Matinee - monster kids special appreciation club

1993, USA

Screenplay: Charles S Haas

This era of Joe Dante is golden. Its mixture of coming-of-age, easy humour and genre motifs and spoofery hits my sweet spot, achieved in a balance that only Dante was doing. It’s a miracle and a joy that we got that gleeful oddity ‘Eerie, Indiana’, for example.

Ten minutes in to ‘Matinee’ and you could almost miss that it’s stuffed with so much due to its deceptively light and bright manner. It has affectionate and funny homage to Fifties Atomic monster films and huckesterism, and clearly aligns this to a kaleidoscope of fear: real, imagined, personal and political. Right down to a TV prank about female fears (the joke’s on you). This gives way to announcements on the Cuban Missile Crisis – it’s 1962 – and the close-up on the mother’s dread moves to incorporate her eldest son. Gene (a charming Simon Fenton) is an army brat, resigned to a friendliness because of that which surely contributes to his maturity and his closeness to his younger brother (“Yeah: disgusting,” says young Dennis, taking his older brother’s cue). And the opening is rounded off with The Tokens’ ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ on the radio as a storm thunders outside. This whole world is defined by latent, real and projected, natural and manufactured. It’s a personal favourite opening.

It's true that the song use is a little too on-the-nose (The Angels’ ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’ plays briefly with the appearance of Starkweather, just in case you didn’t guess) and John William’s score keeps out must subtlety (I wish The Tokens were allowed to linger longer so the mood of the song really set in; and something akin to Thomas Newman scoring would have been more to my taste). But Dante happily shoves subtext forward. There’s no doubting the themes here, long before Woolsey’s caveman-and-mammoth explanation is animated on a wall. It’s Charles Haas’ script but the tonal balance is distinctively Dante.

There’s a comic book gloss, the kind that sold the USA as the empire of dreams and plenty; the adults maybe a little on the hysterical side, but it’s grounded with the casually warm interplay between the youths. That’s a consistent jibe throughout Dante’s work. This grounding is in details like the jaded indifference of Woolsey’s (John Goodman – Stogie-chomping his way through a William Castle character) actress-partner Ruth (a wonderfully dry Cathy Moriarty) and the barely suppressed worry of Gene’s mother. It’s in Stan’s (the instantaneously likeable Omri Katz, who will always be immortal as ‘Eerie, Indiana’s’ Marshall Teller) male bravado being easily punctured by a far more confident girl, or Gene resigned to loneliness because he’s always moving. It’s heightened reality rather than just movie-reality (for comparison: John Hughes’ youth films don’t have such warmth or realism). It’s a film made on memorable detail: for example, there’s a nice little skit on the UN saying “Hell”, and plenty of mileage out of a former delinquent boyfriend called Starkweather and his hilariously bad poetry (“No skin off my ass-phalt,” has always been a favourite). There’s even a gag-homage to Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly’.

Dante doesn’t really take sides on the matter of real, manufactured or imagined fears, although his nostalgia for this era of cinema-going is palpable. Rather, ‘Matinee’ posits that all forms of fear will thrive and exist in one hotbed of anxiety, in peaks and troughs. There is the moment where Gene’s mother nurtures and tempers her worry and possible pending grief by watching old family films of her husband, and Gene leaves her to this private moment of balming her feelings with film. We could criticise him for not going forward and consoling her, or maybe he just innately understands that uniquely private and emotional relationship between viewer and film. And then later in the film, as the kids are upstairs happily throwing popcorn and taken in by the fireworks accompanying ‘Mant’, the cinema owner is in the bunker in the basement, eating popcorn and watching the news. The medium consoles and it inflames, depended upon your preference.

And the movie-within-a-movie, ‘Mant’, is hilarious. These are the patches in the film where satire gives way to gleeful, unapologetic spoof. And it’s always been evident that Dante knows this stuff inside-out: the terrible ‘Mant’ dialogue is belly-laugh funny, it’s so spot-on. Dante’s particularly artistry is in satirising genre while never forfeiting its power. The film ends on hope… the “coming attractions”… but its final image is of war toys in close-up, obscuring the Happy Movie Ending. There’s always grit in the candyfloss with Dante. (And it does short-change The Tokens twice.)

It may have been misunderstood and sunk at the time, but the film has a loyal cult following because ‘Matinee’ is a true Monster Kid happy place. Like Dante’s ‘Explorers’, it leaves me with a goofy-happiness with its Sun-drenched mixture of fear, friendship and film. It’s a hugely entertaining, earnest in its silliness, admirably straightest as a bildungsroman, concluding that, most of all, fear needs an audience.

The Vast of Night

 

Andrew Patterson

2019, USA

Written by Andrew Patterson & Craig W. Sanger

 

‘The Vast of Night’ is one of those films that subsists on mood and build-up, slow burn character and understatement. This means it won’t appeal to those expecting a more visceral and frightening alien encounter: its works more from the eerie-uncanny angle. It’s like a Robert Altman film mixed with a Fifties no-budget b-movie. And it occasionally pretends to be an episode of some Sixties sci-fi spooker. Indeed, we’re in the realms of ‘The Outer Limits’’ first episode ‘The Galaxy Being’, with something weird being picked up on the airwaves, or microwaves, or whatever… 

The evocation of one night in New Mexico 1950s Americana where the town’s majority are at a baseball game is sumptuous: this is wonderful period stuff that  feels nostalgically right. Straight away, it’s socially busy with our nerdy protagonists talking a mile-a-minute. Our central protagonists are Fay Crocker and Everett Sloan, played so engagingly by Sierra Miller and Jake Horowitz, she with thorough nerdy charm and gusto and he with a just a hint of macho jerky overconfidence in conflict with natural goodness. He is a local radio DJ and she’s a sixteen-year-old switch-board operator who loves to talk about the tremendous scientific developments that will dazzle the future. And one of the treats is how their relationship is of friendship, as kindred spirits, rather than romantic. 

It is quite an audacious opening, throwing the viewer right into the milieu of retro-atmospherics, lengthy gliding takes, constant chatter between characters who know each other already and we’ll just have to keep up. The talk is witty, always conveying character, packed with information, realistic and casual, smart and a delight. And beautifully played. The talk is as wall-to-wall as a play – script Andrew Patterson & Craig W. Sanger - but Patterson’s direction – showy without being disruptive – is wholly cinematic. There are gorgeous wide-screen compositions. As Adam Nayman notes, “The technical proficiency of Patterson’s debut is off the charts.” (Although I would say he credits the Spielberg influence too much: talky humanism and UFO scares were a thing before ‘Close Encounters’.)

