My Cultural Life - Death From Above and Below

What's Up? 

Look, this is controversial and I risk alienating certain people among my friends who might feel that I should either shut up or think another way. The thing is, stuff has happened this week that has essentially 'given me high blood pressure.'

It started with Scott Mills - a TV and radio personality who, to be totally honest, I know little or nothing about; he came onto the scene long after I'd given up with Radios One and Two. Initially I was disinterested in his sacking from the BBC and by the time I got around to writing this - Wednesday morning - the only thing he's guilty of, it seems, is an historic 'allegation' about possible coercive abuse. From 2004, which was dismissed by the police as having insufficient evidence to even be more than an informal interview in 2018.

It appears, on the face of it, that Scott Mills has had his career destroyed for something he's never been found guilty of and might be completely innocent of. Yes, I know the BBC wants to be whiter than white and they're not going to take any chances, in case Mills is somehow Jimmy Savile's protégé, but couldn't they have been a little less sledgehammery about it? 

The thing is, this isn't even the issue that's bugged me this week. The thing that has really boiled my piss is related to something I wrote about a month or so ago; about the kid I worked with when I was at the Youth Offending Service, the lad who got done for statutory rape. You see, I'm totally convinced that if that lad's name became known around Kettering and what he did was taken out of context, he would have his life destroyed...

So, what's that got to do with anything this week? Imagine if that lad had never gone to court. Imagine if the police knew his stepsister had a history of allegations about her before they deemed it worthy to follow up on her latest allegations? Then imagine social media existed in 2004 the way it does now and how the young man I worked with would have been treated by keyboard warriors and people who think the law dishes out inadequate sentences. It wouldn't be very nice, would it? It would probably be quite feral.

Now, this is going to seem like a very strange digression, but it isn't. My football club appointed a new manager on Tuesday 31st March; an Italian chap called Roberto De Zerbi, the former manager of Brighton and Marseille. The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Club and many of the woman's clubs associated with my team have strongly objected to RDZ's appointment, on a long term contract, despite the fact that the team are shit and could be relegated. They have been extremely vocal about the fact that RDZ was once the manager of former Man Utd footballer Mason Greenwood.

Greenwood, one or two of you might remember, was the young footballer, capped by England and being heralded by Man Utd as a world class star of the future. Then shortly after his 21st birthday, he was accused of assault and attempted rape and was suspended by Man U while the case slowly worked its way through the procedures. Shortly after Greenwood's 22nd birthday the case was dropped, the CPS and the police released a statement: the charges of attempted rape against Mason Greenwood [have been] dropped due to the withdrawal of key witnesses and new material that [has] came to light, which meant there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction. 

Yes, there were carefully leaked pictures of his then girlfriend to the press, which suggest he maybe shouldn't have been let off, but there were also reports that his then girlfriend had 'form' for this kind of thing; so where do you draw the line? Who do you believe? Can there really be any definitive villain?

However, the media - both social and the paid for kind - didn't want to leave this alone and a campaign, started by Countdown's Rachel Riley, saw to it that Man Utd would eventually sell the player, for a reduced fee, to a foreign side, because, despite Greenwood being innocent until proven guilty by a court of law, the press, publicity seeking mathematicians and social media shat and stamped in it and made sure his life in the UK was ruined. But... but... what's this got to do with Tottenham Hotspur?

Well, Man Utd sold Greenwood to Marseille and RDZ was manager when the French Riviera side bought the (by then) 23 year old player and RDZ was seen to give his support to the player and strangely enough didn't want to throw the kid under another bus.

Let's simply look at the facts here: a young man was charged with a crime; the alleged crime was never prosecuted because there was not enough evidence and the police (no-so-subtly) released information that suggested the witness statement by the alleged victim had more holes in it than Swiss cheese. The problem here is a lot of people had made their minds up about Greenwood, maybe because he's a young black footballer, so he must be guilty and as a result these people have ensured he never works in the country of his birth ever again and his only crime was to be on the wrong end of an unproved allegation.

The new manager of my football team is now being smeared with same tar brush. He's apparently not fit enough to manage a team of Spurs standing... This is because he supported one of his members of staff; wasn't going to be drawn on the subject and made that clear to the predominantly British journalists present at the unveiling of the new Marseille player. I wouldn't mind if these Spurs fans were spitting their dummies out of their gobs because RDZ had gone on French TV and said, "Mason admitted everything to me, but I don't care where he puts his things as long as its in the back of an opponents net!" But all he did was offer some support to a lad, who might be a complete shit, but hasn't been proven to be a complete shit just yet...

I might be wrong here. I might have got this totally wrong and the press, the internet and the people who have dedicated their lives to destroying Mason Greenwood's know something our courts, police and crown prosecutors don't. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places for their justification and verification to continue their hatred of this young black footballer. Maybe Scott Mills is an evil predator? Maybe the kid I worked with in the Noughties was secretly a friend of Jeffrey Epstein and maybe I'm a sympathiser because I worked with him and didn't campaign to have his life destroyed even more? 

Or maybe guilt or innocence means nothing when the mob rules?

The Scales of Justice

A double bill of Daredevil - Born Again this week (I have no idea why) and as everything seems to be turning to shit for Matt, Karen and those opposing Fisk, there's a ray of hope and some good news. The thing is both sides think they're inches away from a breakthrough. The Anti Vigilante Task Force has become a law unto themselves and the Governor of New York gets into the act, much to Fisk's annoyance, because it seems she can't be bought and has no skeletons in her closet. A new player emerges, but in general this felt like a midway point in the story and had this stayed as it originally was planned - one 13 part series - that's pretty much where we'd be. It's still head and shoulders better than anything else MCU TV has done even if it was largely dancing around and going nowhere. 

Shrunken Heads

Jimmy is incapable of addressing his 'daddy issues' but it becomes clear that he thinks of Paul as more of a father than his real one, or at least that's the impression this week's episode of Shrinking gave. Speaking of his real dad, he dumps the fact he's not going to be at Alice's graduation and she takes it surprisingly well, but she isn't carrying the emotional baggage her dad is. Everything else starts to get resolved; the beginning of the end has happened and the places are all moving to their new positions. Derek and Liz have a disagreement over something they should be happy about and Brian decides to do the honourable thing and accompany his husband to Tennessee. Sean gets his own place, makes up with his friend and all that's left is Jimmy and his happiness, except he looks like he's going on a downward spiral. Two to go. 

A Dollop of Shit

Jesus wept. I need to stop subjecting myself to shite. After not really enjoying Kiss the Girls last week, I thought the sequel Along Came A Spider would at least have the added bonus of no Ashley Judd; but even the absence of this below-average actress couldn't save it. This time around Morgan Freeman's Alex Cross had the dubious pleasure of acting opposite Monica Potter (no, me neither) as a Secret Service agent whose main job is protecting a senator's daughter and failing. This truly is a mish-mash of bad ideas, poor execution and some of the most woeful acting I have seen in many moons. Like this film's prequel, it lacked in many departments and even the twists ended up being more yawn than yowser. Freeman wanders around looking and sounding like the only person on set who has ever been in a film before and, frankly, he was probably pleased there wasn't a threequel. Awful rubbish. 2/10

Pigs of War? 

