she studied sculpture at st martin’s college: twenty-seven word reviews of films about beatniks, zombies and other riff-raff

Night of the Demon (1957, dir. Jacques Tourneur, starring Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis) -  Superlative, sweatily claustrophobic Satanism-themed British chiller: psychological subtlety, sympathetic performances, expressionistic camera work combine. The uncanny works best when laced with the absurd, e.g. ‘Cherry Ripe’, séance.

Pub quiz trivia fact: the sample at the very beginning of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love ("It's in the trees! It's coming!") is from this movie.

Beat Girl (1960, dir.   Starring Gillian Hill, Adam Faith, Christopher Lee)   – Architect dad, Parisian stepmum, St Martin’s College beatnik daughter. One worries for ‘City 2000’ (architectural model, clean lines, bevelled concrete, Dad’s pride and joy): Chekhov’s gun? Wild!     

The Apartment (1960, dir. Billy Wilder, starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine) –   Sparkling dialogue; light satire of known yet not-known cruelties. This film’s almost tragic as Romeo and Juliet’s almost comic – in art, as in life, timing is everything.

Five Easy Pieces (1970, dir. Bob Rafelson, starring Jack Nicholson, Karen Black) - Sexual politics =early-1970s time-bound – gain existential authenticity by treating women badly – class politics less so? Compelling: naturalistic performances, sly humour (Alaska-obsessed hitchhikers); ‘open road’ movie; downbeat ending.

“If you've been affected by some of the issues raised in this movie”, you might be interested to read Jefferson Cowie’s Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, which is about class politics, trade unionism and the American political and cultural landscape more broadly during that turbulent decade. 

Stuck On You (2003, dir. Farelly brothers, starring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear) – Owned stupidity can alchemise into sublimity, as with this… entertainment, which includes ice hockey, conjoined twins, diners, fighting, L.A., Meryl Streep and a Producers-esque Cher subplot. Sick!

Leap Day (2010, dir. Anand Tucker, starring Amy Adams, Matthew Goode) – Young woman plans February 29^th proposal to commitment-phobic fiancé. Transportation snarl-ups develop; predictable Platonic conclusion ensues (half-souls encountering one another); stereotypical though scenic depiction of rural Ireland.

One Day (2011, dir. Lone Scherfig, starring Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess; adapted from David Nicholls’ novel of the same name)– Two students ‘connect’ at graduation, celebrate every 15^th July since. Great performances, scenery. Characters believably (unevenly, slowly) learn, unlearn, develop. This honours, transcends rom-com formulae. You’ll cry.

We Have To Talk About Kevin (2011, dir. Lynne Ramsay, starring Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell, John C. Reilly; adapted from Lionel Shriver’s novel of the same name) - Glancing, perverse references to Warhol, Pollock, Edward Hopper etc help this tough, powerfully acted film evoke dislocation, trauma.   Travel, art, freedom (Apollo) versus blood, seediness, tragedy (Dionysus).

The Girl With All the Gifts (2016, dir. Colm McCarthy, starring Helen Justineau, Sennia Nanua, Paddy Constantine; adapted from M.R. Carey’s novel of the same name, reviewed here) – Halfway, wife tells friend and I to stop mentioning what this adaptation omits = character backstories, Junkers (+switched ethnicities – why?); film accelerates, gains confidence after Gallagher’s off-licence death.

Geostorm (2017, dir. Dean Devlin, starring Gerard Butler as brilliant but maverick scientist with unresolved family issues) - Moderately absurd, +entertaining, +cliché-prone (see above… +boy with dog) climate-themed technothriller. How would Hollywood-budget dramatisations of real climatology/ effective politics look? Would/ wouldn’t intermittently break fourth wall…?   

Mary Shelley (2017, dir. Haifaa al-Mansour, starring Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth) – Imagination, family troubles, coming of age, political revolt, ‘free love’ (intersectional with gender, social class, money etc then and since); engaging biopic of science fiction’s founding genius. 

teleportation, demigods, hackney, stevenage etc: twenty-seven word reviews of some books I’ve read recently

Lynne Segal’s Making Trouble –  Personal is political in this engaging, thoughtful, inclusive ‘I-witness’ memoir; lived experience of 1970s socialist/ feminist community politics belies any easy ‘class struggle vs identity politics’ dichotomies.  

Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination  - Characterisation= ‘will to power’ animating bundled instincts (hardboiled). Worldbuilding= exemplary: ‘what if human teleportation?’, a well-worked 1950s thought-experiment paralleling our own real one, ‘what if the Internet?’

M.R. Carey’s The Girl With All the Gifts -  Cohort of children (or are they?) confined to dystopian secure unit, thirty years after convincingly rationalised zombie apocalypse which wrecked Stevenage (+everywhere else). Terse, ethically complex, gutsy.

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound  -  Extraordinary flashes of imagery, insight – only momentarily tethered to lived experience (is that romantic revolt?). Potentially totalitarian ‘liberationist’ kitsch (Difference Engine-style alternate post-1832 timelines); Frankenstein’s less assimilable. 

** What if Percy Shelley was, himself, brought back from the dead by unnatural means and forced to re-write Prometheus Unbound but with zombies and 1970s trade union/ community activists in it? It would feature undead demigods throwing Alps at, and arguing interminably with, one another in blank verse committee meetings, plus a subplot involving the Amalgamated Federation of Undead Persons (AFUP).