Modern Culture - The Naked and the Dull

Spoilers warning on some not all, choose wisely.

Yes Sir, I Can Boogeyman!

I fear we're going to be entering the Vague Zone; essentially an area of my brain that can't remember much about things I've watched because I fell asleep during them. I don't know why, it's just every so often I go through a phase where I can't keep my eyes open at 7.30pm and all the minutes that follow until I eventually go to bed. With The Boogeyman I'd started falling asleep after 11 minutes and while I only really missed about seven minutes of the film they were probably the important bits that would have allowed me to understand what the fuck was going on. It wasn't bad, it wasn't good, I've almost forgotten everything about it that I needed to remember - it was switched off just over an hour ago at time of writing this. 

I think it's about something that lives under the bed or in the cupboard. It can be injured, possibly even killed. The film has actors in it, they do things. It stars Chris Messina, I think I know his brother. It's based on a Stephen King short story - a very old one and extrapolated on until the cows came home. There is little else to say apart from the wife didn't slag it off nor did she sing its praises.

Sweet Two-oth

It's been nine months since we watched the first series of Sweet Tooth and if I had to stick my neck out I'd say they made most or all of season two at the same time as season one because the kids haven't changed. Sadly neither has the programme's ability to make us want to watch it. The bits with the animal hybrid kids are a bit too Disney and the bits with the humans are like a PG-rated Walking Dead without the dead and using local am-dram actors. It's simply not engrossing enough to stick with, so we've decided to call it a day.

Haemorrhoid City

OK. It lost me almost from the start. Wes Anderson films are either slow, drawn out and have a story that you can follow, or you can't. This fell firmly on the latter's side. I can't really tell you what it was about because it doesn't really have much of a story. A family goes to Asteroid City on their journey into grief, while other things happen with other people. There appears to be some flashback scenes, some is filmed in black and white and it all has a 1950s feel to it but in a completely manufactured and surreal way. It might have been a filmed version of a play about some place or it might have been a deconstructed historical piece about a place where a meteor might have struck way in the past. I don't really know. There was an awful lot of famous people in this movie; I'm not sure why.

The film 'adapts' a play about a family [not] grieving for their recently lost wife/mother by travelling to Asteroid City to take part in a competition exclusively for geniuses, once there, their interactions with other families, also in said competition, meander around touching on things - sexual tension, snobbery - but the problem with it is it's interminably dull and all those talented actors mumbling and bumbling their way through a [deliberately] bad adaptation of something uninteresting seems like a great waste of so many things. 

The Paradox

It's coming up to nearly 30 years since Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys was released and for many it is the seminal time travel paradox film; there is some slight of hand used in it, just to keep the wool pulled over one's eyes, but other than that it's just a mystery - one that deals with paradoxes.

Bruce Willis might be from the future; a very typical Terry Gilliam future - a sort of a mishmash between Richard Lester's surreal films of the late 1960s and David Lynch - and Willis might have put the paradoxical idea into the head of Brad Pitt to use his father's chemical company to manufacture a doomsday virus to wipe out most of humanity and all of this is based on a phone call made to an answer machine in 1996. The double whammy is while we follow the red herring to its conclusion, the actual plague is having its debut mapped out by the obvious but overlooked MacGuffin. This is a film that feels equal parts prophetic and yet incredibly dated, especially given the soundtrack and the rather contrived way the story unfolds. I know a lot of people rate this film, but time hasn't been kind to it. Willis did a bunch of odd films in the 1990s; he wasn't frightened to do something off-piste. This almost felt like a misstep in many ways, but it didn't harm Pitt's career, which might be why it was a misstep.  

Used Cars

In Stephen King's 'Bill Hodges Trilogy' the main antagonist - Brady Hartsfield - features prominently in the first and third books, but is just a background character in the second part - he's there, but the story is something altogether different. When the books were adapted into three TV series, the logical thing - financially and narratively - was to have your main story as the main event and the back-up story as an epilogue. The 'problem' with season three of Mr Mercedes is the makers have managed to keep Hartsfield around - psychologically - but he isn't really the story here and neither is Lou Linklater's trial for killing him; they're just here to keep this from becoming just another detective series. However, there are times when the courtroom drama seems far more important than the other story; this might be deliberate.

Based on the second in the Hodges trilogy - Finders Keepers - this probable final series extrapolates on events from the end of the third book while weaving them back into another mystery (the second book) for Bill, Holly and Jerome to solve. In other words, TV adapts the books in the following sequence 1,3,2 it takes elements from the end of book 3 and runs with that, in a slightly different direction. it's actually cleverly done, but the 3rd series needed that elephant in the room - Hartsfield - to be more than just a ghost and memories.

This time it's the killing of local celebrity author John Rothstein and how a simple robbery went so very wrong and started a chain of killings. Morris Bellamy has heard that his hero Rothstein has unpublished manuscripts and lots of cash in his safe, so he conspires to rob the old man. However things go south very quickly when Rothstein - played by Bruce Dern - pulls a gun, shoots Morris's partner and gets himself killed in the process. To add to Morris's bad day, he then drives his stolen car off the road and smashes it and himself up in the process; banged up and dazed Morris seeks help from a friend and forgets the suitcase full of money and unpublished manuscripts.

Pete Saubers - son of one of Mr Mercedes surviving victims - stumbles across the wreck, finds the suitcase and decides he's having some of that, while Morris is racking up his own victims in his search for who might have stolen his stolen goods, Pete thinks he's exorcising some of his own and family's personal demons. I'm not quite sure why Bill is even involved in this case; it's almost like that part of Ohio only has part time police officers, but he's there, working with his pal the assistant DA and, incidentally, he's also a huge fan of Rothstein. 

He has Jerome doing research into the writer, who then finds an embarrassing link to Bill's next door neighbour Ida - who, it seems, had an affair with the writer. Meanwhile Holly is working with Lou to try to get her ready for her trial, which she is able to attend because she's been declared mentally fit to face a jury. Holly has to push herself beyond what she's used to and fend off some potentially amorous gestures from Lou's lawyer, played with his usual slimy loucheness by Brett Gelman. This isn't really the main plot but because of its links to the first two seasons it's the one that dominates in the regular viewers mind.

My problem with this is a little like what I thought of late Genesis albums - most of the band are there but not a lot of what they're playing is particularly interesting. The Brady psychology is quite interesting, but because Brady is a peripheral player and there's no Harry Treadaway, it's just shadows, dark profiles and shots of his hand with a blue plaster on his thumb (or whatever finger depending on the continuity editor). It feels as though it can't be as important because Treadaway wasn't cast and therefore because there's no actual Brady, it does have a kind of epilogue, barrel-scraping feel, however it does illustrate how Brady had a profound effect and continues to have on the town of Bridgetown.

I'm enjoying it, but I am find some of the continuity and writing mistakes a little jarring; when Holly is on the witness stand testifying for Lou, she mentioned that Brady killed two of her aunts, but one of the aunts was actually her cousin. There's also this feeling that where the first two series had a definite framework to work from, because of the mishmash element on this third season continuity and common sense has been forgotten about. I still think Brendan Gleeson is fucking excellent in this series; he's one hell of an actor.

News Bytes

Who are these people?

Considering the BBC, especially for the last 10 years or so, has been extremely 'supportive' of the sitting government (I appreciate that alone is a contentious statement given people will diametrically disagree with me suggesting the BBC is too left wing), arguably not being journalists any longer just reporting on whatever social media is talking about. I really shouldn't bother with it and to be fair, my watching of the 24 hour rolling news channel has decreased by 75%, but the reason for that decline is nothing to do with the news and everything to do with the amateurish bunch of personality-less wankers brought in to replace all those familiar, professional and probably far too expensive former presenters and reporters. I wouldn't mind if they had confidence or public speaking skills or if they didn't look like some kind of AI-generated news reader, the problem is most of them look like they started yesterday and have been given a mic and told to get on with it.

