Pop Culture - Robots and Sex Crimes

 The spoilers are somewhere but not everywhere.

The Really Wild Show

Kids films, eh? Who watches them apart from kids and their parents? Getting the wife to watch a children's film is like trying to convince half of America that Donald Trump is a massive cunt - it's not easily done. So I put it on and didn't tell her about it until it started and fortunately the disparaging remarks were few and far between (actually one in the opening two minutes then she settled back down to her knitting and didn't say anything again until the end when she admitted to enjoying it). I'll take that as a win. The film in question is The Wild Robot and if you can get past the talking animals (there's a good explanation for that) and the slightly silly premise, then you'd have to be one cold hearted bastard not to enjoy this movie.

Based on the book of the same name by Peter Brown, this adaptation stars Lupita Nyong'o as Roz, a robot that was one of six lost when a container ship sank. Roz is a helper, tasked with fulfilling objectives she is given, but when she finds herself on an uninhabited island with only the wildlife for company she has to either learn to speak animal or have no purpose. The need for this is sped up when she inadvertently kills a family of geese, leaving just an egg, which hatches and the chick bonds with the robot, thinking it is his mother. It's a relatively simple story of a robot who becomes the surrogate mother of an orphaned goose, who is also the runt of his 'litter' and is tasked with three things - to feed it, teach it to swim and then to fly before the winter comes. Aided by a sly fox called Fink - voiced by Pedro Pascal - this is a schmaltzy feel good film until the last 20 minutes when it gets very dark and possibly quite scary for younger viewers. There really is a lot to unpack in this movie and there's a lot more subtlety involved than I can convey in a short review. It's helped along with added voices from Bill Nighy, Matt Berry, Mark Hamill and Ving Rhames. It's a great kids' film and anyone who watches it will want Stephanie Hsu's Vontra to die a thousand horrible deaths, if that is even possible for an evil squid-like robot. Good fun with a few belly laughs.

Downward Spiral

With Sofia Falcone alive and well and having just eliminated her family, things are looking up for her, while Oz spends most of the episode thinking he's getting his streets paved with gold; so which one will come out of this on the up? The Penguin just keeps getting better and this week is all about moving - whether it's up or down. Oz thinks he's got everything sown up; Sofia's war with her family is taking her out of his hair and his attention turns to the Maroni family and their mushroom juice production; the problem he has is getting the necessary leverage to get things going his way and for a while it looks like all his plans are coming together. Meanwhile, Vic is charged with looking after Oz's mother, who is not happy with having to be moved to one of the shittiest parts of Gotham, for her own safety. Sofia opts to change the family name and teams up with an unexpected new partner, all in the name of getting rid of the Penguin. Oz shows Vic an old Gotham secret, which might make a great HQ for his own crime empire. It's setting itself up for an interesting final three parts.

Witchy Women

Another B+ episode largely down to the fact that Agatha takes very much a back seat in this again. This time its really all about Lilia (Patti LuPone), the 450 year old divination witch and the part she has to play in the grand scheme of this thing. It's very much a time-bending episode as we flash back and forth between Lilia's past and the last six episodes when some of Lilia's actions seemed a bit weird. Once you get a grasp of what is happening here you understand what is going on - at least for this particular witch and her ability to live moments of her life out of sequence. The team are in a castle full of falling swords and there's a tarot reading that needs to be done, but just who is the reader and who is the person the reading is about? There's a few more revelations and some unexpectedly easy (and slightly disappointing) endings. The few moments where Agatha is in it are yet again the most tortuous even if she's dressed up as the wicked witch from Wicked. I know it's unlikely to be the case, but it almost feels as though by the time they got to these last few episodes the people behind the making of it realised that Kathryn Hahn is a one note actress who does annoying far better than anything else. Still, only two episodes to go and there's at least one member of the coven we haven't focused on, so with a bit of luck we'll be reduced to just having Agatha take the main stage in the final part.

Quite Exasperating 

QI [XL] is back for its 22nd series and as you would imagine very little has changed. When the last series started, I was of the opinion that it felt like it was getting a bit stale, that the end of the alphabet couldn't come soon enough and with this new season we reach the letter V and I very much haven't changed my mind on this. It's still thoroughly entertaining TV, but the belly laughs are few and far between now and this was no exception; Joe Lycett, Lou Sanders and the very funny Nabil Abdulrashid joined Alan Davies and Sandy Toksvig for this first week and with a line up as surreal and abstract as these comedians can be you would have expected more, but it was just Abdulrashid who was on the ball and even he felt a little restrained. With the U series, there were a couple of exceptions that really stood out and hopefully the V series will have a better strike rate, but this just fell a little short.

Drowning in the Pee of Love

It had been almost 35 years since we watched the Al Pacino erotic thriller Sea of Love... What a strange sentence - Al Pacino erotic thriller... sounds like a Jack Nicholson slapstick comedy or a Robert De Niro superhero film; it just doesn't sound right and guess what? It didn't and doesn't really work. Pacino plays Frank Keller, a cop in his late 40s who is eligible for retirement, is borderline alcoholic and has had a messy divorce where his ex-wife is now married to a fellow police officer, possibly even his own ex-partner - it's difficult to say because it isn't made particularly clear. He gets involved in a murder case, one which might be the work of a serial killer, as men who advertise in lonely hearts sections of magazines are murdered in their beds with a shot to the back of the head. The police think it might be a female serial killer and when John Goodman, a cop from Queens comes to Manhattan with a death that has the same MO, the investigation ramps up a gear as they go all out to find the woman doing the killings.

Enter Ellen Barkin, an attractive blonde woman who might be the killer, the problem is Pacino is attracted to her and before you know it they're making the beast with two backs and he's thrown caution to the wind. What follows is a psychological thriller that is neither psychological or thrilling, perpetuates this 1980s vibe of misogyny, female exploitation and bad hair styles. There are a bunch of actors in this who we know from stuff 20 years down the line and look extremely young - cameos from Samuel L Jackson (being Samuel L Jackson), John Spencer (Leo from the West Wing), Richard Jenkins (from Six Feet Under and many other things) and Michael Rooker (Guardians of the Galaxy and The Walking Dead). Pacino just overacts his way through a stodgy story that probably wouldn't be considered for a film in 2024, probably due to advanced police procedures and dating apps. I remembered this being a good film in 1989; 35 years later it's below average at best.

