Pop Culture - Secrets, Lies, Spacemen and Big Monsters

Spoilers again...

Life on Mars - Part One

The second episode of season four of For All Mankind ambled along at an interesting pace. Danielle Poole arrives on Mars to take over as CO from Ed Baldwin, who is still reluctant to leave Happy Valley, while Toby Kebbell's Miles Dale is finding life below ground, as a grunt, a little demeaning and not at all what it was advertised on the tin. However, Danielle isn't there for fun and soon realises that the grunts are disgruntled and starts by fixing something that Ed didn't feel was necessary to fix - the broadband connection to the lower decks. Miles has a meeting with Ed and doesn't get what he thought, but is eventually given some hope that his two years there won't all be miserable.

Meanwhile Kelly Baldwin, who has just had the funding withdrawn from her eight year robotics project, meets Aleida Rosales, who, while still suffering from PTSD goes back to NASA for her old job and ends up telling them where to stick it. The two of them get very drunk and hatch a plan to save both of their careers.

Over in the Soviet Union it looks very much like what happened in the 1990s is about to happen in 2003 as the fall of the USSR suddenly happens around Margo's ears and she just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It ends with her being carted away by the Russian police. 

It's That Time Again

It's time travel time as The Lazarus Project returns for a second season and we're stuck in the middle of the new three week time loop with no good happening from it apart from they creep along towards a solution by being able to remember what happened in the last loop. This, obviously isn't good for Shiv as he's still being shot by George (excellently played by Paapa Essiedu, who manages to do bewildered and funny very well), but for others it's allowing some good to come out of all of this mess.

The opening episodes see the team expand and disperse, recruiting Rebrov to help save the world and try to find a way to travel back to 2012, where Janet has been sent with Cassie, her daughter. Then it all goes a wee bit timey wimey as George accidentally activates the newly discovered time machine under a Swiss mountain and the three week time loop now has anomalies in it that have never happened before.

But that's nothing to what is going to happen as everything starts to get very complicated... The team discover that the reason for the three week loop might be closer to home than they realise and they are literally in a race against time to come up with their own time machine to go back a year and prevent the second singularity from being created, except the problem closer to home has other ideas and they, at first, end up in 2018 in what is essentially a light-hearted interlude (although given the amount of death in it, it isn't that light-hearted), before going back to 2012 and encountering their own project and earlier versions of some of them. This is a paradox inside a paradox inside a series of paradoxes and if you watched Bodies and thought that was confusing then wait until you get introduced to a causal loop - its like the grandfather paradox but nuclear powered.

However, without giving too much away the last few episodes kind of meandered around a bit and I had a lot of problems with it. Not necessarily the paradoxical aspect, more to do with general logic. George is a great character, but he's not a good explainer, so when the raid back to 2012 goes tits up and he needs to get Wes to reset time to allow them to complete their mission to prevent the world from ending, he doesn't particularly put the point across very well and resorts to doing what he was hinted he might do; Sarah was with him and when she persuades Wes to reset time she doesn't bother to tell her that if the Lazarus people from 2024 don't succeed the world will end because of another singularity and resetting it won't matter. It's straightforward logic and might have saved an entire episode of pfaffing about.

The denouement also leaves a lot to be desired with the person who betrays the team not looking at the bigger picture and being sucked into Wes's generally evil intentions. I saw the final scene miles off. In fact the only characters who come out of this with any respect are Shiv and Rebrov - the former doing the right thing and the latter proving that he's far more the hero and the Lazarus Project are really the bad guys. This has been a really excellent and slightly mind-blowing time travel series let down by the ending and the fact it's now distinctly possible that a third series will be on the horizon - I mean there is a conclusion but there are so many loose ends you wouldn't think it was an ending. Another series wouldn't be a bad thing, but it would be nice to have some form of resolution and maybe another threat rather than this almost endless loop of trying to solve problems they themselves cause. It feels a little like a Marvel comic - we're being subjected to the illusion of change and nothing more. I will, of course, watch season three if it happens, but I'd like there to be an ending.

Falling Flat

As an aside, there's been a bit of a resurgence from Flat Earthers recently; from my mate Mo getting sanctioned by Facebook for showing a joke meme about it to absolute wankers posting 'reels' on the platform 'proving' inconclusively that the world is flat and there's nothing else anywhere except us...

Did you know that the Flat Earth Society has over a quarter of a million members (all around the globe)? That's an awful lot of extraordinarily stupid people who will believe any old nonsense to try and get Elon Musk to allow them on his spaceship. The weird thing is I actually knew two people who believe the earth is flat and that the moon landings were staged and that at least as many people who belong to the FES will have been sworn to secrecy not to divulge the truth about it and over 50 years later not one of them has said 'it was all staged' - not even someone on his death bed who had no family to worry about being killed by the CIA... Seriously mad tosspots, the lot of them...

I think of all the conspiracy theorists out there the people who believe we live on a disc are among the most bonkers people to draw breath. What is missing from their lives that they can determinately believe there are hundreds of thousands of people out there dedicated to a lie that benefits no one? What possible benefits would there be from hiding a fact about the planet (or disc) and then bribing or threatening millions of people to continue this bonkers lie? How come no one with an iota of scientific knowledge, former NASA employees or any other space agency just come out and said, "It's all a lie. There's no space, no gravity, it's all bullshit so that you can be controlled, because if you knew the world was flat you wouldn't be able to be controlled any more..." I actually think the FES was created by someone having a laugh to see just how many wankers he could get to follow him. In fact, their Facebook page resorts to insulting anyone who questions their beliefs, rather than offering up proof or testimony from anyone who doesn't whoop whoop when sitting on the toilet.

Cartel Games

We finally got around to watching Sicario 2: Soldado and while it was another example of true American horror stories, it fell a little flat compared to the first film which pushed all the right buttons. This time around there was a disjointed and slightly erratic feel to the story.

I think this is because it starts out as one thing and becomes something else entirely. The film starts with what appear to be a suicide bomber crossing the US/Mexican border who then blows himself up when confronted by the Border Guard and quickly switches to a Kansas City supermarket where four more suicide bombers kill 18 people. Cut to Josh Brolin threatening a Somalian pirate for information and thinking that the Mexican drug cartels are smuggling jihadists through Mexico into the USA. Our CIA buddies hatch, with the aid of a US senator, a plan to start a drugs war by kidnapping one of the children of the one of the leading cartel leaders and then staging it so they all think each other is to blame - quite what this has to do with suicide bombers seems a little vague. This is where the film starts to go a little wonky as it soon becomes clear that the suicide bombers weren't anything to do with the cartels and the guy on the border might have just been a fanatic.

However, Brolin, Benicio del Toro and their team have already snatched the daughter of the top man of one of the cartels, this happens to be the same man who killed all of del Toro's family prior to the first film. The plan is to put the girl in protective custody in the middle of a rival cartel's territory and sit back and wait for the war to start, but corruption spreads far and wide in Mexico and when the state police try and ambush their own convoy to try and... well, I'm not sure because by this point in the film the narrative is kind of lost and you don't really know what the hell is going on. The bottom line is the girl escapes and Toro is charged with chasing her and bringing her back. What he doesn't know is the US govt. has decided they've caused far too much of an international incident and want the girl and Toro eliminated. What follows is a fulfilling denouement, even if it continues with the same disjointed feel. It's a good film but I don't know if stuff got lost on the cutting room floor or the idea was to show how things go tits up and change quickly, I just felt it all seemed a tad confusing and as clear as mud...

A Bunch of Unpleasant People

There were fewer flashbacks and more time spent with the arseholes in the latest instalment of A Murder at the End of the World as Darby starts to follow her instincts regarding the murder and seems to fall foul of everyone there. You start to wonder just why she was invited when all she does is solve crimes and wrote a book when all the others have something 'important' to offer. This is why I likened it to the second Knives Out film from last year.

There's an intriguing premise at work here, but the millionaires, artists, hackers and assorted wankers that billionaire Andy has assembled in Iceland are all incredibly irritating and the mystery is marred by the fact that apart from Darby you really don't give a flying shit if they all die, which given the similarities to Ten Little Indians, is precisely what looks like happening when the second guest keels over and dies just as he decides to tell Darby everything he knows about Bill's death. Half the guests are arrogant wankers while the other half are self-important blowhards and when Andy Ronson tells Darby she's no longer welcome at his retreat because there isn't a murder to investigate and puts her on the next flight out of Iceland your guilt detector is focused directly on him, but unless there's a double whammy at play here he's not going to be the killer. 

