My Cultural Life - Multiple Personality Disorder

What's Up?

So, the press have finally nailed Angela Raynor. They've been after her for five years and they've finally succeeded. Yeah, I know it wasn't really the press wot did it, but they played their part. 

You must all remember all the scandals and corruption that followed the Tories throughout the 14 years of their rule? The cash for questions scandal; the money to mates during Covid for faulty PPE; the parties at Number 10 while the rest of the country had to watch their loved ones die on Zoom; the tax avoidance; the illegal activities and everything else they did and didn't resign or face the scrutiny Raynor has faced.

One wonders if it had anything to do with her being a woman, or a single mother, or a bit left wing, or possibly even the direct way she spoke to opposition MPs? She has always been the kind of loose cannon the Houses of Parliament needed, which, I suspect, is why there has been a Jeremy Corbyn-like destruction of her.

Can you remember the last time the impartial BBC had a news special about some disgraced Tory MP? No you can't, because even when former chancellor Sajid Javid tried to defraud the tax man of £8million there was barely a suggestion from the BBC's political editor the man should be punished. Raynor made a mistake; she should have sort better advice, so she paid £40,000 less tax than she should have and has paid the price. All I can think is in the eyes of the press, other media outlets and the thousands of rabid fuckers out there that £40K is much worse than £8million...

Anyhow, enough of that; grab yourself a cuppa and a few biscuits, it's going to be a choc-a-bloc instalment this week...

An Orgy of Comedy Violence

The phenomenal success of Bob Odenkirk's 2021 film Nobody was always going to spawn a sequel and Nobody 2 is bigger, brasher and altogether more violent while having a cigarette paper thin plot and a succession of stereotypical bad guys all lining up to have the shit kicked out of them or shot by unlikely action hero Hutch (Odenkirk) and his back-up team of adopted brother and pensioner father. This time he's on vacation with his wife and two kids and naturally runs into a huge drug running operation, corrupt cops and the same stuff he couldn't walk away from in the first film. Honestly, this is a really stupid movie and it's enormous fun with almost balletic choreography violence that really doesn't take itself too seriously. It's 90 minutes of blood soaked fun. 8/10

Unfathomable

Gints Zilbalodis made one of the best films I've seen this century with last year's Flow and I finally managed to persuade the wife to watch his first movie Away and I think we're both still a little puzzled about what it was trying to convey. Like last year's animated classic, this is full of animals, all out of context, but it also has a boy, a motorbike and a strange shimmering black giant that appears to eat anything living that it sees. The story starts with the boy hanging from a tree where his parachute has been caught; the giant approaches, attempts to eat him, but the boy escapes by releasing his parachute straps, before running through some Stargate like objects into an area dominated by a beautiful oasis, while the menacing giant remains on the other side of the gate, seemingly unable to follow...

Here the boy finds fruit trees, a pool to drink from and swim in, he also finds a backpack with useful items in, a motorbike and a skeleton. He also finds a young hatchling bird who seems to bond with the boy. He works out that the bike moves faster than the giant, so he eventually - with bird in tow - races past the giant on a journey that will eventually take him to a civilisation marked on the little map which was in the backpack. What follows is a journey into the possibly acid-fuelled imagination of Zilbalodis - with his trademark cats and assortment of odd animals - a giant tortoise, elephants and assorted birds. It was the Latvian's first film and it shows; there's a lack of fluidity about it and when it got weird, it got very weird; I'm not about to even try and explain what it was about, but there was a feeling of jeopardy, especially whenever the strange menacing giant (possibly an allegory for death) was on screen. 6/10

The Thursday Bollocks Club

Jesus H Christ. How can such a bunch of talented actors make such an appallingly bad film? I mean, seriously. This was so much like an episode of Acorn Antiques it even had Celia Imrie in it. Richard Osman actually made money from the book(s) and this film? He fucking robbed Netflix and any idiot who bought his novels; this was abominable and felt like a bad 1970s film that might have starred Robin Asquith or Jim Dale. Absolutely fucking awful and what were Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, David Tennant, Pierce Brosnan, Naomie Ackie and Tom Ellis thinking (as they probably all pocketed shit loads of money for starring in this vomit)? It was just a load of unlikely bollocks in a setting that only exists in the mind of a middle class wanker. The Thursday Murder Club my arse. 1/10

Mergers

A black comedy masquerading as a body horror film - that's essentially what Together is. A film about a couple drifting apart but getting closer all the time. Dave Franco and Alison Brie (real life partners) play the couple who move to the countryside - she's got a job in a rural community as a school teacher - and he's a failed musician who doesn't really have much choice but to join her. As their relationship starts to fall apart, they try to make it work by doing things 'together' and that leads to a hike in the woods and the discovery of something very strange at the bottom of a hole. What follows is the antithesis of a break up, as the two disparate lovers discover that they shouldn't have drunk the water from the weird looking well...

This is an interesting film which rolls along at a reasonable pace and gets stranger the longer its on. There's not much else I can say about it that wouldn't spoil it for you, but it plays down the horror, despite some really gruesome scenes, in favour of a disastrously funny yet tragic love story. It's a movie that ends up worth watching, even if some of the special effects look a bit like a 1980s David Cronenberg film - something like a post modern indie version of Videodrome. 6/10

Cringefest

I can't believe how many times I wanted to hide behind the sofa watching Friendship. It is one of the most awkward and dislikeable movies I have ever watched. It was actually a really decent film but... boy, do I never want to see it again. It stars Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd and Kate Mara and tells the story of a socially sociopathic man, his failing marriage and relationship with his son and the friendship he makes with his new neighbour, which he then quickly destroys. Robinson plays Craig Waterman, an app developer who has no friends, a wife who has recently recovered from cancer and a son who pretty much despises him. He meets Austin Carmichael, a cool new neighbour, who also happens to be a TV weatherman and initially they hit it off big time, but Craig has never been a friends kind of guy and quickly his awkwardness and inability to read the room not only destroys his new friendship but has far reaching consequences for his life. This is a really difficult watch, mainly because you will be switching from incredulity to embarrassment almost continually - when you're not watching it from behind your fingers. The movie, in itself, is relatively flawless; it is well made, the narrative is good but... boy... it's a tough watch and you just want it to finish, from about the ten minute mark. 5/10 

1. The Eagly Has Landed

The second episode of Peacemaker doesn't really move the story forward but does move it sideways enough to be relatively satisfying. Like Alien Earth, I'm finding this slightly more difficult to like than I expected. I mean, season one for all its flaws, was refreshing and exuberant television; this feels like it's missing key ingredients, but I don't know what they are. This second part is really about four things; Economus's job and his new 'handler'; an attack on Chris's house by ARGUS while he's partying with his friends on a rooftop and the disposal of the alternate Chris Smith's body, with the aid of Vigilante. It's also about Chris's slow decent into a breakdown and the decision he's obviously going to make given his dead variant's fantastic life. This just feels like it's missing something...

Split Personalities

I stumbled across a James Mangold film, one of his earliest, starring John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, Rebecca De Mornay, Gary Busey and a bunch of other names and faces you will have seen in any number of films during the noughties. Identity is a dual narrative tale, where the second story isn't as prominent as the first until about the 75 minute mark, when pretty much all is revealed. It's a stormy night in the wilds of Nevada and a bunch of people are all finding themselves caught in the middle of nowhere with only a rundown motel as shelter. Among these people are a washed up actress, a former cop turned limo driver, an actual cop, his prisoner, possibly a Las Vegas call girl and a family. Ten people in all, who gradually get bumped off, one by one...