It's Grimm in Portland

We really enjoy Grimm; it's a good laugh and fills a void left by a number of supernatural themed shows. However, it's also a really awful show, where whoever writes it has more knowledge of pidgin German than police procedures, in a major city that seems to have just one police station, where no one really follows any kind of procedure. One thing that is clear though, with season four it was obvious NBC was having something of a success with the show, so the special effects budget got severely ramped up - it's just a shame about the quality of the scripts or the depth of ideas in the plots. It also seems to be following a similar path as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with the formation of a 'team' to battle bigger problems; the [brief] introduction of another, less sophisticated Grimm and subplots that, on the face of it, seem better than the ones we already have. I will say one thing totally in its favour, as season four winds on the story really starts to get very good and if it wasn't so poorly put together you'd be hard pressed to compare it with anything else; stuff happens that leaves you hoping that the show writers don't wimp out on us. Less than 50 to go. 

Trailer Trash

Several years ago, I discovered Simon Stålenhag via his website https://www.simonstalenhag.se/ - which if you haven't seen you should check it out. He's an artist who specialises in the future and his paintings are a mixture of mind-blowing, disturbing and extraordinary. He's probably best known for the adaptation of one of his graphic novels Tales From the Loop, which was on Channel four about five years ago and, frankly, didn't live up to the hype (although it still has a very high rating on IMDB).

I'd pretty much forgotten about Stålenhag until the trailer for the new Netflix film The Electric State dropped and I was filled with a mixture of anticipation and dread... Anticipation because it looks absolutely fantastic - the Russo Brothers knocking the look out of the park - and the dread because it stars Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt. The latter isn't really the problem, it's Brown, who I've mentioned in blogs passim, I have the problems with. She doesn't do bad films, but equally they're not good films either. They sort of inhabit the grey area in between. The other problem is the original graphic novel was sombre, disturbing and not at all an action-packed blockbuster that this appears to be. Also Stålenhag's name isn't attached so that could be because he's disowned the project...  The Electric State is out next March and I imagine the money that's been spent on it, Netflix will want it to be a massive hit and I'm sure it will be. It appears to be the story of a young woman who doesn't want to be detached from the world like her peers and wants to go and find her missing brother. The backdrop of this is a world that once embraced robots, but now despises them. She teams up with Pratt to find the missing sibling but appears to get involved in a war between the controlling humans and the remaining robots - who appear to be far more benign than they're depicted as. I want this film to be good. 

... Meanwhile, it looks 99.9% certain that the MCU's Blade film has been cancelled, or, at best, been indefinitely delayed. What was supposed to be part of the Phase 6 of the MCU is unlikely to be replaced with anything in the schedule and it now looks as though 2025 will feature just the three films: Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, and The Fantastic Four, with 2026 likely to be Avengers: Doomsday and maybe one other picture, possibly another sequel to an existing property. There is a rumour circulating that World War Hulk might be on the cards as well as a Young Avengers movie, while some are speculating it might be the third Doctor Strange film. If you want my, usually accurate, assessment, Doomsday will set up Avengers: Secret Wars (in 2027) and there will be no other films and while I'm confident about this, I will add the caveat that there might be another film taking place between the two, possibly a fourth Spider-Man film, but that depends on how long Tom Holland is involved with the new Christopher Nolan project and how it would fit into the new streamlined look for the MCU. Alternatively, there is a chance that in 2027 we might see an MCU X-Men film as I expect Disney will want to take the BIG film only route with the MCU now...

A Weak Cup of Tea

The malaise that set in last week didn't go away with this week's double bill of Teacup. The first part was a 45 minute episode that told the story about what happened at the other ranch and how the original guy in the mask and his mates got into alien hunting. This is a slightly ridiculous load of horse shit; I really didn't want it to be but by the end of that 45 minutes I'd torn the premise and the episode to shreds. This is truly dreadful television that rips off The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and really atrociously. It desperately needs to conclude with the two finale parts or I'm definitely not going to be tempted back for a second season. I simply can't believe how bad the pacing is; how stupid the people are and... actually, I need to give you an example of the people and their stupidity... They've worked out that both the bad alien and the good alien transfer themselves into a new host, so they realise that they should never be alone, so they promptly go out into the dark and almost every single one of them is alone at some point.

I had such hopes for this; my mate Mark sounded like he was looking forward to it and it originally had a really high score of IMDB. It's now at 6.8 there, my mate hasn't mentioned it - hopefully he's read these reviews over the last three weeks and decided it would be a waste of valuable time and I'm just disappointed that I've wasted nearly three hours of my life on something that has deteriorated profoundly over the last two weeks. I'm also sad that the excellent Chaske Spencer is involved; Yvonne Strahovski hopefully did good things with her pay cheque and Boris McGiver must have wondered why they killed him off in Evil even if he knew it was finishing. I will stick with it until the end of this season, but something astounding needs to happen to save this from being an appalling mess of a show.

Sham-Poo

Adverts are culture, aren't they? In that case, I was in the bath the other night and I spied upon one of the wife's hair products; Herbal Essence's Repair, a conditioner that claims to help revitalise and repair damaged hair. Now, I'm not quite sure how that works, but who am I to argue with hair product specialists, especially when they come up with groovy ingredients like Boswellox, which is a derivative of boswellic acid [no, me neither] or Argon oil, which I presume is the oil from argons (or a singular argon) ... However, I was looking at this hair conditioner and I noticed the legend across the front, which reads: "96% Natural Origin." Which begs the question, what are the other 4% made of? Would that be 4% unnatural origin or maybe even 4% supernatural origin? "Our new shampoo has essence of ghosts in it, to make your hair more ethereal!" Or maybe, "This new conditioner contains 4% Werewolf!" or "Our new hair product range contains 4% of things that are strange and slightly frightening!" The thing is Herbal Essence doesn't tell us what the other 4% is and that's scary...

Next Time...

Anything above that hasn't finished; we might get around to watching more than two films (a lot of this week has been taken up with watching half a season of Grimm) and with the clocks going back nothing will affect our usual TV watching, not even the advent of winter... Why is TV at the moment either outstanding or abysmal?

Modern Culture - The Joke's On You

This has some hinted at spoilers and some spoilers pertaining to source material, but frankly if my general vagueness gives anything away then you're a lot cleverer than wot I is...