Just to obfuscate things; Ronson's kid Zoomer yet again plays a significant role while staying in the background; Britt Marling really isn't a good actor and some of the scenes were obviously shot on a set rather than outside in the Icelandic wilds. There's an army of AI robots building something odd; there's people wearing masks, the staff are not at all helpful and to keep harping on about it, you wonder why Darby's been brought there unless this is some kind of set up or they're playing an elaborate murder mystery. The rate we're going the killer is going to be Ray - the AI. The few flashbacks we had this week were focussed on Darby and Bill getting closer to uncovering who the silver jewellery serial killer is, but there simply wasn't enough of this and you get the feeling that it would have made a far better series without this Icelandic bollocks getting in the way of an interesting story.

Here Be Monsters

The wife isn't especially keen on Monarch: Legacy of Monsters but I'm not letting that get in the way, because this is a fun TV series with big creatures, an interesting story and frankly it's got a lot more going for it than the films, which have tended to be great action sequences with duff human involvement, especially when the massively overrated Millie Bobby Brown has been involved.

Episode three ramped up the action and the intrigue as Lee Shaw and his three young pals break out of the Monarch 'retirement' home and head for South Korea where an old friend of Lee's is on hand to help them out of crisis. Meanwhile, we get introduced to the woman who appears to be leading Monarch now as she makes it clear that Lee and Hiroshi Randa's notes need to be found, whatever the cost. Lee's buddy provides them with a plane as they head towards Alaska and the last known destination of the missing Hiroshi and it's here they run into the latest Monster of the Week (as pictured). Back in the 1950s, we get our first glimpse of Godzilla as the US military decides to blow an atomic bomb up next to him, leaving the proto-Monarch to think that big green has been vaporised... Heh, little do they know... I don't understand the wife's general disdain, I thought everyone loved a good monster and this series has had quite a few so far.

Operatic Musings

The last time we saw Peter Dinklage was in Game of Thrones and while he has been in other things, there has been nothing we've watched; for a quality actor that doesn't feel enough, but his latest movie She Came To Me is kind of in the vein of the excellent The Station Agent, which we watched long before he became famous and I remember it for being a simply delightful but odd. The same can be said for this movie; it's certainly on the unusual side.

Co-starring Anne Hathaway and Marisa Tomei, Dinklage plays an opera composer who is having something of an existential crisis. It's been five years since his last hit opera, but he's lost his confidence and has a block that even his OCD therapist wife can break him out of. Yet this isn't really the crux of the film because we also have a teenage love story going on in the background - involving Hathaway's son from her first marriage and his relationship with the daughter of her new house cleaner, who is herself in a difficult marriage because her husband is pretty much a grade A arsehole, who also happens to be a LARPer. To make matters worse, Hathaway plays a women who had a Catholic mother and a Jewish father and is herself having her own existential crisis because she wants to give all their belongings away and become a nun - mainly because she feels they have much simpler lives surrounded by the kind of order she wants in her own life.

Then there's Marisa Tomei's Katrina, a tug boat captain who is suffering from a romance disorder - which is essentially that she craves relationships and becomes obsessed with anyone she shags. She bumps into the disillusioned Dinklage in a seedy bar, takes him back to her tug boat, seduces him and changes his life completely. What follows is a strange, slightly surreal tale that you can never be sure where it's going and has some very unusual things happen in it that you feel are almost for a psychiatrist's chaise lounge rather than a movie. Worth watching even if it feels a little... sordid and slightly wrong.

Life on Mars Part 2

Finally. The third episode of For All Mankind has, at last, got back into the groove that made it the consistently best thing on TV for the last three years. This show is at its best when it defies the odds and goes against the norm; when the characters challenge the narrative and do what is necessary rather than what is expected and this week's second helping was the perfect example.

Kelly and Aleida take their proposal to all the major players in space tech and get kicked back every time; it seems no one wants to invest in finding life on Mars. So they take their idea to former Helios boss Dev who also kicks them back, except this time Kelly mentions her mother, the woman who basically stuck a knife in Dev's back and took his company away from him and that seems to spur the former tech billionaire and genius out of his hibernation and solitude, as this new team take the fight to the Helios board. We see a welcome return of Bill, aka Peanut, but Aleida fails to persuade him to come and work for her at Helios, even though he is a shareholder. He does play a huge part in making Aleida realise she has PTSD.

Meanwhile on Mars, Ed and Sveta start to have eyes for each other over Ed's Mars grown weed, which they're using as a pain relief drug and it's clear that Ed is suffering from Parkinson's. Miles gets himself an extra job working for the Russian black market guru and does something he's been strictly forbidden to do and makes contact with the North Koreans. He's also finally making some money - from his less than legal activities - which might persuade his estranged wife not to move out of the family home. While in Russia, Margo faces an episode of sheer hell as the new Russian Revolution goes an unexpected way and she's suspected of being in thrall with a KGB head who might be one of the perpetrators of Gorbachev's downfall; however despite some quite haunting experiences for her, things might just be looking up. This felt like a real return to form, but it might have been as brilliant as ever, it was just up against something very special...

Lessons in Sheer Television Brilliance

I'm of the opinion that Lessons in Chemistry might be one of the best television series I have ever watched in my 61 years on the planet. It's like the prefect LP; one with X number of tracks on it and every single one of them an absolute banger. It is such a perfect TV show that a couple of times during the final episode I found myself welling up. I cannot recommend a TV series more than this; it is and was an absolute joy to watch and while not everyone had a happy ending, there was enough sheer brilliance to go round so those who it didn't quite work out for still had light to bask in.

It would appear that my prediction from last week was almost nailed on. This was really all about Calvin. Elizabeth Zott, her precocious daughter Mad, their fantastic neighbour Harriet, and all the other characters who helped weave this delightful tapestry of joy were just players in a bigger, bolder and brave story about how one tragic man could have such an influence on everybody whose life he touched. The fact that he was only ever there in spirit for the last six episodes was not an issue, because this was all about Calvin and like I said last week, there hasn't been such a likeable and totally fantastic character in a TV series ever.

I don't really want to spoil anything, but I've given much away over the last eight weeks and if you ever do get the chance to watch this I doubt the bits I've touched upon will stick in your memory, only, I hope, that I thought it was simply a heavenly piece of television and that you do to. This week Elizabeth quits her job, Mad finds her grandmother, Harriet's dreams are smashed, Walter gets propositioned and everything ends up being fine. It almost seemed too quick, but the final scene with Elizabeth and Mad surrounded by their extended family with Calvin looking on approvingly from the kitchen, which Elizabeth converted into a laboratory, almost made me lose it. I simply can't think of enough superlatives for this. I have no idea why I should think this was probably one of the best things I've ever watched; it simply was. I will be very surprised if this love story come social historical commentary is ever bettered. I'd give it 11 out of 10 and still think that's not a high enough mark. Find it, watch it and love it.

West is Best

Bill Bailey's Western Australia expedition takes a more gentler pace with the second part as he drives 10 hours north of Perth and swims with whale sharks, meets a woman who is an expert on microbial lifeforms, explores what used to be a coral reef that's now five miles inland and visits Northampton, which appears to have more bins per square kilometre than people. It's your average travelogue fair, Bailey is okay, but I feel the man who used to have me in fits of laughter has never been the same since winning that dancing competition; he no longer seems as surreal and off-kilter as he used to be; it's like he's become a bit too mainstream. Still, it's interesting enough and fills an hour when there's nothing else on apart from fascists eating insects in some other part of Australia...

Swampy Nonsense

"That felt a little like a TV movie," was the comment the wife made about The Marsh King's Daughter, a film starring the excellent Ben Mendelsohn and the overrated Daisy Ridley. To be fair it did feel a little like a Made for TV thing and it might have been, I have no idea, nor do I care to find out. It was okay, nothing special and felt like a bit of a waste for such an excellent actor like Mendelsohn, but he was recently in Secret Invasion so his quality threshold has obviously gone down the toilet since the fantastic The Outsider.

What we have here is a film that examines a control freak at work, but not your average one. Mendelsohn plays Jacob Holbrook, a man of the wild who lives in isolation with his wife and daughter and for much of the opening 20 minutes you think it's an idyllic set-up focusing on a loving father and daughter, but there are cracks around the edge, such as why the mother looks like she hates life and how Holbrook has a thing for tattooing his daughter. When a man on a quad bike strays into their territory lost and in need of help, the mother goes berserk, begging the man to leave and take her and her daughter with him and then BAM! He gets shot from a distance away and the daughter, Helena is fighting her mother to prevent her from being taken away from her father. The mother goes to drastic measures to get her daughter on the quad bike and she wakes up in a police station in the middle of a civilisation she had no idea existed. After a failed attempt to escape and be reunited with her father, who is now wanted for murder, the clock jumps 20 years.

