My Cultural Life - Octopus Prime

What's Up?

I feel there's lots I could write about, but most of it is depressing. The state of the world is a bit crap, so why should I add to everyone's misery? That said, I've had an up and down week. I participated in my first pub quiz for EIGHT years - in a team consisting of me, the wife and Jones - and we won £50; finished first by two points. On the other hand, I was prescribed something for my anxiety and like so many other drugs (legal or otherwise), my body went 'fuck off, I'm not having that in me.'

It's been a constant with me. My body doesn't seem to like very many chemicals. It took the doctors' four attempts to find a blood pressure medicine that didn't screw me up (one of them gave me anaphylactic shock!) - I am the side effects king! The most frustrating thing about it all is I now have to try something else and see if that has no side effects - never mind whether it works, just whether it doesn't...

Other than that, it's been freezing all week. Not bad weather, there's been plenty of sunshine, but the temperature has been nothing to write home about - or maybe it has: "Dear friend, it's been fucking Baltic this week! I've got my fur-lined pants on."

Right, go read some reviews now...

Rocky & The Man

It's the middle of May and finally a BIG film has landed. It seems like ages since Project Hail Mary came out, but it finally arrived on streaming platforms and DVD... was the wait worth it? Well, if you can look past the slightly comical parts and probable iffy science, this is a flipping excellent movie. It hooks you almost immediately and while it's on for almost two and a half hours, it only really feels like it drags towards the end and this is a minor quibble, because for most of the film it just whizzes along at a great pace. Ryan Gosling, who I really don't rate much as a comedy actor, does an excellent job as the eccentric and a little bit neurotic Ryland Grace, a scientist shunned by the establishment because of his wacky theories, who is asked to join a project to discover why the sun is dying and why it isn't just our sun, but almost every star in the galaxy...

There's a lot more to this than a review can really do justice, but once he arrives at the only star in the galaxy which isn't affected by this 'virus' he meets an alien, who he calls Rocky and the two are the only things to try and come up with a cure to be able to save their own planets. It's tense, funny, slightly silly (but that's okay), is jam-packed full of modern culture and film references and was absolutely great fun to watch. This is a mainly feel good film, with a couple of unexpected WTF moments, but it's going to be vying for Movie of the Year, I expect. 9/10

Octopus's Garden

Sally Field will be 80 in November, but she doesn't really look it in the twee, but enjoyable, Remarkably Bright Creatures. This is the story of an elderly woman who works in an aquarium to keep herself active; she has a tragic past, a dead husband and a son, also dead, by mysterious circumstances. She meets Lewis Pullman, a bit of a drifter, who is searching for his father, who he believes is a wealthy construction engineer. Their stories are brought together by Marcellus - the octopus, voiced by Alfred Molina - who is an escape artist and longs to be back out in the ocean. Okay, this felt a little like a made for TV film - it's on Netflix - but it doesn't stop it from being a nice little story about lost people finding something they never expected. 7/10

A Warm Hug

I often allude to surprises when I write my What's Up Next outro. Things that turn up that I had no warning of that make viewing worthwhile. One programme that simply pushes all the right buttons is Tucci in Italy. Stanley Tucci is an engaging host as he travels round Italy searching for food, culture and that specific Italian way of life. It is an exquisite travelogue programme, that just drips character, like the juice from a prime cut of meat. The second series dropped on Tuesday and it's like HDTV was made for it. Every moment of this superb series makes me want to go to Italy; the problem is it's a big country and I want to see all of it and I'm far too old. Highly recommended.

Peed-o

30 years. It's been 30 years since we last watched Speed and Jesus, time hasn't been kind to this movie. Cartoon villains, comical bombs, overwrought over acting, a script that could have been used for a spoof Die Hard film and Sandra Bullock, who treats driving a bomb at 50mph as stressful as drinking a coffee on a French avenue. This is a truly stupid movie. As someone who has driven for over 45 years, I can tell you that keeping anything going at 50mph or higher is easy if you're on the M6 further north than the Lakes, but in LA? Turning corners and hitting cars? Not a chance. The thing is even the camera work made the bus seem like it was ambling along at a leisurely pace. Keanu Reeves set acting back about 75 years with his riveting performance as Wooden Cop. Dreadful. 4/10

Death and Glory

The penultimate episode of The Boys was a strange beast. I felt it needed to move the story on towards a conclusion, but instead it focused on individuals and their motivation. The issue now is whether to fight Homelander or run away and hide and the way he's having swathes of the population wiped out is running away even an option? Billy, Frenchie and Kimiko are trying to recreate Soldier Boy in a lab, while Mother, Annie and Hughie are on a mission, but for what exactly isn't really made as clear as you'd like. There's an ending for a couple of characters and it was all a rather lowkey affair with added Gen V-ers, OTT violence and gore.

Not Funny

Suddenly Widow's Peak stopped being funny and wandered into the hugely disturbing. This fourth episode focuses on Patricia (Kate O'Flynn), the deputy mayor, who so far has seemed like a timid mouse in the town, but seems has a past that she can't live down. This was a snapshot of her life and how she's desperately lonely, unhappy and wants either friends or their respect. It all gets very strange as she organises a party, which seems to be a bad idea, but ends up being very... busy and as weird as fuck. There is some very odd imagery in this week's episode and it's just got a little more interesting. Great stuff.

Orgy of Violence

There are two notable things about the latest Marvel Television special Punisher: One Last Kill: it's much shorter than I expected and the actual story is quite light. However, it was just over 45 minutes of visceral, angst-fuelled lunacy. The premise appears to be simple; Frank has wiped out the last crime family he feels are responsible for his family's death and now believes he has nothing to live for. The streets are burning and lawless, but he's not interested. Then the widow of the family he killed appears at his tenement building and tells him that she has put a hit out on him - she has offered money to anyone who kills him and she's told them all where he lives. What follows is a violent ballet; a relentless period of time where Frank fights for his life against a constant stream of people wanting to kill him. It is quite extraordinary for the company that has brought us so many shite movies over the last few years to deliver something as raw and fantastic as this.