The second narrative is about the last minute appeal to the Nevada state governor for a convicted mass murderer to be reprieved from his death sentence due to medical evidence that he has a multiple personality disorder. What have the two got in common? Why are the two stories linked? Who are the heroes and who is the villain? This is a tight - 85 minutes - and compact thriller (called a slasher film on IMDB, which it clearly isn't), with a neat twist that doesn't play out to its fullest potential. It wasn't bad and it's easily worth a 6/10, as it's let down by the ending.

For He Is Many

Legion... What a remarkable series. Yes, it floundered a bit at times; there was probably a bit too much weird for weird's sake and a few too many unprompted musical numbers, but in general, I don't think there has ever been a television series like it and FX should have been applauded for green lighting it in the first place and then giving it three seasons. I have watched a shit load of TV and films in my 63½ years, but I don't think I've ever witnessed anything as creepy as the Time Eaters; the consequential other threat in the final season. Like nasty evil little Blue Meanies (from Yellow Submarine), these were without a doubt the most disturbing and scary things I have seen in a very long time, if not ever before. This ended up living up to its name, because, frankly, after the first two seasons, if you didn't know the comicbook character, you might have wondered why it was called Legion. Dan Stevens really was the best person to play David Haller, but as an American - not really. One wonders with a character whose father is clearly English, why he simply wasn't portrayed as an Englishman. It would have added to the distinct alienation theme that series creator Noah Hawley was trying to convey.

This concludes our Marvel TV series (not including animated efforts); we have now seen every live action Marvel related thing available (apart from two episodes of Iron Fart) and this ranks in the top three. I said this before, but if Marvel are really doing an X-Men film in 2028 then they need to look at this for inspiration and the sense that mutants are a very different species from homo sapiens. If you ever get the chance, you should watch this, but I warn you, it's a fabulously confusing and enigmatic show and you won't get it all. It does have an absolutely banging soundtrack throughout the three series, especially some of the cover versions.

Album of the Week?

Okay, this is an album that is 46 years old, by a band who have been derided for many years for being... well, for being Pink Floyd. Yet, after watching Legion and its use of the track Mother, I decided to listen to the album - as an album, rather than selective tracks - for the first time this century. The strange thing is I often play Floyd albums, yet I always swerve past The Wall and I don't really know why. Perhaps it's because it felt overblown and far too 'massive'. It is a double rock opera album after all and Floyd have become anything but cool in the 21st century. I know a lot of people who love their music and very few of them have any time for Floyd after Syd Barrett, so I tend to get involved in arguments about their worth rather than sit down and listen to one of my favourite bands of all time.

Here's the thing. The Wall came out in November/December 1979; the UK music scene was dominated by post-punk and New Wave music and Pink Floyd were 'just a bunch of old hippies.' Yet listening to this album again made me realise that it is probably more relevant in 2025 than it was in 1980. It's themes of abandonment, violence, isolation mixed with a descent into fascism, discrimination and racial prejudice feels like it could be about any teenager/early twenties person in the UK today. It also doesn't feel like an album that was recorded at a time when Margaret Thatcher was PM and the world was once again worried about nuclear war and the rise of unfriendly nations. It feels fresh and vibrant, with lyrics that have transcended the ages. You can find the whole package on the Tube of You and if you're not familiar with the album (apart from Another Brick in the Wall pt2) then give it a listen, especially the words. Roger Walters might be thought of as a bit of a twat, especially by many Pink Floyd fans, but he nailed it with this.

Dull-vergent

The Hunger Games has got a lot to answer for. Once that established itself we had The Maze Runner, Ender's Game and then Divergent, a film about people with ADHD... Well, not quite but it might as well should have been. This is based on Veronica Roth's YA novel, which I suspect was about as interesting as the adaptation and starred Shailene Woodley and Theo James as people who have divergence or something like that. There was a surge in YA novels being adapted during the 2010s and you have to ask yourself why... 

Set in a future Chicago about how mankind is split into five factions, each with a specific role to play to ensure man never has wars again, what it really does is show us that left to its own devices mankind will try and find a way to eradicate some other members of mankind, usually through the differences we have. You could argue that this should have been a good film as it deals with modern themes, but it was just so fucking dull. There was a lack of jeopardy, some of the acting stunk and Kate Winslet dialled her role in as the leader of the people trying to rule Chicago by getting rid of the nice people. The action scenes were really quite meh and when it was all over I'd almost completely forgotten about it by the time I scratched my arse, which was more satisfying. 3/10

In Space, No One is Left

For a change of pace, we return to the Maginot - the ship that crash landed in the opening episode. You remember, it was more like a sailing ship bumping into a harbour than a missile coming in at 1000mph. However, yet again, some of the stuff that critics were complaining about is totally debunked by this episode as we learn about the final days of the ship carrying lots of alien species - all of them deadly - back to Weyland-Yutani so they could do whatever they were going to do with them. Babou Ceesay is excellent again as Morrow, who quickly realises that a) he's fighting a losing battle and b) this isn't an accident that the crew are in this predicament. This was an alien heavy episode without much of the actual alien in it - who has a fine set of teeth - and focuses on the other aliens who are just as deadly but in far more imaginative ways. It played out like the Alien - the original film - but with more bloodshed and a far less happy ending. It was an excellent episode compared to the rather silly shenanigans happening on fantasy island led by the annoying Boy Kavalier - who, of course, has more to do with this story than just coincidence.

I'm Confused

Okay. I think I'm a relatively intelligent bloke, but after watching Adaptation. I have to wonder if perhaps I'm not as clever as I thought I was. Or maybe the era of existentialist absurdity in the form of surreal off-kilter narrative was big in the 1990s and 2000s but has since fallen out of favour? The point is, Charlie Kaufman has done very little since this film, although Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind did come after this and both were reasonably well received and have high ratings on IMDB, but so does Adaptation. I just didn't get it. I theorised that perhaps when asked to write a screenplay of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, Kaufman decided that it wasn't good enough to adapt so decided to write something about himself as the main character and simply discard Orlean's original book for something that perhaps he would have written had he had a fictional twin brother who wrote crime thrillers.

I simply don't know what I watched apart from that there's nearly two hours of my life I'm never getting back because of this self-indulgent twaddle. Nicholas Cage was okay as the real Charlie Kaufman and his fictional twin brother Donald. Meryl Streep was remarkably sexy and revealing for a woman of 53 (at the time) playing Orlean - the staff writer at The New Yorker - and Chris Cooper looked as though he really did have his front teeth missing. The problem I had was this film was a load of shite. Unenjoyable bollocks dressed up as existential angst and magical realism. If you haven't seen it, don't bother. If you have and you enjoyed it, I really don't give a fuck. 2/10

23 Bollocks

Fuck me. I still get angry/pissed off when I watch something that stinks the house up. I should learn by now that it goes with the territory. I watch TV and films, I write a column/blog about it, therefore I probably watch more things than I would ordinarily subject myself to. The law of averages says there are going to be shit films and at the moment I'm watching a lot of shit. The Number 23 was the latest. It's a Joel Schumacher movie - which should have served as a warning. It starred Jim Carrey, which should have been another warning and, oddly enough, it dealt with an abstractly similar theme to Adaptation. Or maybe it was just the fact that there was a story inside a story that reminded me of the shite I watched last night when the shite I watched tonight was just as shite... 

