Proximity (USA 2020: Dir Eric Demeusy)

Eric Demeusy has a variety of technical credits, including digital artist on 2016's Stranger Things, animator on Tron: Legacy (2010) and writer of a 2015 Star Wars short called The New Republic Anthology. Themes from all these projects - and many others - inform the style and content of his feature debut, the disjointed YA sci-fi yarn Proximity.

In a 1979 prologue, a lumberjack, Carl (played as his younger self by David Baumgardner and as an older version of the same character by Don Scribner) has a close encounter with a huge flying saucer, which abducts him.

Flash forward in time to 'the present day' (in reality a kind of hybrid of the contemporary and the 1980s, with the fashion and music of the latter but the tech of the former) and we meet Isaac (Ryan Masson, looking at little like a young Stephen Geoffreys or even, for older readers, Bud Cort) a young maths geek who is a computer modeller working on a space programme (!). On the advice of his counsellor to help him deal with the death of his father, he begins to film himself - on a clunky old school movie camera, no less, but which bafflingly seems to shoot on Hi-8 - and its on one of these reflective video jaunts that he too encounters a UFO and its Whitley Strieber 'Communion' style aliens - you know, tall, skinny, rapidly blinking eyes - and is abducted. But unlike Carl he films the whole thing, and uploads the footage on the internet.

Predictably the crowd goes wild, and he becomes a computer sensation until the doubters find their voice, claiming the film is "shiny homemade CGI." Isaac reaches out to the conspiracy theory/abduction crowd, and meets Sara (Highdee Kuan), who is initially reticent about sharing her story. But Isaac's publicity, all done in the name of being taken seriously, attracts the attentions of a group of 'men in black' characters who kidnap both he and Sara, taking them to the agents' hideout in Costa Rica; they're intent on discovering a connection between the pair and Carl, who has been missing for the last 40 years, and they also may be interested in Isaac's new found super powers, which in truth are less super than plain confusing. Escaping the facility Sara and Isaac, who have hooked up with tech wizard Zed (Christian Prentice), realise they have to connect with Carl by travelling to his home in Canada if they're to stand any chance of staying alive.

Proximity veers woozily from one style to another; it starts off as sci fi abductee thriller, then becomes a chase movie with robots and underground bunkers, then changes pace again with The Matrix style hardware, a dash of the 1997 film Contact and a quasi religious ending (the visiting aliens basically want to know who Jesus was, claiming him to be the "link to the origin of everything," perhaps ignoring the fact that there's more than one religion in the world). The bad guys utter phrases like "Calling all agents and androids!" and talk about achieving their aims by "any force necessary." And if you couldn't work out that lurve is gradually forming between Isaac and Sara, towards the end there's schmaltzy music every time they share the screen.

On the plus side some of the effects do look very impressive and the locations - including Costa Rica and Canada - are stunning. And there was one meta laugh out loud moment where Isaac, filming himself on his enormous 80s camera (remember the movie is set in the present day) is challenged as to why anyone would want to record themselves?

But this is basically an extended episode of The X Files for kids. Look, if I saw this aged 10, I'd probably love it, but it's neither charming nor exciting enough to sustain interest in the 58 year old version of myself. Sorry.

Proximity is available via Signature Entertainment on Digital HD from May 18th.

Level 16 (Canada 2018: Dir Danika Asterhazy)

In Asterhazy's downbeat, austere and time unspecific sci fi drama we are introduced to a group of girls who all live in a confined facility, The Vestalis Academy, composed of a number of different floor levels. The young women follow a strict code of behaviour and activity which governs their every move as they 'graduate' to successive levels under the wary eye of the uptight Miss Brixil (Sara Canning): two of their number, Sophia (Celina Martin) and Viven (Katie Douglas) have, contrary to the rules, formed a friendship which is tested when, occupying level 10, Vivien is punished for helping Sophia and stepping out of line in the nightly washing ritual as a result. The nature of this punishment is not specified but is severe enough to make Vivien colder and more ruthless, hinting at something more sinister behind the seemingly benevolent setup.

