Northwest Film Event Highlights – January 2014

Welcome to 2014! We’re now only one year away from Marty McFly arriving in the future to tamper with the space-time continuum, but in the meantime there are lots of Northwest film events to check out. First up, why not get real sleazy with Manchester’s Cornerhouse at their Sleazeathon spectacular on 18 Jan? This Grindhouse-esque, all-night celebration of 1970s exploitation promises back-to-back screenings of some outrageous classics. Expect cult zombie fave The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, slasher granddaddy A Bay of Blood, giallo touchstone The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Tarantino’s Django Unchained inspiration Mandingo, the Tommy Lee Jones-starring Jackson County Jail, and trashy rape-revenge epic Act of Vengeance.

Too much for you to handle? Get down to Manchester’s Dancehouse Theatre instead. They’ll be bringing Jake and Elwood Blues back to the big screen for one night only on 16 Jan. John Landis’ seminal work The Blues Brothers perfectly combines humour with unadulterated cool and held the record for the maddest car chase in cinema history for years following its 1980 release. Make attending this screening your own personal mission from God. Then on 31 Jan, the same venue gets a visit from a certain sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania, as The Rocky Horror Picture Show is brought back to life for one last party. Lingerie at the ready, boys and girls.

Over in Liverpool, FACT has a double punch of must-see re-runs starting with director Gary Goddard’s campy-yet-cool 1987 gem Masters of the Universe (22 Jan). Catch a pre-Friends Courteney Cox help Swedish powerhouse Dolph Lundgren battle Frank Langella’s evil Skeletor for the fate of all Eternia in the only big-screen He-Man epic we’ve had so far.

Interdimensional swordplay not your thing? Then perhaps you’d like the second of FACT’s must-see January screenings, David Lean’s heartbreaking 1945 melodrama Brief Encounter (26 Jan). This touching story of social status constraints, unhappy marriage and the fleeting potential of happiness is as fresh today as it was during its war-time release (if you ignore the RP accents). Unmissable stuff.

And if you love live music as much as you love movies, get down to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic on 3 and 4 Jan for a special screening of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Here, Captain Jack will be joined by a live orchestra performing Hans Zimmer’s irresistible score for a totally immersive experience.