Spoilers blah blah blah...
Chapter 2 - Attack of the Shits
First off, there's not a lot I can say about Hayden Christensen that hasn't probably been said many times before. I could ask what George Lucas was thinking when he hired a kid who clearly couldn't act his way out of a wet paper bag and had as much presence as a grain of sand on a beach? However, as you can imagine, George has stopped taking my calls.
Star Wars - Episode 2 - Attack of the Clones is, in many ways, shittier than Episode 1. However, it's probably a little better in other ways but I'm not really sure why, possibly because it didn't have very much Jar Jar Binks in it and the overt racism was toned down to a three instead of a nine.
It was such a disjointed, FX-laden slog that I'm amazed they managed to stretch it out to almost 140 minutes. There is so much to dislike about it, from the way the story changed to fit in with whatever Lucas was thinking, presumably by the minute. Natalie Portman is no longer queen, because it appears that on Naboo queens are elected for two terms - like Presidents - so you wonder why they're called queens. In fact, Amidala's piss poor explanation as to why she's now a trade ambassador felt like a necessity rather than a natural progression of the story. Or how about the fact that despite Annikin being a sullen-faced, aggressive spoiled brat she could go from you know not really fancying him to falling in love with him? I mean, she seemed to fall for him the twattier he got. I accept she has to fall pregnant and have the Skywalker twins, but apart from the moral dubiousness of it, it would have been better had he just raped her. [When I say 'better' I mean for the overall story and helping make Annikin the monster he became].
I suppose she couldn't really end up marrying Annikin if she was still queen and if he's still a Jedi padawan? So it was done under the veil of secrecy and not one Jedi, not even the little green fella with the pointy ears, had any suspicion? I suppose all will be revealed tonight when I suffer another 2½ hours of pointless shit. Natalie Portman must have been given wheelbarrows full of money to be in these films. Also, Boba Fett - the kid - is there or has there ever been a child that you would have applauded seeing him get squashed by something, accidentally? Oh and his bloody New Zealand accent got on my nerves like nails scraping down a blackboard. "Did, Did, kill him, did." Aaargh!
I have to admit because I'm not into Star Wars that I always thought Attack of the Clones was about the good guys being attacked by a bunch of clones, so my only surprise was they were helping the good guys in what was just a confusing mess with far too much unnecessary comedy, not enough wanton violence and acting which wouldn't have looked out of place in a Frinton Apollo pantomime performed by the East Essex Amateur Dramatic Society.
FFS, why do so many people love this franchise (sorry Mark)? It's just an absolute load of wank... Except it isn't because orgasms, even from wanking, are more enjoyable, productive and intense. This is blockbuster films at their very worst and George Lucas is about as talented as an extra for the East Essex Amateur Dramatic Society. Fucking appalling movie with zero redeeming factors. As Jar Jar would undoubtedly say, "Meesa tink issa loada sheet."
It's Never Coming Home
The Women's World Cup has finished after being on for a month and the outcome was not what England fans wanted, but does suggest that we show some humility whenever one of our football teams gets to a major final. The often misplaced optimism I think tends to put too much pressure on the team; that sense of expectation followed by the familiar crushing defeat is almost an English pastime. Coming home my arse.
Being in Scotland and having adopted the country (as it is my ancestral home), I still do feel a slight sense of disappointment when the England team don't bother turning up for matches, but I also get over it faster than I forget what I had for dinner yesterday.
This spectacle has been more enjoyable than the men's tournament but that wouldn't be difficult as I watched three matches from Qatar and I am proud to have boycotted it. The problem with this women's tournament is it's still mired in the fact FIFA runs it and that twat Infantino cannot open his slimy mouth without upsetting at least a third of the world. I might feel differently about international football if cunts like him were dropped into the bottom of a bottomless sea with some weights and no oxygen.
Chapter Three - Revenge of the Oh For Fuck's Sake...
All I can say is this was as bad as the first two and I suspect it gets its higher IMDB score for the last few minutes when suited and booted Vader turns up and what happens to the twins is revealed, but as for the rest of the movie, Jesus wept what a load of convoluted horseshit and just how stupid were all of these people? Jedis don't seem to have much of a clue and got taken out like they were stormtroopers. Palpitation has been knocking around for donkeys years and yet none of the Jedi noticed that a fucking Sith was amongst them? Jedis are occasionally precognitive, but did one of them foresee their own deaths? How the fuck did Obi Wank know there was an emperor when Palpitation only just declared himself emperor of the new empire? It was good to see Jar Jar Binks not speaking a single word, but they chucked in some Wookies, including a youthful Chewbacca, so they had something furry on the side of the 'rebels'.