Six years later Vivien, now 16, has with a number of others been selected to move to the highest floor of the facility, appropriately level 16 - one for each year of their lives. It is here we learn that the girls will complete their moral devotions and prepare for adoption: for this is an orphanage, and the girls are being trained to take their place as dutiful 'daughters' in wealthy families and, for the first time, venture into the outside world and even 'see the sky.' On Level 16 Sophia and Vivien meet again, and gradually renew their friendship. But Sophia has a message for Vivien that all is not as it seems in the orphanage: it seems that there's a more sinister purpose behind the setup.

Anyone who has read or seen adaptations of either Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' or Kazuo Ishiguro's 'Never Let Me Go' will probably guess the dark heart of this movie quite early on: and in truth Level 16 is a movie combining elements of both. But that's not to say that within its obviously limited budget it doesn't retain interest. The setting, a grim network of grey rooms and corridors, suggests that Michael Radford's bleak 1984 adaptation of George Orwell's novel of the same name may also have been an influence.

Asterhazy wisely focuses on her cast rather than their dramatically limited surroundings, and there's a stunning central performance from Katie Douglas as Vivien, who moves from self appointed top girl status to a frightened young woman as the extent of the Academy's true purpose becomes known. The rest of the cast are affecting in their buttoned up-ness, their closed rank conformity only betrayed by their frightened eyes; there's a great moment when, on level 16, each of the girls is given a dress with their name written on a sash; Vivien hold hers up and asks "What does it say?" Knowing that the expert tuition of the girls doesn't include learning to read is a chilling moment.

Despite its influences Level 16 emerges as a credible film in its own right. Creepy, occasionally rather lyrical and at times deeply disturbing, it's an assured movie that knows its own limits and works effectively within them. Definitely worth a look.

Level 16 is available on digital platforms from 27th May 2019.

Dark Eyes Retrovision #6 - Class of 1999 (USA 1989: Dir Mark L. Lester)

Director Mark L. Lester clearly felt confident enough about the predictions of a soon come USA in his successful Class of 1984, filmed in 1982, to make some even grander assumptions about society 15 years on in the sequel, 1989's Class of 1999. Whereas the original movie anticipated rising levels of violence within the education system, this one goes the whole hog, depicting an American wasteland where schools are run by armed gangs, the police are defenceless and there ain't a whole lot of learning going on.

Oh and robot teachers are a thing. Three of 'em. And one smokes a pipe.

Set just before the end of the twentieth century, Lester's rough and ready - but enormously enjoyable - mash up of Escape From New York (1981), Robocop (1987), The Terminator (1984) and any number of 80s post apocalyptic two wheeled renegade movies, focuses on Kennedy High, a beleaguered school in Seattle, closed down because of escalating violence, and surrounded by a lawless 'Free-Fire' zone in which law enforcement fears to tread. However things are about to change, in a deal brokered by school Principal Dr Miles Langford (Malcolm McDowell). The appropriately named Department of Education and Defence, responsible for the nation's schools, is about to partner up with the military hardware outfit Megatech in a ground-breaking experiment; courtesy of company head honcho Dr. Bob Forrest (Stacy Keach) Kennedy High will be supplied three 'superteachers,' humanoid battle drones, reconditioned and rewired to perform roles as 'Tactical Education Units', but with the added advantage of super strength to deal with the more forceful students.

As part of the project, some of most violent kids, previously locked up in prison, will be released back in to society and obliged to re-attend school. One of these kids, Cody Culp (Bradley Gregg), has decided to reform himself and escape the gang culture which got him into pokey in the first place, despite the stick he gets for this approach from brother Angel (Joshua Miller) who like their mother is still addicted to drugs. Befriending the Principal's daughter Christie (Tracy Lind) Cody begins to suspect that the school's new robo-teachers may be pursuing a slightly different agenda to the three 'R's, particularly when their military programme starts to short circuit their scholastic one. Cody and the warring factions must unite against the humanoid terror that threatens the school.

The sci fi elements may for the most part be slightly McGuffinesque - Lester never lets story or context get in the way of a good fight or car chase - but the director efficiently paints a picture of a future Seattle which is for the most part convincing, helped by locating the movie in an actual abandoned town, vacant pending the expansion of an airport - nice find! There's some humour in here too - the teachers' lockers are largely full of cans of WD40 and the neon signs on the school walls read 'Respect, Obey, Learn.' The effects, largely confined to the the movie's last half hour, are doubtless where most of the $7 million budget was expended, and include an unstoppable final cyborg that may take its moves from The Terminator but is a glorious mix of hydraulics and stop frame animation.

