‘The Sense of an Ending’
Rated PG-13 — The adaptation of the Julian Barnes novel stars Jim Broadbent as a reclusive man jolted by an unexpected inheritance to make contact with a lover (Charlotte Rampling) from decades ago and reconsider actions taken during his life. Michelle Dockery and Harriet Walter co-star.
What’s the difference between science-fiction films and horror movies?
Horror grabs the gut; sci-fi tweaks the mind.
“Science fiction at its best is such a speculative genre, and there’s so much wonder attached to it,” said Joe Neff, who with Bruce Bartoo organizes separate movie marathons for sciencefiction and horror movies. “Especially if it’s interstellar travel — but even for things here on Earth, it was a way to think about the future, about science and about humanity.”
The Ohio 24-Hour Science Fiction Marathon will begin at noon Saturday at the Drexel Theatre.
One of the schedule highlights, Neff said, is the Midwest premiere of “Nova Seed,” a hand-drawn film by animator-director Nick DiLiberto that Neff calls a “3-D psychedelic space opus.”
“It’s a fascinating story that the director essentially spent three years on and off creating by hand,” Neff said. “You talk about passion projects.”
Also on the bill are two somewhat-related films: “Dune,” the 1984 adaptation by director David Lynch of the 1965 Frank Herbert novel of the same name, and “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” a documentary about director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ambitious plan to film “Dune” that never got off the ground.
Stephen Scarlata, a producer of “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” will appear at the screening. He also appeared at the October horror festival during the screening of “Beyond the Gates,” which he also produced.
“He talked about his lifelong passion for the ‘Dune’ world,” Neff recalled, “and door we kind of joked around and said, ‘If we ever have “Dune,” you can be our house “Dune” expert, right?’ We contacted him, and he was completely game for it, so we took advantage.”
Also to be screened are the 1956 film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (starring Kevin McCarthy) and the 1978 remake (starring Donald Sutherland).
The later version moves the setting from a small town to San Francisco and indulges in some of the new-age philosophies of the 1970s while remaining somewhat faithful to the original.
“There’s still a lot of flavor of the first one,” Neff said. “Stylistically, it’s definitely a darker film.”
Occasionally, a film straddles the line between sci-fi and horror. This year, that movie is “Slither” (2006), which centers on a small town in which a plague turns the populace into zombies and monsters.
“When you have something that’s technically an alien-invasion film, but it’s also a gore comedy — where the line between exists, I’m not too sure,” Neff said.
Still, Neff has found the sci-fi crowd accepting of films that veer toward horror.
“We’ve ably straddled that line over three decades,” he said. “It’s interesting — a few times over the history of the event, there have been films that qualified as fairly straight horror films that, for one reason or another, we’ve screened at sci-fi, and generally those have gone over well. ... I’m not sure we would premiere a strictly sci-fi film at the horror marathon.”
The lineup for the sci-fi marathon (with trailers and shorts set to be shown between movies):
“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956) (1996)
Seed” (2016) “Dark Star”
“City of the Lost Children” (1995) “Dune” (1984) “Jodorowsky’s Dune” (2013)
“Seconds”
“Nova
(1974) “Slither” (2006) “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978)
“Scanners” (1981) “The World’s End” (2013)