My Cultural Life - Other Times and Places

What's Up?

What a week this has been. Fascists back in the White House. I got shafted by the pub committee (again). My football team is a load of shit. The country has gone mad for Public Inquiries - you trip on the pavement, have a Public Inquiry! Populist bullshit is now proving more popular than actual facts - I mean, facts are for pussies...

It's almost the end of January, all 14,307 days of it. Actually I usually get the impression that January is 31 days, not fewer or more, although it's never made an awful lot of sense, why don't they make January and March 30 days so that they can then make February 30 days as well? That way we can do away with Leap Years. Yes, it won't prevent wars or famine or anything else, but it might piss a few people off and as long as they're right wing arseholes then some other, decent, people will be happy. We do, after all, live in a world that is so divisive that maybe the only solution would be to move all the nice people to the southern hemisphere and all the arseholes to Svalbard. All of them, on one island, with polar bears.

I heard that thing the other day; this time from a woman I know in town. The weather seems to have been miserable and dull for weeks and when it isn't it's been fucking cold. Then this person I know (she's in her late 70s to be fair) said, "Hopefully we'll have a good summer. We deserve a good summer." We might deserve one but we'll get whatever we're given. I mean, I'm sorry to be so negative but the forces of Mother Nature have never been that bothered with what we deserve; it's not a democracy; we can't vote on whether we want a nice summer.

Every day I switch on the TV, I get bombarded with bad news or things that boil my piss. As mentioned above, it seems despite all the cuts, everybody wants a Public Inquiry. No one seems to realise these things cost millions and millions of quids and that money could go to preventing someone in need missing out. I mean, look at the Southport tragedy. We know who did it, why he did it and what the consequences are, but we seem to have to have a public inquiry about it now. I can understand one about the Post office, because that was corruption at the highest level that was covered up or breezed over, but when we actually know what happened, it seems like Obi Wan Keir is just pandering to the vocal minority - being a populist rather than facing our problems head on.

Then I turn it over and that fucking awful Morning Live is featuring Today's Scam. It's become an extension of Rip Off Britain and Scambusters UK, it's like we live in a country where scammers are allowed to get away with shit because we don't have the resources to deal with them and also we live in a country where so many of the population are either pig ignorant, cretinous morons or so fucking selfish they think something that's too good to be true is true and going to benefit them. What a fucking world we live in when scammers make a decent living out of fleecing old people of their savings and then they sleep well at night knowing there's fuck all anyone is going to do about it. We get warned about scammers all the time and the way we deal with them isn't by tracking them down and having them flayed and displayed down high streets, we're told to put the phone down or ignore them, like that will make them go away... [I was semi-joking about the flayed thing]

Mr Rightside

On the recommendation of a certain Mr Shipp of Tottingham, we watched the Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick film called Mr Right. It's about a slightly psychotic girl called Martha who is recovering from a bad break up when her husband/boyfriend comes home with another woman, so she goes to live with her friend in New Orleans.

Sam Rockwell plays Mr Right (or Francis), a former hitman who has gone kind of rogue and now kills people who hire him to kill people. He is being tracked by Tim Roth, his former partner who got upset that Francis didn't want to kill people any more. Francis sees Martha in a convenience store and decides to ask her for a date, against her better nature she accepts and the two fall in love. However, when Mr Right kills a man on a bridge in full view things change, but they also change when he shows Martha that she has the same abilities he has. Those abilities are being able to see everything all at once. To anticipate next moves and therefore prevent horrible things from happening to himself. At first she's horrified but eventually she's more intrigued and attracted than she can believe. This sets up the second half of the film. It's one of those action films where the main protagonist is almost superhuman in his ability to 'sort out' situations. An ex-special forces guy who is a one man killing machine, but is also quite goofy and totally insane but in a good way despite being able to kill people with anything that's in his hand. It's great fun, but I have a problem with Kendrick. Not just in this film, but just about everything I've seen her in; there's something weird and fucked up about her; something in her eyes that says she's not all there and definitely something about her that is both sexy and a bit scary - maybe it's because she's so... American? This is a good film, very enjoyable with several LOL moments. It gets a 7/10. 

Shit in Action

Do you have Netflix? Have you seen the film Back in Action advertised on the streaming platform? If you have then keep the fuck away from it. Don't be tempted, because it is an atrocious pile of stinking vomit and should not be watched if you want to have 100 minutes of your life to do something more enjoyable, like pulling your own finger nails out or being nailed to a sloth...

Back in Action is the first movie Cameron Diaz has made in over a decade, it's not a good call; the last one being a film with Jamie Foxx, who has seen his star fall so alarmingly he's now almost a parody of the man who won an Oscar and was so good when he was a younger man. This film about two spies who use the plane crash they were in to disappear, go off grid and raise a family, is one of the worst thought out action comedies ever to be made. Huge swathes of it didn't make sense, the wife was even picking the thing to pieces when they started moving round London and she was saying things like, "If they're heading for the Thames Barrier why are they going the wrong way?" And, "If they were there and now they're there then they travelled about five miles in less than five seconds." It wasn't funny; it wasn't adventurous; it wasn't clever and I really wanted to turn it off after about an hour, because I've seen turds that have been more exciting and interesting. This gets the stinkiest 2/10 you can imagine.

The Reading List

I read this book back in September. I'm sure I never mentioned it in here, did a check and couldn't find it, so as the wife has just finished it, I thought I would dedicate a few lines to it - Susanna Clarke's Piranesi. I can't remember why I didn't review it, I mean, I review just about everything. I'd review some of my more interesting shits if I took notes while doing them... Piranesi is by the same author who brought us the endearingly wonderful Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, one of the best books I have ever read about two warring magicians in an 18th century Britain, where magic exists and faeries play a big part in the way those things exist.

Piranesi is about a man who lives in a huge building and he's essentially a servant of the Other. He's possibly the seventh or eighth person to reside in the house as he has found the bones of at least seven other people. Then stuff begins to happen that makes him question his entire existence and the strange story begins to unfurl in front of us. It is short, weird, tragic and remarkable. You should read it, it's an extraordinary story that deserves our attention. Clarke really is a superb writer.

Time's Bullshit

For the love of God. I cannot believe I've waited so long to watch this unrelenting stream of stinky shit. All the hassle to get a copy with decent subtitles, to try and find out what the opening four minutes is about and the pfaffing about I've been through to be able to sit down and watch Cronos, the debut feature of Guillermo del Toro, only for it to be slightly worse than having a bath in a sink full of someone else's vomit. Jesus - literally and metaphorically - this was a dreadful film (Jesus is the name of the protagonist). I mean drop dead dreadful. The music sounded like it was from a Mexican porn film and the acting wasn't far behind. I wondered if I'd somehow stumbled on a copy that had been cut to ribbons, but no, this was the right length. The Cronos device can bestow eternal life on whoever uses it, but it comes with a price - being in this film for starters - it's got a vampire twist, a Frankenstein twist, a zombie twist and none of them are twists. Utter, utter bilge 1/10.

Criminal Holmes?

I think Steven Moffatt misses Sherlock Holmes. I mean who wouldn't. He had a successful TV series making the master detective a contemporary character and then because of circumstances it fizzled out. So the one thing that kept running through my mind while watching Inside Man was, 'he misses writing Sherlock, so he's come up with another 'similar' idea.'

Inside Man is a strange fish. It starts off as a horrible misunderstanding that goes catastrophically wrong and gradually becomes a dark comedy of errors that feels terribly contrived. Don't get me wrong, it's great fun and the addition of Stanley Tucci as a killer on death row, who just happens to be a genius criminologist is a clever and well played move, but... I dunno, there's just something ludicrous about the denouement, of which I won't delve into too much because, you know, spoilers. David Tennant plays a much loved vicar in a suburb of London; he lives in a fabulous vicarage with his wife and son, who is studying for his A levels and said son gets extra maths lessons from a teacher called Janice.

