Crazy Diamonds - A Re-Appraisal of Pink Floyd

Re-appraising Pink Floyd

You know that discussion/conversation; the one where you’re asked, ‘what is your favourite band of all time?’ Well, there have been times when I’ve said Pink Floyd, but the truth is Floyd have always been one of my favourites; up there in the top five, but they’ve probably never inhabited the top spot. I’m sure the surviving members of the band will rest easy about that; my opinion, after all, is just that, an opinion and one that is probably not important. 

Now we’ve got that out of the way, I can explain to you why I’m writing about them. Recently, I’ve seen a lot of retrospectives of the band; articles in papers and on line about their significance to the music industry; critics' favourite tracks and, of course, the acrimonious relationship the band has had with each other since the late 1960s; even if you only really hear about the feud between Roger Walters and David Gilmour which started in the mid-1980s and, apart from a couple of months in 2005, has raged on ever since. I decided after very recently going down a Pink Floyd rabbit hole that perhaps the band’s output needs a 2025 reassessment; they are an extraordinary band, but they’re also fantastic con artists and this breakdown of their studio albums will, hopefully, explain to you why I think this…

I think Floyd can be broken down into four eras.

1) A Brand New Paintbox

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn – With a couple of exceptions, this is a quite extraordinary and whimsical album, which seems to capture an essence of the era it was created in. One of those exceptions is the solitary Roger Waters contribution Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk, which really sticks out like a sore thumb, yet so does Bike which Barrett wrote. There are some genuine group aesthetics going on in the two songs they all wrote together, a hint of what might have happened had Syd Barrett not suffered an acid-induced mental breakdown on an already fragile mind. It is a genuine masterpiece of a debut album and has to rank as one of the best albums of that era. What makes it so good is how playful and happy the band sound; yes it was 1967 and even though they had already started to see cracks appearing between them, this album feels like a celebration and there is little here that doesn’t belong. It makes you wonder what they would have done...

A Saucerful of Secrets – There are moments in this album where you have to consider where it came from. It exists in a very psychedelic period of music, but I can’t help think there’s a huge amount of Syd Barrett in this than is credited, but it is most definitely the same band, but different, but in a familiar way. What I think it comprises of is the stuff that the rest of the band had brought along to the original sessions that hadn’t been used or never made it to the being played stage. There’s a familiar feel to this album yet it sounds distinctly more contemporary than its predecessor. Corporal Clegg is Waters trying to be the whimsical but sinister Syd Barrett; it’s like Roger went, “I can write a pop song like Syd.” He didn’t, but it does belong on this transitional album. The inclusion of Jugband Blues was like an afterthought and nod of the head to the band’s founder, but it also sits at the very end, like there was this obligation to have one song by Barrett. Of course, it was a bit more complicated in real life and to go into that too deeply would take the focus away from the music. This is still a worthy album despite the bad taste it might leave for some partisan Barrett fans.

2) Obscured by Sound

More (Soundtrack from the Film) – There’s this story I know, it was told to me by an old friend who is no longer with us, who heard it from someone associated with Norman Smith, who was the band’s original producer. It goes something like this; during a tour after A Saucerful of Secrets was recorded, the band weren’t raking money in, there were a lot of arguments outside of the studio. In the bus on the way to a concert in Germany, Roger Waters had received a message from home and in it was the offer of a really good job with fantastic prospects at an accountancy firm in London. He was seriously considering taking the offer, he had grown disillusioned with music, felt bad about Barrett’s ‘sacking’ and wondered if it was for him, but Nick Mason talked him out of it and, allegedly offered to give Roger his backing on musical decisions.

Whether that had any bearing on More is obviously a debating point, but this is a dull as dishwater album. I know it’s a ‘soundtrack’ but it just feels like a bunch of half arsed songs thrown together. Arguably Cymbaline is the standout and that isn’t exactly a classic by any stretch. This, in a weird way, felt like one of those contractual obligation albums. There was nothing original here and no direction you can see. Knocked off would be a good description.

Ummagumma – A bit of a curate’s egg this; half live performance, half pieces by individual members feels self-indulgent and devoid of group ideas. There are very few good ‘songs’ and each member is given his moment, but if More felt like dishwater, this didn’t feel much cleaner. I don’t know if the money was coming in by this stage in their careers, I expect from what I read that they were never particularly wealthy in the late 1960s, despite all coming from very middle class Cambridge families, but this is an album devoid of artistic passion; what little pieces of inventiveness there are get lost in the meh that fills the rest of it. It really is for aficionados, although the musician who comes out of this with the most dignity is actually Roger Waters.

