Modern Culture - The Ends of Some Worlds

Spoilery nonsense throughout - don't read things if you haven't seen them, already!

World's End

While the wife found Leave the World Behind a little long and tedious, I found it to be a remarkably profound film about the end of the world because it was more like how I would expect it to happen.

It was a little like something M Night Shyamalan would make, but it was actually a Sam (Mr Robot) Esmail film and any semblance to the director of the Sixth Sense and other oddities was probably down to the presence of the deer and flamingos, which provided an interesting diversion from what was probably happening. It was a film quite heavy on the 'symbolic' and a tad overwrought, but I would expect that in an end of the world story. However, it starts off really as a class thing, with different degrees of snobbery at play, some racism and a few stereotypes being trodden on as that specific rule book is ripped up. Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke and their two children are well off middle class Americans who decide to take an impromptu break on the North Carolina coastline away from the hustle of New York. They book a pretty fantastic rural hideaway and settle back to a relaxing few days away, that is until all their electronic devices stop working and the TV just transmits an emergency signal.

Then Mahershala Ali and Myha'la Herrold turn up - the home's owner and his daughter - and it starts to get a little weird. For starters, Julia Roberts' character can't seem to believe that a black family could have something so splendiferous and her unconscious racism barrels its way to the surface. Then the deer start congregating in the garden and the tone becomes more paranoid and desperate. From that point on quite a bit happens but in a slow and slightly incongruous way; relationships thaw and it starts to get even weirder. You - the viewer - has as much idea what is going on as the actors and as I said, as the film moves from phase to phase you can really start to see how if this was the end of the world that it would be more of a whimper than a bang. It also highlights just how dependent we are on the digital and our electronics; it also points out how nasty individuals can become when faced with the unknown and while it's an American film, I think this time around it would apply to just about any country and its people. It's a reasonably good film and probably gets its low rating on IMDB because most Americans who will have reviewed it will have missed the point. It was a much better way to start the week's viewing than I've been accustomed to recently.

Whos Who

I think the final Doctor Who 60th Anniversary special was probably one of the best episodes I've seen in a long time, even if I'm really not sure what happened or why it happened. What I do think is that when David Tennant walked away from the role years ago, he didn't really want to and this time he didn't have to. We have an interesting subplot in the world of the Doctor now, so stop reading this if you haven't seen it...

Neil Patrick Harris was one of the best villains we've seen on this show for a long time, the Toymaker was a genuinely scary and quite excellent powerful villain, even if some of the set pieces left a little to be desired. In fact the lead-up to the big finale was both ridiculously paced and again quite scary - I can imagine kids will have found some of the imagery in it disturbing and I liked the way that it all linked back to Logie-Baird's first ever television transmission in 1925. There is a genuine feel of watching behind the sofa again.

Something else that was really good was Catherine Tate's Donna Noble in these three specials; she was proper kick arse and very good with it; like she'd been let off of her leash and was finally allowed to be something more than just comedy Catherine Tate; it was also good to see Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and Melanie (Bonnie Langford) back in the show; in fact the entire premise of the Toymaker having programmed a signal into the television in 1925 to come into affect nearly a century later and give humans too much freewill and the belief they are right about whatever they feel they're right about was very zeitgeist-y and topical; even the set-up to bring NCuti Gatwa into the show was quite ingenious, it's what followed that has stumped me and I'm sure many Whovians are probably going 'What the f...' as I type this.

So we now have two Doctors and David Tennant gets to remain as one of them and obviously opens up grand possibilities in the future. Whether you can believe that his incarnation loved Donna Noble the best, especially given the relationship he had with Rose and the fact there's another one of him, in another reality with Rose, but I don't watch this show to get mired in the minutiae of Whovian bollocks, I watch it to be entertained and tonight I was. I'm not sure about this new Doctor though...