It starts with Janice saving the bacon of a young journalist on the tube by doing something brave but really clever; the thing is the journo wants to interview the teacher but she's not up for that, but the journo wouldn't let it lie and the two become something more than just casual acquaintances. Meanwhile Tennant's vicar is dealing with a dodgy verger who desperately wants him to hold onto a flash drive which contains pornography and keep it away from his domineering mother. The flash drive ends up being handed to the maths teacher and things spiral out of control from that point on as the flash drive contains kiddie porn and the vicar tries to take responsibility for it because the teacher thinks his son is responsible.

The journalist goes to the USA to interview Tucci about his death sentence and why he's still helping people solve crimes even though he's waiting to die. While she's there she gets a text message from Janice with a picture of a man's hand lunging towards her. She doesn't answer her phone so the journo goes back to Tucci and asks him if he can help find the woman because she's worried about her. All of this happens in the first episode, but by the end you've pretty much run out of patience with Janice plus the vicar and his family are now so mired in the horrendous situation they're in that the story takes a back seat. There are things that happen in it that are contrived to make the plot move forward - a problem Moffatt had when he wrote Doctor Who - everything from the viewing of the flash drive's contents to the ending, which was slightly silly; even the epilogue felt forced, like it was being set up for a sequel. It was an enjoyable four-part series but it was badly flawed. It's probably going to turn up on the BBC at some point, this year would be my guess and it might be worth you watching, if you can get past the flaws in the overall story.

Ill Lumon-Ating

Okay, Severance is back and everyone is raving about it. But are we going to get an advance on the story or are they going to find a way to reset and repeat? I think it's the latter given the way the extended opening episode went. There's a few wrinkles, such as Hellie clearly lying about her time outside - did she do that because she doesn't want the others to know just who she is or is she really her outie pretending to be her innie? This season opener all takes place on the severed floor inside the Lumon building and introduced us, briefly, to a new team for a while before the old team miraculously returned. It's also allegedly been five months since the season one finale, but is it? Mr Milchick is now the floor manager and Mrs Cobel is nowhere to be seen. 

Then the second episode did something I didn't see coming, but did sort of expect. I'll explain: I expected the second episode to be outside of Lumon, what I didn't expect was just how it was going to play out. More happened in it than I anticipated and many of the questions I believed were going to be brushed over for the sake of a continuing series were actually addressed. Whether anything will come from it is anyone's guess, but one thing is becoming clearer, this is a creepy, disconcerting and troubling show and Lumon need Mark S (Adam Scott); what they need him for is unclear, because, frankly, what his team do on the severed floor is strange and quite inexplicable. The problem is outside Mark Scout is just as intrigued and confused about what is going on and we don't know if he's genuinely back on the severed floor because he feels it's beneficial to him or is he there to ultimately get some answers. There is a real feeling you're watching a horror film; the vibe is most definitely scary.

This show needs to move forward, but it's been a huge success so the odds are that it will tread water; it will stay as weird as fuck and hope to deflect the viewer away from the fact that it's going nowhere fast. I get this feeling because if there is a third season it means we're probably going to get nothing resolved. Don't get me wrong, it's compulsive TV but so was Lost until it started to get on peoples' nerves. It doesn't matter how good it is, if we get to the end of episode 10 and we're still where we were at the start of this or last season then I might just give up on it. I don't know what the ultimate aim is or what the story behind what we see might be; it's just like a perpetual shaggy dog story and it needs to be more... The problem is it's just so fucking good.

Made Up Truths

We ended the week watching a five year old mini-series, one which we'd never heard of but turned out to be an absolutely stonking show that was powerful, disturbing, gripping and full of despair. Unbelievable came out in 2019 and it was and might still be on Netflix. If you have this platform then you need to watch this because it will blow you away, make you angry and give you a sense of justification by the end of it. It starts off with Kaitlyn Dever (last seen in Booksmart) as Marie, a troubled late teen who is raped in her apartment in the early hours of the morning. The problem is she's white trash, comes from a really troubled background and eventually because of her behaviour and some inconsistencies in her story, the police think she's making it up. This isn't helped by a former foster parent almost confirming to the police that the Marie is troubled and might be seeking attention.

Fast forward three years to Colorado and the rape of a student in her room with exactly the same MO as the earlier rape and enter Merrit Wever as a detective and Toni Collette as another detective from another area of Colorado, who by some fortunate bit of luck are thrown together and compare notes to realise that the rapes both of them are working on might be the work of a serial rapist. From this point it becomes part police procedural and part biopic. Marie's story all takes place in 2008 and her life spirals out of control in a really horrible way, while in 2011 the two detectives work tirelessly to solve their cases as more and more of them get unearthed. This is a harrowing series, but it absolutely knocks it out of the park. I don't think, if you are a fan of true crime stories and police procedurals, that you won't see anything quite as excellent as this. I didn't intend to rate TV shows the way I do films, but this absolutely deserves the 8.3 rating it has on IMDB and I'd give it a 9.5/10; the only thing that stops it getting top marks is the feeling of slight injustice you get at the end.

What's Up Next...

I'm hoping I won't be in so much pain. It seems that I don't ever get a break as far as some things are concerned and this time I've got a tooth problem that I might have to wait until the end of June to be sorted, but I hope can be helped sooner; but you probably know what a monumental fuck up our dental services are at the moment, so I expect I'm just going to have to try and manage it until it gets too much to cope with...

Oh, TV and film, yeah, there's that as well. There's stuff to watch, stuff to avoid and stuff that's going to land without my remembering or realising. Like there's something new due in the coming week, but I've forgotten what it is, while on the film front, it's the end of January, there's probably fuck all that's due for release that's going to be much better than that pile of excrement called Back in Action.

As usual, what you see is what you get, so fingers crossed I have something worth complaining about or praising.

 

My Cultural Life - Quackers & Cheese

 What's Up?

On the 14th January - a Tuesday, not that that matters - I had to run an errand. Nothing extraordinary about that, apart from the fact that the thermometer in the car read 14° - 14° on the 14th. 14° is pretty mild for January; when you consider that we had days in June and July that were actually much colder than this, it makes you wonder how people can truly believe that 'climate change' is just the weather.

Over in the USA, two thirds of the country is under snow and suffering freezing conditions, while California burns. The USA is probably one of the worst offenders regarding the destruction of the planet via the shit that it pumps into the atmosphere, yet it has a newish President who is both stupid and stubborn. For many people the USA is far more dangerous than Russia or China and those people would not be wrong...

Anyhow 14° and it wasn't raining, the winds were nothing more than a breeze and in contrast the week before saw temperatures struggle to get about 0° - which, amazingly, was treated by the media like it was some kind of polar disaster. This is the media now, catastrophising normal winter weather. The Met Office doesn't help, it issues yellow weather warnings at the drop of a hat - 2cm of snow gets a yellow warning; what would they do if we really did have a weather event like 1963 again? The problem is we need weather warnings, we just probably don't need them making every change in the weather something to be scared of.

But that's the thing now, isn't it. The media's job is to scare people, that or to lie to us about things. The removal of fact checkers from Facebook (not that they did much) and the promotion of hate speech on that massive twat Musk's pointless X platform is essentially allowing the rise of fascism to spread and we all know how that's going to end. The thing is war, hatred and unrest makes money for big corporations and that isn't me just being 'woke' it's kind of actually the truth.

