Spoilers spoilers yeah yeah yeah
If ever a movie revolutionised the 'zombie' film it was Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later and its radical take on the idea; the concept of infected humans behaving as a hive-like destructive entity, moving at a fast pace and intent on only one thing, infecting others - the way viruses work in general - was more than groundbreaking; it allowed us to actually see the real scary side of 'zombies'.
While the infected aren't zombies, they are treated with just as much extreme prejudice as possible because these creatures aren't lumbering dead wandering around in search of flesh; these are crazy 100mph psychopaths, who will injure themselves in the pursuit of something else to infect. This was The Last of Us before that was even an idea for a computer game.
Cillian Murphy is literally brought into this new world naked, hooked up in a hospital to keep him alive; but for him it's a quick education or he'll find his new life cut short before he realises it. What follows is a relatively familiar post-apocalyptic trope; the road movie in search of salvation as Murphy, and three other survivors decide to travel north to try and hook up with the army. They do this with relative ease, although the tunnel scene - while nowhere near as harrowing as it felt 21 years ago - is still claustrophobic and scary.
One they've been 'rescued' the entire feel of the film changes from escaping the bogeymen to escaping the saviours as the rogue soldiers decide that the two females travelling with Murphy are now theirs and the film spirals out of control. It finishes on a positive note and also suggests that the UK is the only seriously affected place as Murphy watches a jet plane fly over ravaged Britain...
In over 20 years since this reimagining of the genre we've had a lot of post-apocalyptic zombie-fests and many of them have been excellent, harrowing and you've needed a strong stomach, but 28 Days Later was the reason for all of that. It wasn't really George Romero who brought the scary zombie to the screen, it was Danny Boyle - a wee Scotsman with an A-list back catalogue of films.
***
However, despite the flaws that 28 Days Later might have it is an absolute masterpiece of filmmaking compared to 28 Weeks Later, which is an absolute howler of a movie with few redeeming features. If I'd have been involved in this I'd have disowned it or told friends it was someone with the same name. Danny Boyle was only executive producer on this (meaning he didn't want to be involved but wasn't prepared to remove his name from the 'franchise').
It shouldn't be so bad (and in fairness the wife didn't think it was that awful), but from the unlikely premise that 28 weeks after the end of the UK as we know it, people would be moved back into parts of London is only enhanced by some strange pace, plotting and cast choices. I think the director was trying to make a film unlike the previous one and instead kind of 'remakes' the first film's unseen first 28 days with added napalm.
Everything from the kids deliberately defying the curfew instructions on the first night to the rather silly conclusion that sees Robert Carlyle's infected father manage to outwit the US army so he can have a final confrontation with his children, who are probably immune anyhow.
I didn't want to watch this again because I vaguely remembered it being a load of shite; the only good thing to come from this is we won't watch it again.
***
The Night Agent is a box-set we've started. It's a plan to watch one episode a night over the next couple of weeks, with a few skip nights, if we decide it's worth persevering with.
It's about an FBI agent who despite saving a train full of civilians seems to be both under a lot of scrutiny and consigned to a dead-end job despite being a hero (although some think was actually responsible for the train). His 'job' is to analyse reports while watching over a phone that never rings, until one night it does and his rather sedate life changes completely overnight as he learns that he can trust no one.
The first episode set the scene very nicely and it definitely felt worth sticking with. However, by the end of episode two I'd changed my mind completely. It felt, to me, like it had been scripted by a 16-year-old as more and more preposterous things happened and instead of being revelatory, the reveals felt like a desperate measure to keep people interested. It had a lot of bad acting, unbelievable characters and loads of words that seemed to be generated by a melodramatic AI.
***
I was slightly unimpressed by the 2023 version of Minority Report.
I didn't watch the Coronation. I'm not a republican nor am I a royalist. My ambivalence knows no bounds. However, regardless of the part time gammons out there who believed that having the Stasi in charge of our police during this royal money spaffage was a good thing, it sends an awful message out to the rest of the world - the UK is now a bit like China; they don't allow you to think about dissenting now.
That was the overriding issue for me; not the pomp, not the pageantry, but the fact that our police were scouring the streets for people who looked like they might be anti-monarchy and they were either removed from the streets, threatened or simply arrested on suspicion and held until 11.30pm when they were released without charge. As someone who believes in the LAW this was totally wrong and should not have happened. It seems we only now have freedom of speech when it's allowable by our fascist overlords.
