Film Culture - Fantasy Rules but Reality Bites

Here's a spoiler warning, but I don't really think there are that many... GODDAMMIT ALL TO HELL!

Aqua-twat 2

We were warned. A friend got 10 minutes into this film and gave up, saying he could not watch such an awful film with such bad CGI without wanting to put bleach in his eyes. It couldn't be that bad, surely? Oh, but it was. From almost the opening scene to the point where we stopped it - 17 minutes and 45 seconds - I was watching the final nails being driven into the coffin of superhero films. The genre is dead and Aquatwat and the Lousy Condom (or whatever they deemed to call it) has fucked its lifeless stinking corpse.

I don't really know what to say and anyone who reads these will know that's a rare, almost unheard of, thing. But this was a joke... Wasn't it? I mean from the giant CGI sea horse to the baby pissing in Jason Mamoa's mouth, it was just a fucking huge [ahem] piss take? I cannot believe that Warner's dumped an entire Batgirl film and kept this massive dollop of shark shit on the schedules and then released it! That Batgirl film must have been utter bat shit... I mean, they want James Gunn's reboot to work, don't they? They want the new line of DC superhero films to have a fighting chance? So why inflict this on a suspecting public in the knowledge that another pile of unsavoury wank is more likely to turn people off of ever going to see a superhero film ever again? The wife said after six minutes and 10 seconds, 'This is a load of shit.' She has never been more correct in her life.

Love, Death and Robot

This could equally have been called A Man, His Dog and their Robot. It's a 2021 film starring Tom Hanks, a dog called Goodyear (known mainly as 'dog') and their robot, Jeff. It's a post apocalyptic story of a computer scientist who has managed to survive the end of the world, who is eking out a living with his dog and his robots on the inside of a wind turbine. The planet has been devastated by a solar flare that has punched holes in the atmosphere, exposed the planet to temperatures as high as 150f and has high levels of solar radiation. Finch is slowly dying and he's facing oblivion either from starvation or from the effects of the radiation.

He's building a proper robot, not one of his motorised mini dumpsters that help him collect anything that might be useful. This proper robot will have, essentially, one directive - to look after the dog when Finch dies. The three of them go on a road trip when a massive storm is heading their way; projected to last 40 days and Finch has enough food for about five. It's been ten years since the apocalypse and his chances of any kind of survival are slim to nothing, but the dog is young and has to be protected and this is my kind of movie, because as long as the dog lives I'm a happy man.

Considering it's just Hanks, a humorous robot - voiced by Callum Landrey-Jones and a dog that barks, now and then, it's a surprisingly engaging film and proves that some CGI works very well; the scenes of devastation and decay are very good and while there are elements of stretching the bounds of belief it is set in the future so you can excuse that. It's a sad film but also one full of hope and optimism. Jeff is a likeable 'child' learning every moment he exists and getting into the role he's been made for. It's an Apple film and that alone should be enough to guarantee it's got some quality. I'd recommend it. 

A Captive Audience

I only heard about the 'horror' film Barbarian the other day, so we decided to give it a whirl because we'd gotten 17 minutes and 45 seconds into another film and had lost the will to live... So we gave up on that and decided to watch this instead. It was one of the stranger films we've ever seen' it wasn't bad, but equally it wasn't that good either. Strangely enough, this is a film that was set in Detroit but filmed mainly in Bulgaria...

A young girl hires an AirBnB, turns up at night and discovers a man is already there. They've been double booked. There's a lot of tension but essentially they agree to share the place and start to become friends. She goes off to do her thing the next morning and when she gets back she inadvertently locks herself in the cellar, discovers a hidden room and things start to get weird from there on in. The thing is they don't get weird the way you think they should. The very strange takes over and 50 minutes into the film with the two in grave danger, it cuts to sunny California and an actor is being accused of raping his co-star. He's been cancelled and needs to raise funds for lawyers, so he flies to Detroit to sell one of his properties and guess what house it is?