The UK media also seems to have not changed its tune despite us having a government that isn't the Tories. One of my bug bears at the moment is the way the BBC is literally scrutinising EVERY. SINGLE. THING. the Labour government is doing. Maybe people wouldn't accuse the corporation of being a right wing mouthpiece if it had shown half as much scrutiny of the Tory government and the rampant corruption that followed them everywhere. The Tories did some truly horrendous things over 14 years, yet the media is attacking Labour - of which I am no supporter of - like they are deliberately fucking up the country. We've had right wing newspapers attacking ministers because of what they wear, while wankers like Robert Jenrick or Kemi Bad Enoch spread racist bullshit around like a farmer spreads muck and it's treated like they're some kind of political Jesuses. No wonder people are a) fed up with politics and b) we're likely headed for a Reform or Reform/Tory alliance in four and a half years. And if that happens, the country will be well and truly fucked and there will still be arseholes out there who think living in a North Korea styled country will be good for us...

Anyhow... on with what we're here for:

Ever Decreasing Circles

I touched on this last week, so here's what I really thought of the second season of Shrinking... Last year, I did a top ten TV shows thing in the blog and creeping in at #9 was this. I gave it a small paragraph basically explaining that Jason Segel and Harrison Ford play psychiatrists in a California practice with Jessica Williams as the third partner. It was a great series looking at the life of Jimmy (Segel) as he navigates his way through life after struggling to get over the sudden death of his wife in a drink/driving accident and Paul (Ford) who has just been diagnosed with Parkinson's. It sounds like it wouldn't have been very good, maybe even maudlin, but it was excellent. It introduced us to an ensemble cast that included a number of patients, friends, family and neighbours - all of who came into the show as rounded, fully-developed characters that we got to know as the season progressed. It was surprising and the fact it got into my top ten was pretty good, especially if you look at some of the competition it had. Anyhow, we just finished season two, which introduced us to very few new characters - except for Brett Goldstein's Louis; the guy who killed Jimmy's wife - and spent more time developing and focusing on people in Jimmy's life...

If I was to do a top ten for 2024 (when this series came out and finished in) then Shrinking might be #1. It is a fantastic programme; a comedy that is both funny and, like all good comedies, dramatic, tragic and full of pathos. In fact, there's an episode halfway through season two that is about as far removed from a comedy as you can imagine and it's brilliant. There are some truly unreal episodes in this season and the penultimate is probably the one that stands out the most. in any other world it would have been the season finale, but with this surprising show it still had a trick up its sleeve. I remember when the great Buffy the Vampire Slayer had the episode where Buffy's mother Joyce died. It was an awful, awful episode; the kind of thing where you'd question why you watch the show when it could vomit up such a dreadful part... And then there was the ending. An ending so shocking that the previous 40 minutes were instantly forgotten about. If you've never seen it, then I would recommend the following episode - The Body - but you'd need to watch the one before this, because... the ending...

The finale of Shrinking season two is schmaltzy and very American. It's unusually needy and everything about it is a great reason to dislike Americans. Then two things happen and you are left with wet eyes and a bit of a tickly cough. It's got an ending that will have a profound effect on anyone who has become invested in this utterly fucking wonderful show. There's only going to be one more series apparently, that's a fact that's heartbreaking - but not as much as the end of season two. Cancel your streaming platform and get Apple TV+; Shrinking is just one of many great shows on it, but in many ways it's all you need it for. It's a show that deserves a 15/10 rating. I cannot recommend it enough.

When I'm 64

The documentary Beatles 64 is a fantastic snapshot of a world that will never exist again (or will it?). The United States post JFK, a country riven with racial tensions, conservative values and a real anti-youth feel to it. I mean, in many ways the USA hates the young because they represent change, but this isn't so much about the USA as it is about the furore caused by four young men from Liverpool who were already superstars in the UK and were about to become the same on the other side of the Atlantic. This entire film is largely the work of two brothers Albert and David Maysles, who shot two weeks worth of footage for a documentary which was called What's Happening! The Beatles in the USA, their footage was interwoven with footage from US television and other sources. I don't really understand how David Tedeschi gets credited with director on this because at best it's the work of an film editor, and there's also a number of producers, yet again the person really responsible was Mariah Rehmet, the film's editor; she's the reason this film is what it is...

Anyhow, it's a fascinating look at the Beatles at the start of their journey to becoming icons and superstars. Four guys in their early twenties in a strange country that they looked upon with general amusement and bemusement. There's some good interviews with people who were there and people who were deeply affected by the Fab Four, but the one thing I took from it was by the end of their fortnight in the States, Paul McCartney was beginning to look really pissed off. The footage from Florida and then the plane journey home, he looked like he was totally fucked off, whether by his mates or the merry-go-round of press and having to be these nice guys from Liverpool. I've been a huge fan of the Beatles all my life and while this was so much better than the three part borefest that was The Beatles: Get Back it was still just okay. What I want to see is a proper documentary that charts their entire career, or one that focuses on the period from Revolver to the split up. This was still entertaining and John Lennon really was a wickedly acerbic and funny man when he was young. 7/10

Bromance

As is often the case, after we've watched something we enjoyed, we look for something one of the actors has been in previously. The thing with Jason Segel is he doesn't seem to have been in much that appeals. I know friends who find him annoying and talentless and when he first appeared in Shrinking I was hard pressed to name anything I'd ever seen him in before. So when I saw the film I Love You, Man, with Segel and Paul Rudd, I wasn't immediately drawn to it. However, after toing and froing about it, I thought, "Ah fuck it, why not." I can honestly say that I'm glad I opted to watch it and I'm surprised that 15 years after the event I hadn't been tempted to watch it sooner. I mean, for no other reason there's a cameo from Rush in it and while the Canadian rock band are something I don't really listen to much anymore, they're still a very big part of my past.

Paul Rudd plays a man who has very few male friends; he's a lady's man both sexually and platonically. He gets on with all women, but struggles with his own gender. In an ironic twist, his brother - played by a youthful Andy Samberg - is gay and gets on with almost everybody - straight or gay. Rudd is a real estate agent and has Lou 'The Hulk' Ferrigno's house on his portfolio, which, if sold, would earn him enough commission to be able to do the deal of his dreams, but he's struggling to sell the multi-million dollar house and is coming under pressure to do the deal. He's also just proposed to his girlfriend - Rashida Jones [who has really gone downhill in the last 15 years if you compare 2009 Jones to the one who appeared in that woeful show Sunny] - but doesn't have a best man. So he goes in search of a new male pal. The set up is a little contrived and the period between this decision and meeting Jason Segel's Sydney is basically a series of awkward and borderline homosexual encounters.

At an open house event, Rudd meets Segel, who admits he's not interested in buying the house, he's just there for the free food, and there seems to be a spark there; the two guys seem to genuinely like each other. They hook up for a beer and gradually bond over their love of Rush, until several months later Rudd asks Segel to be his best man. Then, like in all the best romcoms, something happens to jeopardise the friendship and the rest of the film happens. It is a genuinely funny movie, with plenty of LOL moments, from both male leads, and it's really unusual seeing Jon - Happy Hogan - Favreau playing a total arsehole. I am really glad we took the time to watch this and I'm going to give it a firm 8/10.

History Ennit

I'm not suggesting this series is worth watching, in fact I only mention it because we watched one episode that was relatively close to home. Villages By the Sea season four, episode two, with Ben Robinson, was in the hamlet of Port Carlisle, a place on the coast of the Solway Firth; about 60 miles from where I live (as the crow flies) and 11 miles from the city of Carlisle. It was fascinating because Port Carlisle, for a short period in the 1830s, looked as though it might become one of the UK's most important shipping ports. It had its own canal, which was soon replaced by a railway line and then just as it was about to be catapulted into the big time, some investor decided to throw a lot of money at the village of Silloth, 15 miles down the coast, and Port Carlisle began to die. Now it's about 40 houses - many of them Georgian manses - some unusual geographical oddities and almost a stone's throw from Scotland. It's actually one of the most isolated parts of Cumbria, despite being close to both Carlisle and the oddly-named (for me at least) Wigton. It's also the kind of programme that if its on and there's nothing else worth bothering about, then you have 30 minutes of interesting history to learn from.

