TV Culture - Box Clever

The spoilers featured this week are for shows that have been out for a while and the number of bloody hells uttered in a Sunday night documentary, everything else is as restrained as I can manage...

1-0

The third part of Simon Reeve: Wilderness is very much like the previous two and I suppose I have to accept that this is what Reeve considers 'extreme fun' as opposed to his usual cutting edge and cut throat documentaries. In this episode the intrepid explorer is in the Coral Triangle around the Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea finding rare coral reefs, tribes that live on, in and under the water and finally searching for whale sharks. 

This really is an eco-documentary series rather than anything else; it is about climate change but it's also about protecting the rarest environments on the planet and ensuring the great wildernesses of the world stay that way because without them much of the planet would change much faster than it is presently. This time, especially, we saw the true beauty of the planet - from sky blue seas to rare species of animals to the utterly spellbinding whale shark, the largest fish in the sea and still truly a puzzle for even the best marine biologists on the planet. It was not an episode without some jeopardy, but again it was a problem with a member of the crew rather than anything from outside. 

It was also decisive in one aspect - the wife went 1-0 up in the great Bloody Hell guessing game. She went for her usual (safe) one bloody hell, while I figured that as he was going to be spending a lot of time under water his opportunities to say bloody hell would be limited. He uttered the words at the 32 minute mark when armed eco-police were checking the boat he was on and it was enough to give the wife a lead that she now can't lose, even if I win next week, like the Ashes, she's currently the holder of the Bloody Hell competition and even if I guess correctly next week, she retains the imaginary trophy until the next Simon Reeve series. Bugger. 

At What Cost?

There is a scene in the early episodes of season two of The Morning Show where the usually narcissistic Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) genuinely tells the perpetually angry Bradley Jackson (Reece Witherspoon) to be careful around ace UBA interviewer Laura Peterson (Julianna Margulies) because the woman wasn't her friend; so when Peterson asks Bradley one of those questions that she didn't want to answer, she does something on the spur of the moment that felt like it was designed to shut the interviewer up but suddenly becomes one of the focal points of the series - Bradley kissed the LGBT+ advocate and found herself plunged into a sexual relationship that even she doesn't seem 100% comfortable about, especially when pressurised to 'come out' by Peterson.

As a result, Bradley agonised over whether to actually do what Peterson wanted her to do but held off because I think it's clear that Jackson is bi-sexual at a push and coming out would feel as though she was boxing herself into a corner she'd struggle to get out of. The problem is, the fabulous Corrie Ellison (Billy Crudup) has obviously fallen in love with Bradley but has held back from making their great friendship anything but that because of the Mitch Kessler business, which has made everyone involved in the TV business wary of doing anything that can be construed as either coercive or creepy. So when Corrie's heart is visibly shattered as he discovers that the rumours he's heard about are probably true he's faced with a dilemma of his own. You see the head of UBA wants to make the forthcoming shitstorm of libellous stories about the now dead Hannah Schoenberg go away and the only way he can do that is give the newspaper that is going to run these stories something even more salacious and therein lies the biggest dilemma of them all.

Meanwhile, Mitch (Steve Carell) is still in Italy running away from his past but being pursued by a wannabe Italian filmmaker who seems to have designs on him, despite his monstrous history. I'm have a conflict here because Kessler is obviously a prize shit and arguably solely responsible for Hannah's suicide, but he's also genuinely hurting and wants nothing more to do with his past and just wants to disappear into the background. However, his new Italian friend has other ideas, which he is resisting and probably because he's scared of being stung again this time as a victim rather than a perpetrator. He kind of deserves to be butt-fucked, especially as Mitch Kessler might be seen as the new Harvey Weinstein, but there is an argument to suggest he could never be that bad and his predatory nature has been overblown and he is simply a narcissist with no self awareness - which is equally as bad but in his business a little more excusable.

Chip (Mark Duplass) is having grave reservations about coming back to the show as Alex's producer, not least because he's starting to get hostility from others on the show who see him as a facilitator in the Kessler business and Alex's personality epiphany swings back and forth as she tries to convey this image of a new woman, but in reality she's just as neurotic and narcissistic as she's always been, she's just less self aware.  While Corrie's new Head of News, Stella Bak (Greta Lee) is struggling in her role and alienating more people than she's making friends. And all of this has happened in the first half of this season and yet it still feels as though it's treading water compared to the first series...

The second half of the season does what the first half fails to do - it fucks you up. From the utterly devastated Corrie's reaction to Bradley's admission that she likes being with another woman to the conclusion of the Mitch Kessler story that you see (or guess is) coming but it still shocks. Yet, despite all of this the two main factors in the closing episodes are the arrival of Covid - which Alex catches - and how everything starts to fall apart for all the main players; of which Alex is the only person who seems to want to come out fighting. Meanwhile Chip, who might have been complicit in the Kessler business, is so loyal it's like watching a puppy dog trying desperately hard to please its shitbag owner, puts his life at risk to prove this. There is also a quite fantastic interview between Bradley and Maggie Brenner, which the latter is completely unprepared for which, given all that has happened, might just be the thing that cements Bradley and Alex's friendship forever. Cracking stuff, even if it wasn't as good as season one.

