Speed, Last Starfighter, Timecop, Stargate and more are AMAZING on an IMAX screen | Forbidden Worlds Film Festival 2024
[Ad - Sponsored by Entertainment Earth] Film Brain gives his thoughts on plenty of genre classics from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s while he talks about the great time he had at Bristol's Forbidden Worlds Film Festival!
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00:00 This video is sponsored by Entertainment Earth.
00:03 Hi, I'm Matthew Buck, and welcome to the Forbidden World Film Festival, as you can see right behind me.
00:08 And now cut to me in my hotel room in much less glamorous surroundings.
00:12 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to my hotel room in Bristol.
00:17 Yes, I know, it's extremely glamorous.
00:19 And I'm not practicing ASMR here, I've just got a microphone because I'm aware that I'm in a hotel room,
00:25 and I probably shouldn't be speaking awfully loud and trying to be considerate to the people that are next to me.
00:31 But this is Saturday morning, I have travelled in for the Forbidden World Film Festival, where I have a press pass.
00:38 Yay! Anyway, let's put that on me, shall we?
00:41 You might recall that a few years ago I actually covered the festival, or covered the preamble to the festival.
00:46 I looked around the former Bristol IMAX at the Aquarium, and that is where the event is still being held.
00:52 It's two years later, and Forbidden World seems to be going from success to success.
00:56 They've held several festivals over the years, including not just their regular one, which is held in May each year,
01:01 but also the big Scream, which is held in October of every year.
01:05 And if you haven't seen my video on it, yes, that is a proper, full-fledged former IMAX screen, the former 70mm one.
01:12 So it is the size of three double-decker buses.
01:15 They aren't using the IMAX projector because they can't, and it's also literally unsafe.
01:20 I believe they literally took the bulb out of it because there is a liability that it might explode,
01:25 but they are definitely trying to fill the screen as much as possible.
01:28 They recently got the lens on their projector replaced, so it's filling even more of the screen up.
01:33 It's a really overwhelming experience at times.
01:36 But also it's a great way of rediscovering all these genre films from the 70s, 80s, and 90s,
01:41 some of which I'm familiar with, some of which I'm not.
01:44 It's in collaboration with 20th Century Flicks, which is Bristol's video store on the Christmas steps.
01:49 And so that kind of mentality goes into the choices that they make for the festival.
01:54 I've been here since Thursday because I really wanted to see Speed, the opening night movie.
01:59 And boy, is that a great film to kick off the festival with.
02:02 It was absolutely packed in that screening for a start.
02:05 I hadn't seen Speed all the way through for a couple of years.
02:08 It was great to revisit it on such an enormous screen.
02:13 I feel like Speed, how have they not re-released that in IMAX properly yet?
02:17 That feels like the kind of movie that is made for it.
02:19 And trust me, I've seen it on an IMAX screen. I can confirm that.
02:22 Even though I'd seen the movie before, there were a couple of moments where I genuinely held my breath.
02:27 There's that bit where Keanu's on the cable car and then the cable snaps and he's flung underneath the bus.
02:32 And I went, "You've seen this movie before, Matt!"
02:35 But I forgot that fact because seeing it on such a massive scale kind of just overwhelms the senses.
02:42 Speed is just a brilliant movie because it's so simplistic in its premise.
02:47 It's a bus that can't go below 50 miles per hour.
02:50 Otherwise, it's gonna blow up. Very simple.
02:53 But you've got the charm of Keanu Reeves and Sandra Book.
02:57 Sandra Book and Keanu Reeves have amazing chemistry in that movie.
03:01 But also, Yander Bont coming in from being a cinematographer, moving into being a director.
03:06 You can tell that his work on movies like Die Hard has influenced the way that he directs action
03:12 and the way that he can really mine suspense.
03:14 Speed is a non-stop rollercoaster ride of just suspenseful sequences.
03:18 It just keeps trying to top itself over and over again.
03:21 And yeah, it doesn't quite succeed at that.
03:24 In the last act, the whole train section is a little bit of a step too far.
03:28 But still, it's Speed. It's hugely enjoyable.
03:31 Speed is part of a run of 30th anniversary screens at the festival.
03:35 And it's really frightening to admit that Speed is 30 years old now.
03:39 You know what else is frightening to admit is 30 years old now?
03:42 Stargate.
03:43 Now, I have mixed feelings on Rowan Emmerich's Stargate.
03:48 I've not seen it for many, many years.
03:50 The last time I saw it was in the DVD era.
03:53 And I thought, "Oh, well, everyone loves Stargate. I'm going to really enjoy this movie."
03:56 And then I watched it and I went, "Eh, it's fine."
03:59 As far as Rowan Emmerich flicks goes, yeah, it is one of the better ones.
04:04 I mean, I love Independence Day, but the rest of Emmerich's filmography is a bit...