This is a film that is so contrived; so coincidental; so ridiculous that I struggle to believe someone gave this the green light. Carrey plays a animal welfare officer who through a series of contrivances becomes obsessed with the number 23 and then starts to read a book that seems to be all about him, even though the lead character is nothing like him. Except it is and that's the whole point. Once you start to realise what is going on you start to realise what a lot of shite you have been watching. I think I can count on one hand, quite easily, the number of films with Jim Carrey in that I've thought were okay. It's obviously not 23, but it might be 2 or 3. That might be an exaggeration. This deserves no more than a 2/10.

 Some Things Never Stay Dead

So, Showtime somehow managed to breath new life into Dexter Morgan and we now have yet another series about the serial killer with a code of ethics. Dexter Resurrection is the latest offering and Michael C Hall is back after not dying - at the end of the last comeback series - at the hands of his own son. This time after over ten weeks in ICU, Dexter is finally on the mend after nearly dying (he was saved by the cold weather, apparently) and his girlfriend cop leaving town after not shopping him. In fact, at the end of Dexter: New Blood there wasn't much left that didn't prove Dexter was a serial killer and probably the Bay Harbour Butcher, but somehow he's managed to get away with it, even if Angel Batista seems to have his number. To get us where we start this series is about as contrived as you can possible get.

Meanwhile his son, Harrison, is in New York being a cool dude and getting involved in his own shit. Yes, it was a good start, despite the stretches in belief you had to suspend and it's always been an entertaining show even if it's getting a bit... samey. I won't do another review of this until it's been watched; mainly because I don't feel like giving you a running commentary for something that has been on for the last ten weeks. I expect whatever happens there will always be room for another Dexter series.

2) The Alternate Universe Story

Imagine a world where Chris Smith aka Peacemaker is revered by the public; is classed as a proper superhero and icon of the world. That's the alternate dimension Chris finds himself in and he loves it. Harcourt fancies him; Rick Flagg jnr (the fantastic Joel Kinnaman) is still alive and ARGUS treats him with due respect. His (now alive) brother loves him and he thwarts a terrorist attack without his stupid battle suit and is oblivious to the fact that ARGUS in his dimension is about to launch a full scale attack on his home with the intention of killing Eagly and bringing Chris down - all for having a dimensional port hole in his living room. This episode is about two worlds that are polar opposites of each other. Meanwhile some other plot stuff takes place and Vigilante proves just how weird he really is. This, at least, moved the plot forward, but the episode was 34 minutes of new material and that felt like we were robbed.

What's Up Next?

I'll tell you what I'd like to do; I'd like to switch the news off and live life in a bubble of uninformed ignorance. I'm sure I'd be happier than I am now. That's not to say I'm not happy, but TV is full of doom and gloom; everything from Morning Live which seems to focus on how scammers are screwing us for our money, to the news, which, as I said above, is so skewered it's not even bothering to claim it's impartial. Almost any current affairs programme paints this picture of a dysfunctional world on the brink of hell. The threat of war is everywhere; prices are going up; immigrants are being demonised, racism is spreading like a summer wild fire and the anger people have is being directed in all the wrong directions... TV seems almost like a triviality, or at best something to escape the nightmare that the world is becoming.

So what can I expect? Fewer movies for starters. The FDoD and TV Hard Drive are either full of what I think of as 'Emergency Films' - things to watch when everything else is exhausted; or films that are on for nearly three hours or longer. The wife has never seen The Godfather Trilogy, but that's 10½ hours of film to watch and trying to cram that in to an evening, especially when we actually limit ourselves to three hours of TV max per night, is off-putting to say the least.

I might just go down the pub instead...

My Cultural Life - Massive Highs and Putrid Lows

What's Up?

TL:DR... I first encountered this about 20 years ago in the comments of a national newspaper webpage. I had to Google it because I didn't get it. 

Too Long: Didn't Read. The bane of explain. How do you convince someone of something when the explanation is longer than ignorant people have the attention span for? The simple answer is - you can't. Even if you could inform someone that their pre or misconception of something is wrong and do it in ten words or less, their cognitive dissonance would dismiss it and then label you probably as 'woke' or 'leftie' - it is a battle that intelligent people cannot win, especially when ignorant people use the acronym like a medal - advertising their reluctance to actually read something longer than a short sentence like it's something to be proud about.

If, for arguments sake, you can tell idiots the facts about asylum seekers and dispel many if not all misconceptions of them in less than 10 words, the racists wouldn't believe you because you are challenging their beliefs and because they believe lies they will always seek confirmation biased opinions, articles or sentences. It's why people like Steven Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) and Nigel Farage (both domestic terrorists in their own way) are able to fuel and confirm bias that has existed in stupid people for a long time. Try convincing a Born Again Christian that God doesn't exist and then try to convince a racist that all the country's problems are not the fault of anyone who isn't white, Anglo-Saxon and proud to display an English or British flag.

I see likeminded friends and acquaintances post stuff on social media in an attempt to change the minds of morons and while it confirms my belief that many of my friends are decent human beings (regardless of how they vote), I also immediately think 'this won't change anyone's mind.' 

Obviously, I'm never going to change a cretin's opinion if I keep insulting them, but, you see, I'm never going to change their opinions, full stop, so why not call it like it is. These people wish ill on people who aren't like them; I wish worse on people who are intolerant or racist. It probably makes me just as bad, apart from the fact I know I'm a decent human being and I know racist twats aren't, regardless of how much they protest. I can't win, so why not make defeat as combative as possible?

However, here's one for you: If you voted Brexit, you are the reason we have so many illegal immigrants! Before 2016, the UK had fewer than 10 small boats a year bringing illegal immigrants into the country; this was because, as part of the EU - it was called the Dublin Agreement. We would process asylum claims like every other EU country and if an individual was deemed as anything other than a genuine asylum seeker they wouldn't even get close to our country, and, more importantly, if they did somehow get here, they'd be shipped straight out again. Now we're not part of that EU agreement, not only are we a great destination for anyone who fancies a change, we have no negotiating powers when it comes to getting the EU to help us. We caused this crisis and now we want to believe the man who pretty much singlehandedly got us out of Europe - Nigel Farage - is the solution... The worst thing about the UK population's lurch to the right? The fact some people are more sheep-like now than ever before. 

Absolutely Fabulous

Oh my word! I think I might have seen the best movie of the year, maybe even the decade so far and it's - technically - a kids film. I don't think I've laughed as much in ages, yet just as I thought it would make the most brilliant family film - for all ages - it takes an almost sinister turn, one which I think would scare the shit out of most kids under the age of 10. The thing is Sketch is everything you will ever want from a fantasy film - in spades! It is a tale about processing grief and how kids deal with the loss of a parent, but don't let that maudlin description put you off because Sketch is enormous fun and has some fantastic acting from both adults and kids and trust me you will believe the cast are actually seeing what we're seeing.

Bianca Belle is Amber Wyatt, an 10-year-old girl who has recently lost her mother; she and her 12-year-old brother Jack are ploughing through grief while their father Taylor - played by Tony Hale - is so wrapped up in his grief he's focusing too much on his daughter and not enough on himself and Jack. Amber is expressing her grief in drawings; really creepy and dark drawings that are upsetting kids at school and have all her teachers worried sick. Meanwhile Jack has discovered a magic pond that fixes things and he has a plan, but that is thwarted by Amber stumbling across him as he's about to enact it. However, her book of drawings falls into the pond and they all magically come to life. What follows will blow your mind, have you laughing like a drain and yet wanting to hide behind the sofa. It is mindblowingly good and writer/director Seth Worley has done an absolutely brilliant job at putting this extraordinary film together. It is beyond brilliant, it's an astounding 10/10.