On the recommendation of a friend, we watched War Dogs with Miles Teller, Jonah Hill and Bradley Cooper. I've had it on the Flash Drive of Doom (FDoD) for about four months and simply never got around to watching it, but Sunday night we remedied that and it made a pleasant change to watch a comedy action film that actually delivered - even if delivery problems was one of the main themes of the movie. Teller's David has been struggling with a pregnant wife doing his job as a professional masseuse when Jonah Hill's Ephraim wanders back into his life. The two had been friends at High School and now Ephraim is offering his old buddy the chance of making some money by joining him as an arms dealer... 

They start by supplying stuff to the US government that big arms dealers simply don't touch, but as they become more experienced and meet new people their chances of becoming big players increases until they get a contract to supply the US army a lot of AK47 bullets. The problem is the bullets come from China and the USA doesn't do business with China. This is where Bradley Cooper comes into the thick of things and everything goes from a little dodgy to 'absolutely get the fuck away from this' crazy. It is an excellent film and a true story about how the American Dream can be a quick reality if you're prepared to break the law. It's worth checking out if you can find it anywhere. 8/10

The Letdown

The worst thing? I watched this on Saturday and realised on Monday afternoon I hadn't reviewed it. That's almost a bad review in itself, but the opening episode of season five of For All Mankind was really understated and devoid of the same kind of set-up and jeopardy seen in previous seasons. This was bordering on ... soap opera. Obviously politics is taking a front seat, but everything seems to have stood still over the 10 years since the end of season four and the 'stealing' of the Goldilocks asteroid. It could almost be a kind of prequel to the tensions between Earth and Mars highlighted many years ago in Babylon 5 or The Expanse and not as interesting. In series past there has been a era changing event to kick the season off, this time it's the first murder on Mars and the remaining original cast members, seen this week, going through various stages of age related stress. It felt tired and uninspired, let's hope that isn't the case.

Episode two dropped before I finished this week's blog and while it was an improvement on the opener, with a couple of revelations that err towards big things, it still felt a little like the producers wanted to make the world (and surrounding colonies) a little more like a Trump World Order. There's a lot of Russians in this but little mention of the USSR, the same with North Korea and, of course, in this alternate history China is a bit part player. There's an element of chess pieces being moved, but at the moment they all seem to be going against our motley group of heroes.

Death in Paradise

This nagging feeling that we lost touch with what Paradise is actually about was amplified to the nth degree with the season two finale and I have to admit that I'm weirdly intrigued by it, despite suggesting it's time to call time on the show. Will it be back for season three? I reckon it will, but let's be honest about this - there is no paradise any longer and this is no longer a show about some survivors of a natural and nuclear holocaust, it's about AI and whether or not time is now full of anomalies screwing up with the actual fabric of space and time. Yes, you read that correctly.  This is about an impossibly super AI computer trying to avert the end of the world by creating space time anomalies... It seems the bits I've been losing track of might have been deliberate and it's also possible that none of this happened and everyone in this is living inside a giant simulation created by Alex - the super AI, thus creating time shifts and weird things happening that maybe shouldn't. I really don't know; this show has found a shark, hired a motorcycle and created an entire performance of new ways of jumping over said shark...

Underground Dung

There are loads of trash films from the 80s and 90s that I wouldn't give house room to in 2026, so why I thought watching Tremors again would be a good idea I have no idea. Kevin Bacon looks very, very young in it, even Fred Ward looks the right side of 50 and these two play a couple of hick hillbilly wasters doing shit jobs in a town of 14 people called Perfection. The acting is hammy; the assortment of characters are cliched and the idea of strange prehistoric (possibly) creatures attracted to vibrations and terrorising the 14 people isn't that bad, in fact the special effects for a 1990 movie aren't awful; it's just a load of shit. Stinky - like the creatures - shit and somehow it's spawned god knows how many sequels. I'm not even glad I watched it again; I wanted to switch it off after five minutes. 3/10

Another Offer Refused

Strangely, it was the wife who suggested we watch The Godfather Part 2 and so we did. Unlike the first part, this really felt like a new film for me. I had seen it, but many many years ago and it clearly didn't have that much of an impression on me. This is an even longer movie than the first film, weighing in at almost three and a half hours and having an even more rambling story, taking place over a shorter space of time. This part kicks off in 1957, Michael is living in Nevada and has the local senator in his pocket, even if the local senator isn't aware of this. The extent of how much control the Corleones have is never really explored, even if we get the backstory of how Vito - a young Robert De Nero - became a crime lord. Like the first film, this is a movie devoid of levity (and in this case brevity) and is essentially a tale of someone pissing Michael off and they get whacked, except in a couple of cases the hit goes wrong, but eventually everyone Michael wanted dead died. That's the thing, Michael Corleone might have been Vito's great hope for legitimising the family, but he's nothing more than a paranoid psychopath who is more interested in revenge than anything else.

Honestly? I found this to be a dull movie, over long and without any real sense that I could give a fuck about any of the characters; with the exception of Robert Duval's Tom Hagen, who, it seems, gets dicked around all the time for being totally loyal to the cause. I can't bring myself to award this a 6, but a 7/10 seems charitable.

Trailer Trash

The new (IMAX) trailer for Supergirl dropped on April 1st and it appears to be genuine and not an April Fool's prank. It still has a Guardian of the Galaxy feel about it; we see Lobo properly and it appears to all be about finding a cure for a poison some nutters have shot into Krypto and as Kara has survivor guilt and Krypto is her bestest buddy then you know what's coming and how it will end. The dog will survive and Supergirl will kick ass to a banging soundtrack. The end. It does look cool though, so it'll probably be a load of donkeys balls.

More Afghanistan

There's nothing wrong with Guy Ritchie's The Covenant apart from the fact it's surprisingly dull and boring. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a sergeant in the US army traipsing around Afghanistan looking for IEDs. He has a local man as translator, who because of his associations is regarded as a traitor by many of his own. When Jake's entire platoon is wiped out in a Taliban attack, it's just him and his translator left and the latter goes through hell to get his 'boss' home, Then the US government reneges on a deal to bring the translator and his family back to the USA, so Jake sorts it out himself. 5/10

Rich Pricks

Jon Hamm's back as Coop in Your Friends & Neighbours, the show about a rich man who loses his job so starts robbing his friends and neighbours, because they're all so wealthy it's months before they even realise anything has been stolen. The new series introduces Ash - played by James Marsden - who is obviously going to be a crook, maybe even organised crime, but at the moment he's just another rich guy flaunting his money like there's no tomorrow. Coop has a bad back, which is making cat burglary more difficult than it should be and everything has moved on a year and feels like there's some back story that we're going to need filling in. It is a mildly amusing look at people with more money than sense.

What's Up Next?

Well... The Boys is back for its final series and I suppose I'm mildly anticipating it. Actually, I don't think I am. It was good for the first two seasons and then it got bogged down in story and reasons to exist.

It does appear to be a boom time in TV suddenly; from complaining about there being bugger all three weeks ago to a schedule that's packed with stuff. I mean, I haven't even bothered mentioning in the main body that Landward is back (for people in Scotland, but you can find it on iPlayer) and how that's an enjoyable 30 minutes a week of stuff that puts Countryfile to shame. I also haven't bothered mentioning that our guilty pleasure for the last couple of weeks has been Escape to the Country, but not every one, just places we're familiar with. It's a dreadful show, but somehow manages to makes itself seem so much better than all the ones of a similar ilk, such as A New Life in the Sun on C4, which swaps aesthetics for some kind of strange competition.