Things Fall Apart

There was a period when both the wife and I wondered why we were watching Your Friends & Neighbours and now we're seven episodes into season two and it's still an excellent show that has gone in directions we never saw coming. This week life for three of the Coopers goes from bad to worse - Mel gets involved with a chemical toilet; Tori gets arrested and Coop starts to discover just what a scary man Owen Ash is. Hunter is off partying with Ash's daughter and she's as dodgy as her father, meanwhile Samantha also discovers that her boyfriend (Ash) is probably a very big crook. This is quite a brilliant show, made all the better for Jon Hamm's louche acting style.

Worlds To Conquer

As we approach the final few episodes of this season of For All Mankind things are slotting into place. Mars is about to be invaded by hostile forces of the M6, requiring the revolutionaries to do something drastic; while 900million miles away, the crew of the Sojourner miscalculated their landing and are too far away from the place where they believe they might find life, so they have to take chances, which will put their lives at risk. There are new alliances formed which we probably didn't see coming. I've enjoyed this series even if the wife hasn't; it's been claustrophobic and compact, but I think that was the point. it has been renewed for one final season, set in 2026...

What's Up Next?

There's all manner of stuff to be watched and I can't be arsed to list it all. 

My Cultural Life - Before the Reformation

What's Up?

Why so glum? Is it anything to do with the rise of Führage? Are you looking at the English council elections and worrying about the future, for yourself and those you love? Well, fear not, my friends and regular readers. All is not lost, at least it's not lost if the people take notice.

The gains made by Reform UK Ltd™ do make grim reading. However, if you've taken any notice of what's happened at council already controlled by Reform UK Ltd™ you will see just how badly they are doing and what a right royal cock up their wannabe Nazi councillors are making of having a little bit of power. These are, after all, mainly racist Tory voters mixed with racist Labour voters who don't like brahn people.

Reform UK Ltd™ do a bad job at running councils and their councils have no reflection of their party politics - they can't; Reform UK Ltd™'s USP isn't covered by councils.

We just have to sit back and hope that the media point out just how badly Reform UK Ltd™ are running councils and before long you'll be growing tired of Führage's pointing the finger at everyone else and blaming them. You will start to wonder what this mob would be like if they ran the country rather than just a county council out in the sticks.

Local politics is a different beast, but not different enough for people not to equate the chaos Reform UK Ltd™ brings to the party and what Führage wants to do to the country. This is good, because we have three years to see just how bad they are; three years of other parties pointing and laughing at the weekly soap opera that these 'politicians' bring to the table. Three years is just enough for people to go 'What the actual fuck?' Enough time to educate people and for them to learn... Yes, I know this is remarkably optimistic for me, but it's also very feasible - Reform UK Ltd™ has nowhere to hide, any longer. They have to deliver and what they deliver won't be less immigrants, because councils don't do that.

It could be a fun ride. Don't give up, just yet.

Everyone Loses

Does it really matter what happens at the end of Daredevil: Born Again? If the MCU is really going to end and a new one reborn in its place, there's likely to be a new Matthew 'Daredevil' Murdock, a new Karen Page, a new Foggy Nelson and a new Wilson 'Kingpin' Fisk. A new twist, with younger actors, in a new direction. Or at least that is what should happen after all the upcoming Avengers movies. We might see one more appearance by Daredevil in the Spider-Man film this summer and that will probably be it; so the final part of this excellent, but at times slow, series was full of revelations, psychopaths, karma and fantastic realism - not realistic, just more real than fantasy. There is the feeling that there's unfinished business, some of the loose ends feel like a blue touch paper has been lit rather than a chapter closing and maybe a third season before the universe goes pop wouldn't be a bad thing...

King of the World

Everything has been leading up to this point. All of the episodes of The Boys since it became a lot less interesting has been about Homelander becoming all important and that essentially happens in an episode that I saw coming almost from the start. The 'to kill the king, first you must make the king think he can't be killed' phase has been entered and that's what the next two episodes are going to be about as The Boys fail spectacularly in their mission to stop Homelander from locating V1 and becoming immortal. All that's left is some loose ends and the downfall - either by an allergic reaction to the drug that makes him god or by something stupid, probably accidentally started by the Deep. Two more weeks to go and then we can forget all about this nonsense.

Taking it Up the Gary

An unexpected TV treat! Something that came out of nowhere to brighten up our televisual experience! A bonus episode of The Bear subtitled Gary about Richie (Ebon Moss-Bacharach) and his cousin Mikey Berzatto (Jon Bernthal) on a road trip from Chicago to Gary, Indiana to drop a package off for 'Jimmy'. It's Frank Castle and Ben Grimm On The Road - what could go wrong? On paper it looked like a no brainer - two great actors, a fantastic series and a chance to find out more about Carmy's dead brother, Michael. However, after the near hour long special all I could think was 'Why? Why did they bother?' It's just an hour of shouty banter, mucking about and pain - because there's a Berzatto involved and mental anguish and paranoia go hand in hand with that family. This was dull, uninspiring and really pointless; even the reason for the road trip was essentially because FedEx were on strike. A wasted opportunity and a wasted hour of my time.