Then there is a long-take of Faye working the switchboard and hearing an odd noise and trying to investigate further. Then there is a second long-take where the camera glides from one side town to the other, via going through the basketball game. I am a sucker for such long-takes: the first allows Miller to act her retro glasses off as she talks to various people, pulling and plugging connections on the switchboard, trying to work on the mystery whilst tied to the switchboard and radio. The second long-take is that kind of camerawork and trickery that always pleases me, the bonus being that it has a world-building purpose (here’s the town; here’s where they are geographically from one another). If the latter errs on the side of indulgence, it’s fully congruous to this mood-piece.

 

The pacing is a rush to figure out what’s happening, a chase. That sets the momentum, giving energy to an otherwise very talky show. There's a perpetual tension that keeps rolling through, even when it stops for compelling story-telling. And all of this leads to a place where they walk right into tragedy and horror. Despite the fun of the retro-sci-fi aliens-above-us, the film is always underpinned by tragedy, right from Billy (Bruce Davis) calling in with his story, through the tale of a child abduction and to the notations of the empty spaces left behind as the town finally comes out of the game. It may be busy on the surface, but it's creepy too.

‘The Vast of Night’ is a treat of a script, performance and characterisation. A wonderful homage to UFO sci-fi with impeccable mood and with just enough bite to accentuate a grounded sadness and terror. It’s jazzy, assured, has a clear love of storytelling, and ultimately haunting.

Something Evil

Steven Spielberg

1977, USA

Writer: Richard Clouse

Spielberg’s first movie, made for TV, is an example of how haunted/possessed houses often show preferences where gender is concerned. When they are more concerned with men, the haunting/possession is much to do with homicidal natures; when focused on female protagonists, it bears a preference for madness. That is, the houses tend to become manifestations of the woman’s alienation, repression and psychological anxieties; an expression of their previously internalised instabilities and traumas. Polanski’s ‘Repulsion’, ‘The Haunting’, the endless adaptations of ‘The Turn of the Screw’, and so on. There’s the ambiguity of “Is it all in her mind?” The feminist sympathies of these films have precedents in Henry James’ novel – a seminal text of ambiguity – and Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ (1959), but also in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novella ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (1892) and even Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ (1847) – a house that is, after all, a building haunted by its past and present cruelties. The houses in these films and texts reflect the neuroses of their women with transmogrifying walls and wallpaper, doors bulging with unseen and frightening presences, their rooms threatened by malevolent manifestations, the air disturbed by cries and voices from the past.

In ‘Something Evil’, the housewife – initially a sunny and fairly confident figure – is troubled at night by the sound of mild weeping from a child. Sandy Dennis exudes a natural eccentricity that lifts the character of Marjorie Worden above stock type, but she’s an artist too and isn’t just there to bake apple pies. Her own children are asleep, and when searching the house (almost caressing the banister as she looks for the moaning), she can find no origin for the plaintive lament. It seems, then to be coming from the barn out back, so there she goes; but there is no one in there and the weeping seems be coming from the stove. No: it’s just a timid shock of a rat this time. But later, it turns out that, in fact, the crying is coming from a jar filled with a red moving substance – a goo, if you will. The abstractness of this is eerie and odd, and therefore a bonus: it is an unusual tool for a devil to use, no? It appears to be calling upon Marjorie’s sanity as much as Sandy Denis’ full array of nervous tics. She gets herself interested in the trimmings of the occult, making trinkets to sell based upon supposedly satanic designs and taking to heart her old neighbour’s tales of having been troubled by devils in his own home. 

A picture of a woman troubled by her husband’s constant absences comes into focus: she convinces the family to move to the farm, but she is also gullible and flaky and increasingly neurotic. Her husband is not a bad or negative influence, but he’s in advertising and always away and arguably neglectful in that manner. The children – young Stevie and toddler Laurie - are fairly nondescript stock types, and the neighbours seem friendly and accommodating, with a couple of quirky types thrown in. Well, the nephew seems a little creepy but that’s just a red herring.

What is it Marjorie is troubled about? Well, there is the creeping sense of possession in which she starts acting paranoid and slaps her son around a bit: the disturbance is, typically, prying at her nerves and insecurities as a parent. She’ll lock up the kids and explain to them, through the door, that she no longer trusts herself. But she isn’t playing with axes like Mr Lutz in ‘The Amityville Horror’ or laying it on thick about perfect families like Terry O’Quinn in ‘The Stepfather’. She just gets needier and quietly falls apart. And what is it about that jar that seems to pop up wherever it pleases, crying, to set her off?

 

The jar hints at an unaddressed grief and trauma in Marjorie’s life, one that has not been properly addressed either by herself or her husband. If we impose the theory that the jar represents the loss of a child, a miscarriage or an abortion, for example, and the "supernatural" occurrences are more her mind’s expressions of unresolved sorrow and need for attention, then it joins an avenue filled with other haunted houses reflecting female trauma. But there is little backstory to clarify.

Spielberg is, of course, a master director who knows just how to frame and move a camera, even incidentally, to keep things purring and more interesting for this unsurprising supernatural encounter, one that’ll learn those atheists and dabblers. What’s most winning is the obvious affinity he has with naturalism: the bustle and flow of the parties are a highlight, but also the semi-improvisational feel when Marjorie is getting her son Stevie (Johnny Whittaker) to do incantations on the protective hexagram she has painted on the bedroom floor. These are fleeting moments, but they hint at greater things rather than just going through the motions of a tv movie. Of course, next we get ‘Duel’.

The saving grace for ‘Something Evil’ is that it is short, so the fact that it has a paucity of action that leads to very little is quickly glossed over (wait, what about the jar…?). Eventually, it shifts to Marjorie’s concern for her son, which is meant to be a twist but, but like many details has no real substance: how could that secondary character know, since Stevie doesn’t do anything odd or suspicious that we see, only that his mother beats him? Why wouldn’t the devil possess Marjorie as she’s such ripe material? And if it isn’t Marjorie that’s possessed, that surely shines more questions on that beating?

