopulated planets that might stand in the
way of space travel. The ship's crew is variously bored, blissed out,
and restlessly rambunctious. By introducing human eccentricities (mostly
southern Californian in nature) into the cold structure of science
fiction, Carpenter creates a vision of the technological future that is
both disillusioned and oddly affirmative in its insistence on the
unscientific survival of emotional frailty. Amazingly, the film
(Carpenter's first) was made on a reported budget of $60,000. With Dan
O'Bannon (also the coscenarist) and Brian Narelle. Dave Kehr
Chicago Reader review: 'E.T. with the lid off (1984). At the center of this horror comedy
is a tidy family parable of the kind so dear to the heart of producer
Steven Spielberg: the cute little whatzits who turn into marauding
monsters when they pass through puberty (here gooily envisioned as "the
larval stage") are clearly metaphors for children, and the teenager
(Zach Galligan) whose lapse of responsibility unleashes the onslaught is
a stand-in for the immature parents of the 80s (Poltergeist).
But Spielberg's finger wagging is overwhelmed by Joe Dante's roaring,
undisciplined direction, which (sometimes through sheer sloppiness)
pushes the imagery to unforeseen, untidy, and ultimately disturbing
extremes. Dante is perhaps the first filmmaker since Frank Tashlin to
base his style on the formal free-for-all of animated cartoons; he is
also utterly heartless.' Dave Kehr
This film also screens on 8 & 12 December and is part of the BFI sci-fi season. Details here.
Time Out review: 'The third and most interesting of Nigel Kneale's Quatermass parables,
scripted without interference by Kneale himself from his original TV
series, so that his richly allusive web of occult, anthropological,
religious and extraterrestrial speculation emerges intact as excavations
at a London underground station turn up what appears to be an
unexploded Nazi bomb, but proves to be a mysterious space craft.' David Pirie Here is the trailer.
This
is one of my favourite Christmas films and well worth catching at the
cinema instead of on Channel 5 each year on Christmas Eve when they show it in the
dreadful colourised version.
Time Out review: 'Surprisingly,
there isn't a film version of the Dickens novella which merits the
imprimatur 'classic'. The Muppets had a good stab at it, and Bill Murray
was well cast in the otherwise scattershot Scrooged. On the plus side,
this version is cast like an engraved illustration: Thesiger, Johns,
Hordern, Harrison, Malleson, Baddeley and, above all, the splendidly
aloof Alistair Sim, who feasts on Dickens' best lines ('I expect you
want the whole day off tomorrow?'), greets each new ghost with a weary
shiver, and handles his giddy rebirth with aplomb.' Tom Charity Here (and above) is the trailer.
This film also screens on 18 December and is part of the BFI sci-fi season. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: For better or worse, one of Steven Spielberg's best films (1977), and
perhaps still the best expression of his benign, dreamy-eyed vision.
Humanity's first contact with alien beings proves to be a cause for
celebration and a form of showbiz razzle-dazzle that resembles a slowly
descending chandelier in a movie palace. The events leading up to this
epiphany are a mainly well-orchestrated buildup through which several
diverse individuals—Richard Dreyfuss, Francois Truffaut, Melinda
Dillon—are drawn to the site where this spectacle takes place. Very
close in overall spirit and nostalgic winsomeness to the fiction of Ray
Bradbury, with beautiful cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond that
deservedly won an Oscar. This is dopey Hollywood mysticism all right,
but thanks to considerable craft and showmanship, it packs an undeniable
punch. With Teri Garr, Cary Guffey, and Bob Balaban. Jonathan Rosenbaum
This
landmark film, on an extended run in the sci-fi seasomn at BFI
Southbank, is also being screened in 70mm on the 2nd and 7th December. Full
details here.
Chicago Reader review: 'Seeing
this 1968 masterpiece in 70-millimeter, digitally restored and with
remastered sound, provides an ideal opportunity to rediscover this
mind-blowing myth of origin as it was meant to be seen and heard, an
experience no video setup, no matter how elaborate, could ever begin to
approach. The film remains threatening to contemporary studiothink in
many important ways: Its special effects are used so seamlessly as part
of an overall artistic strategy that, as critic Annette Michelson has
pointed out, they don't even register as such. Dialogue plays a minimal
role, yet the plot encompasses the history of mankind (a province of SF
visionary Olaf Stapledon, who inspired Kubrick's co-writer, Arthur C.
Clarke). And, like its flagrantly underrated companion piece, A.I.
Artificial Intelligence, it meditates at length on the complex
relationship between humanity and technology—not only the human
qualities that we ascribe to machines but also the programming we
knowingly or unknowingly submit to. The film's projections of the cold
war and antiquated product placements may look quaint now, but the
poetry is as hard-edged and full of wonder as ever.' 139 min. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is the brilliant new BFI trailer.
Hackney Picturehouse introduction: The few remaining residents of a Canadian sorority house are
celebrating the onset of Christmas vacation when a thirteen year-old
girl is found dead in the park. Soon, it is discovered that one of the
sorority sisters is missing, which triggers a terrifying chain of
murders within the house ...Director Bob Clark's tense, effective
film is a precursor to the 'slasher' films Friday 13th and Halloween
that would come a half decade later.
Popcorn Horror website review: What’s so terrifying about Black Christmas is its own history. If you’re a film buff you’re probably aware of this film’s existence: “that Christmas themed horror”/”the first slasher”. Its this status as one of the earliest slashers that sets up a false sense of security. Unlike the standard template however, the antagonist is not a lumbering threat. The fact he stays hidden in the shadows of the house means his omnipresence (an idiom Black Christmas does conform to) is verisimilitudinous without resorting to fantastical devices.
Something is a little unsettling about Black Christmas. It’s a little too confined, the players somewhat more trapped, the playing field is that bit smaller. There’s the traditional set-up but then, early on are the phone-calls. Not calls that Scream hoped to parody; Scream would be lucky if it could capture something as revolting as these. The calls in the movie are genuinely some of the most horrifying, deranged audio ever committed to film. It’s something that will stand out and stay with you. This helps build the palpable tension and star Olivia Hussey is a grand scream queen.
But the best thing about Black Christmas? The plot goes in a direction that will leave you thinking for days , if not weeks. Yes, there are huge leaps in logic (why do the girls stay in the sorority house after several murders? Why do the police not have someone next to the phone 24/7?) It doesn’t matter, this remains utterly original and raw. Thanks to the performances and brutality of the story, this continues to be a terrifying movie to all but the most cynical; and frankly if this picture doesn’t make your skin crawl, it’s on too tight. RJ Bayley
This film, part of the BFI sci-fi season, also screens on 10 and 14 December. Details here.
Time Out review: In the wake of the huge commercial success of Alien, almost all attention has perversely focused on the provenance of the script (was it a rip-off of It, the Terror from Beyond Space?
Of Van Vogt's fiction? Was former John Carpenter collaborator Dan
O'Bannon sold out by producers Walter Hill and David Giler's rewrites?).
But the limited strengths of its staple sci-fi horrors - crew of
commercial spacecraft menaced by stowaway monster - always derived from
either the offhand organic/ Freudian resonances of its design or the
purely (brilliantly) manipulative editing and pacing of its
above-average shock quota. Intimations of a big-budget Dark Star
fade early, and notions of Weaver as a Hawksian woman rarely develop
beyond her resourceful reaction to jeopardy. At least Scott has no time
to dawdle over redundant futuristic effects in the fashion that scuttles
his later Blade Runner. Paul Taylor
