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Science fiction at its best is a site of extraordinary creativity in the cinema, a repository of dreams, as well as a panoramic mirror of the present when it's in the right hands. So just in time for the holidays, we're presenting this selection of classics, rarities and long-unseen gems of the genre from the last 30 years, with a strong accent on the personal. We'll be showing everything from Steven Spielberg's still wondrous CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND to Mamoru Oshii's stunning live-action film AVALON, from the tight and ingenious QUATERMASS AND THE PIT to the expansive uncut version of Wim Wenders's UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD, from L.Q. Jones's grungy A BOY AND HIS DOG to Nicolas Roeg's elegant and elaborate mindbender THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. We're also pleased to be showing the great Nigel Kneale's typically prescient YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS. What better way to usher in the New Year? Join us...in the future.
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
John Carpenter, U.S., 1981; 99m
John Carpenter's 1981 sci-fi escape thriller is his darkest, sleekest, funniest movie, with imagery that has the graphic power of the silent Lang. Like all the director's best movies, it also packs quite a political punch. Kurt Russell is Snake Plissken, the bank robber sent into "1997" New York, which has become one big maximum security prison (tagline: "Breaking out is impossible. Breaking in is insane."), to retrieve the kidnapped President. Sporting an eyepatch, a Dirty Harry hiss and a greaser's fashion sense, Plissken is the ultimate man with nothing to lose, and Carpenter and Russell make him an archtypal figure. With Carpenter perennial Donald Pleasence as the President and Isaac Hayes as "The Duke of New York."
Fri Dec 26: 1 & 5; Sat Dec 27: 3:10
Sun Dec 28: 1
A BOY AND HIS DOG
L.Q. Jones, USA, 1975; 87m
It's 2024, post-WWIII: somewhere in wasteland Arizona, young Vic (Don Johnson) and his adorable doggie Blood spend their time tracking down food, female flesh and an occasional movie in a ramshackle human settlement. Somewhere down under, a bizarre, agrarian (!) community (Topeka) of clown-faced folk thrives through a strongly regimented, totally surreal lifestyle. A lovely woman lures Vic underground, where he's invited to participate in artificial insemination on the grand scale - but there's a wicked catch! Director L.Q. Jones adapted Harlan Ellison's black-as-night comic take on a post-apocalyptic futureworld with mordant glee. A cult fave, A BOY poses that crucial question: Should the love of a good woman come between a boy and his dog?
Fri Dec 26: 3 & 7; Sat Dec 27: 9:30; Sun Dec 28: 5
THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS
Michael Elliott, U.K., 1968, video; 103m
From the archives of the BBC, the first U.S. screening of Nigel Kneale's uncannily prescient vision of what he termed a "New Dark Age" - but which we now know as "Reality TV." In this dystopic future dominated and run by TV, language is becoming redundant, art is forbidden, and all "tensions" - love, war, hate, loyalty - have been neutralized. The masses are pacified and overpopulation controlled through vicarious televisual pornography. The story takes a startling turn when one member of the media elite responsible for the programming, increasingly troubled by the world he lives in, decides to opt out of this society, proposing a new kind of TV spectacle - he and his family will be left alone to live the rest of their lives on an isolated island under the watchful 24-hour gaze of remote-controlled cameras. Look out for character actor Brian Cox in one of his first major roles.
Fri Dec 26: 9; Sat Dec 27: 1 & 7:15
DEMON SEED
Donald Cammell, U.S., 1977; 94m
Based on a critically maligned Dean Koontz novel, the legendary Donald Cammell's 1977 movie is one of his very best films, a typically perverse story of a housewife (Julie Christie, in her most underrated performance) impregnated by a super-computer named Proteus (who speaks in the voice of Robert Vaughan) created by her husband (Fritz Weaver). Cammell made very few films, but they were all intensely personal mergers of pulp and poetry, and this strange tale of machine lust is no exception. With De Palma regular Gerritt Graham. Special effects by avant-garde legend Jordan Belson.