Still Angry and Emotional

Two weeks after watching Mr Bates Versus The Post Office we watched the documentary that accompanied it, Mr Bates Versus The Post Office: The Real Story and it not only allowed the anger to swell back up, it made anyone watching it want to see people at the Post Office face criminal charges. Whether that can ever happen, because of the cover-up culture employed by the national-owned institution, will probably only get answered if we get a political party in power that cares about righting the wrongs of the past, but it doesn't make anyone feel any better about this entire shit show. What this documentary does is show the real people, the real hardship and the utter hell they were put through. It's all well and good watching a dramatised version, but when you see the real people you have to ask yourself how this crime against humanity was allowed to happen and how the people in charge of that organisation can sleep at night - and I fucking hope none of them can and are fearful for their freedom.

The Grim White 

I get the impression that murder mysteries in snowy locations is a thing at the moment; the problem is I'm not convinced by it as a concept and the latest one - True Detective: Night Country is turning into something almost as dull and pointless as Murder at the End of the World.

All those five star reviews after the first episode makes me wonder what the people reviewing would make of it now we're four parts in and all that seems to be happening is fuck all. This is why I'm convinced my theory is simple and correct. I have to ask if this is a murder mystery why are we spending so much time 'agonising' over Evangeline's sister, who is about as rounded as a Lego piece, or being subjected to Danvers being a Class A arsehole who has slept with just about everybody and no one likes; not even her adopted daughter, her former partner and her boss. Why are we interested in her deputy's Russian mail order bride or her protégé's strained relationship with his wife? This is becoming tedious, especially with all the 'ghost story' bollocks, the suggestions that Ennis is a town of the dead, or the fact that these 'days of night' seem to be stretching the whole night thing just a touch. This is just terribly overwrought and really not going anywhere and with only two episodes left something needs to happen soon or it will be a waste of 6 hours of my life. 

What is also a little strange is bits of it are filmed in Alaska and these bits seem to feature the mainly US or Native Americans and the bits with the British and Irish actors appear to be filmed in Iceland - Jodie Foster and (the quite awful) Kali Reis straddle the two but no one else does. You don't see Chris Ecclestone anywhere apart from with Jodie Foster and you don't see many of the other recurring characters with other recurring characters - if you catch my drift? I'm just finding the entire thing a bit of a slog and frankly the dysfunctional Alaskans deserve each other with bells on; no one in this show is remotely likeable, apart from maybe Danvers' protégé and she treats him like shit - but then again, she treats everyone like shit.  

Next Week...

Obviously, television hasn't been a high priority this week with my house half in rubble as the new kitchen project began. It'll be like this for at least two more weeks is my guess and while the living room is a haven - and a warm one at that - it is, at present, full of my new kitchen, so we're crammed up one end surrounded by boxes.

Next week will likely be more of the same; the finale of the Simon Reeve series, the penultimate episode of the Jodie Foster mystery - which it appears others are cottoning on to my complaints about - and the third season of everyone's favourite fictional morning TV show. I have a few new things lined up, but whether we'll get to see any is anyone's guess. I want to at least get through a couple more of Domino Day but this seems to be slipping down the priority list quite fast; I promised a good friend that I would check out Mr & Mrs Smith despite not being that attracted to it; I've got The Big Door Prize to watch and The Essex Serpent. I've heard excellent things about Criminal Record and Home Before Dark so they're both sitting and waiting for us to find the time to watch. I also want to give Silo a chance, despite having similar reservations about that which I have with other recommendations and there's all that old stuff I'm promising myself I will rewatch but we only have so many hours in the evening to watch anything...

As always, you'll find out next time. 

TV Culture - It's February Already!

Yes, there be spoilers...

No Doris Day

A review blog wouldn't be a review blog without me having a pop at The Guardian newspaper. The Nu Right leaning rag has the dodgiest record of reviews known to man, most recently demonstrated by its gushing and fawning reviews of the revamped and new Mrs & Mrs Smith TV series, where it gave it 5 stars in the main newspaper and 4 stars in The Observer, plus extra column inches telling everyone how Donald Glover and Maya Erskine have more chemistry than BASF. Yet, within 24 hours of the release of the entire series IMDB's user rating had it at 6.1... So bearing this in mind, when it gave Domino Day a 4 star review any enthusiasm I had was instantly washed away...

