Modern Culture - A Mixed Bag

The spoilers are here, there and occasionally everywhere...

Holey Underpants*

If at first you don't enjoy, try, try again. We went into the fourth episode of Fallout with very low expectations. My argument to the wife was, 'We used to give any series four episodes before we gave up with it and this hasn't been that bad, has it?' The thing was I was feeling as though I was convincing myself as well. This series had been too corny and slightly 'crazy' for my liking; there was just a little too much... dare I suggest it... silliness. 

I think we're both glad we did, so here is my review of Fallout: Season one; episodes 4-6: Blimey, we didn't see that coming. It makes me wonder what possessed the makers of this series to have made the first three parts so derivative and slightly corny; there was too much humour and reverential bollocks in it that it almost put us off and I expect anyone else not familiar with the game franchise would have felt the same way. Just what and where was this going? However, almost from the word go in episode four and despite the appearance [?] of Matt Berry's voice as a slightly psychotic organ harvesting robot, everything about this took a turn for the darker. This literally stopped being a 'black' comedy and just became 'black'; it took on a quite creepy and unpleasant feel. It also started to ask questions of the viewer, such as how much have you been paying attention and has everything you've been told actually the truth...

Let's start with the timeline. This is set 218 years after a nuclear war, in what was clearly - or it appeared to be - an alternate 1950s to the one we had. That would make it - the present day in the series - around the 2170s, except it's closer to the 2270s according to some rather large clues given away and while the flashbacks to Cooper Howard's film star days really do suggest a technologically more advanced 1950s, some things about it seem decidedly off-kilter. Coop's wife is spending large amounts of time developing vaults for Vault-Tec - some vaults would be better than others and all of them were being prepared for the inevitable nuclear war - which Coop has been informed is only inevitable because Vault-Tec is going to make sure it happens. Yet, has it really been 218 years because Coop is still 'alive' even if he's now a ghoul and the woman who was leading the revolution against Vault-Tec is very much alive and is now known as Mordeva and has Lucy's father, who himself has a now rather strange history, one which Norm, his son, has been digging into, seems to have links to the distant past as well. Then there's Betty - in Vault 33, who I'm beginning to think is Coop's ex-wife, because of things both of them say. There's also this feeling that everything is going to be interconnected.

The real story now is just who are the bad guys and just what is going on in the vaults, how are they getting their food and what is going on in Vault 31, that has led to every Overseer of Vault 33 having once been a resident of 31. What's the score with Vault 4 and what is happening on level 12 and will Maximus realise that he's being brainwashed with lavish things, especially for him? This has become anything but a comedy and is now a very serious drama with some quirks. Is the Ghoul really the bad guy? What are the Brotherhood of Steel really doing and do they even know it? They seem to be searching for old Vault-Tec equipment - because we now know that Vault-Tec were the people who made their suits and that they were around when Coop was a human because he wore one in the early years of the war against the Reds. How come people from when Coop was normal are still alive now? Even Maximus claims that he was a young boy when the bombs dropped, which suggests either we're seeing flashbacks to a period when California was its own republic or there's been another nuclear war since the first one. It has, without a doubt, turned into a puzzle inside an enigma and now it's dispensed with the slapstick and low level comedy Mad Max stereotypes, it has developed into something really quite good. Is it possible that the flashbacks we're seeing, to an alternative 1950s, are really set in the Republic of California and are set in the late 2050s and fashion has dictated that everything has a retro 1950s feel? I expect some things will be explained, but I suspect we're going to be waiting for season two for anything to be answered.

Fallout - Season one; episodes 7 & 8: the first season concluded in a spectacular way; it exceeded my expectations and set things up very nicely for season two. Things started to fall into place - and many of my questions were answered - and we saw the story from three different perspectives - Lucy discovered one side of it when she finally got Wilzig's head to Mordeva and found her father; Norm found out another perspective when he discovered the truth about Vault 31 and in the past, Cooper Howard discovered all the pieces in between as he found out what Vault-Tec and especially his own wife had planned for the end of the world.

