The Guide #227: A brain-melting sci-fi movie marathon, curated by Britain’s best cult film-maker
Few directors currently working merit the title of ‘cult hero’ more than Ben Wheatley.Over a 15-year-plus career, the British film-maker has dabbled in just about every cinematic genre and style imaginable: psychedelic horror (A Field in England, In the Earth), grimy video nasty (Kill List), stylish, gun-toting thrillers (Free Fire), murderous Mike Leigh homages (Down Terrace, Sightseers), literary adaptations (Rebecca, High-Rise), and even a whopping great studio monster movie (Meg 2: The Trench).Wheatley’s latest film further cements that cult status.Bulk is a defiantly DIY sci-fi-noir-paranoid-thriller hybrid, starring Sam Riley as an investigative journo tasked with rescuing a scientist from his own malfunctioning multi-dimensional creation.With its handwritten title cards, overdubbed dialogue, sticky-back-plastic special effects and general vibe of formal experimentation, Bulk exists a world away from most modern film-making.
Even it’s delivery method feels far from the churn of the mainstream: instead of a standard release, the film is in the middle of a tour of independent cinemas across the UK and Ireland – tonight in Liverpool, tomorrow Lewes, with Dublin and Cork on the horizon (you can seek out your nearest screening here).So who better than Wheatley to programme that arthouse-cinema staple, a movie marathon, for the Guide? We tasked him with putting together a 12-hour, backside-numbing, brain-melting series on a single loose theme.He has responded by selecting eight films that inspired Bulk in their paranoid/sci-fi/noir stylings and general ability to work magic with limited resources.Though, says Ben, “I’d lead with the paranoid, sci-fi, noir angle rather than the limited resources.‘Come to the limited-resources all-nighter’ doesn’t sound appealing!”Not that it needs to be an all-nighter.
“Don’t start at midnight – everyone would be knackered,” Ben cautions.Instead his preference would be to make a start bright and early at 7am – “the best part of the day”.7.00 am – Alphaville (1965)Secret agent Lemmy Caution navigates a technocratic dictatorship in Jean-Luc Godard’s pioneering New Wave sci-fi noir“It’s been a big influence on me for many years.I first saw it on Moviedrome, Alex Cox’s Sunday night BBC show that aired double bills of movies, which is where a lot of my early esoteric influences come from.
Conceptually it’s very bold – it’s set in the future but shot in the then-present day of Paris in the 60s.It’s a confidence trick, with Godard looking the audience in the eye and going: ‘This is the future, don’t worry about it’.It’s a noir film, a Bogarde film, a French comic book movie and high science fiction at the same time.Very clever.”Currently streaming on StudioCanal Presents (subscription), and available to digitally rent or buy8.
40am – Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)Landmark Japanese body horror in which a salaryman starts sprouting chunks of metal, becoming half man, half machine“You NEED to see this.For me, apart from Kurosawa, this was the big introduction to Japanese cinema.Even though it’s very skilfully made, you could make it yourself, effectively, if you had the chops.And it didn’t seem to compromise the look of it.It had a heavy influence on me, and Bulk, by saying that film-making doesn’t have to be sanctioned by money and studios: you can exist on the fringes of stuff and then explode out into mainstream culture.
” Currently streaming on Arrow Video (subscription), and available to digitally rent or buy9.48am – Quatermass 2 (1957)Mysterious meteorites strike the earth in the second of Hammer’s 50s sci-fi series“Quatermass 3: The Pit would be the obvious choice here.It is the best one, but I really like Quatermass 2.It’s set in a gloomy Britain.There’s a conspiracy around a gas plant and then there’s this huge blob that consumes organic matter.
..it’s quite wild! There’s a paranoid feeling to it that I quite enjoy.And it’s black and white, which all of the films so far have been.” Currently streaming on Amazon Prime (subscription) and Plex (free), and available to digitally rent or buy11.
