My Cultural Life - Killers and Lots of Filler

What's Up?

I saw a conversation about the Dublin Agreement. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is an agreement between all EU countries whereby if an 'illegal immigrant' arrives in an EU country they can simply ship that person back to wherever they came from - specifically the country in the EU which first granted them asylum or refugee status. It was simple, effective and because we left the EU we cannot do it any longer. 

It now means that every person arriving on a small boat has to be processed individually, tying up government time and resources, filling up dodgy hotels and it's all the fault of Brexit. Prior to the UK leaving the EU, we had fewer than 50 small boats arriving at our shore per year and the people on these small boats were immediately shipped back to France where they became a French problem. When we left the EU, France stopped taking them back.

It literally is why we went from 50 to thousands of small boat crossings per year, because the UK is so mired in non-EU red tape there was no way to stop it. However, if you try to convince a gammon or a far right flag shagging neo-Nazi about this, because the Brexit word is mentioned it sends them into a frenzy of cognitive dissonance and it's obviously all lies.

People want to believe what they want and will dismiss facts however they can. People, not all of them, but in general, in 2025, are morons. Their crap educations are down to governments, who act in the interests of the people who want the population to be ignorant and stupid, because ignorant stupid people are far more easily manipulated than free thinking clever people.

Speaking of believing what you want. Reform UK, currently being lauded as the next government, has just had their party conference and as a spectacle it was impressive. There's a lot of money being thrown at this political 'business' and hopefully there will be the same amount of scrutiny aimed at them (Hah!) as other actual political parties [read: Labour or the SNP] receive. For starters, I didn't see the right wing papers coverage of this conference, mainly because the headlines were all about how evil Angela Raynor is, but it would have been nice to have seen more coverage of the doctor who paraded around the Reform stage claiming that King Charles' cancer was caused by the Covid vaccine...

I shit you not. Farage claims he will stop the boats inside two weeks of coming into power, which, of course, is a boast that once he gets into power he can conveniently forget about or claim the press (and all the cameras that recorded him saying it) have taken his words out of context. There was also the Reform equivalent of a Shadow Health Secretary who talked about how, once in power, they would begin the switch from a free NHS to one that would be paid for by an insurance based scheme. Then, of course, the removal from the Human Rights Act and the subsequent atrocities that would arise from that. Jesus on a space hopper, I thought Brexit was stupid, but the population has learned nothing and wants to self fuck itself even harder... The press have been derelict of their duties to not have scrutinised this considering the press seems to believe they're power in waiting.

The world, as we know it, is coming to an end. I hope your children and grandchildren are prepared.

Of Mass Destruction

The film release of the week was obviously Zack Cregger's Weapons, which I had heard a lot of promising things about, but am now wondering who said these promising things and why they said them at all. I actually said before we started watching it that I had been looking forward to it - why is that always a bad thing to say out loud? I knew very little about it apart from that it was about all but one kid in a kindergarten class going missing and the subsequent fall out of that happening and the opening scenes are of young children leaving their homes at 2.17am and running carefree across roads and down alleys never to be seen again, or at least that's how the opening narration goes. The thing is the opening and first hour of the movie is genuinely unsettling and puzzling; it is told from different perspectives and the individual narrative threads gradually all start to tie into each other. It's an often used trope, but it works very well here.

However, it's the second half that it wanders into WTF territory as we meet young Alex - the only kid not to disappear - and his story unfolds. That starts with the arrival of his aunt Gladys, who came to stay a month before the disappearances and it's from this point where you wonder where the story is going and what kind of 'villain' we're being introduced to. My problem is simple, it got just a little too 'dark' comedy and the creepy and enigmatic story wanders into crazy land. It's not a bad film; it stars Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich and Benedict Wong (all MCU alumni, but who isn't nowadays?); it also has 1980s star Amy Madigan as Gladys, who in her own unique way is the creepiest and silliest thing going on - the problem was I couldn't really take her seriously as this weird looking witch-like person. I can't say it was worth the wait or the expectation; there was something a little too style over substance, of which much just felt stretched, contrived and faintly ridiculous. There is also, in a strange way, a hint of The Benny Hill Show thrown in for good measure. 5/10

Serial Comedy

We finished Dexter Resurrection and I wanted to highlight how the stories of Dexter Morgan have gone from serial killer with a hint of black comedy to comedy with a lot of serial killers and murder porn. 

