Modern Culture: In With the Old

Yes, we have no spoilers, except we have spoilers today... 

It's a damned shame about Bruce Willis and his dementia diagnosis; it's a horribly undignified and slow decline for an actor who has made some extremely good films over the last 30 odd years but over the last ten years has made more shit films than Michael Caine. However, whatever the future holds for Willis, which isn't much more than drooling and forgetting who Demi Moore is, he's not Nicholas Cage...

Cage hasn't got dementia although some would possibly argue with me. He also isn't having a renaissance as such, he's just making as many films as he can before the batteries run out, like Willis did. I've been trying to remember the last film Cage made that was remotely good and I'm left with the conclusion that even his 'classic' films are spoiled somewhat by the presence of Nicholas Cage. Compare this to the shit films Willis has made over the last ten years and you have to ask yourself - is God just really horrible? Is this some cruel trick we're having played on us? Why Willis and not Cage?

I say this because I tend to avoid watching anything with Cage in it, I've never really enjoyed anything Cage has made and I can't see that improving with age, whereas I saw the beginnings of the steady decline of Willis about ten years ago and have largely avoided his films since then, leaving me his enjoyable films to remember him by. However I can say the same about Cage, ever so often I get tempted to watch one of his films because it sounds like it might be good and that's what happened with The Colour Out of Space a few years ago and I'm still beating myself up about it. So, you might ask, what made me think The Old Way would be anything other than a load of shite?

Probably because it had some promising reviews when it was first released and we've been watching a few westerns recently and have been entertained and impressed. So for our Friday night treat we watched a Nicholas Cage film and... dun dun dun... it wasn't as shite as I expected it to be.

Except, it was. Or to be more precise, he was. It's like what little he knew about acting has completely alluded him in later life (he's 59 now). The film wasn't that bad; a typical western tale of revenge in a style similar to big westerns in the 1960s - the soundtrack could have been by Elmer Bernstein and the cinematography was quite outstanding, painting a picture of the old west in a way we haven't seen since John Ford films. The main problem was the acting, or lack of it.

Cage was portraying a stone cold killer who has retired, settled down with a lovely wife (about 30 years his junior) and has a daughter, runs a Mercantile store and lives a peaceful life with no hassles. The problem is 20 years earlier he shot a man who was going to be hanged and he left a big impression on the man's 10 year old son. He returns as a 30-year-old  - with his three dullard accomplices - and does horrible things to Cage's wife before moving on. This is where you start to question the narrative because the now grown up son is essentially looking for revenge and that revenge would and could have been achieved had he just laid in wait for Cage to return from his day job, yes I know the US marshals were after them but the entire set up seemed very contrived and dependant on Cage's character doing the one thing we've sat down to watch for.

A lot of this film has no internal logic, but very few revenge films do. What makes this slightly weirder than your average revenge film is that it spends a fair amount of time examining the premise that Cage's character is essentially autistic and his surviving daughter has all of her father's traits; 12 -year-old Ryan Keira Armstrong is probably the best thing in it, except there's not enough of her or the slightly emotionless future killing machine she might become. In fact, the film lacks a lot of action, although one could argue this is a western and in reality westerns shouldn't really be that full of action - it's all horse riding and eating beans, surely?

There was actually a good film here trying desperately to break free of Nicholas Cage. Yes, it did feel very like a lot of other Cage films, as if it was made with the local Am-Dram society because of budget constraints, but it could have been so much better had the director/writer found a lead actor who has range. 

I wouldn't recommend The Old Way but if you fancy a modern (as in made recently) western that lasts 90 minutes and isn't going to start any wars on the internet then it might be ideal for when you're stuck with nothing to and don't fancy having a long slow wank while watching geriatric porn.

***

I'm struggling to think of a film that Matthew McConaughey has made that I haven't been impressed with. We finally got around to watching Interstellar again - almost nine years after it was released and I'd forgotten - by and large - what a glorious film it is. Two and three quarter hours of Christopher Nolan madness, packed with awesome special effects, fantastic actors, brilliant story and its utterly heartbreaking all at once. I'd probably rate it as one of the best films I've ever seen.

I suppose if there was anything about it I didn't really like it was the mystery behind the mystery that leads McConaughey and his screen daughter into this film in the first place. Yes, it does a brilliant job of 'explaining' stuff as well as creating a strange paradox (and you all know how I love a good paradox), but it falls short of explaining why. There is a moment where our hero realises that the 'race' of beings sending us messages are actually us - maybe millions of years in the future and the weird things that take place inside the black hole felt a little like Nolan was laying the foundations for Tenet and both feel contrived to allow him to make/close the circle of the story, but it doesn't really matter because this is a fabulously well realised snapshot of what our future might be like if we carry on the way we are going.

It's a long film that doesn't feel like it overstays its welcome and I would have gladly watched it for another hour if they'd had anything to tell and while it is full of science that most people might struggle to understand it does it in such a way that understanding (or not) doesn't distract from what a cracking story it is.

Whether you've seen it before or not I'd recommend watching it. Probably for the final meeting of Matthew McConaughey's Cooper and his daughter - now in her 90s, while he's a sprightly 124; the first time she had seen him in over 80 years is the most emotive. I know grown men who blub at this scene and frankly you can understand why, especially if you have kids of your own. 

I cannot recommend this film enough.

***

I'm going off-piste a little here, but I know two people who have seen Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania in the last two days and both of them have said it's pretty much a load of shit and nothing happens; I've also read a lot of 1 and 2 star reviews. Apparently the audience was so unimpressed at one showing they actually booed and laughed when MODOK makes his first appearance; and a number of people are suggesting that Kang isn't the villain the MCU needs. I get the impression that many people feel dreadfully let down by the film. On the flip side, I know two people who have also seen it and they've said the film was a lot of fun; but that's as far as they seemed willing to go.

The film is already sitting at 6.6 (after four days) and heading towards having the worst rating of all the MCU films (that dubious honour is held by Thor: Love and Thunder with a 6.3 rating but that's been out for a year). In fact, the only film since Avengers: Endgame that has got more than 6.9 is Shang-Chi and to be fair while I didn't enjoy that very much it's beginning to look like a classic compared to everything that's come since then. The thing is, I know Marvel and Disney don't care about ratings, at least while they're making money, but if their films have dropped from high 7s and 8s to low 6s then that will eventually have a bearing on the future. 

Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania is the start of Phase 5 of the MCU with a lot planned between now and Avengers: The Kang Dynasty due in 2025, but if the reviews are anything to go by Marvel might have to seriously rethink the next few years, otherwise there might not be a lot of money for Phase 6...

***

I'm not quite sure what to make of Hello Tomorrow. It's all about selling timeshares on the moon. Or is it? After the first episode I'm not sure what I'd describe it as but it looks unbelievably brilliant. It's like it's set in the early 1960s except there are floating cars, rocket packs, robots - full of everything we were told we'd have back in the 1960s and it looks really authentic, except, obviously it doesn't because the retro futurism looks like something out of a science fiction comic from the 1950s and so do all the places that the characters visit. It's odd. It's also a little bit creepy. 