Hanging on the Telephone

Just when I was beginning to think that I wouldn't find any more old films we haven't seen that I'd like, along came a movie I've had on the TV hard drive for a few months but never felt like watching. The wife said, "We've had The Black Phone for months, are we ever going to watch it?" So we did and it was considerably better than I expected. That might be down to the fact it was directed by Scott Derrickson, who we've seen a few films by, some good, some not so good, but generally all entertaining. This is a weird horror about a serial child killer - played exceptionally creepily by an almost never seen Ethan Hawke - and his last victim, Finn, played extremely well by Mason Thames, who might just have some psychic abilities that give him a fighting chance of getting away.

The film has flaws, but I expected that, yet these flaws all appeared to be the lackadaisical way Hawke's The Grabber conducts his perverse kidnaps and murders. This is a movie that is great with its misdirection; has a fantastic supporting role for Madeleine McGraw as Finn's sister Gwen, who has psychic dreams which are dismissed by her father but are taken seriously by the local Denver police, simply because she knows things about the other disappearances that no one else does and as she's about 10, she isn't really a suspect. This is a neat, edge of your seat, thriller with some unique twists and turns. 8/10

Visceral

Blimey, good films are like London buses, you wait for ages then a few come along at once! I'm not a huge fan of war films, I was when I was younger, but now I'm an old man I prefer less violence and anger, or if I have to put up with violence I like there to be a fantasy/horror angle to it. However, this is a true story about an attempt to kill a leader of the Taliban by four Navy Seal special ops and how it goes tits up very quickly all because of some goats. This doesn't exactly have a cast that fills you with inspiration; Mark Wahlberg is the poor man's Matt Damon, Taylor Kitsch isn't the world's best actor, Emile Hirsch was in that fucking awful Ironfart series from Disney and Ben Foster tends to play psychos in mid-budget Americana movies; so the four men charged with this assassination attempt are not what you'd call A listers. And maybe that's why this film was so much better than I expected; I mean, edge of your seat and as the subtitle says - visceral.

Essentially, this is like a docudrama about how the Americans, like the Soviets before them, discovered that trying to beat the Taliban in their own backyard is much more difficult than any other war scenario and this operation went south even before it got off the ground. Kitsch plays the group leader who is given a choice very early on in the film and because of the fear of post-war recriminations opts to do the humane thing, which in turn leads to the deaths of three of the four and the fight for survival that the Lone Survivor has to face. It is a really compelling movie, which considering its title is still full of jeopardy and selfless heroics. This is another good film. 8/10

A Pointless Vampire Tale

In 2022, Showtime released the TV series of Let the Right One In. Anyone who saw Let Me In the English language remake, or the original Scandi film with the same title as the TV series, will know what this is about; except this takes the idea of a man - a familiar - looking after and arranging the feeding of an "11-year-old" vampire and her friendship with a loner kid in the apartment next door, a giant leap forward. This ten-part series uses that original premise and adds to it; whether the adding will be a good thing or not is an unknown because, unfortunately, after watching the opening episode, I discovered that the tenth part ended on a cliffhanger and there were plans for at least one more series, but Showtime cancelled it without a conclusion ever being made, so reluctantly we opted not to bother watching any more episodes and unless you don't care about it not having an ending I'd suggest you don't watch it either.

Hidden Secrets 

The Little Things is a neat little thriller about an LA serial killer who may have been terrorising the area for over five years. Denzel Washington plays the washed up ex-LA detective who is now working as a deputy in the middle of nowhere, California, who because of staff shortages is sent back to LA to pick up some evidence and inadvertently wanders into an ongoing investigation that appears to be the same murderer he failed to nail all those years ago. Rami Malik is the hot shot police sergeant who is now filling Washington's shoes.

However, all is not what it appears to be. Why was Washington kicked off the force? Why did he end up as a lowly deputy in the middle of nowhere? Why was the case that cost him his marriage, his job and his health shut down? The thing is, he was a good cop and his instincts prove to be invaluable to Malik as they circle around a prime suspect who thinks he's cleverer than everyone else - but is he the murderer or just a psycho time waster? This is Jared Leto - a serial wanker - doing what he knows best when he's acting, playing a slimy sleaze ball who is wired into the police band radio and has a penchant for following murder cases. This nifty crime drama then does something we weren't expecting and naturally when something like that happens in a movie everything that follows also comes out of left field. A well oiled and compelling movie. 7/10

Preposterous Bollocks

Look, I can never promise this blog is going to have that much good in it over the coming months and years that is going to be positive. We're simply running out of half decent old films to watch and we're now dredging the depths of films ranked between 6 and 6.5 on IMDB. This means we're going to occasionally dip into the world of M. Night Shyamalan - a film director who made two great films and then shot his load into the void and makes nothing but laughable shite now. A movie director who got lucky with his first two ideas and then basically he broke and no one has been able to fix him or anything he makes. The wife quite likes Signs, the third film he made, with Joaquin Phoenix and Mel Gibson about alien invasion on a Kansas farm, but I thought it was a load of horseshit. Other than that I've sat through some movies he's made where I knew going into them that I would be better off mutilating myself with whatever sharp object I could lay my hands on. He's a two trick pony and he should not be allowed to make a fucking Airfix model let alone be given a budget to make feature films.

This brings us to Knock at the Cabin which is unrelentingly a massive load of preposterous bollocks. 1/10

The Crapstitute

The finale of The Institute was so bad, so very very bad, that it felt like it was being set up for a second season given how much of it was changed from the book. This is television at its very worst and how something as fucking awful as this could be made and then allowed to be shown on television is an absolute enigma of world destroying levels. Don't watch this series, go and buy the book because if you watch this series and then read the book you will be left so confused and bemused you might never watch any adaptation ever again, for fear that you might watch something as devastatingly woeful as this. I want to be as excoriating about this as my sometimes imaginative brain will allow me, but I am not going to waste my time trying to convey how shitty this was in words. It is televisual vomit of the lowest order; it defies all logic and was so laughably fucking fucked up - in like having a really bad shit kind of way - that I am giving this far more space than it deserves. I should just try and forget I ever watched it and hope that it never finds its way back into my conscious mind ever again.

Temporal Anomalies 

I've got to be honest with you; season two of Legion felt like it was too complicated and trippy to really totally understand what Noah Hawley was trying to convey. I actually had to read the recap of the season in Wikipedia to get a complete handle on it and even then when we started watching season three I still have more questions than answers... It's clear to me that now that Farouk - the Shadow King - has his body back he's manipulating things to ensure that the one person who can stop him - David - has to be eliminated; the problem for the now Farouk-led Division 3 is that David, intentionally or accidentally is remaining a couple of steps ahead of them, even if that requires the use of Switch, a new cast member who is also a time traveller. 

Season three is, remarkably, easier to follow. I don't know if the people at FX told Hawley to be more coherent or if I'm such a time travel nerd that I get it, but so far so good. David has realised the best way to stop Farouk and save himself is to find a time traveller who can take him back in time and stop everything that happens by stopping Farouk in the past. What I have noticed is the fact that this world of mutants might not be what I thought it was, because in the third episode we finally meet David's real parents - Charles Xavier and Gabrielle Haller - and they appear to be casualties of war, which puts them both as adults at the end of WW2. This means that 33 year old David now exists in about 1980ish, which might explain the oddly retro feel of the series. A friend of mine suggest that season three felt like more of a compromise than perhaps Hawley wanted, but so far I'm thinking it's pretty good and exactly what I would have done in this crazy world. Marvel/Disney should really take some notes.

Tedious?

