Pop Culture: Missing Pieces

DANGER! Spoilers Will Robinson! WARNING! WARNING!

It's funny how some things simply fall under the radar. ten years ago, a Huge Ackman and Jake Gyllenhaal film called Prisoners came out to little fanfare, yet a decade later still has extremely high ratings on film sites. It was something worth investigating...

Huge plays Keller Dover, a bit of a religious redneck whose daughter is abducted, along with her friend, so he takes the law into his own hands when the police (namely Jake playing Det. Loki) seem to be dragging their feet. It's a relentlessly dour film, set in a depressed and very wet Pennsylvania and focusing on child kidnapping and murder; it's not a film for levity or light-hearted banter; it's a nasty full on examination of the grief that comes with such a traumatic event.

It's also a [ahem] maze of twists and turns that had both the wife and I at odds as to what we thought the outcome might be and who the culprit was - we were both wrong. It's one of those films where you wonder why TV has never shown it; I don't remember this ever being on terrestrial TV. Then you realise what the subject material is - child abduction; beating suspect paedophiles to within an inch of their lives and the sense of horror and suspicion caused by it - and understanding becomes easier.

Both Ackman and Gyllenhaal are excellent and I reckon we don't realise just how good an actor Gyllenhaal is and his chameleon-like ability to slot into different characters, probably because he doesn't necessarily look like an actor capable of being so versatile.

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One of the highest rated TV series of all time made its way to our smallish screen. Watched over two nights, Chernobyl really was considerably more than I would have imagined and while I'm sure it has been sensationalised, politicised and doctored to suit western audiences, it's still a harrowing, bleak and quite scary (but not for the radiation) account that has elements in it that should be talked about when politicians (or any one for that matter) tell you that nuclear energy is safe, because it doesn't matter how safe something is, sod's law dictates that even if it can't go wrong it will.

Yes, this is 1986 and the crumbling Soviet Union is more riddled with distrust than anything else, but the underlying initial message this gives out is how ill-informed and ignorant most Russians were of actual things such as the dangers of radiation. They lived in fear and never asked questions, mainly because that might have ended up with them in a gulag in Siberia, so when a nuclear incident happens the only people who really understand what is going on are the nuclear physicists and they were as 'important' a street cleaners in this world - this was a country and culture that might have liked the modern west's fake news and 'alternative facts' especially during Trump's time; a time when party leaders knew more about things than the experts they consulted. 

In many ways it's like a monumental adaptation of Jaws with the KGB and Soviet government playing the Mayor of Amity while Jared Harris is playing Chief Brody, Emily Watson is Hooper and Stellan Skarsgård is Quint with special guest star Chernobyl as Bruce the shark. In fact the more I think about it the more similarities I see.

However, whereas the opening three episodes were very much a rollercoaster, the last two parts take on an almost surreal gentle quality at times. Episode four focused as much on a group of pet exterminators as it did on solving the reactor meltdown problem, while the fifth and final part was almost boring as we went through the Soviet post mortem of the catastrophe and principle players faced the dying wrath of the CCCP. One of the things that helped this series not become something just relentlessly grim and miserable was the black humour that crops up every so often; it might have seemed inappropriate but it was needed.

I totally get why it's such a highly rated series and why some liberties were taken in the making of this historical adaptation; but it felt like it ended almost with an anti-climax rather than a conclusion. Real life, eh?

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What a curious programme Ted Lasso is. This week we saw much more of Ted as he fretted and worried over his ex-wife's trip to France with her boyfriend. Keeley and Jack's relationship took the expected turn for the worse when Keeley's past caught up with her and the nice guy inside Nathan is still trying to win the battle with the nasty guy he thinks he needs to be.

I don't think I counted more than one laugh this week. It was about relationships and coping with events beyond your control; every episode has a kind of morality tale shoehorned in and the only thing that mirrors real life in this show are the things that are mirrored in real life - personal feelings and relationships. Ted Lasso is a strange entity; it can be very funny but it's completely wrong; it can have implausible things happen and it defies logic - which as regular readers know is one of the things I look for in a good show; logic not defying it. 

I can't get over how disappointed I am in myself for not disliking Ted when all the people I stopped trusting the opinions of told me I'd love it. Bastards.

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The wife has been reluctant to watch the remainder of the old films in the Old Films directory and we're both a little put off about delving into one of the umpteen TV series we've obtained over the last few years. This coming weekend is obviously going to be a perfect way to watch new things and experience something we've not experienced before...

