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...