04:09 [SQUEAKY NOISE]
04:10 I was open to seeing Stargate on the big screen because it had been such a long time since I'd seen it.
04:15 Maybe my opinion would change on it.
04:18 It hasn't really, in all honesty.
04:20 You know, it's great to see it on the big screen because Stargate has those big production values,
04:26 especially because they're filming out in the desert.
04:28 It looks absolutely fantastic.
04:30 I just wish that the story held me more than it does.
04:34 I feel like Stargate, you know, when they're in the opening act
04:37 and James Spader is cracking the hieroglyphics,
04:40 that opening portion of the movie is really great.
04:43 And the last portion of it, where they're fighting against Ra, is also really spectacular action.
04:49 It's all the stuff in the middle.
04:51 I just feel like it's a bit on the slow side when it's kind of building up this world that it travels over to.
04:57 It needed maybe a little bit more just oomph in its storytelling.
05:02 Nevertheless, I feel like Stargate is a great premise,
05:05 but Stargate is the ultimate example of something where what was made after it,
05:09 in terms of the franchises, was really what made it.
05:13 Because you can do so much with that idea.
05:16 I think that Stargate is basically the proof of concept
05:21 for what would go on to be an enormous television franchise.
05:24 And this is Future Matt talking about the films I saw after I recorded that segment in my hotel room on Saturday morning.
05:31 So for the rest of the video, I can't be jumping back and forth in time depending on what I'm talking about.
05:36 You're just going to have to go with it.
05:38 But hey, I've got the same lanyard and I'm using the same microphone.
05:41 That's continuity.
05:43 And if you think something that you remember from your childhood being 30 years old is scary,
05:47 try 40 in the case of The Last Starfighter.
05:51 Although for me, that wasn't necessarily a problem because I've never seen that movie before.
05:56 I know that The Last Starfighter does have quite a lot of fans,
05:59 especially in America where it's very much a cult favourite.
06:02 But in the UK, it's much more of an unknown movie.
06:05 It didn't really have the same kind of following.
06:07 It didn't get shown on TV quite as much over here.
06:11 It's interesting watching The Last Starfighter
06:14 because it's a movie that kind of feels like a stepping stone to the future.
06:18 Because of its use of early CGI effects, especially for the time,
06:22 really it was only this and Tron.
06:25 They are definitely primitive when you see them on screen,
06:28 especially projected on a massive IMAX-scale screen.
06:31 But there was a part of me that was actually surprised at how well the effects held up
06:35 for a film of that era.
06:37 And I think that's largely because it's confined to things like spaceships.
06:40 When it gets to things like planets, for example, it gets a little bit more dicey.
06:45 I do think the movie might have aged a little bit better had they used models.
06:49 I think a lot of films from that era do hold up better in their effects because of it.
06:54 But there is certainly an argument that those effects add a kind of aesthetic choice to the movie,
06:58 especially given its arcade-based storyline.
07:01 It's the sword in the stone for the kind of early 80s arcade era.
07:05 And there is undeniably a charm to the movie.
07:09 The Last Starfighter was massively referenced in things like Ready Player One.
07:13 And I think for a certain generation, it is quite an influential movie.
07:18 And you can totally understand that.
07:20 I got that from watching the movie for the first time
07:22 because it's remarkable how much it feels like a proto-video game movie
07:27 that understands the appeal of that particular medium,
07:30 especially in the idea of all the other Starfighters getting wiped out.
07:35 And now it's down to one lone hero or one player to save the entire galaxy.
07:42 There's a wish-fulfillment fantasy to the entire thing.
07:46 If I was eight years old when this film came out, I would have been obsessed with it.
07:50 And in terms of knock-off Spielberg or Amblin movies,
07:54 I do think The Last Starfighter is really underrated despite the fandom that it has.
08:00 So if you haven't seen the movie, it is worth checking out.
08:03 And in some ways, it's genuinely rare to see a sci-fi film that feels like you're looking into the future.
08:08 You can see the early seeds of what we know CGI effects as now in this movie.
08:14 And if nothing else, Starfighter is worth seeking out just for that reason alone.
08:20 I have my schedule, by the way, printed on the back of this lanyard, if you can see it right here.
08:25 As you can see, it's printed all right there.
08:28 This is a great design choice, by the way. I really like the fact the schedule's just right there.
08:31 I don't have to look on my phone. I can just turn my lanyard over and I go, "Ooh, that's the schedule.
08:37 Those are the films I've watched."
08:38 But while I'm looking at that schedule, let's talk about some of the more esoteric picks at the festival,
08:44 namely the Friday 11 a.m. slot Kin-za-za?
08:48 I believe that's the way you pronounce it, which is a Soviet sci-fi comedy about two people that are transported
08:55 by accident to a sandy post-apocalyptic planet and have to try and find their way back.