Don't get me wrong, Alien Earth is a great TV show (by current standards), but there is something about it that bugs me. There's this feeling of predictability about it; like when something happens you almost see it coming before it happens. The flaws in the synthetic human children trapped in adult bodies; the possible subterfuge from certain members of Prodigy; the incredibly annoying boy trillionaire with his slightly bonkers holier than thou attitude - all these things felt a little like I knew it was going to happen and I don't want my Noah Hawley TV shows to be predictable. We are heading for the inevitable aliens versus the humans on a tiny trillionaire's island and whether the synthetic humans with children's minds will be fighting for Prodigy or maybe standing back and watching the guaranteed carnage we all know is going to happen. It's good, but it feels like it's lacking in something and that something might be originality, or it could be entertainment.

Existentialism 

Obviously (to me), the order of how you read this blog isn't always chronological, although what I will review here is going to be the last thing I watch this week (because tomorrow - Friday - I will be hosting my latest pub quiz, so I won't be watching Peacemaker until Saturday). Sometimes the order of the blog is mixed up; for instance, I started the week watching Knock at the Cabin and it felt like I'd reached a nadir as far as previously unseen films were concerned; however as the week moved on, it seemed like every movie I watched made my initial fears that I would never watch another one that I might enjoy disappear, but every film after that heap of donkey shit has been a really enjoyable experience.

To conclude my week and this blog, I decided to watch Stranger Than Fiction, a 2006 feature starring Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gyllenhaal and, quite remarkably, Tony Hale, who I hadn't seen in any movie at all until I watched Sketch, last night (Wednesday). Some films are just bloody weird and this most definitely falls into that category. It tells the story of boring tax man Harold Crick, who wakes up one morning hearing an English woman narrating his life. The problem is only he can hear her and it begins to affect his life in a very existential way, to the point where he ends up going to great lengths to understand why this strange thing is happening to him. Part of his narrative involves falling in love, while another part is considerably more sinister and potentially tragic, until he sees the woman narrating his story on an old television interview and seeks her out. It is an absolutely crazy movie, that obviously makes no sense at all, yet makes perfect sense and I'm puzzled why I've never heard of it before recently because it was right up my street.

In many ways, despite the year it was made, it feels like a post modern retelling of The Life of Chuck, which I reviewed last week, in that it's a story about a man who is the centre of his own universe and whatever happens to him has consequences for the rest of the world. It is also a delightful love story, a clever comedy (Hoffman proving yet again that he has fabulous comic timing) and just fucking weird enough to make you wonder what the hell you are watching. It felt like a perfect end to the week's viewing and there was a synchronicity about it which I have already alluded to. It was yet again another excellent movie and it makes me concerned that I might have overdone the excellence and I'm doomed to spend the rest of the year watching shite. 8/10

What's Up Next?

A double helping of Peacemaker for starters; the finale of Dexter Resurrection comes out which will signal our watching it (the wife wanted to watch it as a box set rather than weekly). We'll finish Legion and the latest Alien Earth will no doubt entertain and annoy me in equal measures. There are also a couple of other TV shows due to drop next week, so what has been a top heavy movie blog for the last few months will see the balance re-established.

And that's it. Next week more of the similar...

 

My Cultural Life - ESP and the Fallen Arches

What's Up?

Nothing much. 

At least not as far as watching the telly this week. I write this Wednesday evening and so far this week we have watched The Institute, the first half hour of the most recent Mission Impossible film and a couple of episodes of Legion. This is because we've had family up and we've had other stuff to do. I expect we won't watch anything this evening either, leaving just Thursday and Friday, which is likely to be what we haven't finished watching, so the idea did cross my mind to skip this week and just double up next week, but I dismissed that idea because I don't want any of you to pine. Normal service might resume next week.  

What's Also Up?

All the major - mainstream - political parties are so invested in a failing idea - Capitalism - that none of them now know how to run their country. The default position of them all is "Look at that brown person in a boat." We have a journalism that is also invested in the same shit the governments are, so their default position is "brown people, especially in small boats, are coming to eat your food and steal your jobs," and therefore with xenophobia, hatred and mistrust sown on an almost daily basis by what is essentially a propaganda tool for the meg-rich, it's no surprise that nothing gets fixed and it's all someone else's fault.

Politicians are elected to serve the people, but really they're elected to serve their capitalist overlords and because there are enough ignorant people out there the narrative is never challenged. It's why you never see (or hear) a 'journalist' asking a difficult question. Yet, if anyone else challenges this status quo - intelligently - they are now either branded as insurrectionists or conspiracy theorists. "You believe there's a conspiracy run by rich people? You must be mad. They'd never use their money to do such an insidious thing..." As Elon Musk ponders creating his own political party because bat shit crazy Donald Trump didn't like some of his ideas...

The logical conclusion to all of this is a world war. When the world is rife with tin pot dictators all leading it towards inevitable confrontation, what usually happens is the planet comes out of it seeming fairer and less prejudiced, for a while. It's not like the past; the world has changed an awful lot and while many suspect the Third World War has already begun, I expect this war will be not be like any previously held; it will be spill out far more locally than you would expect and very few countries will escape it. It won't just be about borders, it will also be about division; right versus left; right versus moderate; white versus brown/black; you, for believing that woke shit, versus us, for believing our own truth!

Have you noticed how, over the last few years, we've been drip fed a diet of doom and gloom, of managing to get by, the cost of living crisis, wars, corruption, protests and why it isn't going to get better? That's deliberate. That's social conditioning on a mammoth scale to adjust the way we view the world and how - the people - need to be kept in our place and accept continuous lowering of standards so that the incredibly wealthy remain happy in their swelling opulence. We are not governed by politicians, we're being ruled by a monstrous corporate machine that controls all the corporations with visible presences. Control all the money, you then gain control over power, but these mega corporations don't want to rule the world, that's far too difficult, they just want to control it, to ensure what they need in the now and the future is guaranteed. Presidents didn't go into politics because they are altruists, every $billion campaign is paid for by someone and what do you get for helping someone become the most visibly powerful man in the world? With money and power comes overall control and the only hindrance is people.

One other thing; Palestine Action, according to Yvette Cooper, are a far more insidious organisation than anyone knows, this is why they have been proscribed as a terrorist group. The Far Right organise protests outside of hotels housing asylum seekers; there is violence, the threat of violence and many arrests; no one anywhere is suggesting these people should be labelled terrorists, despite the terror they bring. Palestine Action became a terrorist group within days of the UK government reaching a £2billion deal with Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms company that will be supplying specialist training to the UK military. In politics there are no coincidences.

Mission Incomprehensible 

I suppose the most important thing about Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is what an absolute load of old shit it is, It has an improbable plot, ridiculous set pieces - none of which are a patch on previous ones - and a pretty ludicrous sequence of events that make it simply a load of twaddle. I know; I get it. This is Mission Impossible, it has to be more fiendish and convoluted than ever before, especially as this is probably (only maybe possibly) the last one; but Jesus H Christ it felt like hard work for two and a half hours plus...

The main problem is the 'Entity' isn't a very good villain. It's faceless and the minuscule amount of 'face time' we have with it is pointless and a little like an 80s pop video - probably by Frankie Goes to Hollywood - therefore, an actual villain is needed and the actions of Esai Morales are bewildering at best and simply ridiculous at other times - he's not a patch on other MI villains. There is a sequence towards the end where Morales needs some device held by Ethan Cunt, but he spends most of the scene trying to crash Ethan's plane or kill him with extreme force - it made no sense. The movie is full of British actors playing Americans, which I'm beginning to see as a mark of cheapness or cutting corners - you want New York, here's Glasgow and a cadre of British thesps all doing growly - but shit - Yankee accents.