X-Men: Dark & Stinky 

The wife had a Saturday night out with the girls, drinking cocktails and eating fancy nibbles, so that left me alone in the house (apart from three dogs), with a couple of beers and the chance to inflict X-Men: Dark Phoenix on myself, because she didn't want to watch it again. This is a movie that has a 5.7 rating on IMDB, not the worst Marvel film ever, but obviously one of the worst; maybe this is because Sophie Turner - who plays Jean Grey - is about as good at acting as I am at ovulating. The thing is, however bad Turner's 'Marvel Girl' was it wasn't helped by a script and storyline that could have been written by a blind dog with half its brain removed. This is a truly dreadful film and should serve as a warning to Disney about how awful the X-Men are as a visual concept. In comics it works, on film it stinks to the rafters. However, if you can get past the shonky story, the bad acting, the confusing character arcs and the way the X-Men go from heroes to zeros in the space of two minutes, this is a bang average film. It maybe wasn't as awful as I remembered it, but frankly, I didn't remember it. 4/10

A Game of Lies

I was quite surprised at how many Leonardo DiCaprio movies I haven't seen. Some of them we'll probably never watch, but there are quite a few of the others that I simply missed out on. Body of Lies is one of them; the story of an American CIA agent in the Middle East - post Iraq War - trying to track down an Osama Bin Laden type Jihadist. It's a complicated thriller about the USA inventing a new terrorist - using a legitimate and unaware Iraqi architect - to flush out the guy they really want. Russell Crow plays Leo's boss - an arsehole who cares nothing for the people who do his bidding and Mark Strong - as the head of the Jordanian Secret Service, who cares about the safety of Leo because he trusts him as a person, add to the mix. It's maybe a little harsh at times, occasionally a bit turgid, but I was distracted for half the film by the events in a football match I was following. 7/10 

Angel is Bollocks

FFS. I have to stop doing this. After a couple of months, we decided to watch the third of the Gerard Butler trilogy about the President's bodyguard, after Olympus and London, this time it was Angel Has Fallen - a movie shot almost entirely in Bulgaria and Hertfordshire, supposedly set in the USA. This was a spectacular load of shite. It felt like a badly made Straight to Video film from the 90s and I actually said out loud towards the end 'Is this ever going to fucking end?' It's about Butler being framed for the attempted assassination of the President (Morgan Freeman), despite it looking totally like a set up. Awful. 2/10

Brilliantly Ridiculous

My dear friend, Phil H [yes, I know how that looks] asked me the other day if I'd ever reviewed Lucy and I hadn't; simply because it was last watched before I started my regular reviews blog. Therefore, I decided to watch it again, so that I could give it a review. What an absolutely bonkers movie it is; almost from the opening scene to the ending, it's a feature designed to blow your mind. Scarlett Johansson plays Lucy, a rather below average fun girl who gets roped into dropping off a suitcase full of an experimental drug to a violence happy Korean crime lord, who then decides to use her as a mule. Unfortunately, the drug - derived from foetal DNA - leaks into her body and starts a chemical reaction that allows her to use more and more of her cerebral brain; effectively making her a superhero and then a god. It's largely just a crazy idea that isn't always developed or delivered as well as you'd like - it is great fun though. 7/10

Zzzzzzzzz

I've never seen Barry Levinson's 1996 movie Sleepers and now that I have I probably will never watch it again. This sprawling story tells the lives of four good Catholic boys, who through a stupid prank end up serving time in a boys' correctional unit and are changed forever by it. It later picks up their story when they're older, as Brad Pitt's lawyer and Jason Patric's journalist hatch a plan to expose the correctional facility and the guards who worked there, in a daring court case that risks everything. The thing is, even with Robert De Nero, this was as dull as washing up water and remarkably superficial for a film that goes into some detail and still doesn't deliver. I suppose it needed to be made. 4/10

The Wake

Last week's Your Friends & Neighbours ended with a shocking thing and this week the aftermath of the shock is played out, mainly in Coop's folks' house. It's a very good episode, possibly one of the best of the entire show. It perfectly encapsulated what a 'funeral day' is like if you're connected to the corpse; it does overplay the familial tensions, but in general as a 'snapshot' section it's almost perfect. There is also a minor revelation, which the wife saw coming almost immediately, but kudos to the excellent Jon Hamm for being almost perfect for 40 minutes. 

Do the Hag

I wasn't completely sold on Widow's Bay after the opening two episodes, but this week I think I bought the farm. It's a clever little thing, something that balances humour with horror almost perfectly and while there were still plenty of intentional and unintentional LOL moments, there's a distinctly creepy undertone appearing, which suggests to me that while funny stuff will continue, the tone of the 'horror' is going to be ramped up. This, so far, has been a great addition to our weekly viewing and this week is all about a curse from the sea.

One Giant Leap

Man sets foot on Titan, a moon of Saturn! Set six months after the last episode, Sojourner has arrived at its destination, but things are looking bad and they might have to abort and go back to Mars without achieving their mission. Meanwhile, back on Mars, the breakaway government is struggling to both feed and keep everyone happy, six months after they set up an interim leadership and despite the threats from Earth. Dev hatches a plan to wrestle back control of the planet, but it goes disastrously wrong, meaning the situation has become impossible to guess. While on Titan, we could be about to witness the most incredible schism in mankind's belief system ever. This was one of the better episodes - despite the dance scene - of this season of For All Mankind.

What's Up Next?

This could be another short week because of possible plans. I'm going to a pub quiz on Wednesday - attending not presenting. The wife and I have split the team up; she's joining the reigning Phil's Quiz champions - making them pretty formidable, while I am joining Jones and her team to try and ensure they don't finish last. I've given myself an underdog role, because I will still want to win, so it's pitting me against them and I'm up for that - a shot to nothing if ever there was one.

I was going to review Stephen King's Never Flinch in these pages, but I feel so ambivalent about it, I wasn't sure if I'd praise it to the hilt or eviscerate it. I really like the Holly Gibney character and here she's placed in a situation that King does consummately and there's some elements of an older book by King, which I cherish as my favourite book of his, but it just falls a bit flat. It's all foreplay and no orgasm, yet it has the ability to want to keep you reading. Oh look, I've just reviewed it...