Even the new-look, trendier Matthew Amroliwala isn't in the same league as a Martine Croxall, Maxine Mawhinney or Simon McCoy and he - Amroliwala - perfectly highlights the style over substance argument. I wouldn't mind if it was just that, but it's also full of errors (not factual), long gaps of silence, links that break or hang, and a growing list of things you wouldn't expect the BBC to do - such as give sections of the news a different name; like Verified Live is going to restore faith in the corporation with people who are forever accusing it of being left wing and anti-Brexit. 

Why the BBC's news department thought that employing all their former BBC World News reporters - the people who you might see if you seen on the channel after midnight most week nights - was going to improve things, is beyond my understanding; however it was and is clearly a cost-cutting exercise that has devalued the news channel in the same way as the UK's position on the world stage has diminished beyond belief in the last seven years. 

Drab Sparrow

Is the international language of spies and secret agents English? I only ask because the number of movies I've seen in recent years where all the agents/spies all talk English to each other but occasionally slip back into whatever native tongue they speak when the dialogue isn't essential to the plot. I only make this comment because the Jennifer Lawrence film Red Sparrow has a lot of Russians in it, who all speak English - to each other - but fall back to native Russian when ordering drinks or buying a plane ticket. Why bother? Why not just have it all in English or add subtitles? Why switch between Russian and English whenever bits of the plot are being discussed?

That aside, this is a really dull movie. It's painted as a straightforward spy thriller with double or triple agents and is cleverly handled in that you see everything as it happens, but don't think too much about what is happening because you're looking for something else - or in this case, I was looking for a reason to like the film, so I missed some obvious plot points (although, in my defence, I suspected something was afoot when Lawrence stole Joel Edgerton's whisky glass for later on; that was when I realised this film was more than a spy thriller).

What this is defies its appearance. It is not a spy film, or a secret double agent film, it's a revenge thriller and nothing more really. This is about Lawrence's character getting revenge on her uncle for putting her in a position she had no control over to let her believe she had some control over her life and the looking after of her invalid mother. It's just well done in making everyone think it was about Russian spies, the Red Sparrow programme or CIA manipulation inside the Kremlin; they were just plot devices and nothing else.

As I said, I found the movie a bit dull, not really what you'd call an action adventure, more of a voyeuristic exploitation film dressed up as high art. I don't really know what I expected but I thought I might at least enjoy the movie, but I didn't. It's brutal, unflinching and uncompromising; there's a lot of sex and violence in it, quite a lot of torture, Russia is portrayed as a misogynistic country where women have a purpose only seen fit by their male overlords and while all of this might be true, I didn't care about any of the characters, what their motives were or who I would have trusted more was it my life on the line... I don't think we're having a good week as far as films are concerned.

A Quick Round-Up

Yes, it's been another slow week. The Wigtown Book Festival has been on and doesn't finish until most of the people who read this will have read it. The wife has been working all hours and sitting and watching the telly every night has been curtailed with other stuff...

That isn't to suggest we haven't been watching stuff, it just seems pointless to be discussing stuff like Welcome To Wrexham every week because it is what it is, but more importantly it is an entertainment show and not really a documentary. Yes, there is a reality TV, documentary feel about it but because it is also high entertainment there is ironically a feeling at times of mockumentary. This week's two episode instalment plays around with the chronology of last season's football, while suggesting that three events that happened while the CEO was on holiday were far more important than they really were. It is telling interesting stories about the people involved in the club and the show, whether anyone gives a shit about these is up for debate.

I stand by my suggestion a few weeks ago that Paul Whitehouse doesn't really like Bob Mortimer and he would rather be off fishing on his own without the Wearsider or the camera crew or the dog. Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing in my eyes appears to be coming to the end of its natural life. They have caught every fish they set out to catch; have been to Scotland, Ireland, the south coast, Wales and the west, the east, the north and most of the Midlands. The scenery has been fabulous, the retreats magnificent and most of the off-piste bits - usually led by Mortimer - have been well called; but I simply don't think the two have much left to talk about or places to fish. Perhaps a few Christmas specials once this series has wrapped up and then a quiet retirement?

I've also asked this question before, but do many of the people who go on early evening quiz shows - such as The Tipping Point, Pointless, and The Chase - actually have functioning brains? Do they ever watch the programme they're appearing on? Why do they think they will suddenly develop a general knowledge when faced by cameras? I appreciate the shows' producers want 'interesting' guests, which usually means 'stupid' and if everyone who went on quiz shows was good then it would get a bit boring; but Tipping Point has easy questions and you just need to have reasonable hand to eye coordination, yet I've owned dogs with more knowledge and skill than some of the absolute wankspanners Ben Shepherd has to suffer...

Next Time...

Good news! New TV to digest next week - Gen V which is a The Boys spin-off and already getting fantastic reviews. Then there's an entire eight-episode season of Brassic, which dropped a couple of days ago - Joe Gilgun is back in this hybrid of Shameless, Last of the Summer Wine, This is England and a host of others. Oh and then there's Loki season two, meaning the wife and I should really watch season one again, just to make sure we know what's going on. This and a whole lot more... 

Pop Culture - Coats of Manky Colours

This blog contains mainly reviews of what is often billed as shit product and these will contain many spoilers, so if you know the drill avoid the things you don't want spoiled...

Poo Beetle

Oh. The problem here is I didn't go into this film with any expectations whatsoever. I watched it with a faint hope that it would defy expectations, especially as I enjoyed The Flash much more than I expected. However what I can say about Blue Beetle is it was very colourful; (our hero) Jaime's very noisy family were unbelievably annoying and um... er... there's a couple of erection jokes, about penises not building skyscrapers.

It's an absolute [I'm really sorry about using this word] abortion of a film and I don't think this is another nail in the superhero genres coffin, I think this is the last nail. I feel I'm done with them (I know, I'm not, I just wish I was), I think they are movies for a different audience and for more modern times and that might seem like a really horrid insult to younger people and late 2023 but it's all I've got.

There is so much to dislike about this; from the aforementioned family to the contrived way the story 'worked' to the comedy superbad villain - this time Susan Sarandon, another in a now growing line of villains you literally want dead within seconds of them coming on screen. From her private army of machine gun happy wankers to her general disdain and racism to anyone other than herself makes her the latest in the line of manufactured bad guys, or in this case gals. This is a really crappy film, a very colourful and noisy crappy film, but crappy all the same. It tries to make some social points about Hispanic racism, it does a reasonable job of pointing out that corporations are bad but families are good and when it finished after two hours and seven minutes both the wife and I thought it overran by about two hours.

Will someone please put a stake through the heart of fucking superhero movies for at least a decade or until I die... I'm not sure there is anything that can be done. Blue Beetle epitomised what is wrong with superhero genre, it's the perfect example of a comicbook film - the superhero genre died with Avengers: Infinity War and had its epilogue in Endgame, after that we entered the world of comicbook movies. The genre has lost its edge; there is no longer a sense of jeopardy about any superhero film, with a couple of weak exceptions. DC films, because by nature they're usually dull can be as edgy as they like, reinvent themselves so often it's kind of lost that intrigue and taken on a sort of who gives a shit approach - it will be what it will be. Even the dialogue in the films resembles that of the comics and the way forward seems to be with villains trying to outdo each other in terms of their general cruelty and that is usually off the Alan Rickman scale and counterbalanced by a hero and entourage being as happy as Larry despite the shit life they live or the prejudices they face.

I appreciate both Disney and Warner (also Sony, I suppose) have a vested interest in breeding and cultivating new audiences in a dwindling post Covid market, but the writing must be on the wall to them by now even if films still manage to make some money - it's not going to be long before they stop making money. They need to start killing heroes off and have a threat that's not just some nutter with dictatorial psychopath leanings but perhaps someone willing to sacrifice people for the sake of the planet?

Horrible Film

I suppose I'm being a little unfair on the 2011 film Horrible Bosses, it might be because it was made during Jennifer Aniston's 'I need to prove to people that I'm still a hottie' phase (she was 42 when she made this) and her presence in this movie kind of got my hackles up - I never watched Friends and I never understood the fascination with it; however Aniston has aged better than Courtney Cox who looks like she's been plasticised. Hackles were raised because she doesn't really act, she just plays ... Jennifer Aniston.

