SCI-FI-A-THON 2024
On February 24th, we were proud to screen, three sci-fi classics celebrating their 40th anniversaries in 2024. This 1984 galactic pilgrimage was for serious sci-fi fans who took on the challenge of watching almost five hours of film in one day.
Photography: Martin Tompkins.
Our interval foyer displayed a clan of unworldly sculptures by Bristol artist Harriet Aston.
THE FILMS
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
From the writer of the 70’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers and John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China comes this description-defying genre mashup starring a pre-Robocop Peter Weller as physicist-neurosurgeon-martial arts master-secret agent-rock star Buckaroo Banzai, battling aliens (the scenery-chewing duo of John Lithgow and Christopher Lloyd) from the 8th dimension. An ahead-of-its-time and of-its-time film which counts filmmakers like Wes Anderson among its fans.
Starman
Halloween director John Carpenter took a strange detour into romantic science fiction territory with Starman, starring Jeff Bridges in a truly oddball performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. When his spacecraft is shot down over Wisconsin, Starman (Bridges) arrives at the remote cabin of a distraught young widow, Jenny (Karen Allen; Marion from Raiders of the Lost Ark), and clones the form of her dead husband. The alien convinces an understandably freaked-out Jenny to drive him to Arizona, explaining that if his mothership doesn't pick him up in three days, he'll die.
Repo Man
British writer-director Alex Cox somehow got this grotty, hardcore punk-infused Reagan-era satire into the lap of major distributor Universal Studios as his debut film. The legendary Harry Dean Stanton stars as a weathered car repossessor in a weirded-out Los Angeles alongside Emilio Estevez as the nihilistic middle-class punk under his wing. The job becomes more than they bargained for when they get involved in repossessing a mysterious Chevy Malibu with a hefty reward attached to it and something freaky in the trunk. Featuring the ultimate early-eighties LA punk soundtrack with an earworm Iggy Pop title song.
︎ EXCLUSIVE FILM NOTES FROM THE EVENT ︎
Press article Bristol 24/7 released 05/02/24
THE FILMS (click here to see a short video intro by us):