Maximus was given another chance by the Brotherhood when he tried to deceive them over the head and he also discovered just what his brothers had planned and just how bonkers they all are. Coop in the future met Erik Estrada - of CHiPs fame - and killed both of his sons on his way to a rendezvous with the Brotherhood and the raiders led by Moldeva. His relationship with Hank McLean is also explained as we discover just how old some of the people involved in this story really are - how some of them have survived as long as they have is easily explained, others not so much, but it does seem that in Fallout world the laws of physics don't apply so much. The end of the finale has strange alliances formed, more questions answered and decisions to be made. There are still a lot of unanswered questions but I suppose they have to keep things going for the inevitable second season. In the end it was worth persevering with.
* Holey Underpants = something you get Fallout from...

Scary Monsters

I didn't really know what to expect from the Netflix series Baby Reindeer. This Richard Gadd vehicle has had a lot of publicity, mainly because Gadd is a comedian and yet this is pretty much a horror story about his life with a serial stalker. It's based on his own true story, he's changed the names and some of the details. It was brave of him to star in it.

Gadd plays Donny, a hopeful young comedian trying to break through in London and Jessica Gunning plays Martha, a woman who lives in a total fantasy and fabricated world who latches onto Donny when he shows her an act of kindness when she is distraught about something we never discover. From the moment he is nice to her his world is turned upside down; however, it is made worse by his own fascination with the woman, which further fuels her belief that the two of them are destined to be lovers and forever partners or at the very least are involved in a relationship. It is far more disturbing and scary than it is funny, although it does have some humorous moments, this is about psychological obsession and mental health issues that threaten to escalate into dangerous situations. Gadd's character is not only weirdly obsessed by the attentions of Martha, he's also developed his own hang-ups, maybe even sexual peccadillos - he appears to be attracted to transgender women, except is he? He is portrayed as a straight male with a healthy interest in sex, but he is surrounded by all kinds of different sexual behaviours - from an obsessive woman, two very butch gay bosses, his former girlfriend's mother, who dotes on him like her lost son, but also looks at him like she's discovering a lost sexual appetite; then there's his attraction to and time spent on transgender dating sites - he is 'turned on by the different' and Gadd is honest enough to suggest that the problems had with Martha might have been exacerbated by his desire to be the centre of attention or by the trauma from his past that he didn't want to confront but we get to see full on. This is a deeply psychological tale. 

Whatever Donny's interests are they pale into insignificance as Martha turns the screw and begins to assert her lunacy further and deeper into his life. Everything he does she goes out of her way to sabotage as she pops up constantly in his life and drives herself to the brink of illness blatantly stalking him. There are some truly chilling and scary moments and it certainly starts to feel more like a horror story at the halfway point when Martha's obsession turns violent. This is a really disturbing television series and while it is quite excellent it really isn't comfortable viewing. It also deserves to win awards; Gadd is brilliant in it, as is Gunning and it is truly compelling viewing with unexpected things happening and some very difficult to watch scenes. It truly is a unique piece of television and one that I'd recommend people watch. Netflix at its best.

A Gray Tale

We went into The Gray Man thinking we must have seen it because we both remembered Chris Evans looking like a nerdy Freddy Mercury tribute act - I mean, how could we forget a film where he looks so fucking stupid? But it seems that we only remembered the look from things we must have seen on TV or in the press because this Ryan Gosling action thriller was new to us. It's also a Russo brothers film, with a lot of the people who made Avengers: Endgame involved and for all that MCU film's faults, it was much better than this movie.

I think the biggest problem this feature has is that it didn't really know how to pitch itself. Was it a Jason Bourne type thriller or was there an element of 007 in there? It's essentially a movie about covert agents with special abilities and stupid people opting to go up against them. How often in these kind of films are the bad guys told 'He's a fucking nightmare, he's going to fuck up all your men and kill you in the end' so they ignore that and everything they're told happens? Pretty much every single time and this is no different. In fact the only thing about this that is different is the oblique and slightly odd ending, because after the denouement, the 'epilogue' felt more like a set-up for a sequel that hasn't yet happened rather than a conclusion. Too much is left unfinished or unchallenged and the bad guys essentially get away with it leaving their henchman to take the rap. Gosling makes a reasonable action hero, showing off the physique that many thought was fake in the Barbie film, but he was lacking in something - possibly a personality - and some of the 'banter' was tonally very wrong. Evans was remarkable as the sociopathic private sector looney without a care in the world and some of the set pieces were excellent. It was okay. We've all seen better and we've also seen much worse; however, it simply felt like a Ryan Gosling vehicle. A movie that was supposed to go from A to Z but somehow stalled around W and flopped about like a flat fish out of water. It needed a definitive ending not a suggestion that if Netflix were happy with it they'd pay Gosling a lot of money to make a sequel.

