by ·Comments Off on Quatermass and the Pit (1967, Roy Ward Baker)

The Quatermass movies are like Knives Out, not really sequels, just the continuing otherworldly adventures of Dr. Q – same studio a decade after the last one, but everyone here is new except the writer. The doctor (Andrew Keir, a Hammer guy who tended to play priests and professors) is recruited by a military bomb squad and taken to subway station Hobbs End (“hob was once a sort of nickname for the devil”) where ancient apeman skeletons and a mysterious vessel have been excavated. The film title evokes Poe, but the pit is just a subway tunnel.

Dr. Q and the Colonel

Doing Science:

After they uncover locust aliens who decompose into green goo when the air hits them, the military reluctantly admits this maybe isn’t a nazi bomb, and the doctor thinks Martian insects kidnapped abnormal prehumans and enlightened them. A worker goes down alone and a wind storm ensues, he comes prancing outside with his arms held out like a preemptive parody of Weapons, not clear if he is alien-possessed or just British-terrified – remember, a British person can be driven mad by the smallest inconsistency. The assembled scientists and priests agree that whatever mystery they’ve uncovered, it is Evil.

Roney poses with an artist’s rendering of a big-brained apeman:

Crystal mantis pods:

Reporter Barbara Shelley (Village of the Damned, The Gorgon) is sensitive enough to see the invisible martians so they put a brainwave helmet on her and videotape the psychic visions from her “susceptible brain,” then Dr. Q screens the tape (actually some kids’ home movie of plastic mantises fighting on a rockpile) and tries to convince the government that humans have got alien-inherited genocidal tendencies (partly true). “People don’t believe nothing nowadays unless they’ve seen it on the telly.”

Finally with the station full of TV crews and passersby the ship comes violently alive. The Colonel (Julian Glover, lately of Tar) gets hypnotised by the commotion and melts, everyone else starts doing mob violence, until Q’s science-friend James Donald rides a construction crane to electrocute Mantis Satan and save the world (these movies usually end with Dr. Q identifying some great evil then setting it on fire).

My fifth Roy Ward Baker movie, and if I ever watch a sixth then I’ve officially got problems. Though in its best moments this had shades of Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness.

by ·Comments Off on 28 Years Later (2025, Danny Boyle)

Dad and son leave their tidal island home for a coming-of-age venture into zomb territory, and when their short trip gets derailed and extended they end up meeting skull collector Ralph Fiennes, a doomed Swede, and evil acrobat messiah Jack O’Connell. Second-most interesting part of this movie is learning that the rest of the world is normal modern, with internet and uber eats, and only England is zombie-quarantined – the most interesting is that Boyle is image-making here, not just telling a family/zomb story, and this has got more trick shots/edits in the first four minutes than the entirety of last week’s zombie junk The Sadness. Ends weirdly because they’re setting up a sub-trilogy, so the kid and his dad (Aaron T-J of one of the bad Godzilla movies) and other weirdos will return, but the kid’s mom (Bikeriders wife Jodie Comer), an elite zombie defender with terminal brain cancer, will not.

by ·Comments Off on Billion Dollar Brain (1967, Ken Russell)

1960s movie about the threat of artificial intelligence, shot in high style for a British spy drama, which is medium-low style for a Ken Russell picture.

Caine covering up Karl and Francoise:

Villain Ed Begley is a wacked out texas oilman whose computer tells him how to overthrow communism. Oskar Homolka is the KGB man trying to stop him from starting WWIII. Karl Malden and Francoise Dorleac are getting rich playing multiple sides, toting a carton of eggs injected with lethal viruses. Guy Doleman is the British spy boss trying to retrieve the eggs. And all of these groups befriend and/or kidnap special agent Michael Caine, who doesn’t exactly solve the case, but is at least present while it solves itself.

Nazi-coded Texan:

by ·Comments Off on 28 Days Later (2002, Danny Boyle)

I was gonna say “the movie looks artfully shot, too bad my copy is smeary low-res for some reason” – but no, it turns out they shot it on mini-DV. I don’t need to rewatch part two before the third movie, but don’t remember this one at all. Coma victim Cillian awakens into the post-apocalypse, after the extremely infectious rage virus is released from a lab by idiot activists and England is destroyed by Crazies®. He’s rescued by Naomie Harris, and they find a girl whose dad is Brendan Gleeson, and they go on adventures together, getting a flat tire in a rat tunnel, having a Grandaddy-soundtracked grocery shopping spree. Fun’s over after Gleeson gets infected by a crow and the others find a mad group of rapist soldiers. Cillian (a bike messenger who just woke from a coma) turns elite commando and wipes out the squad to save the women. Nayman and Lewis.

by ·Comments Off on Education (2020, Steve McQueen)

Kingsley loves outer space, wants to be an astronaut but can’t read, gets in trouble in school and is busted down to a kindergarten-level special school. A bit upsetting that the night after watching Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii I’m subjected to a fake schoolteacher singing “House of the Rising Sun” in its entirety. Nice little story with crazy end credits music. Naomi Ackie plays an activist exposing the new school for being completely useless, and it ends (ironically I assume) with them putting their hope in an up-and-coming politician named Margaret Thatcher.