But it's the cast that make this, just keeping the right side of tongue in cheek. McDowell and Keach may have small roles but they bring a touch of class to the B pic (Keach in particular looks resplendent with white spiky hair and cats eyes contacts). Pam Grier plays it brilliantly straight as one of the teacherborgs, and Bradley Gregg, Joshua Miller and Tracy Lind are spirited teens who aren't afraid to roll their sleeves up and get with the action.

Class of 1999 is available on Blu-ray as part of the Vestron Collector's Series from 25th February 2019.

Extras include: a slightly lacklustre audio commentary from producer/Director Mark L. Lester; School Safety – interviews with director/producer Mark L. Lester and co-producer Eugene Mazzola; New Rules – an interview with screenwriter C. Courtney Joyner; Cyber-Teachers From Hell – interviews with special effects creators Eric Allard and Rick Stratton; Future of Discipline – an interview with director of photography Mark Irwin; theatrical trailer, TV Spots, still gallery and video promo.

Dark Eyes Retrovision #4 - Alien (UK/USA 1979: Dir Ridley Scott)

These are the notes from my introduction to the 40th anniversary screening of the film at Screen 25 on 1 February 2019.

There are any number of stories about the making of Alien, but as you’re here to watch a movie and not to listen to me all night, I’m going to concentrate on how the film got from story to screen.
The birth of Alien came about when screenwriter Dan O’Bannon was at film school in California back in the early 1970s. His initial idea, originally called ‘Memory,’ wherein a group of astronauts discover a dormant creature, had progressed to a half-written script when O’Bannon met John Carpenter at the same school – and together they took some of the former's ideas, developing a small student film which eventually became the 1975 space satire Dark Star.

Dark Star shares some of the themes of tonight’s movie: namely a motley crew of grumpy space truckers; a scuffed, grotty space ship complete with lots of long corridors; and the tracking and hunting down of a recalcitrant alien (albeit one in the shape of an enormous inflatable beach ball).

Dark Star was modestly successful, but O’Bannon wasn’t satisfied – he wanted to take the space elements of that movie and make it darker, more like a sci fi version of an HP Lovecraft story, with the claustrophobia of Howard Hawks’ 1951 movie The Thing From Another World. And importantly he wanted to direct it.

The next character in the progression of our story is Alejandro Jodorowsky, he of El Topo and The Holy Mountain fame, who was putting together a now infamously un-filmed adaption of Frank Herbert’s sci fi epic Dune over in Paris in 1975. Jodorowsky had seen Dark Star, loved the special effects (and if you’ve ever seen that movie this might seem a bit of an odd comment) and wanted O’Bannon to join a posse of artists pulled together to storyboard the film. One of the other people involved with the project was HR Giger from Switzerland, whose grotesque, distended painted figures, skeletal beings with phallic heads against womblike backgrounds, had a habit of blowing the minds of all those exposed to this decidedly odd guy’s artwork. Dune fell apart in a haze of overambition and shaky finances, and the team involved all went their separate ways. But O’Bannon never forgot Giger’s work.

So at this point O’Bannon wasn’t in a great way. His health was poor and his temper worse. He was staying with his friend, Ron Shusett, and subject to violent pains in his stomach – sounds familiar? A terrifying time which would inform one of the most famous scenes in the film (O’Bannon was eventually diagnosed with Crohn’s disease).

O’Bannon and Shusett produced a different treatment of the original story, now with the title ‘Star Beast,’ the script amended, featuring some kind of space parasite. O’Bannon got the artist Ron Cobb - who had also been part of the Dune gang - to mock up some set sketches, but the studios to whom they pitched it round rejected it as the special effects would be too expensive. So O’Bannon went back to the drawing board and changed the more complicated alien form into… well, a man in a suit.