There are illogical things in this that felt wrong or out of place; almost every serious jeopardy situation ended up having an easy way out and I don't know how many times Ethan died only to be resurrected by a shot of Hayley Atwell's ample cleavage. Cruise looks jowly; they killed off one of his team, he recruited new members with a flamboyance that was almost improbable and frankly I really expected better; much better. The film before this was much better and felt like a Mission Impossible movie; this was a leathery, slightly smelling of wee, dull action adventure with lots of bollocks to pad it out. 5/10

Kid Alien

In an episode where a lot happened, it felt like very little was achieved; but this could just be me nit-picking. Lots of things that bugged critics were dealt with in this part, especially the risking of billions and billions of dollars of R&D on the whim of Wendy. This was probably the thing that bugged many but now you shall be bugged by it no more. We saw a little more of Morrow, the Weyland-Yutani cyborg, who is now on a personal mission to recover all the aliens that have fallen into the hands of Prodigy. We saw Wendy dismember an alien, which was unexpected. We also saw the 'Lost Boys' dealing with the fact they're all kids in superhuman bodies a little more and oddly enough it doesn't grate like it did; it is, in fact, quite sweet and amusing.

The story it seems is simple; Prodigy have all Weyland-Yutani's aliens and are going to research the shit out of them, using only synthetics to do the job. They are conveniently on an island miles from any mainland, which suggests at some point the aliens will all escape but be unable to get off the island, so it will become a kind of glorified cat and mouse game with the non-humans as the only salvation (therefore possibly just another Jurassic Park film...). Other than that it's about rivalry - between the major corporations and the Lost Boys - and how all the pieces will magically fit together. This is a Noah Hawley show, so if it doesn't make a lot of sense at the moment it will fit together eventually even if it never feels like it will.

Low Budget No Frills

I read a review of the first episode of The Institute which said that the entire first episode's FX budget was used on a single special effect involving a glass of water. I think they were wrong; I think the entire series budget was used on that one special effect. The reason is simple, there hasn't really been another special effect in it since that manipulating a spilled glass of water scene. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Oh yeah, this week Luke moved some paper clips with his mind... In fact, this show has proved without a doubt that it was made for about $1.50 plus change. The changes to the book have been far reaching; Stephen King's book pitted a genius kid against the US government; the Institute was a fortress and while none of the staff trusted each other, there were loads of them and half the book's charm was how Luke Ellis - the boy genius - manages to outsmart them all; get halfway across the country and convince the law enforcement people of Dennison, Texas that he was being chased by bad people working for the government. It's actually one of King's better books and I remember thinking it would make a good film or TV show. I was so wrong. This has cut so many corners it's almost round.

Instead of this well oiled machine that Ellis manages to tie in knots, the Institute is run by half a dozen frazzled evil people and a few grunts; it seems to work outside of the government and Luke Ellis has barely had to use his vast intellect. His superior brain has been redundant for most of the series and now we're into the endgame Joe Freeman must be looking at the fucking car crash of an adaptation and thinking he's been wasted and the writers haven't got a clue. So much has been changed about this it could almost have been a different story; every short cut possible has been taken; every perfect corner and straight line of the story has been turned into a crooked line or completely shattered corner. It is almost laughable. The acting, even the proper actor in it - Mary Louise-Parker - has been reduced to a piss poor script that bears little or no resemblance to the book. 

In this penultimate part, instead of fighting a huge battle in the streets of Dennison with an army of government wetworks ops; we have a standoff in someone's living room - literally. There doesn't appear to be the storming of the Institute - to free the rest of the kids - which made the book so unexpectedly full of surprises and Tim - Ben Barnes - is not going to be the up front hero he was and neither is his police girlfriend, who to be fair, probably doesn't know how to do the acting thing well enough to be anything other than an extra given lines. Hannah Galway sounds like she's reading from an autocue ALL THE TIME, with added. husky. voice... Didn't the people making this series realise it, or was it a case of she was all they could afford? It ends next week and that's a relief because there was so much wrong with this penultimate part that I'd go into detail but I've already written far too much. I will say that when Tim finds Luke - Joe Freeman - in the woods, last week, and saves him from the first threat, it is the height of summer and yet this week it's the middle of autumn and the lush trees from the woods are now skeletal and menacing. It's literally like they stopped filming for a few months - perhaps to get enough money to finish it off - just for that added change of light. It really is a very dreadful adaptation, I can't wait for it to finish. 

The Maker of Peace

Season one of Peacemaker was an outlandish, over-the-top, feast of stupidity and brilliance. It wobbled at times, but was one of the better superhero TV shows of the last five years. James Gunn turned the dislikeable supporting character from Suicide Squad into a human being, albeit a right wing, violently psychotic one with a pet eagle and a love of poodle rock. The team he was hooked up with were misfits of the top order and it fitted into the DCU in a similar way to how Deadpool sat in the X-Men Universe; its specifics were less important than the story it was telling. That was 2022 and while James Gunn probably knew he was about to reshape the DCU into his own image, this still was firmly in the DCEU of Momoa's Aquaman and probably Cavill's Man of Steel. How was this going to transcend the changes that have happened and would it be plausible?

Well... I'm not really sure based on the first episode of season two what or where this is going. It's clearly set in the same universe and yet we have Guy Gardner and Hawkgirl to set it in the same place as the Superman film I reviewed last week. The thing is where season one was a cacophony of lunacy and violence, this appears to be different in a few ways. I won't go into any great detail because that involves spoilers, but there is an extended orgy scene about two thirds of the way through which felt absolutely unnecessary. The team that stopped the alien invasion are now outcasts; Peacemaker can't get work, but nor can almost all of the rest of the team, just Economus remains in employment and he's spying on his friend Chris Smith aka Peacemaker. 

It's an opening episode that deals with heroes on a scrap heap, but it quickly finds a new path to venture down and this is Chris's interdimensional pocket universe where he keeps his weapons and technology. it appears it is similar to the one Lex Luthor created in Superman and not only is the government interested, Chris has discovered a reality where his brother is alive and his dad loves him and this is far more attractive than the one he's currently in... I struggled with this, to be honest, it wants to be the same as the 2022 series, yet it felt as though a lot had changed, including the desire to be vulgar and shocking for no real reason. Yes, I've become a prude in my old age and the extended orgy scene felt wrong, misplaced and as I said earlier unnecessary - it felt like a case of 'I'm James Gunn and if I want lots of full on, in-yer-face, nudity in my TV show I will have it.' It didn't add to the story and really didn't need to be there. It spoiled it for me and lowered the tone to a level it didn't need to go. 

Mindfuck

And so we concluded the second season of Legion and where we eventually got what season one was doing, we lost the plot early on in season two and it never seemed to return. This was/is truly cerebral television and I'm not really sure if it was all a set up for season three or they finally realised that David 'Legion' Haller in the comics was unbelievably dangerous and morally ambiguous schizophrenic; someone who did what he wanted to do on a whim and if that meant helping bad guys (beat the X-Men) then fine. I have to say that there was little in the first ten episodes that led me to think that the finale would turn everything on its head and leave the viewer seriously wondering what was happening. The about turn by his friends may have been alluded to, but if it was I missed it. Like season one, I expected it all to fit together and I'd understand what happened, but if it does I missed the memo. It is still mind-blowing TV and I'm amazed we didn't stick with it first time around.

What's Up Next?