Wanchorman 2

See? I told you so. I just didn't expect to watch the sequel the following night... The thing about Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is that it's actually a better film than the first one. I mean, it's still a load of silly crap, but there was a semblance of a story, there were some funny jokes - again mainly courtesy of Steve Carell, who they obviously realised was the funniest thing in the first film so they gave him more air time - and there were actually genuine bits of satire in this one. This time around it was about the advent of 24 hour news and suggests that Ron Burgundy was solely responsible for the phenomena that is rolling news coverage - with added speculation - of current, real time events. Again it was jampacked with A listers - including this time Harrison Ford, Will Smith and numerous others not credited and even Will Ferrell had a few more funny lines; but it was essentially typical shite American humour and was nearly 30 minutes longer than the original. Thank fuck that's over. 5/10.

Incroyables Deux

If you put me on the spot and asked me what I think is the best superhero film ever made I would probably say Brad Bird's The Incredibles. It pushes every single button the comics fan in me needed pushing. Watching again it before Christmas all it did was confirm to me what an absolutely brilliant movie it was. However, the 2004 film suffered slightly from some slightly shoddy CGI - which sounds strange because it's a CGI thing, but if you look closely you can see that CGI films have advanced a lot since then. In printers' terms The Incredibles was 180dpi, whereas The Incredibles 2 is 360dpi - the changes are subtle, but apparent. It's not so much the main characters but the backgrounds, the things going on that are not in sharp focus. If you put the two side by side you would understand what I mean.

The other difference is that before Christmas I thought one thing and after it I thought another. Now I saw The Incredibles 2 six years ago or so when it came out, so therefore watching it again was like watching it for the first time. The thing that sticks out is while it's not hugely better than the first, it is better, so therefore it is now the best superhero film I have ever seen. There are some Marvel films I adore, I even dedicated an entire blog to my favourites, but none of them are ever going to be as good as this. The sequel, which literally continues from the moment the original ends - despite a 14 year IRL gap - is clever, funny and… ahem... super. It's different from the first; it keeps you guessing for well over an hour and the baby again steals the show. Jack-Jack is the best; the scene with the racoon is awesome; the scenes with Edna hilarious and everything else is bloody brilliant as well. Guess what? 10/10, I don't think any Marvel film has ever got better than a 9. 

'News' Papers

Long time readers of this blog will know my thoughts on The Guardian, but my disdain for the neoliberal mouthpiece is quite restrained when it comes to the actual right wing rags out there who seem to have forgotten the last 14 years of Tory rule like they've never happened. I get it that Starmer is as effective as an ice teapot in an oven, but the scrutiny has been ramped up to 11 after just six months, while we were lucky if anything Johnson, Truss or Sunak did got more than a mention - even when they were doing truly horrendous things...

However, that's not why I'm here. I have noticed recently that newspapers and their on-line versions seem to think their demographic is 18-35 year olds, when in reality most 'newspaper' readers tend to be over 50 now. The generation who grew up with the internet and mobile devices would be hard pressed to be seen even with a free paper and a little bit of research on my part over the last few weeks has given me an almost definitive - young people don't look at newspapers, even on line. Many of them don't even look at BBC news pages. This has led to some strange belief that young people now seem to favour dictators over democracy, because they don't engage with politics. I mean, this might be down to the fact that politics doesn't exactly appeal to your average young person and those who are interested in it usually end up as career politicians (and have been brainwashed either left or right by the time they get there).

The one thing, politics aside, that amuses me is certain on-line (and print) papers' clickbait and youth focused articles. They just seem bewildering and some of the feedback you see - especially on papers' Facebook pages - seems to be more WTF than actual engagement. It seems to me that the people who commission articles don't know the bulk of their readers. Now, this might just be me and the vocal minority, but I get the impression that some newspapers will publish any old shit just so that half a dozen ambivalent young people might deem it worthy of their time... I am an old man...

Vomit Inducing?

It's turning into a good week. No really it is. Yes I know we're on the cusp of Trump 2.0 and I'm banging on about politics, newspapers and other shit, but our viewing this week has been mainly brilliant and our Thursday night movie was no exception. It was yet another 'should I, shouldn't I' choice and like I Love You, Man, I just thought, 'ah fuck it, put it on and see.' So that's what I did, I put The Big Sick on, the semi-biographical story of how Kumail Nanjiani - the Pakistani comedian - met and fell in love with his white American wife Emily and it was delightful, funny and extremely human. And that is essentially it, except for one big thing, Emily, got very very ill and that's all I'm saying. It examines mixed relationships, what it's like to come from a Muslim family that lives in a country like the USA and what it's like for a Muslim living in post 9/11 USA. It's a cracking film and deserves a heart-filled 9/10.

Mysterious Ways

I want to tell you a short story. I'll make it relatively quick. In 1986, the wife and I watched a Channel 4 adaptation of an obscure Melvyn Peake novel. It was something I spent the last 30 years trying to track down. It had a profound effect on me but Channel 4 never repeated it; they never seemed to think it warranted another showing. It might have popped up on All4 but I've never really had access to that so I never knew. Then about five years ago I saw the DVD on sale on Amazon and immediately bought it, but by this time we didn't have a decent DVD player and my intention was I'd watch it on the computer. But I never got around to it and then about a year ago it popped up on one of torrents sites, I downloaded it and still managed to go 12 months without watching it. So this week, I asked the wife if she minded and we finally, after 39 years, watched Mr Pye again...

[This is a spoiler riddled review] Starring Derek Jacobi as Harold Pye and Judy Parfitt as Miss Dredger, it definitely hasn't aged well, plus the quality of the copy I got (which was pretty much the same quality as the DVD) was awful. It looked like it has been filmed on cheap video tape and the special effects were... from 1986.

The main thing I remembered was the fabulous soundtrack by Ken Howard, which played on the theme of the hymn Pull for the Shore, Sailor and was haunting and mesmerising, with its key changes and catchy tune; I remembered little about the series though. I remembered the scene where Tanty (Robin McCaffrey) was running around naked, but I thought that happened in the final episode not the second part and of course I remembered the wings and the horns, but the rest of it was largely unfamiliar. 

It is a strange story - Harold Pye, a retired bank manager (Jacobi was 46 when he made it) comes to Sark to spread love and teach the people there to love each other and everything else, at the command of the Great Pal (God), but as he succeeds in changing their lives, he begins to grow angel's wings and he can't deal with that, so he conspires to do evil to rid himself of the wings, but instead grows horns. He is torn and doesn't know what to do. So far so strange, especially the odd bunch of people he surrounds himself with, but at some point about 2/3rds of the way through it stops making sense and the story sort of turns into a shaggy dog story with the islanders turning against Pye and attempting to lynch him. There's lots of inexplicable nonsense that takes place prior to this - such as a decomposing whale, Patricia Hayes as an Albanian cook who everybody understand despite wittering on in a made up language, the island's resident artist who has a crush on the island's resident prostitute and the winching of a huge woman onto the beach and failing. It's full of incidental stuff that really doesn't add to the story because so little time was actually focused on it or no explanation as to why it's there. 