The Grass Man

The wife and I were discussing the fact that there have been very few things we have seen Matthew McConaughey or Colin Farrell in that we haven't enjoyed, so when a film came along with both of them in it but was directed by Guy Ritchie there was a chance that record might be spoiled. The thing is, while we're not huge fans of Ritchie's work, he doesn't make bad films, so we were rather relieved and delighted that The Gentlemen was so enjoyable. What neither of us could understand was how this film has been out for four years and we've only just found out about it. I mean, my film knowledge, even films I haven't seen, is usually quite encyclopaedic but this went under the radar.

This is a movie about a drug dealer - a very powerful and rich drug dealer with a bunch of aristocrats and powerful men on his side, hence the title, but that's a bit of a red herring because this movie was about power struggles and protecting what is yours. The all-star cast do a grand job in telling a story that really has you guessing because it starts with what appears to be almost the end of the tale and then works back to how the start came about. Involved as well as the two aforementioned screen greats are also Charlie Hunnam, Michelle Dockery, Hugh Grant, Eddie Marsan, Jeremy Strong and Sam West in a violent, twisty comedy drama about a man who has created a £billion weed empire that he wants to sell and the people trying to fuck each other (and him) over to obtain it. That's about it, but it's told in a clever way because Hugh Grant plays a sleazy paparazzi journo who thinks he's got the scoop on everything so is trying to con £20m from the weed dealer to stop his story from going public and the majority of the film is him explaining to the weed dealer's #2 what has unfolded. 

If you haven't seen it then try to track it down, it's worth nearly two hours of your time. Everyone in it turns in top notch performances and it will literally have you guessing until the final moments and in a film with some excellent set-ups, it's worth watching for the one in a café where Farrell deals with four young wankers in a most humiliating and brilliant way. Top film and another one for the positive column - the week is starting well.  

Out of Sight

It might be eight years since this came out but talking about it without spoilers is going to be a tough one and I don't want to spoil it because while it might be eight years old it's a little seen movie that is worth watching, especially if you're a fan of Stranger Things, because Hidden is a film by the Duffer Brothers and it's less than 80 minutes long - so it won't even eat into too much of your evening.

This is a truly dark movie - both visually and in terms of the story. A husband, his wife and their daughter live in an underground shelter away from the 'Breathers' who are hunting them, but they have managed to evade their pursuers for over 300 days. The bunker is grim and grimy, it has a rat which is stealing their food and they're running out of options. The daughter is growing tired and restless and the parents are doing everything in their power to keep her from going batshit crazy and all the while they have to be quiet and not draw any attention to themselves. It's a truly dark and twisted story that is, at times, really scary but also almost a bit boring. Like Leave the World Behind the end of the world is a boring place, unless you don't know what's after you and why they're so relentless at it.

We do know there was a virus and we get glimpses of life before the shelter in flashbacks. Alexander Skarsgård and Andrea Risborough are excellent as the parents running out of food, time and ideas, Emily Alyn Lind is their daughter who pretty much grates on you from the moment the film starts and that's all I'm going to say about it because if you haven't seen it, you should give it a go. Anything else would give too much away and I get the feeling that even by saying what I've said I might be spoiling it for someone because whoever watches it now is maybe going to expect something unexpected or out of left field. 

The Colour in the (Man) Things

Because Hidden finished so early, we caught up with the second quarter-final of Only Connect and still had an hour to kill, so I suggested we watch the recently released colourised version of Marvel's Werewolf By Night, especially as there's going to be so little Marvel content over the next year or so.

I really enjoyed this first time around, but it seemed much grimmer and violent when it was in black and white; this new look version seemed to have more humour in it and less haunting graphics. Gabriel Garcia Bernal is still a strange choice to play Jack Russell, but he does it interestingly, with a take that isn't teenage wolf boy that the comics had in the 1970. Laura Donnelly as Elsa Bloodstone is still bloody excellent; she was great in The Nevers and apparently was sexy and spunky in the eight episodes of Outlander and six episodes of Britannia she was in - she's not in enough stuff. Harriet Sansom Harris as Elsa's wicked stepmother is also great, she was most recently in Jules, the charming film about an alien who landed in Ben Kingsley's backyard.