09:00 One of them is a Soviet plumber, the other is a Georgian man,
09:04 and they end up in a whole bunch of misadventures dealing with incredibly unscrupulous people.
09:10 You know what? In some ways, it is kind of comparable to Stargate.
09:13 You know, it's two people, in this case, not Kurt Russell and not James Spader,
09:18 being transported over to the other side of the universe and then trying to have to figure out
09:23 how to bring their way back home from a sandy planet.
09:27 When you describe it like that, it does sound like Stargate.
09:30 And then you mention all the other bits, like the fact that the locals are really interested in matches
09:35 as a form of currency, that they eat plastic porridge.
09:39 What does plastic porridge mean? Is it the porridge that I'm eating in my hotel room?
09:43 Is that what it is? I don't know.
09:46 It's a very peculiar film, but it's absurdist satire.
09:50 It's meant to be a look at the kind of bureaucracy of the kind of Soviet system.
09:56 People have to be wearing these little nose ring bells all the time.
10:00 Your social class is dictated by the colour of your pants.
10:04 I don't know if it was necessarily my cup of tea, and I think it would probably go down a little bit better
10:08 with a touch of vodka, but nevertheless, I do think that that movie is kind of fascinating.
10:13 You can understand why there is a bit of an underground following for it.
10:17 But this is the joy of a film festival, is that you get to explore things that you wouldn't have necessarily
10:22 found or picked for yourself. I don't know if I would have necessarily stumbled upon Kinzaza by myself,
10:29 although maybe Diamander Hagen probably would have subjected me to something of that ilk, let's be honest.
10:35 But anyway, I did feel like it was a quite long movie, and there were points where I wondered if I was never
10:42 going to get off this planet, along with the characters. I did like the opening intro, which did provide a lot of context.
10:49 All the movies at the festival have intros, some of which are contributed by the filmmakers themselves.
10:55 For example, David Arnold actually did the video intro for Stargate.
11:00 Speed also was introduced by the writer, producer, and director Jan de Bont as well.
11:07 Oh, and The Last Starfighter was also introduced by actors Catherine Mary Stewart and Lance Gess,
11:12 as well as director Nick Castle, who, believe it or not, actually played Michael Myers in the original
11:17 John Carpenter Halloween. How cool is that?
11:20 Another one of the more esoteric picks at the festival is The Devil's Sword, an Indonesian action film
11:27 starring Barry Prima as a Conan-esque warrior who goes up against a crocodile queen that is stealing men
11:34 from nearby villages and wants the titular sword to try and take over the world.
11:40 This is the kind of slot that in previous Forbidden Worlds they've screened films like Thrilling Bloody Sword
11:47 and other movies that might not have the word "sword" in the title.
11:51 But The Devil's Sword definitely has its moments. You can certainly see the influence of, say, the fantasy films
11:57 being made in the West, but also very distinctly local elements.
12:02 Largely, though, it is a martial arts movie through and through, and so the plot is secondary to a lot of
12:08 extended fight sequences which are quite well choreographed and quite bloody, to say the least.
12:15 The film has quite ample amounts of limb dismemberment and heads being severed off and flying through the air.
12:23 It's all quite amusing and quite OTT.
12:25 You've got this evil band of warriors that eventually turn on each other as they try and fight for the Devil's Sword.
12:32 My personal favourite was the hag-like witch that seemed to refuse to die and almost seemed to be doing a
12:38 Monty Python-esque "I'm not dead yet! I can still fight!"
12:42 It's kind of a shame we don't know more about how the film was made, because I imagine there's some fantastic stories,
12:47 especially with a group of stunt guys playing crocodile warriors in costumes I'm almost certain
12:52 they can barely even see out of, let alone fight in.
12:56 This was my first Barry Prima movie. I know that he has a bit of an underground following.
13:01 He was essentially Indonesia's answer to Arnold Schwarzenegger, because he's absolutely huge.
13:07 He's got those hulking great muscles, and he can carry himself in a martial arts scene.
13:12 I do think, though, that the movie is generally what you'd expect of an imported martial arts movie for that time.
13:20 I don't think it's as crazy as some of the other ones I've seen over the years,
13:23 like the aforementioned Thrilling Bloody Sword, or even something like Enter the Invincible Hero.
13:28 But if you like that kind of film, you could certainly do far worse than The Devil's Sword.
13:33 One film I hadn't seen for a long time, and I can't really get it to fit in any of the categories at the festival,
13:38 is Joe Dante's Inner Space, which was on Sunday morning.
13:43 Now, I am a big Joe Dante fan. I grew up watching his movies like Gremlins,
13:48 and Inner Space was definitely one of those.
13:51 But the last time I saw it, I was not quite as in love with it as I was as a kid.
13:57 Watching it on the big screen has really transformed my opinion of it.
14:02 And it's understandable why, because it won an Oscar for its visual effects,
14:06 which still hold up to this day.
