Happy New Year! Michael French of RetroBlasting joins us for an exciting trip with Biggles: Adventures in Time (1986), directed by John Hough (of Watcher in the Woods and The Legend of Hell House fame). It's an ambitious and eccentric British fantasy-adventure that attempts to translate W. E. Johns’ imperial-era aviation hero into the idiom of 1980s blockbuster cinema. Produced by Rusty Lemorande (writer of Electric Dreams), the film has since acquired a reputation less as a failed franchise-starter than as a cult curiosity. It stars Alex Hyde-White as a contemporary New Yorker, Jim, who is randomly pulled back in time to the Western Front of the First World War, where he becomes entangled with the dashing Royal Flying Corps ace James "Biggles" Bigglesworth, played with the essential stiff-upper-lip earnestness by Neil Dickson. Peter Cushing also appears in one of his final screen roles.

Should Biggles: Adventures in Time be sprung from the movie oubliette to soar again like its hero looping bravely back into the fray, or grounded permanently like a 'time-twin' displaced forever in the wrong era? Find out!

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Happy holidays! Our festive special this year focuses on The Curse of the Cat People (1944), directed by Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise (of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Haunting fame), and produced by Val Lewton for RKO – a sequel that daringly abandons the horror conventions of its predecessor in favour of an atmospheric, psychological fairy-tale. The story follows young Amy Reed (Ann Carter), the sensitive and lonely daughter of Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) and Alice (Jane Randolph), whose imaginary friend manifests in the form of the serene and spectral Irena (Simone Simon), the tragic figure from Cat People (1942). With its expressionistic visuals, gentle pacing, and Lewton’s characteristically suggestive storytelling, should this film finally be released from the Movie Oubliette to flourish like Amy finding a true festive friend, or left to linger in the shadows like the fading spirits of Christmas past? Find out!

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Our final patrons' choice episode for 2025 is the 1982 VHS relic The Flight of Dragons from TV special animation legends Rankin/Bass. Based loosely on the speculative science book by Peter Dickinson and the fantasy novels of Gordon R. Dickson, the film sends the author insert character on a quest to save a magical realm from the suffocating encroachment of mankind's science. Along the way, Peter will meet wizards, dragons, a winsome princess, and an evil sorcerer voiced by James Earl Jones. But is it a forgotten classic that deserves to be in a domed nostalgic magic nature reserve, or should it be consigned to the straight-to-video bargain bin? Find out!

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In the last of our series of early previews of forthcoming films, gleaned from Conrad's time at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) under the wing of Toronto native and film critic extraordinaire, Joe Lipsett, we're looking at two gold-and-turquoise whimsical fantasies: Dust Bunny and Eternal Return.

The former is Hannibal and Pushing Daisies showrunner Bryan Fuller's directorial debut, introducing Sophie Sloane as a young girl who recruits the assassin who lives next door (Mads Mikkelsen) to slay the monster that lives under her bed. Cue a delightfully colourful and frequently absurd fairytale that also features fun supporting turns from Sigourney Weaver as Mikkelsen's handler and David Dastmalchian as a rival assassin. It's an odd blend of ingredients, but does it work?

Eternal Return is writer-director Yaniv Raz's attempt to create a whimsical romantic time travel fantasy, starring Naomi Scott as a broken-hearted twenty-something and Kit Harington as the eccentric map shop owner who believes he can navigate her back to emotionally significant moments in her life... and possibly change them. Also featuring Simon Callow as an elderly friend who also narrates in his sonorous tones, and set in a London that wouldn't look out of place in a Potter adaptation, does this romantic confection sweep Conrad off his feet?

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Dead Birds (2004), directed by Alex Turner and produced during the early-2000s boom in grimy, low-budget horror, is a Confederate-era ghost story that alternates between jump scares for a slow rot of dread and bad decisions. It follows a group of Civil War deserters – played by E.T.'s Henry Thomas, Patrick Fugit, Michael Shannon, and Isaiah Washington – who rob a bank and hole up in a derelict plantation, only to discover it’s crawling with the supernatural consequences of its own bloody past! So should this dusty relic be set free at last or should it be trapped in the dark with its guilt? Find out!