No Uncle Remus

In the film world there's two kinds of Alien movies - good ones and shite ones. For most of Alien: Romulus you have to include it in the first category, even if most of the actors sound like they've walked off the set of Eastenders and there's a sense of inevitability about everything that happens.

However, something goes wrong with this movie in the final quarter, but we'll get to that. Cailee Spaeny, last seen in Civil War and an actor making a name for herself for playing teenagers, despite her 26 years, works on a mining colony planet, with her 'brother' - a simulant played by David Jonsson - and desperately wants to get off. The problem is the company she works for - Weyland-Yutani - likes to move goalposts and after she's worked the requisite amount of hours and files for departure, she's told she needs to work another five years before she's eligible, because of changes to company policy. This forces her to look for an alternate route away from the wet, cold hell hole she's likely to die on, so she teams up with a few friends and decides to salvage fuel from a deserted space station orbiting the planet they're on. The plan is to dock with the station, take the extra fuel that's stored there and leave the mining colony for the Varga system where they can live away from the Weyland-Yutani controlled company that treats them like slaves. Weyland, as you will remember was the name of the company first seen in the first  two Alien films and a recurring nightmare for anyone who has ever encountered them. Everything goes smoothly until the two men and the android get stuck in a chamber where extra fuel is stored. 

From this point on we enter familiar Alien territory - face huggers and many full grown xenomorphs running riot on the derelict station with our crew of young escapees trying to save their own lives. There are some neat twists that do more than nod at the original film, such as a CGI Ian Holm as a version of the character he played in Ridley Scott's original. Some of the dialogue is excellent, not because it's original but because it mimics both the first film and James Cameron's sequel. Then, with 20 minutes left on the clock and in need of an even bigger and better finale, the director Fede Alvarez borrows from the fourth Alien film - Alien: Resurrection - the one with Sigourney Weaver as a super-powered clone of her original self and this film kind of goes off the rails big time because of that. While the homage to the original films works, when it gets into the later stage movies and tries to tip the hat to these it really loses itself especially when there's even a wink towards Prometheus - a film that should be consigned to a hole in the ground. I see what the director was trying to do but I wish he'd simply kept it simple and just paid tribute to Scott and Cameron's films. The problem is, without giving too much away, I think they've used up every method to get rid of aliens, so it felt like they were re-treading old ideas and it didn't work for me.

Storm in a Teacup

If you read the reviews about the new Peacock series Teacup, you will see a pattern. There are those who liked the opening two episodes and those who disliked them and the majority of those who disliked it disliked it because it's on Peacock. That's the kind of logic that has Americans targeting weather forecasters because of hurricanes. I don't know if I've seen that many Peacock (it's a streaming station connected to NBC I believe) shows, but to condemn a series because of the network it's shown on seems a bit... childish. Anyhow, the majority of all the reviews suggest we're in the territory of other TV shows, such as Lost and the show From - which we watched a couple of episodes of a couple of years ago and gave up on it because it just wasn't terribly good (and it's now on its third season, so what do I know?). 

This is based on Robert McCammon's mid-80s sci-fi horror novel called Stinger, which is about an alien, armed with fabulous technology, in pursuit of an escaped galactic criminal, and tracking him to an area of the USA, which he then encases in a kind of force field and everyone inside is potentially going to die. I have never read the book (I read a McCammon book in the 1970s and thought it so badly written I never bothered again) but this appears to be a loose adaptation with a few new twists. Whatever is trapped inside the blue painted line knows that its pursuer knows where it is, but we take a while to even get close to this deduction because most of the first two episodes is taken up with character development of the people who are obviously going to be the main protagonists, that is until a man in a gas mask turns up and draws the blue painted line and then tells the people inside that they must never cross that line. So naturally a dog and then the wife of the man the dog attacked both cross the line with gory and violence awaiting them. I dunno about it; the first two episodes don't do enough to make me want to commit to it, but it wasn't bad. I just hope we're having a mini-series and not an ongoing thing and that we get some explanations for the weird shit that takes place - like animals trying to commit suicide and all the lights, communication and vehicles stopping working. It has some promise, but I'll wait until episodes three and four - which will be reviewed about... now...

Here's the thing; sometimes I ponder rewriting entire reviews because first impressions are not always the best gauge of things. The last thing I expected was another two episodes to fall, but it seems to be a thing at the moment for stations and streaming platforms to drop two at a time for a few weeks before finishing with a weekly schedule. So by the time we finished episode four, we were halfway through the first season and I was thinking considering there's about two hours of this left, we're not going to see a conclusion because while we're starting to get a picture of what's happening, we're no closer to any kind of resolution or understanding of what is going on. Yes, we've worked out that this might be alien in origin and we discover that some people are not villains and others are. It might be a case that the alien being tracked is a good guy and that it seems there are far more people inside this series that know what's going on than the viewer or the two families trapped inside the blue line.

It's all a bit meh, to be honest. I feel bad about this admission especially if you reread the first paragraph of this review. I wanted it to prove to those who disliked it because of the streaming platform that they shouldn't be so prejudiced about the delivery method, but after four parts I'm not really feeling any love for this. Parts three and four introduce us to the antagonist and we discover that there's a kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers thing going on with both antagonist and protagonist being able to move from different bodies. There's also something going on at a neighbouring farm that looks as though it's a warning of what's going to happen to the crew we're supposed to be invested in. And all the while all of this alien weirdness, animal degloving and blood is going on, the two families back at the ranch appear to still be wrapped up in their own personal lives, despite all this weirdness and death going on. I'm not giving up on it, but equally I'm not holding much hope that in a few weeks time I'll have any inclination to watch a second season, if it happens.  

Cash Strapped

The second half of the sixth season of Brassic has that almost traditional dip in quality - for the last few series at least, the middle few episodes (#3-5), usually rely on slapstick comedy, unrealistic scenarios and are often Vinnie-lite. It's like each seven episode season should really be four 75 minute episodes to include the essential plot bits that are scattered around otherwise throwaway episodes. However, oddly enough, while obviously fillers as we await the usual grand finale and cliffhanger, the Naked Cult episode at least was quite amusing, even if it got a bit silly at the end, while the huge revelation about Carol and Cardy's marriage was a mixture of utterly stupid and quite brilliant, with Tom Hanson (Cardy), who has been in every single episode along with Joe Gilgun, finally being given an opportunity to act and be centre stage, even if it was in slightly tragic circumstances. 

