Film 2019 - Week 3 (Monday 14th to Sunday 20th of January)

Week three of this challenge, and there are four new things to talk about; an old favourite, a fresh discovery, a shorts showcase, and a highly anticipated new release...

7. Schlock - Prince Charles Cinema

First of an impromptu double bill for my birthday at the PCC, both by cult directors named John oddly enough.  This was John Landis' first feature film... I could tell watching it that it was directed by someone who hadn't done a feature film before.  Now you do have to give these sort of things a bit of slack, but sorry, this is just not much fun to sit through.  Problem number one with the film is that it's sort of a mockery of the film Trog; the difficultly there is how exactly do you make a spoof of that film funnier than what the original turned out to be?  Also, it's just a wander from scene to scene, it's all a bit episodic, with a lot of stuff lasting longer than it should (one extended 2001 reference highlights this, given the number of times that they have to restart Also Sprach Zarathustra over!).  I suspect though that a lot of these awkward scenes were simply down to them being so low budget that if they filmed it, it goes in the finished product dammit!  As a curiosity, to see the start of Landis' career... I can't really recommend it on that point either to be honest, just go check out The Kentucky Fried Movie instead (where the fact it's all episodic isn't really a problem).  One thing I noticed though is that it was produced by Jack H. Harris, who made a habit of buying up odd little amateur or student projects like this, and bulking them out for theatrical release, like when he released Dark Star and Equinox.  This time I spotted immediately the bit that was his input, the extended sequence of Schlock in a cinema watching a weirdly edited together double bill of The Blob and Dinosaurus.  Boy, those were two films I'd rather have been watching; I was so glad this screening was the PCC's £1 film of the week.

8. They Live - Prince Charles Cinema

I should mention that Wednesday wasn't just my birthday, it was John Carpenter's birthday too.  This screening had a bit of a triple significance then; Carpenter's birthday, part of the Prince Charles' retrospective to him this year, and to tie in to a new book about the film, They Live: A Visual and Cultural Awakening. The film has always been a favourite of mine, as with my brother's VHS copy (he has a few thoughts about this one too) I'm pretty sure it's the first Carpenter film I ever watched.  As the years pass though, I appreciate it all the more, though in a slightly depressing way.  What I mean by that is that is that I understand way more about the satirical elements of the film than when I first saw it, however I am sad that the film is still timely.  This tale was originally making fun of very specifically the whole Reaganomics generation, with the clever move of having a few of the aliens be specifically hinted to be real celebrities/politicians, and yet with the pair of spectacularly bad choices made in 2016, it now feels even more relevant than ever.  I'm honestly surprised that there hasn't been more talk of some manner of remake to be honest.  Still, the original is a great piece of work, and seeing it on the big screen this time (after it's recent 4K spruce up), it made me realise a few new things about the film, like how much like a video game the final few big action beats are.  There's a shot of the cops in the alley shooting that I swear a whole bunch of light-gun arcade games must have copied verbatim.  BTW, did you know that John Carpenter has gotten big into video games these days?  Has he ever thought of doing let's plays? That would be awesome!

Oh, and I noticed a little link to the previous film; this has a couple clips of B-Movies too, namely The Monolith Monsters and This Island Earth playing on the TV.  In this case, no I wouldn't have rather watched those, but that would actually be a pretty decent little double bill.

 9. London Short Film Festival: Prano Bailey-Bond - Nasty Stuff - Regent Street Cinema

I've been meaning to check out a film events with LSFF for a while, and this one was at the right time, and was of quite a bit of interest.  I had heard about Prano Bailey-Bond's short Nasty a while ago, but had never gotten around to seeing it until then, so it was great seeing it in a little selection of her work on the big screen (which included a few more shorts and some music videos).  A great little selection of things, she has a real knack for the horror genre, especially with a definite nostalgia for the VHS age.  Apparently her first feature, Censor, is in the works, and you bet that I am keeping an eye out for that.  If I didn't have some adulting to do early the next morning, I would have stuck around for the screening she had organised to follow, a 16mm screening of Basket Case!  Oh well, at least I got to see this leg-crossing moment on the big screen (warning; that short is really graphic!).

10. Glass - Odeon Swiss Cottage

This is going to divide film fans for years. Some liked it, some didn't, and your mileage is going to come down to one main factor; how you feel about some of M. Night Shyamalan's worst habits as a director.  Now myself I saw it as a real mixed bag; when the film is working, it works like gangbusters, there are some great moments, not least for how James McAvoy and Samuel L. Jackson have some good chemistry in their scenes together. However, appropriately for a movie trilogy that starts with a train crash, this one goes really spectacularly off the rails.  You probably are wondering "is there a Shyamalan Twist in here?".  No.  There are at least three Twists (maybe a few more depending on how you count).  One I question how necessary it is, one makes the storyline go extra wonky, one doesn't quite work if you understand how the internet works.  All of them overall do fit into a rather objectivist philosophy that Shyamalan is really forcing into this one (what is it about some superhero filmmakers that makes them go all Atlas Shrugged?  In the comics Alan Moore pretty much skewered that point of view years ago....).  Oh, and it looks like he didn't get a lot of the "meta commentary on storytelling" stuff out of his system when he made Lady in the Water, as there is some truly awful dialogue at points trying to discuss these points, made worse in that I'm pretty sure that a casual audience knows what the climax to a story is.  It's a very frustrating film, but as some have pointed out it seems to have been designed to be so in several ways.  Well I'll add to that argument that some of the frustrations in here are definitely not by design, such as the above-mentioned tin-ear dialogue.  I really enjoyed Split, so I'm a bit disappointed to see Shyamalan start to slip back into bad habits again, especially since there's enough to in hear to like to make those issues stand out all the more.  I do oddly recommend seeing it though as critical feeling on this one is all over the place, so I want a proper discussion about it with more of the audience.  I get the feeling though that when it comes to December, there are going to be a lot of people making best/worst of the year lists looking at Glass with a lot of confusion...