One of the biggest problems with the Dexter series from 2006 was how did you sympathise with the lead character when he's a mass murderer. This was achievable because of his 'code', where he got his fix by killing bad guys and his ability to try and blend in with 'friends' and colleagues despite not really liking people. Once that was achieved and story arcs were completed that lead to the problem of how they make the next season's baddy nastier and will allow them to get an even more action-packed denouement - TV is lazy like that, instead of just allowing a story to be a story with good writing, they make the villain more complicated, dangerous and destructive with every season. It got really rather silly and slightly contrived - which was my biggest problem with the opening episodes of this return, because there were a lot of stretches of the imagination to have allowed Dexter to a) be alive and b) still be roaming free. Dexter Morgan in the books by Jeff Lindsay was a bona fide psychopath, but the TV Dexter is more David Walliams and less Patrick Bateman; his internal monologue is now full of witty cultural references and lots of A list actors want to be cast as a serial killer so they can lay on Dexter's table.

However, by the time we got to the final episodes, I couldn't help thinking that this was all the makers of this have got; they have to escalate the carnage because you can't do anything else with this character. The stories are either going to become ridiculous (and that isn't the first time and is unlikely to be the last time I will use that word in this week's blog) or you'll be wondering why all the bad guys have Mensah IQs and the police - even those depicted as hyper-intelligent - are never in the same chapter let alone the same page. It's entertaining but it's remarkably throwaway...

Anyhow, Dexter Resurrection is about a serial killers club; a very rich man with a propensity for the weird and how Dexter makes his new life in New York despite the interests of the NYPD, Angel Batista and a man from Sierra Leone who becomes his friend. It's like it was written by someone with no understanding of plot twists or off kilter narratives; everything is contrived; everything fits nicely into their slots and the comedy is always a little on the outrageous side. There is something a little condescending about it - like it knows how cheap and easy it is. But it's fun, throwaway, TV and it was much better than Dexter: New Blood. 

The Critics Might Be Right

Not something I'd like to want to agree with but a number of things the critics have complained about have been addressed across the six episodes so far. However, for all the sinister goings on, the subterfuge, the bleeding obvious that is going to happen, I've tried really hard to hope and believe that Noah Hawley - the show's creator - was going to have a story that was something different. But here we are, with individual meltdowns happening among the Lost Boys and way too much lackadaisical urgency from Prodigy.

The problem with this is simple; the characters all feel half-arsed; the story, while plausible and a good set up, is spoiled by the six hybrids, who are essentially children in adult bodies and the general disdain and couldn't-give-a-shit attitude about their welfare from the people who paid for their creation. That's not all though; the Boy Kavalier is the kind of character you want to die in the most extreme way; his #2 robot Kirsch is basically allowing carnage to happen on the island without any reason given other than he might be offended by the Boy for talking to him like he's a glorified toaster. I'm thinking Ade Edmondson is probably not going to be human given his propensity for firing people despite them being involved in top secret shenanigans. None of the story holds together; none of it seems like it was written by someone with the pedigree that Hawley has displayed in the past. This is like Alien written by the person who wrote any of the most recent MCU films where you walked out of the cinema thinking you'd just wasted a shit ton of money. This needs to improve, but it's also not going to end; there will be a cliffhanger ending before everyone wakes up in the shower and realises it was a bad dream and season two starts...

Let's Make A Podcast

Five minutes into this movie and I thought I'd probably not make it to the 15 minute mark. I'd 'taped' this off of Film4 a couple of weeks ago and Film4 has a tendency to have some really crap films on it, so imagine my surprise when Vengeance, a film by BJ Novak, turned out to be something really quite good. Novak wrote, directed and starred in this feature about a wannabe podcaster in New York who is coerced into going to Texas for the funeral of a girl he barely knew, because her family thought their daughter was his girlfriend. I mean, it's a crazy premise and Novak's Ben, sensing an opportunity, decides 'why not?' and heads down to Texas and into the lap of a very unusual hick family.