Film News

News broke today that Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson were to star in a remake of the 1988 comedy classic Naked Gun. I find this disturbing and worrying and I really hope that the wondrous Leslie Nielsen isn't spinning in his grave at this truly vomit-inducing outrage. That is all...

Mr Bright + Sidekick

Back at Christmas 2017, when we'd lived here less than six months, we had a crappy festive period. I was ill, the wife had just recovered from a bad cold and we missed almost the entire holiday period. Our Christmas night film was something that had been Netflix's Christmas Eve special; a fantasy thriller set in an alternate LA, one with orcs, elves, faeries, centaurs and other fantasy creatures and all having a place in a largely human hierarchy. The film was Bright and it starred Will Smith and Joel Edgerton.

It's been 6½ years and with a couple of exceptions we remembered absolutely nothing about it at all. This was a story about a human cop, played by Smith, who has an orc for a partner, Edgerton, and orcs are hated by humans because of something that happened 2000 years ago and he's hated by his own kind because he's sold out. Jakoby is the first orc to become a policeman and he is despised by his colleagues, even to a certain degree by Smith. The thing is he's a good cop and he's honest. This is the 1980s Alien Nation updated with fantasy creatures and the villain they are up against is an elf who possesses a magic wand who wants to bring the Dark Lord back to rule the earth. The elf, Noomi Rapace, is a ruthless and violent being with a couple of henchmen almost as nasty as she is and they are desperate to retrieve her wand which has been taken by one of her former disciples.

The problem with this movie is the story is pretty flimsy; the wand is desired by almost everyone and the two cops with the elf in their protection are being chased by literally everyone, yet there isn't really much going on... Well, there is but it doesn't seem to have a direction apart from to lurch from one violent set piece to another. It's a great action adventure but there's this feeling that it's also a bit vacuous; it simply nearly two hours of stuff happening. There's talk about prophecy, hints that Will Smith is a Bright - someone who can wield a magic wand - and there's a couple of FBI Magic Division agents who feel as though they should be in this more or that there's more of a story about them, but like the rest of the film it's all just a tad superficial - all style no substance. It wasn't a bad film, but it wasn't brilliant either. It felt like Netflix thought they could have a franchise on their hands but didn't.

Day Shit

There's some films we've seen before that we can't remember and they were okay and then there's some films we've seen before that after watching them a second time we wish we hadn't bothered or that maybe we could have done something more interesting like dying or having all of my limbs hacked off with a blunt spoon. That was pretty much how I felt after [again] sitting and suffering Day Shift a film about vampires with that one-time Oscar winning Jamie Foxx.

This Netflix pile of shite was everything you didn't want from a vampire film or even a comedy horror film. It had bits that made no sense (or were explained away in such an off handed way that it gave you the impression they made it up as they went along), huge amounts of comedy violence and a script that may well have been written by a dog scraping its arse along some paper on the floor. It was so fucking awful it made other vampire films ashamed to be in the same category. Foxx has been in some stinky films in recent years but one wonders what the fuck he did with his career to have been relegated to the kind of film that Eric Roberts might turn down. It starts quite promisingly with some acrobatic violence as the pool cleaner with the Polish name played by Foxx battles an aged woman finally besting her after being drenched in blood vomit. The problem is she was the daughter of a really high and mighty vampire who is also a real estate mogul and the movie pretty much falls apart from that point on. It has vampires who aren't bad, which gets zero explanation and it has Snoop Dog as a lone cowboy vampire hunter who does stupid things and still manages to be alive at the end. Like Bright, one gets the impression Netflix thought this might have sequel legs. I hope to whatever gods there might be that it doesn't, for the sake of people who might watch it.

Sweet Confusion

The fourth episode of Sugar did not deliver the plot twist that The Guardian said happens at the halfway point of this series, or if it did it went over my head. The episode starts with John Sugar having a medical examination by the 'approved' doctor and a little more of the weird things he's involved in outside of his detective work was hinted at. In fact, he was describing The Thing to the doctor which just makes me think he is really part of an alien invasion, which of course would be fucking ridiculous or a stroke of genius. Maybe he's an angel, that might explain why he's so nice to people?