Horrible Bosses stars Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day (no, me neither) and also features Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell, Donald Sutherland and Jamie Fox as Motherfucker Jones - which alone is probably the funniest joke in it. It's a funny film without ever being a good film and a lot of the humour feels almost accidental. In fact, the pre-credit outtakes scenes are the funniest bits of the movie. It's all a bit pantomime - albeit a noisy one; it's a bit comedy melodrama and very contrived - it's a plot with a story moulded around it. I can't see myself falling over anything to watch the sequel.

Shit City

Heavens above; I'd forgotten what an absolute load of stylised shit Sin City was. I completely understand what Robert Rodriguez [and Frank Miller & Quentin Tarantino] was trying to do but in the 18 years since the film was made it has dated so very badly ...

Yes, it's a film based on a hard boiled noirish comic book series from Dark Horse in the 1990s, but that was a comic book series that was all hype and all shite. I have a personal disliking for Frank Miller; I think his work is over-rated and he now has some rather distasteful right wing attitudes that make him quite a loathsome character. I never understood why people thought his Daredevil was so good, I wasn't drawn in by The Dark Knight Returns and stuff like Sin City, Hard Boiled and 300 were all smoke and mirrors - he conned the comicbook reading public into thinking he was some kind of genius, when he was just of his time.

Sin City is in four parts (really only three because one of the segments, with Josh Hartnett, is neither relevant or long enough to be thought of as anything but a 2 minute interlude) and three of those parts interlink in a way that some people might find clever. The first part is the sleazy tale of a child molesting killer, who just happens to be the son of the mayor and features Bruce Willis; the aforementioned second part features Hartnett as a serial killer/assassin; the third part has Mickey Rourke as some kind of musclebound super strength thug called Marv and the final part has the wholly unconvincing Clive Owen as someone who's got himself into something that makes almost zero sense.

It's boring, the then state-of-the-art special effects look as cheap and shoddy as some of Miller's earliest artwork and it's got attitudes and angles that make it just a bit too misogynistic and exploitative. It is a film that does not deserve the 8 it gets on IMDB. It's a dislikeable load of bollocks with zero redeeming features and it's equal parts offensive and offending.

Welcome 2 Wrexham

We got a double dose of this fly-on-the-wall documentary revolving around Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney's purchase of a non-league football club with bags of history. This scheduling is probably down to the historic double length opener which features King Charles. 

The second episode focuses on the team's top striker Paul Mullins and his autistic son while tastefully intertwining the story of one of the clubs fans, a 17 year old girl who also has autism and how the club seems to embrace diversity. It's a poignant and extremely moving 20 minutes of TV. The third part switches back to the football with the main focus being on the impending battle of the season between Wrexham and another, arguably bigger, team who fight them all the way - Notts County. It's doing what I thought it would, focussing on Ryan and Rob for maybe one part in every three, but it feels like they have more interesting stories to tell now that the programme has become a huge hit.

Round the Benz

As someone who has read most of Stephen King's books, I don't think he's ever created a literary villain quite as vile and nasty as Brady Hartsfield. Mr Mercedes season two is a strange beast; it is simultaneously better and worse than the first series - it's a curate's egg of a TV show, with some bits that are great and other bits that just feel unnecessary and literally just there to act as plot devices to move the story along.

Brendan Gleeson is, as usual, quite brilliant and Harry Treadaway is dark, malevolent and utterly scary as Hartsfield, while Justine Lupe is great as Holly Gibney as we are in the front row to watch her becoming a good detective rather than an OCD fuelled bag of neuroses. There are some other intriguing supporting cast members - Jerome and Ida, but everything else feels like padding or characters you're supposed to become invested in, somehow, who are simply being set up for a nasty ending. However, one thing about this second series that was different - the way it ended, or rather the way in which the last three episodes seemed to go off piste. Because we're in 'Stephen King Land' now you kind of expected something weird and wild, what you get is something slightly unsettling and unexpected; this has a finale that will have you wide eyed with incredulity in more ways than one - but mainly with how the US justice system works. If you ever needed another reason not to ever visit that country it's in the - based on fact - US criminal justice system. Whether it's the same denouement in the book I don't know, but King often doesn't stray too far from the path of reality even in some of his more fantastic book ideas.

Imaginary Tails

Some people who read this will be aware that around the turn of the century I acted as Simon Pegg's PA and Minder when he was the guest of honour at the UK Comic Book Convention held in Bristol. It was my job to basically hang around with him, keep him watered and fed and ensure he wasn't mobbed by hordes of Spaced fans. He wasn't.

I had this image that he would be a bit like Tim, his character from Spaced - untrendy and a bit of a pot smoking hippy. In reality he was an untrendy nerd who liked a drink and enjoyed the company of some of my other nerd friends rather than the pot smoking, super cool comics guy that was me. It was the year that I ended meeting a bunch of guys from Image Comics and spending more time hanging with them at the bar than keeping Pegg occupied. There was one particular moment when he spent more time talking to a couple of dear friends of mine about 2000AD - the comic - than paying attention to the awards he was supposed to be hosting.

Anyhow, I only tell you this because before I watched this new film, I'd wondered if Pegg made any other movies recently other than the latest in the Mission Impossible franchise and it seems he has. Had I known I might have done more research about his new film, read some reviews and then decided not to watch Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose, because I could have watched something where I didn't keep falling asleep because it was so boring.

This adaptation of a true story about a renowned parapsychologist of the 1930s, the Hungarian Nandor Fodor, who investigated claims that a talking mongoose was living in a farm on the Isle of Man [Yes!] and concluded that the farm's owner - John Irving - was as mad as a box of mongeeses [sic]. The story has been tweaked a little to add to the mystery and make the viewer wonder if the mongoose is perhaps symbolic of something or exists but only in the hearts of those who listen to it, but the overriding thing is how boring it was and how ludicrous it was that people could have been so gullible to believe such a load of existential bollocks in the face of overwhelming evidence - I've been reading about it and the film could have been so much better if they'd examined Irving a bit more.

Its beautifully shot; the sets are perfect and Pegg and Minnie Driver put in reasonably good performances, its just a load of shite really and Fodor's scepticism has essentially been toned down until the final scenes to help the film pass the 90 minute mark, otherwise it would have been a short film of about 45 minutes. There's an element of comedy about it - such as Irving's daughter being an accomplished ventriloquist or the gardener being the only person on the island who saw what was going on but wasn't about to rob other folk of their hopes or dreams - but it needed to be funnier and possibly shorter or perhaps not made at all. When I downloaded the movie it had a 7 rating on IMDB; 48 hours later when we watched it that rating had dropped to 5.5; I rest my case.

Abandon Hope

The first thing you notice about No One Will Save You is how few words are in it - I think there are less than a dozen. The second thing you get is the impression you're watching a nightmare, that what is happening is happening inside someone's sleep and then eventually you come to the conclusion that you might be watching exactly what you theorised or you might be watching a deconstructed and stylised version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Whatever you think about No One Will Save You it probably won't be to think it's an Academy Award winning effort, because however earnest Kaitlyn Dever (she off Booksmart) is with her miniscule amount of dialogue this struggles to be anything more than just a an pretentious load of twaddle.

Dever's Brynn is a slightly alienated member of the community who we discover is responsible for the death of her friend when they were much younger and this is pretty much the only discernible backstory because the rest is a relentless cat and mouse game between her and a number of aliens of varying sizes. I have to admit to falling asleep inside the opening ten minutes and then struggling for the next 80 because while it had the feel of a kind of cosmic horror, it also felt like in a few months time many people will be recommending you avoid this film like the plague...

Next time...

How about that for a compact and bijou week of reviews then? Still no Barbie - the wife doesn't seem to understand it isn't what she thinks it is, but I only say that based on the miniscule amount I've bothered to read about it. 