Billy Crudup stars as the timeshare salesman Jack Billings, who might be leading a team of hawkers and hucksters - are they really selling condominiums on the moon or is this some elaborate scam before they move on to somewhere else? His team includes Hank Azaria, who has a serious gambling problem and Dewshane Williams, who is bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and a little too cheerful to be true. There is also Nicholas Podany, who plays Joey, who just happens to be Jack's son from a failed marriage. Joey isn't aware that Jack is his father and the only reasons the two get thrown together is because an automated delivery truck, designed never to hit anything, crushes Joey's mother's skull in a reversing accident and leaving her hospitalised, so Jack's mother cajoles him into paying his ex-wife a visit; it's with this that he suddenly develops a conscience and decides to reconnect with his son, but by offering a sales job. 

By episode two I was criticising The Guardian again. You see the newspaper reviewed it and basically said it was a comedy series that wasn't funny and I realised they'd seen the description on IMDB of 'comedy/drama' and immediately ignored the word 'drama' and then probably didn't watch it. It's clear this is something altogether different, although in truth it's going to be an old fashioned story about ripping people off without having a conscience. Except... I'm not even convinced of that. 

There's a scene in episode two where's Jack's #2 Shirley has an envelope full of cash that needs to be given back to buyers because of delays for rockets to the moon and this got my internal logic thinking - they must be selling something otherwise how are all these people living and surviving? Yet they seem to have been where they're operating from for a while, because they have offices and family there, so surely they're not just moving round the country ripping people off; but it's also clear that the head of the company might not even exist and the ex-actor who helps promote the moon houses is actually living in an old peoples home and obviously suffering from some form of dementia.

***

The Last of Us episode 6 was a bit of a puzzle. Again very little happened, but it was, in my never humble opinion, the best episode of the series - a vast improvement, despite no zomboids and very little action. It felt a little like how I would expect a post-apocalyptic society to be like, once you've escaped your Negan type nutters.

Joel and Ellie are in Wyoming; it's snowy, cold and empty. There are no sign of the infected and just an old Native American couple warning them not to go further west because that way is death. However, our intrepid heroes have to go west so they head off, despite the warnings and eventually they run into a bunch of horsemen and are taken back to their home - after a tense scene with a sniffer dog. Yet again, there were no signs of the infected, but unlike TWD, I think TLoU realises you don't need a monster threat every week - especially as Ep5 had a lot of them.

It turns out the leader of the horsemen is Joel's sister-in-law, although he doesn't know that at the time, and who's back at camp but Tommy, helping create a communist haven. Joel is struggling with panic attacks; he's doubting himself and I think it's implied that he is becoming attached - in a paternal way - to Ellie, which is why he asks Tommy to take her the rest of the way to the scientists based in a Colorado university.

It's an episode that focuses on a peaceful community and felt exactly how I envisaged this kind of community to be - the kind of place where the most exciting thing to happen is the failure of the potato crop. They have film nights - the one featured was the awesome Goodbye Girl which I only watched a few months ago and weeks before I started doing these columns regularly; and decent food, and booze and livestock and you get the gist. It would have been a great place to call home had they not had more pressing engagements.

Joel persuades Tommy to take Ellie to Denver, but has a change of heart and takes her himself. It's clear the bond between the two has become one like a family and when the university has clearly been evacuated in a hurry, it soon becomes clear they are in a bind. That becomes more of a problem when they see four men - scavengers - and make a break for it. From that point on anything I say will be a proper spoiler so I'll refrain from doing it, but I will say that for the first time in 6 weeks I actually am looking forward to the next episode.

***

The Nevers finally returned for the second half of its first (and now final) series. No longer on HBO (because they dropped it like a ton of human shit when allegations of sexual misconduct and impropriety were aimed at Joss Whedon), it's on something called Hubli, which I think is part of the Warner Network. It's also nearly three years after the first half of the series thanks to Covid and many members of the cast having commitments elsewhere that prevented them from finishing this series.

To be honest with you while I remember the first series and enjoyed it immensely, it's been so long since we saw it that I feel like we maybe should have watched the first six again, because lots of the characters seemed unfamiliar or I simply couldn't remember their stories. It's also under the helm of a new creative team, so whether we get what Whedon envisaged or how the new team took it is unknown.

I rate Laura Donnelly highly (apparently she was most famous for getting her kit off in Outlander) and she recently was one of the characters in Marvel's excellent Werewolf By Night playing Elsa Bloodstone. She's back as Amalia True, the leader of the gifted young women now vilified by London and its 'normal' inhabitants. There's still an alien imprisoned underground, it's still tied to a dystopian future (which the alien has travelled back in time to try and prevent) and it still has the equally excellent Ben Chaplin in it, as Frank the detective - now being marginalised by his own for his sexual preferences (which I can't say I remember either).

All six parts dropped at the same time, but we're only four parts in and frankly I've lost the plot. What seemed to be a genuinely interesting story in the first half of the series, somewhat clouded by the 6th episode, this second half has lost me as it tries to be more complex, weave countless tales and make it feel like someone, somewhere, is holding out for a second series. It's clear the new creative team wanted to put their own mark on it, but so much is happening and little of it makes much sense. I think this is now a case of watching the last two parts and forgetting about it.

***

After 10 years, we finally got around to watching Life of Pi and what an absolutely wonderful film it is. The wife has read the book so had been looking forward to watching the film, but I simply couldn't understand how a film about an Indian teenager trapped on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker would be remotely entertaining. How wrong could I have been.

It's an Ang Lee film and until he made 2020's The Gemini Man (a rather meh Will Smith vehicle) this was probably the last proper feature film he'd made and he does - according to the wife - an outstanding job of realising a difficult book to adapt into a superb film, full of passion and the unexpected. It's not really the 'life of Pi' as such, more like the first 16 years of Pi, but if you've never seen it I recommend you do, it might blow you away. 

***

The second part of season three of Picard had an element of padding about it already. Most of the 45 minutes was full of a Mexican stand off between the USS Titan and the mystery bounty hunter ship demanding they give Jack Crusher - Beverley's latest son and suggested son of Picard - up or get blown out of the stars. 

The rest of the episode continues to follow Raffi's 'undercover' investigation into some mysterious weapon that killed 117 Starfleet operatives; she was never the most fulfilling of characters and now she's become a little annoying and while this subplot is obviously to do with Jean Luc's as well, I thought we'd dispensed with the lame Picard sidekicks in favour of reuniting the old band? 

Oh and Oor Worf turns up.

***

A trip down memory lane with a 43 year old time travel film... The aforementioned The Guardian did one of its Top 20 film lists, this time dealing with Time Travel and as usual they omitted about five prime candidates just to stimulate some debate below the line. One of the films not listed was the 1980 'classic' The Final Countdown which had nothing to do with Europe or the pop charts.

The US Nimitz wanders through a wormhole and back into 1941, two days before Pearl Harbour. The captain and crew stop some things from happening, but let others happen as they did. They decide to prevent Pearl Harbour from happening, wander back into the worm hole; the things they prevented from happening happen anyway and the man who gets left behind in 1941 meets the man he didn't get on very well with in 1980 again in 1980. Nature abhors a paradox and therefore none happen.

It's remarkable for a couple of things; Kirk Douglas was 63 when he made the film and he looked old in it; he didn't die for another 40 years. Also absolutely nothing really happens; for a roughly two hour film I'd say that at least 40 minutes of it was made of stock footage of aircraft taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier or naval staff beavering away on said aircraft carrier. There's a brief excursion with a psycho Japanese POW and about ten 1980 US naval people die in 1941.