Despite claiming this new BBC3 series to be 'Buffy for the 21st Century' (BtVS actually finished in 2003...) we still watched the first two episodes and we are going to watch the remaining four - not because it's "4-star" telly, but because it isn't shite. However, let's get a couple of things straight - this isn't Buffy for a multitude of reasons and I haven't seen a half decent witch-based TV series, ever. Willow was excellent in Buffy, but she was the exception to the rule and with witches seemingly big in 2024 there might be more nonsense on the horizon... Anyhow, Domino Day is a bit of a mess - plot and story wise - but there's something half decent hiding in here, at the moment, despite being slightly hindered by the poor acting.

Siena Kelly is Day, a modern-day witch with a sketchy history in a world that appears to value order and transparency. How she came into being hasn't yet been explained but it's clear that she was in a relationship with a male witch that went catastrophically wrong and unleased a power inside of her that has not been seen for a long time. As a result, she prowls Tinder for arseholes and then sucks the life out of them - a sort of vigilante psychic vampire targeting the worst kind of men - but she's been noticed by a coven, who answer to a group called the Elders, who are likely to kill Domino if they discover her existence and that is more likely to happen because she's getting greedy and careless. So far so reasonable idea (even if I've skirted over some of the subplots)...

However, there's things about it that seem half-baked, a sense of making it up as they go along and far too many skeletons in characters' closets that given we're a third of the way through seem unlikely to be addressed given the nature of how the first 90 minutes has gone. I feel slightly uncomfortable about the overtly sexy nature of the show - and this isn't me talking about my prudishness, more the feeling that the makers are exploiting Siena Kelly's sexuality and quite fabulous body; plus there's this suggestion that most men are pigs - which might be right in 2024 - so that even decent guys get stitched up or fucked over. In the end, thanks to some questionable magic by the coven leader, we discover that Domino is a Lamia - a monster who, in this instance, devours the life forces of men and leaves them ill, even possibly dead. 

The thing is Domino is just looking for real love and her appetite is a metaphor for addiction, but she's not a bad person, even if she does some bad things. I've always liked the idea of massively powerful human 'creatures' in the real world, probably more than anything other monstrous characters, which is why we're going to stick with this until the end of season one, at least.

Into the Andes

The second episode of the Simon Reeve: Wilderness series was in Patagonia, in a proper wilderness, in a place where there were very few people per thousand square mile. There was plenty of rocks and ice and an injured cameraman - the same one who got a worm in his leg last week, yet I still got the sense that this is actually more of a travelogue than a documentary series. 

In the past, Reeve has travelled the world and dealt with issues that have been ignored by other journalists; he's uncovered stuff that others haven't wanted to touch and he's talked to people who maybe never have people talk to them; but this wilderness series seems to be about climate change and while that is an important thing and should get as much exposure as possible, chatting to gauchos or rangers and guides about how the landscape has changed over the last 25 years feels a little like bandwagon jumping, and I really don't want to sound like I'm dissing climate change or the need for it being talked about, but the weird sense of jeopardy has diminished in this series, despite the places he's visiting being as dangerous as skirting round the edges of drug cartels or dealing with fascist militants.

This week he trekked up to an ice field in Patagonia and then back again; spent a couple of nights with two gauchos and then wandered around south eastern Chile with a man who gave up a comfortable life to watch pumas in the wild and at no point in the hour did Simon seem particularly comfortable; in fact he seemed to struggle for a lot of it, yet I spent more time looking at the clock waiting for his second 'bloody hell' and the chance to win this week's competition - I went for two, the wife went for three and he ended up saying it just once. So far, two episodes in and the score is still 0-0; next week could be decisive. 

The Mourning Show

One thing about the remainder of the first season of The Morning Show that hit home really hard is just how self-serving most of the long-time serving members of the Morning Show team were. The decent people on this fictional show are actually fucked up because of the narcissists and the power plays taking place - Jennifer Aniston's Alex Levy is chief narcissist - but studio head Fred Micklen, the kind of man who is sure he's bet on the right horse and then watches it come in last, is really the enabler here. But these are just two self-serving egotists in a huge playing field made up largely of people intent on fucking or fucking over whoever gets in their way. 

Charlie 'Chip' Black (Mark Duplass) is so erratic it makes you wonder how he became executive producer, while Bradley Jackson (Reece Witherspoon) and Corrie Ellison (Billy Crudup) are both doing proper journalism but for differing reasons. Towering over this entire mess is Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) who spends the first nine episodes of the debut season in complete denial that he's a predatory, manipulative bastard and then tries to use his 'popularity' to win what is essentially a popularity contest in his head. He is, without a doubt a person who was loved by his co-workers, but now he's in Harvey Weinstein's league and facing ruin because every single one of the Morning Show's team - all with their own agendas - are no longer interested in helping him and, frankly, why should they? The decent ones won't and the Machiavellian ones don't give a shit. The finale is as brilliant as the entire first season with twists and turns you really don't see coming and a closing section that is one of the most riveting scenes I've seen on a TV in years... I've heard that season two loses its way a little; there's only really one way to find out... We're going straight back in!