Rather, taking Marjorie as the source of the supernatural, then the act of beating her son filled her with such guilt that she projected her troubled state onto her son so that she could save him and redeem herself. And with that in mind, she’s the cause of the attack on the neighbour just at the moment she calls him. It’s not the whole family hugging in the pentagram, just her and the boy. A tale of a woman having and recovering from a breakdown of sorts, it seems.

It's very minor and wouldn’t necessarily be of much interest but for it’s director and, as mentioned before, next we get ‘Duel’ and the Spielberg story really starts to take off.

The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence

The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence

Writer & director: Tox Six

2011, Netherlands

Even friends warned me off this one. 

Tom Six’s original ‘The Human Centipede’ possessed an ultimate provocative basis, one that has now become a mainstream meme: even those who haven’t seen the film are likely to know the premise. A line of people stitched together mouth-to-butt. To elaborate: a madman with an accent abducts unfortunate Americans for his plan to make the human centipede of the title, mouth-to-anus, etc. And it’s this horror stunted at the oral and anal stages that Mary Wild* thinks is the true cause for the gag-reflex reactions and criticisms, and there’s a lot to that. A black comedy, a mad scientist romp crossed with torture porn, more akin to, say, ‘Re-Animator’, or ‘The Flesh Eaters’ or some Universal classic (certainly is shares the jet-black blood of the latter). Although it never seemed to be really mentioned, it had an evident tongue-in-cheek twinge that was ignored because people were so busy being disgusted/delighted at the outrageous premise. It was flirting happily with the SO-BAD-IT’S-GOOD pleasures. Certainly, Dieter Laser played it to the campy mad scientist hilt, holding it all together. There was negligible dialogue and characterisation, but there also seemed to be a knowingness that seemed to indicate that this was predominantly intentional. And it had a gloss too.

But my curiosity with ‘The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence’ was that this was Tom Six’s apparent response to genre fans admonishing ‘The Human Centipede’ for not being extreme enough. So, this sequel is surely a jibe at those wanting something more extreme: the central figure is a repulsive, mentally challenged psychopathic fan that lives with his abusive mother, can’t tell reality from fiction and thinks the original is a manual for his sandpaper-assisted masturbatory fantasies. Martin – a gleefully repellent Lawrence R Harvey – works as a security guard, re-watching the original film repeatedly and keeping a scrapbook saying “100% medically accurate”. One of his victims screams, “It’s just a fucking movie!” When Martin entices the original star of ‘The Human Centipede’ to come to London, she witters on about getting parts in a Tarantino movie and surely clearly broadcasts that she is in on the joke. There’s the smidge of industry satire here. But is this film criticising or just GIVING ‘EM WHAT THEY WANT? Maybe it isn’t a jibe at all, but rather meeting the challenge to cross the line of extremity, a laying down of the gauntlet. 

From the very start, ‘The Human Centipede 2’ does its successful best not to be liked or in any way appealing. Martin is repulsive, Harvey oozing into the role with goggle-eyed gusto. It’s the kind of role that gets cult kudos, that makes and breaks career opportunities. There is also the side to Martin of a bullied, damaged protagonist punishing those that mistreat him. We know how it’s going to go with the neighbour playing his music too loud: this is not a subtle film. Then there’s the black-and-white, as a means to mitigate the gore, which should add a little class maybe, but also adds to the griminess and mostly makes the rain look black (a wonderfully oppressive if not surreal effect). James Edward Barker’s score is a relentless drone, and there’s no reprieve in the sound-design. Then there’s the portrayal of an unappealing Britishness, the kind that runs through B-horrors like ‘K-Shop’ and ‘Mum & Dad’, full of dodgy dialogue and hysterical caricatures. It’s almost like a hybrid of ‘Eraserhead’ and John Waters and ‘Maniac’. Superficially, it’s slicker than those films - for it has decent production values that make the effects a cut above (so to speak) - although those are classics. But those films were more than just exercises in audience punishment. 

And then ‘Full Sequence’ gets to the third act, which jettisons the artistic ellipses and is just relentless torture. Martin wields a syringe like a mad doctor and tries to classically conduct his work, like many a psychopath before him, not least of all Hannibal Lector. But ultimately, even he vomits. As a delivery system of shocks, carefully graduated to see exactly how much you the viewer can take, it is a triumph. The ridiculous extremity of the mother murder is that kind designed to elicit the WTF laughter from gorehounds. But by the end, no one is likely to be laughing: it is because the subsequent extremity is increasingly centred in degradation and relentlessness. Like ‘A Serbian Film’, it’s set up as a challenge, an endurance test. Then the comeuppance, a lurch for poetic justice, harks back to that laughing-at-extremity-ridiculousness. 

On-set effects supervisor Dan Martin and Lawrence R. Harvey make it explicit that Tom Six’s agenda was to show his detractors how extreme he could be, and certainly the construction of the centipede is gruelling, more like what people expected from the original.* It’s very disarming to hear these creators laugh their way through discussions and interviews about ‘The Human Centipede 2’, to hear Harvey of how he reached the role of Martin as performance art. One can trace back to Grand Guignol: “You came to be shocked, no”? Martin talks of how he gave Six a list of BBFC taboos and Six seemed to be ticking them off like a TO DO list.

But Six and Harvey were also referencing Euro-art films, ‘Salo’ being the obvious touchstone. The thing is that the extremity of ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘Re-Animator’ is for comic effect; serious works like ‘Salo’ and ‘Martyrs’ have political and socio-critical intent, commentating on the very cruelty they are depicting. Waters films have camp goals to challenge conservative norms. I have seen Six’s ‘Full Sequence’ as a gibe at the horror fan that thinks they want MORE, but it doesn’t actually feel condescending, unlike Haneke’s ‘Funny Games’. It doesn’t feel poignant and tragic like ‘Henry: portrait of a serial killer’ or ‘Maniac’, or even ‘Santa Sangre’.  Probably because it doesn’t really end on tragedy. Certainly Martin can be conceived as a tragic character, horribly abused, let down by a care system and articulating that abuse in the most demented way possible, but the film makes sure sympathy is not an option long before the barbed-wire rape (a moment apparently cut from the version I saw). Tragedy is not a lingering aftertaste. 