To be honest with you, I could have written about loads of stuff this week. I simply didn't think it was appropriate, which is why I'm surprised I'm still leading with the story I am. The thing is I'm such a feminist it surprises a lot of people - usually women. So I usually prefer to avoid issues like sexual assault, gender or things that might suggest I'm some kind of misogynist and this is supposed to be entertaining, but it's also about the culture I subject myself to and the news is very much part of that culture.

I even got to the point midweek where I really just felt like switching off the news, removing the Guardian from my bookmarks and not interact with anything outside of the town I live in. There are 21 Donald Trump stories in Saturday's Guardian. TWENTY ONE! That's almost a fifth of the stories covered on the newspaper's website. I know the man is a dangerous psychopathic narcissist but I'm fed up to the back teeth with seeing his fucking smug face plastered all over the media. It's what he wants. He wants the world to be talking about him ALL THE FUCKING TIME!!!

And here I am, talking about that great orange cunt in my closing remarks. It's like the press at the moment are fixated on that man, his fucking Mini Me in the UK and whose careers they can ruin because someone said something once when they were 8 and if they don't accept full responsibility for it, own it and apologise for it then their careers are going to be over. What a fucking world we live in?

My Cultural Life - Classical Trash

What's Up?

As we zero in towards the May elections, I just want to remind people out there with bad memories that however bad you think the current Labour government is, try and remember the chaos and corruption we suffered for at least 14 of the 14 years the last Tory government rained down on us and while you're doing that imagine what a country the UK will be like if you give Reform UK power - given they are made up almost 50% of the worst Tory ministers we had during those 14 years; they want to stop you from having what you're entitled to - and if you refuse to believe that you deserve everything that will happen to you - and they have a leader who is a racist, Russia-loving cockwomble who will say anything to get into power so he can give tax cuts and pay days to all his far right friends. He'll dismantle everything and fuck off to France.

That's what's up and you really shouldn't ignore it.

Too Many Jimmys

After the truly dull and boring 28 Years Later, we kept putting off watching 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple because we kind of dreaded the underwhelming feeling we were expecting. We shouldn't have been so worried; this is the film 28 Years Later should have been (although, in truth, you couldn't have had this without that). This time the focus is on Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) from the previous picture and his attempts to try and discover what makes the virus that turns people into marauding nutters tick. It also follow the Jimmys - led by Jack O'Connell - as they sadistically kill their way through the non-infected survivors, while despatching the infected with relative ease. This is a much better, fast moving and intelligent movie that, of course, leaves things open for a third part, by not only leaving one story completely open, but also adding the story of 'Samson', who we met in the first film, but takes a much greater role in this one. Samson is an Alpha and Dr Ian thinks he can cure him. If you watched 28 Years Later and felt cheated, then watch this as many of the pieces slot together to make a superior chapter. There's also an intriguing cameo that will give you a good feeling about the future. 8/10

An Offer You Can't Refuse

I don't know how long it has been since I last watched The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola's seminal classic gangster movie, regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. It's probably been 40 plus years and if I want to be honest, I  don't think this epic has aged well. There is a sense of this being far too long and sprawling, like it could have had some of the fat trimmed off of it and maybe some of the scenes could have been a little less circumspect. Maybe some time showing more of the violent world of the Corleones. It is still a great film, but there's something about it that just feels a little too melodramatic, too stylised and earnest. Too art house. Yes, it's about a Mafia family across a period of time and the wars they get involved with and the losses they take by being a crime syndicate family, but it really lacks levity; it's just far too serious and, as I said, goes on and on and on. In 1972 this would have felt different, in 2026 it feels of a time.

I suppose the key thing about this isn't Marlon Brando's Don Vito Corleone, or James Caan's Sonny, or even Robert Duval's Tom, this is about Al Pacino's Michael, the one member of the family that Vito did not want to be a criminal and how he ends up being the best suited to replace his father, because not only does he have the brains, he also has the ruthless streak that is needed to be the next Godfather. It is a three hour movie and like last week's Gandhi there's the feeling of having to plough through so much story without getting a real feel for the lives in it. I'd argue that a huge chunk of the middle could probably have been omitted and it wouldn't have lost any of its impact. Still, it's still worthy of an 8/10 although I'm sure some people wouldn't be happy with me marking it so low...

Bunker Dreams

I'm getting a little confused now. The penultimate episode of the second season of Paradise appears to be getting more bogged down and I've lost track of what's going on so much I'm not sure who is who and what is what now. Xavier's distraction is sorted out relatively and quite boringly easily, before him and his recently reunited spouse are on a train to Colorado. In the bunker, Sinatra meets the leader of the guys who have turned up on her doorstep, the same guys we met with Shailene Woodley in the opening episode and one of them might be her dead son, if I'm following this correctly and some odd shit happens. Jane meets her match and everyone is talking about someone or something called 'Alex'. I don't think I have the will to persevere with this after next week; there's simply too much going on and none of it is very interesting.

Desert Island Dread

Sam Raimi is back. His first film since that Doctor Strange load of nonsense stars Rachel McAdam again, this time as a plain Jane accountant who attracts the disdain of her new Gen-Z CEO. He is played by Dylan O'Brien and he's a complete arsehole. The two somehow end up being marooned on a desert island near Thailand and despite McAdam's Linda doing everything she can to help and save her boss, he's an ungrateful wanker prepared to stab her in the back at the earliest convenience. The thing is, she's a fan of survival programmes and knows her way around a desert island and he's just an entitled twat. Will he change; will he see Linda for the hero she is? Send Help is a black comedy liberally laced with some eye-popping events, to emphasise the pain the two main characters have to endure. It starts off looking like it's going to be a Misery riff and then morphs into a kind of sadomasochistic Robinson Crusoe and while it was slightly absurd in places it was good fun. 7/10

Two Killers All Filler

Sometimes I find myself wondering why it is I never watched a specific movie. Was it because I had been put off by reviews I'd read? Possibly. Maybe it was from someone I know who's seen it and wasn't impressed? Also possibly. I don't know why I'd never got around to watching Morgan Freeman's Kiss the Girls or maybe I had watched it and just completely forgotten about it, except for one little thing, that nagged me all the way through watching it. I knew who the bad guy was almost the instant he turned up on screen - so maybe I had seen it and thought I should never watch it again. Aside from that this is a film that floundered at times - the story felt strangely superficial; the acting was, at times, the kind that makes you pucker your lips and wince at how bad it was and it also felt like it had had about 20 minutes cut out, which might have helped with many things about the seeming brevity of the actual story. This was released around the time that Ashley Judd was being touted as the Next Big Thing and someone watched this and realised she wasn't even going to be the next forgotten thing. Her character alone felt tonally wrong and like she had been written by a man, because she was either super weak or super strong; she had no normal traits; no middle ground. This is the story of a serial killer who is also a serial collector of intelligent women and the incompetent (or are they?) North Carolina police department who seem to have no idea what is going on. Freeman comes along as criminal psychologist Alex Cross to solve their case and uncover the shady secrets. 5/10