In the end, with his wings returned to their full and lustrous span he flees the islanders and drives the buggy he escaped from them with off the causeway, where he flies off into the sunset. The end. There's more to it than that; it might be allegorical, but if it is it's missed, mired by an uneven narrative with gaps that I presume the viewer is expected to fill in themselves.

With hindsight, I can't understand why the 24 year old me loved this so much; maybe my young self saw something that my older, more cynical self can't see, or maybe it was simply the soundtrack (which gets an 8). However, if I'd watched this today for the first time I'd say it was a lot of shite. If I was to give it a mark out of 10 now, it probably would struggle to get a 3.

What's Up Next...

Severance is back and I'd like to watch it weekly; the problem is I don't think the wife even wants to watch it. There are things, I believe, she simply puts up with and when they return she struggles to hide her true feelings from me - that's what being together over 40 years does. 

It's my intention to watch Cronos, the debut feature of Guillermo del Toro. I've had it for a long time, but the opening four minutes - the scene setting - has always been without subtitles. I could never understand why a film that has subtitles, doesn't have them for those opening few minutes. Well, I found the opening scene on the Tube of You and someone had included subtitles, so I downloaded that and we can finally watch it knowing what the premise was.

We also have the new Cameron Diaz film - her first for over a decade - but since acquiring it and writing this it has plummeted to 6.1 on IMDB and I'm not hopeful it will recover. I can't actually remember a January so devoid of anything new to watch. There was this suggestion recently that Netflix produce TV that can be watched while scrolling on your phone; if that's the case - welcome to the end of TV and film as we know it.

I suppose it's another case of wait until next week and be surprised if there's anything for me to talk about...

 

My Cultural Life - The God of Unfairness

What's Up?

The first proper week after the festivities always feels a little strange. I saw a meme about how this week is a little like waking up and wondering who you are and why you're here. I think, and I say this from presumption rather than experience, that after two weeks of limbo, getting back on the horse can be a little disorienting. You become accustomed to the fact you've had two weeks of your life disrupted by events you expect will be different (every bleedin' year) but tend to be the same. Like repeating the same thing hoping for a different outcome.

I'm still getting over this virus I had after Christmas. It's my thing; taking longer to recover from things that knock me off my feet than the thing itself. However, I should be really grateful because from what I've heard I was lucky to just get a 'cold', there have been people out there catching all kinds of nasty shit, so I suppose my lack of being sociable saves me from getting shit that might fuck me up even worse. The good news is that at the time of writing this, I am feeling more human again.

I started watching season two of Shrinking, but you won't see a review of it until I've seen all 12 episodes - because I'm not going to do the reviewing things as I watch them thing because it simply means I do more unnecessary writing. I made this point last week or maybe I didn't, but I need a degree of discipline in my format and telling you about the first episode of season two in a general sense means when I watch episodes two, three, four and five over the coming week I will just go back and rewrite, reword or reassemble existing words in a different way, when I can just write it once, when I'm finished...

Pilgrimage

You may recall a few months ago I mentioned that I'd fallen down a West Wing Tube of You rabbit hole, ending up watching literally hours of clips from one of the greatest TV series of all time. During these few weeks I heard about a film that Martin Sheen made in 2010; something his son Emilio Estevez wrote, produced and directed (he also appears in it as well), which on the face of it looked like something I wouldn't go near. The thing was I watched some clips of it and I got this feeling that maybe I should watch it. I don't know why, because a film about an aged optometrist travelling to the south of France to identify his dead son's remains and then ending up completing the journey his son was supposed to make, sounded like something that should appear on the Bible Network or possibly sponsored by one of the major religions, especially as the journey was the Camino de Santiago - the way of St James. The thing was it has sat on the Flash Drive of Doom for over three months and every so often I think, "Shall I watch this?" 

The Way is absolutely fucking glorious. It is an utterly wonderful, beautiful and emotional movie. It is one of the loveliest and saddest films I have seen in many years and it might be because I'm getting old, but I was engrossed from almost the moment it started until the very end when, part of me, wanted it to carry on for at least another hour. Daniel Avery quit his doctorate to go and travel the world; the first thing he wanted to do was walk the Camino de Santiago between France and Spain, but literally a day into his walk - which can take months - he fell victim to bad weather and died. Dr Thomas Avery, his father, a widower, receives the bad news from a French police officer while he's on the golf course with his country club friends. From that point on, it's about Tom reconnecting with his dead son by doing the thing Daniel wanted to do; so Tom walks The Way and stops at every important point to scatter some of his only child's ashes.

Along the way he meets Yorick van Wageningen's Joost - a Dutchman who is doing The Way for reasons which may or may not be truthful. Joost is a pot smoking party animal who wants to lose weight for his brother's wedding, so he can get into an old suit. Joost is fucking excellent and you'll love him within five minutes. Tom and Joost meet Sarah - Deborah Kara Unger - who is doing the walk so she can quit smoking (but you can guess this isn't the real reason) and these three eventually team up with Jack - James Nesbitt - a travel writer with a block who is all front. To say they hit it off would be a lie; they all have their reasons for being there and those reasons mean they walk together, but it's a long time before they become friends, but they're on The Way for the long haul.

I loved this movie. It was a simple tale about truth and commitment; a story about love and loss. It was sumptuously filmed with some great and colourful characters, some genuine moments of the sense that people can love each other regardless of their beliefs or their pasts. It transcends everything and plays out in a spiritual way that's dotted with vibrant and fantastic supporting actors. It's emotional, funny, poignant, sad and one of the best things I have seen in a long time, but I think I already said that. It's not often I will ever award a 10/10 but The Way almost deserves an 11.

This song was on the soundtrack - https://youtu.be/OOgpT5rEKIU?si=Wt_qLwdybjRhDEbh - but the entire soundtrack was great (apart from the Coldplay song). 

Black & White Lives Matter

Sometimes a film really does have an all-star cast, yet despite this we had never watched A Time To Kill. I don't really know why, I mean, it's a Matthew McConaughey movie and we literally have never seen him in anything we haven't enjoyed. Why this has Sandra Bullock as the lead in the credits must have been a bit of a wrench for McConaughey because this is his film, even if it also has Samuel L Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Donald and Kiefer Sutherland, Brenda Fricker, Oliver Platt, Ashley Judd, M Emmett Walsh, Charles Dutton, Patrick McGoohan and Kurtwood Smith. He commands it from the moment he first appears and it's probably the role that made people go 'Oh, this guy's good!'

It's a '90s set courtroom drama about a man who murders two child rapists after they rape and beat his daughter and leave her for dead. Against a backdrop of racial tension in the deep south, this is a nasty, unrelenting movie that is both compelling and difficult to watch. It paints a very good - but bleak - picture of what the USA was like and possibly what it is going to become again now that the Orange Cunt is back in charge. It does suffer from some 1990s filmmaking problems, but the story and execution is way more important; it's also - amazingly - directed by Joel Schumacher without his usual bombast. This is a quality film and you might catch it on Film4 or even All4. It deserves a big 8½/10.