More aliens, more superheroes, more telekinetic kids in peril, and probably something else that will arrive that I will have forgotten about or will surprise me. The problem I have is that 25% of the things I've been looking forward to have felt like a huge let down and I can't make up my mind if I'm just growing jaded at TV and film in general. I shouldn't be because there have been some real highlights over the last few months, but I spent almost four nights away from the TV this week and felt I could have spent more...

My Cultural Life - Some Big Ones

What's Up? 

In London last Saturday, over 500 people were arrested for showing solidarity with Palestine Action, a group of 'terrorist' protestors who, to my knowledge, daubed a lot of red paint on an RAF aircraft and are campaigning for the stopping of babies being murdered in Gaza. At the same time about 500 people, very many of who were right wing neo-Nazis, marched down a high street in Nuneaton, waving racist banners, chanting recognised far right expressions and threatening non-white people - one person was arrested on the threat of causing criminal damage. They were doing it because allegedly two Afghan refugees are accused of raping a 12 year old girl. This is a horrible thing, but apparently it's far more acceptable for 500 people to march against something that hasn't been confirmed than 500 people who don't want babies being murdered get arrested. This is where we live now...

** In other news, Donald Trump's more bluff than bluster attempts to win himself the Nobel Peace Prize continued this week with him trying to broker a deal with Putin to end the war in Ukraine. Now the USA have essentially gained control of Ukraine's rare earth metal lands, it doesn't really compute to the Donald that stopping the war by allowing Russia to retain all of the land it has stolen - by force - is essentially rewarding the aggressor. He doesn't care because whatever happens his country now guards Ukraine's main reason for being such a key bit of world real estate. He wins, Putin gets more than he probably bargained for and the Ukraine, well they'll probably stop being bombed - for a few years...

** I get a little bit cheesed off with people when they post awful memes about our awful PM. I can't stand Starmer, but he does have a few things that should give him the benefit of the doubt if nothing else. One - he inherited a country and politics badly broken by the Tories. You can't deny that the UK didn't have much of its infrastructure working how we'd like it to by the time they went scurrying off to political oblivion. He was never going to change much immediately because if he'd just gone and borrowed a lot of money and started rebuilding the country, he would have had everyone and the Bank of England on his back for increasing the 'National Debt' when, realistically it would generate work, jobs, money and spending, be good for the economy and (I say this through gritted teeth for other reasons) we can pay that 'debt' off more quickly. Or maybe taxed the rich. Or stop reacting to every far right dog whistle. They need to govern and be like the Tories and not care what their critics say.

** Isn't racism awful? I mean, anyone who thinks racism is horrible is probably going to be a reasonable human being. I think I'd be right about that. The thing is racism is rampant at the moment; it's a proper white supremacist racism too. They're all very... public about their racism. If racism has to exist then the best place for it has always been in the mind of the solitary racist; not allowed to become so common place that unified outrage from people who aren't racist is irrelevant. On the Spurs page I run, someone was really very awful about a black footballer who missed a penalty. This person even went to great lengths to tell the page (me) and all the non-racists that we can all fuck off because he doesn't care if he's banned, people need to see the damage non-white people are doing to our lives. I shit you not. We are fucking doomed because it is becoming a serious risk to challenge brazen racists now, which is why it doesn't happen; people are fearful of repercussions. So, these idiots act with impunity knowing our police are busy arresting pensioners for not wanting brown babies to die.

Oh, Superman...

Right, before I get into this, I have to say Edi Gathegi as Mr Terrific is, by a country mile, the best thing in this film. I didn't get any kind of indication from the myriad of clips that came out that some of the supporting cast would have the roles they had, so it was really good that not only was Mr T on the right side, he was also absolutely superb. As for David Corenswet's Superman, well, he might be the best Superman since Henry Cavill and considerably better than Brandon Routh and the weird looking guy who plays him in the most recent TV series. The problem is while this is an excellent film, it doesn't have a heart. There's love and history missing from this. There's too much weight of expectation. There are far too many unexplained other superheroes and there is absolutely no feeling of jeopardy. Clark also has hick, slack-jawed parents.

Nicholas Hoult is a fantastic Lex Luthor, 100% nasty arsehole and very much the Luthor of Pre-Crisis Superman; a man driven by his irrational hatred of the Man of Steel, prepared to do anything to finally win; but even he struggled to make this tale of obfuscation and deflection really tick. This was about dog whistling, literally and metaphorically - which might be why the right wing wankers disliked it - about saying 'this is bad' and getting a load of monkeys on social media to click like. This is about how the human race is losing its moral compass and ability to think rationally when over reaction is the best policy. When it boils down to it all, this isn't about a kaiju destroying Metropolis; or the Justice Gang helping out. It isn't about whether Superman's real parents were closet fascists with world domination in mind. This was about one man making lots of money and accruing even more power by making the world look at one overblown thing while he tinkered about somewhere else.

Was it any good? Well, yes. It's the best new superhero film I've seen for a few years, but it's a bit hollow - a trademark of director James Gunn, I suspect. I didn't at any point feel emotionally involved or connected with it. Rachel Brosnahan is okay as Lois Lane, but she's a bit too punk, where Clark, who claims to like punk music is a bit too nerd and that felt wrong for both characters. This is a film that feels like chunks of it have been cut out; bits that might have made us care more about the things were were supposed to care about... if there were any. It felt a little like  Superman for the TikTok generation and one that lacked a soul. A Superman with his heart dialled down. 7/10

Alien Invasion

Noah Hawley is all over my TV at the moment. We're watching Legion, season two, and now his much heralded Alien: Earth has landed and it felt more like an extended film than the start of a TV series. This is a weird one; absolutely nothing wrong with it at all, but if there's a story it's been hidden in typical Hawley fashion. The first part is taken up with an out-of-control science vessel, casually, ploughing into a building on Earth in 2120. A planet pretty much divided between four mega corporations, with a fifth, new kid on the block - Prodigy - about to join them. The race is who will create the best future life - human hybrids, cyborgs or total AI androids and Weyland-Yutani has just brought alien life back in the star ship that has crashed into a Prodigy owned building and it could be a gamechanger. This is a world where Search & Rescue is armed to the teeth, where empathy and compassion are pretty much non-existent.

It's not just familiar xenomorphs, but five other alien species and they're loose and Prodigy has people on the ground trying to save civilians, who are being chewed up by the nasties. Enter, Prodigy's 'Lost Boys' - human hybrids; androids with dying children's minds imprinted into them, because a child's mind is more 'flexible' and they have abilities to perform far better than humans. Led by Wendy, they are the creation of the Boy Kavalier, who is the genius behind Prodigy and he wants whatever Weyland-Yutani has got on the crashed ship, even if it is heavily guarded by someone with his company's interests only at heart. It's this element of the show that clearly doesn't work and feels shoehorned in. I get the idea of Prodigy but Kavalier's Lost Boys feels like a scenario that wouldn't happen in a real world situation in a billion years, especially as Wendy appears to be the only one of them who has any awareness or idea what she's doing. The first two episodes seem heavy on style, do have some substance, but isn't specific with what or where the story is likely to go; maybe it's just going to set us up for a second season where more is revealed. It's was an interesting and action-packed introduction with just a smidgeon of doubt as to whether this can be more than what Alien films usually end up being. There was also a noticeable drop in overall quality between episodes one and two.

Lo-Fi Sci-Fi

I'm not really sure how to review this. As a piece of filmmaking it was pretty excellent; everything from the long tracking shots to the feel of the late 1950s USA, was pretty perfect. This was an homage to programmes like The Twilight Zone, with even the dialogue feeling like it had been lifted from a 1950s script. The problem with The Vast of Night is it simply isn't very good. It's a talking heads picture, which ironically came out on Amazon streaming in 2020 - at the height of the pandemic - but was actually made in late 2018. There is little or no action - apart from the running and largely unnecessary bits in a car - and it's all about the story, or in this case the lack of it. It is a heavy style over substance movie that I'm not sure would have benefited from having any more substance...

