Usual spoilery things apply and don't forget if you haven't seen something I review it's probably best not to read that section...
Endlessly Endless
So I was looking through lists of under-rated and overlooked sci-fi films of the 21st century, trying desperately to find something I've either never heard of or something I've overlooked in previous searches. One thing I'd never seen on any list was Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson's The Endless, which just about every film website rated a lot higher than its IMDB rating (6.5). It's described as a cosmic horror with elements of Lovecraft and that's probably a fair description. It also showed some fascinating and disturbing images that made me think we could be on to an unseen winner.
It starts very slowly with two brothers living a meagre existence as cleaners but with a back story that struggles to make a lot of sense, chronologically, but has enough weirdness to keep you interested. They were both members of a 'UFO Death Cult' or at least that's what brother Justin told everyone when they escaped 10 years earlier, but their life hasn't panned out as well as they could expect, so when a video tape arrives at their apartment with scenes from the cult on it, Aaron is suddenly spurred into returning to the camp to see if it was as bad as his brother described it.
There is a creature in this desert-like US terrain and it manipulates time and space and has essentially trapped a number of people in time loops of differing size across the area it lives and inside these loops life goes on as normal but then resets when the three moons in the sky are all full. The people in the loops do not age, they do not die, they remember everything and it's probably been going on for decades, at least.
This is where the film's logic breaks down and it doesn't matter how much you try and argue in the film's defence it simply makes no logical sense... The brothers managed to escape the camp when they were younger, which suggests they were there less than 30 days, as anyone inside a loop when the moons are full stays there. However, by the way everyone is talking to them, they had been at the camp for a long time, long enough for everyone to have fond memories of Aaron at least.
Don't get me wrong, I liked the movie as an idea. It was a unique take on time travel/loops, apart from the fact when you place it under general scrutiny it falls apart as a concept and surely Benson and Moorhead must have seen this, considering they're clever enough to have dreamt up the idea in the first place. It reminds me a little of Annihilation - another film that dares to fiddle with the entire nature of things. However, if you're going to have a premise of an invisible space creature holding different groups of people hostage in time loops, then don't spoil the logic immediately by having things happen that contradict what is happening. I think 6.5 is a better score than it probably deserves.
Signs and Portents
There's a slight discrepancy about the start of this second outing - what was supposedly the first meeting between Crowley (Tennent) and Fell (Sheen), at the Garden of Eden, now happens billions (?) of years prior to that with the formation of the universe - which seems to be Crowley's doing (in terms of constructing it) when Fell, who seems attracted to his fellow angel (soon to be fallen) and strikes up a convo.
Fast forward to present day (fictional) London and the former angel and demon are living as mortals when an amnesiac archangel Gabriel (John Hamm) wanders into Fell's bookshop, start naked. He is now called Jim and to protect him from harm the angel and his demon friend perform a very small miracle to make him 'invisible' to non-humans. Naturally this goes a little skew-whiff. You see, something's gone wrong upstairs and while heaven is in disarray a new look devil wants to know what and why. The bemused angels simply don't know what to do without an appointed leader and naturally think Crowley and Fell are involved, which they are.
There's a subplot about two gay women who may or may not be destined for a relationship and what the relevance of a Buddy Holly 'B' side might have on things. But generally not a lot happens in the opening four episodes (of six) and most of what does happen is in the form of flashbacks that will have some relevance to the overall story, or at least you hope they do otherwise it's just fleshing out Crowley and Fell's 'platonic' relationship.
By the penultimate episode, Crowley's replacement, Shax - Miranda Richardson - has brought about 100 demons with her from hell to attack the bookshop, while Fell lords it over a 'retailers meeting' that somehow has become like a scene from a Jane Austen novel, while Crowley returns to heaven for the first time in millions of years...
I thoroughly enjoyed this, probably more than the first series, but it has an incredibly sad ending, almost tragic and is quite unexpected, almost out of keeping with the rest of the show. It's probably just a scene setter for a third series, but in case it isn't, it doesn't have the ending you'd probably want.