14:09 I've always been a big fan of Dante's direction because it's so playful and has so much cinematic knowledge with it.
14:15 Dante grew up loving B-movies and loving science fiction movies.
14:19 You see that in Inner Space.
14:21 But he also has a great comic sensibility because he's someone that grew up watching Looney Tunes.
14:28 In this movie, Martin Short is kind of like Daffy Duck, and it's a very physical performance from Short.
14:36 Dennis Quaid spends much of the movie sitting around in a cockpit, but he's quite a charismatic presence.
14:42 And it's actually remarkable how much the two sides of the movie that are going on kind of gel together,
14:49 considering that Short and Quaid, they're not really in the same movie together until the very end of it.
14:55 It turns the body into an adventure, but also it's incredibly inventive and actually kind of bonkers in so many different ways.
15:03 You've got Vernon Wells as this cyborg character with detachable hands.
15:08 You've got Robert Picardo turning up with a bizarre accent as the cowboy.
15:12 And Meg Ryan is delightful as the romantic interest, working for both Quaid and Short.
15:19 Even though we had to practically fight our way through the Bristol Marathon taking place outside the screening to see it,
15:25 I think you could tell that there was so much affection in the audience for the movie.
15:29 And I'm always surprised that Inner Space wasn't a bigger hit.
15:32 And actually, I think it's better than I've probably given it credit for over the last several years.
15:38 I mean, where else are you going to see these cult hits on such a massive screen in this case?
15:43 Like, where else are you going to see Attack of the 50-Foot Woman?
15:47 A movie that I've actually had on a canvas print because the poster is absolutely iconic.
15:53 You've got this shot of this massive woman in the middle of a city.
15:56 That doesn't happen in the movie because it's a cheapy B-movie about a woman who encounters a satellite or a spaceship,
16:07 as it's more accurately described, and a giant who irradiates her and she grows to massive size.
16:13 And this involves the use of massive prosthetic hand effects.
16:19 "Aaah! Aah! She's coming to get me! She's coming to get me!"
16:22 [laughs]
16:25 It's a 50s movie through and through. It's the kind of thing that if you've ever seen the Joe Dante film, Matinee.
16:30 Do you remember Mant? It's kind of like in the vein of those sorts of movies.
16:35 It is kind of a proto-feminist film in that you have this plotline of a husband who is having an affair on the side.
16:42 Everyone in town seems to know about it.
16:45 And he's scheming to put his wife in a psychiatric institution.
16:49 And all the while, she's constantly protesting, "I'm not crazy! I have seen this alien!"
16:54 And also, "I know that you're running off with that floozy down at the bar! Yeah, I know what you're doing!"
17:02 I say proto-feminist because I would say that it's not really developed in its attitudes.
17:08 It's very 50s, the movie, in general.
17:11 But there is kind of a charm to that, especially in the double exposure effects,
17:16 and the kind of wonkiness of it all, and some of the archaic dialogue,
17:20 which definitely got some laughs from the audience.
17:23 And the audience is another great part of the festival because they're very much engaged.
17:28 They're not trying to turn it into MS3K or anything like that.
17:32 They're not trying to riff on the movie live, but they are, you know, you can tell that they're actively participating.
17:38 They're cheering, they're laughing, they're having fun.
17:41 Which brings me to another substrand of the festival, which is the Killer Queen's theme.
17:45 I would argue that Attack of the 50-Foot Woman is sort of a pass of that,
17:49 but it really kicked off in full force with Blue Steel, Catherine Bigelow's movie between Near Dark and Point Break,
17:56 which has always been one that I've wanted to track down and see.
17:59 That was the second film I saw at the festival after Speed.
18:02 And Blue Steel was a really interesting movie, especially in light of the introduction,
18:07 which pointed out that Bigelow came from an art background, and how she often critiqued violence.
18:12 You can really see that in the way the villainous character played by Ron Silver is depicted.
18:19 He encounters cop Jailee Curtis at a holdup as she blasts away a very young Tom Sizemore,
18:26 and the gun flies towards him, and he steals the gun, and then starts to commit murders using that .44 Magnum.
18:34 Ron Silver's performance in that movie is disturbingly fanatical.
18:38 He is so fixated upon her.
18:41 He's a Wall Street shark, and then the shark actually starts killing people.
18:45 You get the sense that he doesn't see other people other than as commodities, as little specks in his very privileged world,
18:53 and then the gun enters his life, and it becomes this hideously corrupting element.
18:59 Some of the reviews on Letterboxd compared his character to being like a werewolf,
19:02 which I think was an interesting take on it, especially as the character kind of degenerates.
19:07 That's that moment where he's working out, and he starts having almost like this godlike vision.
19:13 He's got voices in his head telling him what to do, this kind of corrupting influence taking over.