Starring Jake Horowitz and Sierra McCormick (no, me neither) and directed (also written and produced under a pseudonym) by Andrew Patterson (no, me neither again), it tells the story of how aliens visit a small town in New Mexico during the opening basketball match of the 1958 season, when the town is crammed into the sports hall and the local DJ and the girl who fancies him, the night shift telephonist, first hear strange noises and then pursue the 'things in the sky'. As a period piece it is outstanding, but nothing really happens; you spend the entire film waiting for something to happen and when it looks like something is going to happen, nothing else happens and then it's over. It looks fabulous, but it's a little like waiting for paint to dry or phlegm to dissipate. 5/10

Escape From Nowhere

With just two episodes to go in The Institute the makers are going to have to cram more than a third of book into it. This should include a full scale battle on the streets of Dennison and Luke and Tim enacting a mass breakout of hostages and kicking some arse. Whether that will happen is a complete unknown because the story has been changed, in some places unnecessarily I think. Lots of convenient stuff happens in this where the book was far more detailed and focused on Luke's computer-like brain, which really seems to have largely been neglected throughout the last six weeks. It seems that people can't help change King's stuff but rarely make it better.

Rocket To The Moon

To borrow a joke from someone else, we watched James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3 by James Gunn on Monday night because it had been two years since we last watched it and I simply fancied something I've enjoyed and there's not that many MCU films that I've enjoyed in recent years. This, arguably, could be the last best MCU movie ever made and even this has a ton of stuff that muddied the story rather than helped it. However, I still feel the High Evolutionary - Chukwudi Iwuji - would have made a much better Big Bad than anything we were promised or will end up with. Narcissistic, nasty, heartless and powerful - he ticks all the boxes...

Things that are wrong with this: Warlock and the people he came from. I get it's tying up something that happened in the second (or was it first) film's epilogue, but it felt shoehorned into a story where it wasn't needed, or could have been less clunky. The Ravagers or whatever they're called and therefore Gamora, with very little exceptions all were actually quite unnecessary. There felt like there was too much music and it also gets a little flabby in the middle and depends on sentiment and tugging at heartstrings too much, but it is a good film for all the right reasons. 7/10

What the Fuckington?

I've seen two Ari Aster movies in my life. One was unbelievably boring and the other was a load of shite (I'm talking Midsommer and Hereditary), so having heard some positive things about Eddington, when it became available I jumped on it like a frog onto a lily pad. Sometimes I should seriously question my better judgement. Eddington is almost two and a half hours long; it would have benefited from being an hour forty at best, possibly even not existing at all. I'm not saying it's a bad film, because it isn't, it's just... well... fucking boring apart from one ten minute segment near the end, which is only very loosely explained. 

Labelled as a 'modern western', what it really feels like is an attempt to make a Cohen Brothers film without the humour, wit and sophistication. Joaquin Phoenix plays Joe Cross, the sheriff of Eddington, who is surrounded by conspiracy theory nuts (his wife - Emma Stone - and his mother-in-law - Deirdre O'Connell) in May 2020, as COVID is hitting the world. He seems like a decent, but misguided, guy but he's clearly got a problem with the town's mayor - Pedro Pascal - and this boils over in a number of confrontations that leads Cross to decide to run for mayor. In the background is an America being run by Trump, the Black Lives Matter movement is growing and its set in a dying small town where the young people feel abandoned and alienated. The tensions between Phoenix and Pascal begin to boil over and the last hour of the film is about how that goes off the rails ending in a killing spree through the deserted streets of Eddington, New Mexico. The problem I had with it more than anything else is how so much of fuck all happened. Does Aster just make fucking long films because he can? In many ways the first hour didn't add much to the story; it didn't even do a good job of character building - it was just there, stinking the TV for 60 minutes and by the time stuff happened I didn't give a fuck. 4/10 

The Weirdness Continues

Season one of Legion is essentially a story about madness and parasites; season two is a horror story infested with strangeness and subterfuge. It kicks off with something of a mystery and slowly, much like the first season, starts letting you know what's happening in increments; a tease here, a clue there. We spent the entire first season trying to figure out how David was going to rid himself of the mega-powerful mutant parasite Amal Farouk and season two is about how David has been coerced into helping Farouk find his real body - which we were told in season one would be a really bad thing. There's a 'Days of Future Past' element to this, but now with the mutants working with Division 3 and all the hallucinogenic qualities that brings with it, I'm wondering if this is just a set up for something bigger that's going to pop up in the future?

AI, AI-Oh

Steven Spielberg's homage to Stanley Kubrick, the 2001 A.I. Artificial Intelligence does something really rather strange; it manages to be prophetic in many ways while simultaneously being one of the creepiest films you will ever watch. It is a movie in three parts; the first is about David - Haley Joel Osment - the world's first almost human artificial boy; built and designed to be exactly what someone might need or want. The odd thing about this decision to build an almost child is the artificial infant would never grow old, would remain a perpetual 10 year old, transfixed with the human it has 'imprinted' with. Quite how this would work ten or 20 years after a human comes into contact with this AI that will always be devoted to whoever they're imprinted with, is probably something no one thought about.

The second part is a garish adventure in the world of discarded robots; where humans hunt them for pleasure and resentment to AI is deep-rooted and destructive. This is very much where the nearly-human psycho drama mutates into something different, fantastic and fantasy-filled. This is where Joe, played by Jude Law, enters the picture and becomes a sort of guiding light for the now disoriented and lost David. This effortlessly segues into the third, shorter part, where the more than 2000 year old AI beings left on the now devoid of humans planet discover David frozen in ice and give him almost what he wants but they cannot completely fulfil his dream.

This is Spielberg imagining what Kubrick would have done with the Pinocchio story but with AI. I think the Jaws director tried a little too hard to weave an enigmatic and interesting version/vision of what the dead American director might do, but in reality this is just another Big Brash Spielberg film that is decidedly creepy and unnerving for large parts and pompous and up its own arse in others. It delivers a 'happy' ending, which, of course, is anything but and Haley Joel Osment was a really weird kid when he was all the rage. I didn't get this movie first time I saw it and now 25 years later I do get it and it's essentially a load of modern fairy tale bollocks. 5/10

I See Fire and I See Rain

I didn't think there was much chance of a second season of Smoke, but now you can't rule it out. This had a resolution, after a fashion, Dave Gudsen has been arrested but charges are a long way away and Michele Calderon has got herself in all kinds of a mess and while her brother might have covered it, there's another avenue that remains a long way from being resolved. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel the denouement of this series has been the weakest thing about it and if it's true that Dennis Lehane - the writer of the series - sees a total of three seasons, then I can just about see where he's going to take it. Taron Egerton was fantastic in this and at the end we finally see the Dave Gudsen everyone else saw, but aside from the lack of evidence to prove he's an arsonist, there's his boss's corruption and embezzlement, Calderon's extremely iffy judgement calls and attempts at framing others and even some of the supporting characters need closure on what we've seen about them - so I can see a second season at least. It needs to match this completely otherwise it's going to seem like we've been let down...

What's Up Next?

Stuff. There's always new stuff. Whether the stuff that's watched is going to be as big as this week turned out, that remains to be seen. As ever, what goes on in front of my eyes will be talked about regardless...