Season two - of which we're a third of the way through, at time of writing - takes place nine months+ after the tumultuous season one finale and whereas the first outing was all about #MeToo and whether Mitch Kessler was really a monster, this one is dealing with two issues quite clearly: the advent of Covid and whether Bradley Jackson's ego is bigger than her worth - maybe she's turning into a different kind of monster... It hasn't got that WOW Factor it did have, but it does have enough to keep us deeply involved.

Mystery on Ice

The plot thickens, but the mystery remains the same and I'm still fully committed to my theory that the Tsalaal Research Station men had something to do with Annie's death six years earlier and someone - probably the surviving member of that team and Annie's secret boyfriend - has made them pay for it in a truly horrible way.

I'm firmly in the camp of this is going to be a simple story that's being wrapped up in mystic bollocks and arctic Indian campaigning; there's a lot of dressing on this but it's essentially going to be a case of brewing revenge that finally got enacted when guilt overcame those with something to hide.

Probably the other main issue here is how the Ennis PD can be so... well, shit. This series has done extremely well in painting a picture of a disparate and dysfunctional Alaskan township with a mix of indigenous natives and racist Americans, but we're also talking off the scale levels of fuckwittery and borderline vigilantism - led by one of Danvers' (Jodie Foster) own men, who seems to think that being a policeman comes in about fifth or sixth on his list of priorities. Danvers has so many sexual skeletons in her closet she seems incapable of dealing with anything apart from insisting this case stays in her jurisdiction; but what we're really talking here is fluff and padding because I'm convinced this is going to be something simplistic, despite the ghosts and messages from beyond the grave and whatever else the writer/director wants to throw in to obfuscate and keep the viewer off the trail. It's excellent TV but I'm not really sure I'm enjoying it. 

Quite American

The latest QI is essentially a battle between the United Kingdom and the United States - as part of the U season - and the overarching thing I took from it was the underlying contempt David Mitchell appears to have for the Americans. He seemed hell bent on lecturing Alex Edelman of the USA team about how wrong he was about anything he didn't like about the UK. There were times Mitchell seemed like he was going to walk round the front of the set and lamp the American.

The other American guest - Kemah Bob recently caused a bit of a hoo-hah on the internet because of her unusual voice and diction. I got the impression she spent much of her time trying to be as diplomatic as possible, but she has lived in the UK for six years. To be controversial for a second, while I found her voice a bit odd, which is fine as it's her actual voice, the fact that people were horrid to her on social media just about sums up what is wrong with both the UK and the USA, with opinionated arseholes being fucking nasty for the sake of it. If I want to be equally nasty, there's a UK comedian who is disabled and, in my never humble opinion, is not funny and spends most of her time talking about other women she'd like to shag; she's also a regular on QI and I can't understand 90% of what she says and I never see anything on social media about her, so maybe the attacks on Kemah is nothing to do with her distinct voice and more to do with the fact she's black?

In other news, this wasn't a particularly funny episode, but that's probably down to the fact that I find the USA a spectacular country full of tedious bores and fascist loving racists. I also expect you're going to be thinking, 'Why is he still watching this if all he can do is criticise it every week?' Well, it's probably to do with history and habit, also the hope that an episode will come along and make me remember why this was one of the best panel shows ever created. 

Connections

Another series of Only Connect bites the dust. This is a quiz show that's on for more than half a year from start to finish and is still possibly the most fiendishly difficult thing on TV. This year The Thrifters won it on the very last question beating the Also Rans by a single point and while we wanted the losers to win, we weren't that bothered because both teams said 'horned viper' rather than 'hor-Ned viper,' which is something that gets on both of our nerves. I know many people who find Victoria Coren-Mitchell loathsome but as a quiz show host she's always been good enough for me and she's married to David Mitchell and he won extra brownies points this week for being passively aggressive towards Americans. I will say that she is beginning to look her age - she's 51 - and (to be outrageously sexist for a second) her good points are probably heading due south now... Unlike something like QI, which changed hosts without any real jolt to the system, Only Connect just wouldn't be the same if it lost its slightly - at times - surreal host. Anyhow, we get 22 weeks off before it starts all over again... 

Next Week...

I'm loathe to say 'more of the same' but that's likely to be the case. We haven't watched the most recent George Clarke offering, it's been on the hard drive for a week now and the wife was more keen to watch something else, so she might be starting to get Clarke fatigue as well - there could be a return to that next week, but I somehow don't expect that to be the reason whoever reads this will rush to come back. We do have the start of Masters of the Air to watch, but despite great reviews, I have this 'problem' with Austin Butler, so we've been putting that off. There's stuff on the Flash Drive of Doom to catch up on and there's usually something new or returning that jumps up on me, so you'll just have to wait and see what happens next...

Film Culture - History (Three Ways) and Futures

If you like having films spoiled for you keep on going... 