I'd have a stab at guessing what's going to happen in the next week, but I think whatever we'll see, we'll see. I was asked if I'd watched the new Daryl Dixon of the Walking Dead series and I said I have no interest in it at all. We've even decided to not bother with the last eight parts of Fear because it's a load of shit. We need a new load of shit to follow. 

Modern Culture - Aliens Fishing for Dead Cats

Spoilers, spoilers, nah, nah, nah...

Jules in the Crown

There's a gentle innocence about Jules, a new film starring Ben Kingsley, Jane Curtin and Harriet Sansom Harris, it's kind of how you might expect Wes Anderson to have made ET. It's not a long film; it weighs in about just over 80 minutes and follows the life of Milton, a 78-year-old man who might be succumbing to the first signs of dementia; so when he starts telling people about the alien that's landed in his garden, possibly damaging his azaleas beyond being saved, most people smile sweetly and move onto the next thing. Milt even goes to regular town meetings and announces the crash landed craft to everyone there and gets told off for making old people look stupid. 

Jules is the name Milt and his two friends Sandy and Joyce give the apple-eating alien invader, although Joyce thinks he's more a Gary than a Jules. He's just trying to repair his ship and get going, or at least that's what appears to be the case, because Jules never speaks, in fact Jules doesn't do much at all apart from possibly steal the corpses of dead cats (which he needs for repairs), eat apples and a couple of other things that ordinarily would make this stop being a gentle comedy and start making you think you'd just wandered into a David Lynch horror film.

There's lots of gentle comedy, a couple of genuine 'Oh My God' moments and a charming and entertaining little film here, which deserves your attention and has a lot in common with Close Encounters of the Third Kind Special Edition, in fact, at times, Milton could be an elderly Roy Neary. This is a really likeable movie with a simple story told in a matter-of-fact way and it has an ending that we all deserve. Lovely little film, highly recommended.

Sailing Into Boredom

Perhaps the worst thing about The Last Voyage of the Demeter is the fact it's nearly two hours long; they somehow managed to drag it out longer than it probably takes to read the entire novel Dracula. This is a film that is interminably dull, has a strange logic sufficed throughout it and has lots of earnest and overwrought acting going on. It does have an interesting take on Dracula even if it sort of makes the rest of the story a bit redundant if you're going to have a vampire monster who doesn't shapeshift into a human being, how's he going to get on when he meets the locals in Whitby? I'm sure the person portraying Drac probably had a hoot and picked up a handsome cheque. I'm sure the rest of the cast just picked up cheques.

This was an unnecessary, pointless and redundant film. If you knew the 'story', you knew how it ended before it started and if you're depending on telling a compelling story with this in mind then the first thing you have is interesting characters and an actual story, not just a selection of characters in search of a fitting death. This is not a particularly good film and whoever thought of the blood transfusion idea missed a trick. At no point during this film did they twig that the vampire didn't like the daylight so mount your attack during the day rather than waiting until it was dark. There's also the other fact that you can sail from London to the eastern Mediterranean without ever being more than 10 miles from a shoreline, so there was never a reasonable chance they could get lost at sea. I could go on but I wanted this review to be short and pithy, what the film needed to be.

Gorn Fishing

With TV dribbling back onto our screens, I caught up with Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, which is amazingly up to its sixth series. Paul Whitehouse is now 64 and Bob is a year behind him and they're still alive, otherwise this would be a strange series indeed. It's 'the same' TV, just an episode, probably filmed with a hi res camera to get the best of the British countryside and with a general sense of well-being as the underlying message.

I sometimes wonder if Paul Whitehouse is interested in anything with any kind of passion if it doesn't involve going fishing because he seems to like leaving Bob to do all the actual donkey work and while we have no idea how long it takes to film each episode (usually a couple of days would be my guess), Bob always seems to have a better strike rate of catching fish to the number of minutes he has a line in the water. I sometimes think even Paul doesn't like being there, with Bob, but they get paid for it and he gets to fish. Sorted.

It's Miller Time

Never trust a film by its IMDB rating isn't usually an ethos I stick by because I've seen good films with low ratings and crap films with high ratings, but when I saw the rating on this was 7, I thought it might be worth watching given Ted Lasso was in it and we're batting well with Sudeikis films. 

What We're the Millers tries to be is a stoner comedy without the stoned; a Sicario - the PG-Rated Comedy or maybe Ozark with a comedian holding balloons, featuring a slightly schizo Ted Lasso and one of Friends trying to prove to everyone that being in your 40s (this was made in 2013 when Jennifer Aniston was 44) doesn't mean you're not still one hot piece of arse (she's not that much). What We're the Millers is, is a load of weak beer masquerading as something special with a number of actual funny bits studded around but tough to find. Imagine jewels in shit, except the jewels are cubic zirconia and the shit is quite stinky and a bit runny.

Jason Sudeikis plays a drug dealer who gets robbed and to pay his supplier off he has to go from being a dealer to a smuggler by transporting two tons of weed from a Mexican cartel, which turns out to be a heist in a way, in an RV. The premise is actually as thin as a 190-year-old's skin; it's really quite stupid and only moves along because of circumstances rather than planning; it is essentially a vehicle for Aniston and her wonder bra as a stripper pretending to be Lasso's wife and they take on two errant waifs and strays as their children. This family then spend most of the time inadvertently avoiding a DEA officer and his family on holiday and the comedy Mexican Cartel who don't kill the 'family' so often that you start to lose the will to live. It's a vacuous mess; a void not dissimilar to the space left in your colon after you've eaten a lot of salad and beans and evacuated it into a local toilet. Will Poulter's in it; he probably didn't realise.

No Dogs' Bollocks

Strays is like that BBC comedy natural history program where someone is shouting for 'Alan' a lot. It's a dog comedy with special effects designed to make you think 'if dogs' could talk', except it's like we'll fit the words around what the stunt dogs are doing rather than try and spend any money on it. We got 11 minutes into the film and then stopped. I've had enough shit for one week already and it's only Saturday night.

Confidentially Speaking

It's been over 25 years since we last watched L.A. Confidential the film that had far too many Antipodeans in major roles - just kidding, mate. I recall being enthralled by the complex story and the layers that needed to be unpeeled to get to the heart of the story, but I seem to think it was more difficult to get your head around and there were more twists and turns than there actually was. This film really stars Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce yet it's Kevin Spacey who gets top billing; it's notable for having the farmer from Babe - James Cromwell - as a police captain, Danny DeVito as a sleazy paparazzi and Kim Basinger as a Veronica Lake look-a-like.

This is a movie that essentially is about corruption on the LAPD but it's also about the era and the fight between staying true and straying from the path. It's a deliberately obtuse film at times with unnecessary red herrings because the film's plot and story is pretty clear from the word go and while there was no real attempt to make you think the main bad guy has always been in plain sight, you don't need to be an Agatha Christie detective to work it out or how the two independent investigations were going to lead in the same direction. The only real shock in this movie over 25 years after it was made is the unexpected early death of one of the main characters. It's a solid film, but it's really more atmosphere than good filmmaking.

A Cop and Mole Story

Martin Scorsese's The Departed is a bit of an all-star cast kind of film - Matt Damon, Leo DiCaprio, Alec Baldwin, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, (the lovely) Vera Farmiga and even Ray Winstone, doing one of his bad accents; it's a veritable who's who with a top notch director, based on a best-selling book with a high IMDB rating, yet there's something missing from this film... Maybe it's a heart? Maybe it's whether we care about any of the characters? I don't know, it just felt a little contrived and it reminded me of that Ryan Reynolds film we watched a few weeks back - Safe House - not in the actual film just that all the important stuff will probably happen after the camera stops rolling.

DiCaprio and Damon are their usual pristine selves in this movie, but I kept thinking that Jack Nicholson thought he was remaking Batman because his Costello reminded me a little of his Joker persona and the mole inside a rat-infested mob balanced against a mole inside the police department twist wasn't really that twisty and the reasons none of Costello's men didn't realise it was Leo DiCaprio is because people in organised crime are great with guns but not very good with brain things; or at least that appears to be the message a lot of films give out - thugs are thick (so therefore their victims must be even thicker?). It's an entertaining film, but I never felt like I was committed to it; there wasn't a great deal of investment and I didn't really care about any of them.