Helena is now married with her own daughter; she's hiding all of her strange tattoos and she seems happy even if she appears to have some hang ups. Then her father escapes from a prison van, the FBI turn up - treating us to a ten minute segment that just further compounds my belief that the USA is a fascist dictatorship disguised as the Land of the Free. There's a car accident and the police and FBI declare Holbrook dead and everyone can go back to their lives, except Helena's husband is a bit sceptical about his wife and there's a lot of work to be done. Then Helena starts to think her father might not be dead and she has to use all the skills he taught her as a child to determine the truth from a growingly obvious fake trail. The rest is an attempt at an action adventure type of resolution, but as the wife said, it all felt a little PG13 and not really something to get excited about...

Animated Stuff

A brief mention for something we've obviously watched but I forgot. Season three of Love, Death and Robots came out last year and I thought we'd missed it, but not the case as we got to the second episode and the wife told me exactly what was going to happen. We watched three episodes in all and I couldn't remember any of them apart from a vague recollection, but enough to know we'd seen them and wouldn't bother with the rest. LD&R isn't a bad series; it has stunning visuals and some of it has excellent SF stories, but if I had to stick my neck out I'd say only about a quarter of the episodes in total are any good, the rest being derivatives of better known stories, rip offs and poor attempts at being cutting edge.

Next Time...

It feels like this week hasn't been as fruitful or productive as previous weeks and despite three excellent TV shows - one of which finished - compared to recent weeks it all felt a little like an anti-climax, despite me declaring Lessons in Chemistry as one of the best TV shows I've ever watched. The coming weeks promise very little apart from For All Mankind and the second half of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and that's because we're fast approaching Christmas, which will be in a month.

There is Doctor Who to dissect next week; my feelings are this - I expect Russell T Davies to bring the Doctor back after a number of years where it/he/she has been missing in action; he obviously knows how to find the right buttons to push and I expect a lot from what is to come - I might be setting myself up for a heap of disappointment, but, the trailers for the upcoming three specials all look fabulous and I have to admit I'm a fan of David Tenant's Doctor, even if he looks like he's been out on the town for a very long piss up! I'm not even too bothered about Donna Noble returning as this does feel like they've been brought back to tie up a loose end or two. Plus, compared to some of the more recent companions, at least Donna was something different.

The rest of the week looks a little barren and devoid of anything to get excited about; it might be time to explore some of the series we overlooked in 2023; to return to things we've watched over the last few years and to bite the bullet and watch some of the things on the Flash Drive of Doom that we've avoided for one reason or another. Whatever we sit down to watch, you'll be the first to hear about it.

Modern Culture - Of Monsters and Men

There will be spoilers in places so tread carefully young Jedis...

The Creator Has A Master Plan

I am a huge fan of Gareth Edwards - the film director, not the Welsh rugby legend. I think his debut feature Monsters is one of the best films of the 21st century; I thought his Godzilla reboot from 2014 was only spoiled by the rather uninteresting humans in it and while there is this belief that Rogue One: A Star Wars Tale was really someone else's film, I'd like to think it was Edwards' film that, like Godzilla, had too much interference from a major studio - in this case Disney (Ooh, might there be a theme developing here with Disney and how it loves to be the narcissist? Find out later in this blog).

The Creator is his latest effort and what a stunningly heartbreaking and spectacular movie it is. If you like good science fiction and want a thinking man's 'Terminator' then this is the film for you. I think it's possibly the best film I've seen this year and I'm aware that I'm biased because I think the director is an auteur, but this is a fantastically rounded story which essentially starts with John David Washington being exposed as a US spy trying to infiltrate the Asian headquarters of 'The Creator' - the person who allegedly turned AI against humanity and was responsible for exploding an atomic bomb on LA. Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that, but that's your premise.

Five years after seeing his cover blown, his wife killed and his new friends destroyed, the bitter and twisted Joshua is recruited again by the US government to return to Asia, find his presumed dead wife and help them locate a new weapon that is designed to destroy NOMAD, the USA's defence system that has essentially turned them into a rogue police state, disregarding other countries and international law in their pursuit of destroying all AI. It's smacks of real life USA, especially their 'war on terror' and it's probably why the film only has a 7.0 rating on IMDB because the USA are the enemies here; a bunch of ruthless and determined psychopaths hellbent on destroying AI and anything and anyone that gets in their way. By the end of the first hour if you haven't got the utmost contempt for the future USA then you're probably already a fascist with Nazi leanings. Edwards does a fantastic job of essentially pointing out what a ruthless bunch of cunts the US military are. There are other reasons why it probably has a lower rating, I won't say why, but I will give you an oblique clue - it doesn't end well for the USA.

The special effects are mindboggling; the robots are so lifelike and plausible; the acting is stunning, especially Madeleine Yuna Voyles as Alphie and always reliable Ken Watanabe as Harun. This truly is an epic film that in my opinion cements Edwards as one of the leading directors (and writers) in modern cinema. It has genuinely funny moments, painful heartbreaking ones and evokes so many emotions when you watch it from joy to anger to great sadness. It's even better than the next film I review - just below this - and I think that will win a hatful of Oscars. Watch The Creator first, it's an extraordinary movie.

And Man Created Mass Destruction

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a very long film, one that tells a very well known story - about how J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and his team created the hydrogen atomic bomb. What it also does is tell how one man orchestrated Oppenheimer's destruction from the Father of the Atom Bomb to a national disgrace and threat to security because of something that was said.

This is a film about two people - the eponymous creator of the bomb and the man who played a huge part in his life after the Second World War - Lewis Strauss, one-time head of the Atomic Energy Commission (played by Robert Downey Junior). Obviously the main focus is on Oppenheimer and his life leading up to the moment when Trinity was exploded in the New Mexico desert at Los Alamos, but from the start that history almost shared top billing with Strauss's efforts to be elected to a committee and what appeared to be his efforts to distance himself from Oppenheimer and his legacy. These parts of the film are in stark black and white, with a dynamic performance from RDJ, proving without a doubt what an incredible actor he is. That's not to say that Cillian Murphy shouldn't get a huge amount of acclaim as the scientist, because his performance as the womanising, decadent, communist sympathising scientist with a slightly narcissistic streak is superb.

This movie is literally wall-to-wall famous people, including Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer's wife; Rami Malik, Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, Florence Pugh (like you'd never imagine her), Kenneth Branagh, Tom Conti, Casey Affleck, David Dastmalchian, Dane DeHaan, Matthew Modine and Gary Oldman - as a really dislikeable Harry S Truman - it's star-studded and five minutes short of three hours, yet it whizzes along like - well, like all really good films - and while few of the characters from history come across as particularly likeable, it doesn't really matter; this is not a film about personalities, it's about telling history and setting a record straight, because the USA appeared to want to destroy the man who basically ended the war against Japan and then turn his invention into something they could use to flex their muscles and show their strength to the rest of the world - and we pretty much know how that ended up. Whether Oppenheimer really did regret what he did and what happened, I don't know, but even if that was artistic licence, we do know that the USA is essentially a fascist, authoritarian hell that claims it stands for freedom and democracy, even if that means destroying half the planet or condoning war criminals to do it. Anyhow, this is a truly stunning film that should, if there's any justice, sweep the Oscars.

This Charming [Hit] Man

The new David Fincher film comes complete with a Smiths soundtrack that frankly didn't spoil it as much for me as I might have thought. The Killer is a clinical examination of the life of an assassin, how he does his business and what happens when a hit goes tragically wrong and the tables are turned on the killer.

Michael Fassbender plays the hitman, a person with countless humorous identities, such as Oscar Madison, Felix Unger and Howard Cunningham to name but three. He's thorough, cold blooded and does his job; he's faultless until a split second changes everything and he finds himself plunged into a paranoid dilemma. He knows the moment the hit went wrong that his life now has a price on it, so he bolts for his secret hideout only to discover the caretaker has been seriously injured fending off two other hitmen, his hideout no longer so secret. This rather pisses the Killer off and what follows is essentially a revenge thriller, but as I said earlier it's done in a clinical and cold fashion. This is personal but it's also business and he doesn't let personal interfere with business.