Zombie Horse Shit

Oh Lupita Nyong'o... Did you need the money? Was it a case of a few weeks in Australia taking in the sun and sea, make a shit film and then return to being a promising actor? Because that's what Little Monsters felt like; an ill-advised excursion into zombie comedy horror that was really a redemption story, except the redemption should have come from me and anyone else by NOT watching this absolute heap of shit. It was mildly amusing in a really annoying way for the opening ten minutes - long before the zombies arrived - with Alexander England playing a complete arsehole who just annoys everyone he's near because of his selfish whiny nature. Then there's a zombie outbreak and a quiet corner of Australia is turned into the most boring zombie apocalypse I have ever seen. This was 28 Days Later on mogadon, the Walking Dead performed by somnambulists; it was simply awful. Bad special effects, bad acting - even from Josh Gadd, who is so good in Wolf Like Me, and a film that was not funny, nor scary or even slightly jeopardous. Why was this made? Who greenlit this gobsmackingly woeful excuse for a film? 2/10

Somebody

If Little Monsters was a trashy 'monster' movie, then Nobody was a trashy action thriller. The big difference - other than being different genres - is that Nobody didn't take itself seriously even if it was a brutal and violent movie. Bob Odenkirk - about as far removed from Saul Goodman as you could imagine - plays mild-mannered Hutch Mansell, an accountant for his father-in-law's manufacturing company who also just happens to be a very handy man with anything that can be weaponised. He was what covert ops people called an 'auditor' - the last person anyone ever sees before things... stop. The idea of Odenkirk as an action hero is quite unlikely, which might be why this movie works so well. It really is just a slight story that spirals out of control because Hutch had an itch that needed to be scratched. The levels of 'revenge' he goes to to 'pay back' a Russian mafia boss are so good you want to punch the air at times and all because someone - unrelated - broke into his house and stole some money and a watch. Had this not happened, the rest of the film wouldn't have and it would have been a three minute film about a boring accountant in a loveless marriage with a son who has no respect for him and a young daughter that feels sorry for her daddy. It is very trashy; there's a number of plot holes in it, but they're so unimportant that you don't really care about them and there's an irreverence that makes this a feel good film with one of the highest body counts you will ever see in a contemporary movie. 6.5/10

Healthy?

Apparently, too much vitamin B6 has a detrimental effect on peoples' health. Don't get me wrong, I think being kept up to date with what is good or bad for you is a positive thing, but it's getting to the stage where I'm beginning to wonder how our ancestors managed to live for more than 25 minutes, let alone grow up, have families, leave legacies and eat whatever they could afford...

Canine Blues

The thing about Dog is that it's a simple story about a former soldier given the job of taking a dead veteran's dog back to his funeral in Southern California. The dog - a Belgian Malinois - worked with one man and now that man is dead the general belief is the dog goes to the funeral and then to an army base where she's going to be euthanised because no one else can work with the her. It's a road movie over five days and it's enjoyable, quite emotional and Channing Tatum is a bit of a plonker. The thing is, like the dog, he has no direction any more. He's not getting back in the army, despite his wishes and while the dog's journey might be a backdoor back into it by the time they get to the funeral there's always going to be one outcome. It's a good film, not a great one, but worth your while, especially if you like dogs. 6/10

No Entry

Matt Reeves is a great director. There's a sense that whether it's a blockbuster or an 'indie' take on something big, he's the go to guy at the moment. The Batman was a unique take on the DC mainstay, while his POTA reboot makes the original series look as bad as the 1970s TV series. He was also the guy who directed Cloverfield, the found-footage film that essentially kickstarted his career. The fella is just good at making films (and he's pretty good at producing films and TV as well) despite the fact he hasn't actually made that many. So, it was time to revisit his breakout movie; the remake of the Scandi horror flick Let the Right One In, rewritten and retitled Let Me In. Starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Kodi Smit-McFee, Richard Jenkins and Elias Koteas - as a detective on the trail of possibly a Satanist cult; this is a modern (although it's set in 1983) vampire story with a twist. It's like an indie film, but it's also like a psychological study. It's understated, yet really quite nasty. There's an icky feeling attached to it, without it ever feeling like it's crossing any lines and it's as disturbing as fuck. It examines all manner of themes - alienation, loneliness, domination, bullying and what indicators do you need to see that someone might be on the verge of becoming the next psychopath.

In many ways, it's not a patch on the original, but it doesn't try to be. It almost tries to be a companion piece, even if the stories are incredibly similar. It's also really noticeable that Carla Buono plays Smit-McFee's mother and while she appears numerous times, I don't think the viewer sees her face once. Although that might be allegorical in a way, because the adults in this film all could serve a purpose - like never naming a pet because you might one day have to eat it, I think Buono was never shown because once you see her face, she could become dinner. It was maybe not as good as I thought it was 15 years ago when it came out, but this downbeat and cerebral horror movie still deserves a 7/10.

Antisocial Media

A bit of preaching to the converted, but it seems that the world's richest people now want to rule the world. That plastic-faced lump of human waste Elon Musk is buying a lot with his right wing views, while the autistic wanker of the world, Mark Zuckerberg, has decided that fact checking is for 'libtards' and we're in for a proliferation of all kinds of bollocks that someone will think is true.

Couple the above with The Donald's desire to acquire both Greenland and Panama (and everybody said he wouldn't get involved in world politics) and we're heading for a period in mankind's history where maybe living in a quiet corner of Scotland (not that far from one of the Orange Shitler's golf courses) might have been a really sensible decision by me...

ET Bone Home

It has been 40 years since we last watched John Carpenter's Starman and considering this was made seven years after Close Encounters you would have thought it had been made ten years before it. This is the only time that a Carpenter film ever had an Oscar nomination for - Jeff Bridges in the Best Actor category - and while Bridges is adequate as the alien taking the form of a dead husband, it really is just a really naff feature. I wanted it to be as good as I remembered it being, but I think tastes have grown more sophisticated over the last four decades and while the subplot is about what the US army would do to an alien invader, the main thing about this is trying to get an alien to assimilate into humanity and the way humans think and feel. Karen Allen does a reasonably good job as the widow suddenly thrust into a strange and inexplicable situation where her dead husband is suddenly reincarnated, right in front of her in her own lounge, plus you know she's going to end up boffing the alien too. Meanwhile, Charles Martin Smith is admirable as the SETI scientist who, at least, understands that for an alien to come here then there's a chance its going to be considerably more advanced than us. The special effects are from 1984 and the USA is depicted as a collective group of arseholes - so nothing there has changed much (except it does the usual good job of showing that the poorer you are in the USA, the more human you become). It's also a movie that leaves so much open at the end it was almost like they expected to do a sequel. It feels as dated as its age and maybe if I'm still alive when I'm 102 I'll watch it again. 4/10

Wanchorman

It took me 20 years to watch Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and the wait wasn't worth it. It's very silly. It has some genuine LOL moments - most of them courtesy of Steve Carell, who was by far and away the funniest person whenever he was on screen. I struggle to see why people think Will Ferrell is funny or even talented - he's like a poor man's Steve Martin; someone I also struggle to find funny... But what about the film? Well, it felt a little like that great Apple TV show The Morning Show but set in the early 1970s and written by a kid who likes fart gags. It was about the appointment of the first female news reporter for Channel 4 News in San Diego and it was childish nonsense. The 'story' was largely superficial and, yes, I know, it was supposed to be a silly comedy produced by Judd Apatow and directed by Adam McKay, a man whose films I usually love, but it felt like one long badly written sketch for SNL. However, I was slowly racking up the Marvel references made during the film - from an early Johnny Storm joke to a Thor nod at the end - so there was something... Plus there's a post credit cameo from Smokey and the Bandit 2 - which was ace i9n a post modern humour kind of way! I have the sequel to watch as well and the masochist in me will probably see it next week. 5/10

And Finally... I Lied

I started watching season two of Shrinking, but you won't see a review of it until I've seen all 12 episodes ... This was the first line of the third paragraph of this week's blog; you read it about ten minutes ago, at most. I lied, I need to talk about it, just briefly because there will probably be a proper review next week.