Absurd Nonsense

I liked Olympus Has Fallen, compared to the disappointing White House Down it was full of visceral action and edge of the seat jeopardy. However, London Has Fallen, the sequel - and the film I mentioned had a lousy rating on IMDB - is absolute horse wank. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, about it is bollocks. It is wrong from almost the opening minutes. I know Gerard Butler is from Scotland, but there are a bunch of British actors in this and you would have thought that one of them, in passing, might have mentioned that the entire premise for this movie is rubbish. From the destruction of London, via bad special effects, to the fact that it made little or no sense, was geographically all over the place and suggests every countries intelligence is rubbish and not worth the money that is spent on it. If anyone working on the film thought to mention to anyone important that much of this was senseless rubbish then the people who made this film took no notice and still made this load of twaddle. The movie was borderline racist and worked on the premise that you can infiltrate the Met, MI5 and 6 and the army with enough rogue mercenaries and NO ONE notices is pretty much clueless; or that London's people would simply mysteriously disappear when they could be filming it on their smart phones and streaming it live on social media was utterly fucking moronic. This was appalling and worthless. It's much worse than the 5.9 rating it commands on the internet. 2/10 (and it really should be 1).

Daddy Issues

As the show gradually winds down to its inevitable ending in three weeks, we had more resolutions (and revelations), more confrontations and quite a few unexpected events in the latest episode of Shrinking. Sean (Luke Tennie) has been offered the job of sous chef with a big LA restauranteur but is going to let his own paid staff down badly. Paul manages to persuade Gaby back to work with added incentive and Brian gets to camp it up while giving his own version of a Ted Talk. Yet all of this pales into insignificance to what is happening at Jimmy's. His father is back on the scene and making big plans for Alice's graduation, but only Jimmy knows the bad news. This brings him at odds with Sofie, who, like everyone else, thinks Jimmy needs to park his daddy issues and just enjoy his old man being there for his daughter. The thing is Jimmy knows his dad better than anyone else...

Man Without Fears

This week has seen the return of television to my life. Despite knowing there's only three episodes of Shrinking left and that the first episode of the new season of For All Mankind will not be watched until Saturday, I did get to see the opening salvo from Daredevil: Born Again as it winged its way back onto the small screen and proved yet again it is head and shoulders better than anything else Marvel has done for the small screen. In an episode that mirrors the shit that ICE has been doing in the USA for the last six months, Matt realises that his battle against Wilson Fisk has just got a whole lot worse and it isn't safe for any of his friends. As the Anti Vigilante Task Force run NYC with an iron fist and Fisk increases his power with the help of Langley, Virginia, it might take strange alliances to help him finally beat his nemesis. This is outstanding television and shouldn't be missed.

Righteous Motherf*ckers

As we plough our way through classic movies of the 20th century, we found our way to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, a movie that almost everybody know at least 50% of but usually forgets the other 50% - not because it isn't good, but probably because it isn't as good as the most memorable stuff. I have mixed feelings about Tarantino films. Some of them are genius, others tedious and dull; this falls into the former category as it tells a series of inter-related stories centring around Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L Jackson) as they either circle around or are directly involved in tales from a few days in LA. Ably abetted by the likes of Urma Thurman, Ving Rhames, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer, this has Hollywood themed restaurants, accidental shootings in the backs of cars, fixed boxing fights and gimps in leather. If you've never seen this movie then you need to rectify that as soon as possible; if you haven't seen it for a long time, it still packs a hell of a punch and while some of the circumspect scenes leave you wondering if these people are really like that or just reading a script; but you can't deny it's a classic of cinema. 9/10

What's Next?

It's quiz week again, so our viewing has been curtailed by more interesting things. Next week there's more Daredevil, the return of my favourite TV show - For All Mankind - and we might give Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen a spin, but given the Guardian likes it so much and has been factually inaccurate about it, I'm not terribly hopeful...

There's the season finale of Paradise, which is likely to be our final outing with it as well. It's a show I've wanted to like, but it just feels... like it doesn't really have a story. The countdown to the final episode of Shrinking really begins in earnest and there's always some other thing that creeps under my radar, this time it's the new season of Your Friends and Neighbours. John Hamm is back as the stockbroker turned cat burglar who robs from his neighbours to pay for his lifestyle choices.

Next week's films could mainly be made up of sequels. I think The Godfather 2 might get a viewing (if I can convince the wife), plus there's another Morgan Freeman/Alex Cross load of nonsense to watch and if I'm feeling masochistic there's the third in the 'Has Fallen' trilogy, but after the aberration of the 'London' instalment I might choose to abuse myself instead.

Oh and I saw the trailer for the TV adaptation of the first Harry Potter book and thought it was just a bunch of people recreating the original film but with different actors pretending to be the previous actor who played that role, if you get what I mean? It's out at Christmas. Weekly or in one drop? Who can say.

As usual, blah blah blah. 

My Cultural Life - Echo Foxtrot Foxtrot Oscar Foxtrot Foxtrot

What's Up?

The Oscars, that's what. 

I suppose, this column is essentially both review and critique. I am a critic and therefore I crit. I suppose you could label me a specific type of film watcher, but generally I think my viewing habits - especially with films - are varied and wide reaching. Therefore, I can disagree with peoples opinions until the cows come home, because it's my opinion and I'm sharing it with you. I just want to get that out there and emphasise it's nothing personal.

I seem to be old. I seem to be unable to see the masterpiece inside certain films, which I have never been particularly fond of. Sometimes I can see a good film even if I'm not enjoying watching it - god knows there's been enough of that - but usually I wonder about the opinions of others. Take One Battle After Another, I think it was loud, rambling and utterly pointless. Paul Thomas Anderson's films are largely built around chaotic whimsy. I don't dislike his films, he's a kind of Avant Garde Woody Allen for the 21st Century, but I didn't really like Allen's movies, so... meh.

This particular winner of six Oscars was so memorable, the wife asked me when she saw it had won to remind her what it was about - we watched it 10 days ago. It wasn't funny. It wasn't dramatic. It felt like someone wanted to make a Cohen Brothers movie but had never seen a Cohen Brothers movie. I saw no reason why a film consisting of lots of shouting, peculiar scenes and borderline slapstick would be able to win like that. If [IMHO] the film wasn't really that good, are we talking about rewarding the best films or the best marketed films?

Don't get me going with Sinners. We watched it almost a year ago now and thought it was a strange mixture of post WW1 ethnic poverty and oppression and vampire movie. I didn't see the message. I didn't think it did a very good job of telling what little story there was. It was full of characters and had the rhythm of a modern-day black version of Towering Inferno, but with less jeopardy. 

Except... looking at the list of films nominated for best picture - we've only seen half - there are a couple we have to [can] watch and there were a few we're unlikely to ever watch, so this can't be definitive, but that's a shit selection of 'the year's best films,' isn't it? I can't really remember that many of the previous few years' winners either and if reminded I'd probably shrug. It's like Oscars have become like the Turner Prize for films, maybe crossed a little bit with the Darwin Awards. I don't think it reflects what people watch and enjoy and it probably hasn't for a long time.