A Bone Apart

Well, that was two and a half hours of my life I'm not getting back. Let's be honest about this, Napoleon is really quite boring. The scenes of war are impressive, actually they're very impressive and quite brutal, but the rest of the film is an absolute snorefest.

Joachim Phoenix brings about as much energy to the role of Napoleon Bonaparte as a corpse does to a funeral. I mean, I don't know what the bloke was like - the historical one not Phoenix - but he was as miserable as a wet weekend in Frinton and really needed to lighten up a bit. There was one scene, early on, where someone who was talking to him thought he'd fallen asleep but he was just being moody and mysterious. Plus, his love for Josephine had all the impact of trying to get one of those polystyrene mannequin heads to give you a blow job. It was a bit like a dramatised history lesson with the most boring history teacher.

Vanessa Kirby as the love of his life who shagged around behind his back and only loved him when he threatened to take everything away was not really convincing either; she seemed like a 21st century woman acting in a drama about people from past. There was a stream of people appearing in it who didn't appear again; Mark Bonner was the most consistent as Napoleon's number two, but he was gone before the hour mark, then it was literally someone new every scene - Julian Rhind-Tutt popped up to get Napoleon to rule France with him and then we never saw him again and this seemed to go on for ever. Some people were given little subtitles under them to let us know who they were and others did not and it was all wrapped up quicker than Napoleon having a go on his philandering missus. It was interminably dull and apparently it's been nominated for several Oscars, but then again so have a number of films we've seen over the last few weeks which bored the tits off of us. It wasn't a load of shit but it wasn't riveting entertainment either.

Theatrical

If ever there was a science fiction film that felt so unlike a science fiction film it's The Man From Earth, a very strange movie that could almost have been a one act play given that virtually all the 'action' takes place in the living room of the main character John Oldman's cabin.

He invites his friends from the college he works at for a fond farewell as he moves to pastures new, but they're intrigued as to why he's leaving them, then one of his friends mentions that in the 10 years they've known him he hasn't aged a day and this leads to the unveiling of a fantastic story that causes all kinds of consternation and arguments among the group of friends gathered. John announces he is about 14,000 years old and he has been travelling the world avoiding being discovered since he realised that he was never getting any older. He'd been sick and he'd been injured but he doesn't scar and he always recovers from even the deadliest of diseases and he decides, just this once, to tell his friends his story. What follows is lots and lots of talking, supposition and disbelief; there's anger, interest and interventions, but gradually some of the people in the room start to believe him while others simply think he's either mad or playing some monstrous practical joke on them.

It's not action packed - in fact the most energetic thing that happens is removal men taking his furniture away - it's very wordy and I expect it is quite boring (I had to stop the wife from falling asleep and she actually thought it was a clever idea) for some people who expected more. Yet it is intriguing; it leaves you wondering all the way until the end whether it's truth or bullshit and it has a twist in the tail that turns out to be pivotal to the entire 90 minutes. It touches very much on theology and the origins of deities and doesn't try to be clever or anything other than a story that might be true and if it is true then its simplicity makes it all the more difficult to disbelieve. It's got a high rating for such a stylised and speciality type of film and there was a sequel to it that is apparently an absolute heap of steaming shit, which, rest assured, we won't be watching. As a curiosity though it is really worth 90 minutes of your time, especially the twist.

Modern Family?

There was a reasonably good sci-fi film hiding inside the 2018 movie Kin; the problem was that whoever made it didn't really realise this, instead gluing together lots of stuff that seemed to mimic other sci-fi films from the past mixed with gritty crime dramas.

Kin is about Eli, a 14 year old boy who finds a piece of very dangerous alien tech that only he can operate. The tech, which is a mighty weapon has a number of settings, all of which cause a shit load of damage.

This is a movie that is about a young black boy who has been adopted by a white family. His 'father' played by Dennis Quaid (looking very old) is a straight forward hardworking man whose natural son has just been released from prison after serving six years for an unspecified theft/robbery. Quaid has concentrated on bringing Eli up properly, especially since his wife died and doesn't need his real son screwing up things, especially as he's come out of jail with a $60,000 bill to a local crime family. Things go a little wonky, Quaid gets killed in botched robbery, as does crime boss James Franco's brother and what follows is a road movie of sorts as the two brothers cross country trying to escape the shit show they have inadvertently left behind and then the alien tech comes into play and it all goes a bit... well, I was going to say cliched and shit, but not shit as in a bad way - in fact some of the action sequences are highly entertaining, especially when Eli fires the gun at things and people - more like shit in a 'oh for heaven's sake who made this shit' kind of way. 

