Future shock

A new British sci-fi movie with brains is a complex chamber piece (and observes the classical unities)

A Million Days Dir Mitch Jenkins, UK 2023 On digital platforms

A Million Days is a British sci-fi drama that belies its limitations to produce an engrossing and complex chamber piece.

The Earth is experiencing a catastrophic environmental disaster and a ‘Space Seeding’ project is in place to colonise other worlds. On the eve of mission launch, Commander Anderson Reigel (Simon Merrells) and his partner Sam (Kemi-Bo Jacobs), both members of the project, settle down for a romantic farewell evening before Reigel departs for a lunar colony. They are interrupted by colleague Charlie (Hermione Corfield) who brings some shocking data produced by Jay, the AI system underpinning the mission. Unrequested, Jay has run simulations far beyond the timescale of the project – 2,740 years into the future, in fact, the titular million days. The implications of Jay’s predictions are so vast that the three team members must strive through the night to literally decide the fate of life itself.

For the most part it works very well. I call it a chamber piece

There is literally nothing to see except endless plains and forests

advisedly, for A Million Days conforms to good old Aristotle’s (or is it Trissino’s?) classic unity of time, place and action. The film never leaves its location (Reigel’s house), it takes place over just a few hours, and has one central theme. There are sub-plots involving Reigel’s love for his former partner, who died in an earlier mission, for which he blames former Captain Gene Campbell (Darrell D’Silva); Campbell’s subsequent disappearance; and the sexual tension between the three colleagues; and Sam’s knowledge that she is not Reigel’s true love. Initially tangential to the main story, these sub-plots become increasingly relevant.

‘Action’ is perhaps not the best word to use here, because while the film has an epic theme it is concerned not with spaceships and laser pistols but with ideas and relationships. As a consequence, it is very talky. You need to pay attention too, because some of the concepts, and the way crucial information is communicated, can be easy to misunderstand. It’s never boring, though, and as the film builds towards the point at which the crucial decision must be made it generates a fair head of steam.

The photography is good and the sets are suitably modern in design without being forced to look futuristic. The script could probably have done with greater clarity and the acting is a bit too earnest to be punchy, but if you like your sci-fi with some brains behind it then look no further. Daniel King

★★★★☆

The Cat and the Canary Dir Paul Leni, US 1927 Eureka, Blu-ray

A classic of the comedy-horror genre, The Cat and the Canary has been filmed several times. Based on a successful play staged in the US in the early 1920s, the best-known version is that from 1939 starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. However, director Paul Leni’s film from 1927 is the OG. The basic plot is as old as the hills: at a gloomy mansion, various parties arrive for the reading of a will and the beneficiary comes under threat from someone – or something – that covets the legacy.

It can be difficult to imagine a place in today’s market for a silent film nearly 100 years old. Sure, silent films still have their aficionados – foremost among them being the great Kevin Brownlow, who has more or less dedicated his life to documenting and championing films from the silent era. In the streaming age, with so much new product reaching our screens on a daily basis, I’m not sure whether there’s even much awareness that silent films exist, let alone a desire to watch them.

Films from the silent era seem so impossibly remote in time from today’s mega-budget superhero epics that people find them difficult to relate to. For instance, one of the actors in Leni’s film – Tully Marshall, who plays the lawyer Roger Crosby – was born while the US Civil War was still in progress. To teenagers today, a film from the 1920s must seem like an historical artefact rather than a piece of entertainment.

And yet there is plenty of entertainment to be had in The

Cat and the Canary. For one thing, it’s actually quite modern in its presentation. Okay, the setting is pure gothic, but there are young guys in sharp suits, automobiles, telephones, and all the rest of it. In fact, there’s an interesting play between the modern and the gothic going on in it: as well as the more modern elements there are hidden passages, sliding doors, dungeons and disappearing corpses.

The black comedy doesn’t land quite so well, although the cynicism survives and there is one great sequence where Creighton James (as the somewhat inept but brave-hearted hero Paul Jones) finds himself hiding under a bed while a young lady gets undressed. Racy for 1927? Not really, for this was before the motion picture industry imposed on itself the terribly puritanical Hays Code.

This new release from Eureka, in their excellent Masters of Cinema series, presents the film on Blu-ray as a 4K restoration of the original negative and it looks sensational. There are multiple extras too: audio commentaries, video essays and many interviews. So do yourself a favour and instead of the latest blockbuster release, take a chance on this and marvel at its beauty, graceful camerawork, magnificent lighting and winning performances.You won’t regret it.

Daniel King

★★★☆☆