Yet, the day after the annual snoozefest, we had my 'favourite' newspaper claiming the Academy Awards are now 'for everybody' and 'have changed for the better'... Really? Because a black vampire film won a couple of gongs? Because Paul Thomas fucking Anderson was finally rewarded for not giving up with his quirky overlong bits of nonsense? The Guardian*, as usual, can go fuck itself. How this newspaper can even call itself a serious commentator of film, when it gives positive reviews to all manner of shit, has been up for debate for a long time. 

* Yes, I know it's an obsession, but tough; it's my column... The Guardian gave Maggie Gyllenhaal's second directed film a FOUR star review and called it 'electrifying' and literally fell over itself to praise actor du jour Jessie Buckley in her role in The Bride, a 'post-modern' reworking of the Bride of Frankenstein as a Bonnie & Clyde gangster movie - yes, that's what it's about. Film fans have been a little less ... accommodating, as it - today alone (Wednesday) - has wavered between 5.8 and 5.9 on IMDB. The reviews have been a little more critical: "Strong concept, thin execution," or "About halfway through The Bride!, I found myself doing the one thing no director wants: checking my watch," or "Did anyone at Warner Bros. watch this film before releasing it?" One reviewer, who claimed they really wanted to like it, called it "Excruciating," while another said, "a terribly slow, misguided, incoherent mess."

But, you know, The fucking Guardian claims it's a FOUR star triumph, in the same month it claims the Oscars are now 'changed for the better,' perhaps the people running the newspaper will give each other reach arounds if this piece of stylised shit gets nominated for an Oscar next year? Suffice it to say, I will not be watching this or even giving it house room...

The only awards I give a minuscule fuck about are ones given to people who have made sacrifices or helped others in the face of adversity. If you have to give gongs out for films, they should be voted for by the people; they should reflect what people like; they should reward acting that makes a shit film average or an average movie good. If I was Michael B Jordan I'd be thinking of all the great black actors who didn't win Oscars for far better performances rather than think of myself as something special.

However, now that they're over we can go back about our normal viewing habits until some cunt mentions the O word just after New Year and the machine grinds its way back into view, yet again...

Trailer Trash

Is it a big thing now when Marvel has a new movie out? It's not like every time you take a shit there's a new MCU film any more, therefore there does seem to be something - dare I say it - exciting about a new feature from the place formerly known as the House of Ideas. This time it's the first official trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day and I've watched the trailer three times to give you my thoughts on it... Meh. That's it. Meh. So it has Frank Castle in it. Bruce Banner. Possibly Sadie Sink (she doesn't appear in the trailer, but do a search for the film on something like Duck Duck Go and she pops up all over it). There's the Scorpion - aka Mac Gargan - and there's something wrong with Peter Parker...

So why meh? Well, trailers are supposed to get you psyched up, aren't they? This didn't. This felt a little like we were going through some motions. Nothing reached out, didn't grab me by the balls or slap me around the face like an ancient Tango advert. This felt... meh. This could be a good thing; I mean how often have we watched trailers for BIG films and ended up with disappointment etched on our souls? 

What have we discovered? Well, Parker is still unknown, but Spidey's life seems to have gotten better. He's still lonely and missing his friends. He bumps into The Punisher and the two clearly know each other because Peter calls him Frank. Peter also asks Bruce Banner for some advice, because Peter is beginning to have strange things happen to him, which he doesn't understand and there's a narration over the top suggesting that he is mutating, the way real spiders (apparently) do. There's the briefest of appearances by the Scorpion and the suggestion that Spidey is about to come into direct contact with the Hand (or some other Yakuza-like organisation). Glasgow looks cool though... but... I dunno, I expected something with a little more oomph.

However, while Zendaya is back as MJ, she's also back as Chani of the Fremen in Dune 3, which appears to be arriving about four years earlier than first thought. Denis Villeneuve's third instalment, thus a trilogy, arrives at Christmas and takes the apparent 'impossible to film' Dune: Messiah and makes it the concluding part of the tale, with Timothée Chalamet (sans hair) back as Paul Atreides. This is also a BIG thing and is coming out around the same time as Avengers: Doomsday and is likely to be a huge success. Maybe it's because these trails have caught me on a down cycle in my mood swings or I'm simply growing largely indifferent to any film where I'm supposed to get excited about, but, you know... meh.

It Was Inevitable

We watched White House Down on Friday, so it stood to reason we'd watch Olympus Has Fallen on Saturday. What we didn't know was the latter was directed by Antione Fuqua, the guy who directed The Equalizer movies we've watched over the last ten days; so there's been a link. Olympus Has Fallen is head and shoulders a better film that White House Down. Not only was it tonally right, it was considerably more visceral, ruthless and while neither movie is plausible, this had an immediacy about it that other features similar have lacked. I'm not a huge fan of Gerard Butler - he had just about hit his peak with this - and Aaron Eckhart's star had also... ahem... fallen. However, this was far better than the two main stars. It's now opened the door to watching at least one of the two sequels (but maybe only one, because the second film has a shit rating on IMDB). 7/10

Spousal Abuse

I've never been remotely interested in the film Mr & Mrs Smith; despite quite liking the recent TV adaptation of it, the movie simply never pressed any of my buttons and after finally giving in and watching it, I feel utterly vindicated. I think the wife enjoyed it; I found it tortuous, annoying and largely incomplete. This was a film that was two hours too long [it's two hours long] and I struggle with Angelina Jolie at the best of times - I don't think she can act - and while I like Brad Pitt, I didn't like him in this. John and Jane are both hired killers who don't know their other halves are also hired killers. The laughs were strained; the premise was absurd and when it ended it felt like there was a great deal of confidence there would be a Mr & Mrs Smith 2, because they won a battle but not the war. I just didn't like this. 4/10

True Lies False Truths

Paul Greengrass's Green Zone is a fictionalised version of how some people from the USA discovered there were no WMDs in Iraq and how this was manipulated to allow the USA to stage a full scale war and invasion of the Arab country. Whether the events are true or have been sensationalised for the benefit of a movie I don't know, but I think I probably watched a very close approximation of how some people discovered other people had lied about things and those people were the government and the people who knew this were the CIA and they ended up being powerless to stop it. Matt Damon plays a chief weapons searcher coming to the conclusion he's searching for imaginary WMDs; Brendan Gleason is the CIA man who just wants the Americans to allow Iraq to police itself; Greg Kinnear is the shit-bag administrator from George W Bush's office trying his best to cover his and USA's arse and Jason Isaac plays his enforcer for Kinnear. There was an almost documentary quality to this, but it ended up feeling like the main story was lost - or that might be what it was trying to convey. 6/10

Going Anywhere Soon?

Paradise switched between the outside world and Colorado pretty evenly in the sixth part of the second series. The focus from the inside was Jane, who it appears was the subject of a prophecy when she was born that she would be the person who brings about the end of the world. Jane is the Secret Service 'dumb blonde' who killed her boyfriend, framed the President's girlfriend for killing him and has been playing everyone for her own benefit. On the outside, Xavier is planning on attacking the compound to free his wife, using cobbled together explosives without realising he's also being played. We're hanging in there, but sometimes the plot feels extremely contrived and there's feeling sometimes that the writers don't seem to have a clear direction.

