Cult Movies

Creeping about the West End in search of film obscurities being something of a hobby of mine, your pal Scenester fair leapt out of his office at 5.30 one chilly Monday evening, throwing his coat on as he did, to make his way once more to BFI Stephen Street, for a screening of Deep End, a forgotten gem from 1970. I confess to not having heard of this film before, although I am at a loss to say why, in view of the gritty subject matter, year of production, authentic London locations and strong cast. The list of films dealing with society's changing sexual mores, young and older people and their contrasting attitudes to sex is a particularly lengthy one, but I can safely say that this one is a real oddity, even by the standards of the time. The story concerns Mike, (John Moulder-Brown) a young lad who has started work in his first job as a public baths attendant, in an age where the 'baths' were not simply for swimming, but were also to bathe in, there still being people who did not have the luxury of a bath in their own home. Mike is a pleasant sort, but very inept and shy with girls, and the fact that one of his co-workers is the sexy Susan, (Jane Asher) means his hormones are running crazy. Susan introduces Mike to the seedier side of bath house life, where attendants can earn a few tips doing 'favours' for their customers. Mike's complete lack of experience leads to many embarrassing moments, including one with a notable cameo role for Diana Dors as a buxom matron, who projects all manner of football-related fantasies onto Mike whilst she paws him into submission. The baths are frequented by a long succession of frustrated women, scruffy men and schoolchildren, the latter being of particular interest to a lecherous teacher (Karl-Michael Vogler) whose bottom-slapping and 'come hither' behaviour would earn him an appearance in court in these more protective times. Mike, of course, only has eyes for Susan, and has determined to disrupt her relationship with her soon-to-be fiance (Chris Sandford, a face no doubt familiar to almost everyone reading this article, such was his ubiquity in 60s and 70s films and TV). His farcical attempts to split the two lovers up only serve to make Mike more miserable and Susan more attached to her man. The lengthy scenes where Mike follows the couple around town, first to a cinema showing a truly hilarious excuse for an adult film (little more than some poor quality dominatrix spouting pseudo-scientific babble in an elegant house), and later on to the inevitably expensive nightclub, well beyond Mike's modest means, are spellbinding for their shots of the streets, cafes and people in their late 60s/early 70s finery. Mike ends up eating more hot dogs than could ever be healthy for a body, served by the ever-present Burt Kwouk, during his long waits around Soho to catch a glimpse of the seductive Susan, always accompanied by her fiance. ??If this is all beginning to sound like 'Here we go round the bike sheds' or 'Carry on up the S-Bend', I would stress that the scenes with Mike going through adolescent agony and frustration are handled with a great deal of sensitivity, even when Mike kidnaps a cardboard cut-out that looks like a scantily-clad Susan, from outside a strip joint. And is if to compound his misery, he is forced to hide out in a prostitute's 'workroom' to evade the strip-joint owner’s heavies. His awkwardness in front of the ageing pro, one of her legs in plaster, summons up pathos as well as hilarity in roughly equal measure. As our hero tries and fails over and over again to get something more than Susan's attention, the film starts to take a surreal turn, with Susan losing the stone from her engagement ring in the snow. Their eccentric method of retrieval staggers the viewer, as does the fate of our two leads. To tell you any more of the plot would be plain cruel. I will however mention that the shots of London just after the glad-tide of the 1960s had receded are a joy of dis

In a nutshell: Joshua recently saw the re-release of Jurassic Park, and was left with one question: Remember back when kids' movies had some of the scariest moments in film history? Whatever happened to that?

In a nutshell: Ami is taken prisoner by the Negaverse! Also, Usagi goes on a double date with Hikari, and it's very uncomfortable.

While I've never seen Richard Franklin's Ozploitation classic Patrick, I have it on good authority that the thriller about a young man in a coma who has the power of telekinesis which he uses to kill, is pretty darn good. It certainly sounds great and I'm thinking it may be one to track down in the very near future. [Continued ...]