It's not Fincher's best film, but equally there's little wrong with this. It plays out a little like a hitman's manual - apparently it's based on a French comic book - and while it has a pervading feeling of paranoia throughout it, it explains that the more normal you look the less notice you bring on yourself - something that people don't seem to understand in the 21st century. People only look at you when you want them to look at you or you don't know how to act to avoid them looking at you. It's worth two hours of your time.

Big Japes, Poor CGI

Our Saturday night plans were thrown into disarray when the wife, who has been knitting Christmas presents, didn't want to watch Oppenheimer because she couldn't concentrate on it, so we opted for something she could just have on and that meant watching Jack the Giant Slayer from 2013 - a Bryan Singer film that was co-written by Chris McQuarrie (the man behind recent Mission Impossible films and a couple of Captain America movies).

It had been about ten years since we last saw it and the first thing that we remembered about it was the awful CGI looking giants, who really didn't look like actual giants. It's a sort of cross between The Princess Bride and Jabberwocky but without the humour - normal or surreal. It has its moments but essentially it's a film that has Stanley Tucci with hair and that is disconcerting enough. Nicholas Hoult makes a so-so hero, Ewan McGregor is always good value for money when playing a posh bloke and some of the other special effects weren't bad and that's about all I can think to say about it.

Hawkeye & Scarlet Witch with added Punisher

A slightly trite header for what was essentially a nasty little film; but it did star Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen and fleetingly Jon Bernthal and the movie was Wind River. Renner played Cory, a white American firmly entrenched in the Arapaho community in Wyoming, during a bitterly cold winter. He's a hunter and tracker, who was married to a Native American with two children, but one of them died tragically in unknown circumstances, so three years later when he finds his late daughter's best friend dead in the snow it isn't just another local tragedy, it's personal.

Olsen plays an out of her depth local FBI officer - Jane - who is called into the case because the girl may have been murdered and the FBI deal with cases such as that (it's a little more complicated than that, but it is explained in a scene with the coroner). She 'employs' Cory to do some tracking and hunting and what we discover over the next hour is that life for Native Americans on a reservation is a fucking horrible existence and largely down to dumbfuck redneck Americans and the complete lack of respect any of these mongrels give to any of the indigenous species. I've seen a few things over the years about how incomers relegate the indigenous to second and third class citizens, whether it's in the USA, Australia, South America or Israel and it is enough to make your blood boil.

What follows is a strange narrative that slowly winds its way to an almost ridiculously speedy resolution. Cory spots a track leading from the dead girl's brother's digs and he and Jane follow it and find the dead body of a man who turns out to be the dead girl's boyfriend; this leads them, the local police and the county police to a local mining camp where it quickly becomes clear that the five men there know exactly why the law have arrived and we get transported back - via flashback - to the night of the murder, which is violent, nasty and pretty grim - a theme we seem to be having with film and TV at the moment. There's a scene that pretty much telegraphs the workers' guilt and makes you wonder what the hell these men thought they could achieve, but it doesn't stop a violent, bloody and murderous confrontation. Only a Kevlar vest saves Jane's life and the help of Cory and his high powered maximum velocity hunting rifle; what follows this is a particularly nasty and satisfying piece of revenge.

Marvel's Melting..

Welcome to the Marvel Age of Flops. The Marvels took $47m in the USA on its opening weekend, making it the lowest opening weekend for any MCU film, including The Incredible Hulk, which wasn't technically an MCU film but was co-opted into the franchise by virtue of its epilogue featuring Tony Stark. The Marvels did fair slightly better on its worldwide opening, but the total of $110m is by far and away the lowest take of any real MCU film and is most definitely another nail in the coffin of superhero movies.

There are a number of factors at play here, but frankly they all sound like excuses rather than reasons. The blame appears to be an attempt at singling out Iman Vellani's poorly received Ms Marvel series, but this is one of those 'I smell racist and sexist bullshit' moments, although depending on two characters from TV shows to bolster Brie Larson's already rather unpopular Carol Danvers was always going to be a tough one. There's also the 6.1 rating the film has on IMDB - days after its release - and the poor audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It's going to be the lowest ranked Marvel film ever; there might not be any coming back from this... 

Even the addition of an X-Men related post credit scene hasn't done anything for this film and while Disney has shelved all by Deadpool 3 from the schedules for the next 18 months at least, I'm wondering if we're ever going to see Captain America: Brave New World at the cinemas, with suggestions that it might have some extra scenes added to it and made into a three-part mini-series for Disney+ in late 2024. Another distressing bit of news is that the anticipated Daredevil: Born Again MCU reboot has essentially been scrapped and is being 'remade' using only about 20% of the stuff from the already finished maxi-series; apparently Kevin Feige and his team were unimpressed with the finished product and sent it back to be remade, now with different directors, script writers and characters - it sounds like no one really knows what they're doing there any longer. Plus it suggests that anything MCU is now 'made' by committee and not by an individual; gone are the days when a writer and director took an idea to the company and it was made with little or no interference.

Whether or not we're ever going to see Blade or Thunderbolts is seriously up for question now and it could be that the revised film schedule might be as follows: Fantastic Four in 2025, Avengers: The Kang/Doom Dynasty in 2026 and Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027 and no new TV shows other than the ones that are already scheduled. However, there is talk that there could be a 2025 MCU/Disney TV series called The Mutants, which might lead into an X-Men feature film depending on its success. Time's up for Marvel; they threw too much shit at the wall and barely any of it stuck.

Big in Australia

Bill Bailey returned to our small screens on Sunday night as he travels the western side of Australia in Bill Bailey's Australian Adventure; this is a place that isn't often seen or focused on in the UK. Australia's wild west is a bit of an alien land with its own maverick spirit and the first part of this wasn't your average travelogue, with Bailey opting for some interesting adventures.

The problem I have with travelogues now is the feeling that most of them appear to be very scripted, however this had moments that were completely unexpected, like being approached by several fans at varying times who pretty much demanded his attention. Western Australia is quite unknown to me, although the brother of a friend has lived out there for the last 30 years, and it will be interesting to see what it looks like when he gets further north and into a landscape that is quite inhospitable, desolate and unknown. The most telling thing for me was when he met a Welsh lady who moved there many years earlier and when asked why she liked it there, she said it was a dangerous place - referring to the high number of things all over the continent that can kill or incapacitate you.

Goodbye to Wrexham, Until Next Year

The finale of this second season of Welcome to Wrexham quite rightly focused on the players and the coach and not on Rob, Ryan or any of the people handling the cash - yes, they were in it and the elation on Reynolds' face when Wrexham won the game they needed to secure promotion back to the EFL was one of a man who has discovered a genuine love for football. It was quite an emotional 38 minutes, I think the wife had a tear in her eye, because this has been a TV series about a football club that women have thoroughly gotten into. Next series will be a hoot and as I'm currently keeping an eye on these Welsh dragons, I already know some key things they'll be focusing on. But that can wait.

A Really Alien Landscape

My mate Chris doesn't have a good batting average with his recommendations for stuff for us to watch, but when he totally recommended Scavenger's Reign, an animated mini-series with a 9.0 rating on IMDB, I thought we'd give it a try. Sadly, the wife wasn't impressed and I struggled with it.

It's an intriguing premise; survivors from a malfunctioning deep space transporter crash land on a planet that is radically different from anything we've ever seen. A place where humanoids don't (so far to my knowledge) exist but the flora and fauna is weird, wonderful and a lot of it is trying to eat the survivors. There are four humans and a robot; the groups are two humans - a male and a female, who seem to have already worked out what's what and are utilising the natural elements to their own purposes - how they come to know that some of the flora can be used as electric cables or that fauna can be used as gas masks isn't explained and sits totally wrongly with me. The second group is a human and her robot, who is slowly being 'taken over' by the flora and changing the way it reacts and interacts with its 'master'; they have run out of food and are battling hostile arthropods. The final survivor is a man who has been trapped inside his escape pod at the top of some 'trees' and is 'rescued' by one of the creatures on the planet who not only feeds him but is also inside his head communicating with him by substituting itself for the man's former partner and using memories as metaphors.

The problem I have with it is it doesn't appear to be going anywhere and I'm not sure I want to persevere with it given I have so many other things to watch and while some of the animation is good, it suffers from this common anime style that I really have a problem with. I miss 1940s and 50s style animation with work and artistry built into it; I know it takes forever but it also is nice to look at and this, along with some wooden voice acting just didn't hit any spots. I might return to it, on my own, at a later date, but for the moment it's being shelved (not deleted).