Gung-Ho USA

Two themes are emerging this week in things we're watching: war and the USA. 12 Strong has both of these things in spades. It's the story of the USA's immediate response to the 9/11 incidents; when a team of 12 green berets went to Afghanistan to join forces with freedom fighters to attempt to beat both the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Obviously we all know how that eventually panned out, but I suppose at the time it was an important mission for the USA to be seen involved with. Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon are the two notable actors in this as they play Captain and Warrant Officer to a small selective group of soldiers led by Michael Pena. Modern war films are a different beast, even compared to movies of the 1990s; there's a visceral feel and the weaponry is designed to do as much damage as possible, so nothing is pleasant viewing and that old gung-ho feel of a John Wayne war film is replaced by a general feeling of fear and fight. This isn't a bad movie and does a reasonable job of humanising the soldiers. 7/10

Mistaken Identity?

I have never in the slightest bit been interested in Lucky Number Slevin. I remember seeing Jonathon Ross review it back in the noughties and thinking, "that's something to avoid." Yet, here I was, on a Wednesday night, watching it. For the opening hour I was feeling vindicated as Josh Hartnett bumbled his way into two situations he didn't appear to know much about. Was this really a case of mistaken identity? Was he really that stupid? The two crime lords wanting him - Ben Kingsley as The Rabbi and Morgan Freeman as The Boss - were surrounded by a lot of vaguely comedic henchmen and there was always a feeling that we were watching a comedy rather than a drama. Lucy Liu played a slightly ditsy pathologist who fancies herself as a detective and Stanley Tucci as the cop trying to make sense of it; while Bruce Willis, who was prominent in the 'prologue' was most definitely pulling the strings. Then it changed tack completely and while the wife had an idea what was coming, I was hoodwinked and realised the film I thought was a load of shite, was actually a cleverly put together idea that I had somehow missed, because I thought it was about something else entirely. 7/10 

Struggling

There's still an element of treading water in this middle section of the final season of Shrinking. Gaby is grieving and hurting about the death of a patient, especially when she discovers things she should - as the therapist - have been aware of and this subsequently leads to issues with some of her other patients. Jimmy ends up becoming an impromptu therapist for his new girlfriend Sofi (Coby Smulders) and her ex-husband and Paul seems to be babysitting his staff a lot, at a time when he should be winding down. There's maybe now this feeling creeping in that this show is going to simply end with stuff that's been telegraphed happening - Paul's retirement, Gaby may get married and open her own practice and Jimmy waving Alice off to uni and starting a new relationship with Sofi, while the world just carries on, because almost everyone else in this show has had their moments and are moving on. If that's what happens then it fits in perfectly with how the show has gone. I won't be disappointed in the slightest if no one dies and Liz stays perfectly horrible. 

Lewd, Rude and Quaaludes 

I don't usually associate Martin Scorsese with comedies; yes, there are comedic elements in some of his work, but The Wolf of Wall Street is a bona fide LOL film. It is without a doubt the film of the week in the Hall house and I'd forgotten what an absolute gem it was. It's a movie that pulls no punches; it's full of nudity, drug taking and some of the dodgiest things you could imagine on a screen, yet it keeps you completely hooked for its almost three hours. It is both astounding and astonishing, not that it is based on a true story, but because the people involved actually got away with what they were doing for so long with almost complete impunity. Leonardo DiCaprio is fantastic as Jordan Belfort, who became a stock market broker the day of Black Wednesday and took that to become a phenomenal power and influence broker across the USA for over a decade, while simultaneously shoving all manner of drugs into his body. 

This movie also stars Jonah Hill, Jon Bernthal, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Matthew McConaughey, Jon Favreau, Cristin Milioti, in fact, it pretty much has an all-star cast with people only appearing for seconds when they'd be the stars of their own films. It is also crazy and brilliant as it follows Belfort from wannabe stockbroker to the head of a company that cut every corner, broke every rule and threw every dwarf it could to make its staff millionaires. It is quite an extraordinary movie and thoroughly deserves a 9/10.

Remarkable Man

Several weeks ago, the wife said to me, "I've never seen Gandhi." I realised that I also had never seen this Richard Attenborough epic from 1982. I mean, how do you go 44 years without seeing one of the classic movies of all time? I won't bore you with the details, but actually being able to watch this film took more than just three hours of our time, but instead of watching some action-packed adventure on Friday night, to finish our week's viewing off, we settled down to watch Ben Kingsley and a who's who of stars tell the story of Mohandas Gandhi from idealistic young lawyer in apartheid South Africa in 1893 to his death in New Delhi in 1948. 

I wouldn't call it a work of cinematic genius; it needed to tell far too much. What it was though managed to educate me about the man who transcended specific religions and believed in the power of humanity, whatever religion you followed. In many ways, because this was made by the British, there was probably an element of downplaying the atrocities, especially from the Partition - a holocaust if ever there was one, which may well have killed more Indians and Pakistanis than the Nazis killed Jews; but, you know, the British were responsible for that so it's an episode of history that we don't hear much about. However, there was much more to this than just a chronological march through Gandhi's life, but one got the impression that he did so much and touched so many if this movie had been eight hours long it might still only have scratched the surface to his story. 

I'm going to break with tradition here and not mark this out of 10. It's simply a film that if you get the chance and are not familiar with some of the less heroic parts of British Empire history you should watch. 

What's Up Next?

Daredevil: Born Again is back for a second season - but we all know it's just the second half of the first series. There's also some hints that one of my favourite TV shows of the 21st century might be back on the screens before the end of the month, but I'm not going to tempt fate by naming it, but if you've followed this long enough you'll know it's on Apple TV+ and is an alternate history series about how the USSR beat the USA to the moon and what happened next...

Also, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen arrives on Netflix. This might be a load of shit, but the reason I mention it is because... [ahem] ... there's a big feature on it in today's Guardian by Rik Samadder claiming it is the latest series from the Duffer Brothers - you know, the guys who brought us Stranger Things - except it isn't. They are credited as Executive Producers, which means their input into this was at a basic production level, It isn't their idea; they don't direct or write any episodes, they basically stumped up some cash... Yet the Guardian, for some reason, makes then the stars of the show and not creator Haley Z Boston (no, me neither). 

Literally an hour before I put this blog to bed, the news arrived that Nicholas Brendon had died, aged 54. To be honest, in a week where Sarah Michelle Gellar announced that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot was dead in the water and wasn't going to be making a comeback, the death of Xander feels like a real kick in the balls. Nick Brendon was a victim of his own success; he never really reached the potential he showed as Buffy's BMF, got into trouble with the drugs and the law and then discovered a few years ago he had a congenital heart condition - which ultimately killed him. It seems like a huge waste of talent and a tragic end for one of the reasons why Buffy was such a great series...

Anyhow... next week is also a pub quiz week, so there won't be a Friday night feature and it could be a thin week of reading material for you as I'm also supposed to be going out boozing tonight. Whatever happens, you'll be the first people to hear about it...

My Cultural Life - Monsters Munched

What's Up?

It's the middle of March already. How did that happen? 2026 has been an eventful year so far, not helped by the weather, which, the further north you are, is not very spring like and when we do get a taster of something warmer and sunnier it's gone by the next day.

I often wonder if time accelerates for everyone? I mean, the longer you're on the planet, the shorter the years become, but I'm noticing younger people complaining about time flying and while the physics suggests this is all subjective, it's the bloody middle of March already and before you know it it'll be much further into the year. 