More of the same, maybe something different, always on a Saturday.

 

My Cultural Life - The One With the Ginger Wig

What's Up?

The Media can no longer be trusted. I'm aware this is a statement that could be applied to the media at any time over the last 15 years or so, but in 2026 it has finally crossed a line and has become a problem not a reporting medium.

The easy ride the Tories got for 15 years, the demonization of the Labour Party over the last two years, the lack of scrutiny regarding Reform UK, the general ignorance of the Greens or the LibDems - the media wears its political affiliations on its sleeves.

However, it's the overreactions to certain events, not just by the media but by politicians and interested parties that has destroyed any credibility the media, in 2026, might have hoped for. 

I have a staggering figure to share with you. In 2025 there were 14,577 knife attacks in the capital, that equates to more than 40 per day. How many of these knife crimes made the national news? However, at the end of April, a mentally ill young British Somalian, with a history of violence - to any and all nationalities and races - stabbed two Jewish men in Golders Green (an hour after stabbing his Muslim best friend) and we've had wall-to-wall coverage about anti-Semitism, Jewish people frightened to leave their houses and the PM - whose wife is Jewish - denouncing this 'epidemic of anti-Semitic violence'... 

You might remember when famous communist anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn was castigated for everything from not wearing a tie properly to not bowing enough at the Cenotaph. The media has a bug up its arse about conflating everything with anti-Semitism. It's like they have an agenda...

Do me a favour. Not only is this over-inflated hyperbole, it selectively ignores a huge elephant in the room. What it also does, in a strange, off-handed way, is accept that the attacks on British Jews - whether that's physical or in the form of pro-Palestinian marches - has been caused by the actions of Israel in the Middle East. In a strange way, this reminds me of the fly tipping problems the country has at the moment - lots of handwringing and questions asked about who and what is being dumped in fields across the UK, but never asking WHY it's happening.

Fly tipping happens because councils no longer supply easy access council refuse sites. If you want to get rid of rubbish, you have to jump through so many hoops and over hurdles - and pay extortionate fees - so unscrupulous people dump their rubbish illegally. With British Jews, there's much discussion about who and what is being targeted, but no discussion about why it is happening. Oddly enough, the why is exactly the same as why followers of Islam are targeted.

Except... in this Golders Green case, there's a very good chance that the perpetrator could have attempted to stab anyone that got in his way. If he'd stabbed two hipsters in Shoreditch would we have had the kind of coverage we've been subjected to?

I do not class myself as anti-Semitic; my paternal grandmother was Jewish (alienated by her community because she married a gentile) and the closest I've ever got to being racist is having a very poor opinion of many white British people, occasionally calling them fascists or Nazis. So this isn't me jumping on the Hate Jews bandwagon; this is me looking at all the available information and how it has been conflated to suit a narrative that supporters of Israel and its Zionist government want you to be thinking.

I condemn any violence against any race or religion, but I never see the media giving a voice to Muslims when they face abuse on a daily basis. I don't see the police force issuing warnings about future problems when it involves Muslims being racially targeted. Fewer than 4% of the UK population is Jewish - yet given the coverage they get you'd think that was 40%. 13% of the population is Muslim, how often do we see Muslim hatred make the news, let alone be the lead story?

What I will say to people who are targeting Jews is many of them do not support Israel. Rational people don't blame the Asian guy running the local Indian restaurant for Jihadist activities, so why target a Jewish person for the crimes of Benjamin Netanyahu? That's like blaming the cow when your milkman doesn't deliver your daily pint. 

Unfortunately there is genuinely another agenda at work here. One that gets people like me being accused of unpleasant things. This agenda is simple, there are many friends of Israel all over the world and they have a lot of money and influence and this is often reflected in what we see on the TV, hear on the radio or scroll through on our social media feeds. These people dictate the narrative and anyone challenging that is an extremist...

Adventures in Babysitting

Surely the frontrunner for film of the week - maybe even the month - has to be the 2014 Bill Murray vehicle St Vincent. The story of a misanthropic Viet Nam war veteran and the friendship he forms with a 10 year old kid whose parents have just divorced. This really was a gem of a movie and one I'm surprised I'd never heard about. It also stars Melissa McCarthy as the mother, Naomi Watts as Murray's pregnant lap dancing Russian hooker friend and a lad who is now known as Jaeden Martell as the boy - Oliver.

Murray's Vincent is up to his eyeballs in debt, his wife is in a care home suffering from dementia, he lives like a pig and the only thing he seems to care about is his cat, but scratch the surface, enough, and this grumpy old bastard has a heart of gold and teaches Oliver more about life than his bickering parents have managed and gradually as the film unfolds, the people who think of Vinnie as this waste of space old git start realising that he might be the saint Oliver thinks he is. Bill Murray has always been a favourite of mine but his output in the 21st century has been... different, and this certainly was. 8/10

Back in the USSR

In For All Mankind, the Soviet Union still exists in 2013 and while it is still essentially an authoritarian communist state, it is also capitalist through and through. The first of this week's double bill looks at Margot's former boss, the second in command of the KGB back at the turn of the century. It also expands on the mysterious first murder on Mars, the revelation that Dev was one of the people behind the automation of Mars and the civil unrest on the planet comes to a head, as we're left with a cliffhanger ending.  

The wife has found this latest season a bit underwhelming and I know what she means, but this is probably down to the fact that most of the original cast have been reduced to bit parts, cameos, flashbacks and deaths - it has been over 50 years of time passed since the series started. 

However, as we caught up with the series, something dawned on me. Where the first four series were all about - BAM - in your face events, this one has been far more subdued and close knit, almost claustrophobic. The latest episode showed how the people who have made lives on Mars are desperate to stay there and how they have everyone against them. We've seen brief mentions of the International Space Network - the rival faction to the M6 nations (the countries who have invested in Mars' infrastructure) and I believe they will play a big part in the concluding episodes. Slow burner is how I'd describe this series; yes, it hasn't been as good as the seasons which made this one of the best shows on TV, but it's still better than much of the rest.