After these came a colossal space filler, giving Aaron Effernan (Ash) the centre stage for the second time in this series. In the Naked cult episode he strutted round stark bollock naked for most of the episode and this time his masculinity and his homosexuality are put to the test, but it all felt like more treading water before the inevitable ending/finale. It is good to have Doctor Chris (Dominic West) back, even if it's obvious that he filmed his few scenes all at the same time and they were cut into later episodes. The finale was everything we've grown to expect from Brassic, except for one thing... I think it was actually the final episode. I think we've seen the last of Brassic. Why? Well, it ends on an actual cliffhanger - playing out a joke that has been long running across the previous five season finales. Vinnie's problems - outside of his own mental health - get sorted. Someone important dies and has two funerals and Vinnie walks out on Doctor Chris, declaring him not very useful. It was touching in places, was full of the usual daftness and all the gang were there, for the last time; even Dylan - after a fashion. Goodbye Brassic, it's been fun.

How To Send Someone Mad

Episode four of The Penguin was all about Sofia Falcone (the quite gorgeous Cristin Milioti) and how she came to be where she is today... It starts with the bits from the end of episode three we didn't see - a revelation that throws the rest of the series and Oz's safety into serious doubt. Then it flashes back to Sofia's work for a mental health charity and how, as the only straight member of the Falcone family she was a rising star in the right circles of Gotham's elite. However it goes wrong for her when she meets up with a journalist who wants to know how come a number of women who work in Falcone clubs have all ended up the same way as Sofia's mother. This leads the female Falcone to begin to realise that something is wrong about her family and her mother's apparent suicide. What follows is nearly an hour of the most fraught and disturbing episode by far, as we discover how Sofia became The Hangman, what an absolute shit her father (Mark Strong) was and what 10 years in Arkham Asylum can do to a lovely free-spirited young woman. This was head and shoulders the best episode so far and The Penguin was in it for about four minutes as we see how he betrayed the woman he was looking after and how, if there's any justice, she should eventually get her revenge - however unlikely that is going to be.

How's Your Father?

The conclusion of the fourth series of Slow Horses felt like slightly unfinished business. It has been, as usual, one of the best things on TV and there are a couple of things that happen, especially in the finale, that will probably have you cheering at the TV while quietly looking at yourself. This season has absolutely whizzed past, but that might be because only one episode is over 45 minutes long. It started with a suicide bomb at a shopping mall in central London and goes down a maze until we discover a few very unexpected things about some of the Slow Horses. If I have to be honest, it's probably been the most ... strange... season so far; not because it wasn't very good, but because there seems to be plots left dangling where they are usually cleared up. Such as what happens to Hugo Weaving's 'cult' leader and what the score with the new First Desk is. It felt like it could have done with an extra episode just to properly fill in some of the vagueness you might be left feeling. Gary Oldman, as usual, is brilliant and Jack Lowden does another sterling job as River, who discovers a family secret that has far reaching repercussions for the whole of MI5. This wasn't the best of the four series so far, but it's still better than most things I will watch.

West Wing Wormhole

At some point in the coming months, the wife and I are going to rewatch The West Wing. We'd been toying with it for a while, but lots of other things get in the way and we're talking about seven seasons and over 150 episodes, but I expect it will be worth it. Ironically, once we decided to watch it again, I discovered The West Wing Channel on the Tube of You and promptly fell down a massive rabbit hole watching a succession of 5 minute clips from all seven seasons. It has simply made my enthusiasm for rewatching it grow.

A Folly

I'm not suggesting I'm some kind of prophet or oracle, but I did say, in these pages, about a year ago that the idea of a Joker sequel being a musical sounded like possibly one of the most ridiculous ideas I've ever heard and a guarantee it fails - especially in the current comic book film market. So, it appears that Joker: Folie à Deux has been a catastrophic failure, with audiences staying away in droves and the film is set for an early release on streaming sites. The movie with Joachim Phoenix reprising his role as Arthur Fleck - the Joker - and Lady Gaga [real name: Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta] as a version of Harley Quinn, was one of the most highly anticipated films of 2024, especially given the success of the first film, but it has been described as 'boring' 'execrable' and has one of the lowest ratings on IMDB for a major comic book film, currently sitting at 5.3 after nearly 75k reviews and ratings. I have to say that when I heard about it, my first thought was 'I don't know if I want to watch that' and now that has changed to 'I don't want to watch that.' 

Time's Arrow

You see, this is where the importance of me NOT spoiling a movie becomes an imperative, because if I tell you much about Caddo Lake I will be spoiling a bloody excellent film for you. Dylan O'Brien plays a guy in his 20s called Paris who is trying to recover from the death of his mother after she drives off of a bridge spanning Caddo Lake. Paris works in the lake, helping clear away debris and junk that has washed up. Meanwhile, Ellie (Eliza Scanlen) is a teenager who constantly fights with her mother (Lauren Ambrose), especially about the mysterious disappearance of her father, but these arguments stop when her step-sister Anna goes missing. While Ellie helps search for her sister, Paris is searching for answers about his mother, but no one wants to give him what he wants. As the two people get closer to discovering the truth, their lives start to become completely entangled without either of them ever meeting... And that is as much as I'm going to tell you. This is a fantastic mystery that I urge you to go into with as little knowledge as you can; if you see it's on, watch it, don't even read anything on IMDB, watch trailers or anything - just watch the film and see if you can work it out as it goes along. Personally, I think it's one of the best films I've seen this year and as a cryptic clue, when you've seen it you will understand why I rate it so highly. It has more twists and turns than a switchback race track and when you do start to realise what is happening you're already totally committed. Fabulous. 

The Hahn Problem

The sixth episode of Agatha All Along was, for 35 of the 42 minutes, the best one so far. However, this was because there was no Kathryn Hahn. Let me try and explain this... The worst thing about Agatha All Along is Agatha. She is just a fucking horrible character and Hahn is an incredibly annoying actor. There's this massive elephant in the room and it's the only thing in this series that was in WandaVision. There's also the fact that Hahn reminds both the wife and I of a woman who lives near us who is really annoying, self-centred and narcissistic, so watching this series just feels a little like having to be stuck in a room with someone we both detest...