But there is also a reading of it as a criticism of and reaction to the arguments that greeted ‘The Human Centipede’: Six was apparently frequently asked if he was concerned about copycats. The sequel asks, “How would that work? See how absurd that is?” Dan Martin speaks of the fact that the 2012 Colorado shooting has a clear link to Nolan's ‘Batman’ movies, but that it hasn’t hurt that franchise at all. Compare with the rabid UK tabloid reaction to ‘Child’s Play 3’ and withdrawal because it was claimed it had been seen by the murderers: the link is far more tenuous. By amping up to ridiculous levels, ‘Full Sequence’ tries to show the accusations against the concept as absurd.

“The film is reprehensible, dismaying, ugly, artless and an affront to any notion, however remote, of human decency.” So says Robert Ebert, which is exactly its come-on for extremity fans. But ‘The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence’ is perhaps too inside itself and its own genre commentary to illicit the kind of poignancy of the other extreme classics. There is perhaps the sense of a near-miss with Six. As an unforgiving exercise in offensiveness and extremity, as an endurance test, it succeeds and on this it stands. Whether that is enough depends upon your taste. Certainly, I wasn’t inclined to either condemn or commend ‘Full Sequence’. For all its carnival of the gross and grotesque, it ultimately doesn’t have that subtextural sucker-punch of something more, something beyond its in-joke to elevate it.

References to Dan Martin and Laurence R Harvey and Mary Wild taken from: Evolution Of Horror pt 27: The Human Centipede 2 - 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4QN89yyj3xhX559N65uY0l

'Secondhand Xperiments' - Buck Theorem covers album

And here is my second lockdown release, although I started this a long time ago. It's a collection of cover versions called "Secondhand Xperiments", featuring covers of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Kate Bush, Kylie Minogue, Jerry Goldsmith, Depeche Mode and of my friends Poet and the Loops and Miodes. 

Made 2020-2021. These just caught my attention, although some are total favourites.

The 'Seconds' cover comes from my attempting to it in my teens, cribbing the dialogue undoubtedly with some dodgy drone from some eighties kid's keyboard. I have been disturbed and loved the Frankenheimer film since I was a kid, and recently read the James Ely novel, which is a great downer.

Wen I was at teenager, I remember my mum walking in and quietly smirking when she caught me singing along to 'Never Let Me Down Again'. These were the days when I would replay my 7-inch purchases over and over, in succession, and I am sure I did that to this. How annoying that must have been to others in the house.

Speaking of which: I am not a Kylie fan, necessarily, although I don't object, but 'I Believe in You' is one of those mainstream tracks that periodically get into me and I can't deny. A few times I played it too loud and had the neighbours knocking. How annoying that must have been for the neighbours. I seem to have re-imagined it through 'The Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord' era Cabaret Voltaire.

It included field recordings of my local park during my lockdown walks in the summertime.

Teeth

Writer & Director: Mitchell Litchenstein

2007, USA

‘Teeth’ doesn’t dress up its vagina dentata as a hulking monster.  She doesn’t turn into a big cat either. Nope: this is the most direct example of vagina dentata horror, with an excellent poster design making it obvious but not crude (well, the poster above). And that’s how the film plays out: clear but not vulgar. It has a lot of sleaze, but the film itself is not sleazy. It’s not a revenge fantasy, it’s not controversially feminist treatise against the patriarchy. ‘Teeth’ rides from a generation of extreme horror that means there’s no need for analogy, but black humour undercuts grimness and polemic. There’s melancholy and sadness instead of rage and comic book craziness.

Jess Weixler is Dawn O'Keef, a high school spokeswoman for abstinence, wearing her “purity ring” with pride and, it seems, a little out of fear of sexuality. There’s the overly familiar high school setting, a slightly heightened reality, the kind of colour palette familiar from 80s teen comedies – but it feels a little more muted after the cave. The feel is more akin to Bea Grant’s ‘Lucky’: there’s a sadness here. The performances and attention to character are more akin to indie sensibility than John Hughes. They could all be caricatures, and the gynaecologist and the lewd old man certainly verge on that – for comedic effect – but Jess Weixler gives Dawn full-bodied respect rather than just a prudish judgementalism. Similarly, John Hensley as her irredeemable brother Brad manages, through the scuzziness, to project a lost defeatism beneath the nihilism. Even The School Lesson Of The Film’s Theme doesn’t feel too, too obvious… even as the nuclear plant looms over the town.

One of the themes is the insufficient protection given by piety and/or Faith. The “purity ring” is no safeguard against rape. After the attempted rape in the cave, Dawn is forced to confront her sexuality, and there’s also no real room for support at home, what with her dying mother and obnoxious brother. But, you see, it’s not sex that is the problem, but how the boys treat the girls. A little respect will save us all. Although through duplicitous means, when Dawn believes that sex is consensual – he even asks her if she wants to stop, and there is no reason to think he wouldn’t listen her if she said no – it is enjoyable for her and it’s all wonderful. This is not an anti-sex film and one of the subtle enjoyments is seeing whatever fears and reservations dawn has about sex falling away and a new vibrancy comes into her character. It is only when he answers his phone during sex and confesses that he had a bet that reprisals come. The other subtle enjoyment is Dawn realising that she is in control, that her apparent curse is in fact a weapon.

Its successful restraint means this is funny and nuanced where it could have been broad and bluntly vengeful. ‘Teeth’ is an easy watch, even at its darkest and most provocative, doing a fine job of mixing tones of the humourlessly outrageous with grimness and empathy, never short-changing the focus on respect for its young protagonist.

The Sweet Smell of Success

 

  The Sweet Smell of Success

Alexander Mackendrick, 1957, USA

Screenplay: Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman

Coming from Ealing, Mackendrick went to America and made this vehement attack on the noxious shwbiz gossip journalism scene. Moving stateside, the wit is less satirical and more acidic. Full of memorable put-downs and one-liners that are just desperate to punch you. The pace is at an authoritative stride and you’d best keep up. 

Elmer Bernsteins’s score keeps up the jazz dizziness and cool, never overpowering the dialogue but always paralleling the sense of characters constantly riffing. And with that heavy-hitting script and actors at their best, with that agile camera following and gliding through James Wong Howe’s wonderful black-and-white photography, it’s definitely a film where everyone is at the top of their game.