It was just more special effects and the battle scene at the end between Kenobi (why did he take on the name Ben?) and Wankanin was preposterous - they're fighting on a molten lava planet and neither is barely breaking sweat, let alone catching fire or melting. The slightly Pythonesque lopping off of Wankanin's limbs or his insistence that he'd fight Obi Wank with just his teeth (okay, that doesn't happen, but it should have) was about as 'nasty' as this kids' franchise ever got and fancy Padme losing the will to live; I mean that's such a common way to die after giving birth to twins who probably needed their mother.
FFS, I think people forget how fucking awful these movies are because they're in love with those original films from a childhood they will never return to, in a simpler time, when special effects had to be worked on. Obviously as the Empire takes over the universe they retro fit it with rubbish equipment. How convenient that Palpitation told the droids to switch themselves off and never reactivate themselves, I half expected him to order all the clones into giant vats of conveniently placed acid so there was no evidence of them ever existing. Dog shit. Utter dog shit. Utter utter dog shit on burnt toast. People who love this franchise have brain disorders, FFS.
Even Better Than the Cloned Thing
It also has a Star Wars reference in it - in the first five minutes, which felt like I was being haunted by that fucking film franchise - actually it has two, the other being John Boyega, who plays Finn in the final (so far) SW trilogy; you know, the black guy who was so prominent in The Force Awakens but almost got forgotten about in the following two, like George Lucas put his racist hat back on and told the directors to stop it now. But let's not dwell on him or his pile of shit franchise. This was far better than a fucking Star Wars film.
In fact, this also has a kind of Marvel link as it's really Electro, Monica Rambeau and the guy who people believed would replace Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror, should he get the sack if found guilty in his forthcoming sexual assault trial. Jamie Foxx, Teyonah Parris and the aforementioned Boyega team up as a pimp, a ho and a drug dealer who discover there's something badly wrong in da hood and it's all going off underground...
Boyega is Fontaine a miserable local dealer who barely cracks a smile, who leads a boring life that seems to repeat itself day after day. When he has a confrontation with a rival drug dealer and gets shot you'd almost think that was it, until he wakes up the next morning as good as new. This, as you might guess, confuses him a bit and confuses others even more. It's especially confusing as people don't tend to come back from the dead, especially after having three bullets pumped into their chest. When he discovers that everyone thinks he's dead, including Slick Charles (Foxx) the last person to see him alive, it starts a chain of events that leads to the two men and 'retiring' whore Yo-Yo to uncover a full scale mind-blowing operation designed to alter the minds of the folk of the neighbourhood and also clone them, in case replacements are needed. You have to ask yourself about the logic in this...
Not only is this happening, but the food, hair products, drink and music are all doctored to keep the locals under control - have them being dodgy folk, but only up to a certain point. Slick Charles and Fontaine both seem important as they're able to be mind controlled by the agency that operates underground, but Yo-Yo isn't and when she's kidnapped by the agency and attempted to be brainwashed, Fontaine and Slick come up with a plan to break her out and expose the conspiracy.
It's all very loud, at times violent and has a lack of internal logic, but it's a fun film that does a good job of pointing out how black people in urban US areas have the world to beat just to be able to live. The three main actors are excellent in it - Boyega, in this, reminds me of an adult US version of his homey from Attack the Block, while Parris is anything but a Marvel superhero and Foxx is just bad - as in good, if you know what I mean? It's worth watching, I think I could have done with some subtitles though.
Badlie Spelt Tytle
That's not to say Inglourious Basterds was a bad film, it just didn't do anything for me and when it was revealed that it was another alternative history movie it just got me wondering about Tarantino in general and whether he can make actual 'real' films. It's the story of a platoon of Jewish US army men who travel around occupied Europe during WW2 scalping Germans in response to Hitler's 'final solution', while simultaneously it is the tale of a Jewish girl who survives the wiping out of her family in rural France, inherits a cinema and takes the opportunity of a Nazi film premiere at her cinema to attempt assassinate a number of leading German military figures including Goebbels, Hess and Adolf Hitler.
The film is held together by Christophe Waltz as a slightly rogue officer who is also a detective and known as the Jew Hunter because he notoriously tracks down Jews and has them killed; he was there at the start and he pops up throughout the film until he comes up with his own final solution and a way of him walking away from the war with the best possible outcome for himself.
I simply didn't find the film very enjoyable; it has some funny moments, but essentially it was a nasty, small-minded movie, full of characters who were neither pointless, likeable nor expendable which all took you down a garden path to the conclusion. I also thought the title was slightly redundant, I mean it starts off by suggesting the name of the film is A Band Apart but everything else says it's the badly spelled title referred to earlier in this review. The actual 'Basterds' were on screen for about 25 minutes in total - out of 2½ hours - but it was really about the Jewish girl, Waltz's Hans Landa and a little bit of Brad Pitt's character, and he was really just a vessel to go from A to Z.