In Too Deep?

The now extended episodes of Your Friends & Neighbours spent half of the episode at a Passover party for some of Coop's Jewish friends, which also acted as Sam's (Olivia Munn) return to being accepted by the snobs of the neighbourhood. Coop's ex wife, Mel (Amanda Peet) is the only person who has a problem with this and she's been told to 'get over it.' Owen Ash continues to give Coop grief, this time about not investing $400million in a super hedge fund fast enough, while simultaneously dangling his blackmail video in front of Coop as leverage. Torrey, Coop and Mel's daughter continues to confound her parents (and the viewers, tbh) as she seems to want to give up everything they want for her.

The latest episode is essentially all about fucking, or at least it is for some of the cast, for others it's about being fucked and for Coop it's a bit of both. This was all about excess - a look into the lives of people who made Your Friends & Neighbours look poor in comparison. It was also about Mel's struggle with the menopause and her feelings of being betrayed by Sam - who was her best friend until she fucked her ex-husband and then tried to frame him for the murder of her oafish husband. All of this pales into insignificance because the ending is a real kick in the crotch.

Extinction Event

You might remember a month or so ago, I was talking about starting to watch the Netflix four-part series The Dinosaurs, narrated by Morgan Freeman and containing some questionable special effects? Well, we finished it and while it was entertaining it was also quite facile and superficial. I appreciate it was about dinosaurs, but it skirted evolutionary processes, other life on earth and huge swathes of time to try and make a 'natural history' documentary and I think it only just succeeded in creating entertainment. 

I said to the wife halfway through the third part that I felt like we were getting fleeting highlights of a world that existed and we claim to know more about every year, but is still an interpretation - not that I would expect anything different. I just didn't think this one felt... plausible. I don't think even dedicated palaeontologists can comprehend what it was like 200 million years ago. It would have been interesting if we'd been given an insight into what dinosaurs evolved from and why and how long between [object A] becoming [object B] and why this happened. If mammals and dinosaurs existed at the same time. We know evolution exists, but to our feeble minds and the timeframe they sit in; 'evolution' is just a catch all description for something that changes over HUUUUUUUGE periods of time and sometimes it might be nice if they filled in the gaps, even if it's just more theories.

Absurd Nonsense

Sometimes, I see a film, look at the IMDB rating and think, "It's a 6.5, with 8.5K reviews, it can't be that bad" and I watch it and then almost immediately regret that decision, but I don't just turn it off and start with something else - like I should. They Will Kill You falls into that category completely. Zazie Beetz plays a woman who goes to a building, faking herself as a new employee, but to save her sister from what she thinks is something nefarious. It turns out that she's trapped in a building with people who cannot die and are protected by Satan. There is enormous amounts of blood and guts, but it's quite preposterous, stupid and stylised and quite ridiculous. It was another poor choice of movie entertainment. 4/10

Improbable Bollocks

I don't know. I seem to wander into watching some shite films at the moment. I suppose the good thing about that is, if you believe me, it saves you watching them. In this case, it's another film where a prized and excellent actor is no longer the star he once was and has been reduced to playing hard men and psychopaths. Jake Gyllenhaal used to be in some great movies, but his star waned and he's been in some stinkers in the 2020s, none more so than Ambulance, which he co-stars with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (or Wonder Man as we've recently seen him) and Eiza Gonzalez, about two brothers who rob a bank and then hijack an ambulance to try and make their getaway. This film is over two hours long when it should have been 90 minutes max, but they - actually director Michael Bay - somehow manages to spin it out for almost an extra hour. It is faintly ridiculous and Gyllenhaal is shit as a psychopath. 4/10

Sacrifices

In a surprisingly revelatory penultimate episode, Daredevil: Born Again wasn't one of those scene setters but a part full of surprises and dangerous confrontations and not everyone gets out alive. Matt gives Bullseye a job to do, which will see the downfall of Fisk, while he comes out from his undercover to defend Karen at her trial for essentially unAmerican activities. There's some more of Heather Glen, a character that seemed to be vitally important to this show in the first half, but has become a peripheral character and something of a fifth wheel - will she have a moment in the finale, or was she just a red herring?

Psycho Messiah

Homelander is God is now a thing and it's starting to get difficult for Firecracker and her own religious beliefs. This dedicated follower of Homelander must forsake Jesus for her new master and that bothers her. The Boys this week was all about supporting characters and what is happening through their eyes. It was cleverly done and yet felt as though it was treading water. I've been here before, but Daredevil is so much better at this kind of thing and never feels like it's going through motions to eke out eight or nine episodes. This needs some... oomph injecting back into it, because after last week's interesting episode this felt like the same old same old - that is until the end, which surprised even me.

Spooky Island

I don't really know if I can even hazard a guess as to what Widow's Bay is going to be about. The new Apple TV+ show is billed as a comedy horror, but could probably be called a lot of other things. Matthew Rhys plays the mayor of Widow's Bay, who seems to hold the town and its people in some disdain, but is also trying desperately to put the place on the map. There are secrets about the island and stories about the people. Old newspaper headlines are surreal and often hilarious, but... we didn't get much of an idea what the show is going to be about other than it's going to be quirky. We have another episode to watch, so hopefully that might shed some light onto what we need to know.

The second part is really all about a challenge Matthew Rhys has to accept, when he dismisses the stories about the local hotel being haunted, so he spends the night there to prove he knows best. What happens might be able to be explained away by fungus or it might be something more... spooky. All I can say is this is a show that channels both Stephen King and Scarfolk County Council, it's weird but very funny.