I remember this unexpectedly making my Top Ten TV shows of 2023. I also remember raving about it being excellent television. Season two - of which I am half way through watching - is even better than last year. It might be because I'm more familiar with the characters and feel a little more invested in it, but this story of three psychiatrists, their friends and patients is heavenly TV. It ticks every box; there isn't a dislikeable character in it and all of them are unique, well written, rounded and funny in their own ways. Harrison Ford is a revelation as the lead quack whose health is deteriorating because of Parkinson's disease and even the normally annoying Jason Segel is really good. The two best characters - if such things exist - are Christa Miller as the neurotic, self-obsessed next door neighbour Liz and the fantastic Jessica Williams as Gaby; one of the partners in the practice, who literally only has to open her mouth and you're laughing; she is sexy, cool, geeky and I do apologise, but I would... Stay tuned. 

What's Up Next?

Well, Severance is back this coming week and I expect it will be as strange and mysterious as the first season... However, this is a TV show that needs to be finite and given the huge success it was for Apple TV+ I get the horrible feeling that instead of a season of explanations, we're going to end up being mired in new characters and a lot of obfuscation regarding whether it moves forward or not. I hope I'm wrong, but it was left at such a point in the four main characters' lives that to ignore that might be seen as taking the piss. I hope I'm not disappointed. That said, like Shrinking I might (have to) wait for all the episodes to drop before watching it because we watched it as a box set the first time around and one suspects watching it as a weekly might lose some of its mystique and impact.

The Flash Drive of Doom is full of things we either don't want to watch again, yet, or newer stuff that have been sitting on it for a while that simply do not float our collective boats, at the moment. Most of the film reviews this week are from things we recorded off of Film4.

I don't remember a start of a year that has been so devoid of interesting TV. The BBC has been promoting the hell out of The Traitors, a reality TV show that we find about as appealing as having to spend the day sitting in a bath full of someone else's runny shit. The coming weeks also have the return of shite like Dragon's Den and that wanker Alan Sugar in The Apprentice - both fucking awful TV shows that we have never watched a single minute of. That said, we have never watched an episode of Strictly Come Dancing nor have we ever succumbed to watching anything with the words 'Reality' and 'TV' in. I find it wasteful and destructive to watch TV that highlights the worst in human beings; I mean most people are just worthless cunts at the best of times, so why subject myself to them when I could be doing something interesting like self-harming...

Next week will be whatever next week brings.  

My Cultural Life - New Year, Newish Look

Welcome to a new blog. A bit like the old blog but slightly different in that this won't just be about films and TV, it will also be about music, books and my life, because I expect 2025 will be different - well, it's more hope than expectation, but I'll be 63 in April and I've got to do more than just sit in front of the TV and then tell you about it while trying not to spoil things for those of you who might not have seen what I was watching...

Christmas Repeat

Facebook memories has become a useful tool in many ways, especially around things like birthdays and, of course, Christmas and the New Year. I've been doing Facebook for 17 years in June and that's longer than I want to think about - I mean, it still feels newish.

What these memories also do is show me how bloody often I've been ill over the holidays. This was our 8th Scottish Christmas/Hogmanay and it was also the fourth time one or both of us have been ill. Fortunately (if that is the right word), it was only me this time and it waited until December 28 before it hit me. What had been a teensy sniffle on the 23rd, 24th and 25th, got a bit more snotty on Boxing Day and the 27th and then whatever virus I'd managed to catch took hold and by New Year's Eve I'd broken out the emergency antibiotics and steroids.

A cold will probably be the death of me. In many ways it was the death of my mum; it was a cold that made the previous chain of events (my dad's non-fatal heart attack and the subsequent days that followed) a concoction of imminent death. Of course, we didn't know this at the time, but less than 3 weeks after my dad came out of hospital, my mum was in it and dying. When I was diagnosed with COPD, the doctor - a lovely woman called Helen Mead - said as I was leaving her office, "Oh and try not to get any colds; colds are bad for you." I've been told by a number of health professionals since that it was very unprofessional of her to say this, but I think it was her way of saying that at some point in the future a cold will be my undoing.

Jeez, this is maudlin, you're probably thinking? The thing is mum died when she was 64 and I'm zeroing in on that number and with COPD, my anxiety issues, propensity to get viruses and lack of any discernible social life - since COVID - I made a decision at the end of November to do stuff. So I signed up to a Tai Chi class; I have gotten involved in helping the newly acquired community buy out of the pub (and will work there for free if they'll have me - at least until they're up and running) and I have a bunch of other things on a 2025 list of things I need to do to get me back being the Phil I once was. It might be a resolution I screw up, but I've never been one for New Year change, so why not start now?

So this new blog is going to be more than just what I watch on the Smart TV in the living room. It might not seem that different for a while, but I have things to read, to listen to and to get involved with that I hope will be more interesting than weekly updates of what I think of a 10 year old TV series I've just got around to watching. That said, we ended 2024 with something altogether better than I expected...

Creep

What a simply superb movie Heretic is. Who would have thought that a) a film about two Mormon missionaries on a recruitment drive and b) Hugh Grant being Hugh Grant in a totally scary way, could be such a barnstormer of a feature? Not me for starters. I'd had this for a couple of months and I kept putting it off, preferring to watch anything rather than see if all the critics were right. They were. Heretic is a modern horror classic because like any really good horror film, it's totally plausible. Grant plays Mr Reed, a man who lives in a lovely - very British looking - house, who has expressed interest in talking to the Church of the Latter Day Saints, so he is visited by two young and idealistic young women. The moment they walk into his house it looks like a bad idea and if you have any idea what the film is about then you're looking at all the clues and thinking exactly what you're supposed to be thinking.

For a movie that is mainly set in Reed's living room, parlour and cellar, it pretty much whizzes along and about a third of the way through any atheists out there will be totally enjoying Hugh Grant's speeches about religion; by which time all the two women want is to leave - something both of them now realise isn't going to happen. This is a clever, nasty and quite shocking feature and was the perfect way to end 2024 - we watched it NYE - if you haven't seen it, then I recommend you do and if I had to give it a rating - my rating rather than an IMDB one - then I'd give it a solid 8/10.

There is also a weird connection between The Hollies, Radiohead and Lana Del Rey, but you'll need to see it to understand it.

Invisible Touch?

Unlike many old films I review, I'd never seen the 2000 adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho and after finally watching it I'm glad I'd never watched it and wish it had stayed that way. It's a very confusing film that made little sense to me until about the halfway mark when I started to realise that everything in it was going on in his head. Now if that's a spoiler then tough because this film is a quarter of a century old and if you haven't seen it by now then you're never going to. Possibly the funniest moment in this darkly comic movie was Bale discussing his love of Genesis (the pop iteration of the prog band) and his admiration for Phil Collins, which, if nothing else, proved categorically that this was indeed a comedy. What was real, what wasn't? Was Christian Bale actually playing someone called Patrick Bateman or was his name Davies? In the end it made little sense and I felt it was badly acted - apart from Bale - and was mindblowingly bad. I rate this a 3/10 and a recommendation to watch something more interesting instead.

Comanche Run

If you want to be honest, when a franchise as big as this one boasts the original, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the best of the bunch then any discerning movie goer would question whether watching any of the sequels is worth the time and effort. However, Prey the 2022 prequel to Arnie's Predator is an incredibly well done, back-to-basics, film that is worth your time, even if you don't like sci-fi films with ugly brutish monsters as the main antagonist. This is set in North America in 1791 and is all about Amber Midthunder as Naru, a woman who wants to be a warrior but isn't taken seriously by her elders and 'betters'. All of her attempts to prove herself either fail or fail spectacularly; that is until a Predator arrives on her peoples' reservation and starts hacking the heads off its prey.   

This is an excellent addition to the franchise, with possibly only Adrien Brody's 2010 sequel Predators also worth your time and effort. Midthunder is excellent (as is her dog) and this absolutely is a full on, no time to rest, thriller with nods to the original film as well as some ingenious ideas. It deserves a solid 7/10 and a thumbs up from me if you've never seen it. Don't be put off by the sci-fi monster premise; this is about emancipation as much as it's about alien creatures with advanced weaponry for the 18th century.