It wasn't that good; nothing happened and it obviously had a reasonable budget for a 1980 film. It's unlikely to get an airing on TV any time soon.

***

Next time: Fleishman is in Trouble has been lined up because it looks good and is well reviewed; we have Aronofsky's The Whale to watch and M. Night Shamalamadingdong's Knock at the Cabin - I'm not really looking forward to either, tbh. More Picard and the conclusion of The Nevers, as well as the latest Hello Tomorrow and probably something else that's new. I'm trying to download the first three series of Being Human because it's been years and we might enjoy seeing the original gang battling Jason Watkins and we still have a load of things listed over the last couple of months that we still haven't got round to and maybe won't, depending on how either of us feel. 

Oh and the next proper MCU TV series is Secret Invasion which doesn't start until May 10, five days after the release of the last Guardians film... Is it me or does Disney/Marvel actually need to do more TV releases? There might be What If season two before then, but I'm as interested in that as I am performing a self-circumcision without anaesthetic.  

Modern Culture: The End is Near

 The spoilers await within...

The finale of Everyone Else Burns wasn't what I expected. It felt like four mildly amusing sitcom episodes sandwiched between an awkward debut and a tragi-comic finale. At the end of part five you're hoping that the reason the things are happening 'off camera' is because there's going to be a happier outcome than is being let on, The reality is the final part leaves you feeling that this series was really all about being part of a looney religious order and that no one is ever truly happy when that's the case.

The conclusion left me with a real desire to see a happier, more fairer, ending. It felt a little bit like a  comedy that morphed into a drama, even Simon Bird came across as less bonkers compared to others. The 'big shock' wasn't that much of a shock, while the neighbour needs to be used more in any second series.

***

Clarkson's Farm was, without a doubt, one of the televisual highlights of 2021. That was because it was about farming rather than an aged buffoon best known for being a bore. I have a guilty secret; despite thinking Clarkson is a monumental twat, I also quite like him and he did a fantastic job of highlighting the fact that, by and large, our farmers are undervalued, and that is something that needs to be known by the ignorant and who better to tell them than one of their patrons.

Obviously, Kaleb - his assistant - has become a star and the assortment of comedy and serious supporting cast has made the Farm entertaining TV with a hint of unexpected jeopardy. Yes, Clarkson is going to be a twat, but this time it's usually to make a point - such as the slagging off of Brexit in episode two. Season two is about cows, wanting a restaurant and more bureaucracy that will have the former Top Gear presenter frothing at the mouth.

The problem? This is a prime candidate for second season syndrome. The pranks and set ups have to be bigger and believable, the buffoonery needs to be plausible and it needs to deal with issues that weren't looked at in the first series and, of course, if they weren't looked at it was because they're not interesting. Plus there's the more recent elephant in the room, one that Jezza can't seem to avoid - the comments about Prince Harry's wife, which have somewhat plummeted his stock and already led to the end of The Grand Tour and question marks over his WWTBAM future. This isn't going to be anything like a redemption arc for him even if he delivers a baby calf with his teeth while simultaneously dying of cancer, Clarkson is going the same way as Ron Atkinson and Angus Deayton - off our screens forever.

***

The decision the other day to switch Mystery Men off after 20 minutes seems to have allowed us a get out of crap free pass. Nearly 25 years after watching American Werewolf in Paris and remembering we didn't like it, we started to watch it again tonight and switched off after 20 minutes. Everything about it was an affront to the original John Landis film - and even that's dated somewhat badly.

***

Instead of a crap old werewolf film, we opted for Christian Bale's The Pale Blue Eye, a mystery thriller set around West Point in 1830.  A grizzled detective is summoned to the army academy after an act of horrendous mutilation is carried out on a cadet who appears to have committed suicide.

Bale deduces that what actually has happened is a murder, but finds the code of silence among the cadets difficult to break through. He manages to enlist the aid of a cadet who is treated as something of an outcast - one Edgar Alan Poe, who himself proves to be a fine detective in his own right. 

I'm not going to say it's a riveting film; I found myself struggling to keep up with it at first, but I don't know if that was because it simply wasn't very good or if it was because it was a British film with very few actual proper American actors in it, which I found distracting and slightly off-putting (because there was hardly an American accent in it apart from Poe); even Gillian Anderson, who is American via Hampstead sounded more Blighty than Yankee. It's full of twists and turns and a few gruesome coincidences, but it lacked atmosphere.

Would I recommend it? Probably not - it's a bit of a warm bland wank of a film.

***

The fifth instalment of The Last of Us finally had something happen; it also threw another curve ball at us. The problem is I'm losing the will to live with it. It's nine parts and I'll give it until the end but I doubt I'll be coming back for season two if this is anything to go by...

I feel there's an emperor's new clothes thing going on here and that I've not got the memo that's telling me I have to fawn and gush about this as much as possible. I do not think the acting is better than The Walking Dead and I don't think this is something a little more sophisticated than TWD and I'm not buying that this is a series as much about the growing relationship between Joel and Ellie as it is about killing zomboids. It's obviously had a little more money thrown at it and the CGI is excellent. I mean, this is a HBO product, it has to be brilliant; doesn't it?

The zomboids (or 'infected' as the fans of the show like to remind us) finally arrived in what can be described as a big explosion and a degree of threat was shown, but this is essentially going to be a show where the two main stars avoid being bitten in the most hazardous and jeopardous ways. A bit like The Walking Dead then?

It's not the best thing since sliced bread, in fact it's not even an average farmhouse loaf so far. I wanted to like this, probably based on all the positive press it was getting. I feel like lighting a lamp, swinging it back and forth and shouting 'Nothing to see here. Nothing new to see.'

***

It was Super bowl weekend so that meant trailers!

First up Flash. In terms of DC, Flash and Wonder Woman are probably the two I've been least interested in. Then DC did a comic called Crisis on Infinite Earths where the Flash is an absolute hero, totally wins over the comic reading public and then dies in probably the most hollow, lonely and unnecessary death ever; a death that to my knowledge still applies. Ezra Miller as Barry Allen is also such a bonkers brilliant idea. The trailer makes it look like it might be the best DC film ever, so it'll probably be shit.

Not released during the Bowl of Super was the second Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 trailer - quite a long one at nearly 2½ minutes - and it achieves something quite rare, it's managed to lower my expectations back down to a yawn. All of the 'hang on a minute' moments in the first trailer all gone as if magically removed from your memory. Obviously, I didn't really want potential bad news reinforcing because that would spoil it; the idea is to clearly make me think someone dies then remove that feeling so that when someone dies - or maybe even some ones - the impact is even greater. It's called the Double Bluff and Stan Lee used to use it quite a bit. Anyhow, the film looks like it could be messy and confusing with more baggage added to the already baggage heavy baggage. 

And that was all she wrote. Yes there were other trailers, but nothing that particularly set my world on fire. I should point out that I checked the newspaper the following morning to see what films had been trailed, I didn't watch the Super bowl. I have never watched one; not even Rihanna's sprog would have tempted me.

Have you ever noticed that Super bowl can also be Superb Owl, which sounds like it could be one funky superhero. "Who are you?"
"I'm Superb Owl."
"What do you do?"
"I do what other owls do but superbly."