Never Mind...

...The Buzzcocks was resurrected a few years ago by Sky TV and it's still about 30 minutes [too] long, except now they manage to fit it into almost an hour of screen time. There are lots of familiar things still in it and lots of unfamiliar things, such as guest stars you've never heard of and others you wonder why they agreed to this. I found it boring and outdated. Greg Davies is okay; Noel Fielding is co-captain with Jamali Maddix on one team [why?] and Daisy May Cooper captains the other side. It's essentially the same old shite that the BBC got rid of in 2015; it has some funny bits, but so does things like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was really a misunderstood black comedy. This isn't even really nasty anymore either and that spoils it somewhat for me; we need more wanton offence distributed, because there's nowt more spleenal [sic] than an offended person.

Welcome Back to Wrexham

The next umpteen episodes of Welcome to Wrexham should be edge of the seat stuff, especially for people who don't follow football but do follow this. The season Wrexham had last year was straight out of a Hollywood scriptwriter's best imagination bits and while I quibble about the general chronological narrative of this opening episode in season two - the football season started in August 2022 and Ryan and Rob met the King in December 2022, they managed to meld the two of them together to make it seem like it was all happening that week.

We all know, those of us who watched this rather excellent thing first time around, that there will be about 50% of the episodes that will be brilliant and about 50% will go so far over the heads of viewers in the USA they won't know it even happened. The thing is the 2022/23 season was tumultuous for the Welsh team, their supporters and the guys who own the club. Not wishing to spoil it for you but having the opening episode where in the second game your team loses 2-0 doesn't auger well for the coming months, the thing is Wrexham only lose two more games for the rest of the season, but I believe so do main rivals Notts County so we're in for a hell of a ride.

This is a well made, cleverly edited (unless I'm watching it with critical specks on) piece of television; it probably makes Wrexham (football club and town) a shedload of money and has made them something of a global name, despite them not being a top flight team. King Charles' appearance will boost TV ratings and we'll soon be wondering whether Humphrey Ker will have a beard in one scene and be clean shaven in the next - Ker is the executive manager, probably a director of the club, possibly a minority shareholder; he's a funny guy and in the first part he looked different in almost every scene he was in. I expect this series will take care of itself in terms of drama; it will have a finale that is worthy of a blockbuster, it'll be how much of Reynolds and McElhenney they can put it in to keep the people not interested in football or the Welsh watching.

Dead Copbusters

So, we decided we hadn't had enough Ryan Reynolds so we watched RIPD again. I'm not really sure why because the first two times we saw it I don't think we were that impressed, but like many throwaway pieces of trash you can't remember much about the bits in between and that usually makes things bearable. It wasn't like watching a new film but it was a bit like watching a best bits reel with the less best bits sewn back into it.

Imagine Ghostbusters but with police officers and then mixed with Men in Black, throw in some Ryan Reynolds - becoming a big thing - and someone classy like Jeff Bridges. Put Mary Louise Parker into the Rip Torn role and you have box office success oozing from its sores in abundance. This had everything to make it a) the start of a new franchise and b) enough inspiration and state of the art special effects to be able to make something that transcends both GB and MiB; however, what you get is a film that doesn't know how much of a comedy it wants to be, but knows that it wants its monsters to be ludicrous, stupid and obviously created inside a computer. Bridges is shite (and stupid) - he dials his role in and he was bored when he did that, Parker acts like she'd rather be somewhere else singing Burlesque showtunes and Reynolds has an air about him that tells me that he realised very early on in the making of this film that he might have another Green Lantern on his hands, except a whole load stinkier. This is a film you really should allow your better judgement to have the final say; it might do the sensible thing and persuade you to do something more satisfying, like having a massive wank.

Talking Out of Turn

Modern horror films, eh? There's just nothing remotely scary about any of them. I know that people will disagree with me there, but sadly those people would be wrong. The highly rated Australian movie Talk to Me wasn't bad but it was hardly a jump a minute scare fest and while it did try to be something a little different, the problem I had with it was I simply didn't give a shit about any of the characters in the film, in fact some of them were simply annoying and a couple of them were just so fucking annoying you wanted them to be the first to die. 

There's a viral video doing the rounds of kids weirding out when they hold onto a 'plaster' hand, which might have been the hand of a seer or something once upon a time - all you have to do is hold the hand and say the words 'talk to me' and you see someone who's dead, then you say some other shit and you become possessed by the dead. You should only hold the hand for 90 seconds otherwise bad stuff happens. Suffice it to say, one of the characters Mia - Sophie Wilde - whose mum committed suicide, gets hooked on it pretty quickly, because the experience is like some fantastic rush from a new drug, the problems begin if something hangs around after the candles have been blown out as she quickly discovers.

It's a bit weird, slightly disturbing with some imagery that would probably wig out a few teenagers, but it isn't scary and it's not really a horror movie, per se. I mean, it is but you know, it isn't really. It has some shocking scenes, some make up and a creepy idea - not much else. I also find Australian films relatively difficult to watch; I think that's largely down to Australians. 

Trailer Trash...

The first trailer for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom has dropped and I think we can safely say that superhero films will take another lurch towards their own endgame. I know the first film defied logic and had good returns, but that didn't stop it from being a bit shite. Everything I've seen in this trailer suggests that hasn't changed, but Jason Mamoa fans couldn't give a shit.

It's just another FX-laden load of bollocks and if this teaser is supposed to make us want to go to cinemas to watch it then I think we're heading into a new kind of territory here, the one where fans of superhero films are going to be very annoyed that this is going to be the straw about to deal a death blow to the camel. Honestly, the first one was bad enough and I don't care this is part of Gunn's vision or that James Wan directed it - so fucking what?

Graduation Day

We'd seen Booksmart four years ago, but as we've discussed many times before this means nothing when you have memories like what we have. It was the wife who spotted it, but it didn't spoil any enjoyment we got from it, because it is a bizarre, slightly surreal film that isn't what you think it's going to be and spends a lot of time essentially trying to wig you out and piss on your preconceptions of what you think the film is going to be.

It's the story of two high school nerds who realise that on their last day of proper school that they've lived far too sheltered lives because all the party animals are all also going to top universities, so they decide to spend their last night before graduation partying hard and catching up on everything they'd missed out on. There's a lot of actors you've seen in other things in this and while the duo of Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) are the stars of the film, it's the character called Gigi (played by Billie Lourde) who, I think, steals the movie, because she's literally everywhere, all at once and she comes out with some fabulous lines that you could almost imagine were from a different film entirely.

It's rude, funny, embarrassing and has a feel about it like it knows it's good, which is no bad thing. If you haven't seen it it's worth finding because while you might wonder at times why you're watching it, you'll still find it a very good film.

The Brady Hunch

Season two of Mr Mercedes begins by filling in the gaps between season one's finale and its epilogue. I think this is for two reasons, to act as a nice rounded synopsis of 'previously' bits and because it probably needed a little more padding out than you would normally get.  

Harry Treadaway's Brady Hartsfield isn't dead, gawd knows he should be given the amount of times Holly took it out on his skull with a pug (you need to watch it) and he's a bit of a ghoulish celebrity because of what he did. He lies in hospital with a brain that's, seemingly, made of mush; however this is where the new characters - the Babineaus - come into things, because Felix, the skilled neurosurgeon who saved Brady's life is now being funded by the Chinese and they're giving him a drug that they need to be trialled on humans (why they wouldn't do this in China is never explained) and Felix starts pumping it into Brady because he's going to lose his Hollywood patient because the hospital no longer can afford to keep the mass murderer hooked up to their machines when other, paying, customers might need them, so they're shipping him out to a cheaper, more prison-like hospital. 

As Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson) recovers from his near fatal heart attack, trains Holly Gibney his trade, the two of them run Finders Keepers (their detective agency and also the name of the second book in the Bill Hodges trilogy), he's trying to put Brady behind him, but when an old friend and colleague dies of a heart attack in Bill's kitchen, his own position and that of the still alive Brady brings his own existence back into sharp focus. Obviously the situation with Brady just compounds the anger and guilt Bill feels, while we have no idea how and what the drugs Babineau is giving his 'brain dead' patient are going to do, you don't need to be Stephen King to tell yourself that the first series was almost a straightforward police procedural with some excellent character padding; for Brady to return and play any significant part in the next nine episodes we're going to start entering a world that King knows much better - the weird and supernatural.

Next time...

It feels like I managed to cram in loads more films this week than usual, but I think a lot of that has been down to the encroaching autumn and us starting TV nights literally about 7pm rather than usually after 8pm, which means that if we watch an average length film then we can usually get something else in after or before - it's the freedom having iPlayer has given us [again].

What's on the horizon? Well, the rest of season two of Mr Mercedes, more Welcome to Wrexham and maybe more of other weekly watches, it depends on whether there's anything worth saying. On the film front, we're still to give Barbie a go, while the other 2023 films I have to watch - include The Boogeyman, Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse, Asteroid City and Air - really depends on the wife's feelings about them. There might also be some newer films, it depends on what's out there by next weekend.

Just remember, Huge Ackman is splitting with his wife so now might be your time to shine...

 

Pop Culture - Magic, Mayhem and Norse Gods

The usual spoiler warnings apply, apart from...

Prestigious

Usually when I review old films I'll happily divulge huge chunks of the plot and probably what happens; in fact I do that with most things, however with Christopher Nolan's audacious and quite brilliant The Prestige I really don't want to because, you know, if you haven't seen it, it would really spoil the enjoyment and if you haven't seen it, go out, find it, watch and enjoy it, you will not be disappointed. Plus, if you have seen it but not for a long time then the above applies.

All I will say about it is I feel it doesn't have a happy ending and justice - even if exacted by revenge - doesn't seem to prevail, although by the end it didn't really matter.

This is a movie about two magicians who once were quite friendly but whose rivalry - tempered by tragedy, a tragedy that needn't have happened - consumes them both to the point of obsession. Huge Ackman and Christian Bale are both superb as the warring magicians, but there are also great supporting roles for Michael Caine (he's 90 now, you know?), Scarlet Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Andy Serkis and David Bowie as Nicola Tesla. It's set at the turn of the 20th century and is full of twists that I really don't want to touch on because all of them make this extraordinary film even better still. It is a movie about secrets, lies, obsessions and one-upmanship that eventually leads to... well, it leads to a conclusion, one - like The Mousetrap - deserves to be seen or re-seen unadulterated. I feel that the conclusion is excellent, but it did leave me with a slightly bad taste in my mouth.

Benny Hill versus The Bogeyfish

Ben Wheatley, the director who makes films only a handful of people like or understand but no one has the balls to admit it in case one of their film aficionado friends has an eppy about disrespecting 'an auteur', really should have known better or he needed a new house. That's the conclusion I reached after the wife suggested we watch The Meg 2: Holy Fucking Shit on Toast it's the Actual Shitting Second Meg Movie, the Motherfucking Trench, which was possibly the biggest heap of prehistoric-mega-shark shit I've seen since the last Star Wars film I watched - so about a week, I'm doing well on donkey shit movies at the moment; but hey, this column can't just be about good films otherwise it gets boring. I ask you this question - does a fish really rot from the head down or does it just rot and stink?

Presumably the Chinese really loved The Meg because this felt like a cheap budget Jackie Chan rip-off with Jing Wu and added Jay-son Stay-fum innit and in it. It was one of those films where for the first hour it seemed to be taking itself as seriously as the script - presumably written by a blind and deaf brainless Albanian translator who couldn't speak Albanian - would allow, but suddenly became Carry On Jurassic Park, guest starring Benny Hill and a screaming - yes screaming - giant octopus. 

Just why is Jay-son Stay-fum popular? He acts like most people taking a rough shit and he obviously knows his talents are stunted, so I suppose hats off to him for sticking with it and pocketing  the obscene pay cheques he obviously gets - he presumably knows that at some point he won't have much of a career, unless Eastenders beckons as the long lost Mitchell brother, so he's pocketing whatever he can, while his face still works. 

Honestly, I've seen pantomimes with more pathos than this and if it wasn't for the wanton cartoon violence and big monsters it could probably have been given a U certificate. It is just one minute after another of garbage and not even good garbage, more like stinky garbage with absolutely no redeeming features at all; like putting your hand in one of the vegetable draws in the fridge and pushing your finger into a parsnip that you forgot about and had been festering in there since March (which I did the other day and frankly it was more fun and pleasurable than this monstrous piece of rotting sushi).

A pox on anyone who thought this film was better than a 0 on IMDB. About as rancid a movie as you could possibly imagine and then covered in shit, bile and soiled underpants and then more shit. Utterly ghastly.

De Gamle Gudene

There's nothing better than to blow away the cobwebs formed from watching a Jay-son Stay-fum film than watching something from Scandinavia and the Norwegians are usually excellent at doing weird. Maybe it's because they spend a lot of time in the cold and dark, but Ragnarok is very quirky and quite weird.

We gave the first episode of the first season a go and was addicted immediately. It begins with a family returning to the town they were originally from when the mother gets a job with the company that seems to control the town of Edda. The first episode focuses on the two brothers starting their new school, Magne and Laurits, who were both toddlers when their mother left Edda after the death of their father, ten years earlier. Magne is a blonde chunk of a guy, built like a shithouse rat, while Laurits is much darker haired and has a mischievous look about him and is prone to pranks - we're looking at Thor and Loki here, because Ragnarok is about the return of the Norse Gods for a final conflict with the giants they battled centuries earlier, before Christianity replaced the old religion.

It has some corny dialogue, but it works and the strangeness of the town is conveyed extremely well. Jutul Industries seems to be adding to Norway's very own climate crisis as the town is experiencing warmer winters, cold snaps in summer and generally strange weather and Jutul is a metals and chemical company who are the town's main employers. The head of the company is married to the headmistress of the school the boys go to and their two children are the golden children of said school, both good looking and very snobbish. The first part does a good job of introducing some of the main characters and ends with a completely unexpected death. I'm aware there is a dubbed version, but like the utterly brilliant German sci-fi series Dark this needs to be in Norwegian with subtitles. 

The thing I like about this is it isn't hanging around; the second episode spells out what Magne is up against by focusing on the Jutul family who are obviously the 'giants', while the third and fourth episodes really get the story moving along nicely and Magne's transformation into Thor, god of thunder, continues at apace. Vidar Jutul - the head of the family - is starting to do reckless things bringing unwanted attention to the family and Gry - the love interest of the younger Fjor Jutul and Magne - makes some bad decisions. 

By the end of the first season it's now clear that Magne is up against a bunch of 'giants' who are slowly killing the town of Edda, possibly the whole of Norway. However our hulking hero has now been told by the woman at the Spar who he is; the next question is are there any more new Gods on the way? Perhaps that last sentence gives you an idea how bonkers but quite brilliant this series is.

The conclusion of season one made me realise something about this Norse God drama - it might be rather excellent TV, but there's not a huge amount of action. This isn't an MCU film, this is a slow burn Scandi drama, fantasy as serious TV, but rather dialogue heavy than resorting to fights and action all the time. It almost feels like a psychological thriller. It isn't really until the concluding moments of season one that we even see what I would regard as proper action and that is handled extremely well.

I do feel that the first series does a very good job of setting the scene and ensuring that Magne (Thor) spends most of it getting accustomed to his new abilities and having everything he wants crushed before him, whether it's by the Jutuls or by his teachers. The almost cliffhanger ending has both of us wanting to start watching season two almost immediately...