Werewolf By Night is essentially a play on The Most Dangerous Game, with a group of hunters fighting each other to find the monster who has the Bloodstone stuck to his back. The monster just happens to be one of my favourite Marvel characters of all time - The Man-Thing (and he really is giant-sized in this), who, like Jack, has been reinvented for the 21st century. Jack helps Elsa find Ted (Man-Thing's alter-ego's name), gets the Bloodstone, but because he himself is a monster he gets captured along with Elsa and... well, contrived story or not it's all nicely wrapped up inside 45 minutes with the heroes winning and the villains in various pieces or burned to a crisp. It is a fine little Marvel show, which was originally going to be the first part of a series of stuff leading to a Legion of Monsters feature, but that got shelved for various reasons, not least the fact Marvel has become a bit of a dirty word in the last couple of years for many reasons we've gone into in these pages. Suffice to say, if you haven't seen Werewolf By Night, I'd urge you to watch the black and white version because it feels better and creepier; the colourised version seemed to lose some of its atmosphere and the werewolf wasn't anywhere near as good in colour.

Bollocks at the End of My Tether

I know I've used variations of the following analogy a few times, but A Murder at the End of the World is like unsatisfying sex without an orgasm. This insipid nonsense continues to crawl to its conclusion  - We have one more week of this bullshit to go. However, this week, the thing we've essentially been waiting for was revealed: the silver serial killer resolution and how that all culminated... yet even that was like having a slow cold wank for 45 minutes and then stopping pre-orgasm to read a bad book. 

We found out who he was, but we didn't see him, we just saw that he blew his own brains out and somehow all of this was a clue to solving the mystery in Iceland, which it appears has been explained away and Clive Owen is probably going to be the baddie all along, probably with the aid of his AI. It appears he's a nasty control freak and because he's a billionaire he can get away with what he likes and have whoever he wants killed off, beaten up or whatever. Fortunately this penultimate episode was only 44 minutes long, so that was a blessed relief. I just can't believe that it's going to be this straightforward because if it is then Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij must never be allowed near a TV or film studio ever again. There has to be a twist in the finale otherwise anyone who's watched this heap of shite - which feels like it was scripted by a horny 14 year old - will want these twats' heads on a pike.

Alien versus Vikings

Despite some dodgy acting, Outlander a film made in 2008, was a surprisingly enjoyable load of nonsense. Starring Jim Caviezel, Sophie Myles, John Hurt, Jack Huston and Ron Perlman, it was about an alien - Caviezel - who crash lands on earth - presumably Norway, but possibly Scotland and on board his spaceship is not only his dead relatives but also a deadly Morwen, a creature that is almost impossible to kill - at least for the limited technology available to Vikings.

The thing that sets this apart from a dodgy film is the excellent special effects - the alien creature is quite fantastic and also one of the scariest since Giger invented Alien and even the story, complete with backstory is actually quite inventive. What lets the movie down is the, at times, wooden acting and slightly stilted script and Jack Huston is more suited to playing a trendy London swinger than a Viking - he simply can't carry it off and is a tiny bit too camp for the part. Caviezel growls his way through this and was a surprising bit of casting given he makes very unusual films - such as Mel Gibson's Jesus of Nazareth film, which of course was all in Aramaic.  

The alien hero is captured by the Vikings who believe he was responsible for the destruction of a rival village, but it soon becomes clear that something else is terrorising the area; he eventually wins his captors' trust and they go about tracking down the alien monster and trying to kill it, but they simply don't have the right tools, which means Kanaan - the alien human - raids his sunken ship for metal to fashion into weapons that can penetrate the monster's thick skin. There's a hint of a love story, a lot of larger than life characters basically there as monster food but it has a cracking pace and as I said to the wife, 'sometimes dodgy films can be enjoyable hokum' and this certainly filled that description.