This week it was Teen's origin story, as we discover that he was originally William Kaplin, a 13-year-old Jewish boy enjoying his bah-mitzvah and discovering from a fortune teller that something is about to go seriously wrong in his life. Little did anyone expect that the something serious would be him dying in a car crash about ten minutes later. We find out who casts the spell over him making it impossible for him to reveal his true identity, which is what he becomes when young imaginary Billy Maximoff 'possesses' William Kaplin the moment he dies. We then follow Billy as he tries to find out who he is and why. Along the way we meet Evan Peters again - you remember him, he was the guy who Wanda made her brother Pietro, but was also Pietro in the Fox X-Men films (just to muddy already murky waters). We also discover that Billy is now gay (is it that Billy Maximoff is gay and has made William Kaplin also gay or is it the other way around?) and he's also possibly some kind of witch. I mean, whatever he is, it was an entertaining episode until the back story caught up with the series and he broke into Agatha's house, then it just got fucking annoying again. This would have been so much better had they called it something else and never employed Kathryn Hahn again - she's just ghastly.

Not the West Wing

What better way to enjoy a dreich Friday night than to curl up with a warm and comforting film from the 1990s. This West Wing rabbit hole I'm still trying to crawl out of was widened slightly when I was reminded of Aaron Sorkin's first foray into the world of US politics, when he wrote the Rob Reiner movie The American President, a film that pretty much was a test run for the TV series that would come five years later.

Watching this 1995 feature was a little like trying to get two similar illustrations to marry up to each other. The number of West Wing alumni in this was remarkable, including Martin Sheen as the President's chief of staff and Joshua Malina and Anna Deavere Smith in back up roles. There was someone else in it who would return to the White House a few years later, but I was so wrapped up in remembering this excellent film that I didn't keep a scorecard. Michael Douglas plays Andy Shepherd, a widowed POTUS who falls in love with Sydney Wade, a lobbyist, played by Annette Bening and then has to deal with the fall out of him having a relationship with a woman while the prospective Republican candidate (Richard Dreyfuss) spends most of the movie smearing his opponent - so far so pretty realistic. Honestly, this was made in 1995 (probably a year earlier) and even 30 years ago Republicans were just essentially a bunch of lying worthless cunts who will say anything to get elected and know full well that 50% of Americans will believe any bullshit that spews from their gobs.

Obviously, there's more to this than just a love story. it's at times a hilarious comedy; it paints this picture of a President's administration being about the team rather than the man and focuses on climate change 30 fucking years ago, when the USA really should have been doing something about it (and look at us now, with a prospective Republican madman hoping to win the ticket decrying climate change as a myth). If I was handing out ratings for films this would get a solid 8, but on IMDB it sits at 6.8 and that's largely down to anti-Democratic viewers leaving nasty, spiteful and vindictive reviews because they can't differentiate between real life and fiction. We're heading towards one of those crucial moments in history when the USA decides in November whether they want a bright orange Shitler or a black woman as President. There shouldn't even be a contest, really, but I don't know if the world has stopped making stupid, suicidal decisions yet. This film just reminds us that once upon a time we hoped for altruistic nice guys as leaders of the free world.

Next Time...

Shrinking, Teacup, Agatha, The Penguin, and some other stuff, no doubt. I want to watch The Wild Robot because it looks good and still has an 8.4 rating on IMDB even after 75k ratings and there's a couple of other recent films on the FDoD such as Speak No Evil and Bookworm - it all depends on what's out and whether we can fit it in.

 

Pop Culture - A 'Slow' Week

It's mostly about TV this week. I've tried to avoid spoilers but I might not...

The MI5 Run-Around

As we have grown accustomed, Slow Horses starts off with one thing and invariably will end up somewhere else entirely. This superb show is anything but predictable, however there is an element of predictability in the opening episode of the fourth season... 

Gary Oldman is back as Jackson Lamb, the guy running the department where all failed spies go to waste away until they die or get killed off. But of course, as we've discovered, Lamb has apparently no time for his team, everyone thinks they're shite and yet they seem to spend more time solving MI5 problems than MI5 does and this is likely to be another one of those cases. The new series kicks off with Jonathon Pryce (River Cartwright's grandfather, David, who is suffering from early stages of dementia) accidentally killing his grandson with a shotgun, except when Lamb is called to identify the body of his most able bodied but accident-prone team member, he seems less than bothered - usual par for the course antics from a man who makes the Steptoe brothers look well kept. It soon becomes clear that someone wants David Cartwright dead and as he used to be First Desk - ie: head of MI5 - this could be important.

Obviously, MI5 are way behind everyone else, except for Kristin Scott Thomas's Diana Taverner, who hasn't become First Desk like we expected her to be, but is running around sorting out the new #1's problems because he's got chocolate teapot written all over him. She suspects something is going on, but apart from River's apparent death doesn't think this is a Slough House thing. Meanwhile, Jackson has already visited Saskia Reeves' Standish and worked out most of what is happening and mobilised his team of misfits into doing some work. Jackson has a new PA who has already pissed him off - just by being there - and there's a new team member who doesn't appear to do anything and seems deeply disturbed. It's great to have it back. I'll conclude my review next week.

Second Thoughts

This week was all about Victor (Rhenzy Feliz); the boss's apprentice in The Penguin. Oz's young assistant, recruited because Oz could see something of himself in the stuttering young Hispanic, is at a crossroads in his life and has to make some decisions. This played out by looking at Vic's days before the flood and before Gotham's fall. Things didn't seem that bad for him - loving family, girlfriend and mates. Then the Riddler came along and anyone who doesn't have money in Gotham has been paying the price ever since. This episode was really more about decisions than actions. In this case, specifically Vic's reasons for being Oz's new kid; Oz's reasons for now being on Sofia's side (or is he?) considering his betrayal of her a decade earlier and the reasons both want revenge over the wide Falcone empire. This week includes extortion, double crosses and admissions of guilt, but it's just part of the long game. The only problem I have with this is Sofia might be a psychopath but she's as sharp as a razor and some of Cobb's moves can't be going over her head quite as far as they appear to be...