The Gen Z Sherlock

A Murder at the End of the World is the latest Britt Marling effort and the first two parts dropped this week. I can safely say it has that slightly disconnected, odd feel that Marling's previous series The OA had and whether it's going to be as clever as people think it is really depends on whether or not the clues given so far are red herrings or just bad plotting...

The series opens with Darby Hart talking about her debut novel and explaining to an invited book signing audience how she became a murder detective and solved the case that propelled her into fame. From then on in what we have is a three pronged story - two in flashback and one in the present. The flashbacks are Darby as a teenager still in school and helping her dad who is a medical examiner/pathologist; later when she meets Bill, her partner in crime detection and in the present, at the retreat of billionaire innovator Andy Ronson and his wife Lee Anderson, who is something of a hero of Darby's. It has the feel of a contemporary, even futuristic Knives Out: Glass Onion type tale when the retreat is hit by a tragedy that directly involves Darby not just professionally but also personally.

Ronson is a creator; his AI called Ray is a quite brilliant bit of kit that surpasses all other AIs to the point that Ronson refers to him as Alternative rather than Artificial and it has been fully installed in the futuristic Icelandic hotel that Ronson had Darby's ex Bill design. Also in this wilderness are a handful of selected brilliant people including other tech designers, filmmakers, eco warriors and Darby, who it seems has been invited by Lee Anderson because she was who the dedication was to in Darby's book. It soon becomes slightly obvious that Lee might have been having an affair with Bill, now known as Fang. This throws up the most obvious red herring as Ronson seems keen to breeze over the tragic death of Fang and continue with his week long soiree, while Darby quickly surmises that this was not a tragic accidental death but in fact a murder, which immediately makes you think that Ronson - played by Clive Owen - is probably behind it...

However, we came up with a couple of theories while watching it; me the first, the wife the second and as we have no idea what the conclusion will bring, here's our thoughts: Ronson and Anderson's son, Zoomer, is introduced in the first episode and is eager to be part of the fun - he's a precocious five-year-old and I immediately suggested he wasn't even human, but would be another of Ronson's imaginative AI creations. The wife concluded that Zoomer will ultimately be the murderer because when Darby accesses the door camera footage, the victim opens the door you don't see anyone in the doorway and Zoomer is under three feet tall or thereabouts. Just our theory and it could well prove to be a red herring we're being led towards to cover the real killer. The opening two parts are intriguing, but I feel that the flashbacks to Darby's earlier life are far more interesting and enjoyable; there's something about a bunch of rich and famous people huddled together in snowy Iceland in a state of the art hotel trying to come up with solutions to save humanity that I found a bit [ahem] cold and uninspiring, so we'll see how this all unfolds over the following five parts...

Lessons in Letters

This wonderful television series delivered something really special this week - almost an entire episode devoted to the truly wonderful human being Calvin Evans - Mad's father and the love of Elizabeth's life. There have been so few truly likeable characters in television; people you'd want to exist in real life and be your friend and Calvin is without a doubt one of those people.

This week starts with his young life in St Luke's as an orphan and how he yearned for someone, preferably his parents, to come and rescue him from what he clearly felt was religious purgatory, but this is where his love of chemistry started to pay off as he produced hooch illegally to help provide funds for the church and this was also where there might be a clue as to where he originally came from. 

Things jumped forward to when he began working at Hastings as a brilliant young chemist and when he started a correspondence with Curtis Wakely - the reverend that coincidentally Mad has struck a friendship up with and that is essentially what most of the rest of the episode is about, these two people discussing life with each other - one a man of science, the other of God and it is a truly wonderful episode of TV, one made all the more painful by the fact that we don't see Calvin any more, so having an entire episode devoted to him was like dreaming about a dead relative. There's also something else that's become apparent; this series might appear to be about Elizabeth Zott and her rise, but it's really about Calvin and how he changed so many people and how he continues to have an effect on people. This episode ends with another clue to his past being uncovered just as Mad thinks she's hit a dead end. I tell you this every week, but you need to watch this. It is the best thing on television; it's even better than For All Mankind, for which you'll get a double helping next week as we couldn't watch the second part of season four because the wife wanted to go to bed after two solid days of travelling and shopping.

The Legacy of Godzilla

Apple TV+ never ceases to impress as it continues to pour entertainment gold into the streaming world and anyone who thought that Monarch: Legacy of Monsters was going to be cheesy or corny or both would have been put to rights with the opening two episodes of this series. This is a serious show about a not very serious concept and one that extrapolates on themes explored in the Legendary Pictures Godzilla/King Kong movies; maybe even putting too much meat on the bones although I doubt it will prove to be incongruous.

I had this feeling that this series would promise lots of monsters and deliver very little of them, but the first two parts quashes that theory like a city under Godzilla's size 400 foot. I'd say there were at least four new monsters introduced, along with footage of Godzilla and a giant spider - on separate occasions, not fighting each other; the spider fights a giant crab instead... This is conspiracy theory territory mixed with a top secret organisation with more oomph than you've ever seen in the films with a human interest story that is both confusing and compelling. It starts with footage taken by John Goodman from Kong: Skull Island and extrapolating on that as the legacy of Bill Randa unfolds and the dark secrets of Monarch come to light. This is a story about flashbacks - we go back to 1952, 1959, 1973, 2014 and to an undisclosed time - not the present, but a few years after the events in Gareth Edwards' 2014 Godzilla reboot and we even get some shots of the Big G that weren't lifted from any of his previous appearances.

This is a series that makes you wonder - like with The Creator - just who Marvel/Disney are using for their special effects to be so lousy, because this is excellent and the monsters we're introduced to in the opening 90 minutes are awesome and new. Cate Randa arrives in Tokyo to explore her missing presumed dead father's apartment only to find a family live there; Hiroshi Randa (the son of Bill and Keiko) it seems lived a double life with a family in San Francisco and one in Tokyo that knew nothing of each other. Hiroshi also worked for Monarch, which his father was the founder of and they want his files, which Cate and her half brother Kentaro have come into possession of. This is happening in the almost now, but in the 1950s Bill, Keiko and Lee Shaw are just discovering that dragons and other monsters really do exist. The two eras collide when the children of Hiroshi find the aged Lee in a 'retirement home' exclusively run by Monarch and as a certain Holmes would have said, the game is afoot.

This surprised me; a TV series loaded with monsters that also has a story and feels like adult TV not some cash in or compromise. It does feel a wee bit earnest at times, but the flashbacks to the 50s are excellent with a real Indiana Jones feel as the proto-Monarch starts to uncover the secrets of the world. Wyatt Russell - Kurt's son - plays his father's younger self and they're about the two most recognisable actors in the series so far, but don't let that detract you, this is an excellent beginning to the series and I don't expect it to trail off.

Next Time...

There's the probable season finale to the awesome Lessons In Chemistry, a double bubble of For All Mankind, more monsters and Monarch, Bill Bailey and Icelandic murders; plus season two of The Lazarus Project and possibly a couple of other things.

In the world of films... tough to say, depends what comes out, what we fancy off of the hard drive or Flash Drive of Doom or whether there's simply too much telly to fit a film or three in. The quality TV is being packed deep, especially given we're approaching the 'dead season' when the schedules are full of repeats and crappy Christmas-themed bollocks. 

Album Review - Beluga Lagoon: The Kilfraggan Forest Choir

"When I'm calling your name, all I hear is the rain..."

A quick bit of history: one cold winter's night back before the world was struck by a pandemic, we were flipping through the channels and on the new BBC Scotland channel was a half hour programme called Roaming in the Wild. The episode we wandered into had just started and it was about two men crossing the north coast of Scotland on a tandem. It was quirky, slightly silly and seemed to perfectly encapsulate Scotland and Scottish television. About halfway through, the two men got on a boat and this was accompanied by a piece of music - almost a shanty and I liked it so much I tried to find out what it was called. It was called Neverland and it was performed by Beluga Lagoon, who just happened to be one of the guys riding a tandem across the north of Scotland, who also was a wildlife photographer, filmmaker and all round thoroughly decent chap called Andrew O'Donnell.