Atom Heart Mother – This is a joke, right? Whereas some people claim this is the point when Pink Floyd became the band that everyone remembers, I  now think this was an overblown attempt at making an album of concepts and it feels  very fake. I’d always had fond memories of this album, but  listening to Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast again proved to be quite an insufferable experience now and not at all the whimsical bit of nonsense I once believed it to be. The title track is big and flabby and the rest felt a little like filler – this isn’t anywhere near as clever as the band wanted it to sound, but I suppose their growing following lapped it up. I’m still not sure the band knew where it wanted to go.

Obscured By Clouds – The thing about this album is it comes after Meddle, but where that album heralded a new Pink Floyd, this was like an ending for the old band and the limited ideas they had. Another ‘soundtrack’ studio album, if More felt like an obligation then this felt like all the stuff that didn’t get past the ‘work it up’ stage on Meddle. I look at this album as being all filler; an album that allowed them to take some time, while using all the shite they had left hanging around. Listening to it recently, it is slightly disconcerting that you can get through so much of this album without realising it. It washes over you in a very background noise kind of way.

(Lots of) Money

Meddle – What is good about this album is that it’s what the other earlier albums wanted to be; one side has a big track and then it has another side of interesting rock music with a twist. The four felt like they were working as a band again and interestingly there’s a lot of Gilmour on this and while it’s very similar in format to Atom Heart Mother, it’s like that was a rehearsal and this is what time gave them. One of These Days is one of the best openers on any album ever and Echoes sounded like a confident group toying with new ideas. One of those ideas was giving Nick Mason more free rein to record all manner of things you wouldn't associate with a rock album. I often regard this as an overlooked album in the band’s oeuvre – the one that got away from best of lists.

The Dark Side of the Moon – Is this really one of the greatest albums ever made? The stats would indicate that it is extremely significant, but it’s now been over 50 years since it came out and while it is a fantastic compact album, there’s something about it that has dated more than other Floyd albums. I often wonder why it’s so revered; recently I realised that the two Floyd albums I’ve played the least in the 21^st century are this and The Wall and I think that’s because they are probably the two most recognisable albums for the average person who simply knows of Pink Floyd and isn’t necessarily a fan. Yet this is an album that has more of the band than individual songs – it feels like a period in the group’s evolution where all four members had something to offer and there was an equity here that had been ignored when Barrett departed – and in Floyd terms the band is often better than the individual.

I find this album is very much Richard Wright’s album; yes, the concept might have been thought up by Waters, but Wright’s presence here was essential. I somehow don’t think this would have been the album it became without Breathe, The Great Gig in the Sky and Us and Them, but he also contributed to Time and Any Colour You Like and I often wonder if the emergence of Wright as a writing force in the band might have tipped the often unpredictable Waters into the realms of paranoia – as ironic as it would have been. I expect in 1973 this really did blow a lot of people away; it is a remarkably accessible album with almost hints of genres that made it a gateway album for many people, many of who simply thought of Pink Floyd as some art rock bunch of Cambridge toffs. 

Wish You Were Here – For many years, this was my favourite Floyd album. It stood out like a beacon, but I think it might have had more to do with the fact that everyone I knew regarded The Dark Side of the Moon as their favourite. It was really the end of David Gilmour's writing influence – the era of BIG guitar solos and that distinct 'Gilmour feel' would gradually diminish by the time we reached the 1980s; yet oddly enough this was also the start of Roger Waters’ takeover of all the lyrics. While Gilmour has always been a really competent guitarist, Waters often struggled with his lyrics, like he was never really confident about that part of his abilities. 

However, the tale of the band being visited by Syd Barrett during the recording of this album, I believe is a key element. I know the band all have slightly differing versions of what actually happened the day Syd came to see how his old mates were doing, but one thing is constant – Roger Waters reaction to his old friend… Now, as a fan of the band I’ve read just about everything there is about them, I’ve been fortunate to have spoken to people who knew people close to the band and my journalistic instincts have often made me, maybe wrongly, read between the lines of what people said. I know people who claim that the reason Barrett wasn’t supported by the band more was down to Nick Mason’s desire to be a pop star and his ability to distort the truth; but the actual truth is probably more inane than that. When Syd lost it, it was the late 1960s and people who had mental breakdowns normally got stuck in a mental hospital like Shenley, Napsbury or St Andrews in Northampton; places the families of sufferers could hide their mad family members away. Syd’s apparent mental health issues were exacerbated by LSD, pot and amphetamines; he was open to putting anything into his body that made him ‘feel’. As someone who was probably an undiagnosed bipolar sufferer and other anxiety issues he wouldn’t have even known what the problem was because there was no mental health provision, so the drugs helped him function until they took over. Seven years after he ‘left’ the band, his reappearance probably brought the entire incident back with more clarity for a group of men now entering their late 20s and I think the lyrics on this album reflect that. I see this as more of an explanation than a tribute to Barrett. Floyd were notoriously unfriendly towards the music press but criticism and suggestions they wouldn’t have been where they were without Barrett probably stung; especially Waters who had been huge friends with Syd and was probably the least comfortable with kicking him out. So I expect the lyrics of this album work on a number of levels, but all could equally apply to Barrett and what happened to him. It gave Waters a framework to write to as well.