The screenplay is by Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets from Lehman’s novel, and it’s a legendary script. It’s film noir with the nihilism and wisecracks transported to column writers rather than private dicks. And even if there is the implied gloss of the entertainment industry and we’re visiting high end clubs and restaurants, we’re firmly in the gutter and underbelly here. Tony Curtis practically sweats self-loathing as Sidney Falco, the press agent trying to simultaneously suck up to and siphon some power from columnist J.J. Hunsecker. Burt Lancaster as Hunsecker seems to turn the very air around him to cruelty. And boy, Lancaster and Curtis know just how to deliver those zingers. The former’s sleaziness and the latter’s ever-present ominous threat are palpable essences. Falco avoids the conscience-pricking of his secretary whilst Hunsecker connives to destroy his sister’s romance (Susan Harrison) to the decency of a jazz musician (Martin Milner). That’s the plot that barely hints at the poisonous flow of character and scheming, the hints of the incestuous and moral vacuity. All for the sake of personal weakness, cynicism and show business.

And of course, these men would never think they might be beaten at their own game.

A cold classic.

Vivarium

Lorcan Finnegan, 2019, Ireland-Belgium-Denmark-Canada

Story by Lorcan Finnegan and Garret Shanley; written by Garret Shanley

I went into ‘Vivarium’ with a vague sense of its premise and that it seemed to be met with a kind of indifference that intrigues me. In fact, ‘Vivarium’ ticked many of my genre boxes: the unreliability of reality, unfairness, leaning on the abstract and unanswerable, the unknowable. Of course, the title is a major clue, but I certainly got the most by knowing so little.

 Like Finnegan’s short film ‘Foxes’, the identikit nature of deserted suburban streets creates an eerie, otherworldly backdrop. Finnegan’s previous feature ‘Without Name’ sets the central idea that some places tend to the eerie, that they are bad news for those who find themselves susceptible to their influence (rather than the threat of the locals). But in ‘Vivarium’, it is a little different: these people are the kind of genre protagonists that don’t deserve to find themselves locked in a horror scenario. Add unfairness to the horror elements. Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg give insular, fine performances and this grounds the film as the craziness sets in.

This new and seemingly unpopulated community looks like a plastic display unit at the Real Estate Office. Supplies just appear, like in a game (and surely even more relatable in a lockdown world). Then a baby is delivered into the mix. Imprisoned in a baffling situation that they cannot escape, this scenario starts to wear away the couple. He becomes obsessed with digging a hole – just something to focus on – and her maternal inclinations are grazed, however much she resists. It resonates as a disturbing satire on the conservative demands to conform by an abstract, external force. Men: slave away senselessly for nothing attempting to get out. Women: play the role of motherhood. And the boy (Senan Jennings) is supremely eerie and unsettling, with his sweet looks and not-right voice, reciting the adults’ incriminating dialogue back at them – parroting that is surely recognised by any parent. And the screaming.

All there is becomes a fake existence at the hands of an uncaring omnipresent, abstract force. The force isn’t even being deliberately malign: it’s just doing what it does. This is the kind of concept that implies that all our existential crises and rumination is just an anomaly of the human race in the wider scheme of lifeforms just carrying out their existence. In this instance, it goes beyond being a mystery until it just grinds the couple to the nub. It doesn’t drive them to arguments or acrimony: they just drift apart, which is just as cruel.  

There are casual comments on Amazon that the third act fails, but I disagree: all the clues are there from the very opening. He was digging his grave all along, tying back to his burying the bird at the beginning. Cronenberg would be pleased: it is just a parasite taking its course in this nightmare without intentional malevolence. Whatever it is, as with everything, existence is purpose. The end revelations and reservations, the final madness where the surreal lets rip, are much needed after the measured build-up, but doesn’t forsake mystery for exposition.

‘Vivarium’ is a film whose creepiness reached far down in me to take root in a way that doesn’t happen often. A prime example of the uncanny.

And the screaming.

The Third Man - and the humbling of another

 

The Third Man 

Carol Reed, 1949, UK

Screenplay; Graham Greene

‘The Third Man’ is a tale of an American pulp writer Holly Martins in the post-war ruins of Vienna, trying to solve the mystery of the death of his friend Harry Lime. He does this mostly by initially stomping around and barking his privilege and entitlement. He’s often insulting to the British authority investigating the death too, for Lime was apparently mixed up in some shady business – but Holly’s not having it. He’s going to ignore the officials and their incompetence and solve it on his own.

Except what he really does is fall for Lime’s girlfriend, Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli). But he does ruffle some feathers and uncovers inconsistencies in accounts and reason to suspect that Lime’s death was faked. But by then, Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) steps in to stop him barking around to show the evidence they have that Lime was indeed guilty of what they say. Now, usually it undermines my sense of the film’s credibility when the authorities seemingly hand over the investigation to a writer/journalist or whoever: this is a recurring trait in giallo and a plot feature I often just can’t take seriously. But in ‘The Third Man’, it’s the turning point for Holly: besides, they are telling him to stop stirring things up and maybe to get him on their side. He is proven wrong and all his entitled bolshiness is hobbled. From then on, his confidence is broken. He is not very good when he gives his lecture on the contemporary novel. Even when he finally finds and meets Lime, he hasn’t the imagination or smarts to counter Lime’s famed sociopathic “cuckoo clock” speech. Most bullish dupes crack wise right to the end, lamenting fate and desire, dominating the story with their self-pity, but there is no voiceover here for that. Harry becomes more and more speechless and overwhelmed by circumstances far bigger than him and that he doesn’t really understand. By the end, where he doesn’t really get the girl, he is silent. Just patient and hopeful.

In fact, it is the silences that impress most. Or rather, how the film knows when to let silences speak. Whereas many genre pictures will talk and talk – and not that it’s lacking in that department because Graham Greene’s script is classic, sharp and memorable: the debate about morality and human worth between Holly and Harry; a fleeting “striptease” gag. But with the final chase, the ‘The Third Man’ goes into the sewer system and lets the sound design take over. Not even Anton Karas’ unforgettable Zither score – which is one that haunts every second, even when it’s not playing – intrudes on this subterranean cat-and-mouse. It’s like the film is holding its breath.