Several purchases later, I found I classed myself as a fan. Not everything they did floated my personal boat, but it helped me rediscover a love for folk music that I had as long ago as 1979. In December 2020, Beluga Lagoon released an album called The Lagganberry Man, which I thought was their best yet; it wasn't quite Scottish indie folk, not only because Andrew has a voice built for rock music but because it was so lavishly produced, with layers of complex notes, it felt more like a vintage wine than an album by a largely obscure Scottish band (and when I say 'band', apart from live appearances, Beluga Lagoon is essentially the aforementioned Andrew O'Donnell).

As you get older time passes much quicker; it's to do with familiarity. For a five year old a year is a fifth of their lives; for a man in his 60s it's a 60th of his life - a 60th is much smaller than a 5th, so the three years between The Lagganberry Man and The Kilfraggan Forest Choir hasn't seemed like the chasm it would have been when I was younger. I've kept an eye on the Beluga Lagoon Films website to see what he's been up to and apart from the occasional thing it's been quite quiet, but I still play The Lagganberry Man regularly as well as The Caledonian Fig Tree, The Small Boat and the Big Sea and all the other albums, EPs and singles that have been released. I wouldn't say I was obsessed by them the way I have been other bands throughout my life, but sometimes, living in Scotland, I just want something that fits in with the landscape and while O'Donnell probably makes his living from wildlife camera work, his songs are often laden with references to the things he films and clearly many of them are love songs about Scotland, the country. 

About six weeks ago, a new song appeared on You Tube. Called Laid Bare, it was a slow, quiet, journey through a pine forest that eventually gave way to a harmony that grew richer as it went on before finally O'Donnell's gruff voice broke through the choir and a shiver went down my spine; I was overcome with emotion - this was simply fabulous. Was the Kilfraggan Forest Choir going to be as choral as this? Could it possibly be better than the stupendous The Lagganberry Man? I would find out on the 11th of November.

The album was premiered on Beluga Lagoon's You Tube channel and one of the first comments said this, "This is a subtle and complex album. Traditional folk? Opera? Ambient? Psychedelic? This is a spellbinding album! Beluga Lagoon have ascended to celestial realms!" I don't know about the opera reference but everything else was spot on; if I could possibly write a review encapsulating this album that You Tube user did the job for me. Spellbinding is not a good enough word to describe it, from the moment I started listening I was blown away.

This is a spellbinding album!  Full of wonderfully beautiful songs, fabulous harmonies and meaningful lyrics. O'Donnell has created the best Beluga Lagoon album so far with every single track knocking the ball out of the park. Choral folk rock with an ambient twist and production that makes it sound like it was recorded in a haunted Scottish castle. This is so atmospheric it takes your breath away at times. Truly a thing of utmost beauty. It feels like a culmination and appreciation of everything they've done so far while opening the door to new and exciting things - I cannot recommend this album more. It is the best thing in a woefully awful year. What makes this all the better is I think 2023 has had some fantastic albums, including a new release from my favourite band - North Atlantic Oscillation (also a Scottish band), yet this... this is just so lovely it makes me want to cry...

There are actually some stand out tracks, despite almost every one of them being sublime. If you get the chance check out Upper Lee, Frail, Laid Bare, Forever More, Many Colours, Fire and my personal favourite (atm) Bird Food - the quote at the beginning of this review is from that. There's also this feeling, I hope I'm wrong, that this could be the end of the road for the band. There are so many references to previous albums and songs here and there is the underlying feeling of great sadness permeating throughout this collection. I hope I'm wrong because there is so much more Beluga Lagoon can do. 

You can view the first single Laid Bare on You Tube: https://youtu.be/hIvJWWqh9eM?si=RdxbJfwlAlf8-V1s and you can buy the album on Amazon, although I'm sure it will be available on their website at some point and it would be better for the band if you bought directly from them.

After much internal debate, I feel I can only award this album a 10 (out of 10). 

Track list:
Kilfraggan
Wear Away
Upper Lee
Nae Bother
Frail
Other Side
Bird Food
Laid Bare
Sleep
Aberlane Ghost Train
The Moth Meets the Moon
Forever More
Many Colours
Fire

Modern Culture - A Week of Near Perfection

The usual disclaimers about spoilers, telling you stuff you don't want to see and shit like that...

The Final Time

Wow. Just fucking wow. Loki ended and cemented itself as possibly one of the greatest things the MCU has ever done just as it looks like the MCU is about to die on its feet. What an absolutely brilliant 50 minutes of television in a week that has already thrown up examples of just how good the medium can be. This was unexpected, quite brilliant and desperately sad all rolled into a finale to absolutely die for.

The episode that concludes this epic series was called Glorious Purpose, but might as well have been called Yggdrasil, which is the sacred tree in Norse cosmology and that does give some clues to what Loki is all about; but what this episode really did was showcase what a brilliant actor Tom Hiddleston is and what an unbelievably awesome story about time, time travel and the time lines unfolded in front of us. Imagine Groundhog Day but on a cosmic level, an ending that throws into question the existence of Kang the Conqueror - giving Marvel an out if they don't want to use this character or Jonathan Majors again and breaking the hearts of so many people who have come to love this adopted son of Odin. I simply can't get over it, At the end I turned to the wife and all I could do was squeak out three words, "Brilliant, just brilliant."

The entire two seasons were a redemption arc, because the Loki snatched out of time in Endgame was a complete bastard and not the Loki we had seen in Thor films. I think it did just that; the rest of it was just window dressing. In reality all the TVA and Sylvie did was make Loki realise he was growing as a person and others meant more to him than his own personal achievements. He gets his redemption but the sacrifice he makes to get it is possibly the most heroic finale for a comics character I've ever witnessed. This is a 540 minute feature film; I can't think of any other way to describe it; everything from the first episode to the end slots together perfectly. I know people thought this series was boring, but I fear they didn't see the bigger picture.

What I didn't notice until the very end was this series was directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead - the guys behind The Endless and many other weird and wonderful horror, Sci-Fi and fantasy films. These are two people who know how to make weird and this is one thing you can safely say about this finale - it's as fucking weird as fuck. It will drag you in all manner of directions and it will make you think there is only one possible ending to put things right, but then it does something unexpected, fabulously heroic and, seriously, it made me want to cry. There won't be a third series.

Quiz Night

From the moment I saw the trailer for Quiz Lady I wanted to see it. I'm not a fan of Awkwafina nor Sandra Oh, but there was something about this movie that made me want to watch it. Maybe because I thought the wife would like it - she being a quiz lady herself.

This is a zany sisters comedy and it's very funny. It's rare I have many LOL moments in films nowadays, but this had a number of them, in fact far too many for me to pick out one or two to look out for - although Sandra Oh's wrist might be one of the silliest and daft things I've seen in a film for a long time - I missed loads of dialogue, had to rewind it and then promptly missed the dialogue again because I was still laughing so hard. 

We probably are all aware that Nora Lum (aka Awkwafina) is a funny woman, she was a surprisingly good addition to the Shang-Chi film, but I had absolutely no idea that Oh could be so... excellent. Her comic timing is brilliant and her portrayal as Jenny, the older of two sisters, is a thing of beauty - she's equal parts hilarious and annoying, while Lum's Anne is essentially a misanthropic, friendless lump, who just happens to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of almost everything and is an avid viewer of a nightly quiz show presented by Terry McTeer - aka Will Ferrell. 

Circumstances - the disappearance and sudden eviction of their mother from her residential care home - bring the sisters back together and it's clear that the 10 year age gap and basic disdain for each other is what drove them apart, but now reunited it's time to make some changes, that is until Mr Linguine, their 20 year old pug dog is kidnapped by gangsters and they have to raise $80,000 to get the dog back - cue the quiz show and what is essentially a riot of very funny scenes. Holland Taylor plays Anne's next door neighbour - she does a great line in elderly next door neighbours, albeit this time looking more like her actual 80 years than she did in Mr Mercedes and there's a poignant final film appearance by Paul Reubens, playing himself. There's very little in this movie that isn't good, even the post credit 'epilogues' are a riot, even if the one with the aforementioned Reubens foretells the death of the next door neighbour when it turned out to be the actor instead. I'd recommend this if you fancy a laugh.

Time and Again and Again and Again...

I saw that the Sky sci-fi series The Lazarus Project was returning for a second series so I read up on it and thought 'why didn't we watch this first time around?' So we did. Jesus wept, what a grim and nasty as fuck programme it is; it's also bloody excellent and plays with time in a truly unique way.