As far as the album is concerned, musically it is the Pink Floyd album; the one that says more than anything else. It is musically complicated with elements of jazz rock infused throughout it. The addition of Roy Harper singing on Have a Cigar also feels significant, because I wonder if EMI, who the band were with when it was Syd’s band, were maybe the main catalyst in annexing the troubled songwriter from the band and I think the lyrics in this track suggest as much; getting an old warrior like Harper to sing on it might have been symbolic. Aficionados of the band will always include two or three songs from this album in their lists of favourites and that is totally understandable.

Animals – How does a band heavily connected to its own past do something relevant in 1977, when punk had taken over and everyone thought bands like Pink Floyd were just a bunch of old hippies making music for boring old cunts? In all fairness, I was a prog loving young hippie when Animals came out and it was very much my go to Floyd album for many years, with Sheep being the track that made me start putting them on a pedestal. You know how you get into a band through a certain album, well this was mine. I was more than aware of Floyd for years, but this was the first album I went out and bought with my own money. The one I’d gently head bang to with my mates and discuss the finer, political points of Waters distinctly anti-right wing lyrics. Floyd weren't really old hippies (they were barely in their 30s) but this was full of anti-establishment anthems and I knew a few punks who often played this album. Maybe it’s because this is the most ‘rock’ album they ever made; this is angry, angsty and heavy, with big riffs, political lyrics and all Roger Waters, apart from a co-credit for Gilmour on Dogs.  

The band were more than aware that the music world was changing, none more so than Waters, who felt the band needed to be more relevant, so he took his concept album based around Orwell’s Animal Farm and made it contemporary – although his targets feel a little weak and petty nearly 50 years later. It’s an album about a love song, split into two halves, like bread, with a huge slab of angry rhetoric shoved in between, in what does feel like an attempt to at least shake off the bunch of old hippies tag. Waters was 31 when he wrote this, no age really when comparing it to now, but he really did feel as though Pink Floyd were being left behind and becoming irrelevant, when in reality they were at the absolute pinnacle of their careers and actually about to enter the end game of their peak as the world’s best band. This is, arguably, the best stuff Waters ever did, because he was motivated by the world around him; this was Pink Floyd acknowledging that the late 1970s existed and they were part of it.

The Wall – This really is the inspiration for this article. The Wall desperately needs to be reassessed in a world that has radically changed since it was penned. Overblown! Bloated! Not needed! All things said about this mammoth album, which might just be the band’s best album, ever. This tale of isolation, radicalisation and sadness hits so many buttons in 2025 you would have thought it had been written last week. I’m loathe to give Roger Waters a lot of credit for anything – part of me thinks Floyd were always heading south when he became principle song writer because they always worked best as a band mixing ideas to create excellent songs – but this really was a brilliant piece of writing, from the concept, that was relevant in 1979, to the music which is fantastically constructed.

If I had a problem with this album it would be the beginning of the marginalisation of Richard Wright. I don’t believe Waters had much, if anything, to do with Syd’s departure (smart money is on Nick Mason doing that), but there was definitely a problem between the band’s bass player and lyricist and the band’s keyboard player and sometime songwriter. Waters handled it badly and Wright’s inclusion on this album as one of the additional musicians felt spiteful and pernicious. That aside, the rift between the two almost felt fitting that it should happen during the creation of this. However, by this time, Waters had taken over virtually everything and started to view Pink Floyd as his band and the rest of them as his ‘session musicians’. The last album they worked together as a band on was Wish You Were Here, with Animals and this being constructed from sessions with the individual musicians. Waters and Gilmour weren’t getting on and because of the money they’d made from the mid-70s, the members were doing things you wouldn’t associate with a band that always portrayed themselves as relatively socialist - they seemed to become the snobs everyone accused them of being.