Toothache 2
If you require a film that's 105 minutes long and has 95 minutes of relentless, full on action and violence then Chris Hemsworth's Extraction II is definitely the movie for you. After a quiet opening, this essentially explodes into action and doesn't stop until the antagonist is dead.
There are lots of plot holes, things that make no sense and you need to have the subtitles switched on because half of the film is in Georgian. It has familiar tropes, usual betrayers and a child who causes all the grief because he's a little shite. Idris Elba turns up for about six minutes and Chris Hemsworth's Tyler is harder than Thor. It's not a film I will watch again but it was better than punching myself in the face or sticking needles up my Jap's eye - hot ones, mind, cold ones wouldn't be tough enough. Expect Extraction III at some point before 2025.
TOTALLY MASSIVE
All I can safely say about Colossal is what a fucking excellent and unexpected film it is. Ann Hathaway is fantastic as the alcoholic waste of space who gets dumped by her boyfriend - Dan Stevens - and ends up back in her home town and hanging with her old school friend Oscar - Jason Sudeikis - who now runs the local bar. The first half an hour is sharp and witty comedy as we get to know the main characters but also puzzle over the events taking place in Seoul, in South Korea, as a giant kaiju monster suddenly appears, causing destruction and death.
Then what is ostensibly a very funny comedy, with some slightly disturbing ideas (all of the dead people in Seoul as a result of Gloria's drunken rampages) turns into a really quite nasty film as the good guy in the movie turns out to be a really nasty guy. It's weird seeing Ted Lasso playing a man-baby-control-freak-abusive-psycho but he does it with far too much ease and the film takes some really unexpected and unpleasant turns. He is also a giant monster, because whenever he enters the playground with Gloria a giant robot appears in Seoul. It seems they both have some link that dates back to when they were children.
I won't give the ending away because it's a quality film, with a great cast including Tim Blake Nelson, and I can't understand the low rating on IMDB - not that I take much notice of that nowadays because there are too many impotent moronic male twats prepared to vote a film down because it didn't do something they wanted - but if it ever comes on TV or on a streaming platform then give it a go, I absolutely loved the film and feel slightly aggrieved that it took me seven years to watch it.
Trailer Trash
It looks like more is going to happen than in season one, but equally we might have just seen all the action scenes and the rest of it will be boring and full of debate and discussion. It looks like it should be fun but you could say that about anything Marvel brings out. Anyhow, it might feel like October outside but it's only just August, you have two whole months to prepare for both things.
A World of... Underpants
Whenever and wherever this is set it's now machine gun wars with silver bullets and silver nitrate bullets and lots of bullets everywhere because all the people firing them are worse at shooting guns than stormtroopers from Star Wars. The first thing I took from the opening ten minutes was how much money they all must waste on bullets and whether it might be time to re-evaluate bullets and maybe use silver knives or silver nitrate jet washers.
However, the main thing I took from this is what an absolute load of pants it was. I mean, I'd say it was style over substance but frankly it had no style and the substance was mainly teeth, hair and blood. The acting was diabolical, it looked like it was filmed in an abandoned Prague and the script was written by a seven year old (actually it wasn't but maybe it might have been a better film had it been). I'd say it was a load of cobblers but I reckon that would be much better and probably more intelligent.
Kate Beckinsale is Selene, a vampire who hunts werewolves. Scott Speedman (you know, Mrs Speedman's boy) plays Michael who just might hold the key to creating a vampire/werewolf hybrid capable of becoming the lord and master of all. Michael Sheen is Lucien, a werewolf who married Bill Nighy's daughter and as he's the grand poohbah of vampires he wasn't keen on his daughter being porked by some low-life wolf so he offed her and started a war with the creatures who had been their servants for centuries. Now 500 years later and in cohorts with vampire Kraven - so badly acted one hopes Shane Brolly never again appeared in front of a camera - Lucien is trying to create this hybrid and overthrow the vampire dynasty once and for all. Oh and Sophia Myles is in it as well although quite what she was doing other than inexplicably being a double agent who got her baps out (off camera), I don't know.