Beach Bums

The documentary about the history of The Beach Boys has been floating around my hard drive for over six months. It's something I've wanted to watch but never got around to it, so on New Year's Day afternoon, we settled down and watched the film that is currently available on Disney+. It's very comprehensive up to a point and spends best part of two hours looking at the period between 1961 when the Wilsons' decided to start a band and goes up to the mid 1970s when the band had fallen into decline and were no longer the superstars they had been. While it does a really good job of telling the story of their success and the savant genius that Brian Wilson was, it skirts over issues in their later life and careers that might have made this an even more enjoyable (and truthful) documentary. 

I suppose this was a celebration so the darker moments in the band's career were overlooked or simply airbrushed out. There was no mention of Dennis Wilson's ostracization and drug struggles or his death which was accidental but could have been suicide. Neither was there any meaningful mention of Carl Wilson's struggle with cancer before he died in the late 1990s. The Mike Love controversy was swept over briefly, with no real mention of the huge rift that formed between Love and his cousin Brian Wilson, which led to the two not speaking for years after Love - rightly - sued for loss of royalties. The problem was he sued Brian and it wasn't really Brian's fault his father was a complete cunt.

I learned a lot of things that I never knew, like Glen Campbell was a member of the band for a while in the 60s or that effectively there were two Beach Boys - the studio band and the touring one, because Wilson - who is clearly on the spectrum - kept having breakdowns when he went on tour, so stayed in the studio composing all their hits with Phil Spector's session band The Wrecking Crew. Anyhow, if you want to have a nostalgic two hours of songs we all know and many of us grew up with then this is worth your while. I give it a wobbly 6.5/10.

Pot Sounds?

Honestly, this is what I should do more with this blog... Much of the focus of the Beach Boys documentary was on Pet Sounds, the groundbreaking (really?) album which many believe was the best thing the Californian band ever created [read: Brian Wilson]. So after watching the documentary, I gave the album a couple of listens to. This is what I think... 

The documentary has Al Jardine claiming he played the album to Lennon and McCartney and they were so blown away they listened to it three times. This may well have been the case, but one suspects because of the rivalry built up either side of the Atlantic by the people associated to the bands, Lennon and McCartney wanted to see what they're rivals were up to next and maybe they were impressed by it or maybe they thought, "If this is the best Wilson can do then lets go into the studio and blow him away!" Pet Sounds is a Beach Boys album. It has less surfs up type songs and a few things - God Only Knows and Wouldn't It Be Nice especially - that showed they were capable of doing something other than derivative pop. It doesn't float my boat and I like the band's hit singles - but that's about as far as it goes. This has some excellent hits on it and a bunch of meh other tracks that didn't - for me - show the genius of Brian Wilson. Yes, as an arranger and producer he was good, but probably with the exception of Good Vibrations (which wasn't on this album) there hasn't been anything really innovative and even that classic single is still the Beach Boys. Considering they pretty much went into decline after this album, one wonders if people view this with rose tinted glasses rather than with a serious critical hat on. It's okay, but if I hadn't already owned it, I wouldn't go and buy it.

Chase Me

The wife is a big fan of The Chase, but it's because she's a quiz fan more than anything else. I am also a quiz fan - obs - but this is a show that infuriates me (much like many afternoon quiz shows). Why does it infuriate me? Well, for two reasons. The first is the incredibly stupid people who appear on it. Do these people understand that they're on a quiz show so they need to have a rudimentary understanding of general knowledge? And secondly, why do people go on this show to take the low offer? I mean, you get an opportunity to go on a show, they're already highly unlikely to win the jackpot - I think it happens about once in every 12 shows - so you might as well take what you earned in the cash builder because taking the low offer is just an insult to your team mates.

I've always said if I went on show - which is as likely as me being the next Doctor Who - I'd probably get edited out for telling my team mates if they take the low offer I won't try in the final and they will be on their own with their limited general knowledge. I think it's just people who want to be on TV, getting their 10 minutes of fame and coming across as chicken shit wankers to the rest of the nation. Twats, all of them. 

Dick in a Vice

If a modern actor deserved high praise it's probably Christian Bale for his ability to transform himself for whatever role he's playing; from dodgy skinny boxers to Batman, Bale has been chameleon like in his career, but none of them are a patch on his Dick... I am of course talking about his Dick Cheney - former Vice President of the USA, as well as many other positions within Republican administrations - Chief of Staff and Defence Secretary to name but two. Bale's performance as Cheney in Adam McKay's Vice is quite remarkable and I'm still wondering if he simply put on a lot of weight or a fat suit, because whatever he did the make up department deserved an Oscar. But not just for him, also for Sam Rockwell, who I said just two weeks ago was at his best in The Way Way Back (which also starred Steve Carell, who in Vice plays Donald Rumsfeld), but was also pretty damned good in this. Rockwell was made to look so much like George W Bush that you literally needed to do a double take at times.

Vice is essentially a biopic of Cheney's life - because the man was so secretive much of this movie was conjecture and presumption, but you really get the impression that apart from some artistic licence this was probably what happened and points the finger squarely at the former VP for much of the mess the world is in today - the rise of the Right Wing, the proliferation of capitalism and all those wars that Halliburton has made so much money from - a company that Cheney was CEO of and may still have links. I have said for many years, like other people, that Halliburton is one of the corporations that run the world and this excellent, if not quite scary movie, goes a long way to corroborate that hypothesis. It was our first time watching this movie, another one which we should have watched much sooner than now. It's not the film of the week but it's pretty close and I give it a solid 7.5/10 - it could almost have been an 8 but the depressing nature of the truth got it downgraded by half a point.

Arthouse Thing

What do you get if you cross John Carpenter's The Thing with a David Cronenberg homage made by a French film 'auteur'? You get The Substance, a movie that seems to have really shaken up the film world - a body horror that really is about bodies and a performance from Demi Moore - considering she's 62 - that deserves a positive acknowledgment. She plays fading Hollywood star  Elizabeth Sparkle who hosts an aerobics slot on morning TV. It's not often a woman of Moore's age will wander around for most of a movie with no clothes on - although to be honest, for her age and with NATSO she's in pretty good shape - so all credit to her for doing this with the kind of confidence she showed in the early 1990s. 

In real terms this is a tough film to review without giving anything away or sounding sexist, but I suppose Coralie Fargeat's movie - which actually feels like French film - is about sexism, ageism and being left behind for younger, brighter things. Elizabeth Qualley plays Sue and her unique relationship with Moore is explored in a sinister and strangely addictive way. This is a violent, sexual and bleak feature with most of the dialogue being supplied by the other main actor, Denis Quaid - as both women's producer. It is, I suppose, quite a darkly comic turn, with some excellent, but stylised special effects. Did I enjoy it? Not really. I thought Moore was okay until her life started to fall apart - literally - and that's when she really showed that she is, at times, an exceptional actor. It's a cold and detached look at the decadence of fame and beauty and what people will do to hang on to these things. It has been highly praised in critical circles, but is a difficult movie to like, so I'll go down the middle and give it a firm, but saggy 5/10.

What's Up Next?

I'm still trying to decide what I'm going to do when we come to TV coming back. The plan is with Box Set releases then I'll review the entire series and when there's a big weekly show that returns then I'll see how I'll approach that when it happens. There will be stuff before hand but Severance is back in February and by then I should have got into some kind of groove.

So probably a selection of old and new films until the TV is back, with maybe some other stuff thrown in to mix it up a bit. As with last year, it's a wait and see thing! Ciao!