There is the leading feeling of resignation that overwhelms everyone, and it just takes Holly a little time to catch up. It’s the post-war milieu where we go from sumptuous interiors to bombed buildings with just a few footfalls. Joseph Cotten is apt for the role, going from obnoxious belligerence, to out-of-his-depth, to soulful and bruised square jaw machismo. And:

“In Vienna, Martins is constantly at odds and out of step, never able to forget that he is in an alien place where everything seems upside-down. This wasn’t too far away from how Cotton felt himself when making the movie. The star complained of a endlessly shifting schedule that he was afraid as going to keep him in Vienna far longer than the two weeks he had anticipated: ‘This method of making a picture,’ he complained to Selznick executive, Daniel O’Shea, didn’t make him feel at home in a location so far away, so cold and dirty and so uncomfortably occupied by such a variety of peoples.’”

Charles Drazin, “The Third Man: Mixing fact with fiction”, Studio Canal Vintage Classics booklet, page 9. Quotes from original documents […] taken from the files ‘The Third Man’ in the David O. Selnick Collection, Harry Ranson Cemter, the University of Texas at Austin. 

If you are one of those that find constant annoyance at characters walking into other places and assuming their dominance and privilege, watching Holly’s assurance being dismantled during the unravelling of the mystery is satisfying. It’s a pleasure to see Cotten getting progressively more soulful, speaking with eyes rather than wisecracks, despite the actor’s apparent reservations.

The film turns every character on their side when it can. Anna’s loyalty to and love for Harry doesn’t quite seem unblemished romanticism when we know how manipulative he is, and that she knows the truth of him. Is she just foolish? She’s not stupid. Is there a hint of Stockholm Syndrome here? The Major becomes an increasingly decent sort the more he comes to light. Holly isn’t so bone-headed and simple when his privilege is challenged and found wanting: he doesn’t launch into denial. And so on. 

The pace is fast and so some of the nuance may not be so apparent on a first watch. Even in supposedly more minor works like ‘A Kid for Two Farthings’ and – a personal favourite – ‘The Fallen Idol’, Reed’s camera always feels like it’s moving with the story, not simply observing and serving exposition. For example, a plethora of Dutch angles tells you all the time that this is an off-centre world. It’s speedy, smart, fully entertaining. And there’s that unique Viennese location of a certain time and place and a wealth of brilliant character actors.

It’s as much a tale of the humbling of one man, who’s likely all the better for it, as it is a mystery being solved.

And, of course, that Zither score.

Favourites 2020

 

 Let's do this before the new year kicks in....

Well, having written my end-of-year editions, I realised it was probably weighted to genre a little more than usual. I guess that what happens when I’m in lockdown at home.

I realised I should have seen ‘Saint Maud’ at the very least and look forward to catching up with it.

And I also realised that I didn’t write up ‘Anything For Jackson’. Which is a great genre piece and you should check out, horror fans.

 So these are the films I liked the most this year; some I had to think over and some were immediate, but that's always the way.

Uncut Gems

Relic

His House

Parasite

Possessor

Fried Barry

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

A Sun

Rent-a-Pal

The Vast of Night

Tumbbad

Really wish I had seen 'Fried Barry' with a live audience. As it was , I could practically feel the Grimmfest audience enjoying it, albeit digitally through the screen. I knew nothing about it and when it went batshit crazy, I was delighted.

'Tumbbad' would have looked fantastic on a big screen. Well... they all would have, 

but 'The Vast of Night' would have looked wonderful too. I was only afterwards that I realised it's mixture of wordiness, cinematic playfulness and period atmosphere had totally beguiled me. 

I just chuckled when I realised that 'Relic' had just pulled the reality rug from under me.

'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' just exuded maturity and elegance.

'Possessor' was wonderfully grungy and troubling.

 

And also:

The Special

Vivarium

Death of a Vlogger

I See You

The Invisible Man

Lucky

The Wolf of Snow Hollow

Koko-di Koko-da

There was so much to savour in these films too. They all provided delightful surprises and intelligence. I am only expect to like them more on following viewings.

(Oh, was 'The Painted Bird' 2020, because I really, really liked that too....?)

Well, it will interesting to see what happens next year.

Film Summary 2020 - home viewing version

Film Summary 2020

home viewing version 

And so, film watching became fully a Home Lockdown Sport.

It turned out my annual holiday to FrightFest simply mutated to digital, and I also found Grimmfest this way too. In the end, I “attended” four horror film festivals, missed the London Film Festival and thoroughly intend to go for more digital festivals in the future, hoping they continue this alternative. And of course, there were premiers and such on Netflix and Prime, so even though I thoroughly missed going to the cinema, I still saw some new releases.

Some of these are streaming releases and it's a weighted towards horror, but hey-ho. I bet I am playing a bit fast-and-loose with release dates being 2019-2020 on occasion, but you’ll just have to forgive me.

‘Extraction’ proved popular enough, but superficial. Some good action though. 

Won-Tae Lee's ‘The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil’ was the kind of Asian crime thriller that does action and nihilism so well, unmarred by the kind of sentimentality that gave ‘No Tears for The Dead’ hiccups. Here, a couple of gangster movie archetypes join together to stop a serial killer. Stylish and starred ‘Train to Busan’ favourite, Ma Don-Seok.

Yes, Edoardo Ponti’s ‘The Life Ahead’ heralded the return of Sophia Loren, but the film belongs to the performance of young Ibrahima Gueye as Momo, the orphan she begrudgingly takes in. Otherwise, it’s a by-the-numbers weepy with not enough grit and/or unpredictability in the detail to make it stand out,

A far more fascinating and troubling sleeper masterpiece was Mong-Hung Chung’s ‘A Sun’ (Yangguang puzhao). It’s about the long-term consequences of crime, hubris, desperation, temper, family ties… all that. It begins with the shocking incident where a man’s hand is chopped off and lands in boiling soup – a moment that wouldn’t disgrace Takashi Miike – and the rest of the film and the subsequent years all lead back to this. There’s the superficial dynamic of the good son and bad son, but both prove enigmas. The father is arrogant and angry and the mother is torn this way and that by all this male conflict. Focusing on the cruelty of life yet the film isn’t mean. It stays non-judgemental with a strong undertow of empathy.