"Like Someone in Love" is the title of the latest movie from Iran's master of cinema, Abbas Kiarostami, a man routinely cited as one of the world's great living filmmakers. The title is taken from a popular song from 1944 by Jimmy van Heusen and Johnny Burke. We hear Ella Fitzgerald's 1957 version on the soundtrack; the professor who is one of the movie's two lead characters plays the recording in his apartment, while entertaining the other lead character, a college student who moonlights as a high-end call girl. The meaning of the song in this context is elusive. Even after you see the movie, you may ask yourself: What is like someone in love? Or: Like someone in love with what? The one-word answer that seems to fit best is: cinema. In 2011, Kiarostami's previous feature, "Certified Copy," was the first of the director's 20-plus narrative and documentary features to be booked into a Memphis theater in his 30-year career. The movie played at the Malco Ridgeway Four for three weeks -- a surprisingly long time. (I'd like to think my four-star review helped.) Later, I put the movie in the second spot on my list of the year's ten best films. Even so, a trend was not established, and Kiarostami is back to the Memphis movie margins. Overlooked by Malco, "Like Someone in Love" makes its local debut at 2 p.m. Sunday (May 19), for a single screening at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Tickets and more details are here. Like previous Kiarostami works, the movie may perplex or frustrate those unwilling or unable to sympathize with the director's long takes and subtle rhythms. It is not for those with audiovisual ADD or who demand spoonfed information. The "action" onscreen is minimal, yet it requires the moviegoer to be an active participant in the experience. Watching a Kiarostami film, I feel like I'm being asked to place my face into a still pool of water -- to break the surface, open my eyes and take in something beautiful while leaving the distractions of the rest of the world behind. This is a different form of "escapism" from that promised by a genre film or noisy blockbuster. The increasingly international Kiarostami places "Like Someone in Love" in Japan, in and near Tokyo. The cast is Japanese, as was most of the crew. The movie consists primarily of conversations, some of which (as usual for Kiarostami) take place in the modern citizen's home away from home, his car. The windshields are just one of the movie's reflective surfaces; others include windows, mirrors and blank TV screens. The reflections "open up" the compositions while reminding us that these people inhabit cramped, restrictive spaces. (The shiny cinematography is by Katsumi Yanagijima, whose credits include "Battle Royale.") The performances are superb -- even unforgettable. Rin Takanashi is Akiko, the innocent-seeming, ponytailed call girl. Her elderly, kindly client here is a professor, played by Tadashi Okuno, a veteran stage actor. The professor is a writer and translator, and his small apartment is filled with books. In other words, he's a professional communicator, but as this odd "date" progresses over the evening and into the next day, it seems that communication as it's practiced most often by all types of people seems to be, paradoxically, an impediment to understanding. The movie is filled with examples of and references to methods of communication: Books, faxes, cell phone messages, answering machines, intercoms, misunderstood jokes, traffic signals, the honking of car horns. A copy of a famous 1900 Japanese painting titled "Training a Parrot" by Chiyo Yazaki hangs on the professor's wall; the woman in the painting is supposed to be teaching the bird to talk, but Akiko suggests it looks like the bird is teaching the woman. Messages are cut off in mid-sentence; if they're delivered, they aren't answered. What's it all about, Abbas? He's not saying, which is why you may find yourself thinking about this movie, this particular form

Fearless and flamboyant, the late William "Bill" Kendall was an outspoken champion of art cinema and gay pride at a time when both concepts were met with suspicion or even hostility by most Memphians. As manager of the Memphis "art" movie houses of the 1960s and '70s, Kendall was the city's eccentric and proudly contentious patron saint of art, foreign, classic, camp and experimental cinema -- or "smut," as some of his bookings were defined by prosecutors. Kendall was indicted on obscenity charges by the Shelby County Grand Jury for exhibiting such frank films as "I, A Woman" (1965) and "Without a Stitch" (1968), both from Sweden, and "I Spit on Your Grave" (1959), a forgotten French film -- no relation to the notorious 1978 revenge movie of the same name -- about a light-skinned African-American who heads South to investigate the lynching of his brother. Kendall always beat the rap, as Bogart or Cagney might have said in one of the classic Hollywood movies Kendall sometimes revived when he was manager of such now defunct movie houses as the Guild Art Theatre on Poplar, the Studio on Highland and, briefly, the Bristol on Summer. The Guild was a successor to the city's first art theater, the Ritz, which was inspired by the success of the Peachtree Art Theatre in Atlanta, which was devoted to foreign films. ("Gone with the Wind" author Margaret Mitchell was headed for the Peachtree when she was struck by a car and killed while crossing the street in 1949). The Studio has since been converted into Newby's, a bar/pub/music venue, while the Guild is now the Evergreen -- still a theater, but home mostly to live performances. The tiny Bristol, meanwhile, has been replaced by a strip mall. Kendall's fate was just as inauspicious. Although he enjoyed the spotlight, by the time he died April 19 of natural causes at age 88 at the Westminster Commons care home in Atlanta, he was more or less alone, although he still corresponded with some faithful and far-flung friends via shakily handwritten letters. He had no children or surviving close family members, and was essentially indigent. Funeral arrangements were handled by the Fulton County Department of Health and Human Services, and Kendall was buried May 2 at Lakeside Memorial Gardens in Palmetto, Ga., in a "potter's field" gravesite marked by a number rather than a name. News of Kendall's death traveled slowly, reaching friends mostly through Facebook postings. Citing privacy rules, Westminster and other agencies refused even to provide death and burial information for days. Friends were frustrated, but perhaps timeliness wasn't particularly important to Kendall, who championed such timeless filmmakers as James Whale, Buster Keaton and Orson Welles, as well as Fellini, Bergman, Antonioni and Andy Warhol. A lifelong film fanatic, Kendall brought acclaimed, controversial and unusual movies to Memphians in the era before VHS, DVD, Netflix and the Internet, when there was almost no way to see "La Dolce Vita" or "The Bicycle Thief" except on a movie screen. He also revived such classic comedies as "The Great Dictator" and such camp favorites as "Flash Gordon." "Any cinephile in Memphis, Tennessee, who saw a movie with subtitles during the '60s or '70s has one person to thank -- Bill Kendall," said Chris Ellis, a native Memphian and Los Angeles-based actor. "Such movies were considered seditious filth by the local authorities, which very often they were, but by seditious filth I mean to include not only foreign films but the movies of Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, the Brothers Marx and Laurel and Hardy," said Ellis, whose credits include "Armageddon" and "The Dark Knight Rises." "Thank God for Bill Kendall." Local cinema historian Vincent Astor said Kendall was "a dedicated film fan, to the point of spending holidays in Europe inside movie theaters." "I'm still keeping count of the movies I've seen," Kendall told reporter William Thomas in a 1996 interview in The Commerci