14am – Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955)Classic fantasy adventure from the Czech animation wizard Karel Zeman“It’s like a proto Jurassic Park.These kids go down a river on a boat and the further down they travel, the further back in time they go.They see cavemen and dinosaurs and have adventures along the way.All the creatures in it are stop-motion but it’s very, very well done, and you don’t even think about them being stop-motion after a while.It’s just a great adventure movie.
”Available on DVD and Blu-ray12.40pm – The Third Man (1949)American writer Holly Martins investigates the death of old pal Harry Lime in postwar Vienna, in perhaps the definitive film noir“It’s a unique movie.There can never be another one like it because of the way it was shot on location in Vienna just after the war.The city had been shot to pieces.It’s beautifully framed, the script is fantastic, it’s got one of the best scores, and the performances are great.
An almost perfect movie,”Currently streaming on BBC iPlayer (free), and available to digitally rent or buy2,24pm – Primer (2004)Two engineers accidentally discover time travel, and a whole load of trouble, in a mind-bending indie sci-fi“It’s completely befuddling, but that’s not a bad thing,I’ve watched it a dozen times, I’ve seen the diagrams of what it means, and I’m still not quite there with it, but that’s part of the fun,You know it’s slipping away from you but you can’t stop it.
I think it’s a masterful film, and a movie that could not have been made inside the system.”Currently streaming on Amazon Prime (subscription), PlutoTV (free) and Arrow Video (subscription), and available to digitally rent or buy3.42pm – Scanners (1981)Telekinetic misfits run amok, and explode a head or two, in David Cronenberg’s horror breakthrough“I think I first saw it as a kid on VHS from the local store.It’s a wild film that takes no prisoners.It’s a genre movie that also comes out of the arthouse scene but it’s science fiction, too.
It covers a lot of bases.”Currently streaming on Amazon Prime (subscription) and Shudder (subscription), and available to digitally rent or buy4.27pm – Le Samourai (1967)Jean Pierre Melville’s effortlessly cool neo-noir, starring Alain Delon as a hunter turned hunted hitman“I’ve picked this mainly because I always joke with Bulk star Sam Riley that he looks like Alain Delon.It’s genre but also arthouse; low and high culture can exist at the same time.If you’re not already asleep by this point in the marathon, a slow contemplative film about a man walking into quiet rooms might finish you off.
Maybe end on Scanners instead!”Currently streaming on Amazon Prime (subscription), and available to digitally rent or buy6.13pm FINTo read the complete version of this newsletter please subscribe to receive The Guide in your inbox every Friday
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Even if you have no truck with Blue Monday, Quitter’s Day or any of the other new-year wheezes concocted by enterprising marketeers, the last weeks of January can feel like a bit of a confused slog. Seasonal colds and lurgies abound. The weather is generally at its rain-lashed and blackly overcast worst. Well-intentioned attempts at self-improvement or abstemiousness are starting to creak in the face of a desire for whatever scraps of midwinter comfort we can find.Nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to food and, more specifically, the daily puzzle of how to have something nourishing as a working lunch
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After Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica last October, rum lovers anxiously awaited news from the island’s six distilleries. Hampden Estate, in the parish of Trelawney to the north, was right in the hurricane’s path, and the furious winds deprived its historic buildings of their roofs and the palm trees of their fronds. Then came more alarming rumours: the dunder pits had overflowed.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link
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Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, under the banner of story, art and folklore, the Roman publishing house Newton Compton published a series of 27 books about regional Italian cooking. Some, such as Jeanne Carola Francesconi’s epic 1965 La Cucina Napoletana, were reprints of established books, while others were specially commissioned for the series. There is considerable variation; some of the 20 regions occupy 650 densely filled pages, sometimes spread over two volumes, while other regions have 236 pages with larger fonts, with everything in between. All of which is great, although I can’t help feeling affectionate towards the regions with 14-point font.In the face of the vast variation of regional culinary habits, knowledge and rituals, I also feel affectionate towards the common traditions; those that are specific to a place, but at the same time that cross local and national borders, as well as for the stories of the ingredients
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