... Yeah, I know. Hardly the opening you expected. Where's all the serious guff? Or even something remotely funny? Well, for once I can't be arsed to make serious about current affairs; my football team is in self-destruct mode and as you'll find out by the end of this entire blog, I'm not watching a lot of TV. I think I'm at that March Moment - when the nights are drawing out, but the skies are full of cold and there's more chance of snow than short sleeved shirts. The time of the year when our minds are saying 'why the fuck can't I feel my toes?' Or, 'When the sun shines it's too bloody cold to appreciate it!'

March has always been a month where the light doesn't correspond to the temperature and if, like me, you hate the winter, March brings shit loads of false optimism. Obviously, optimism is in short supply what with WW3 taking shape around us and profiteering rampant. It makes me wonder what those 'in charge' think the world will be like once an apple costs £50 and you heat your homes by rubbing two of your pets together?

It's Saturday morning and the sun is out, the skies are blue and so are my fingers...

Ai Ai Moosey

It's March and the first 'big' film of the year has arrived on streaming platforms and probably DVDs. I have to admit to being a little interested in seeing this movie, because it seemed like a good idea from the few trailers I'd seen. However, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die was a bit of a massive let down. First, though, I want to have a strange moan; apart from Sam Rockwell, Michael Pena, Haley Lu Richardson (who I thought was one of the Richardson dynasty of actors, but obviously isn't) and possibly Zazie Beetz, no one else in this movie has any link to the USA at all. All the other actors in this were either British, South African or German - this was filmed in South Africa - and many of the characters didn't even try to cover up their accents, despite this being set in the USA...

It's essentially: man comes from the future to persuade a group of people to join him on a mission to prevent an all-conquering AI from being created that will change mankind forever. He's done this 171 times and failed every time, but this time it might be different. There are some highly telegraphed twists in this; some things with don't really make any sense and ultimately none of it happens - at least that's what I'm taking from it, because it all seems to be happening in an AI environment... or is it? This is the biggest problem I have with this - is it real, is it a simulation and why don't I give a fuck? Not even the special effects seemed that good. This was a solid disappointment. 5/10

Fungus & the Bogeymen

Is Joe Keery becoming typecast? For those who don't know who Joe Keery is, he was Steve Harrington in Stranger Things and Cold Storage is a film that: a) was more enjoyable than that and b) he played a similar character, except a little less clever and a bit more dodgy. Think Night of the Exploding Dead or The Last of Us played for laughs and you'll be in the right ballpark. Keery plays Travis - aka Teacake - who works the night shift at a storage facility that used to be a government 'storage' facility. Georgina Campbell is Naomi, his new co-worker, and wanna be vet. They investigate a strange beeping sound and before you know it Liam Neeson is there with a small suitcase nuclear device. This is surprisingly well made and while it smacks of B movie, it's actually a bit of solid Saturday night entertainment. I enjoyed it, even if it reminded me of just about everything I've ever watched in my life. 7/10

Legacy of Wankers

The wife is going to be right. This is a load of shite. This week's Monarch: Legacy of Monsters ended on a cliffhanger, except the two people involved in the perilous ending are both still alive 70 years later, so there was no real jeopardy at all. Oh and the special effects on this are atrocious. I don't know who did them but I think someone using an Amiga 500 might have done better. The dialogue is corny; the back story is fucking hopeless and while there does seem to be more monsters in this, it needs a lot more than that to make this even half good.

I caught up with the series, on my own. The third episode of season two arrived on Friday (yesterday, as I write this) and I put the wife out of her misery and watched it alone. I figured I had a decision to make... Here's the thing - this series has weird pacing, unfathomable time shifts, people who are younger than they're supposed to be - and I'm not talking about Keiko's 70 years in the 'other world' but her son, who should be in his 70s - at least - but seems to be in his 50s. The flashbacks to 1957, which seem redundant given that season one ended with Keiko disappearing shortly after this, appear to be building some melodramatic three-way between her, Bill and Lee, all just feels pointless and irrelevant. That said, Hiro's daughter Cate doesn't really have much of a story either apart from tortured lesbian with guilt and daddy issues. I think I'm done with this. I really wanted it to be ... well, not exactly good, but at least interesting or, heaven forbid, exciting/entertaining. It's just dull and absolutely chock full of disappointment...

It Almost Lost Me

Right... Perpetual Grace Ltd is a series from 2019 by Steven Conrad, who brought us Patriot, which we've still yet to watch the second series of. The reason for this is we wanted to recover from that sufficiently before venturing back into the world of depression and espionage tinged with weird Luxembourgian strangeness. This other series is about a man who is persuaded to help initiate a massive con that would see an old married couple swindled out of $4million, except there's not just a can of worms involved, there's a truckload of cans of worms...

Ben Kingsley plays the preacher who is actually a psychopath and owns the town where he lives. Jimmi Simpson plays a grifter called James who organises Kingsley's Pa and his wife, Ma, to go to Mexico to retrieve the body of their estranged son, but he isn't there and they're going to be imprisoned for two weeks to allow James to become their son Paul and have power of attorney over their estate, allowing him to have away with said $4million. Of course, this all seems easy until we find out about Pa's psychopathic tendencies, so what follows is interesting. What's also interesting is James, now posing as Paul, discovers that the man he's pretending to be is wanted for questioning in regards the murder of a young girl. This is a ten-part series and that was just the first part... And after three episodes we decided this was just too glacial and dull to persevere with it.

Denzel's Back

We decided that Sunday night should be The Equalizer 2 night and while this sequel was not as good as the first, it was still a far more entertaining movie than we expected. Denzel Washington is back as the OCD ex Special Ops agent righting wrongs and ensuring good people have a happy ending. It is quite remarkable just what a great guy his Robert McCall is (but I seem to recall that Ewar Woowar was also a decent guy in the original TV series) and how he knows a decent person from a piece of shit so quickly.

What is different, therefore less good, about this sequel is it's really about McCall's past rather than his present and when someone close to him dies unexpectedly, he has to come out of his isolation - where people think he's dead - and go up against some people from his old life. There's a fair bit of vigilantism but the main story is a revenge mission. Like I said, it's good but not a patch on the first film, but that might be because there were no nail guns in this. 7/10

Lives and Deaths

Sometimes I can't fathom why certain films have such poor ratings on IMDB. Most movies with lower ratings tend to be accurate, but occasionally I think it's about a lack of understanding from the reviewers and In The Blink of An Eye is probably one of them. It's a bit of a curate's egg really - a portmanteau like tale of three lives in different time periods of the universe. A Neanderthal family, an archaeologist in the present and a space traveller from the future - why are they all linked? Rashida Jones plays the 21st century scholar who finds an acorn in the palm of the hand of a Neanderthal man from 40,000 years in the past. Kate McKinnon plays an enhanced human, capable of living for hundreds of years, who is charged with populating a new planet light years from Earth and both of these stories are linked and link back to the Neanderthal family.