Sat Dec 27: 5:15; Sun Dec 28: 3; Mon Dec 29: 4:30;
Tue Dec 30: 1
THE FURY
Brian De Palma, U.S., 1978; 118m
Hardcore De Palma fans prefer his Hitchcock riffs and vamps, but this 1978 film might be his greatest, because (rather than in spite) of the fact that the source material is someone else's - a novel by John Farris, to be exact (Farris also wrote the script). The eponymous emotion is ignited by a desire for vengeance, which sends a father (Kirk Douglas) presumed dead on a long search for his telekinetically gifted son (Andrew Stevens), kidnapped by his former best friend (John Cassavetes), a sinister government operative. Most of this eye-popping movie takes place in the city of Chicago, but De Palma turns the city into a spectral universe that resembles the great expressionist landscapes of Murnau. THE FURY builds and builds in physical power, to a literally explosive finale, one of the most satisfying endings in film history. With Amy Irving as the innocent girl who makes extra-sensory contact with Stevens, and Carrie Snodgress as Douglas's valiant girlfriend.
We regret that the print of THE FURY is faded, but it is the only print available.
Mon Dec 29: 2; Tue Dec 30: 3 & 7:10
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT
Roy Ward Baker, U.K., 1967; 98m
The third and most conceptually daring of writer Nigel Kneale's groundbreaking Quatermass films. A London Underground construction site is sealed off when workers uncover human skulls and what is assumed to be an unexploded German bomb from WWII. Rocket scientist Professor Quatermass investigates and comes to believe that the mysterious object has been buried for millions of years and may be of extra-terrestrial origin (the film's U.S. title was Five Million Years to Earth) - and perhaps poses a threat to human civilization. Taking elements of historical inquiry, the occult, and evolutionary theory and turning them on their head, Kneale crafts a chilling scientific mystery to explain humankind's racism and warlike ways, and anticipates some of the key themes and plot devices of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Tue Dec 30: 5:15 & 9:30;
Wed Dec 31: 1:30 & 6:15
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
Steven Spielberg, U.S., 1977; 132m
Still Spielberg's best movie, this 1977 epic of benign extraterrestrial visitation remains a rapturous experience. The narrative structure, in which many different elements come together like a series of interlocking puzzle pieces, is a thing of beauty in itself. And Spielberg's imagery has an almost primordial power - even more than in E.T., southwestern suburbia becomes a land of mythical transformation, in which the grandest desires are projected out onto the big sky and answered with an equally grand spiritual embrace, in the form of a light and music show. A genuinely wondrous movie. With Richard Dreyfuss (maniacally intense), Teri Garr (initially appealing and increasingly shrill as his disbelieving wife), Melinda Dillon (the embodiment of wide-eyed wonder), the otherworldly Cary Guffey as her son, and François Truffaut, in a lovely performance, as the scientist who makes contact.
Mon Dec 29: 6:30; Wed Dec 31: 3:30 & 8:15;
Thurs Jan 1: 4:45
THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH
Nicolas Roeg, U.K., 1976; 138m
Stranger in a strange land: on the brink of his Thin White Duke phase, David Bowie plays a neurasthenic extraterrestrial who patents nine inventions that transform the world's communications industry and in short order becomes a secrecy-shrouded billionaire - Howard Hughes from outer space. Before long he's debilitated by booze and too much TV, and his relationship with earth woman Candy Clark turns into a hysterical parody of marital dysfunction while his plans are wrecked by a conspiracy of powerful vested interests.
Thurs Jan 1 : 2 & 7:30; Fri Jan 2: 4:15
PRIVILEGE
Peter Watkins, U.S., 1967; 103m
In this follow-up to Peter Watkins's astonishing The War Game and Culloden, a pop star named Shorter is recruited by the government to hypnotize his youthful audience with music loud and violent enough to distract them from politics and bring them into harmony with the greater society. One of the key movies of the period, PRIVILEGE inspired Patti Smith to cover one of its most famous songs, "Set Me Free," on her 1978 classic Easter. "No film has dealt with the analogy between pop-star worship and fascism so directly, but the magic of PRIVILEGE lies in how Watkins transcends this painless metaphor and examines the relationship between star and audience in terms of need and denial." - Chris Fujiwara
Fri Jan 2: 2 & 9; Sun Jan 4: 3
PUNISHMENT PARK
Peter Watkins, U.S., 1971, beta; 88m
President Nixon has decided that the assorted "radical" elements in America together comprise an "internal security emergency," and invokes the dreaded and all-too-real McCarran Act of 1950. All radicals are rounded up and those who are convicted are offered a choice - a prison stint or a 3-day ordeal known as Punishment Park, a trek through the desert while trying to outrun trigger-happy National Guardsmen. Anyone who lived through the Nixon era will remember the dynamics behind this terrifying fact-based fiction (every participant was a non-actor who espoused the political views held by their respective characters) - the fiction part isn't much of a stretch.