19:20 And Curtis, on the other hand, she's also a real anchor for that movie,
19:24 because she's the rookie cop that finds herself being the target of this fixation.
19:28 It starts out almost like he's trying to seduce her, and then he reveals why he's actually connected to her,
19:36 and then suddenly it becomes a race to try and prove that he is the guy.
19:40 And all throughout the entire movie, she's going against the kind of bureaucracy of the system that refuses to believe her.
19:47 I do feel like some of the plotting here is a little bit exaggerated.
19:52 It's co-written by Eric Red of The Hitcher, and there are sort of vibes of that Rutger Hauer character in Silver's one here.
20:01 It almost feels a lot of the time like these aren't literal characters, these are more allegorical ones,
20:07 that Silver's character more becomes an entity of evil in the same way that Hitcher does.
20:12 And I do think the final act of the movie has some implausible elements, but nevertheless,
20:18 I do think that Blue Steel is an interesting, if albeit flawed work, from a very, very fascinating director.
20:27 The one that's part of that strand, I would say, is Female Prisoner 701 Scorpion,
20:31 which is a Japanese manga adaptation that kicked off a whole franchise of movies.
20:37 Women in prison films aren't usually my deal.
20:40 I don't kind of like the degradation that's very common to them when you combine that with the sexualization that's also inherent to those movies,
20:48 and there is a fair bit of that, but I've got the past of the festival.
20:52 If I don't enjoy it on an IMAX screen, I'm not going to enjoy it anywhere else.
20:55 I do think that the movie has its moments, even for someone like me, there is unusual amounts of stylization here,
21:02 particularly that one sequence where, yeah, it is a women showering sequence,
21:07 but then it turns into a mad, rabid chase where one of the characters has this demonic expression painted onto their face,
21:15 and the payoff to that got a big "Ooooh!" from the audience.
21:19 I think it's very easy to see why Miko Akaishi became iconic in the lead role, because she just has those murderer eyes, you know?
21:25 She looks at you like...
21:27 And you know she's plotting bloody revenge against you the entire time,
21:32 and a lot of the movie is Matsu dealing with these various indignities, to put it extremely mildly,
21:40 and I think that carried me through the movie, even in its rougher moments.
21:43 I do have to admit, the final portion where she actually breaks out of prison and gets revenge on the drug gang that put her there,
21:51 that's easily my favorite part of the movie.
21:53 I kind of wish it was more of that, and a bit less of the kind of torture and ugliness of prison movies.
22:02 It's a bit Prisoner Cell blockade on steroids, not really my cup of...
22:06 But I gave it a good go.
22:08 Continuing the killer queens at Saturday lunchtime was Foxy Brown, one of Pam Grier's iconic black-sploitation movies from the period.
22:17 She plays the title character who is avenging the death of her boyfriend, who has just gone through the witness protection program,
22:23 but still, because of her no-good brother, ends up being killed by a group of drug pushers.
22:28 It's a classic exploitation of the period, it's got drugs, sex, nudity, violence, all delivered in copious amounts,
22:35 but I found myself more on board with it than something like Female Prisoner 701,
22:39 and I think that's because there is a kind of comic-booky knowingness about its own sleaze,
22:45 even if I do think that at times it can be tonally unbalanced.
22:49 There's that whole segment where Foxy gets her ducked in and taken to a shack with a group of hicks that abuse her and keep her hooked.
22:57 I also think a major reason for the success of Foxy Brown is Pam Grier herself, who towers over the material
23:05 and gives it a kind of class and dignity that maybe it couldn't have had in lesser hands.
23:10 And I've wanted to see Foxy Brown for the longest time because I'm a big fan of Jackie Brown.
23:15 I think that's one of Quentin Tarantino's best movies, and Grier is fantastic in that movie as well.
23:22 And certainly I've seen Grier in a lot of other roles, many of which have drawn upon her blaxploitation iconography,
23:29 but it's nice to go back to the source.
23:31 The movie was introduced by Tessa, who you might recall that I interviewed for that video way back when.
23:36 She brought up the fact that the movie is kind of accidentally empowering in its own way,
23:42 and I think that's an interesting point, especially with a lot of these exploitation movies,
23:47 like the ones they picked for the festival, in that they are definitely made for a male audience
23:52 and often sexualize their female characters, even as their architects of vengeance.
23:57 But the thing about exploitation movies is that they're transgressive.
24:01 They're pushing against taboos, you know, they're kind of designed to shock the audience.
24:06 When you do that, yeah, you are going to do things that are quite progressive even now.
24:12 The filmmakers might not have been thinking about those kind of liberations, but it adds to the film's enduring appeal,
24:18 because they are breaking down barriers in their own way, as much as they are equally stereotypical.
24:24 Continuing the Killer Queen strand was the 4K restoration of Nikita, or La Femme Nikita, depending on what title you want to give it.