The first trailer for Europa Report has raised some eyebrows with QE readers who feel like they're seeing double. Some have noticed it bears more than a little resemblance to the BBC's faux-documentary Voyage to the Planets about an imaginary trip to Jupiter's Moon, Io. [Continued ...]

Title: Star Trek Into DarknessDirector: J.J. AbrahamsCast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Peter Weller, Benedict CumberbachReview: I’m not a Trekkie in the pure sense of the word, because I don’t know every single episode from every single series that ever came out and there have been a few series. I did see every episode of Star Trek the Next Generation which for non Trek connoisseurs is the series in which Patrick Stewart played Captain Jean Luc Picard. Now that one I enjoyed all the way through! I’ve also seen every Trek film ever made and have enjoyed them for different reasons. For example, I love the old ones starring William Shatner because of the chemistry between the characters, the interactions between them and the banter they play off each other, this by the way is an element that the new films are delivering as well. The new actors channel their older counter parts rather effectively in my book; which of course makes the whole film that much more enjoyable, cause a huge part of what audiences like in these Star Trek films is seeing Kirk and Spock quibbling about “gut reactions” and whether something is logical or not. I think audiences agree with me on this respect, the audience I watched Star Trek Into Darkness with giggled at the comedic elements in the dialog, especially when they brought in those old phrases like “Dammit Jim! I’m a doctor not a miracle worker!”. There’s lots of nudges here and there that Trekkies will eat up, it’s a film that’s mindful of its core audience while at the same time attempting to appeal to a broader audiences in order to break with old stigmas. J.J. Abrahams bringing Star Trek Into CoolnessThis time around, there’s a mysterious terrorist inflicting fear upon the population of earth, by blowing up landmark buildings. The terrorists real purpose is to kill the leaders of the federation! When the terrorist successfully kills some of them, Kirk and his crew have to head to the Klingon home planet in order to find the one responsible and make him pay. Along the way, relationships will be tested, friendships will clash, and the enterprise will test its limits! Can Kirk and crew bring this megalomaniacal madman to justice?In this film connoisseur’s eyes the Star Trek films have always been cool, I have always loved them; but I know this is not the way everybody sees them. To the rest of the world Star Trek is synonymous with the freak and geek crowd, you know, those guys that dress like Klingon’s in comic book conventions and have discussions on Star Trek lore speaking in the Klingon language. What J. J. Abraham’s wants to do with this new series of films is change all that, he wants to make Trek sexy, make it cool. Not an easy task when we consider that Star Trek has never cared to be sexy. They’ve never been about beautiful looking people. In fact, in the first series of films we followed a crew that was populated by fat, old, bald people. Not so with these new films where the crew of The Enterprise is young, beautiful and sexy. Hell, on these new films Kirk’s always getting some action, he is portrayed as a womanizer! All these changes serve to make the film more entertaining. J.J. Abrahams wants you to be amazed by a Star Trek film, he wants people to go see Star Trek Into Darkness more than once! Well, if you ask me he has successfully achieved his goals, I know I’ll be seeing it again. This is the biggest Star Trek film ever, what’s not to celebrate? I mean, this here Star Trek film is a summer blockbuster of gargantuan proportions! I was wowed. First up, the visual effects are sheer perfection, you should be impressed. I mean you will see gigantic spaceships traveling through the universe, alien planets and civilizations, a futuristic version of earth, these vistas offer us bucket loads of escapism. If you want to escape to another world, here’s the movie for you to do it with. I wasn’t aware that in some ways this film

The makers of Europa Report continue to keep their cards close to their chest in terms of what the crew of the Europa meet on the fourth moon of Jupiter. But, based on the early critical buzz that positions the film as an ultra-realistic depiction of space travel, I'm thinking the film won't be the Apollo 18-style handicam horror trip we're all secretly thinking it could be. [Continued ...]

If you were on the ball earlier this week you may have caught a peek at the first footage from Jim Mickle's We Are What We Are remake before it was removed from the official Cannes Vimeo account. The clip suggested that Mickle's remake was going to be a quietly gruesome affair and while we wait to hear how the movie is received at Cannes, it seems producers Memento Films International have no doubts it will be successful; they announced that they had launched sales on both a prequel and a sequel to Mickle's movie. [Continued ...]