As for the album, it is concept album like no other really. Floyd were big on concepts but this truly felt like the ‘rock opera’ it was called. Almost every track segued into the next; the story was clear and the styles added to the contrast. Bob Ezrin played a large part in the construction of this album; as a producer he brought a different kind of clarity to the table. Probably the only thing that lets this album down was the mammoth success it had; not only did they have a #1 single, the album spawned a tour that was bigger and more brash than anything they’d ever done and then there was the film adaptation, directed by Alan Parker, which was the catalyst for the end of the band as we knew them.

The Endless Wibble

The Final Cut – I try to like this; there are moments in it (which I later discovered were songs written for The Wall but which never made it), but in general it was self-indulgent psychobabble bullshit about Waters’ dysfunctional upbringing and about his absent father. It also showcases Waters disdain with Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands Conflict and how veterans are treated; the problem is it’s largely dull and uninspiring and you can see why Gilmour and Mason had problems with it (especially as both were now wealthy enough to not give a fuck about social equality) and the missing Richard Wright leaves a bad taste in many people’s mouths.

It has its moments, but it also feels like an attempt to make Floyd relevant to the mid-1980s. Not Now John felt like a song with its roots in Alexei Sayle and The Young Ones, while the best song, the eponymous, The Final Cut feels as though it would have been better suited as the closing track on The Wall. Recent reappraisals have The Gunner’s Dream and Two Suns in the Sunset as songs that need to be considered amongst the best of the band’s oeuvre, but neither are that good. This is a Roger Waters solo album with Gilmour and Mason appearing as guests.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason – I was almost orgasmic when this album appeared. The first new Floyd album in almost FOUR years! It seems like a joke now, but when we were younger four years felt like an age. It was still a Pink Floyd album even if there was no Roger Waters on it, but there were all the familiar sounds which I was always drawn to. Sometimes I found Waters a little too harsh and preferred the rounded corners and slick guitar solos of David Gilmour – I even liked his first two solo efforts. It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered that, in reality, A Momentary Lapse of Reason was in fact simply a Gilmour solo album with Mason and Wright on it (and Wright was originally listed as – again – an additional musician, until 2014 when subsequent pressings redressed the balance).

As a Gilmour solo project with added Floyd members it really isn’t that bad and writing that feels like I’m being petty and slightly bitter because I really rated it when it came out and I still listen to it now and get enjoyment out of it. I mean, compared to The Final Cut it’s a fucking masterpiece. I suppose the biggest problem this album has is there’s not a lot to say about it. It’s full of songs that sound like Pink Floyd; there’s little in there you’d call classic, although I’ve always been a fan of One Slip, but the 2014 remaster and subsequent 2019 remix have managed to turn a crisp little song into a slightly murkier one with the subtle backgrounds disappearing.

One thing which I will always remember is the 1987 film about the making of the album’s cover. This was the summer of 1987, an era before the mobile phone became synonymous with everyone and when many people still looked like they’d wandered blinking from an earlier time. The album cover shoot took place on the east coast and needed to be done as quickly as possible because of the tides; this was an era before digital and Photoshop, so the beds you see in the cover photo are all there, as was the green sand. The shoot probably cost as much as the album did to put together and was the first album cover since Animals that used Storm Thorgerson as the principal art director. I have a fondness for this album that transcends the problems I have with it and how it was made, but frankly issues I personally developed about this are mine alone…

The Division Bell – Now this, to me, felt more like a Pink Floyd album even if I didn’t enjoy it as much as I anticipated. If I thought a four year wait between albums was long, there was a seven year one between this and A Momentary Lapse of Reason and it arrived in the mid-1990s, during a period in my own musical odyssey where Pink Floyd may not have featured any longer. That said, if you can get past the turgid lyrics, musically it feels more …complete, but only in places. This is an album that at times feels like the end and really it was because it would be 20 years before another Floyd studio album appeared and that in itself was more of a coda than anything to get excited about.

My biggest problem with The Division Bell is probably more to do with David Gilmour than anything else. I felt he was trying to rediscover the past rather than do anything new or even contemporary; so it’s full of Wright’s keyboards, Gilmour guitar riffs that wouldn’t have seem out of place in the 1970s, the use of female backing singers with the gusto of The Great Gig in the Sky, but nothing that felt at all 1994; in fact in places this is a turgid album that sounds like musicians who have run out of ideas. To be fair, the band were now all approaching their 50s and there are very few musicians who produce their best stuff at this age. The thing is David Gilmour was a guitar god in the 1970s and by 1994 he felt as relevant as Eric Clapton does in the 21^st century; although maybe not as racist or right wing. There is also this thing about him as a lyricist; he wasn’t that good at writing songs, music yes, but his lyrics were always a bit 'teenager', so much of this album was co-written with his wife Polly Samson and to be honest I think this irked many Floyd aficionados; I know it did me because... ‘Who was she?’ A perfect example of the poor writing on display was Poles Apart which wandered around before ending in a crescendo of mud.