I didn't enjoy it. I'm not in any hurry to see the other QT films I have yet to subject myself to.
The End is Nigh?
The death of the superhero film was always going to be a foregone conclusion. I know that sounds like hindsight given what's happened in the last couple of years, but overkill coupled with below par offerings appears to have Disney execs running for cover. With the writers' and actors' strike still going and an intransigence from the money men keeping it going there are an abundance of delays, postponements and now, it seems, Disney's Bob Iger has suggested the MCU might end after Phase 6 - which at the moment stands at a Fantastic Four film and two Avengers films and doesn't look like it's going to be added to unless something 'special' comes along.
Disney has been looking at the numbers and now regard the third Guardians of the Galaxy film to be an 'event' film; a conclusion to a popular sub-franchise and a buck in the general trend of superhero films, which have lost their mojo and are unlikely to respond and bounce back into favour, especially with some of the less than awesome things on the horizon. So at a time when DC appears to be ramping it up to try and compete with the MCU juggernaut, the MCU is looking at calling a halt to all superhero films after 2026 - at least for a few years, to give it time to breathe and rethink the way forward. This doesn't mean the end of the MCU just a much slower output level, probably with more focus on one or two TV event series per year and allowing Sony to go and play with the Spider-Man universe, while picking up residuals from that. I expect the Secret Wars film will be a conclusion to everything with an ending that leaves the MCU open to being rebooted in 2030 at the earliest. I also expect Kevin Feige to depart in the next year.
Is it Safe?
Reynolds plays Matt Weston - a caretaker at a Cape Town Safe House operated by the CIA. He's got a cushy life, a nice French girlfriend and a cover story that no one seems to question, but he's bored and wants to be a field agent; the problem is no one else at CIA HQ wants him to be. Then one of the most wanted men in the world turns up as a 'guest' at his house - Washington's Tobin Frost, a former CIA agent who's gone rogue and has half the world's secret agents looking for him. He's got something that someone wants badly and within minutes of Frost being admitted to the safe house it is under attack from hostile forces.
What follows is a cavalcade of violence, double crosses and a chase across South Africa to stay alive - at least that's what Matt needs to do, because Tobin is on a mission, one that involves him making a lot of money with a file that contains the names of every dodgy spy for every spy agency on the planet and that makes him expendable and therefore everybody who comes into contact with him.
It's quite a brilliant film with twists, turns, red herrings, dark blind alleys and unexpected - yet totally expected - shocks. In fact it's one of the best thrillers I've seen in a long while with some fantastic set pieces and a clever ending that you don't see coming but makes you feel a lot better about some people who work for the CIA. There are some great turns by the likes of Sam Shepherd, Brendan Gleason, Vera Farmiga, Ruben Blades and Robert Patrick - some of which are almost blink and you'll miss them. It does one thing I never really considered though, Reynolds is a good straight actor and he doesn't need to be 'Ryan Reynolds' to hold a film together; he can actually act.
Trailer Trash
It's basically Star Wars had it been done by someone who understands films, stories and how to make a space opera - or at least that's what the trailer looks like, even if Sofia Boutella is the main star (readers of this column will know I have my doubts about the French actor's ability to act) and there are things that look so like a Star Wars film that I wouldn't be surprised if Disney don't have their lawyers scouring the trailer as I type this to see if there's something they could sue Netflix for.
I'm not going to get excited about this, but given the success of Dune and the imminent failure of the entire superhero genre, I expect this will be a big hit as will the next two or three years worth of space fantasy films, because that's going to be the next big thing. Science fantasy is here baby and you'd better believe it. The trail looks meaty and chock full of action, adventure and Star Wars-esque characters done right. I mean, come on, they could have made it with puppets carved from human faeces talking like Pinky and fucking Perky and it would be better than fucking Star Wars...
All Hard Feelings
I know, that's a very convoluted entry paragraph, but Jennifer Lawrence's latest movie No Hard Feelings is quite distasteful on a number of levels, yet still manages to end up being one of the best feel good comedies I've seen in a long time; or at least it's morally questionable for about the first half an hour and then turns into something else entirely.