Exposing Dark Secrets

What was needed was a grown-up movie with grown-up actors after the massive prehistoric shark film and we got that with Spotlight, about the Bostin Globe's uncovering of the cover-up of abusive Catholic priests across Boston initially, but in the end, as fitting as the newspaper's name, a global problem and the conspiracy of secrecy that made sure no one either looked into it or managed to draw a line through it.

Starring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery and Rachel McAdams it follows the Globe's investigative wing Spotlight and its team's work at uncovering the worldwide sex abuse problem that still mires the church today and it all starts with one priest. I should also point out the interesting factoid that the four main stars have all been in superhero films - Ruffalo is the Hulk, Keaton was Batman, Schreiber was Wolverine nemesis Sabretooth and Slattery was Howard Stark; another interesting factoid is McAdams has starred in no fewer than FOUR films about time travel, yet has never actually time travelled. Here they are in a very interesting biopic about uncovering corruption and scandal in the catholic church. It does what it says on the tin; the acting is fine, the pace is excellent and it's a compulsive watch and it's played in a way that leaves the viewer with the sense there are red herrings thrown around to ensure we stay off the scent as long as the investigative reporters. It's an excellent film without ever really feeling like it gets out of second gear.

*Update: Thanks to my pal Mick who reminded me that Rachel McAdams has been in both the Dr Strange movies. I mean, how could I forget that? [I was being rhetorical...]

The Norsegod Cometh

Season two of Ragnarok kicks off exactly where season one ended - which was with Laurits (Loki) doing his mischievous best to alienate both sides of his friends and families - he's very much a both sides player, in more ways than one. 

At the start of season two Fjor Jutul basically tells his family he's finished with their evil, destructive ways and quits the family - being told to kill his girlfriend was really the tipping point for him; this causes more of a ruction than you can imagine because it coincides with Magne gaining revenge over Vidar by dumping barrels of toxic waste - with Jutul Industries labels all over them - on the doorstep of the police station, thus exonerating him of all the nasty accusations thrown at him at the end of the first series, which led to his suspension from school and police orders that he needs psychiatric help.

Magne also meets his first fellow God and looks like he's going to lose his brother to Vidar Jutul, because if you know the story of Loki you'll know his true origins. However, as we move through season two things get complicated and there a couple of truly unexpected turn of events as more Gods are recruited and the two 'younger' giants start flip-flopping in their beliefs as ambition drives them harder than simply wanting to destroy the planet. In fact Vidar's relentless lust for destruction makes little logical sense, but, to be fair, there are other things in this series that are logic baffling, but it is fantasy and I can suspend some of my need for common sense and sudden about faces by characters because of that.

As we reach the conclusion of season two the unexpected twists keep coming; there are some truly ludicrous ideas that seem to make sense in this fantastic world creator Adam Price has developed and as Magne discovers that the Gods need a strong leader to stop them from exploiting their powers in the way the giants seemingly flaunted their power for 3000 years, he gets his own lesson in humility and hubris. It's still compelling viewing though and it's the simple fact you don't know where it's going next that makes it so enjoyable. It seems nothing is black and white with gods and giants.

Season two's finale was one of sacrifices and full of Scandi humour - which I haven't really touched on but there's a considerable amount in this series, although it's often used sparingly and sometimes you think it's almost a bit silly, but I'm not an aficionado of Norwegian humour. The finale is really about laying the foundations for the final series, but it also gets a little weird especially with the introduction of the Midgard Serpent, which isn't what you'd expect at all and just adds to the general oddness.

Farewell and Adieu?

We've just about given up with Invasion. Episode two goes back to the kids and Devante, the now former soldier and it's lost its way almost immediately. Plus episode two starts in Wellingborough, declared safe by the WDC. You know you're watching bullshit when that happens - Wellingborough is anything but safe. We're were going to give it one more go and if it doesn't spring into life then it dies a death, but we're not even going to do that, there's far better things out there we haven't watched.

Gods are Monsters

Have I said the best thing about Ragnarok is the way it doesn't seem to conform to the norms of usual fantasy TV? Or that while it's based on old Norse legends, it's got an ecological twist coupled with a theme about how power ultimately corrupts or isn't necessarily wisest in the hands of those who feel it's deserved. 

We have all the players in place - on the side of good is Thor, but does he have his army on his side or has he lost their support? Only Wotan (Odin) seems to be rooting for Magne, but that faith is sorely tested. Over on evil's side is Fjor and Ran, possibly Saxa but she, like Loki, seems to have her own agenda and because this show doesn't allow you to second guess it, there's no real idea of knowing. There's also this underlying thing about who's living where; the wife commented that it seems that half the series is about who's sleeping in what house...

With a third of the season down, there's a wedding to attend and a lot of unexpected alliances forming that follow the Norse myths almost to the letter, but there's a growing inconsistency problem with this series and considering it's written by the same writing team it's a concern. When Thor/Magne finally forges his hammer - Mjolnir - in the following episode Saxa says she cannot pick it up. However as the series nears its conclusion it seems everyone is now picking it up and while that only spoils it a little but there are some other logical mistakes and contradictions that seem to have been conveniently forgotten about. However, this might have something to do with the actual story rather than just bad writing, or it might be simply bad writing.

In fact, it all ends up being something of an anti-climax and while I'm thinking I don't want to spoil it for people, my better judgement says I should, because I feel like we were conned by this. I'm still not sure about the ending but the entire thing ended up being something of a damp squib. You know The Sixth Sense and how all the clues were there you just didn't put them all together until the giveaway, but it meant the second time you watched it everything seemed so bleeding obvious? Well, there's a similar subtext to this; however I'll preamble a little bit more before the reveal.

The confrontation between the Norse Gods and the Giants culminated in Magne/Thor telling the Giants - Fjor, Saxa and Ran, that they were outnumbered and would all die, but he has a peaceful conclusion that would suit all of them. So they lay down their weapons and everyone becomes friends and all live happily ever after... but... that was the penultimate episode, something must go wrong or someone must break ranks in the final part surely? 

Except the only battle that takes place is in Magne's head. It's during this final part that we see things get even more confusing as the Jutul family become good guys, the Gods all find their true place in life and most importantly Magne graduates from school and it's here at the graduation ceremony that he begins to live Ragnarok in his head; you see that's probably where all of this series took place, in Thor's head and there were plenty of examples and clues throughout the series, it's just we always saw it from his perspective and never wanted to believe he was mentally ill, possibly borderline schizophrenic, but he got better and they did all live happily ever after. In the end it was actually a load of metaphoric bollocks and I felt massively cheated and let down by it; although, to be fair, it's almost logical, especially with all the logical and storyline inconsistencies. 

I'd almost suggest watching it and skipping the final episode because it doesn't add anything to the story but it does blow all your conceptions to smithereens.

Diarrhoea of Destiny 

So people thought The Curse of the Crystal Skull  was bad, huh? Well wait until you get to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, a film that starts well and ends up being a nasty, mean spirited heap of shite. 

Don't get me wrong, the opening 40 minutes is pretty excellent and feels like a proper Indiana Jones film. Much of this is down to the superb special effects which de-age Ford to how he looked when he was making the original films and the genuine feeling that you could have been watching scenes cut from any of those early films. 

It's when it fast forwards to 1969 that it starts to fall apart. Our eponymous hero is retiring from his job as a lecturer (at least I think that's what the presentation was about and Ford certainly looks old enough to be retiring) and is discovering that his students are all feckless and stupid and then he runs into his goddaughter Helena, played alarmingly badly by one-note Phoebe Waller-Bridge, daughter of the Toby Jones character seen in the opening scenes as Indy's late WW2 accomplice. 

Waller-Bridge is a mean and nasty piece of work, in it for not fame, nor glory but for as much money as she can make and she's in New York (a very convincing Glasgow) to take half of the 'Dial of Destiny' off of our titular hero all the time being tracked by the CIA and the rogue agents all aligned to Mads Mikkelsen's former Nazi. She apparently cares nothing for her father's best friend and her godfather and proves that by leaving him in the lurch where a number of his colleagues are killed for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time and this brings the first bit of illogical plotting... Mikkesen's Schmidt and his cronies don't seem to have a problem killing people, or rather some people, but if they're important to the plot they take them hostage.