Angel Station

I decided I wanted to watch some films from much longer ago than usual - not that long but from an era that tends to be forgotten; the 1990s. This was a strange decade, it was just as special effects were becoming digitalised but most films were still relying on actual man-made effects. Then of course there was the fact that films seemed to still be channelling the 1980s in terms of fashion and look; arguably the 90s was a 'better' era but it still stunk out the cinemas quite a bit. However, there was the beginnings of a renaissance - Spielberg was still making great films, Tarantino had come along and we were on the cusp of a new era of great films including a new generation of women directors - Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion and Nora Ephron.

It was an Ephron film that I wanted to watch as it had been 28 years since we last watched Michael and I remembered it was a movie I really enjoyed. Watching it again, I totally get why I thought that even if it now seems a little of another time. John Travolta is the eponymous Michael, an angel who just happens to be living in a motel in Iowa. He's a bum; he smokes, drinks, has a beer gut and apart from the wings doesn't really look like an angel at all; but that's really the entire point of the start of this. You see while Michael is the focal point of this feature, the movie is really about William Hurt and Andie McDowell, because Michael is essentially setting these two up for each other; it appears to be his last responsibility before he returns to heaven and is no longer able to set foot on earth.

Hurt, McDowell and Robert Pastorelli work for a weekly 'newspaper' a little like the National Enquirer and they're following up on a lead about an angel living in a motel, so they travel to Iowa and pretty much meet the archangel Michael straight away - it's a little more complicated than that, but that's all you need to know. What follows is a road trip across the USA, the three reporters, the angel and the dog - which is really the lynch pin for the entire film because it's the dog who is the popular one. As this group of disparate individuals and their angel work their way through the Mid West it soon becomes obvious that they are dealing with an actual angel, but that never seems to be an issue because these reporters are too wrapped up in their own worlds to let it even bother them. It is a very funny film at times and as it is essentially a fantasy it belies the poor - 5.7 - rating it has on IMDB, which I find a bit of an insult to what is essentially a feelgood film. Yes, it's a dreadful 1990s film, but Travolta - fresh from Pulp Fiction - is great and he carries what is essentially a love story that has dated because attitudes are different now. I'm glad we watched it again, especially as we have another Travolta film lined up for later on, another mid-90s film he made while he was having his second wind as a A list actor.

Double Trouble

Despite having films and some TV series we haven't seen yet sitting on the Flash Drive of Doom, we decided to start watching The Outsider again, mainly because I enjoyed reading the book so much in the summer and because not only is it one of the best books Stephen King has written in the last 25 years, but it's also an excellent TV series, which expands on the book and treats us to another version of Holly Gibney (first seen on TV in Mr Mercedes).

While it's unlikely we'll watch all ten parts this week, I don't need to give you a running commentary over the next couple of blogs. This is a cracking TV mystery series about the brutal murder of a child by, what appears to be, the coach of the town's little league baseball team, except it soon becomes clear that if he did kill the kid he was able to be in two places at the same time.

Jason Bateman plays Terry Maitland, the man accused of the heinous crime and Ben Mendelsohn plays Ralph Anderson, the town's sheriff who watches his 100% guaranteed case start to fall apart within hours of the arrest of Maitland and what happens after this and the utter chaos and despair caused by the murder and the consequences after it. This is a supernatural story told in a police procedural way and it is quite brilliant; maybe not as good as the book, but still it's top notch TV. The ten episodes follow the investigation as it become clear that while Maitland didn't kill the kids, he also must have as his prints, DNA and likeness is everywhere, until gradually you realise and the people investigating that something not right is happening. It's on HBO, it isn't your average supernatural TV series and if you haven't seen it you really should, it is just one gut punch after another all the way through as the main cast wrestle with the impossible. It was one of the highlights of 2020, which is why we're watching it again.

V is for...