24:31 But this was another first watch for me. It was another film that I'd wanted to see for quite a long time, but hadn't.
24:37 So this filled in a gap for me.
24:40 It's probably one of Luc Besson's most well-known movies, and certainly one of the most well-regarded.
24:45 And it was an interesting movie, because while it is an action film, I would more describe it as an action drama,
24:51 especially given that it focuses on Nikita and the way that she evolves over the course of the running time.
24:57 When she starts out, she's borderline feral.
25:00 The thing that I found most interesting was actually pointed out in the introduction,
25:04 and there is kind of a riff on Pygmalion, or My Fair Lady, in that Chekhi Khario is kind of like Rex Harrison in that movie,
25:12 in that he takes her off the street and then adapts her into his world.
25:17 In this case, espionage, even giving her tutorials on how to dress, how to behave.
25:22 And Anne Perrieault is fantastic in the lead role, especially because it's a quite complex character.
25:30 Certainly, it's one that isn't always entirely sympathetic, but over the course of the film,
25:34 we do become emotionally involved with her, and we fear for her safety.
25:38 And that's quite a remarkable trick, considering one of the earliest times that we see her in the movie is blowing someone's head off.
25:44 And then it becomes something of a love story between her and supermarket cashier Jean-Hughes Anglaide,
25:51 which initially starts out as just being something impulsive, because that's how most of Nikita's decisions are made.
25:57 But then it becomes much more than that.
26:00 Suddenly, they begin to trust each other, and it really begins to evolve.
26:04 In many ways, that character is sort of where the actual heart of the movie really lays.
26:10 Regardless of what your opinions are on him, and mine are certainly complicated,
26:13 Besson directs the hell out of this movie.
26:17 It's not a film that has loads and loads of action set pieces, but when they do arrive, they're incredibly well done and suspenseful.
26:25 The action is also complemented by Eric Serra's score, which hits like an absolute anvil.
26:32 Serra's score is distinctive and hard-hitting, and will be echoed in his future work on Leon,
26:37 which of course makes sense, because that movie is something of a spin-off of Nikita in some ways,
26:42 given that late in Nikita, Jean Renaud turns up as Victor the Cleaner,
26:47 who would be the influence for the future character of Leon.
26:50 The film also has a surprisingly low-key ending, which I suspect was something that was jettisoned for its American remake,
26:56 Point of No Return, or The Assassin, as it's known in the UK.
27:00 And you can also tell why Nikita did actually spin off into several television series,
27:06 although unlike Stargate, I think it works as a standalone film.
27:11 The Killer Queen strand would conclude with the final film of the festival, but not the last one we're talking about here,
27:16 The Long Kiss Goodnight, which I've always felt is an incredibly underrated movie.
27:22 It was a pair of movies that Geena Davis did with her then-husband, Rennie Harlin,
27:26 who previously directed movies like Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger,
27:31 and then the first movie they did together was the notorious bomb, Cutthroat Island.
27:36 Now, that movie doesn't really work for me, but Long Kiss Goodnight is a massive improvement on that.
27:43 It's a shame that it wasn't more successful at the time of its release,
27:47 especially because Davis really shows that she has action chops.
27:51 She really sinks her teeth into the duality of the roles,
27:54 starting out as maybe a little bit more typical for one of her parts,
27:57 and then becoming this foul-mouthed, peroxide blonde.
28:01 Of course, it also helps that it has a Shane Black script, which is naturally set at Christmas time,
28:06 and even more naturally is filled with quotable quippy doll,
28:10 most of the best of which given to private eye Samuel L. Jackson.
28:13 Jackson looks like he's having the time of his life,
28:16 and might be the only person to make Brian Cox's leftover wardrobe look absolutely fantastic.
28:23 Rennie Harlin still keeps himself very busy these days.
28:26 He's directed several movies this year alone, but he's never topped his 90s action boom,
28:32 and certainly this delivers plenty of bang for buck,
28:36 especially in the final act of the movie, which might be the most excessive,
28:42 most OTT finale in all of 90s action cinema.
28:47 And that is saying something.
28:49 The amount of times characters seem to get shot and come back from the dead,
28:54 the amount of times they get covered in blood, the sheer scale of the explosions.
29:00 Boy, howdy, the explosion at the end of the movie.
29:03 I'm pretty sure that's a three on the Richter scale right there.
29:07 It had been a while since I'd seen it, so I was delighted to re-watch The Long Kiss Goodnight,
29:12 especially with the intros that they managed to get,
29:16 which included Samuel L. freaking Jackson,
29:19 but also Yvonne Zima, who played the young daughter in the movie,
29:23 and of course, Rennie Harlin.
29:25 Rennie always delivers very, very long introductions.
29:29 He makes me look concise.