It's probably a cult classic and young people more than likely find it one of those post-modern horror tales that appeals to the TikTok generation; it was quite interesting in the way it cut back and forth from the past to the present and told two completely different stories that converged on the same house, which we had the origin of spelled out in the flashback. However, I really don't see why it was called Barbarian, unless it was simply a play on the definition of the word (and that didn't work). There was just something a bit too comedic about it; a little too convenient and a little too trying to mimic an era of filmmaking that probably doesn't warrant homage. It also told me one thing about Detroit, if you're a black kidnap victim who has escaped your captor, your chances of convincing the police of this are just below zero.

Trailer Trash

It's called Deadpool & Wolverine now; none of this Deadpool 3 nonsense. This has to have a new beginning and being the third film in a trilogy isn't going to hack it for Wade Wilson's MCU debut. 

So they've fiddled with the title because that is going to fool everybody and they released a trailer that is essentially all about Wade but gives you a hint of Logan at the very end; but that's because they don't want to ... spoil... the surprise for you even though his fucking name is in the title... Do I sound cynical? That's because this 'change' smacks of sales cynicism. The trailer itself is fine, apart from the bits I was bothered about, such as the TVA... actually mainly the TVA and the fact that Marvel/Disney didn't feel as though Deadpool could carry an entire movie on his own without also introducing Wolverine into the proceedings. I think this is a bad move, but I also thought changing the name of the latest (and very delayed) Captain America film because the original title might have upset someone in Israel was also a dick move.

Do you know something? I don't really care about this film. I'll watch it when it becomes available to download, but I was more intrigued by Wicked because it has the lovely Cynthia Erivo in it and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. The MCU could do gay goat porn now and I wouldn't care.   

However, that's not all - the latest Kong x Godzilla: The New Empire trailer dropped. Bearing in mind that this film hits the cinemas in less than a month, it seemed almost like an act of desperation to have this new 150 second hint, featuring more teasers from the film, more shots of Godzilla actually running; Kong with his arm brace and the killer orang-utan who is going to fuck up the world until the two baddest monsters can sort their shit out and fight for each other. It actually looks like they might be bordering on comedy here. Kong seems to get cuddlier, while Godzilla is going decidedly pink and the humans in this have obviously been paid shit loads of cash because I can't see why any of them - especially Dan Stevens - would want to destroy their careers for two monsters who are not going to do much for them apart from - as I said - raise their bank accounts. Of course I'll watch it when I can, but I can't imagine there's going to be much comparison to some of the actual good films I've seen this year so far...

Expletive Not Deleted

... And the film of the year so far goes to - American Fiction. What a glorious, gentle and lovely comedy about love, death, secrets, being black in the USA and snobbery. It is an absolute joy to watch; almost two hours of quite excellent filmmaking in which a number of Academy Award nominations are forthcoming and it deserves it immensely.

Geoffrey Wright plays Monk, an academic and a highly regarded writer who simply doesn't sell books. He's excellent at writing thoughtful, erudite stuff that often gets put in the wrong areas of bookshops or is thought of as a bit high brow. He is also a massive snob, someone who doesn't really see being black as a hindrance or a problem, even when things happen to him because he is black. He comes from a close, but slightly emotionally dysfunctional family, where everyone is a doctor apart from him - "I'm a doctor of words." is how he describes himself. His sister works in a family planning centre, his brother is a recently outed cosmetic surgeon, his father was a philandering bastard who blew his own brains out in their Martha's Vineyard seafront house and his mother is suffering from the early stages of dementia; oh and his job at a university wants him to take a break because he offends too many white students by his analytical use of black language - the film starts with a very white student taking serious offense at Monk's use of the N word and his refusal to not stop using it in an English class about black fiction.

However, his life takes a series of unexpected turns over the space of the first 45 minutes of the film and leaves himself in a position where, initially for a joke, he writes a 'black' book, at first called My Pafology, but changes it to Fuck when things begin to get out of control. Monk's problem is it doesn't matter how good a writer he is he's becoming broke very fast; for various reasons other members of his family can't help - despite all being doctors - and yet he's having money thrown at him for the joke book he's written but doesn't really want. The problem is, as mentioned, he's a massive snob and it simply doesn't sit well with him that he has to pretend to be everything he hates about the way black people are depicted in USA life.