This is a poorly plotted, quite dreadfully paced film with some really well known actors totally wasted - including Carrie Coon, the aforementioned Franco, Zoë Kravitz and Michael B Jordan - in what is essentially a wanker dragging his kid brother into all kinds of fucking stupid situations, because the elder brother doesn't have two brain cells to rub together. You start to wonder why he was only in prison for six years, when he should have been thrown in a pit and had the ladder burned. Jack Reynor as Jimmy was probably supposed to be an incompetent moron, while young Eli seemed to have a brain - proven in the final scenes - and all the things that happened really made little or no sense; just a lot of things sown together to make something that resembled a coherent sci-fi film. I'd avoid this if it ever appears near a streaming service or DVD near you. Oh and Kin is the theme to it, especially when you discover just what kin really means, but that message is also poorly executed. The wife, I think, found it a fun and entertaining film; I couldn't wait for it to end.

Bang Bang, You're Dead

I know people who rate Ben Wheatley as a filmmaker, but almost all of his films have below average ratings on most film sites; Sightseers, Kill List and the film we watched tonight Free Fire are the highest rated films on the two major films sites - IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes; everything else doesn't come out with many plaudits. We have seen most of his films and I've never been quite sure why; probably because people we like rank him as a good filmmaker so we wanted to see if we were wrong about him. I don't think we were...

However, Free Fire is head and shoulders the best thing I've ever seen with Wheatley's name attached. It's a riotous violent comedy with so many excellent moments that I'm amazed that the 51 year old director actually made it. I mean, his films are usually vaguely erudite, strange and oddly paced; sometimes just weird and difficult to follow and, to be fair, this wasn't what we expected at all, this was bonkers almost from the word go; a colourful, 1970s set action comedy about an arms deal that goes spectacularly wrong because of two people - one on either side of the deal - who both wanted the blood of the other.

There's a lot of famous names in this film; Cillian Murphy, Brie Larson, Sharlto Copley, Jack Reynor (who plays the idiot brother in Kin), Armie Hammer, Michael Smiley and Sam Riley and there's a lot of guns, loads of gun fights, wounds, blood, swearing, drugs and double crosses galore and it's a 90 minute riot - a thoroughly bonkers film which doesn't really take itself seriously and you have to ask why Wheatley can make a film like this and then something like A Field in England, which was just a load of shite. [For Wheatley, also see Robert Eggers]. 

Run Run Run

Part of me thinks of Forrest Gump as a comedy, because it has so many funny moments in it, but after watching it for the first time in probably 25+ years, the overreaching impression is it's possibly one of the most tragic and sad movies I've ever seen. It is a work of utter genius, but it's also so heartbreakingly sad that it's difficult to watch it without wanting to burst into tears.

For those of you who have never seen it - not that many I'd hazard a guess - Tom Hanks plays a man with an IQ of 75 who despite being mentally challenged is fortunate enough to succeed in life where many others haven't. His propensity for running fast saved his hide and got him into college because he was a fantastic American football player; his speed and strength gets him through Vietnam along with the Medal of Honour for bravery - saving his CO and many men - and his tenacity makes him rich, he wanted to be a shrimp fisherman because of his friend Bubba and good fortune meant he became the biggest in the USA, making millions of dollars for him and his former CO. However, all the time Forrest was having an adventure of a lifetime and inadvertently living the American Dream all he could think of was his best friend in the world, the girl who gave him a seat on his first school bus journey, Jenny.

When you look at the film through the success it sounds like a heart-warming tale of achievement against adversity, but in reality it is a catalogue of tragedy from Forrest being bullied for being stupid, his mother having to give sexual favours to enable him to go to a proper school, to being rejected by the love of his life on countless occasions, the death of Bubba, the ruination of his CO's life because of the horrors of war; the death of his mother and finally the death of his beloved Jenny, in the 1980s, from AIDS - contracted during her drug usage and promiscuity period. Forrest Gump is just one of the saddest film you will ever see. The penultimate scene where he is talking to Jenny's grave is probably Tom Hanks's finest scene in a long and illustrious career. 

Robin Wright, Gary Sinese, Sally Field, Mykelti Williamson and everyone else who made this film an Oscar-winning triumph are all fantastic; this is probably Robert Zemekis's best film and probably the last great film he made - he did make Contact and then Castaway a few years later, but I think his star was waning by then. If you're one of the few people who hasn't seen this, then you should track it down; it's quite a beautiful movie, but remember it is also desperately sad and will probably make you cry...  

Hive Story

What a way to finish off the week; A Jaysun Stayfum movie! You remember Jaysun Stayfum? He was last seen in that abysmal - Ben Wheatley - film The Meg 2 and here he is as someone in The Beekeeper, a film that plays fast and loose with facts to make a movie that defies logic.