O’Bannon’s script was later criticised for ripping off another earlier man in a suit space monster movie, 1958’s It! The Terror from Outer Space, in which an alien stows away on a spaceship. Others recognised more than a nod to a 1965 movie by Italian director Mario Bava called Planet of the Vampires, in which a spaceship is sent to investigate an alien world, which turns out to be full of creatures looking to escape it. But O’Bannon in later interviews was fairly candid that ‘Star Beast’ was influenced both by a multitude of films, pulp fiction stories and vintage comic books, borrowing a little here and a little there, into a screenplay that was pretty much what you’ll see on screen tonight. But we’re not quite finished with the story yet.

At this stage ‘Star Beast,’ as the script was still called, was being envisaged as a modestly budgeted sci fi B movie – indeed cult king Roger Corman had expressed an interest. A friend of Shusett’s advised the pair to think bigger, and eventually the script ended up in the hands of the Brandywine production company – big players on the scene with links to Twentieth Century Fox. Initially the company were nervous – a sci fi monster movie? But when both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind were released in 1977, both of which did amazing box office, suddenly science fiction was big business.

The film changed from ‘Star Beast’ to ‘Alien’ – a title O’Bannon claimed for himself, but who knows? Walter Hill from Brandywine rewrote some of the script (introducing female characters for the first time, and also the character of ‘Ash’), the budget increased, and O’Bannon was no longer in the frame as director (although he did successfully fight to secure ‘screenplay by’ and co ‘story by’ credits after a long messy battle with The Writers Guild).

Hill was first choice for director but he was unable to commit as he was about to start work on the Greek myth stroke gang flick The Warriors. A number of other directors were approached, including Peter Yates, Robert Aldrich and Jack Clayton but they passed on it. The eventual choice of director was the then 40 year old Ridley Scott, a man with a background in TV advertising who had only previously directed one feature, 1977’s The Duellists. It was a big risk - an unknown director with an equally unknown cast - and was only finally given the go ahead when Ridley underwrote a lot of the costs himself.

O’Bannon was very much around during the production – some said too much (he was banned from the set at least once) – but his master stoke was introducing Scott, a man who had no real affinity with science fiction – to HR Giger, via the artist’s seminal work ‘Necronomicon.’ Scott was yet another person whose mind was blown when exposed to Giger’s art, and the film’s look, which is the key to its success, was nailed at the point where the Swiss artist came on board, finally providing the perfect antidote to the director’s worry that Alien would be seen as just another man in a monster suit movie. What Scott didn’t know was the O’Bannon had been keeping Giger – who hadn’t worked on a movie before - on the side-lines all the time, convinced that Scott would want secure the artist's services. He was also rather unhelpfully telling anyone who would listen about his ongoing battles with the Brandywine team.

When the film was released in 1979, although it opened to a lukewarm critical reception, it was a huge commercial success, making nearly $79 million in the United States and over £7.5 million in the UK on initial release – the fourth largest grossing film of the year. Its total worldwide gross has been listed up to $203 million. The film had left both O’Bannon and Giger nervous wrecks. Scott on the other hand said of the film: “There’s nothing very intellectual about Alien. That’s the point of the film. It has absolutely no message. It works on a very visceral level and its only point is terror…and more terror.” This rather sniffy approach didn't stop Scott returning to sci fi for his next project, 1982's Blade Runner.

Alien’s rise from a few scribbles on paper at the beginning of the 1970s to its position as top grossing movie of 1979, and arguably one of the most impressive science fiction films of all time, is really the story of one person – Dan O’Bannon – and his fight to get his dream realised. It’s a fitting tribute to the man who sadly died way too early at the age of 63 in 2009, from Crohn’s disease complications. And to think, he almost didn't get a credit!

Arrival (USA 2016: Dir Denis Villeneuve)

A while back I was complaining to a friend about the all embracing spread of emo-driven advertising at the cinema to sell anything from booze to banking. Well the trend has seeped into the sci fi genre as well. Swelling string sections and trembling bottom lips have recently found their way into metaphysical sci-fi outings like Interstellar and Midnight Special. Denis Villeneuve's ponderous Arrival also has metaphysics and emotion in spades, and sadly isn't the better for it.

Amy Adams, in a bravura performance, plays Dr Louise Banks, a lecturer in linguistics with a tragic past - a teenage daughter who died from cancer - called upon to assist when a series of huge oval spacecraft suddenly appear, hovering above a number of towns and cities around the world.