I'm going to have to sit through at least two more of the five film franchise, because I think that's what it's going to take to wean the wife out of her desire to finish a franchise she stopped watching after the third - flashback - movie retelling and fleshing out the story Sheen tells Mrs Speedman's boy towards the end of this film. To put this into some kind of context, Underworld isn't as exciting nor as interesting as Michael Portillo's Great Train Journeys of Norwich...
Some Brief Observations
We're re-watching Black Books and I have to say it might possibly be the last best sitcom ever made. We've just finished watching the first series and I've laughed more than I have at any comedy for years. There's many memorable scenes, but the one with Bernard's underpants is worth mentioning given the title of this week's blog.
My opinion of George Clarke took something of a weird downturn. I mean, I've never been a huge fan of Mr Please Go Over Budget but while checking up something about him that the wife asked, I stumbled across a fact in his Wiki entry that made me seriously doubt the man's sanity - and I'm not joking.
Has anyone ever watched any of Michael Portillo's Great Train Journeys. They're often very interesting, educational and despite being a fascist Portillo is a genial host, however and this is something only a few people will understand, when he's summing up direct to camera at the end of each episode it's so like Tommy Cockles doing an introduction for Arthur 'Where's Me Washboard' Atkinson that I struggle to stop myself from laughing hysterically. Simon Day could fill in for him for an episode and I doubt anyone would really notice as long as the comedian wore outrageously colourful clothes.
Moore(s) the Murderyer
It's a strange movie, but one I'd recommend purely and simply because it's not too long and it's quite enjoyable in a slightly wonky kind of way. My personal jury is out about Hamm, there's something a bit Hollywood classic actor about him, yet he likes to do experimental or slightly off-the-wall stuff. I never watched him in Mad Men and I wasn't interested in his Fletch reboot, but there's an everyman charm about him that makes him quite likable.
Maggie Moore(s) is the story of a woman called Maggie Moore who pisses her dodgy husband off so he arranges for her to be scared shitless by a local thug, however that goes wrong and she ends up dead. What follows is a complex case for Hamm's chief of police and his assistant played by Nick Mohammed, because a week later the town's other Maggie Moore also turns up dead and this sets off a chain of events that seemingly keeps running up dead ends.
Involved in this is Tina Fey, the first Maggie's next door neighbour who becomes Hamm's love interest after witnessing something that might have some bearing on the case. Also tied up in this is the husband of the second Maggie who is having an affair and looks like he might be responsible. Then a neo-Nazi former colleague of the second Maggie is implicated in the deaths of both women, but there are inconsistencies that Hamm doesn't like. Also involved in this is Happy Anderson, who plays a deaf mute called Kosco, who is actually the murderer, except he isn't deaf and he isn't mute but he is very nasty. There's also a slimy food salesman with a penchant for lewd pictures of children, just to make it a tad uncomfortable at times.
Now, this all feels a bit Fargo and in truth it would have been had it not essentially been a comedy*; a slightly off-key comedy, not black, but also not laugh out loud either. The more it twists and turns the more it moves away from the funny side and veers into a different territory entirely and by the last ten minutes it's gone full on drama with unexpected deaths and a twist you saw coming but only as it was about to happen. It's an entertaining film that probably suffers a little from having some largely stereotypical characters in it that feels just a little too... if you excuse the expression... hammy. Hamm does hammy?
Actually, he's the least hammy in it. It does feel as though it could have been half an hour longer with a little more character development; in fact it feels like it might have been but got cut down for no other reason than to spoil what might have been a better film. That's just how it felt, probably not how it was made. Worth checking out if you see it anywhere.
* I am aware that Fargo the film and subsequent TV series are black comedies, but the humour in them comes from the narrative rather than specifically being a comedy.
Next Time...
Maybe more of the Underworld saga unless I can't avoid it. Possibly a TV mini-series called Candy and you never know something new might come along or something might return to install me with a sense that TV hasn't died and we're just living off the tender pieces of its corpse. It's essentially too loose and up in the air to decide on anything at the moment, so I might end up doing a long winded review of [insert crap TV show here]. Who can say? All the fish are blue.
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