OPENED MARCH 28, CERT 12A, 135 MINS
The Earth's molten core has stopped spinning, and this is a Bad Thing, with knock-on effects that will kill off humanity within a year. Enter a team of kamikaze scientists with an unlimited military budget who plan to drill through the Earth and kick-start the core again with a few nukes.
"This isn't going to be subtle," observes a character early on, and they're not far wrong. What we've got here is kind of the ultimate disaster movie, like Armageddon with the gloves off and a ton of mad science on board.
"The Beatles tours were like Fellini's Satyricon," John Lennon once remarked, and seeing the director's 1969 masterpiece of decadence again, you can only wonder how they made it through alive. A bleak but visually stunning crawl through the paranoia, bisexuality and corruption of ancient Rome, it's hardly easy viewing, but stunning all the same as a lurid portrait of a world tipped over into the realms of madness.
A monumental 150-minute attempt at tracking China's cultural transition from Mao-ish uniformity to the eccentricities of Deng Xiaoping's quasi-capitalism, Platform (1990) follows four wannabe performers from Fenyang over a long and turbulent decade (1979-1989). Unlike director Jia Zhang-ke's excellent 1997 drama Xiao Wu, Platform has a bizarre disregard for character and narrative coherence.
First Jesse Malin's solo debut, now Concussion—if anything, this is an even finer record than The Fine Art Of Self Destruction. Steve Earle described Ryan as "one of the best songwriters I've seen come to Nashville", and he's no bullshitter.