Of course, by the mid-1990s Floyd were such rock gods that they could work with anyone they wanted to, so instead of doing something with the huge number of contemporary musicians making a mark, they chose to work with Stephen Hawking, or rather a Stephen Hawking sample from a BT advert. There was a certain amount of derision (so much so this album could have been called The Derision Bell) because it did feel like a going through the Floydian motions. It was, of course, a monster hit for the band and regardless of what Roger Waters thought and said between 1984 and with this album's release, he couldn’t stop Syd’s replacement from becoming Pink Floyd.

The Endless River – I’m not really sure why Gilmour decided to release this. Perhaps he and Nick Mason needed the cash, because it might be a tribute to Richard Wright but it’s a relatively piss poor way of doing it. Maybe if they’d assembled all of Wright’s classic Floyd moments and had them remixed or remastered by someone like Steven Wilson it would have served a better purpose, possibly including the one finished track on that just to bring it up to 2008 when Wright died.

It really is, for the most part, a bit of a dirge – which I suppose was what it was planned to be. But before we spend as little time as possible talking about this final studio album, I want to point out that between The Division Bell and this, Floyd or their record company released a shit ton of greatest hits albums, boxed sets, rare and unreleased tracks and probably noises made in the toilet recorded by Nick Mason. Pink Floyd might have pretty much ceased to exist as an extant band, someone, somewhere was milking their back catalogue like there was no tomorrow. I appreciate that some of these things needed to be released; the early recordings that had been switched to digital to get the best from them, but everything was remixed, remastered and redone for 20 years to the point where there was a distinct drop in quality. As I said before, A Momentary Lapse of Reason was remixed in 2019 and it took all crisp production work out and replaced it with a mushy sound that had no distinctiveness.

The album itself is more of a compilation of snippets and half-finished stuff than anything else and even the one actual song on it feels like a contractual obligation – which Gilmour suggested was the true motivation behind the album, in that the record company wanted another album and this was the easiest way to do it and honour their fallen bandmate.

I’ve played The Endless River about four times in the last eleven years; I don’t even think of it as a true Floyd album and while the two most recent listenings have made me feel a little more connected to it, it sits alongside many of Floyd’s ‘meh’ albums in that it will only ever get an airing when I fall back down that Pink Floyd rabbit hole…

In Conclusion

There was a period between 1971 and 1979 where Pink Floyd was the best band in the world. You could never accuse them during this period of selling out or losing their souls (like, say, ELP or Genesis), but trying to find excellent stuff by the band from other times is a tough ask. The Syd Barrett ‘era’ was a different beast, a different band and had mental illness and drugs not fucked up the genius that was Syd then maybe this would have been a completely different retrospective.

I love Pink Floyd’s music; it’s always a band I will return to, especially if I don’t feel like playing anything specific, so they’re always there ready to jump onto whatever player I’m listening to them on and continue a love affair that reached the peak of its passion on a sofa in the Crown pub, Hardingstone, in the December of 1979 – but that’s another completely different story. Everything after that was a decline, and in many ways outside of Floyd’s music too.

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...

My Cultural Life - Multiple Personality Disorder

What's Up?

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

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

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

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

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

An Orgy of Comedy Violence

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

Unfathomable

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

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

The Thursday Bollocks Club

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

Mergers

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

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

Cringefest

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

1. The Eagly Has Landed

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

Split Personalities

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

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

For He Is Many

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

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

Album of the Week?

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

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

Dull-vergent

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

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

In Space, No One is Left

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

I'm Confused

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

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

23 Bollocks

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

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

 Some Things Never Stay Dead

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

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

2) The Alternate Universe Story

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

What's Up Next?

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

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

I might just go down the pub instead...

My Cultural Life - Massive Highs and Putrid Lows

What's Up?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Absolutely Fabulous

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

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

Hanging on the Telephone

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

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

Visceral

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

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

A Pointless Vampire Tale

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

Hidden Secrets 

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

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

Preposterous Bollocks

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

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

The Crapstitute

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

Temporal Anomalies 

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

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

Tedious?

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

Existentialism 

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

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

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

What's Up Next?

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

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