I thought it was a charming and allegorical movie about how everything is ultimately entwined and how, quite literally, one thing leads to another. It was gentle, unspectacular and poignant, yet totally encapsulating and enjoyable - snapshots of different lives throughout their own lives and the people and things that characterise those lives. I really liked this. 8/10

Up and Down

After the first episode of the second season of Paradise and the promise that brought, there has been a feeling that it's been slipping back into rather dull and tedious 'inside the compound' series. Then, like that opening episode, this one came along and we had the story of how Xavier's wife survived the apocalypse and it was an interesting look at how much of the USA didn't slip into anarchy and become feral. It followed the seven people inside 'The Mailman' bunker - a Post Office capable of withstanding whatever is thrown at it and focused on the guy that Xavier met at the conclusion of last week's fourth part. It felt like a totally feasible scenario until it wandered in The Walking Dead without the zombies territory and then it delivered a number of twists and turns. This show is so much better when it isn't in Colorado, but I think I said that last week.

Cock-a-Doodle-Doo

Steve Carell's new comedy series, Rooster, is about a popular fiction writer who is invited to his daughter's college - where she teaches - to give a talk about his (populist) fiction and also trying to deal with his daughter coping with her impending divorce. It is being advertised as a kind of collegiate Ted Lasso and a bit like Shrinking, but it's neither of these and we don't really know where it's going after the opener, except Carell's character has been offered a job as the writer in residence at Ludlow college and he hasn't made up his mind about it yet, given his reservations about having never gone to college. The problem I had was I didn't find it funny, nor did I imagine myself becoming engrossed with it...

Three Piece Suite

So, it was the wife who chose for us to watch the third instalment of Anton Fuqua's series of movies about former special op Robert McCall. As she said, "Let's watch something we won't feel disappointed about when it ends." And, the thing is, she wasn't wrong. The Equalizer 3 is much better than 2 but obviously not as good as the first. This is a stripped down film, shorter than the previous two with a much older Denzel Washington (he was 68 when he made it - he's 72 now) relocated to the Amalfi coast after travelling to Napoli to do a bit of business that is revealed in almost the last scene.

His relocation is due to the bullet put in him earlier in the film and he's about to bid the place farewell when he sees someone he likes get involved with the local Mafioso and that's really all you need to know. It's Bob versus the Mafia and we all know who is going to win. He also does a bit of CIA work for Dakota Fanning (all is revealed at the end also) and takes on a psychopath in his usual style and slightly OCD way. It's a good way to spend a couple of hours. 8/10

In Laws

This week's Shrinking was as usual full of far too many wholesome people all being nice to each other and generally being nothing like what Americans probably are like. It's Tia's birthday, the second one for all the family and friends since she died and Alice has a plan up her sleeve that bothers her dad but not when he realises the reason behind it. There's also more about Paul's decision to retire and Gabby is distracted by her inability to contact one of her patients. Brian continues to be inappropriate around his new baby and as always while all this unbelievably nice shit is going on something big and nasty is waiting in the wings to fuck everyone up. Candice Bergen (she's 80, you know) guest stars as Derek's mother, who has a problem with Liz (everyone should). This was maybe not the best episode of the series so far, but it still delivers a massive kick to the testicles when you needed it.

Space Filler

We checked out the first part of Netflix's The Dinosaurs, one of those natural history documentaries full of conjecture and cgi, but something that filled in blanks with our knowledge. The evolution and life of the dinosaurs and what was here before them right up until the point when they all got wiped out. It's narrated by Morgan Freeman and while there's an element of dodgy special effects, it's the actual timeline that I'm interested in and the evolution of our own planet. Not brilliant, but most definitely something to watch without it all getting too heavy or with in-depth barely penetrable plots. Freeman narrates this like he died a few years ago. 

A Greek Tragedy

Later on this year, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is released. It is expected to be over three hours long and there's a real buzz about it. Back in 2004, Wolfgang Peterson directed Brad Pitt in Troy and that was over three hours long and this particular film pretty much covered about a third of Homer's other great work The Iliad, albeit the final third. If I learned one thing new about this story - I obviously knew about Helen, the Trojan Horse, Paris, Hector, Agamemnon, Odysseus and Achilles, plus other aspects of this epic poem by Homer (not Simpson) - it was what a bunch of ruthless arseholes the Greeks were and what an honourable people the Trojans were. I always thought the Trojans were the bad guys. 

This is a modern epic full of swords, battles, naked bodies, blood and guts - you name it, this is a BIG film. It's also extremely overwrought, melodramatic and theatrical. It's got an all-star cast and a lot of actors who are no longer with us or no longer are seen as 'stars'. It's not bad, but equally it felt like it could have been at least an hour shorter. At least I got around to watching it as it might make Nolan's The Odyssey a little easier to understand, given it's about Odysseus and his long journey back from the Trojan War. 6/10

Presidential Hokum

Our viewing week finished with yet another film we were giving a second airing for without really remembering much about it at all. I think all I could really remember about White House Down was it came out at roughly the same time as Olympus Has Fallen and they are, essentially, the same movie with different quirks. This one has Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx doing a sort of double act while hundreds of people die horribly around them. Foxx plays the President, Tatum an ex-serviceman hoping to become part of his personal security team and together they do a Die Hard with a bunch of mercenaries led by James Woods, who is out for revenge by destroying the Middle East - all of it, in a series of nuclear attacks, after he gains control of the 'nuclear football'.

Apart from feeling tonally wrong and trying to have far too many quirky characters all vying for screen time, it's not a bad action adventure if you want some escapist nonsense for a weekend viewing - just don't watch the version that's been on Film 4 recently, because they seem to have to darkest, grainiest print available. If you like explosions, dodgy special effects superimposed over actual footage and Channing Tatum in a - I kid you not - singlet, then you'll be all over this like a rash. Was it any good? Does it matter? Well, not really and yes, so therefore just a 6/10.

What's Up Next?

I'll tell you what has been fun watching this week. Not worthy of a review and stretching to a tenuous joke, but I've been watching A New Life in the Sun on C4 for the last couple of days because I've been a little under the weather. The thing that got me chuckling (and then the wife joining me) was the couple who bought half a chateau in France to run their own B&B...

Paul and Melanie, were from New Zealand and South Africa and both well into their 60s (unless they've had hard lives). Paul only had to open his mouth and I was sniggering, because Paul could easily have been the voice of Korg in the Thor films - you know, the rock creature who becomes the God of Thunder's mate. All you had to do was shut your eyes and it was whoever Taika Waititi based Korg's voice on. Mel, his wife, hardly spoke, so whenever the two of them were on screen, for me it became Korg and Mick's French Adventure. Or misadventure, because it appears they bought a place that just wants to fall apart. Yet Korg took it all in his stride, facing everything with a sunny disposition and like no mountain was unclimbable. It was something you needed to see and get the reference to, but if you did then you'd get the joke...

Other than that, this week has really been about giving up. Three things above are not going to be revisited and it might even be four things because Paradise has been hovering around the should we/shouldn't we place and I know the wife wouldn't really miss it if we never watched it again. TV, on the whole, has been largely disappointing in 2026 and a lot of the shows we've tried from the past probably explain why we didn't watch them the first time around...

So, next week Shrinking is the only guarantee, that and a bunch of films. There are some returning TV shows due by the end of the month and there are a few things we should try and get around to watching - it just feels really difficult and like too much hard work to be arsed to persevere with so many of them. 

So, therefore, a Doris Day song...