David Fincher’s ‘Mank’ had the formal play expected of him, recreating old school Hollywood with all the modern tricks at his disposal: Dutch Angles, smoke, stylistic nods to ‘Citizen Kane’, etc; look for the cigarette burns, the typewriter title cards, etc. The dialogue plays like sparklers wielded as swordplay – script by Frank Fincher, David’s journalist-essayist father – is fast and clever and very old school: everyone knows just what to say. It’s the kind that you will watch a second time just to listen.  It’s pacey in and old school way too, even if it’s length at over two hours is very contemporary. ‘Mank’ isn’t one to turn to for veracity, it seems (say people far more knowledgeable than I), but the general tone of people screwing one other over, the horrendous hierarchy, that all rings true to the stories and reportage I do know. And the subplot about politics and fake news and propaganda is totally contemporary, or at least offers a starting point. It’s all excellent performances and storytelling.

Nick Rowland’s ‘Calm with Horses’ boasted great performances from Cosmo Jarvis and Barry Keoghan and a terrifying turn by Ned Dennehy. An upsetting tale of insidious bullying and manipulation where a local gang uses the gullibility of an ex-boxer for their muscle. It’s concise with truly repellent villains, defiant women, nicely rendered milieu, a sense of a class brutally policing its own, unfairness, and a sudden great car chase. Impressive.

But for a Ladies Only focus, Céline Sciamma’s ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ was sublime. Something of its spaces and moments of quietude reminded me of William Oldroy’s ‘Lady Macbeth’; but this was a different beast, full of warmth and sympathetic elegance. Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel are both captivating, falling for each other over the painting of a portrait. Just a house, some perilous and picturesque cliffs and two smart people falling in love. Sciamma offers some end notes that make this a fully realised tale of fleeting, lost love, but not of regret. 

Tayarisha Poe’s ‘Selah and the Spades’ was a nicely played and rendered high school clique conflict drama. The Mean Girls And Guys of High School where the factions all have funky names and are introduced by knowing voiceovers or postmodern techniques is something that I have come to find a turn off, but ‘Selah and the Spades’ is not overdone, has a nice smooth stylish surface. The problem is, having deconstructed Selah, it assumes an acceptance and redemption that the script hasn’t quite worked for. And of course, it depends how you feel about a group of privileged drug pedlars, although there is a lot of nice characterisation. 

Similarly, Sophia Takal’s remake of ‘Black Christmas’ just assumed Final Girls triumphing with kick ass and quips was enough to polish up the slasher tropes. There’s some nice setup and it’s decently presented so it’s hard not to think that some of the negativity reaction to it was based in part on garden variety misogyny. But it’s ultimately a little lacking when women reclaiming the genre is storming up a treat and has quickly surpassed gestures of Girls Kick Ass Too! to more sophisticated catharsis.

If you were looking for a really oddball Girl’s Clique At School, Betrand Bonello’s ‘Zombi Child’ provided a fascinating genre mash-up. Part underplayed supernatural – the voodoo Zombi backstory is almost so faint as to be subliminal – and part coming-of-age drama, it’s more magic realism than horror. Probably belongs to that long tradition of bildungsroman streaked with fantasy-horror. But its calm surface is beguiling and eventually asks more than it answers. Best to treat as fable.

But as an example of how feminism has advanced in and has expanded genre, Leigh Whannell’s ‘The Invisible Man’ is a fine text. Rather than remaking the HG Wells tale, Whannel’s screenplay uses the concept to capture the fear and relentless paranoia of an abused woman. He’s always there; you just can’t see him, but she knows. Following the excellent ‘Upgrade’, it’s obvious that Whannell has a fearful respect for technology and its insidious threats: in ‘Upgrade’ and ‘The Invisible Man’, the technology is given plausibility where the effect and use are tied inevitably the individuals flaws and/or villainy. Elisabeth Moss gives a great performance struggling as, of course, no one believes her. Whannell makes the empty spaces in the frame electric with threat. 

Similarly, Bea Grants scripts for ‘12 Hour Shift’ and ‘Lucky’ were witty, acerbic, twisty, full-blooded and female-focused/feminist without compromising genre thrills. In recent horror festivals, there’s a lot of this going around, providing fresh paint and venom to genre tropes, but Grant is obviously a reliable voice. Especially with ‘Lucky’, where the analogy takes over and could risk losing credibility, but instead is sad, chilling and fully satisfying. 

Likewise, Piotr Ryczko’s ‘I Am Ren’ holds fast to its metaphors and analogies to explicate the female condition. A woman is a faulty domestic android...

Ivo Van Art’s ‘The Columnist’  and Emre Akay’s ‘AV The Hunt’   provided revenge tales for women, the first being satirical on the era of social media trolls, the latter a scathing indictment of patriarchy’s psychopathy. Craig Zobel’s ‘The Hunt’ was a similar woman-kicks-back tale with a upfront class commentary which got it caught in the crosshairs of the zeitgeist and banned for a while. But really it was the kind of enjoyable violent satire that dominates horror festival programmes. 

And B. Harrison Smith’s ‘The Special’ provided a gloriously icky commentary on the apparent insatiability of male desire.

There were plenty of noteworthy genre character pieces. One of the best was Jon Stevenson’s ‘Rent-a-Pal’, a sympathetic portrayal of male loneliness leading to desperation and breakdown.

Joe Begos’ ‘VFW’ was a homage to eighties b-movies, which is an overriding trend in the genre at this time. It was far less impressive than Begos’ ‘Bliss’ and somewhat hobbled by a lacklustre female upon which a group of old war veterans leap into one last bought of bloodletting and vindicated violence. But the old timers know what they’re doing. The influence of Carpenter was obvious and the action was delivered decently.

Neasa Hardiman’s ‘Sea Fever’ is the kind of thing that catches my attention more because it tries to do something different with a similar underwater-and-under-siege premise as, say, ‘Underwater’. Surely in a pandemic era, it’s threat of contagion resonates even more. It’s often pretty too.

Jim Cumming’s ‘The Wolf of Snow Hollow’ was another surprising delight, with Cummings himself giving an excellent turn as a small-town police officer trying to simultaneously keep his anger in check and solve a series of brutal killings. Watching him trying to hold it together whilst surrounded by annoyance and lack of competence proved a treat and darkly funny. Your temper may be proportional to the town you’re in. And, of course, anger and Id are the basis of werewolf tales, so all those themes were fully in place. However, anyone expecting a conventional werewolf tale from the title were bound to be disappointed, but it offered a wealth of great characters and turns. 

The most unapologetically episodic, free-for all was the glorious oddity and instantaneous cult classic ‘Fried Barry’.  Narratively-challenged, the joy was in seeing what and where it and he would go next. Rarely have I been so thoroughly amused and delighted to just be swept along.