The Ginger Wig

If you've never seen Samuel L Jackson in a tight ginger wig, then you get your chance in The Negotiator, a 1998 film that was so far-fetched and overwrought that it could have been a pantomime about hostage taking. The opening ten minutes seemed okay, but as soon as Jackson started to be framed for something he clearly wasn't responsible for, you had to start wondering whether the writer of this film was ignorant or just thought that the viewing public was. Jackson is a 20 year plus veteran of the Chicago PD; he's a hostage negotiator, great at his job and loved by all his colleagues. For some reason (and trust me, there are loads of 'for some reason' moments in this) he is able to be railroaded from hero to zero in about 30 seconds and the real question is 'how many crooked cops are there?'

So Jackson, in a tight ginger wig, does what any sane person would do, he takes a bunch of people hostage, asks for Kevin Spacey to negotiate and there's loads of shouting, hard stares and things that made no sense at all. JT Walsh - in his final film - gets killed, like he seemed to in almost every movie he made and David Morse is so strange you don't know if he's crooked or just a gung-ho nutter with a fixation for killing first and maybe asking a question later. This was rubbish and I feel like I'm on a roll with shit films. 3/10

What's Up Next?

And what a week that was - some shit, but some sweetcorn poking out of the shit... I was looking at the huge list of films we have to possibly watch and I'm not too hopeful that there's going to be much I'm going to get excited about. I suppose, the crappier the film the more chance of a funny review, but it doesn't always work like that...

In other news... Oh yeah, I promised myself I'd avoid that subject for the time being, so there is no other news. Next week will be the first full week of May and summer's over already. Take nothing for granted.

My Cultural Life - Short & Stinky

What's Up?

Welcome to the shortest My Cultural Life ever. It's been a week where TV took a back seat. Except, it didn't. There's stuff I don't review - the staples of our week's viewing; stuff that I do not consider writing about. There might not be much of it, but if I was to include writing about the news, Pointless, the occasional Tipping Point or stuff like Landward and Scotland's Home of the Year then I'd get bored writing this thing, so who knows what you'd think?

However, something on the news caught my attention and it's put something of a bug up my arse. How come corporate crime is more important than just crime in general? Let me explain; one of the things people have been moaning about over the last decade is the police's inability to solve crimes, or even be available to pretend to solve crimes. How often have you or someone else been given a 'crime number' and pretty much been told "this won't be solved, contact your insurers"?

It's frustrating, especially when we see masses of police officers arresting old people who oppose the genocide of Palestinians, but not one when we need one, it starts to feel like a bad joke. So imagine my surprise when I found out this week that the police are clamping down on Firestick users and suppliers. Apparently large amounts of resources have been allocated so that police can a) track down and prosecute people supplying Firesticks and b) will then target people who bought them and are getting their streaming platforms for free.

Many of you might feel this is a good use of police resources and I'm not about to argue with you about that. What I will say is I think the UK police focusing on stopping people from getting US subscription channels for free is like the police giving a pensioner a parking ticket while a bunch of schoolchildren are murdered in front of him. It proves that we are totally in a world where individuals mean far less than organisations. I don't see the police hunting down BBC licence fee dodgers, so why should they be doing this at the behest of the likes of Amazon, Netflix and Disney? 

I don't have to worry about this because Firesticks are slightly pointless for me, for reasons we don't need to go into, but while I don't believe in victimless crimes, I do think that if you're getting something from Amazon for free then fucking go for it because they have more money than God and pay very little in taxes...

Spider-Crap

I remember reviewing The Amazing Spider-Man when it came out in 2012, rebooting Sony's Spidey franchise. I also remember disliking it immensely and oddly enough, watching it again, years later, I still don't like it. Everything from the lame story, to the trying to make it more of a mystery and the awful special effects, the ones which make the Lizard seem really substandard and Spidey's aerobic antics look more like a 2012 computer game than believing a man came swing on webs. I vaguely recall preferring the sequel to the reboot (which we will rediscover soon enough), but this is a slight story that retells 'emo' Peter Parker's origin and conveniently wedges Gwen Stacy in as the new love interest. One of the major problems is that both Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone look like high school happened over a decade ago for them both and Rhys Ifans isn't a good villain. This is the worst Spider-Man film. 5/10

Spider-Crap Too

No, this is the worst Spider-Man film. Everything that was bad about the first Andrew Garfield Spidey movie was amplified in the second one. This had awful villains, a continuation of the Parker parents subplot, that really felt like more was made of it than anyone thought possible, and more wisecracking from emo-Spidey, that works in the comics, but falls quite flat on screen. Jamie Foxx's Electro is woeful - a mentally unstable black man working for a corporation that treats him like shit, and a very deranged and confusing Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborne, this time reborn as some foppish wanker who would never have been friends with someone like Peter Parker and yet is somehow, despite not having seen each other in years. Fucking awful superhero movie. 3/10

Practically Bollocks

Sometimes, I have to ask myself why I subject myself to certain things. In this case watching Practical Magic for what I'm informed was for the second time. Apparently I'd watched it about 28 years ago and as I don't remember, I wondered if I hated it as much then as I do now? In 1998, Sandra Bullock was top billing next to Nicole Kidman - fancy that. Stockard Channing (who hadn't yet become First Lady) and Dianne Wiest, play the two aunts, who also happen to be witches, in a story about cursed love, unintentional magical deaths, unsettled spirits and bigotry. It's essentially a romcom that isn't very funny, not very romantic and isn't spooky. There's going to be a sequel later on this year, I'm taking bets as to whether I watch it or not. 3/10

The Hate Boys

Billy Butcher leads The Boys into the heart of Fort Harmony, where the original superheroes were created and also where there might be some of the original batch of V floating about. They are soon followed by Homelander and Soldier Boy and all of them are walking into a trap. This, peculiarly, was almost like a standalone episode and it benefited from it. The place they're searching is haunted by one of the original heroes and he feeds off of the hatred that people feel. There is also another perfect chance to kill Homelander off, but yet again, he walks away to proclaim himself God. Annie visits her father and lots of home truth are said. Almost a reasonable episode. 