The people who work for the Lazarus Project are the only people who know that time gets reset, sometimes over and over again and that July 1st is the date to keep an eye on. The job of the project is to prevent world ending events, but sometimes it takes many many times and if they fail they have to start again, from July 1st. It exacts a huge mental toll on many of them and gradually as the series continues the back stories of the key players are revealed, because most of them have an injection that allows them to remember, while two characters are 'mutants' who have a gene that means they don't need the injection but they do relive life over and over again. Oh and did I say it was a grim and nasty as fuck show?

It also does a good job of explaining Déjà vu by following the lives of individual members and ex-members of the project and how they got to where they got to, including a moment in Eastern Europe that has to be replayed over and over again, exacting a heinous toll on the project, especially one team member who has to give birth to her daughter literally hundreds of times. Paapa Essiedu is the new recruit - an app developer who suddenly starts to live six months of his life over and over while all around him seem oblivious. The effects on him and his relationship with his girlfriend are harrowing until he's recruited and starts to learn all about time; he also learns about his team, past team members and how 'harrowing' isn't even touching the surface. Did I say this was a grim and nasty as fuck show?

The last few parts however take us in an altogether different direction and one that spells certain disaster for many of the cast as secrets start to unravel and then the Chinese develop their own version of the 'time machine' and it goes spectacularly wrong. Think Groundhog Day but as a nightmare spread over three weeks. Obviously it ends on a cliffhanger, of sorts, and sets up season two - which starts next week - extremely well. The entire premise of a world saving - at what cost - agency working above and beyond top secret needs to be addressed more - it has been an underlying theme throughout this season, but Tom Burke's character Rebrov starts to look more like the hero of the thing rather than the villain as time progresses, so you never know for sure what is what. The decisions of the Project might save the lives of many billions of people but the psychological toll it casts means that the people who work for it are essentially walking mental breakdowns and even the hardest of hearts and minds get ground down after a while.

I struggled to see why this series had so many negative reviews; admittedly a large number of those reviews came from the USA but many came from here and it does question whether some of the audience for intelligent science fiction should really not bother because anything more than Play School must be a massive problem for them. This is thinking man's Sci-Fi; it's cerebral and can be quite mundane in an explosive way (if that even makes sense). People who lack the ability to understand something as clever as this should not watch it, or perhaps have time rewound so that someone can prevent them from watching it. Oh and did I say this was a grim and nasty as fuck show?

The Pregnancy Test

Robert Downey Junior has not been in much at all since Tony Stark croaked at the end of Endgame. He was in the woefully awful Doolittle, which we haven't and won't watch and he's in Oppenheimer, which we'll see next week - Saturday night to be precise. He's been on something of a hiatus and frankly there's not been much he's been in that we haven't seen and largely enjoyed. However, we'd never seen the 2010 comedy Due Date about a man who needs to get from Atlanta to LA for the birth of his baby. This was also the first time we'd seen the ubiquitous (to a number of these blog entries) Michelle Monaghan for a few weeks.

This film in many ways is a kind of version of Trains, Planes and Automobiles and equally it isn't. It is about a man who has to get across 2000 miles of the USA with an extra arsehole, but unlike that classic movie from the last century, this film has Zach Galifianakis in it and he is about the most dislikeable actor ever to grace a screen and while I'm aware that this was a deliberate intention of this film it doesn't stop it from being correct and while the entire premise was for RDJ to have to travel with Galifianakis all the way, Galifianakis spoiled what was a middling comedy with some great acting from RDJ.

Galifianakis plays Ethan Tremblay an aspiring actor who is going to LA to make it big in Hollywood. He can't act, he's an absolute wanker (literally), a man child and RDJ's character really should never have warmed to this cretinous moron. If it had been me I would have killed the annoying fucker and left him in a ditch in Arizona. The problem I have is I get it, I totally get it - he's supposed to be like that, it's what the film is about; I just think Galifianakis is an arsehole and not a very good actor, so playing a guy who's an arsehole and wants to be an actor and isn't very good at it seemed like bad casting to me, although I'll admit it also smacks of genius. 

I acknowledge that The Hangover has its moments, however it's largely spoiled by the presence of Galifianakis. I looked at his IMDB entry and noticed apart from the Hangover sequels his film career was basically between 2009 and 2011, that's about 23 months too long; he's made other films but you've never fucking heard of them (apart from Birdman which was good but I forgot he was in it, so it couldn't have been an important part otherwise he would have spoiled it). I wonder if RDJ thought the same when he was making this film or perhaps he was wondering why he was making this film at all.

Trailer Trash (with actual spoilers)

The final teaser trailer for The Marvels arrived four days before the film's release and I'm still not convinced that what we're going to get is anything like a coherent or half decent movie, especially now that Marvel are touting it like it's going to be some mega important part of the Multiverse saga - a concept that has so far failed spectacularly to ignite interest. It appears the villain of the piece - Dar-Benn - has torn a hole in the fabric of reality allowing things from other places into the MCU, but I somehow suspect this is going to be the subplot that is relegated to the background as the three heroes battle the aforementioned villain to the finish. I also suspect that this could well be the make or break film for the MCU and all those reshoots we heard about will all be to do with this hole in reality and we now know for sure that we're going to be teased with X-Men - I've seen the post credits scene and I can confirm this is the case.

There's a rumour going around that Disney is prepared to throw money at Robert Downey Junior, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson and Chris Hemsworth to reprise their roles in the next Avengers film because they've finally realised that very few people give a shit about the MCU without its icons. Personally, I think this is major wishful thinking. Kevin Feige did say that RDJ is part of the Marvel family and did not rule out a return by him or any other of the 'fallen Avengers' but equally he might have just said that because he knows his arse is on the line.

Whatever the MCU does, it will be short term and it won't solve the fact that superhero films are no longer a box office certainty and what is needed is a long break from them, not attempting to rediscover the past when the viewing public is exhausted. As was proved this weekend when Marvel announced there would only be one 2024 film - Deadpool 3 - all the others are either put back to 2025 or cancelled and that includes the finished and in the can new Captain America film. The numbers up for the MCU, you mark my words...

The Kitten of Wall Street

While I was faintly aware of the Game Stop stocks and shares business back in 2021, it was something that largely passed me by. You see I struggled to fully understand Trading Places, mainly because despite having a few shares in the company that used to be called Standard Life, I got them by virtue of being a customer and not opting for the cash option, so now I get about £25 a year in cash for my meagre amount of shares, but I don't really understand how they work.

The film Dumb Money is all about Game Stop and how a guy who had as many You Tube followers as I have Facebook friends invested $53,000 in shares and ended up with considerably more and all because he had faith in the product and he convinced thousands of others to have that same confidence.

Starring Paul Dano as Keith Gill aka Roaring Kitty, he managed to persuade, initially through Reddit and then through his You Tube channel to get ordinary people to invest in Game Stop and everyone made a shit ton of money, although it did look like it could all go tits up when the Hedge Funds and big boys got involved and tried to cause the stock to plummet - and as I said I didn't understand the maths in Trading Places so I'm not about to try and explain this. Suffice it to say, this is a weird film that cuts back and forth to different people with vested interests in Game Stop's success or failure - including Seth Rogen, Vincent D'Onofrio, Shailene Woodley, Dane DeHaan, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Sebastian Stan and Clancy Brown, who actually gets through a film or TV show without dying in the first reel. It's an entertaining romp and pretty much proves that sometimes the little guys win.

There Shall Come a Reckoning

The Jimmy Savile story is a bit like the Lazarus Project but without time travel. It's a grim and nasty piece of television, however while extremely disconcerting and disturbing it's essential viewing if you didn't see it first time around. We caught up on iPlayer and the first thing that comes to mind is hindsight is a thing because if this is an accurate reconstruction of the life of a national icon who also happened to be a vile monster then people knew just what and who he was as early as 1962 and yet still allowed him to destroy lives.

The story starts with Savile running Eric Morley's nightclub in Manchester and having a roaring success with it and this is because for all this monster's faults he knew how to wow a crowd, get people dancing and he understood the youth of the day, even if that was only so he could get into their knickers.

The opening episode focuses on Jimmy's relationship with a mother who didn't really love him, how he finally got to work for the BBC and also infiltrate Leeds Royal Infirmary as a hospital porter - voluntarily - and hospital radio DJ and where he first started to be seen by some people as some kind of predator. The episode cuts back and forth from the past to around 2005, as he is being questioned by a biographer for the book that needs to be written about him. My first impressions, despite hearing how good the make up had been, was to think that Savile at 35 didn't look much different than Savile in his 80s, but then I remembered that everyone over the age of 30 in the 1960s looked old and almost dead. The sets are fantastic and the camera work easily makes you think a time machine might have been used to get the feel spot on. But as the series progresses, the admiration for the accuracy of the era is replaced by an overwhelming feeling of sickness and a wee bit of sympathy for Steve Coogan who plays Savile brilliantly considering the risk his put his own career in portraying one of the worst monsters ever to emerge from television history...

