Film Shapes

The old Cygnet cinema in Como reopened, initially for the Strange Festival in July, but is now running films from a very wide range of genres and eras (as well as quality levels).  An exhaustive scan through the calendar turned up the seminal kids'  fantasy-comedy,  Gremlins  from 1984. Seeing an opportunity to show the kids some 80s style, we ventured south of the river for the fi r st time in ages. Now I hadn't seen this since about, hmmm, maybe 1986 (I'm pretty sure I was too young to see it at the cinema on release, so it must have been a TV screening). It's an oddity, in that it borders on horror, flirts with comedy and yet is, at its centre, a soppy heart-warmer from Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, written by Chris Columbus. Apparently though, this film (as well as  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ) forced the MPAA to bring in the PG-13 rating, due to complaints about violent scenes. It starts with a slightly misplaced voice-over from an inventor/sa...