We're talking super action bonkers feature with the relentless Stayfum as a super special agent who is so good, so frightening and so deadly that the former head of the CIA literally shits his pants every time the words 'Bee' and 'Keeper' are spoken [some details in this review are not strictly true]. This person is played by Jeremy Irons, who was obviously paid a lot of money to shit his pants a lot and sound terrified at the prospect of having his hand broken (which happens near the end as he gets away with only broken bones and shit-stained pants). The body count in this is so high they needed a super computer to keep up with it and it all leads back to the President of the United States (played by Jemma Redgrave being less convincing than when she plays Kate Lethbridge-Stewart in Doctor Who) whose son is essentially a massive cunt who steals money from poor innocent and lovely people to fund his mum's election campaign and keep her living in a style far better than POTUS would normally. Mum, of course, has no idea that her son is a monumental shit bag and therefore is spared by Jaysun Stayfum from an ignominious death.

This is a hoot. It's essentially a British film with some location work in Boston, but even if it's set in the States it looks a lot like Devon and with a couple of exceptions all the actors are Brits. It plays fast and loose with the facts because POTUS's defence is made up of people built out of string and a bunch of colourful vigilantes dressed like they're going to a rave. Stayfum infiltrates her big private party so easily, it was like he wanders into the middle of an FBI raid - aimed at catching him - and beats them all up using just a feather duster and his anus [this actually happens but not with the feather duster or his anus]. It is so fucking awful it's great fun. From the moment Stayfum literally blows a building up using just a can of petrol and his dynamic acting ability you know you're onto something as special as the most special thing ever, EVER. 

I could go on but I don't want to because it might spoil it for you and you deserve to have this spoiled for you by you alone. You need to watch this and wonder why you did and then go to bed wondering why you did and having a restless night as you work out how come Jaysun manages to kill over 30,000 [some 'facts' are wrong in this review] using just his hands and a cocktail stick and then swims off into the sunset with only a stab wound and a dodgy arm. The girl who was in The Umbrella Academy - the one who can whisper things and people do it - is also in this film; she's put on a fair bit of weight since that series and her acting skills are Olivier level [they really aren't] in a movie that makes about as much sense as why people find Michael McIntyre funny. Watch it, it's fucking awful and brilliant at the same time, simultaneously. 

Next Time...

On the horizon - the Aquaman follow-up has been on the Flash Drive of Doom for over a week now, the problem is I just can't bring myself to watch it because everyone who has seen it has killed themselves because of how brilliant it isn't... The next week sees Poor Things hit the streaming world, everyone and their living aunt is raving about this film, except some people who think it's exploitative horse shit. Having read about some of the scenes, I'm debating with my prudish self whether I want to go there; after all I decided not to watch Saltburn because of some of the sex scenes (you see, this is what happens when you get into your 60s, you want sex scenes to be under the covers, in darkened rooms. I do believe this is more to do with my feminism rather than embarrassment though).

I sometimes wonder if I'm running out of films to watch, but obviously I'm not as the FDoD currently has 37 films on it and the TV hard drive has about another 20 - the problem is I need to feel like watching something and hope that the wife is up for it as well, otherwise we end up watching something like Napoleon or The Beekeeper and I then have to use my imagination to describe them in as many humorous (or disappointed) ways as possible... 

TV Culture - A Range of Emotions

There's some spoilers here and there, but old stuff not so much...

Angry, Upset and Disgusted

Fuck. Fucking hell. Mr Bates versus The Post Office is without a doubt the most emotive television programme/series I think I've ever watched. It made me want to scream at the TV; it made me want to scream at politicians, at the Post Office and at the general injustice of it all - British Justice: what a fucking joke; what an absolute load of horse shit.

Honestly, by the end of it I had tears in my eyes and I know the wife did and I think we were both so fucking angry, because for over 20 years peoples lives have been systematically destroyed by a Post Office - owned by the government; Conservative and Labour - that lied, cheated and knowingly fucked up the lives of sub-postmasters every week, wilfully and with a degree of evil that is just utterly wrong. A corporation that went out of its way to obfuscate and prevent the truth from coming out; a corporation that treated those seeking the truth like imbeciles and felt it was above the law to the point of making the law an absolute mockery. This was undeniably the most damning thing and greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of the United Kingdom. This was a fucking sick joke dished out by a group of people who should, if there's any justice face criminal proceedings and Paula fucking Vennels, handing back her CBE after it, she should be put inside for a long time. The woman is a Christian - allegedly and apparently - it just confirms my longstanding belief that Christianity is the worst fucking religion on the planet, a religion inhabited by people who wouldn't know the true meaning of Christianity if it was spelt out to them on a big fuck off white board. 

Do I need to tell you what this four-part series was about? I expect anyone who doesn't has been either hiding away for years or is one of those atrociously awful right wing wankers who thinks British law is fabulous and all of these people were secretly criminals - don't think that hasn't already been said on numerous pages because I've seen it. This is about a 20+ year fight to clear the name of people who were essentially framed by the Post Office as criminals; many of whom have died, committed suicide, been financially ruined, lost everything, suffered mental health issues - have been victimised and demonised by a business that knew - it fucking knew - what it was doing. 