What follows is a jaunt around the Mediterranean and a who's who of guest stars from previous Indy films and some we've never seen before and it all feels forced, there's a lack of jeopardy, the baddies continue with their bizarre decision to kill some people and not others and when the Dial is finally found and it becomes clear what it does everything truly falls apart. Helena changes character and becomes all responsible and caring about the godfather she would gladly have sold down the river an hour earlier and it all felt just a little bit anticlimactically rubbish.

It's not a very good film; Harrison Ford is fine, in places he's even quite brilliant; the problem is everyone else especially Waller-Bridge who is just fucking awful and could easily have been Fleabag in it because she appears to have zero range. Mikkelsen's henchmen were all stereotypical and pointless, even featuring Boyd Holbrook who seems to specialise in playing baddies who are wankers. There's a couple of cameos from John Rhys-Davies and Karen Allen, but there's a sense of 'why the fuck?' about both of them and we discover that Shia LaBeouf probably got himself killed in either Korea or more likely Viet Nam, giving Indy a kind of tragic feel. The last 20 minutes was far worse than The Crystal Skull could ever have been and let's hope that's it and they never make another one ever again.

Big Crocs

Did you know the last major role Bridget Fonda had was in Lake Placid, she hung around show business for a few more years, featured in a couple more films and a TV show but effectively retired from it all in 2002. The daughter of Peter Fonda is married to Danny Elfman and I reckon she gave up acting because she wasn't very good at it. Take the aforementioned Lake Placid as an example; she plays a bolshie, shouty, screamy palaeontologist sent to Maine to investigate a tooth found in half the body of a man killed on Black Lake (which wanted to be called Lake Placid but that was already taken).

Lake Placid is a film that wowed the box office in 1999 because it was low budget, relatively short and was quite an entertaining film; it also starred Bill Pullman, Oliver Platt, Brendan Gleeson, Betty White and Meredith Salenger and watching it for the first time in 24 years it was mildly amusing with probably relatively reasonable state of the art CGI for the era; the problem with the film is that it's a comedy/horror but there's not that many laughs and the horror is funnier than the jokes. It's also very dated in terms of language, sexism and stereotypes and the crocodiles appears to be several different sizes, which might explain why there were so many really poor sequels or it might have been explained by the killing of a second croc towards the end of what was an incredible short film - less than 82 minutes to be exact.

It was fun on a throwaway level but felt like a film that that could have been made in the 1960s because of it's portrayal of women in general and was choc-a-block full of plot inconsistencies and ridiculous set pieces - such as if you've been attacked in your boat once by the giant croc why would you venture out onto the water again and again?

Mercedes Bends

Starved of new TV to watch and spurred on by my current read [The Outsider which I've finally gotten around to reading and will rewatch the fantastic TV series in the coming weeks] we decided to start watching a TV series that didn't so much as allude us but more like got passed over because it came out at a time when there was really too much to chose from. Mr Mercedes [incidentally one of only three Stephen King books I've never read, apart from the latest which I haven't purchased yet] is something that I looked at a number of times but couldn't convince myself about. I really don't understand why...

Despite the wife not enjoying Lake Placid at all, one of the brighter moments in the film was the presence of Brendan Gleeson, someone I don't think we've ever seen in anything bad, so his presence in Mr Mercedes should have been a strong indicator that we wouldn't be disappointed. He plays retired detective Bill Hodges, an Irishman who has been in the USA getting on for 50 years and had been on the Bridgetown, Ohio PD for 36 of those years. He was the lead detective on an unsolved crime involving a stolen Mercedes ploughing into and killing 16 people waiting in line at a jobs fayre, but became so obsessed with the crime that it led to his 'forced' retirement. This is never spoken of but it's pretty much inferred an awful lot.

Bill is now bored shitless, drinking too much and has fallen into a sedentary life with only Pete, his giant tortoise, as company and Ida, the woman next door, who wants Bill to become her old age fuck buddy - played by Holland Taylor, who would have been a sprightly 76 when this was originally made and still 12 years older than Gleeson. Instead Bill gets involved with the sister of the woman who owned the Mercedes and she becomes his ... well, he works for her and she's screwing his brains out and this gives him the impetus to clean his act up.

Then Bill's really woken from his stupor by a series of videos sent to his laptop from the Mercedes killer, taunting him about his lifestyle, the amount of weight he's put on, his daughter, even his unknown real first name and Bill knows it the real killer because certain facts about the case were never revealed to the press or public, which this man knows. We're also in on the killer's life as well played by Harry Treadaway - a British actor - portraying a sicko psychopath with a scary aura about him and who is a bit twisted in many more ways than just killing lots of people - we're in Oedipus territory here...

There are lots of other excellent people in the supporting cast, many you will recognise the faces of even if you don't know their names. Oh and just wait until you meet [this version of] Holly Gibney, she'll blow you away. It's not just a crime drama/police procedural and neither is it a 'horror' despite it being originally written and now produced by Stephen King.

I Am Shite

What the actual fuck? Yes, I'm well aware this is a kids show aimed at the under two years old age group (possibly younger, who can say for sure?) but Jesus, Mary and the little donkey this is utter dog shit. Each episode is approx three minutes long, but the exact total running time of new material is about 14 minutes for five episodes that are so puerile and stupid that I suppose wee bairns might like them, if they've been given psychedelic drugs and then had their parents arrested for neglect and abuse. I know, I know, this isn't for me, it isn't for a 61 year old man to be reviewing. I shouldn't have even watched it, just watching it is some kind of perverted practice and I'd probably get the electric chair if I was in Alabama just for having it in my house without a child present... But in the first season there were some actual LOL moments, some genuine bits of intelligent writing, some things that GotG fans would appreciate; this has a kind of cameo by the Watcher in the final episode, which instead of being the best one of the five was just fucking awful. Oh and they've reduced it to fart and rainbow poo jokes... Marvel are just a bunch of worthless cunts.

A Book Review

A still from the HBO series with
Ben Mendelsohn and Jason Bateman

Yeah, I know. I usually do these as independent things but as I'm here and I mentioned it earlier on...

The Outsider is a Stephen king book I had never read. I think it was because it was unofficially the fourth part of the Bill Hodges Trilogy - three of the four King books I have never read and that kind of put me off, especially as I'm a bit of a continuity OCDer. However glorious weather always sends me to the book case, I love reading in the sun and when it's too hot to do anything else I love reading.

I'll keep this relatively brief. If you've seen The Outsider TV mini-series then the book follows a similar pattern, it is much shorter and less... thorough, although that isn't the right word. There's more in the TV series because it has 10 episodes to fill, but this is compact and bijou; this book is about a thing and only really strays from that path when another thing is linked to it, thanks to the character Holly Gibney, who I'd never read before, because she's in the books I haven't read.

The Outsider is a fucking fabulous book. In fact it's probably one of the top five King books I've ever read. It is quite brilliant and I almost choked up near the end because it's like the man whose career I have followed since the late 1970s got his mojo back.

If you've never seen the Outsider then I urge you to seek it out and immerse yourself in its brilliance. If you've never read The Outsider and are scared that King writes horror novels and you don't like horror novels, this is a police procedural with a difference; this is a 'what if bad things that Stephen King writes about actually happened in real life' story and it's all the better for it. It's a 10/10 book and as far as I'm concerned there are only about four other king novels that are 10/10 books. That's huge praise from someone who owns almost every single one of his books (except two - two of the Bill Hodges Trilogy) mostly in hardcover and many first editions. I'm a fan and I wish I'd read this four years ago so I could bang on to people how bloody great it is.

Next time... 

I don't know ... There will be more Mr Mercedes (hopefully, if the wife can put up with another season so quickly after the first) and the new series of Welcome to Wrexham, a few films, one of them might be Barbie and a few from the archives. You'll have to wait and see...