Afterthought

You remember the other week when I was filling space by talking about shit I won't watch, anime with ridiculous names and ... oh yes, talking about anime with ridiculous names, does anyone fancy a season of As a Reincarnated Aristocrat I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World? Who knew? Aristocrats have an appraisal skill; that's what they do! I mean, is life so fucking exciting in Japan that they make boring anime as anti-dopamine for the masses?

Stretch Armstrong

I think Ryan Gosling is a lucky man because he is a film star, a veritable A lister, and yet, by and large, he comes across as really fucking dull, so who better to play Neil Armstrong. First Man is a biopic of the first man on the moon and I'm amazed it weighs in at over two hours, because Armstrong was never a charismatic individual and always came over as a bit boring - almost the perfect choice for first man on another planet - no hyperbole from Neil. It's not an exciting film as you can imagine because you know everything that's going to happen, it's just the bit beforehand that we weren't really clear about. I don't know if this is factually accurate; I can't say if Armstrong and his first wife had a strained relationship (they lasted another 25 years after he walked on the moon) and I don't know if he dropped beads belonging to his dead daughter on the surface. I didn't really care, to be honest. I don't know what I expected really; I knew about NASA and the moon landings and I knew Armstrong was as exciting as watching paint dry. I shouldn't be disappointed that his biopic was meh.

Shameless Copy?

The entertaining thing about Brassic when it started was how it felt like a derivative, there was a charm that made it feel more authentic, not a knock off. Then, at almost the perfect time, ten minutes from the conclusion of season four, it really looked like they were going to wrap it all up and let Vinnie and his chums go their own way, we got a cliffhanger epilogue and everything changed.

It was from that fourth season that things changed. Joe Gilgun started to sound like he wanted to be somewhere else; Damien Molony wanted to be somewhere else, so he did and Michelle Keegan's bright future had come to a stuttering halt - Brassic was now the only thing she had left. There was also a massive drop off of Dominic West from that point as well - he's Vinnie's psychiatrist and large buyer of weed as well as being so much more at times... The thing is, Brassic had its faults but it was fun, even the serious subplots had a pantomime feel about them, but with season five, to try and reinvigorate things and to try and replace what they'd lost, they started to delve into the worlds of Vin's supporting crew and the thing is you don't need to do that. Vinnie has dodgy mates, we don't need to know how they got dodgy.

Plus and especially last series, I started to get increasingly hacked off with the filming schedule and the subsequent editing. What is it with Northern dramas and television? Is it not possible to shoot things chronologically any longer? In the opening episode - a jaunt to Dublin for a 'Fools and Horses' styled 'heist' episode - the filming took place in the spring, summer, autumn and winter and was then spliced together. It might be a small and simple thing but it is disconcerting if you notice it.

There is a familial comfort about this series, but I no longer think it has the strong characters it once had. However, this new season appears to be an ongoing plot inside of an existing narrative - if you know what I mean - there were many questions left unanswered at the end of season five and so far each episode has dealt with one of those questions, while simultaneously introducing new stories that help the story flow. The wife said, 'this is better than the last series, isn't it?' and she's probably right; it does feel as though some of the mojo has been rediscovered. We're halfway through, the remaining episodes will be talked about next week.

Cheated?

The extremely strange Outer Range, the time travel, black hole, neo-western series starring Josh Brolin was cancelled in July; after two seasons and a massive cliffhanger, Amazon pulled the plug on the show leaving anyone who followed it (and enjoyed it) a little disappointed. Brolin said in an interview recently that he'd like to see the story concluded but it was unlikely to happen in the current climate.

This was a TV show with big bucks and big stars but was a difficult watch at times because you never really had a clue where things were going. Brolin played Royal Abbott, the head of a family of ranchers, who it seems came out of nowhere in the 1970s and was adopted by the Abbott family. On his land is a black hole; a seeming portal to different times and alternate existences. Included in this was his wife played by Lili Taylor, his two sons - Lewis Pullman and Tom Pelphrey and his grand daughter played by Olive Abercrombie and Imogen Poots. The biggest problem the Abbots have, apart from themselves, is the Tillerson family who own the next door farm and want to acquire the land where the mysterious hole is. By the end of season two it was more like a game of time-related snakes and ladders than a straight forward narrative, but it was a cracking series that felt like a re-imagining of the brilliant German time travel series Dark - despite there being absolutely nothing to suggest this other than the time travel business. Hopefully someone will come along and try and get a final season made, but with many of this show's stars having moved onto bigger and greater projects, I expect that will be unlikely.

Agatha OMG

Do you know, I almost forgot I watched this, it is having such a profound effect on me... One thing is certain about episode five of Agatha All Along is the comedy (what little there was) was drained away with this, rather dark and foreboding instalment.

This is still dull and little boring, although we're learning some things, a couple of them should not surprise anyone. Agatha is an absolute bitch; she's a bad guy and no one has anything decent to say about her. She uses people, manipulates them and then 'absorbs' anything positive from a situation and turns it into her advantage and all of her coven knew this but they still came along for the ride. The biggest problem this show has apart from very little happening is the absence of jeopardy and threat. None of the characters - apart from Agatha - have been seen before, therefore no one has any investment in them and subsequently when one 'dies' it's more of a shrug moment than anything else. The underlying mystery of who 'Teen' is might be interesting now it's clear he isn't Agatha's sacrificed son, especially the closing scene of this part, which suggests he's going to be one of the Romanov twins - the children Wanda had in WandaVision but, of course, were just constructs from her warped and damaged mind. To be honest, that works for me because we're talking magic here and I figure it's a template for 'no holds barred, we can do anything'. 

This week was also another opportunity for the cast to dress up in groovy, multi-coloured outfits like they're about to appear on a 1980s Noel Edmonds TV show. There were also some nods to other MCU films that include magic in them and the Salem Seven showed up again - a genuinely scary bunch of characters, I'm hoping they offer some resistance in the closing four parts because at the moment they're a creepy looking damp squib. This series will not go down as a glorious success.

Next Time...

It's been a busy week and most of the TV viewing has been parts of boxsets. Next week, as well as the latest instalments of Agatha All Along and The Penguin, there will conclusions for Brassic and Slow Horses. In the queue waiting to be watched are season two of The Old Man, that 2022 HBO series Let The Right One In, there's also Grotesquerie and Teacup to be started. We left Grimm at the end of season three with a cliffhanger, but we're trying to have some variety in what we're watching, so we might try and go another week without dipping back into creepy Portland...