The authorities, in the shape of Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker, whose age and acting style have finally found harmony) persuade Banks to join a small team of experts to travel to Montana, where one of the craft is located, and help decode the first messages from the aliens inside (the UK also have one, in Devon of all places, but we don't get to see that story). Also assisting is scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner, smarmy as always) representing the yin of fact to Banks's yan of belief.

Much of the film is devoted to the pair's growing understanding of the language of the Cthulhu-like aliens, named heptapods (as well as a discordant moaning they write their messages in what looks like a cross between smoke and squid ink), while other members of the team monitor the reactions from Governments around the world to the arrival of the strange craft in the other visited countries - predictably China are first to turn from tolerance to aggression.

This is a fine setup - taking the germ of the last few minutes of Steven Spielberg's 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind and making a whole movie out of it - but a rather thin one, and in its rush, or rather gentle trot, to replace content with emotion Arrival becomes rather laboured. By the end, Jóhann Jóhannsson's sweeping orchestral score had become so overpowering I wasn't sure whether I was still watching the movie or just more adverts. As an aside, Jóhannsson used to be a much more interesting composer (just listen to his score for The Miners' Hymns - it's on YouTube - and tell me if it isn't the most powerful soundtrack you've ever heard) but seems to have blanded out recently, possibly tantalised by the promise of more Oscar nominations.

The first part of the movie is the most successful. Villeneuve, a skilled director who gave us one of my favourite films of last year, Sicario, delays showing the spacecraft, cutting away from news items and reflecting the wonder of the alien vision via the reactions of his actors. And the final unveiling of the craft, about twenty minutes in, is a woozy mix of aerial and tilt shift photography that depicts the military activity around the craft as the aliens would see them, small and insignificant dots in the Montana landscape - it's a great scene. The craft's interior is simply designed, with its own gravity system (which provides the film's most obviously exciting moment) and as mentioned the tentacled heptapods are distinctly Lovecraftian.

But as the film progresses the promise of the first half subsides. The analysis of the alien language may be interesting but doesn't make great cinema, and Villeneuve's decision to show the world's varying reactions to the alien presence - from fervent prayer to looting and violence - via TV screens is clearly a deliberate attempt to tell a 'first contact' story from the point of view of one character rather than through spectacle. But in so doing it reduces the film to a rather one dimensional, almost soap-operaesque drama. I also couldn't help but notice that, once again, the only country to make the communication breakthrough was the Americans.

Arrival is based on a short story called 'Story of Your Life' by Ted Chiang, who also contributed to this movie's script. The story's themes of language, time and memory are arguably more suited to the printed page than the cinema screen. Here the awkward melding of aliens and sentiment just didn't work for me. I found Arrival at times very clumsy and forced, and if it wasn't for the casting of Amy Adams (a central character in some ways similar to Emily Blunt's flawed heroine in Sicario) it would scarcely be worth bothering with at all.

The Survivalist (UK 2015: Dir Stephen Fingleton)

Stephen Fingleton's sci-fi film - his first feature - is that rare thing, a movie which communicates predominantly visually rather than via exposition, yet manages to convey important ideas about humanity and our ability to cope and adapt in the face of catastrophe.

Martin McCann plays the unnamed Survivalist, all skin, bones and animal wariness, who has carved out an existence in the years following an unspecified disaster (although we know from the clever opening titles shown by way of a two line graph that this catastrophe has been triggered by a sudden fall in oil production mixed with over population). He lives in a woodland hut and has become largely self sufficient, even down to manufacturing a form of oil for his lamps. He is ruthless in despatching anyone who threatens his solitude, burying their bodies for compost - he is also incredibly lonely, masturbating over photographs belonging to those he has killed.

Into this Robinson Crusoe-like existence appear Kathryn and her young daughter Milja, looking for food and shelter. Kathryn offers seeds and later Milja herself in exchange for sustenance and a roof over their head. The Survivalist's initial reticence gradually thaws as he enjoys regular sex with the young girl, but the three remain wary of each other - any one of them is capable of violence it seems - and lead a largely silent existence.