What is good about this week's episode is we're firmly back in the 'where's Olivia' storyline and we start to discover what her half brother Davey has been up to; just what a slimy piece of shit he is and what lengths his parents will go to to protect him. We also know that whoever John really works for are very concerned about him uncovering things he wasn't meant to, which also involves the nutter Stallings - played by Eric Lange - who is trying to find out what happened to his chief henchman but also shut people up who might know what Davey Siegel has been up to. It's clear that Davey - Nate Corddry - is a dangerous sexual predator and that his father is trying desperately to cover something up he's committed, but what this has to do with Olivia is still not clear - apart from the fact she now knows her half brother is a massive cunt. Stallings has something in his cellar which he refers to as his project, if this is Olivia then I don't see how it's going to end well for her and why her father is so ambivalent about her fate. It's still quality TV, I just wish it was longer than half an hour.

Rebel Poo - The Shitgiver

So my birthday treat was to watch Rebel Moon, Part Two - The Scargiver and this is a film that was 6.8 on IMDB when I downloaded it (less than four hours after it was released on Netflix) and by the time I started watching it was down to 5.3 and when I finished watching it two hours later was 5.1. I'm going to be brutally honest about this - the people who have rated this so low are a bunch of sad pathetic wankers. I know I said this after the first film, but I feel really doesn't deserve that kind of hate. Yes, it's derivative nonsense, but it's entertaining nonsense, with reasonable actors and this time round a simple 'Magnificent Seven' story that was simultaneously boring and mega-exciting.

In many ways this is a far better film than the first part, even if the first hour was as dull as dishwater and plodded along at a snail's pace. It was about bringing in the harvest - as a kind of weapon against the 'empire' and then training the villagers to be an army. I had to laugh at one point when they were totting up the weapons and ammo they had and then they spent ten minutes having villagers firing weapons at straw figures, but you know, that's rather trivial. It's the second half that's worth the entrance fee because however overblown and full-on Snyder it was, it did really work as an ongoing action sequence that was both epic and different from your average BIG action sequences.

There was deaths and shocks, but you expect that; in the Magnificent Seven, I think, three of the team died fighting the bandits and in this one we lose two of the team, obviously heroically. Sofia Boutella still can't act and Djimon Hounsou barked lots of General things at the assembled team and villagers. Ed Skrein went through a prolonged rejuvenation process where the idea he might have some serious brain damage after almost being killed by Boutella's Kora, but he ended up being as psychotic as he was in the first film - no changes there and a bit of a pointless subplot/red herring. The Anthony Hopkins voiced Jimmy (or James as he liked being called) got involved just when things were looking desperate, despite telling Kora that everyone would die and by the end of the movie it was clear that Zack Snyder had been told by Netflix that despite the woeful reviews he had the green light to do a third part because even though they won this battle, there was still a war they had to finish.

It was overblown nonsense, but it was fun entertainment and I've watched some much worse films with higher ratings than this (some of them above this review). I think Snyder is a Marmite director and I think Star Wars wankers have deliberately gone out of their way to sabotage ratings on this film to - hopefully - have it killed by Netflix. of course what they've actually achieved is a record number of punters watching it to see if it's as bad as they were told it was and they obviously didn't because they came back for the second part and they will for the third. I would never have gone to the cinema to see this and I do feel it was a knock off of Star Wars, but in a weird way it was so much better than that 9-part heap of steaming shite. The special effects were better than anything the MCU has done in the last few years and the people making it - the actors - clearly had a lot of fun doing it. I will watch the third part, whenever it comes out and I will enjoy it so much more than any Star Wars film I've ever seen (although I did enjoy the first one, but I was 15 when I saw that, but it still wasn't the best Sci-Fi film I saw that year). Treat yourself to some cheesy wotsits of a film; take it as it comes and don't expect Shakespeare. 

Next Time...

Late Night With the Devil is likely to be the next film we watch; I've discounted a lot of new releases, including Immaculate (mainly because I don't see what all the fuss is about Sydney Sweeney - we've seen in her a half decent film, but other than that, not much has impressed me) and a couple of others whose titles have already departed my brain. The thing is this week hasn't been bad, there has been some quality entertainment in there and I struggle to remain optimistic that this will continue. I think it might be an exception to the rule. The thing is, as usual, you'll find out what nonsense I've watched this time next week.