There are films on the FDoD and on the set top box hard drive; Caddo Lake and Speak No Evil are two films recently released that will be prioritised over the older stuff. It will be what it will be and you'll be the first to see it, next Saturday...

 

Modern Culture - Blood and Blunders

Frankly, this once, I don't give a shit about spoilers...

BoredPool and Dullverine

It has been almost a year since the last Marvel/MCU film. That was the woefully poor The Marvels, which was considerably worse than I thought it was going to be. You might also note that usually I give an entire column over to the latest MCU film, but this once I thought, 'Ah fuck it. It can slum it with the rest of the shite.'

Honestly? Deadpool & Wolverine is not a good film. It actually gets quite boring after a while as it lurches from one set piece to another; a movie in search of a fathomable story. It rides roughshod over some Marvel history and has unnecessary cameos, which felt more like who they could get rather than anyone top quality or they would have liked. Yes, Chris Evans is good, but where are the other members of this FF? Or any of the others for that matter? The TVA, in this, have driven a Mad Max styled car through the excellent Loki series with their appearance and Matthew McFadyen's Mr Paradox is far too slimy to be anything other than a twat. When you have the third part of a trilogy (albeit one that no one saw coming for a few years) you'd expect it to feel like it was some kind of special event. This felt like they got loaned one of the old location sites used for Doctor Who shows in the 1970s and ran wild with it. Huge swathes of this make no sense at all - absolutely nothing. Why were the army of other Deadpools so determined to kill 'our' Wade and his Wolverine? Is that dog for real and if so was it painful? I felt like I needed to write a concerned letter to the Kennel Club. What about the 'villain' - the bald twin sister of Charles Xavier, introduced in the comics after my time and... um... why is she bald? Charlie lost his hair when he was young to something un-mutant related, so why is his twin sister bald? It was for the look and the style, wasn't it? Bald lady villain look good!!!

This was a truly awful movie. The first LOL moment for me came 100 minutes into it and while there was a second inside the following ten minutes, this is a poor return for a 'franchise' that prides itself on its comedy and despite the first two films being okay, they were far funnier than this. D&W really did feel as though it was written with the exact brief of simply being more Deadpool [Read: Ryan Reynolds] than the first two. I mean, if there was ever a place to use as a dumping ground for bad ideas - Kang maybe? - or a place to literally show where bad ideas go to die, this film could have done it and claimed afterwards that while it was a piss take, the actual continuity in it is proper. Anyhow after all this nonsense, Deadpool remains on his own timeline, which he has made healthier - gosh and darn - and with a heap of luck we may never see a fourth film ever materialise or hopefully an X-Men movie ever again. There's this pained expression on Huge Ackman's face for most of the movie, like he was doing this for a favour and the money wasn't good enough to assuage the feeling of having been conned by an old buddy. What astounds me is the 8 rating on IMDB; the fact that people liked this heap of shite even though it was an incoherent mess of guts and shit. Remember when other people said 'normal' people reviews were the true reflection of a movie because there was no vested interest in it for the reviewer? That's a crock of shit. If you haven't seen this and were considering it, perhaps go for a curry the night before - have extra poppadums, a naan, a healthy starter and a Vindaloo to take home; drink 17 pints of Guinness, eat lots of lentil snacks and avoid going anywhere near a toilet until you're about to start this film; then take a laxative and run.

Bang the Drum

It was a big film 10 years ago. I think it won an Oscar or two and everything from the subject to the way it was played out won kudos and praise from Hollywood and it barely ever registered on my radar. A film about sadistic drum teachers and subservient pupils doesn't really sound like a riveting thing and to be honest, it wasn't that interesting.

It's clear from almost the first minute of Whiplash that Miles Teller wanted to be a brilliant drummer, so that he would help his cause to get there he would allow himself to be mentally abused on a daily basis while simultaneously being treated like a piece of shit isn't really that different from real life, except JK Simmons plays the teacher with a casual cruelty that's about maximum hurt. In fact, it becomes clear this is simply an allegory for any kind of 'domestic' abuse, even down to the desire to return to it even if it is bad for you, the highs are so much better. It is not a likeable film; Teller is weaselly and cold while Simmons is fire and brimstone, in a 'there-could-be-Oscars-in-this-for-us' way and the denouement was a mixture of the sadist and the masochist routine but with a huge nod to how without pain there is no gain. Like I said, not likeable, very American with a message that it is both bad, but good, to live your life this way.

Fishing For a Spark

I doesn't even feel like it was last year we were here talking about the then most recent Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing series and I was suggesting that maybe it needed to go out to pasture, maybe wheel the pair out for a Christmas special every yule where they get sent to ridiculously inhospitable places around the globe as they get older and more likely to have some repeat but deadlier cardiac infarction. So when they concluded said series with a reminder that this wasn't the end of their fishing trips, they were already planning season 6, we all knew that something that probably didn't need to be would be back for another.

The opener took the boys back to Norfolk and in search of tench and carp and it also managed to fit in the chat with the heart doctor who saved Bob's life - as they do every series. One gets the idea that Bob enjoys his couple of weeks filming round the UK with his mate, while Paul has seemed increasingly like he'd rather we doing ten other things - literally. However, that feeling had disappeared slightly with a poignant and slow but graceful episode which saw the boys catch three of the biggest fish we've seen on this show and having done this seems to have allowed Paul Whitehouse to enjoy himself again. There is a strange competition between the two men, one I don't think Bob is aware of, so while Paul was pleased as punch that Bob caught an absolute hefty tench, when he pulled an even bigger one and then a monster carp, there was the sense of competition in his eyes and face. It did feel like it had been given a refresh without doing much than returning to what it became popular for.

Criminal Moves

The Penguin needed to be something extraordinary to pull off even getting close to its first stunning episode and I'm sorry to say it didn't get close. It wasn't bad, but I think I see what the problem is and it makes some sense...