***

We thought we'd treat ourselves to a comedy and The Change Up looked to be the good choice. Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds and a Freaky Friday vibe that should have been a riot. We switched off after 20 minutes. It wasn't funny; it had a lot of cringe in it and Bateman, who is a fine actor, doesn't do Reynolds very well and Reynolds doesn't do anything but himself at all well.

***

ARQ is Groundhog Day meets any anodyne dystopian sci-fi film. It gets straight into the action and the twist in this is that after a while the main protagonist isn't the only one who realises he's in a time loop. I think the idea of the film was to show you how many layers there might be to something because before the end of the third loop you've sussed out that at least one of the characters isn't who they claim to be and by loop seven or eight it's like no one in this building is who they seem to be.

The loop 'starts' with Robbie Amell waking, having a second to compose himself before his door is kicked in by three antagonists. Robbie and his ex, Hannah, are held hostage by a group claiming to be part of the 'rebels' and it seems like a simple robbery, but it isn't quite that.

Our hero, explains to his ex-girlfriend that they're stuck in a loop that starts at 6.16am and finishes at 9.25. This loop is caused by whoever the dead body is in the same room as the ARQ, touching the ARQ at 6.16am, so imagine the paradox created within the time loop when one of the antagonists opts to prevent the guy with the ARQ from dying; this would presumably break the loop as it will never have happened, but the writers haven't thought about that.

Anyhow, what makes it different from other groundhog day type films is that each loop is considerably different from the previous ones by virtue of the fact that half the cast are trying to use the loop to their advantage and while there is a serious paradoxical mistake made - as mentioned - the conclusion of the film is more akin to how I'd imagine a film about a time loop to conclude.

It wasn't very good though. 

***

Of all the Stephen King novels, stories and books I possess, there are very few I have never read more than once; in fact, of his work pre-accident, there are only a few books he's written that I've never revisited and The Dark Half is one of them. This was adapted into a feature film in 1993 by George A Romero - Mr Zombie - and stars Tim Hutton as Thaddeus Beaumont and George Stark (his ghostly twin).

It's been 30 years since we last watched the film, which also stars Amy Madigan and Michael Rooker - with hair and playing a good guy. You can see it was made at a time when special effects weren't that special but were creeping into films on an almost weekly basis. In fact, for a Romero film it's almost quite restrained with more inferred gore than you actually see.

In essence it's a bit of a cross between Misery and The Outsider - which was adapted - quite brilliantly - into a 10-part series in 2020 with Jason Bateman and Ben Mendelsohn. There are elements of some other books by King in there, but essentially it's about a writer who 'gives birth' to an alter ego rooted in his absorbed dead twin that then goes round killing everybody related to Thad until he agrees to write another George Stark novel - the pulp novels that have earned Thad all of his money that he no longer wants to write.

It's dated. For a near two hour film there's lots that seem to be overlooked and corners that appear to have been cut for the sake of the film. The story has been changed slightly - but I'm remembering that from the book, which despite having read it over 30 years ago is memorable for the death of a recurring character in many of King's Castle Rock books, who doesn't die in this film.

I suppose the thing that makes this film interesting is it's a Romero film without proper zombies and highlights something very few people tend to observe when talking about this 'legend' of horror cinema - he's actually a really shit director, who seemed to think the art of making a film was to have a camera rolling while people did things in front of it. However, The Dark Half isn't half bad; it has a strong cast and felt like it could have benefited from being longer or even a TV series - but, of course, that happened 28 years later in another story by another director.

***

So, in a strange way the third and final season of Picard is essentially getting the Next Generation team back together, although we only saw three of them in the first episode - with Gates McFadden looking like a 200-year-old woman in a blonde wig. However, in just 45 minutes it did a very good job of excising the memory of Season two from my mind.

It appears to be set a few years after the end of season two with 7 of 9 now Commander whatever her name is working on Ryker's old ship with a captain who seems to be what most Starfleet personal appear to be now - an arsehole. She risks her career to help Jean Luc and Ryker achieve what they want to but we're left with a cliffhanger - Beverley Crusher has another son (We saw Wesley briefly at the end of season two as he is now - a Traveller) and they're being menaced by what looks a little like the Romulan vessel that Eric Bana was driving in the first Star Trek reboot film.

Frankly, this first episode was better than almost everything that went before it and they really should have just got the old gang together and made three series of Star Trek: The Old Generation.

***

And so we return to Clarkson's Farm and the inexplicable position of feeling sorry for the fat old fascist.

Over the space of the days between reviewing the first couple of episodes and finishing it, we have witnessed West Oxford District Council (or the Oxfordshire Nazi Party) essentially wage a personal vendetta against Jezza, even stooping so low as to refuse him planning permission to build an internal farm track and putting traffic cones for 2km either side of Diddly Squat farm. Someone rich and powerful and not a Clarkson fan has been bankrolling this action against the controversial presenter regardless of the harm it's doing to other farms that are relying Clarkson's success to help improve their plights since Brexit fucked them up royally.

What this series does better than anything else is show, quite starkly, the rubbish farms and farmers have to put up with just to supply us with food. They're essentially a service industry that is treated like some idiot cousin because of the impression that all farmers are wealthy. It's clear from this that isn't the case at all and the only reason there is someone fighting for them is because Clarkson is doing it and he has the money and the resources, oh and is bloody minded enough to fight.

The NFU recognise Clarkson's Farm as being ten times more beneficial to educating people about the struggles of farming than Countryfile does on BBC1; so much so it actually won an award. What Amazon have done is highlight what rural Oxfordshire nymbyism is doing to destroy the lives of the people all connected to Clarkson's venture. You see, he's wealthy; he'll be all right, but none of the other people involved will be.

Amazon also confirmed they will not be renewing Clarkson's contract when it runs out in June 2024, so series three of this and another four Grand Tour specials will hit our shores before Jeff Bezos finally sacks the divisive Yorkshireman.

***

Next time: Hopefully more new series - I mean there's more in this edition than I expected - and probably some older films. 

Modern Culture: The NDA Edition

The warning of spoilers is accurate 

She Said sounds like a dodgy AOR chart song by a 'rock' band like Train or Collective Soul, but is actually the story of how Harvey Weinstein's perversions finally were revealed, leading to him spending what is likely to be the rest of his life in prison. It stars Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan as the Woodward and Bernstein of the New York Times uncovering sexual abuse in quantities that would have had Jimmy Savile nodding in approval. Weinstein wasn't just a monster, he was a rich and powerful one.

The thing is, I think I struggled to fully enjoy the film because the events depicted happened so recently and given films like All The President's Men, Zodiac and The Post have all been classics and this isn't. It's not a bad film, Mulligan and Kazan are great, as are Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher and Ashley Judd, playing herself, but the scariest thing about Weinstein seems to be the amount of power he wielded and the complicit people allowing him to buy his way out of a frightening number of lawsuits, of who and which we still know little about. It still doesn't make it a particularly good film. Historically it will be a key moment, in 50 years time were they to still have films and they made a biopic remake about this I'm sure there'd be more car chases, drugs, nudity and murders, but this is just two hardworking reporters chipping away at the veneer.

This is a proper spoiler; they get the bastard in the end and he's still facing new charges almost every month. I don't watch a film produced or connected to the Weinsteins without wondering who the victim was in this one and I expect so much more will come out over the next few years that they could probably make a follow up. Ick.

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Would you watch something called Rehab Addict Lake House Rescue? Is this something genuinely new or some hybrid of three other genres?

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John Wick is a special film because it proves irrevocably that Keanu Reeves can't really act. Therefore every film Keanu Reeves has ever appeared in is special for that reason. John Wick is great fun - if you can excuse the dog slaying - and it does something I've not seen in this kind of film before - the resignation by most of the cast that they're going to die unless they get lucky. The scene when the head of the Russian mafia discovered John was after his son: 'Oh shit.'

How it has spawned two sequels with a third on the way is a little difficult to get my head around, but it's a full-on fun 100 minutes with only Willem Dafoe's choices not really being properly explained. But hey, what film nowadays makes perfect sense and has multiple killing sprees?

***

Nothing appears to still be happening in The Last of Us as Joel and Ellie trundle across a surprisingly empty US highway system unmolested by either zomboids or crazy survivors. In fact, up to a point, post-apocalyptic USA looks considerably more appealing than it does at the moment.

Episode four was still on the soporific side of exciting; the fungal-infested zomboids we're obviously having the week off, while the nutters were out in reasonable supply as we're introduced to the vigilantes of Kansas led by Melanie Lynskey who is keeping a very unnerving secret in her cellar.

I still feel that the people reviewing this for the Guardian or raving about it on film sites are people who grew up playing the game. There's a degree of knowledge about their descriptions of what is going on that suggests they've either seen all episodes or they know what these new characters are up to from playing the game. It means I try to avoid the articles and blogs about this series because I find it just clouds an already dark and murky lack of [gamer] knowledge; reading the aforementioned newspaper's summation of ep.04 suggested to me that Andy Welch (the author) knew a lot more about what he was watching than I did.

There's a level of Last of Us Snobbery floating about. Like a sort of nerd pissing contest between the 'we know the game, we know what happens' folk, the 'ooh look something to fill the Walking Dead void' brigade and people just dropping in to see what they might find. I've seen far more 'Oh you're not a gamer' styled comments/insults than I thought - proving I don't understand how important the game market is, obvs - and even Welch's weekly column in the Guardian was referring to characters and groups of people in a way that the casual viewer did not/would not learn from the episode itself. Apparently there are clues or enough material out there in Internetland to fill in any gaps you might have with the series so far, but, I dunno, I kind of expect the TV show I'm watching to cater for everyone not just fans of the game and me not have to go in search of things that aren't in the show to make me understand the show better...

Anyhow, Joel and Ellie avoid running into the 'revolutionaries' with the pulsating cellar floor but get held up by what looks like two kids* with guns and Adam Ant vibes. I'm hoping the thing under the pulsating cellar floor is some kind of mutated monster that heralds the beginning of something a little bit different from a big budget version of The Rick Grimes Show; it's probably not going to be that...

*You see, I thought it was two kids, but it turns out it's an adult and a kid and it's the people Melanie Lynskey was looking for. When I expressed on a forum somewhere that I was struggling to keep up with the story, it was a little like I admitted to something heinous and should be exterminated. I'm just about at the point where I really can't be arsed with it; unlike its die-hard aficionados I'm finding it slow, uninteresting and not even in the same league as early The Walking Dead seasons and apparently that makes me something of a moron.

***

Everyone Else Burns is, as I hoped, getting better, but I realised watching episodes three and four that the least funny thing in it is Simon Bird. He plays varying different versions of the same character in whatever sitcom he's starring in whether it's The Inbetweeners or Friday Night Dinner and he carries that same vibe in this.

I was bang on the money about Fiona the wife, who I think is quite brilliant as she slowly begins to understand what makes her neighbour tick - her neighbour being a divorced woman with a wicked desire to educate Fiona. Meanwhile daughter Rachel is slowly turning into a normal 17-year-old and younger son Aaron is developing a number of ... quirks ... that are being treated a little like they'd be treated if this was a comedy made 40 years ago.

I'm of the belief that this doesn't specifically need some cultish church as a background reason for the family's dysfunctional behaviour; I've met some families not too dissimilar to this over the last 60 years and most of them would probably have been excommunicated from whatever denomination they aimed for.

Anyhow, by the time you get to episode five it's set itself up for any interesting final episode as at least half of the family look like they might be rebelling against the conformity laid down on them; or maybe not...

***

With two weeks to go before the new MCU film hits the cinemas, it means it will be at least June before I see Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, I'm hoping that Secret Invasion is going to land sooner than later otherwise I won't have anything new to complain about for ages...

Actually, I can always go back in time and have another go at Black Panther: Wank Ada Forever and that might be down to the fact that I've read a fair few reviews about the film now - I was avoiding them - and I'm glad I wasn't the only person who thought it was loose knit jumper of a mess. What is more satisfying are the number of people who have watched it over the last couple of weeks who feel that they might have been wrong to have been so positive about it when it was released.

It's actually a bit of a weird one in you could say it's allegorical to Marvel at the moment. It kicks of with a nostalgic look back to when things were simpler, introduces us to far more than we want or need and then makes a hash of sorting it out - sounds pretty much what the MCU films have been doing since Endgame. 

I've also been trying hard to remember what it was about and why the narrative went the way it did, such as how did Lupita Nyong'o - a semi-retired former Wakandan spy - unearth the secret of Atlantis, locate it, work out a way to infiltrate it and then rescue two people, when the CIA were just getting confused. Namor and his submariners had swanned around for nearly 500 years with no one having heard or seen them and no intelligence agency on Earth is aware of him or his minions, but Nakia's performing jailbreaks. Or why Namor is now very much a sociopath and what makes Marvel/Disney think we're going to root for him, especially given how different he is from the classic version.

Essentially, because there wasn't much of a story, this film has been used to further the introduction of plots for next year's Thunderbolts and Captain America movies, while dropping the M word in for good measure. This wasn't a film that you could really watch and enjoy without a knowledge of at least the first film and maybe a couple of others; it's not a standalone like the first Black Panther and that's probably the MCU's biggest single problem now - 90% of its output is now familiar to us, very little is new and what has been new - Eternals or Shang-Chi - hasn't exactly set the world on fire and even 2024's aforementioned Thunderbolts is a collection of existing heroes/anti-heroes. Nothing stands alone as an individual film - everything is linked. There's nothing released where you can say - you don't need to understand Marvel to enjoy this film.

***

We went back to Tarantino again and watched The Hateful Eight. Like other Tarantino films we've watched, it was almost a week long and at the end of it I wondered why the hell I'd even bothered. Does he get a paid by the actual film minute? The reason I ask is because his films don't need to be a week long, probably two hours would be ample.

This is another violent western with a lot of racism and slapstick comedy. I think I've seen Samuel L Jackson in more dodgy films now than half decent ones. This wasn't a bad film but it wasn't anything to write home about either; or even write a half decent review. I could still have lived a full and interesting life without having seen it.

***

It's been 24 years since we last watched Ben Stiller's Mystery Men - a superhero film pitched somewhere between Batman and Watchmen with added comedy. I recall finding it a bit of fun in 1999, but in 2023 we turned it off after 30 minutes. It was a wee bit too camp; a little too silly and a lot pantomime. While we remembered nothing about the story we remembered the characters and when we were reminded of them - Hank Azaria, William H Macy and Janeane Garofalo amongst them - it didn't help, in fact it helped us decide.

***

So we moved onto Chappie, another film that left me a bit confused because I didn't think I was enjoying it at all and then I realised I was. It has a curious Mad Max vibe in the acting and a very Robocop feel in other places and yet as it went on I found myself enjoying it far more than I probably should have.

I think it was because it wasn't what I thought it would be and ended up going places I really didn't expect. I remember a comic story by Tony Isabella and George Perez in Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #2 called War Toy and it was about robots trained to be soldiers and how one of the robots had helped defeat an alien invasion before being kicked out of the army. When the aliens returned he was the only one left to stop them but before he could be brought back into the army he kills himself leaving the planet to be overrun by aliens. Grim stuff.

Chappie isn't like that at all, but the robot does remind me of War Toy - it was like someone had read the comic and thought they could do it differently. The film had turns from Sigourney Weaver, Huge Ackman, Dev Patel and Sharlto Copley and jerked around at times from slightly silly to deeply emotional; the acting was all over the place and yet by the end I was thinking I should have watched it 8 years ago. Maybe I did. If there's one thing I'm starting to realise it's that I might not be paying enough attention to the films I watch.

***

The Menu is a strange little film. I wanted it to be about food, but food was just a cover; a ruse; what is what really about was dissatisfaction. Ralph Fiennes plays a world renowned chef who offers taste experiences at his island restaurant at ridiculously high prices and the supporting cast are some of his favourite people - to hate and loathe.

The film is a bit stagey; like it would work equally well as a play. It overplays the entitlement factor a little too much, but maybe that's the whole point. There is an element of the preposterous about the menu in The Menu and while it is an amusing film that reminded me a little of Peter Greenaway, I couldn't shake the feeling it was being a little too clever by half. It will disappoint people who have enjoyed restaurant films in the past.

***

Next time: I think the wife is getting fed up with watching films all the time and is hankering for something with brevity. I also noticed Channel 5 has started showing 1923, so I expect it won't be long before she mentions this; however, if Channel 5 is showing it, I don't have to be involved. Oh and Clarkson's Farm season two, there's that as well.

Modern Culture: Jizzlord for PM

The spoiler warning you desire is right here...

I don't like admitting this but I spent half of Moonage Daydream asleep. I expected something else, but the documentary I wanted was hiding behind two hours of rare footage. I didn't think it was going to be a two hour examination of David Bowie's life, but I sort of thought it would be more than just starkly linear. It took me about 25 minutes to realise that this was going to be a documentary made up of pictures, footage and snippets of Bowie from whatever available source there was and from that point on I struggled to stay awake and alert. This kind of thing has been done so much better with less charismatic characters.

I can't really say it was riveting because it clearly wasn't. It failed to make the right connection with me and I've seen similar, better, more interesting variants on this made for television. You can handle Bowie one of two ways - wigged out and bizarre or as straight as a die - he's a unique guy and a new look at him either has to take a different perspective or tell us something we don't know. This didn't do either; it tries to be different and feature things we've maybe never seen but loses its appeal quickly when you realise that with little exception we've seen the best of Bowie already; being dead rarely turns up a masterpiece when it's mainly barrel-scrapings on the menu.

***

Extraordinary isn't, yet. It tries to be but falls short, mainly due to a slow start. I'm fairly sure the 'only normal person in a world full of superheroes' thing has been done before, but I have no problem with re-treading old ideas as long as there's something to hold onto. This is a little bit rude but largely through innuendo and suggestion than anything else and it isn't going to have a subplot about why this version of our universe is mainly made up of people with superpowers. I suggest, this is largely a comedy about misfortune and not appreciating what we have. It doesn't really need a back story but over the space of this series we realise that part of good comedy is having a half decent back story.

Jen, the girl who isn't extraordinary and is now 25 is preoccupied by the fact she didn't gain a superpower at 18 like 99.999% of the population did and this series starts with her applying for a new job with an interviewer who has the power to make you involuntarily tell the truth to anything she asks you. This was both amusing and slightly cringey, but had the right balance. From this point on it's about introducing you to Jen and her circle of friends and to the fact that having superpowers has not really changed anyone's life and people's lives are still mundane even though they have something unique. However, by the time you get about half way through the series, you realise that Jen is extraordinary, but for all the wrong reasons.

It's most definitely one of those 'gets better with each episode' TV shows. Máiréad Tyers has the kind of face you're positive you've seen before and unless you've seen Belfast then you haven't, she's the main character in it, although her best friend, Carrie, played by Sofia Oxenham, who has an ability that would equally work in a drama; has a role to play that is just as important. Then you slowly begin to realise that while this is a funny TV show, it's also bitchy and focuses on a kind of person we probably all know one person to be like - the psychic vampire; the person who sucks the life out of everything by making everything about them. The person who believes the world is revolving around them and everything else is just, you know, not about them. 

Jizzlord is a great character; is he a man who shapeshifted into a cat for too long or is he a cat that can shapeshift into a man? For most of the series you wrestle with that question as he takes more of a centre stage in the show, especially in situations where really being a cat instinct takes over. He's an odd looking guy and very much a lynchpin of the show, especially when Jen and Carrie stop talking. In fact as the series draws to a conclusion you're left with the uplifting conclusion that Extraordinary was a little better than just ordinary and then the post credit scene happens and just like that you're transported into the world of cliffhangers - a place that's well suited for superpowers. It isn't even the post credit scene you could be half expecting, it's proper left field, but it does introduce a back story, one we didn't know but now is, like, blimey, I didn't see that coming. 

Seriously, Extraordinary would have worked as a stand alone series, but knowing there's at least a set up for a second season makes me happy.  

***

I learned on Thursday that Doom Patrol had been cancelled and the second half of season four would also involve a wrap up story. I can't say I'm that disappointed, but it kind of proves something; if you can't really do sarcasm in print, do you have the same problem with weirdness on film? TV and film doesn't do 'off-kilter' because it isn't palatable for very long. It's why it's almost impossible to recreate a dream and give it universal meaning; Twin Peaks did weird well, yet it was grounded in reality. I can't really think of anything that tried to do something as weird but also tried to have some kind of linear understandable story. That's what Doom Patrol started off like: weird but with a story you could follow; but from season two on Doom Patrol's 'weird' was simply stupid.

Another problem with Doom Patrol is it either borders on the Vaudeville and slapstick too much at times or ends up with being weird for weird's sake; or delving into the histories of the team. The show starts to struggle when it tries to go outside its comfort zone - in many ways Doom Patrol is a sitcom; an ensemble cast in a room, each with their own quirk. A lot of the 'big' set pieces of the last couple of series felt like set pieces rather than actual threats. Mr Nobody (from series one) was a great villain, butt monsters or men with giant penises aren't - they're just silly. Having the team made up of a bunch of angry self-centred people can also be quite tiring, even if they're all mad in different ways; but using neuroses as a 'weird' tool isn't big or clever and this show falls into that category a lot. Where the team were at the mid-season break was weird enough to allow this show to go out with the bang it should have been delivering from the start of season 2; it just depends on whether Jeremy Carver and his team have the balls to do something truly different with this show.

***

The Wonder is a strange film because what purports to be a mystery is pretty much not after about 30 minutes. Florence Pugh plays the nurse brought over by the elders of a small Irish village to help prove an ongoing miraculous event. When she begins to doubt what she's seeing and tries to solve the mystery, she is 'educated' by local boy turned Daily Telegraph journalist Tom Burke about the price of deceit and how this entire 'event' is now a fait accompli - with only one outcome regardless of how wicked and tragic it will get.

I don't want to give too much away because the entire film is held together by the thing the nurse (and also a nun) are employed to watch and the last half an hour is really just a slow motion car chase (figuratively speaking); one where you wish you had some control over who was driving what vehicle. It is a little slow at times, but that's the pace of the entire film. In many ways this is a horror film where the monster is an entire village feasting off its own grief.

Pugh playing a frumpy, frustrated English nurse, resented by the locals is a perfect role for her. She's very good at being cold, charming but frosty; she also has the ability to be extremely attractive and very plain, but she's also very good and she'll win more fans with this film and her future eclectic choices.

***

Everyone Else Burns isn't what I thought it would be. Reading the Guardian review you'd think this is going to be the next best sitcom of the century - something the 21st century has struggled with... great sitcoms. I think I chuckled about twice, both times delivered by the wife, who I think is the secret weapon in this. The rest of the ultra-religious family this follows aren't necessarily funny, but they are sad and a lot of the jokes are simply things we'd expect, like what it must be like for young God Botherers to have to knock on the doors of people who wouldn't piss on them if they were in fire.

It's a little like Extraordinary, in that it's about fitting in or in this case choosing not to. Unlike Extraordinary it needs more laughs; just because you have a weird looking family doesn't mean it will be funny. I always thought Ever Decreasing Circles was a sitcom based on how fucking weird and anally retentive Richard Briers character was, but it was actually far more clever than that; Everyone Else Burns feels like a contemporary version of that but without a raison d’être or the nuances. Simon Bird isn't Richard Briers and at the moment his central character needs to find something humorous to add to proceedings.

***

I went into Django Unchained thinking it was going to be something else entirely. I think I expected more to happen in the near three hour running time. It must be a thing about Tarantino films that they all have to be really long, even if they don't need to be. 

This is a simple idea - German bounty hunter enlists slave to help him identify some people, takes a shine to him, teaches him the business and then agrees to help the freed slave regain his wife. The problem is it's about an hour too long and while the underlying message is obvious, it felt like you were being beaten about the head with it a little too often.

It's not a film I can see myself returning to in the future.

***

Upon the conclusion of The Fablemans, the wife turned to me and said, "That was on for as long as Black Panther but didn't feel like I'd been watching it forever." Damning with faint praise or a seriously good indictment? You decide. 

Only Steven Spielberg can write and direct a film that deals with some quite sensitive issues like anti-Semitism, mental illness and marital affairs but makes it feel like you're watching a feel good film for all the family. Because, in many ways, The Fablemans is exactly that - a feel good film about the young Spielberg's embryonic stage. It also appears to be very biographical with literally only the names changing, but don't let that put you off, it's a lot of fun. It also feels like a film that's been made to win awards and I don't mean that in a nasty or mean-spirited way, it's almost like this kind of film is only made to tickle the Academy's fancy and isn't made to make a lot of money. I mean, this is a vanity project, but it's also Spielberg and that usually guarantees VFM.

This film had a simultaneous cinema/streaming release in the USA - hence why I've had my copy since early December - it's in UK cinemas this week and I expect it will feel cinematic on the big screen because it feels like a proper grown up movie, tastefully done. The kind people will look back on in 20 years time and say things like, 'Did you ever see The Fablemans? That was an underrated film.'

***

Episode three of The Last of Us felt a little like the Last Chance Saloon for the TV show being called one of the best ever by reviewers with gamer's brains who are all under 40. The wife's only comment when I put it on was 'let's hope something actually happens.'

The kindest thing I can say about this episode is it was a sweet natured tale of love in a post apocalyptic landscape. About ten minutes into Joel and Ellie's journey away from Boston everything rewinds to 2003 and focuses on survivalist Bill, who evades the government execution squads and turns his village into a fortress. Fast forward four years and he meets Frank, who is just trying to survive. Before you know it, it's become a gay romcom behind barbed wire. These two lost lovers know Joel and Tess from a time before Boston was run by the fascist arm of the Gestapo and are self-sufficient and well-protected from the zomboids and the hordes of nutters trying to survive (given the on-line backlash from the anti-woke brigade out there, gay bashers will try extra hard to survive so they can roam the land purging it of woke LGBTQ+ survivors).

It was a good episode - after a fashion - but it moved the story along exactly nowhere and wasn't really about the two main characters at all, so what was the point of it? Why was it even here? Is this series going to be so weak on actual plot story that we're going to have 50% of episodes focusing on the back story of the following week's zomboid fodder? Three episodes in and we know more about Bill and Frank than we do about Joel and especially Ellie, but I'm not even sure I want to know their stories, or at least the last 20 years of it and that's what I think is going to happen; we're going to get what happened to Joel from the moment his daughter died in his arms to his journey across the fungal wastelands. That's going to be your USP because running away from, killing or evading the fungal infected is going to grow tiresome quickly. Especially in the wake of how long the Walking Dead franchise has milked this genre.

As with the first couple of parts, the sets are outstanding and the people doing all the Walking Dead franchise must dream of having that kind of a budget, especially when they don't seem to have much of a story. Apparently people think the 'banter' between Joel and Ellie is 'outstanding'. From what I can see Ellis barks at everyone exactly the same way. She doesn't appear to have any other mode than constipated angst.

The Last of Us might still be the highest profile mid-season drop we've had since Foundation. The jury is still out, part four needs for something to actually happen otherwise I'll leave it to all the people who've been fawning over how true to the game it is and go and watch something less boring instead.

***

Babylon is, as the wife pointed out, a kind of homage to Singing in the Rain. Early on in the film (about an hour in of the three hours) there's a rendition of the song in the year it was first released - 1929. I didn't think anything of it until the end when, in 1952, someone from the cast is watching the film.

Babylon is a semi-fictional, therefore semi-biographical, snapshot of Hollywood between the mid 1920s to the year, or so, before the Hayes Code changed the way Hollywood was. I'd wanted to see the film because I'm a bit of a film buff and I've had a particular interest in Hollywood between about 1924 and 1934 - an era where good taste and restraint was few and far between. 

It was a time of excess and expression and this film follows the lives of a number of people, either directly or peripherally; Brad Pitt stars as silent movie heartthrob Jack Conrad (as maybe a Don Lockwood character), Margot Robbie as Nelly LeRoy (or maybe as a Lina Lamont type character), Jovan Adepo as talented musician Sidney Palmer and Diego Calva as Manny Torres - a Mexican migrant who yearns to be a film producer.

The film follows their careers through the ups and eventual downs; we witness Conrad's star fall, LeRoy's catapult into stardom that quickly fades because of her rather uncouth and debauched life style. We see Manny go from success to success but is constantly held back because of his unspoken but undying love for Nelly and we see Sidney, a man with principles, who walks away from a possible way out of his racially-abused life because it's not really a way out at all, it would just be a different kind of abuse.

It's a film with a lot of big, brash Cecil B DeMille type sets; an opening sequence that felt more like the big battle in Avengers: Endgame than anything else it was that grand; except this looked like it had been done in one take. This was a time when Hollywood was this uncensored den of inequity and depravity, which also had an underbelly that didn't just bite back, but will bite your head off and eat it.

Was it a good film? My biggest problem with it was I wasn't desperately bothered by any of the main players; none of them were that likeable, even Manny. For a film that's three hours long, you'd think it could have done a better job of making you care about the characters more. Take Robbie's Nelly - she's a spunky, go-get-em kinda gal, but like when she plays Harley Quinn, you don't really give a shit about her; her attitude - whether it's the characters she plays or the way she portrays them - make her a difficult actor to like. I suppose it wasn't bad, it just lacked a soul. It felt a little too cold and by the numbers and perhaps the director's love of the era overtook his ability to tell an interesting story.

***

Next time: There might be something a bit different, I'm erring towards an ITV thing. We'll work our way through the Flash Drive of Death. 

Modern Culture: Black Panther - Wakanda Forever

Warnings of spoilers are accurate... 

Did you know that an anagram of Wakanda Forever is Wank Ada Forever.

I really wanted to like this film, but almost from the opening scenes I realised I wasn't going to. I found the way T'Challa's death was handled while the women of Wakanda were doing their things all a little too badly matched; in fact the opening half an hour felt all over the place and I'm not sure it managed to sort its bearings out at all.

I have massive problems with the whole Black Panther/Wakanda thing because it depicts this small, incredibly powerful country as being completely uninterested in the plight of the rest of their continent. Before T'Challa tried to reunify the country with the rest of the world, it hid itself away and lived its affluent life while parts of Africa starved. It didn't share its technology with the rest of the world and had a secret army that operated above the laws of the rest of the planet. Now, the country feels like its been mind-melded with a disgruntled control freak right wing chav - complaining about the rest of the world wanting its part of Wakanda, not being happy at being part of international espionage and world politics. It all smacks of privilege, but what makes it worse is it smacks of black privilege on a continent where inequalities are normal.

Plus why should I feel any sympathy or affinity with a royal family? They might rule over the richest and most equal country in the world, but I'm betting they still have shop assistants and people wiping a pensioner's arse? Do they all get paid the same as the doctors, lawyers or politicians? Is Wakanda really a place of equality and equity? There is so much wrong with the idea of Wakanda, especially as it promotes separatism and in a strange way nationalism. However, despite first impressions of Wakanda being a hologram of how they wanted the rest of the world to see their country, they still existed and people knew of Wakanda, as far north as Latveria or Sakovia.

However, that said, I think I have more of a problem with an entire race of amphibians co-existing alongside the human race and an organisation such as the CIA who think the Wakandans are to blame for the shit happening because they don't know about Namor and his underwater pranksters despite knowing everything. I'm sorry, but it needs to be asked: where were these Atlantians when Thanos was kicking earth's butt? Did 50% of them disappear during The Snap? Plus, how come they have armies that outnumber the Wakandans, but the plucky rich Africans managed to hold their own against most of Thanos's minions - where were these armies when there was a Celestial emerging from the planet's core? Where were these armies when the planet's welfare has been at risk? 

What we have here is a case of general misunderstanding, a lot of scene setting for next year's Thunderbolts film, an unusually morally ambiguous antagonist, more deaths than you can shake a stick at and it all felt bolted together. Like a six-part TV show made into a film.

Now that we have Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner in the MCU; my vote would be for him to disappear inside whatever underwater castle he lives in and not come out again. Let's not talk of underwater people and the crimes they commit, ever again. This is a comicbook character with almost as much history as Captain America; someone who, despite his loyalty to 'Atlantis', fought with the USA against the Nazis in the 1940s and essentially a popular supporting guest star in the comics universe whenever he wasn't doing his own thing. Now he's kind of depicted as a sociopath, who is prepared to go to extreme lengths to protect his people and his birth right. But what are these extreme lengths? Especially as I touched upon, hasn't been seen by anyone in 500 years.

There's a subplot featuring Riri Williams who makes her own armour using some new energy source. She's actually developed a vibranium detector because all the world's biggest nations want vibranium and subsequently Riri becomes a targeted young woman. She's also the equivalent of a 19-year-old black Tony Stark although her Iron Heart armour is more Power Rangers than Downey Junior and you start to wonder why Marvel/Disney is doing this. 

Why have they decided to wander down the route they're choosing rather than just having a relatively easy to follow multi-part franchise using an algorithm that works - the method in which they made the original 23 films. I don't know if Iron Heart is a popular comic, but I'm struggling to understand why she even exists, especially if you consider that Tony Stark might be dead but his technology isn't; his company's ability to manufacture suits is still in place, Pepper Potts/Stark has her armour and the MCU has this multi-national company that's not contributing to the universe it helped found. 

The thing is I'm sure I'll watch it again in a couple of years and appreciate it more, but it felt overly long (at 150+ minutes it is) and was, at times, really dull. It didn't feel like a linear narrative despite it being just that and Shuri not only became an arguably more powerful Black Panther than her brother ever could be, she also has developed a stable super soldier serum that the greatest minds in war science have failed repeatedly to do since the birth of Captain America, that acts in seconds and doesn't bulk you up. Does Letitia Wright make a good BP? Yeah, I suppose so. I think the real question is whether this film was even necessary.

Yet so much in this film felt wrong - from Okoye being ostracised to the 'introduction' of the 'Pantherettes' - Shuri's mates in funky battle armour like a cross between Predator and those Mighty Morphin Power wassnames. Angela Bassett losing her shit; Martin Freeman feeling as though he was in a different film, to some really painful dialogue. The waste of Winston Duke's talents and lowering him to sounding like a slightly barbaric misogynist - loads of things in this film felt like they were done wrong. In fact, one of the few things that was handled reasonably well was Chad Boseman's absence. Although did anyone else notice that his funeral was different from his father's and their mother's was also very different? 

Wakanda for all your free form funeral needs!

The most disappointing thing for me was the fact I had zero expectations. I've never understood the love Black Panther got, so I wasn't coming into this with any expectations at all and the fact I was even more disappointed by it than I thought I would be was a bit of a kicker. We all have had that party or social gathering we don't want to go to but can't avoid and it ends up being a cracking night; part of the reason it does is your own expectations. Imagine approaching something you feel is not going to be very good and walking away feeling like you've been short-changed? I won't say I was crushingly disappointed but this was a film that needed some humour, some brevity, some suspense, a coherent story with believable characters and one that leaves you with a renewed sense of feeling your investment in the MCU is justified. I want that from the MCU and I've never given them a penny; I can't imagine what people paying to see shite like this would feel if they'd been IMaxed or some such.

Now it's all about Ant-Man and just how deep and 'plot episode' that is and when we're ultimately disappointed by that it's time for more Guardians - another part of the franchise I've struggled to love. They're all right, but Volume 2 was a load of horse wank compared to the first film and even that struggled when they weren't in prison. Obviously Guardians is also going to be huge disappointment and with Marvels rounding off the year and that has Brie Larson - who every Incel in the world refuses to have a wank over - and a Pakistani girl and a black woman... They might as well call it Marvels: Not Like Being Wanked Off.

I should just not watch MCU film. What is the point? I feel as though I'm waiting for the impossible to happen and each instalment takes me a few miles further away from the impossible happening. Perhaps I'd have felt better had this actually been called Black Panther: Wank Ada Forever and was just a two hour porn film of a man in a BP suit pleasuring a woman called Ada for what seems like an entire millennia. I would have got what I didn't pay for and it would be exactly what it said on the tin.