29:31 In fact, he delivered an introduction to this movie that was so long
29:35 that they actually had to cut it down for the screening
29:38 and put the rest of it on their YouTube channel.
29:40 It was 25 minutes long.
29:43 So yeah, if you love action movies and you haven't seen The Long Kiss Goodnight,
29:46 what the hell are you doing?
29:48 Go and rectify that as soon as possible, because it kicks ass.
29:51 New to the festival this year was a short film showcase
29:54 meant to be highlighting new genre filmmakers,
29:57 which is actually quite unusual for the festival,
30:00 because they focus on films pre-2000.
30:03 And certainly, the quality of the submissions at the festival was very high.
30:07 First of all, congratulations to the filmmakers for being selected,
30:11 but there were definitely some highlights.
30:14 There were three in particular that I really suggest checking out.
30:17 The first was a horror short called Only Yourself to Blame by Noomi Yates,
30:22 and that film is notably executive produced by Rose Glass,
30:26 who directed Saint Maud and the recent Love Lies Bleeding.
30:30 And that short is a kind of an exploration of trauma
30:34 on the part of its main character and dealing with the kind of duality of it.
30:39 Really interestingly done and definitely unsettling and thought-provoking.
30:46 It's mentioned in the introduction that they were using the genre
30:49 as a way of discussing difficult subject matter.
30:52 It was a film that definitely resonated with me,
30:55 even though it was relatively brief.
30:57 Another that I very much liked was an animated horror short
31:00 called The Hounds of Elmwyn, which is based on a Welsh legend,
31:05 and the film is subtitled In Welsh,
31:08 although there isn't much actual spoken dialogue in it.
31:11 But it's just very visually striking.
31:14 I especially appreciate the animation style.
31:17 It kind of reminded me of Wolfwalkers in some way.
31:21 That film owed a bit to Irish mythology,
31:24 but of course this is much darker and dealing with a warrior
31:29 who finds himself pursued by the titular hound.
31:32 I found it to be a very effective piece of work.
31:36 Lastly, I wanted to have a big shout-out to Lost in the Sky,
31:39 which took three out of the four Shorts Awards at the festival,
31:43 including the Audience Award, and it's very easy to understand why,
31:48 because it's a really remarkable short.
31:51 It focuses on this WALL-E-esque recovery robot floating through space,
31:56 trying to save someone from a black hole.
32:00 And the entire short is just incredibly visually striking.
32:04 You can tell it was a real labour of love.
32:07 Apparently it took six years to produce,
32:10 which is even more understandable,
32:12 because apparently the film was put together without any CGI.
32:16 It was entirely done with practical effects.
32:19 The star fields that you're seeing in the movie and the star patterns
32:23 were done by putting ink in water and experimenting with that.
32:27 The robot is an actual practical puppet.
32:30 It makes for a very tactile and very immersive sci-fi short
32:35 that I actually found quite emotional, especially towards its conclusion,
32:40 even though it has almost no spoken dialogue.
32:43 The final substrand at the festival is a Peter Himes celebration,
32:48 Peter Himes being the director of many a cult favourite.
32:51 They're showing a movie of his from the '70s, '80s and '90s.
32:56 So yesterday afternoon, Friday, we saw Capricorn One,
33:00 which is a paranoid conspiracy thriller about a group of astronauts
33:04 that are pulled out of their Mars mission at the very last moment
33:08 and are forced to fake it.
33:10 Elliot Gould is an investigative reporter,
33:12 and when the astronauts decide that they're not going to cooperate,
33:15 all the parties involved have to try and avoid being disappeared by NASA.
33:20 You can tell that it's a movie that clearly has influenced a lot of...
33:25 unhinged types, I should say.
33:29 But I do think that the plotting and the way that it gradually unfolds
33:35 is intriguing.
33:36 It's got a really strong cast.
33:38 Hal Holbrook is the NASA director that's kind of overseeing the whole thing.
33:43 And then over the course of the film, you can see that he becomes more conflicted.
33:47 Capricorn One is very much of its era, in this case, the '70s,
33:51 very much post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, very cynical.
33:55 Got a very starry cast as well, James Brolin, Sam Waterson,
33:59 and unfortunately O.J. Simpson as the astronauts.
34:02 But perhaps the most memorable of all is a late appearance in the finale
34:06 from Tali Savalas playing a crop duster pilot
34:11 who aids Gould at the end of the movie and really likes calling things perverts.
34:17 It's an absolutely bizarre performance, especially for a film that is quite serious
34:22 for a lot of its running time.
34:23 And then Savalas comes in like a comedy character.
34:27 Honestly, it was probably my favorite part of the movie.
34:29 And also because there's some really spectacular stunt work,
34:32 especially because there is genuinely a stunt guy hanging onto the side
34:36 of a crop duster as they're flying around.
34:39 This big aerial chase playing out on an IMAX screen.