It literally is a case of not so much mistaken identity but mysterious identity as Novak is informed by the brother of the girl - Abilene - that he thinks she was murdered and together they should track down her killer to get the vengeance of the title. After contacting his editor, he begins to record everything that happens as the brother, Ty, played by Boyd Holbrook shows him Abilene's life and the people she knew. This, for the first hour, is pretty much a comedy as Ben discovers how weird the people around him are, but also how warm and loving they can be and it's not long before he starts to think that Ty might have a point about his sister's death. However, the last part of the movie twists off into a different direction as something a little more sinister starts to develop leading to a denouement I really didn't see coming. This is a good film and one that comes totally out of left field. It's likely to be on Film4 again and if it is, set your recorder or sit up and watch it; it's much better than it looks like it's going to be. 8/10

Let's Make a Crime Team

The new Mark Ruffalo series, Task, a HBO production landed and if I want to be honest about it I don't know if I'm any closer to knowing what its about after the first episode than I was before it started. It was almost glacial in its pace and is focusing on the main protagonist and the main antagonist, or at least that's how it seems. It's a similar story to that show Dope Thief we watched earlier in the year, in that it's about a couple of guys who target drug dealers and a biker gang to rip off but something goes wrong and it ends up getting very complicated. Ruffalo is, it appears, an alcoholic who works for the FBI and has a son who is in prison awaiting trial for something heinous. He is also charged with starting a new task force to try and work out a series of home invasions that seem to have targeted drug dealers and biker gangs. It was absolutely as boring as hell, but I suspect we'll give it a couple more episodes, to see if anything happens.

Unhappy Gilmore In Space

Adam Sandler doesn't really make good films. If you go through his IMDB profile, you will see that he's made a handful of movies since 2000 with a rating higher than 6 and Spaceman isn't one of them. This is based on a story by a Czechoslovakian author and actually feels like it's been lifted straight from the pages - no updating of the Czech country name; no explanation for why the people involved are existing in a time zone that looks very much like the 1980s and no explanation as to why it is such a dour and dull film. It could have been made in Czechoslovakia in 1968 with Iron Curtain actors, a dwarf and a tree that sings and rings and maybe wouldn't have bat an eyelid, but you wouldn't have watched it either.

As well as Sandler, Carey Mulligan has to be asked, one day, what on earth made her agree to be in this. She plays the estranged of the Spaceman - Jacob - who is having a mid-pregnancy crisis six months after her husband left to study a strange phenomena near Jupiter. Also in this is the voice of Paul Dano - known for being in strange films, this is no exception. He plays Hannas, a giant spider who is from another galaxy who hitches a lift with Jacob and serves as his madness and redemption. Whether Hannas actually exists is up for a debate, but I'm certainly not having that debate. I've already wasted one hour and 45 minutes on this unbelievably dull, but, in an odd kind of way, touching love story. I see why it got such a low rating and I need to stick to my code of not watching films rated under 6. I give this a 3/10 and only because at the end it felt like it achieved something.

Brevity

I know I'm flying in the face of general public opinion but I think season two of Peacemaker is slight and each episode weighing in at about 33 minutes feels like a real swizz. This is the fourth episode and three of them have been a fraction over half an hour and instead of an alien invasion and the complexities of creating a new team of agents to combat the threat, this is about Chris finding a place he'd rather be in while pining for Harcourt, who in this reality is just a bitch. Then there's ARGUS being a bunch of cunts and that's about it. There's no vagaries; no subtlety; no intriguing subplots or twists and turns. John Cena's acting range increases all the time, but he's the only one developing. I really want to love this show but it feels like a bit of a copout. I can't see it improving. 

What's Up Next?

Another short week. Next week will likely have even fewer reviews because I'm going to be out on Tuesday (Community Council vote) and Friday (pub quiz) and there's a chance I might be out tomorrow (Saturday). Septembers always tend to be busy months, but this one is likely to be busier than usual.

The bottom line is I hope to put some quality in here as well as the next episodes of Alien Earth, Task (which might be its last for us) and probably no review of Peacemaker again, because of the pub quiz. There will be a new TV show and returning ones such as The Morning Show or Gen V, with the new series Black Rabbit which looks interesting - at the moment - from what I've read. 

I dread to think what films you might end up being subjected to, but you don't have to watch them (and neither do I, but...). This time of the year is when the digital air waves are usually full of interesting stuff... usually...