A little comic book anecdote of sorts. I first met David Lloyd - the artist - back in the 1990s when I worked at Comics International. I wouldn't say we became firm friends, but we knew each other well enough to have good conversations whenever we'd meet. When I was doing Borderline Press, we got talking about possibly publishing in print form some of the strips that were featuring in his on-line comic and while nothing came of that, we're still friends and we still wish each other birthday and Christmas greetings every year. Considering I have much closer friends in comics, very few of them are as consistent as my relationship with David.

I have never read V for Vendetta. In fact my never having read it was one of the reasons I think we became casual friends, as he'd never met anyone in comics who hadn't read it and the fact I was such a prominent figure for a few years, with an apparent encyclopaedic knowledge of the genre, made this even stranger. Like chatting to Stan Lee's #2 Roy Thomas in Tarzana (home of Edgar Rice Burroughs) about guinea pigs, it's something the other person is prone to remember. So as I've never read V for Vendetta, I've never seen V for Vendetta, it is a film that has never really been of interest to me - as strange as that might seem, but by the time it was made I had already started to form a negative opinion of its original writer Alan Moore - something I had always resisted for convoluted political reasons. However, by 2005 I had come to the conclusion that Moore and my (and Moore's) previous employer Dez Skinn were as bad as each other (another convoluted story) and both suffered from much more than just ego problems. So you might think that if Alan Moore refused to have his name attached to the film it would make me want to watch it, but I'd never been interested in the source material so it just never happened - a kind of paradox.

After 18 years, we rectified that this week, but it was more to do with the 8.2 rating it has on IMDB rather than anything else. It is literally the last movie in a long list of top rated films we'd never bothered to watch. 

It is a uniquely prophetic feature, depicting the UK - or England - in a way that might have seemed scary in the 1980s when it was written or in 2005 when the film was made, but now seems almost like it could be a training manual for the far right or something a lot of sitting Conservative MPs would consider as good propaganda. Natalie Portman plays Evie, the daughter of 'activists' who unintentionally gets marked by the fascist regime in control of the country when she breaks curfew to visit a colleague, but is also rescued by a mysterious 'hero' simply called V - played in voice, at least, by Hugo Weaving, when she falls foul of some 'police' type wankers. 

It is largely about a year of revenge and retribution, setting in motion an attempt to mobilise the people of the country against the fascists running it, led by John Hurt, with a subplot involving the police, led by Stephen Rea and his assistant played by Rupert Graves, who are charged with apprehending V but become embroiled in the killings of prominent party members and the reasons behind their deaths. In many ways it's a clever, almost labyrinthine story that is probably let down by the overall Britishness of it. It might have been made in 2005, but it kind of feels like it was made when the original comic came out, the early 1980s. There's also elements in it that felt contrived and don't stand up to much scrutiny - such as Evie's imprisonment and the 'people' she meets there.

While it is a good and compelling 'superhero' film there is something about it that simply doesn't feel like a film; there's this mini-series stitched together vibe or even a stage play and while it's a little over two hours, it felt heavily edited and in need of a bit more fleshing out, especially some of the peripheral characters and even the leads. It also feels a bit dated despite the very modern premise. I struggled with Weaving's voice, which does sound like it's kind of behind a mask but is far too clear, precise and BBC to really convey the kind of menace he's supposed to have, but then again I'm not sure what kind of voice he should have had. The bottom line is I enjoyed it, but I don't see why it has such a high rating nor was impressed enough to feel like recommending it to anyone who hasn't seen it, thus probably opening myself up to more criticism from the people who have a problem with me for thinking Alan Moore is a vaguely talented plagiarist - but hey, these reviews aren't designed to win friends, just influence some people...

The Big Guy is Back

Finally Monarch: Legacy of Monsters delivered a better than average episode, but the younger cast members really aren't all that engaging at all. Well, maybe Kentaro has something going for him but Kate and May seem to switch back and forth as to who is the whiniest and most contrary. To be fair, whenever Kate starts getting contrary something interesting happens and this week it was the return of the big guy - Godzilla.