Lawrence plays Maddie Barker, a 32-year-old Montauk Point 'good time gal' who lives in a house that was bought for her late mother by a rich New York holidaymaker who accidentally knocked her up with Maddie. She drives an Uber, while working at a bar and is struggling to make ends meet with state taxes and is in danger of losing said house because ... life in the USA is essentially expensive to even breathe let alone live in a nice house with a low income. When her car is repossessed and her home comes under threat, she takes on an unusual job of bringing a shy, reclusive 19-year-old 'out of his shell' - or in other words, she's employed by the kid's rich parents to bonk his brains out before he goes to college. She effectively becomes a sex worker to obtain a car to help her remain in her house and living in Montauk. So far so seedy and Lawrence does seedy far better than you would imagine - not only does she have an extremely potty mouth, she appears to have slept with just about everyone in the holiday resort she's spent all her life in.
What happens though is ... not the fact that Maddie and nerdy Percy become friends - that is almost a given - but that Lawrence gets completely full frontal naked in a beach fight scene that is both unexpected, funny (especially being punched in the privates) and not really necessary but almost essential for the progress of the story. You see Percy might be a bit of a geek, but he's actually a nice guy with a lot of hang-ups and so is Maddie, although she didn't know this until she met Percy. The evolution of their friendship and the inevitable revelation that she was essentially a set-up is handled with a lot of humour and satirical jabs at rich Americans. What happens is a really nice - but bawdy - film with some funny set pieces, unexpected twists and poignant moments that are handled, as you might expect, very well for a film that has one of Hollywood's A listers in it.
Andrew Barth Feldman is excellent as Percy and there are good turns from Ebon Moss-Bachrach (of The Bear fame) and an old looking Matthew Broderick as Percy's father who doesn't seem to want to let his son grow up but realises he has to and probably goes about that growing up in really bad taste - but, hey this is the USA and foisting your son on someone the parents think of trash and a sex worker is probably normal for that extremely fucked up society. It is an enjoyable film and ends up being quite the feelgood 100 minutes.
Bowie Invasion
It's a tough show to explain given that series one seemed to focus more on the humans and there was about five minutes in the entire season that had aliens in it. It was essentially introducing you to the five main protagonists; the people who seemed to have either a connection with the invaders or were going to play a key role in stopping them and this first episode of the second season focused on Aneesha (Golshifteh Farahani) the Iranian-born American who is on the run from the US because she fears for her family's safety and she's a Muslim (having lost her husband already to trigger happy good ol' boys because of that) and Misuki (Shioli Katsuna) the only person to have contacted the aliens and the woman responsible for the only victory Earth has had against the aliens so far - as witnessed by a huge ship downed in the Amazon basin.
The episode kicks off with Misuki fighting aliens with Molotov cocktails and making them seem rather tame considering they're winning this war. She's wanted by the world government to help work out why the aliens are here and what they want - which seems obvious given they're killing humans and terraforming the planet with ammonia and for the next hour it shifts back and forth between her and Aneesha's struggle to stay one step ahead of the [US] army, until she or rather her son falls foul of a patrol and they are captured, only to be released soon after by a new plot in the story, a group called The Movement, who, it seems, are also interested in beating the aliens but not in the same way as the world government.
It's all very overwrought still, but you somehow expect that given the scenario and the other characters are ignored (until the final scene) in favour of fleshing out the two main protagonists stories moving forward as much as they can. I'm still not 100% sure that this is a good series, but we now seem to have more focus on the actual invasion and less pfaffing about with introducing us to the humans. It's still early doors, so anything could happen in the coming weeks.
Extra Terrestrial Hijinks
Made in 2011, when Simon Pegg was looking like he would become a serious A list actor (I wonder why that never happened?) and Nick Frost wasn't typecast as a Nick Frost kind of character, this is one of the best homages to almost every great Sci-Fi film ever made and yet is quite fantastic in its own right. It follows the adventures of Graeme and Clive, a couple of British geeks in the USA for the San Diego Comic Con and to take an RV across the US visiting all the famous UFO places like Roswell and Area 51, who just happen to pick up an actual ET on the way, one called Paul - voiced by Seth Rogan. Your stereotypical looking 'grey' who smokes, swears and generally likes having a beer and a good time.
The three are pursued by three shady characters from a secret organisation which includes Bill Hader as an ambitious and suspicious agent and Jason Bateman as the quite superb Agent Zoil (first name: Lorenzo - yes, it's that corny). Heading up this secret organisation is 'The Big Guy' played by Sigourney Weaver and also involved is Kristen Wiig as Ruth and her ultra religious father played by John Carrol Lynch. It's a road movie, an alien movie, a love story and a secret organisation out to kill you film and it simply never gets old or boring. Paul is simply one of the best 'sci-fi' films ever made and I struggle to find any fault in it at all.
Next Time...
More of the same I expect except with less Star Wars, which in itself will make the coming week a lot more enjoyable. There might even be some more new TV, but given the autumn schedules are being leaked, I'm sceptical about TV coming to the rescue any time soon...
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