The backdrop to the formation of this uneasy family is the forest itself, verdant and tranquil yet containing hidden dangers in the shape of potential (and actual) assailants. The woodland is timeless and constant - as we watch it we're almost convinced that nothing has happened until we see the pitiful figures foraging within it. The rather staggering realisation that humanity has reduced itself to this existence (and in a later scene, a much worse one) in only a few short years since the catastrophe has taken place, as the eye is comforted by the green depths of the forest, is chilling.

As the film progresses rivalries develop, and the relative calm of the Survivalist's life is shattered - in fact we're now not sure to whom the film's title refers. In an environment of want and meagre resources, survival becomes paramount, and the film ends on a note which offers a possibility of hope and also a re-appraisal of what we've just witnessed.

The Survivalist is perhaps a more brutal and honest version of the 1975 BBC TV series Survivors - it's surely no coincidence that the titles are similar. Yet while that television drama often recalled the more cosy self sufficiency tactics of The Good Life, The Survivalist behaves rather like an adult version of Lord of the Flies. This is a strong, assured debut from Stephen Fingleton, with top notch acting turns from McCann, Olwen Fouere as Kathryn and the wraith like Mia Goth as Milja (who was so impressive in Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac: Vol. 2). Filmed in natural light and with no soundtrack, The Survivalist feels honest and bold - very, very impressive stuff.

Hard to be a God (Russia 2013: Dir Aleksey German)

When is science fiction not science fiction? The 1964 novel 'Hard To Be a God' - on which Aleksey German's extraordinary and frustrating film is based - was SF almost by association. Set some time in the future, a group of observers from Earth are posted to a distant planet, also containing human life, which it is assumed has evolved in the same way as our world. At the point of the occupation the planet is roughly at the medieval stage of development. The observers are there to learn and study, but not to intervene in the race's progress, but this proves increasingly difficult in the face of a totalitarian takeover which sees an army of thugs - the Grays - killing all of the planet's intellectuals and artists. Do the alien observers stand by and watch as the massacre continues, intervene and alter the course of the planet's history, or just leave? While the book made some references to the technology deployed by the Earth observers, and was written from a perspective of the central character - Rumata, a man gradually losing his civilised Earth persona as he disappears into his adopted guise as a wealthy Don - it is entirely set within its medieval environment and thus is only marginally a science fiction novel. The book can be read as a treatise on statecraft and a savage attack on power and hierarchy, but is also disturbing, claustrophobic and surprisingly funny.

German's film retains the claustrophobia but similarly abandons almost all of the science fiction elements, apart from one brief shot showing a transportation device which could only have come from future Earth, and the final scenes which also demonstrate that the handkerchief has finally been invented. of which more later. Instead it concentrates over the course of its 177 minutes in totally immersing the audience in a medieval world. The closest cinematic comparisons are probably Tarkovsky's equally lengthy Andrei Rublev (1966) combined with the grotesquerie of Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) or maybe Annaud's The Name of the Rose (1986). But, and believe me, nothing will have prepared you for this. From the breathtaking opening scenes depicting the panoply of village life, like a Breugel painting made real, the camera restlessly and incessantly patrols and roams this world, itself an active participant and material presence in the cares, intrigues and double dealings of its people - no static Tarkovsky lens here. And these people live in filth. They cough, spit, defecate, void the contents of their noses, urinate publicly, eat pretty much anything, smear themselves with excreta, and show their bottoms regularly. Over the course of nearly three hours the viewer longs for the sight of some clean cutlery or even a handkerchief to provide a glint of civilisation, but those luxuries are clearly some centuries from development. Instead the mundanity and sheer relentlessness of the grim life on display rendered this viewer amazed, bored and aghast in roughly equal measures.

Unfortunately much of the source novel's plot, about the attempts of Don Ramata to intervene in the massacre and his exposure as an alien visitor, are totally lost. German's concern is the creation of a world rather than telling a story, and this ultimately renders Hard To Be a God a frustrating and rather soporific viewing experience. Arguably, how successful can a film be if it offers no real chance for the viewer to understand what's happening? However, a couple of days after seeing it, it's a difficult movie to shake off. This is a film that is far easier to write about than to experience. As I type this I'm aware of the need to categorise and understand the film to help describe and make sense of it. Yet, and rather like life itself, scenes from Hard To Be a God replay in my head making me realise that I haven't really understood anything. So maybe German, who sadly is no longer with us, has succeeded in his intentions.