However, how he got to northern Africa when he was last seen swimming out into the Pacific ocean is anyone's guess or why he was buried under a lot of earth, rocks and sand is another - unless of course there's more than one of him, which we know there isn't. But this episode moved along at a blistering pace and crossed two time lines - back in the 50s we found out why Lee Shaw lost control of Monarch and probably began his decline from leader to zero and how he lost the love of Keiko (or did he?). The baby Monarch team meet Dr Suzuki who has invented a way of summoning titans and in 2015 the gang finally see their dad again as he uses a similar device to call on Godzilla. We also learn what Shaw has planned, which rather surprises the youngsters. At least it's moving in the right direction again after a couple of weeks of flip flopping around going nowhere.

Luke Cage meets the Devil

The difference between SurrealEstate and Evil - a CBS All Access show - is the latter actually felt like it was made by a TV production company and was written by someone that understood the English language. They are, however, largely similar shows. Mike Colter played Luke Cage in the two Netflix Marvel series and a Defenders spin-off, and in this he leads a team of people debunking or proving the existence of possession and biblical evil - a kind of X Files meets the Exorcist.

The pilot episode dealt with a criminal psychologist testifying that the man the prosecution were trying to have convicted of multiple murders wasn't barking mad or possessed by a demon and then being recruited by a team, who work for the Catholic church, to essentially do the same thing - a case of is it genuinely evil or is this explained by psychology? It worked and while it wasn't particularly scary, it was clever and intelligent enough not to be treated like a load of bollocks, which SurrealEstate managed within five minutes of its pilot episode. This time it's just three in the team, of which Colter is the man training for the priesthood and very much the Mulder here, who believes in demonic possession and spiritual evil, while the other two are the Scully in the show - both sceptical and looking for the logical rather than the 'fictional' and in the first episode the logical won out, but not without a hefty dose of the spiritual thrown in to make things interesting. This was originally broadcast in 2019 and there's an entire series plus two more in the can for us to watch. I'm not necessarily going to review this like I review weekly serials, but I might dip in and out if we stick with it after a promising start.

Is There Life After Mars?

Just as I forecast last week things are heating up in the best ongoing TV series available on any streaming platform at the moment as For All Mankind went to some places you might have guessed but also to some places you never saw coming - which is why this show is so good. 

One thing this show never fails at is managing to pull your heartstrings and get you emotional about something; there's at least one thing every series that will bring a tear to your eye or have you wondering how the writers manage to fuck you over with excellent writing and this week's 6th instalment does it in spades as a reunion that was never expected has an unexpected reaction before the expected happens - sorry to be vague but I'm not spoiling it for the people who do watch this excellent TV show. The episode is called Leningrad and that's where most of the action takes place as the M7 nations meet to discuss how to deal with the Goldilocks asteroid conundrum.

Up on Mars, Ed's loss of job means he's drinking and smoking a lot of weed and in need of a new mission and when Helios offers the grunts a ridiculous re-evaluation of their existing contracts, especially with a multi-trillion dollar gift on its way, he decides to get behind the workers and advises them what to do. The North Koreans get involved again, this time to help Miles out who shows he has a very nasty side as the balance of power shifts in the black market racketeering game. All in all by far and away the best episode of the series so far.

Next Time...

While the two Apple TV series we're currently watching still have a few weeks to go before they finish (and there's a new Slow Horses marathon due around New Year), I expect this blog may well be a wee bit erratic over Christmas. We'll just have to see; I mean there's going to be stuff to watch and look out for but we do have stuff that I'm not necessarily going to be reviewing that we'll be watching between now and the New Year - take the seven episodes of The Outsider for starters - I've done that review, there's no need to return to it. If we watch more Evil there's no real need to do a weekly update of a series that is currently filming season 4. There will be new films including Rebel Moon (which got a 1 star review in the Guardian today) and I'm sure the streaming channels will have something else apart from crappy festive movies. We'll just have to wait and see...