Sicinski called this and Wheatle the weakest episodes: “Still, even understood as fundamentally educational efforts, these films are much more adept than the work of Loach and [Paul] Laverty when it comes to articulating the complexities of systematic oppression.”

by ·Comments Off on Downhill (1927, Alfred Hitchcock)

Movie about Ivor’s life repeatedly falling apart even though he’s rich, white, and handsome. First his college buddy, a trend-following buffoon with a pretty sister, knocks up local girl Mabel. She pins it on the rich boy so his family will pay her off, even though scholarship kid Tim was the culprit, and Ivor is expelled on moral grounds and kicked out of his home.

Subtle, Mabel:

But Ivor inherits some money, somehow? He marries a fancy actress, who spends all their cash, cheats on him, then kicks him out of the apartment. He spends some time pathetically mooching off pathetic older women then runs off to France. Fortunately back home, Tim is dying and deathbed-confessing to clear Ivor’s name, so his family takes him back when he returns home half-starved.

Hitch pulls off some really great framing and closeups, but the movie felt like a chore, a couple steps down from The Lodger, so I opted to cut my losses and skip the couple hours of blu extras for now.

by ·Comments Off on Secrets & Lies (1996, Mike Leigh)

After her foster mum’s death, Marianne Jean-Baptiste consults compassionate social worker Lesley Manville about finding her real mum. Lesley gives her some options, says this should be handled delicately, and of course don’t just show up at mum’s doorstep, but Marianne is out of patience and does exactly that, getting to know Brenda Blethyn (Keira K’s mum in Pride & Prejudice and Keira’s boyfriend’s mum in Atonement) and remaining her “work friend” to the rest of the family until all the titular secrets get blurted out at a birthday party.

Brenda’s brother is Timothy Spall, his wife who nobody likes is Phyllis Logan, and mum’s other daughter (and birthday girl) is Claire Rushbrook of Adler’s Under the Skin, who brings along her boyfriend Paul. Poor Paul seems nice enough, has nothing to do while caught in this massive unloading of grudges, and when the fourth family secret within 15 minutes drops, he makes a facial twitch that justifies his entire existence in the film. As for Blethyn, she and the movie won top prizes at Cannes in a stacked year (Crash, Fargo, Breaking the Waves, Three Lives, Drifting Clouds). She’s excellent throughout, but one line delivery in particular, which I won’t detail here because I’m trying to stop thinking about it, had me upset all week. I planned to catch up on a few Mike Leigh films – maybe Meantime or High Hopes – before watching MJ-B’s comeback Hard Truths, but maybe stacking these in a single month would be overwhelming.

Josh Lewis: “So funny to make a movie as nihilistic and troubling as Naked and then immediately follow it up with Timothy Spall in this who is a contender for the nicest, warmest character in the history of movies.”

by ·Comments Off on The Lodger (1927, Alfred Hitchcock)

There’s a serial killer murdering the blondes of London, but the movie is more concerned with showing us all the media technologies of the time (telegraph, newspaper, radio, electric billboards). Meanwhile after a performance of “Golden Curls,” the few performers who weren’t wearing wigs are worried about their walk home. Good music by Neil Brand, and I love the construction paper graphics on the intertitles.

Ivor Novello arrives, pale and scarved, at a boarding house, acting like a dramatic ghost while renting a room, and is assumed to be the killer so everything he picks up is implied to be a possible murder weapon. He likes local girl Daisy, which annoys her hanger-on Joe. First the landlady then the cops go snooping through Ivor’s stuff, then the real killer is caught off-camera but not before jealous Joe gets an angry mob to beat Ivor half to death.

Killer calling card:

British people must spend 15% of their day standing in shocked silence after something mildly disagreeable happened. Novello’s legacy: he would be portrayed ninety-some years later by the guy who also played young Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia 2.

POV: Ivor Novello wants to kiss you

by ·Comments Off on Alex Wheatle (2020, Steve McQueen)

Seventeen months after the last episode I’m finally getting around to part four of Small Axe. Alex is in prison re-living his life in flashback, particularly the year he arrived in London, met a bunch of cool people and got really into reggae. Jerking back and forth in time, I only figured out Alex was a real person towards the end when he got out of jail. Most critics disliked this episode for its biopic nature or its wonky script, I liked it very much because it’s an hour long and full of cool music. Then I listened to disc one of The Trojan Dub Box and now I’m good for the rest of the year. Alex (Sheyi Cole) was later in Soderbergh’s Full Circle, which I’d forgotten all about.

Alex’s cellmate says the name of the next Small Axe movie:

Alex says the name of McQueen’s follow-up to Small Axe: