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.