Hell's Kitchen

The aftermath of last week's surprise ending spills out into the streets as Wilson Fisk casts caution to the wind and decides to shut the city down and hound out the vigilantes and their supporters. As we fast approach the finale, this week's Daredevil: Born Again has some shocks - such as an appearance from Jessica Jones and Karen and Matt falling out over how this all has to end. There was a lot going on and yet it still felt like a slow dance until Daredevil and the Kingpin come face-to-face again. With two episodes to go, everybody is in a shit situation and it looks like no one is going to win.

Political Bollocks

Robert De Nero, Dustin Hoffman and Anne Heche are the main actors in the 1997 political satire Wag the Dog. A film I thought I'd seen before, but am now convinced I haven't. This I find illogical, given who's in it and what it's about, yet after watching it I find myself strangely unimpressed. It had funny moments and was absurd yet totally believable, but... Anyhow, when the incumbent POTUS is implicated in an under age sex scandal, it's up to De Nero to come up with a smokescreen story to knock the allegations out of the mainstream press. The USA gets involved in a war with Albania and Hollywood producer Hoffman is the man to 'produce' this 'war' and sell it to the public. Maybe it was the fact it could be true that helps the film lose it's impact or maybe the current POTUS makes satires look old and dated, either way I can only give it a 6/10 and that's at a push.

What's Up Next?

Double For All Mankind and Your Friends & Neighbours, because this week is a quiz week. Plus we seep closer to a conclusion in The Boys and there's the penultimate episode of Daredevil: Born Again - which I think is going to have a surprise ending. 

Hopefully, my choices in films will be better.

As usual...

My Cultural Life - Time Zones

What's Up?

I've been having anxiety issues for a few years now. It comes and goes, usually depending on the time of year or how much stress I'm under, but it has been something of an enigma, given that I've not been happier than I have since I moved to Scotland. I think a bunch of things probably set it off, the most obvious one being the pandemic in 2020, although I didn't really start having serious issues until 2023 when I pretty much had a full on breakdown...

I used to be quite dismissive of agoraphobia - a symptom of anxiety - but I think that was because I didn't understand it, despite having had a bout of it in the late 1990s - also due to stress and anxiety and probably all brought on by that bastard ex-employer of mine, who made my life something of a living hell (and is still alive). Now, agoraphobia is something that is the most prominent product of my anxiety and something I'm slowly beginning to understand, maybe even deal with.

I went to the doctor's in the September 2022 about my growing anxiety issues, but then that serious chest infection that led me to being rushed into hospital happened and everything got thrown into confusion and I had a couple of years of medical professionals treating the symptoms and not the cause. The thing is the pandemic led me down that 'I don't feel happy in places I don't feel in control of' path and that's not a control freak thing, but a COPD thing, because I irrationally panic in situations I can't control my anxiety in. This was amplified by Covid. Again, it's now something I'm beginning to deal with, but it's been a long old process.

Why am I telling you this?

Partly cathartic and partly explanatory. It has been noticed that I rarely socialise now and yet people who attend my pub quiz would probably be hard pressed to think there was anything wrong with me at all. Like many mental health issues, it's something I've learned to hide well. The stupid thing is I'm fine when I get wherever I'm going, it's the getting there and then getting back bits that I struggle with. I also could do without finding situations stressful, especially when there's nothing to get stressed about, or stressing about situations where I have the chance to dwell on worse case scenarios. 

The mind, eh? Can't live with it, cant live without it...

Is There Life on Titan?

The first post-Ed Baldwin episode of For All Mankind started with a dedication to the show's principle character and then featured a guest appearance from his old space partner and adversary, while introducing us to Gordo's granddaughter and the chief subplot of the series. There was me thinking it was going to be about discovering life on Titan (a moon of Saturn), but it's actually going to be the survival of the Mars colony and whether or not Ed's own grandson - born on the red planet - will be able to survive. There's still a feeling of understatement about my favourite TV show, but it's finally taking shape and Aleida's arrival on Mars, after a 40 year wait is a very interesting thing.

The Future of AI

Just before the opening credits rolled on Grayson Perry Has Seen the Future, the wife said, "Oh shit, you're going to be screaming at the telly before the end," as the show opened with Grayson chatting to a woman who had married her chatbot. The irony is that within a few minutes, she was shouting at the television about the world being full of fuckwits. However, this wacky start was a prelude to 45 minutes of some quite scary ideas and a wee bit of relief, as AI becomes extremely powerful, but has limits to its capabilities - at the moment - which might take a lot longer to master than the experts hoped. Perry is a knowledgeable and amiable host and this is a must see show for fans of dystopian sci-fi...

Double Crossed

As Coop (Jon Hamm) reels from being caught red handed by Ash (James Marsden), he's given a dilemma - retrieve what he stole or face the consequences. This sends Coop down a path in Your Friends & Neighbours he doesn't really want to, but has to and when he finally gets what he needs, he discovers he's not been double but triple crossed. Meanwhile, Coop's business manager has some new found energy since discovering what his client does for a living and Coop's daughter goes full on 'anti-mom' mode and moves in with her dad, much to the annoyance of her control freak, menopausal mother (Amanda Peet).