Fri Jan Fri Jan 2: 7; Sun Jan 4: 1; Sun Jan 11: 5
GAS-SSS
Roger Corman, U.S., 1971; 79m
The subtitle of Roger Corman's anarchic 1971 sci-fi countercultural comedy tells all: "Or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It." A bomb has been dropped on America, killing everyone over the age of 25. A hippie fugitive (Robert Corff) and a scientist (Elaine Giftos) go on the road looking for a communal paradise somewhere out west. On their picaresque journey, they meet up with a militant revolutionary (Ben Vereen!) and his pregnant girlfriend (Cindy Williams!! Playboy Playmate 1970), Country Joe and the Fish, and Edgar Allan Poe (Bruce Karcher). Although recut to Corman's dissatisfaction, this remains a prodigiously inventive, raucous, oddball singularity, the comic flip side of the 1968 Wild in the Streets.
Sat Jan 3: 1 & 5; Mon Jan 5: 4:15
LIFEFORCE
Tobe Hooper, U.K., 1985; 101m
Sent to probe Halley's Comet, British-American space shuttle Churchill is recovered with its crew dead and bearing a trio of energy-draining humanoids. Once revived, a female vampire escapes and wreaks havoc throughout London, transforming humans into zombies. Irresistibly silly and with some of the most groan-worthy dialogue in film history, LIFEFORCE is the kind of supremely enjoyable trash cults are made from. Bonuses: a pre-Star Trek: TNG Patrick Stewart as the director of a mental hospital; statuesque French actress Mathilda May nude throughout the entire movie; and a score by Henry Mancini. Based on Colin Wilson's novel Space Vampires.
Sat Jan 3: 2:45; Mon Jan 5: 2 & 6:15;
Thurs Jan 8: 1
AVALON
Mamoru Oshii, Japan, 2001; 106m
Mamoru Oshii followed up his beautiful Ghost in the Shell with this stunning live-action film. The carefully stylized action (most of it in sepia tones), takes place within the confines of a simulated-battle virtual reality game called "Avalon" that fries the brain pans of all but the most intrepid and alert. With the help of her former partner Murphy and a mysterious figure named Bishop, player extraordinaire Ash works her way to the final "Level of Reality." Nothing is quite as it seems in this hauntingly synthetic experience. Watching AVALON is like floating through thick, velvety layers of cyberspace.
Sat Jan 3: 6:45; Mon Jan 5: 8:30; Tue Jan 6: 2;
Thurs Jan 8: 3:15
UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD
Wim Wenders, Germany, 1991; 4h 40m
Wim Wenders's 1991 epic of a son crossing the world to bring his mother the gift of sight was originally released in a two-and-a-half-hour version that moved at a faster clip than it probably should have. In its complete form, it's mesmerizing, a startling trans-continental journey, shot through with vaudevillian humor (most of it from Rüdiger Vogler's disenchanted detective) and a delirious succession of varied landscapes, from a Tokyo travellers' hotel to the Australian outback. The film also features one of the greatest song scores ever put together for a movie, with music by REM, Talking Heads, Jane Siberry, Elvis Costello and many, many others.
Sun Jan 4: 5:15 (with two 10m intermissions)
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
Philip Kaufman, U.S., 1978; 115m
This hip, playful remake of Don Siegel's 1956 Cold War paranoia classic relocates the action from a small town in Marin County to nearby San Francisco, epicenter of New Age personal growth culture and alternative lifestyles. In place of Siegel's upright, all-American protagonists, our unlikely heroes are an affectionately observed assortment of oddballs and misfits (led by Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, and Veronica Cartwright) whose unconventionality underscores what's at stake as the Pod People take over. Watch for cameos by Kevin McCarthy, the original film's star, Don Siegel (as a cabbie), plus an uncredited Robert Duvall as a priest.
Tue Jan 6: 4:15; Wed Jan 7: 8:30 ; Sun Jan 11: 7
BODY SNATCHERS
Abel Ferrara, U.S., 1993; 87m
Setting the action in the self-contained community of an army base in the Deep South, Abel Ferrara reinvents the Pod People premise for the post-Gulf War Nineties: a scientist (Terry Kinney) and his family and kids come to live on the base while he inspects its stocks of biological and chemical weapons. Before long the base's twitchy chief medical officer (Forest Whitaker) is telling him about an outbreak of delusional behavior amongst the men. As you might expect from the director of Bad Lieutenant, this update packs a punch both viscerally and emotionally, while maintaining its own deliciously warped sense of humor.
Wed Jan 7: 1 & 3; Sun Jan 11: 9:15
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