34:42 I keep mentioning the IMAX screen, but, you know, it is a variable in this case.
34:46 The Peter Hayem season continued on Saturday nights with his '80s sci-fi thriller
34:51 Outland, with Sean Connery uncovering a conspiracy on a Jupiter Moon mining station.
34:58 You can definitely see a lot of the themes from Capricorn One kind of expanded upon here,
35:03 especially that kind of world-weary cynicism, although here it's applied to corporations
35:08 that see their workers as commodities, trying to push them to work harder and longer
35:14 and faster and be more productive.
35:16 And eventually that just makes them go insane.
35:20 And as pointed out, it's essentially a Western in space with Sean Connery
35:25 in the Gary Cooper role of High Noon, but with more exploding heads in it,
35:30 which is always fun.
35:31 In many ways, I found it to be a more confident and assured movie than Capricorn One,
35:36 which was very multi-stranded and it took a while for them all to connect together,
35:41 whereas Outland focuses on Connery's character and has a single driving,
35:46 investive plot line.
35:48 So I actually found it quite engaging, especially in its first half,
35:52 when Connery is putting all the pieces together.
35:54 It's a shame that the movie in the second half does start to slow down quite dramatically,
35:59 especially when it really should be building tension.
36:02 A lot of the second half is them waiting for these hired assassins,
36:06 but instead of building suspense, it actually feels like you're just waiting around
36:10 for them to arrive so that the plot can actually continue,
36:13 and I do think that maybe the movie could have been tightened up.
36:16 Once they do eventually arrive, though, it becomes a cat-and-mouse game
36:19 between them and Connery, which can be quite thrilling,
36:23 if occasionally having its own slow spots, because you can't really get anywhere quickly
36:27 in a space suit.
36:28 It's a bit like trying to have a fast-paced sequence underwater.
36:31 It doesn't really happen.
36:34 Despite that, though, I did enjoy Outlander.
36:36 I did think it was quite technically well-executed, pacing issues aside.
36:42 The Peter Hyam season concluded on Sunday night with the '90s sci-fi actioner Time Cop,
36:48 which teamed him up with Jean-Claude Van Damme for the first of several collaborations,
36:54 and arguably it's still one of Jean-Claude's best movies.
36:58 I think that Van Damme got better as he got older when it came to acting.
37:01 You can see that in his later direct-to-video movies,
37:04 but back in his '90s heyday was letting his fists and his kicks and his splits
37:09 do much of the talking, and there are some quite solid action sequences
37:14 all throughout the entirety of the film.
37:17 I mean, yeah, the time travel in Time Cop doesn't really hold up to any kind of scrutiny.
37:22 What happens to the car that they travel back in time with?
37:25 It disappears when they go back into the past and it reappears when they come back,
37:30 but it does also use it quite inventively.
37:32 There's that moment where scars form on people's faces and other kind of ripple effects.
37:38 It has fun, even if some of the effects have not aged all that well.
37:44 And we were talking about Ron Silver earlier with Blue Steel,
37:47 and here he is again playing another bad guy as an evil, corrupt senator,
37:52 which perhaps might be the clearest through-line to Peter Himes' earlier work.
37:57 Again, Silver's very good at playing the kind of slimy bad guy roles.
38:02 I love the kind of running gag that the older version of him is embarrassed by the younger one,
38:08 you know, telling him what to do.
38:09 "Could you just lay off the candy bars, for God's sake?"
38:13 You know, that sort of stuff.
38:15 Directorially, he's a bit more gun-for-hire with something like Time Cop,
38:20 and it's even slicker than something like Outland.
38:23 I can understand why Himes is considered kind of a workman-like director,
38:28 because you can kind of see that in this movie.
38:30 He directs the film very competently, and it moves very quickly at 90 minutes or so,
38:36 but it doesn't have a very personal stamp to it.
38:38 Not at this point, anyway.
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39:01 So that was my Forbidden Worlds 2024 experience.
39:04 Would I recommend going to future instalments of this festival?
39:07 Hell yes! It's an absolute blast to go to.
39:11 The audiences are fun, the people running it are dedicated and passionate.
39:15 It's very well run, but also, it's just very fun.
39:20 I mean, where else are you going to see those kind of movies on a screen this big?
39:25 You're very rarely going to get that kind of opportunity,
39:29 and I definitely recommend it if you're interested in the area,
39:34 to go pay them a visit and support their work.
39:38 It's a shame I won't be able to go to their horror spin-off, The Big Scream, later in the year,
39:42 because it clashes with the BFI London Film Festival,
39:45 but I really recommend going to it if you're a horror film fan,
39:49 because I'm sure they'll have a great line-up for that as well.
39:53 And certainly, I think that these local film festivals definitely need all the support that they can get.
40:00 I'm Matthew Buck, fading out.
40:03 (dramatic music)
40:06 [Music]