The second and third parts looks at Savile's meteoric rise from Top of the Pops to all round celebrity with an OBE and all of his 'fabulous' charity work, done largely as a front to continue his devious and deviant behaviour. As he climbed the ladder of fame he became even more depraved and his victims got younger and their gender no longer mattered as long as he got his rocks off. There were numerous rumours circulating, but he had friends in very high places and often the people casting aspersions were often silenced if not believed. The thing was as he became more monstrous he became more powerful and that is possibly the most scary thing, especially as whenever anyone got close to uncovering his secrets he managed, like a slimy snake, to slither free.

The concluding part focused on the downfall of Savile; his deteriorating health and the fact that as the walls started to fall in on all sides, he still managed to persuade people he was the victim. Some saw through him; the man writing his biography starts to question Savile more intensely but the monster remained in denial until his death and as we all know, it still took almost a year before the truth started to come out. It was a harrowing mini-series that, fortunately, was not particularly explicit, but it didn't really need to be. I'm sure there's going to be more said and made about the man over the next ten or 20 years.

My Gay Dad and Other Parental Stories

Okay, I thought episode 13 would be the finale of Welcome to Wrexham but there's actually three more and two of them dropped last night (Wednesday). The first one - #13 - seemed to be an appreciation of fathers (first) and parents (in general) and focused on the forward Ollie Palmer's parents marriage failure because his dad was gay - this all happened 20 years ago, but seemed to be significant, especially as Rob McElhanney's mother left his father for another woman and Ryan Reynold's dad was a policeman, emotionally detached, had Parkinson's and died before Ryan became hugely famous. Other fathers featured as well, but much more fleetingly.

Episode 14 looked at the last four matches of the season, or actually at two of them - the 0-0 draw with Barnet and the potential banana skin against relegation threatened Yeovil. This was the comeback game for Anthony Forde, the Wrexham player who took a sabbatical because of his wife's brain tumour diagnosis, which not resolved but does seem to be more positive, and there was a lot of focus on him, especially as he scored the opening goal leading to a 3-0 win and leaving Town just one win away from the holy grail of a return to actual league football. The producers are dragging this out, but it still remains one of the most watchable reality TV shows on the box and next week it concludes.

Final Patrol

I am so fucking glad I stuck with this show until the end. I was sure there would be two more episodes, but #12 was the last Doom Patrol ever and it was probably the best one of them all... I'm still in a slight state of shock, not because this show found its mojo in the last two episodes, but because I didn't see this coming and it's one of the saddest finales I've ever seen. I mean, I'm getting on a bit now and a lot of things bring a tear to my eye, but this almost had me blubbing.

When I saw the episode was called 'Done Patrol', I checked and saw it was indeed the final episode of them all, but what the next 50 minutes delivered was far above what I expected, even if it did start off being the usual silly nonsense the last few series has dumped on us.

This was the end; the conclusion; the last time you're going to see any of these characters again. It was a story of absolution, of endings, of deaths and new beginnings and it was handled in such a pitch perfect way I literally almost lost it, especially the final scenes when the most annoying of all the Doom Patrol had his moment and it was beautiful and unbelievably sad.

I know some of you watch this but will not have seen this yet, so I'll try not to spoil it for you, but there's such a finality about this that it needed to be handled with care. This was the final journey for three of the team and a new beginning for the other three. The first finality brought a tear to my eye, while the second made me happy, but the final one, jeez, I never expected that and it almost floored me in its... power and yes the person in question finally made it home.

I'm crying? No, you're fucking crying. 

Shhhhhh! II

One of the breakout films of 2018 had a sequel in 2020, which while not as good is still a cut above the rest in terms of sequels. A Quiet Place, Part Two literally follows on from the point where the first film ended after a ten minute prologue that deals with the day the monsters arrived. We then jump forward to the day after John Krasinski dies saving his family and new born son and from this point on we all know where we are and what we need to do to survive as Evelyn, Regan, Marcus and the baby travel to their friend Emmett's for help, as quietly as they can.

This is where the sequel takes on an interesting twist as this is part two, the story splits into two parts as Regan and Emmett go in search of an island that might be a sanctuary, while Evelyn, Marcus and the baby battle to survive when a monster gets into their shelter, below a steel works that Emmett has been using. I still think that it's strange that Evelyn's alien body count appears to be higher than all the combined forces of the free or not-so free world, but it makes for entertaining movie watching even if you could do with subtitles during some of the lengthy scenes with her deaf daughter Regan. The signing is as general as they can be but you need to concentrate on it harder than if there were actually subtitles. I suppose it adds to the jeopardy. Anyhow, it's a great sequel that flounders a little at times as it seems to be driven by humanity's stupidity and complacency rather than common sense. Every one in the film does a great job of conveying the fear and jeopardy their characters face every minute of every day. There's going to be a third part, possibly even a fourth part; this concerns me a little.

Lessons in Discrimination

A week of absolute top quality television continued as our Friday night line-up was an almost perfect mix of fantasy (Loki), history (Lessons in Chemistry) and science fiction (For All Mankind) and we made the mistake of watching Loki first...

However, that said, Lessons in Chemistry really is the best ongoing series on TV at the moment and there's only two more to go as I can't imagine this will have another season.

This week was all about racial discrimination and sexual discrimination, parental bullying and work place bullying and a little girl who is desperate to discover who her father really was. Elizabeth goes head-to-head with her arsehole of a boss, but turns the tables on him just when he looked like he'd pushed her into a corner she couldn't get out of. Harriet's attempts to stop the freeway from being built in her neighbourhood's back garden comes to a violent and nasty impasse and an old enemy becomes a new ally. As I said to the wife, this isn't action-packed, it's not got much in it apart from a fictionalised version of history, that probably couldn't have happened in the 1950s, about two extremely strong and resourceful women who empower others. What it does do is give us rounded characters, interesting stories, likeable and thoroughly hateful characters and this week a glimpse into the troubled and tragic past of Elizabeth Zott, as we discover her father was a cold, callous fraudster who might have been a preacher but was also a shit.

The Return of the Best Show on TV

Or is it? For three years I've banged on about how brilliant For All Mankind is and tonight (Friday) it came up against Apple's other brilliant show (see directly above) and the finale of Loki which I still can't get out of my head. We're in 2003 and those who are left from the first three seasons are all getting old and are suffering from differing health problems. 

Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) is still in space and seemingly avoiding returning to Earth; he also appears to have early stage Parkinson's disease. Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) has retired from the space program but is being tempted to return to run the Mars colony. Aleida Rosales (Coral Pena) has not risen through the ranks to run NASA, but still resides in Mission Control and is suffering from PTSD after the tragic events at the end of the season three finale. And Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt) appears to be struggling with her health in the new Soviet Union, that is now forming alliances with the USA, and it's clear that life as a defector has not been kind to her.

As opening episodes go, this was quite subdued when compared to previous season openers, even if there was a disaster involving pushing a multi-trillion dollar asteroid to Mars that goes tragically wrong. Former president Ellen Wilson won a second term and her vice president Al Gore is now in the big chair, while the USA's first openly gay leader has retired and it feels unlikely that we'll see much, if anything, of her as the series focuses on making money from the space race. NASA now operates out of the Molly Cobb Centre, a fitting tribute to a character we only knew died by the way her non-appearance at the end of the previous series was handled, and is now in the hands of Daniel Stern's Eli Hobson - put in place by Gore as a cent-pinching bureaucrat. Politics still has a hugely prominent place in this series as do actual true life events - they all have a context in this alternate history sci-fi series. However, this week For All Mankind only came in with the bronze medal rather than the gold for TV excellence because it was up against some strong competition.

Next Time...

What will we make of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters? We have the penultimate episode of Lessons in Chemistry and For All Mankind will hopefully get into full swing. The new series of The Lazarus Project starts and the finale of Welcome to Wrexham promises 45 minutes of things we already know wrapped up in such a way it will all seem new and exciting.

Oppenheimer is our big Saturday night film and I expect there will be some others that get some air time, including the new Peter Dinklage movie and the new David Fincher thriller called The Killer. The world of TV and film is pulling itself out of its malaise and grabbing us by the balls again, at last...