Legal Eagle

It's been about 25 years since we last watched Erin Brockovich and I'd be honest by saying we'd forgotten what a great movie it is. The story of a woman who essentially was on the waste tip of humanity; two former husbands, three kids, loads of debts and no chance of getting a decent job, who somehow gets a job in a law firm as a legal secretary and then discovers that some of their clients might have a Class Action against a power supplier in California. It's all about her relentless work in the face of discrimination and people looking down on her because of her appearance. It won Julia Roberts an Oscar and she absolutely deserved it. 9/10

Cream of Bailey

Bill Bailey's Thoughtifier, his latest comedy offering, is a mixture of hilarious and tedious, but that's probably just me. I find Bailey a very funny man who has waned with older age, but I've always struggled with his music. Yes, he writes and performs funny songs and his musicianship is remarkable, but I like my comedians to be comedians and I always get the feeling that Bailey is a repressed rock musician who would have been equally as happy in a prog rock band as making people laugh. This hour long special is good, but I think it was poorly edited and we well may have missed some of the more surreal and funnier bits.

We Are All Slaves 

I've often said that we have never seen a bad Matthew McConaughey movie and as we close in on seeing almost everything he's ever made, I can add The Free State of Jones to that list. It's an excellent film, but it does nothing to quell the feeling that the USA is just a giant lie dressed up as a democracy. The slave trade is a difficult period for any normal person to get their heads around; how we as a human race can imprison and force other humans to do whatever we want and if they don't acquiesce then we can punish them as we see fit. White Americans, especially those from the southern states, have a history that will rarely be looked back at fondly by anyone with a working brain. The MAGA movement, led by that Orange Racist in Chief, might want to return the USA to a period in its history that is abhorrent, but for all their power, at present, there are still filmmakers out there who show the country up for what it was - a barbaric, psychopathic and intolerant society that is anything but the land of the free...

This is a story that starts with the desertion of a Confederate officer who has realised that the Confederate army is being run by rich powerful Americans who were not putting themselves at risk, but getting poor, innocent people to believe in a world they had no real place in. McConaughey plays the deserter, Newton Knight, a man who has to hide with escaped slaves because there is a bounty on his head. He rallies his friends and other deserters to fight back against the corrupt Confederates and for a while they not only succeed but are at the forefront of the end of slavery and the birth of the freedmen. However, as Knight's story unfolds, we are treated to chunks of more recent history and a court case from 1950, where a descendent of Knight, who might have been one eighth black was imprisoned for marrying a white woman in Mississippi. As a historical 'document' it's tough watching; it's a great movie, but it will leave you angry and bewildered that the USA paints this fabulous picture of itself, but is really one of the worst places to live in the world if you are not white and privileged. 8/10

The PI Stakers

There is a team at my monthly pub quiz called the P.I. Stakers and I didn't know it was a reference to someone from the film Hot Fuzz. The reason for this is I've never seen Hot Fuzz. The team were amazed, given I write a column about films and I knew Simon Pegg (casually). So, on Monday night, we watched Hot Fuzz and I wasn't very impressed. It was okay, nothing special. I laughed a couple of times, but generally I found it tedious, predictable and exactly how I'd imagined it. There's not much else I can say about it really; if you've seen it you know what it's about and if you haven't my advice would be not to bother. 4/10

Mission Improbable

James Mangold's Knight and Day is essentially a piss take of Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible films. It might not be dressed up as such, but with Cruise playing a flippant, slightly sociopathic, version of Ethan Hunt and getting himself into all kinds of situations with dodgy, double-dealing baddies, while also having the best looking woman around, the comparisons were always going to happen. The problem with Knight and Day is it just isn't in the same league as the movies it's attempting to parody. Cruise plays Roy Miller, a CIA agent seemingly on the run from his own people who 'recruits' the help of Cameron Diaz and subsequently puts her in danger. It rushes around a lot, does clever things 'off camera' and generally makes a good fist of a comedy action thriller, except it isn't very funny and a lot of the action happens 'off camera' so what you get is style over substance. It's entertaining without ever being much more. 6/10

Yawn!

Is it superhero fatigue? I doubt it because I'm really enjoying Daredevil. So why am I finding The Boys just tedious now? That's a tough one to answer with any conviction. It might have been Gen V and the fact, at some point, the wankers from that are going to turn up in this. Possibly it's the fact it has gone on for so long now that the actual aim of the story seems like it has outlived its stay - there have been a couple of occasions where Homelander could have been killed off, but here we are, with him going even more insane and yet becoming less threatening. This week some stuff happened.

Yay!

I have a soft spot for Daredevil. It's a comic that for years plodded along with no real direction and then a couple of writers - Frank Miller and then Ann Nocenti - did something different with it and the essence of that took root in Netflix's Daredevil series and now in Marvel's Daredevil: Born Again. This week was the aftermath of last week's boxing match with the WTF ending and much of it was told in flashback - utilising that Marvel de-aging technology they used originally in one of the Iron Man films. As Matt tries to get Bullseye safe from the AVTF, Fisk paces hospital corridors waiting for news of Vanessa. There's a sense of dread all through this and there's even a little subplot that keeps you guessing all the way to its conclusion. This is quality TV and far more entertaining than that The Boys shite.  

Drive My Cars

After watching Hot Fuzz I fancied watching another Edgar Wright movie, because I do find him to be a reasonably good director. That film was Baby Driver, something I'd avoided seeing, mainly because I felt it was going to be a different movie than it turned out to be. Ansel Elgort plays Baby, he's an actor I'm not familiar with but he does a good job as the slightly damaged kid who can drive a car like a pro. Supporting him included Jon Hamm, in a role that was a real change to his usual, Eiza Gonzalez, Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx. It was a really entertaining feature with a banging soundtrack, but I felt it was let down by the ending which I found a little disappointing, but I suppose it was the only place they could go. 6/10

What's Up Next?

More of the usual and probably less as well. I'm off to the pub tonight for my impending birthday, where I will be 64 and humming a Beatles tune. Then this coming Friday I have another pub quiz and you never know what's going to happen on the other days, especially with a reasonably warmer weather forecast.