There was a handful of horrors that offered different spins on witches. Brett and Drew T. Pierce’s ‘The Wretched’ had some nice witch reveals and a mean streak that made it worthwhile. The supernaturally inflicted amnesia about missing children was a truly creepy and troubling quirk. For something a bit different in the witch department, Aaron B. Kootz’s ‘The Pale Door’ offered an entertaining Western/Horror mash-up with plenty of meat on its character bone and unapologetic in the old-school hook-nose-and-chin witch design. For all the machismo, it was the women here that wielded all the power. ‘Blood Harvest’ offered a more sombre, character-based witch tale that was far better than its title (originally it was ‘The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw’). 

Ryan Spindell’s ‘The Mortuary Collection’ was a slickly made horror anthology with a great turn by Clancy Brown, but somewhat undone by an ill-judged final gag.

The fascinating ‘Rose: A Love Story’ by Jennifer Sheridan ended just as it was about to kick into another level. But again, the variation on tropes and concentration on character proved gripping.

I didn’t realise how much I loved Andrew Patterson’s ‘The Vast of Night’ at first: it was such a heady mix of delightful dialogue, mood, the occasional camerawork flourish, and an ultimate sense of unfairness that haunts. I watched it again soon after because I realised it was a favourite for me.

Similarly, I fell in love with ‘Tumbbad’ - directed by Rahi Anil Barve with Adesh Prasad and Anand Gandhi – the more I thought about it. 

Johannes Nyholm ‘Koko-di Koko-da’ was yet another that I liked the more I reflected. 

Lorcan Finnegan’s ‘Vivarium’ was a total surprise and hit my buttons delightfully. Unfair uncanny absurdist failing reality. That’s the stuff I consider horror just as much as violent killers. 

Jessica Hausner’s ‘Little Joe’ definitely won’t be for everyone, but it’s themes of anxiety, commerce and science presented a different kind of invasion. There were obvious foundations of triffids and bodysnatchers, but it was so low-key and insidious, with an overall mannered aesthetic that surely some of its subtleties were lost on many. But it was colourful, intriguing, intelligent and troubling.

For something more conventional, Rob Savage’s virtual séance frightener ‘Host’ proved a breakout horror hit during lockdown. It proved a good jump-scare vehicle, not quite overcoming all the issues posed by live cameras, but very entertaining.

But it was Graham Hughes ‘Death of a Vlogger’ that impressed me more. It perhaps wasn’t the most promising title, but it wasn’t afraid to lets its intelligence and agenda take their time revealing themselves. A vlogger films a haunting in his average flat… In many ways, it was just as twisty as 'I See You'. Starting conventionally enough, it provided me with two unexpected jump-scares and moved into themes of fake news and ambiguity that elevated it with current relevance. 

Adam Randall’s ‘I See You’ was an unexpected, excellent thriller treat. It’s one of those that, through a little sleight-of-hand, makes you think you are watching one type of film but… well. The feature that I liked is that the family doesn’t discuss the odd things happening to them because they are in crisis and not really communicating. It’s definitely one to go in with knowing nothing and stick with.

Oz Perkins’ ‘Gretel & Hansel’ was the kind of reimaging of fairy tales inflected with arthouse aesthetic that always fascinates. There was the sense that it wasn’t quite hitting all its marks, was a little unsteady, but Alice Krige’s performance as the witch grounded it all. That, and the production and art design by Jeremy Reed and Leonie Predergast respectively. 

Matteo Geone’s ‘Pinocchio’ takes a similar approach – a fairy tale given a dose of realism – but far less successfully than his wonderful ‘Tale of Tales’. Perhaps it was the dubbing – okay, definitely the dubbing – but for all its beauty and fascinating oddity, there is something that doesn’t quite gel. 

Maximiliano Contenti’s ‘Red Screening’ was a retro-horror  with giallo tendencies (it’s a trend), set in a cinema. It’s enjoyable fodder for horror fans, comfort food even, as a small selection of staff and audience fall pray to a killer on the premises. The detail that the director of the film being screened (‘Frankenstein Day of the Beast’) is playing the murderer gives an extra twinge of meta. Aside from a couple of character histrionics, it’s solid fun.

Keola Racela’s ‘Porno’ is, like ‘Red Screening’, also set in the past of a movie theatre. Five employees unleash a succubus which means they will not only have to face the supernatural but their own Faith. You see, they’re all very Christian which gives a fresh tint to genre tropes. It’s this that is most interesting, this limited group struggling with themselves… well, predominantly male angst. After all, the threat is mostly exploding dicks.  But it is relatively tame, truly, if and makes only one truly out-there moment of excess and gore amid truly startling (you’ll know it when you see it). The nostalgia isn’t overdone, the cast are game and a step back from outright caricatures. It’s likeable enough, even if it gets a little lost with itself.

The legendary FrightFest screening of ‘Train to Busan’ will always remain vivid in my memory: the feeling of audience enjoyment was a tangible thing that I can still feel now. The follow up ‘Peninsula’ isn’t as good as that – ‘Train’ was a lightning strike – but it’s still an enjoyable zombie romp, now with a ‘Mad Max’ vibe. The emotional resonance of ‘Train’ kicked so because it was unexpected: ‘Peninsula’ seems to be trying too hard – the superfast zombie onslaught will slow down to let characters emote and the music swell; there’s a lot of performative heart-wrenching – but even so, there’s a lot of fun here.

Natalie Erika James’ ‘Relic’, Brandon Cronenberg’s ‘Possessor’ and Remi Weekes’ ‘His House’ were all examples of the genre currently at the top of its game. 

Okay, okay, let’s stop there, although I know there are some I've left off. 

Well, there’s always the usually daft cries of Death Of Film, but this year the hints of Death of Cinemas seemed closer than ever. It's all the fault of the pandemic, of course. I guess the move to streaming has been even more dramatic than ever. But I also know that ‘Mank’ would have looked gorgeous on the big screen, that I would have been immersed in ‘Possessor’ even more, that I would have loved to see ‘The Vast of Night’ on a big screen (yes, I know it wasn’t a cinema release), that ‘Fried Barry’ would have been delightful with an audience, etc cetera. I think cinema will survive somewhere and somehow, because nothing beats that if you’re a film fan.