The problem is we're so busy because spring's finally made an appearance, but that didn't stop us from watching Room, the film that rocketed Brie Larsson into the film world. Room is a disturbing film about a woman and her five year old child who live in a small room, but are really kept as prisoners in the room by a controlling rapist. In fact, she's been kept prisoner for seven years and her child is the product of her rapist.

In many ways the thing that brings the imprisonment crashing down is an unlikely scenario but once upon a time we would have considered the entire idea of this film unlikely and yet it's happened - in real life - a number of times. It's a bleak journey with an underlying streak of coldness with the only thing able to thaw it being 5-year-old Jack played by Jacob Tremblay. It's not a jolly film and I'm not sure I'd recommend it despite it being a well made and competent movie.

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It's a slow week. I suppose the Hollywood writers strike will have a knock-on effect over the coming months much like it did on the two previous occasions its happened. Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick somewhere, one of the reasons for this strike is concern over AI written scripts.

I think there are a few AI written football web pages out there given the bizarre language and phrases used in some of the things I read. I'd always thought it was an article that had been translated from English into another language and then translated back into English, but it might have simply been written by a stupid AI machine.

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Trailer Time - fortunately for everyone it seems there's at least four A list trailers a month, meaning there's very few weeks when there isn't one or I ignore it because it's a Fast and Furious film, of which I have never seen one of the 27 films. 

This week it's Dune 2 and boy does it look epic; especially given that there's nothing of the expected big finale in the preview, at all. What Villeneuve has done is take a book that is almost impossible to film - has pretty much failed in its only attempt to date - and created a believable landscape. It might be wise to watch the first film again in the months before the next one arrives as this version of Dune has included more of the things that David Lynch had to leave out of his adaptation, because of time constraints. 

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Yellowjackets arrived back after its skip week and it was harrowing stuff. As the modern-day survivors all seem to be heading towards reuniting, while back in the past Shauna's baby arrives and things take a really dark ... hang on a minute, this show is about as dark as things get, how can it get darker? 

Modern Shauna seems dogged down by the unfortunate murder she's committed by making a reasonable fist of trying to lead the police down the wrong path, her problem is the cop who thinks she's involved has a real bug up his arse and is convinced that Shauna is as guilty as you can imagine - which, of course, she is. He just can't prove it.

In the past, the shadow of a Lost-like plot still looms, especially with some of the survivors talking about the wilderness as if its an actual being. The real issue though is despite handling a plane crash, an amputation and the death and subsequent dining on a team mate; a 17 year-old girl giving birth really throws the rest of the girls into a panic and adds a new wrinkle to Misty's truly narcissistic nasty streak. 

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Oh fuck. I did something really stupid. I did something I stated I wouldn't do, in this blog, probably inside the last four months. I hate having to admit to this, especially as it was a really entertaining film, but we watched the latest Nick Cage film and it was a riot...

Renfield isn't really a Nick Cage film; he's in it and important to the plot, but that's because he plays Dracula to Nicholas Hoult's Renfield. The film is really about narcissists and control freaks, but it's jam-packed with blood and gore to a comedic level reminiscent of Monty Python taking the piss out of Sam Pekinpah films.

The thing is it's quite a dreadful film except it isn't. The best thing in it is Awkwafina (who essentially plays herself in everything she does) as the only cop on the New Orleans PD who isn't corrupt and that sentence alone doesn't really belong here, but that's the thing about this film; it's just wrong on so many levels it's brilliant. The NOPD is in the pocket of a local crime lord whose son has somehow stumbled into Dracula's lair and struck up a deal with him.

Renfield wants out of his abusive relationship with the Prince of Darkness and does some heroically violent things that brings him to the attention of Awkwafina. It essentially turns into a Bruce Willis/Sly Stallone/Arnie film of the 1990s with Renfield and cop friend versus everyone else in an almost non-stop bloodbath of comedy, ludicrous set-ups and bad acting. It's a cracking film and well worth wasting 90 minutes for.

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There's a Coronation going on - as I type this - I'm sticking with my ambivalence and doing something less boring/interesting instead...

Next time: Before anything else, next week we're getting a new TV. A 43" Toshiba with add-ons so I expect viewing things might have just got a little more... cinematic. 

Ted Lasso heads towards its season (possibly the show's) finale; Yellowjackets is now in the final few episodes before its finale, so I'm expecting some more movement on the plot given we've had six episodes and we don't appear to have moved that far forward. I have a few interesting curios that might get an airing - The Night Agent is a espionage/spy thriller which we might give a chance to, plus some films.