All Slights Deserved

Well, it finally happened: I got to see a Johannes Roberts film at my local cinema. If somebody had told me this when I sat shaking my head in dismay at the singular incompetence of Sanitarium I wouldn't have credited it. Hopefully it's not the end of the journey but he appears to have arrived somewhere. Storage 24 is a nuts and bolts sci-fi exploitation movie. The premise is a simple one: a US cargo plane has crashed somewhere in London, possibly shot down, for reasons unknown. Part of the wreckage has landed in the grounds of the titular secure storage warehouse, including a mysterious container which has broken open, releasing a nasty monster which seeks refuge in the building. It also causes a power failure, meaning that those who happen to venture inside - including Noel Clarke, the girlfriend he's just acrimoniously split from and attendant friends - find themselves trapped in there with the beast. We've seen it all many times before of course, from T...

If you wonder where Christopher Nolan found his inspiration for Inception then look no further. The wunderkind writer/director has readily acknowledged that Satoshi Kon's 2006 anime was an influence and not only do they share the same premise - that of being able to share other people's dreams - but certain images were directly copied. That's not a slight towards Nolan and Kon's own influences, such as the work of author Philip K. Dick, are readily apparent here in this story of a technological innovation that allows therapists to enter the dreams of their subjects. Inevitably it falls into the wrong hands and is put to malicious ends, resulting in a dream that spreads like a virus, blurring fantasy and reality. Like his earlier film Millenium Actress ( AFED #36 ) Kon allows his imagination to go to town with some astonishing sequences and truly hallucinogenic dream imagery. Unfortunately it also shares the flaw of sacrificing something in the way of coherence ...

The opening to Duncan Jones' second feature film is classic Hitchcock, and not just because Chris Bacon's rousing score evokes Bernard Herrmann in his pomp. Helicopter pilot Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) awakens on a passenger train sitting opposite a woman (Michelle Monaghan) who seems to believe he's somebody else. More worryingly still when he checks a mirror the face that looks back is not his own. Yet before he's had a chance to try and understand what's happening a bomb on the train explodes, killing everyone. Since Gyllenhaal is the star and this is a science fiction movie you know it's only the beginning. He reawakens to find himself strapped into a sealed, cockpit-like cabin where - via a monitor - an air force officer (Vera Farmiga) explains to him he's part of an experimental programme that allows subjects to travel back in time to enter and control the thoughts of the last eight minutes of a dead person's life. Capt Stevens' mi...

Billed as "the Spanish Clockwork Orange ", Eloy de la Iglesia's film makes no attempt to disguise the influence of its more illustrious predecessor. Not only does the story feature a subplot of behaviour modification experiments and similar kitschy production design, the earlier movie is even playing on the television when a gang of ersatz 'droogs' mount an identical home invasion (although, being Spanish, these guys favour black leather and bullwhips). The Kubrick connection is further enhanced by the casting of his Lolita , Sue Lyon, in the lead role. For those in the audience too dense to make the connection - and in truth she was much changed in the years since her breakthrough role - there's a scene in which Lyon is even depicted reading the Nabokov text. It's fair to say that subtlety is not one of the films strong points. And yet Murder in a Blue World actually aspires to be something more than a shameless ripoff, treating A Clockwork Orange...

I mentioned Sexmission in passing a few weeks back as an example of how films can be massively popular in their country of original yet comparatively unknown elsewhere. A few years back it was adjudged to be the best film of the last thirty years by Polish filmgoers, much to the bemusement of more highbrow critics. Sexmission is a sci-fi comedy; a sub-genre that proved surprisingly successful in eastern bloc during the communist era, as evidenced by such works as the cult Czech film Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea . Yet far from being an anomaly it makes perfect sense; science fiction - particularly that of the more dystopian variety - is often a means of commenting allegorically on the current milieu and dressing it in humour is a means of deflecting criticisms of being overtly political. Which is precisely how Sexmission operates; serving up a lampoon on the absurdities of totalitarianism which would have resonated strongly at the time and the skewed nostalgia...

Said to have been an influence on Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey , Czech sci-fi Ikarie XB-1 demonstrates both a debt to its American cousins and a willingness to do things a little differently. The eponymous 'Icarus XB-1' is an exploratory spaceship in the 22nd century, with a mission to go boldly go where no man has gone before, namely Alpha Centauri. Manned by a large mixed crew of various skills, their journey is scheduled to take some fifteen earth years; although because of "time dilation" only two years will pass for those on board. The earlier part of the film focuses on the humdrum details of life on board the ship, which gradually gives way to frustration and cabin fever as time wears on. Just when you've started to wonder whether anything of significance is ever going to happen, they encounter a derelict twentieth century vessel armed with nuclear weapons. When it explodes, killing two members of the Icarus's crew in the process, our enlig...

Hidden amongst the quatrains of Nostradamus's celebrated Prophecies , published in 1555, is a curious passage which has long baffled scholars: In London, many years from now I shall awaken, disembodied, in a physician's chamber At the behest of a rich and powerful man. But he and I, we shall not be friends. LOL . Baffling indeed, but it seems unlike many of the 'great' seer's predictions it may have some shred of credence. A little over 400 years later came the extraordinary dramatisation of an incident that rocked the foundations of science to its very core... This is the remarkable account of Karl Brussard (George Coulouris ), a massively successful entrepreneur who discovers he's dying from a brain tumour. It's a tragic waste because Brussard , by his own modest admission, is such a fine physical specimen (!). Fortunately Brussard's doctor has heard of a surgeon in London who's been conducting some exciting research in brain transplantation. Bu...