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We're back with our penultimate pair of exciting early previews of forthcoming attractions, gleaned from Conrad's time with Joe Lipsett at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). This time, the connection between them is simpler: they both feature one of Conrad's favourite actors, 1917's George Mackay.

The first, & Sons, stars Bill Nighy as a reclusive famous novelist who gathers his two estranged sons, Richard (Johnny Flynn) and Jamie (you guessed it, George Mackay), for an important announcement about their half-brother, Andy (Noah Jupe)... with a fantastical twist. This slow burn family drama with a sci-fi/fantasy element is an adapted from a novel by David Gilbert, directed by Pablo Trapero.

Perhaps more hotly anticipated is the new film from Cornish 16-mm phenomenon Mark Jenkins, director of Bait and Enys Men. Rose of Nevada features Mackay in a leading role alongside Masters of the Air's Callum Turner, as two men who unwisely sign up to work on a fishing boat that mysteriously drifted back into the docks – sans crew – after disappearing decades before. What follows is a voyage into an uncanny time-travel purgatory... but did it work? Find out!

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Joe Lipsett of Horror Queers joins Conrad again for another couple of advance previews of films at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and it's another case of spotting a couple of movies with a similar premise. In this case, it's women going to an isolated manor house for some form of wellness/recuperation exercise... only to discover things are not what they seem!

Retreat is Ted Evans' feature debut, and stars Anne Zander as a young woman who visits an isolated retreat for deaf people in the English countryside, run by the imperious Mia (Sophie Stone). There she discovers a community that may have more in mind than providing a safe space that helps prepare its members for life in the uncaring world of the hearing. Hailed as the world's first deaf thriller – the film's principle cast and its director are deaf – the film's relationship with sound is particularly fascinating.

Honey Bunch is an eerie horror/thriller from Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli, in which its central character Diana (Grace Glowicki) and her doting husband Homer (Ben Petrie) arrive at... yes, an isolated country house... so the former can recuperate from an unspecified recent accident. When we tell you Diana's injuries include brain trauma and memory loss, genre fans' twist-detecting spidey senses will immediately start tingling. Steeped in a late 70s Let's Scare Jessica to Death aesthetic, is an atmospheric affair – but did we like it? Find out!

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Seventh Son (2014), an overcooked fantasy-adventure directed by Sergei Bodrov and adapted loosely from Joseph Delaney’s 'The Spook’s Apprentice', was a troubled Universal–Legendary Pictures co-production whose delays, rewrites, and ballooning budget became as notorious as the film itself. Set in a vaguely medieval landscape of witches, knights, and prophetic farm boys, it stars Jeff Bridges (yes, it's a JB double bill on Movie Oubliette!) gargling his way through a swamp of dialogue, Julianne Moore relishing her turn as an evil sorceress, and Ben Barnes looking perpetually bewildered as the titular seventh son of a seventh son. Game of Thrones heartthrob Kit Harington and Tomb Raider Alicia Vikander are also in the movie, apparently. Should this magical relic be sprung from the oubliette or should it be thrown off a cliff and left for dead? Find out!

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Our fourth bonus preview of forthcoming attractions that Conrad and Joe Lipsett caught at TIFF focuses on two British thrillers with a similar theme: children being locked in basements! The first, Heel (it was called 'Good Boy' when we saw it, but they must have changed it to avoid confusion with the haunted house film told through the eyes of a dog), sees an aimless and hedonistic teenager (Anson Boon) get abducted by Chris (Stephen Graham) and Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), and subjected to their unorthodox approach to parenting. The second, Bad Apples, stars Saoirse Ronan as a primary school teacher in the UK who, though an unfortunate sequence of events, ends up trapping a foul-mouthed, disruptive student in her basement. One is a compelling character drama that recognises and eschews genre conventions, the other is a cuttingly satirical black comedy. Did we like them? Find out!

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Our TIFF coverage continues with two horror-inflected films centring indigenous characters, and using hauntings as a method of exploring generational and personal trauma. In Taratoa Stappard's Mārama, a Māori woman travels from freshly colonised New Zealand to a creepily gothic English manor in the Yorkshire moors to uncover secrets about her family's past. Meanwhile, Bretten Hannam's At the Place of Ghosts (Sk+te'kmujue'katik) follows two estranged Mi’kmaw brothers' quest into the Canadian woods to avenge spirits that haunt them from their childhood.

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