There's this thing in comics that having a run of 6 issues in a popular comic written by different people every month might provide a good idea, but there's going to be something jarring about the stuff that isn't the main story that everyone is sticking with. It's usually dialogue and/or character interaction between each issue that makes it feel a little incongruous. Episode one does such a good job of showing this longstanding knowledge even borderline friendship between Sofia Falcone and Oz, and the conclusion of that episode would have been noted by the Sofia from episode one, but she seemed to be gone in the second part. The interaction between her and Oz was like two strangers at times; conversations you feel would have been had many years before episode one was even thought of. But, meh, it was a small foible that bugged me. Other than that it was yet another episode of Oz causing as much chaos and havoc from inside the Falcone operation while managing never to get the finger pointed at him. I'm hoping that the 'goal' Oz talks about is what is achieved in the coming season and we don't just have HBO trying to recreate the Sopranos using some background Batman cast. 

The Backfire

We return to one of the regular - sometimes rhetorical - questions I ask myself in this blog: why do I believe that The Guardian would direct me towards a good movie when it has systematically failed to do so for the last five years or so? To be honest, the 'newspaper' is batting a very poor 20%, possibly even lower than that, in the 'do I trust the review' game and while this one only got a three-star rank, I entered into it with a degree of, dare I say it, optimism. I don't know why... Could this, for me, be... The Last Straw... ..?

Jessica Belkin has just been promoted to management at her family diner in the arse end of nowhere. She's just discovered she's pregnant, she fucks anything that moves, so the father could be one of a few people and she has an attitude problem that makes you wonder why anyone would want to go near here. On her first night 'in charge' she fires the cook Jake, for no real reason other than she's an arsehole and he's a bit of a twat. She does this because he gets smart about some even wankier idiots who come into the diner and cause a stink. It should have been at this point - about 25 minutes in - when we should have turned it off and watched something else. The acting was poor and there didn't seem to be much of a story. Then the diner is attacked by some dodgy guys on mopeds - possibly the ones who gave her a bad time earlier. Then the film gets turned on its head and even this twist isn't enough to make it better than shite. It's got a 5.3 rating on IMDB; I would have avoided it like the plague, but something about the Guardian review made me think maybe all the people who watched this and realised it was a load of shite, maybe they got it wrong and the Guardian had uncovered a low budget violent thriller that really rocked. Or maybe it would just be like the watery discharge from some one suffering from dysentery, but the Guardian is paid by sadists to tell us crap films are really quite good...

Ring Burner

And so we watched The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for the last time, because we won't be wasting our time if and when they make a third season. It is a television series that looks like it was made by a man who creates fantasy screensavers and backdrops. The dangling plot threads seemed to be 'concluded' in a list - let's start here and work our way through all the different subplots we have running and then we can set things up for the next series and hope we employ someone who knows how to write a fantasy show - and while some died and some not, did I give an actual jot? No I didn't. There were a few nods and winks - the Balrog, Sauron being called LOTR and all the suspense around Galadriel - obviously pointless because we know she's knocking around in a thousand years time, which begs the (unanswered) question about how they're going to pad this series out and what stories will they use. The thing is I don't care. I'm done with it. Dull.

Have You Seen the Witch?

Here's the thing. Marvel doesn't do good quality now; it does Marvel stuff, which covers a shedload of bases and means fuck all in the face of a quality threshold. Agatha All Along is boring, extremely camp, and this week we got another rendition of the witch song from episode one. 

This is simply not that good. It plods along with no real pace, is very wordy and talks about people we have no knowledge of or no interest in; it's either lazy or just not very well thought out. Hahn is borderline annoying and her coven are there to add important link verbiage so she can talk some more about herself or the mysterious new Green witch - Plaza. This week the autumn leaves road takes them to another house, this time to delve into another of the coven's histories and an excuse to dress up and do a sunshine 60s homage pop tune just to ensure the campness is ramped up even higher. MCU TV isn't batting a good average - Loki was superb but they're already ruining that's legacy. The Falcon and Bucky thing was okay and oddly enough WandaVision now feels groundbreaking, the rest are varying degrees of shite, even the ones that you want to like (Ms Marvel) are largely what remains inside a writer's bowels after he's been murdered by a bowel eating killer.  

The Modern Vampire Classic Trashed

If we want to be honest about the two previous Salem's Lot TV mini-series, it would be that neither were that good, probably because they were made for networked TV; so a full-length feature film of the classic modern vampire story and one of Stephen King's seminal offerings seemed like a match made in heaven. Then you hear that it was actually finished in 2021 and a lot of work was 'needed'. I don't think anything was needed apart from maybe a film editor who was allowed to watch the thing he'd been given a pair of scissors to attack. This new film stars Lewis Pullman, my actor du jour and about to grace the Marvel stage as Bob aka Sentry in an upcoming film. He was also Calvin Evans in Lessons in Chemistry and in this he was fantastic. Maybe the reason I'm dwelling on Pullman's past is because this bit of his 'present' stinks like a bucket of fermented shit. In complete honesty, I'm perplexed as to how something like this even gets a release. Has anyone anywhere that writes cheques or gives approval for something or other not seen this? Did they not watch it and go to other people in the chain of this becoming a film and say 'we'd be better off drowning ourselves in buckets of faeces than endorse this amount of digital space'. If you know the story or have seen the other adaptations then do not go anywhere near this; treat it like some idiots have made a Lego version and remind yourself you hate Lego. If you don't know the story then also don't go anywhere near this 'movie'. It will just leave you angry and probably tired; tired of watching so much shit hoping it might be better than you hoped for.

I am genuinely flummoxed by this. It's a truly difficult thing to adapt into anything other than a min-series, yet this was almost all over and done with by the 90th minute. The makers saw fit to add things that were not in the original, yet take other bits out that might have helped the narrative a little. It had clearly been hacked to pieces almost to the point where certain characters literally have no reason. Take Pullman's Ben Mears - in the original, he was drawn back to Salem's Lot because of a scary thing that happened to him in the allegedly haunted Marston House. His arrival in the town coincided with the arrival of the vampires, thus making his 'past issues' now his present issues. He did return to write a book, the thing was he didn't know that, he just used it as an excuse. In the film, he turns up, says he's researching for a new book and you're left with this... emptiness. Mark Petrie in the book was many things, but this story was his journey from point A to Z; in the film he's a plucky little black kid who beats vampire familiar's to death with a poker. The way the film jumps around, people turn up unannounced or some of the dialogue doesn't seem to have any relationship with what's going on suggests that this was an even longer pile of shite and they took a hatchet to it to cut their losses. It has a 5.8 rating on IMDB already, that will drop as it is deserved...

Next Time...

More of the same.