Oh and let's not forget the memorable event as the Met Police shot to dogs on leads because they might have posed a threat. These cunts should be stripped naked and made to walk the streets having shit thrown at them until they're driven into the sea and drown.
***
It's been less than four years since we watched Men in Black International and yet we remembered so little about it we could have been watching it for the first time.
I remember the derision aimed at this film and the feeling it was simply jumping on a bandwagon with a bad idea and I can understand why; there is very little to like about this movie and the bits that are good are outnumbered by the bits that are rubbish. For starters NONE of the characters are likeable and Chris Hemsworth's Agent H is basically arrogant Thor with less hair and muscles and really is an arse and I kind of get why he was pitched that way, to give the MIBs some variety, but this was pitched at the wrong frequency.
In many ways it's like the reboot of Ghostbusters but where that was a far superior film to the original, MiBI is like a cling-on or dangleberry on an arse, waiting to fall.
***
Anyone who has followed my blogs for the last few years will know that I am transfixed by superhero films. I have suffered for my art by watching just about every superhero film made over the last 30 years and many of them have been shit.
In the grand scheme of DC films, there has been little to get excited about and much to complain about, but I am still trying to work out what the rest of the world has against Green Lantern because there are much worse films than this.
It really isn't a bad film; it has some bad bits in it, but in general it's a tight little film with not too much baggage, a reasonable backstory and decent special effects; why has it only got a 5.5 rating? We've watched films in the high 6s that have been a lot worse. I didn't even think Ryan Reynolds was that bad; he was actually considerably less Ryan Reynolds than he usually is and his wife, Blake Lively, is quite a decent actress. I just don't get the hostility towards this film... Is it the crazy things that a Lantern creates with his ring? The fact that creations mimic real life, so if you want a shield you make a shield out of green light and it will resemble the shield in your thoughts rather than just create a barrier? Is it because there's an element of, I dunno, comic books about it?
Even Mark Strong plays a hero (for this film only). Maybe the more enlightened among you can help me understand why no one likes this film, because I can think of at least five MCU films that are much worse than this?
***
I realised what the funny thing about Ted Lasso is. It's Roy Kent. The rest of it is mainly soap opera, but Brett Goldstein - who essentially writes the majority of his own lines in the show - is the stand out funny guy and I think he's going to make an awful Hercules...
The focus on this week's episode was Roy's need for a direction in his life and what happens when one of your team mates turns out to be gay. It's handled in a quaintly naïve USA way that belies everything about the USA being anything but a cynical violent bigoted place.
While I'm sure many professional footballers are fans of this show, it really takes so many liberties, not just in football but also in British geography, especially by making West Ham AFC Richmond's local rivals. For starters Richmond is in Surrey and West Ham are in East London (for the sake of history); they couldn't be further apart in terms of 'derbies'.
Anyhow, Roy Kent is very funny when the words in his mouth haven't been written by the staff writers.
***
Okay, I'm slightly baffled again; or maybe it's other people who are baffled and I'm just here to show them the errors of their ways? If I couldn't understand why Green Lantern has such a low rating on IMDB, then I have even less of an idea as to why Paint has an even lower rating.
I wouldn't say it was a brilliant film, far from it, but it is gentle, funny and extremely surreal in places and I don't think people who watched it actually understood what they were watching with its Wes Anderson vibes and extremely odd pacing. I think it was trying to capture a moment in US broadcasting - probably in the late 1980s - when Public Service Broadcasting thought of itself as very important but wasn't in the slightest.
This is also a kind of unofficial homage to Bob Ross, the painter who captivated audiences for years with his homespun, easy going and gentle paced commentaries as he painted pictures out of nothing, well Owen Wilson's Carl Nargle is 'Bob Ross' except here he's a man with an uncanny following and is very much a sex god (I don't think you're supposed to even understand why let alone question it).
In this film Carl has everything until one day he starts seeing it begin to be taken away from him and from that point on his life spirals out of control at a sedate and leisurely pace. I thought it was a wonderful film that has to be taken the way it was delivered, like the film is actually an extension of Carl's totally chilled self. I'd recommend it to fans of Wes Anderson if nothing else.
***
We fancied watching a classic movie; one we know we've seen (a number of times) and one that is head and shoulders above most other films. So we watched The Exorcist again and despite when it was made, it is an incredibly brilliant film that is only spoiled by the fact Blatty didn't make it an hour longer so he could explore all of the subplots in the book that had to be overlooked (actually it's spoiled by the head turning scene which I've always felt was unnecessary).
Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller, Lee J Cobb, Kitty Winn, Max Von Sydow and Linda Blair were all fantastic in making a ludicrous idea into a believable 'real world' event where bemusement, bewilderment and eventually horror are the overriding emotions and the idea that someone might be possessed by a demon is the stuff for nutters, religious freaks and people with specific mental illnesses. Yet it takes a somewhat silly idea - for the 21st century - and treats it with immense seriousness and sensitivity while providing some shocks that have never truly been equalled. It is a rare thing, a totally serious film about a slightly silly thing that achieved so much it made every single subsequent film about the subject look either like a pale imitation or a rip off. Even taking away the religious and medical aspects of this film, it's an absolutely disturbing and riveting two hours.
***
I'm struggling with Yellowjackets at the moment; I know I've hinted at this since the start of season two but we're over halfway through now and I'm really torn. The 2022 women are becoming tedious; the entire set-up in the present veers towards comedy a bit too much and while Shauna is great, I'm thinking the other 'adults' are all a bit of a waste of space; all a bit too ... convenient.
Actually Adult Shauna is just as whiny, needy and annoying as all her mates, but I like Melanie Lynskey. Adolescent Shauna is a fucking psychopath and she's not the only one. If the present is becoming tedious, then the past is an absolute horror show. I think that's the problem I'm having with this show now; the present has just a bit too much levity while the past is relentlessly grim, nasty and horrendous - an unending nightmare of hunger, cold, paranoia and insanity.
Here's the thing - whenever the focus is in the 21st century, I want it to switch back to the 1990s, but whenever it's in the past I'm desperate for it to not be there either, but for all different reasons. I suppose harrowing TV is a good thing, but is it when it's mixed with something a little too flippant and humorous? I'm not so sure.
***
Somebody shoot me. Now.
The wife says, "Well, we've watched all this so far, we might as well watch the last season..."
And so it began...
The final season of Fear the Walking Dead has arrived and I downloaded it on the wife's say so, I would have been happy ignoring it the way I'm going to ignore the 438 spin-offs planned over the next few months, but, you know...
What the fuck has happened to this franchise? The walking dead has lurched from creepy and genuinely disturbing post-apocalyptic drama to this fucking ridiculous nonsense with shark-jumping almost as regular as Happy Days. Jesus wept, you'd think whoever authorises this kind of shit would have some quality threshold.
Season eight kicks off with Morgan and Madison in Padre's HQ trying to negotiate the return of Mo, who Madison had stolen for them and now is trying to help Morgan get his daughter back. A fight ensues and it appears that Morgan and Mo get away - cut to the credits. When the action resumes Madison is locked in a cell, we learn quickly that this is after the events of the prologue and it has been seven years since Morgan's escape.
To cut a long story short, Madison is discovered in her cell by Mo, who it seems escaped Padre but came back, so Madison, who agreed to help Morgan at the end of season seven decides that everything she had done for the previous five years was pointless and intends to escape Padre with Mo again and find Morgan. Except here comes the twist, Morgan gave the child back to Padre in exchange for becoming one of their child finders. Morgan and Grace are now 'child stealers' working for Padre, none of the others whereabouts is known and the good guys are now the bad guys.
And I just wanted it to end. They've tried so many different things in this series and got it right between seasons four and five, but it's gone so far off the rails now that it's just a fucking joke. This is now set something like 15 years after the apocalypse and I really don't give a flying fuck about any of them any more. I'm done with it. It's over for me.
I'll try and keep next week's review of this down to fewer than ten words...
***
Next time: will I continue to lose the will to live? Is my current TV funk down to overkill or is everything just shit now? I sometimes wonder if writing about this stuff - as in regularly and as an actual weekly thing - is perhaps making it more difficult for me to be objective and then I realise that this week I have re-watched The Exorcist and found it as brilliant as it always has been; Paint was much more enjoyable than others thought it was; Ted Lasso continues to confound me and I still like Green Lantern, so I think I'm still batting a decent average.
An aside - Film & TV is going to get a makeover of sorts because this evening I took possession of a new Toshiba 43" UHD television and it is going to elevate my viewing an awful lot; I just don't appear to be able to get my separate surround sound unit to work with it. That said, I now have iPlayer, All4, ITVX, My5, Freeview Play and some PPV options should I ever decide to spend money on my viewing hobby.
No comments:
Post a Comment