To add to the utter splendour of this movie, there's a love interest; also a housekeeper who is family in every sense of the word and another black author who has done what Monk has done but in complete seriousness for commercial reasons - allowing an excellent juxtaposition in a number of ways. This is a cracking film; it will make you laugh, it will make you think and it portrays a certain element of black society - presumably the Republican, slightly right wing element - in a way that you never see entire films dedicated to. It's also a really gentle film, something else very few black films ever seem to be. We're only into February, but I'd hazard a guess and say this will be in my top films of the year come next December. This is a highly recommended movie - don't miss out on it.

Dammit All to Hell

[All the following dialogue is SHOUTED in a theatrical way]

Dammit Peter.
John?
Dammit four times round the car park and back in for another dammit.
Do I get the feeling that something's on your mind, John?
Come on, Peter, you know what the hell I'm talking about.
At a guess I'd say that this had something to do with the DDL Enterprises takeover bid?
You know it's funny, Peter. Four years. Four hard years I've put into building up this Health Club. And now I'm supposed to stand by and let a bunch of wet-arsed college kids take it all away from me.
I know, John.
If only Marjorie hadn't left us the way she did ...

Do you remember this? Maybe if I put it all in capital letters with emphasis on the SHOUTING and the OVERWROUGHT you might remember it's the first of the 'Dammit' sketches from A Bit of Fry and Laurie, the one where they want to put Uttoxeter BACK on the MAP!!!

I should point out now that I haven't been watching old episodes of their sketch show, I just couldn't get this and the other Dammit sketches out of my head when the wife and I took a Tardis-like trip into the past and watched the 1972 British TV movie (it was originally broadcast as a play) written by Nigel Kneale called The Stone Tape... Or maybe it was called THE STONE TAPE!!!

Michael Bryant and Iain Cuthbertson could have been Peter and John from those Fry and Laurie sketches, because the first thing you realise about this 'ghost' story is HOW MUCH THEY SHOUT THEIR LINES AT EACH OTHER; LIKE SHOUTING AT EACH OTHER SIGNIFIES THAT THIS IS AN IMPORTANT THING AND THEY ARE VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE!!! 

I have to say that this was something that I believe scared the shit out of the 10-year-old me and watching it 51 years later it has left me with this feeling that Michael Bryant - who was one of my favourite actors in that era - was just a shouty man. HIS CHARACTER, BROCK was awful as well as a misogynistic audio scientist who decides on a whim to turn his research into ghost hunting apparatus. Don't get me wrong, the idea was BLOODY ORIGINAL, that ghosts don't exist, they're just audio or visual imprints in stored in stones - like a kind of ancient VHS attuned to individuals, but the execution was BLOODY AWFUL. Jane Asher plays, one of, Bryant's many dalliances, a shit hot computer programmer who was one of many individuals - including Michael Bates and James Cosmo - who talked in 'science' throughout the duration. None of it made an IOTA OF SENSE and they spent ages LOUDLY PUNCHING COMPUTER KEYS on the LOUDEST KEYBOARD IN EXISTENCE while the printer spewed out stuff that only A COMPUTER PROGRAMMER would UNDERSTAND, so there was NO point in discussing it. Then there was the noise experiments, which at times sounded like an impromptu concert by the Radiophonic Workshop and the ghosts, which did more than just make sounds or appear but got deep into the minds of the more sensitive members of Bryant's team.

It was DAMNED AWFUL, IT WAS HELL AND SO WAS THE FUTURISTIC WASHING MACHINE, GODDAMMIT ALL TO HELL!!! The thing is it really was unbelievably dreadful, with so much shouting I had to turn the volume down and a script that literally didn't make any sense at all - it was like they invented some gobbledegook science language to simply confuse the people watching. Half the cast was so wired I thought they might explode and the other half just looked worried and confused, like they didn't really know what they'd signed up for. It appears that the stones have had things stored in them from 7000 years ago and they're not really stored sounds or visuals, they're real and they're capable of causing death by falling and people having breakdowns. Then there was the spam, not the computer kind, but the chopped pork and ham kind and as I mentioned before THE FUTURISTIC WASHING MACHINES being made by CJ, Reginald Perrin's boss. I had to watch it, I really wish I could go back in time and warn myself NOT TO WATCH IT AGAIN, GODDAMMIT... 

Next Time...

I don't know and I'm thinking you don't care...