God, I'm so fucking angry, disgusted and upset and so should you and most of this happened on the Tories watch and ironically if it hadn't been for a back bench Tory MP it might still be raging on, claiming more people's lives. Cunts the lot of them, every single fucking last one of the cunts who knew about this and tried to hide it. CUNTS!

All Star Brilliance

And breathe...

I've said this before but it's worth saying again - dump Netflix, dump Disney+, dump Amazon, Hulu and whatever other streaming services are out there and get Apple TV+. You won't regret it and pound for pound you will not be disappointed with your return. This is a streaming network that might have brought us that borderline awful Monarch series, but also knocks the ball out of the park with shows such as Ted Lasso, Lessons in Chemistry, For All Mankind, Shrinking, Silo and now The Morning Show.

Okay, the Morning Show started in 2019 but I didn't know it was an Apple TV series and the moment I discovered it was I was on my torrents search engine looking for it and to kick the week off we started with the first episode. Man, what an all-star cast, I mean who hasn't been on this show? It's wall to wall A list celebs, padded out with B list celebs and has people in it you haven't seen for years and others who will go onto bigger things. What you have to start with is Jennifer Aniston as the co-anchor of the eponymous Morning Show, who for 15 years has co-hosted with Steve Carell, but he's suddenly fired for a 'Me Too' moment and lives are thrown into complete turmoil - history has been made and cancelled.

Also involved in this is Reece Witherspoon (about to become Aniston's new co-host), Mark Duplass, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Brett Butler, Billy Crudup, Nestor Carbonell, Jack Davenport and that's just the first episode, there's a whole host of others lined up for one, two or three episode guest appearances and this first season is going to be about the fallout from Carell's character's departure and how the USA's one time favourite morning show maintains its audience and gets bigger. It sounds a bit trite, possibly even boring, but trust me on this, This is TV that kicks you in the balls and then gives them a gentle massage, but you know there's another kick coming, maybe two. We needed a new series to get into and instead of trying one of the things we have already, we've dived into something I hadn't even considered 24 hours ago. I don't think there's been anything since the heyday of Aaron Sorkin that has been this compelling and riveting about US television.

Crudup is superb as the almost psychotic deputy head of the network who seems to believe in chaos over order and it is absolutely brilliant to see him cast as someone other than the villain of the piece - that's not to say he won't end up being the villain, but at the moment he's absolutely fucking excellent as the 'shoot first and ask questions if we feel like it' exec. Mark Duplass, who like Jake Johnson in last week's film blog, is a Safety Not Guaranteed alumni is also pretty good as the bewildered executive producer of the Morning Show and someone who is in charge, but seemingly in name only. I can't believe it has taken us so long to find this utterly fabulous TV show.

Amazing Misadventures

Regular readers of my culture blogs will know that while I have a soft spot for George Clarke's programmes, I also find him irritating and his shows incredibly formulaic. Most Christmases George (and usually Will Hardy, his mate) go somewhere to look at fancy houses and amazing structures, usually somewhere cold and snowy. This time around George is on his own, in a complete series and he's travelling the USA, not only to look at the architecture but also in search of Americana and have a bit of a travelogue at the same time. Regular readers will also know that over the last year my opinion of Americans has dipped to an all-time low...

George Clarke's Adventures in America hasn't done anything to change that opinion, especially as it seems to be more about oddball characters than the thing we associate him with more than anything else - amazing spaces.

George tries his hand at historical commentary and social opinion here and he should stick to knocking down walls. He doesn't do a very good job of looking or sounding sincere about the horrors of slavery - although I'm sure he was - and he looked like a crawfish out of water with the Cajuns in Louisiana. However, it was when he got to Texas that I wondered if Channel 4 had made a monumental fubar as he spent more time getting a Stetson made, going to a rodeo and spending a huge amount of time in the country's biggest man cave stuffed to the gills with Americana that just smacked of privilege and money and oddly enough he seemed more at home there than anywhere else. The congenial Geordie just isn't, say. Simon Reeve, he's not even in Robson Green's league; he's just a big bloke who says 'amazing' a lot and gets by with his winning smile and his lack of personality. At least there wasn't people going over budget here, not that that would happen in such a diametrically disparate country as the USA; a place where 80% of the people who get made bankrupt do so because of unpaid medical bills. He looks like he has a great time, I no longer understand how anyone can go to that country and enjoy a place that is just fascism hidden behind a lie and if things go the way they're going these fuckwits are going to elect Trump again. The Yellowstone Caldera can't erupt soon enough... 

A Horror Show

The second episode of True Detective: Night Country has a real wtf opening, one which leaves you wondering if you've just wandered into a detective version of The Thing. It is full on horror and one of the most disturbing things I've seen on telly for months.

However, as the episode progressed with Jodie Foster's Danvers continuing to piss off almost everyone she comes into contact with I started to get an idea about what I was watching and what happened in this puzzling mystery. In fact my theory could spoil it for you so you might want to skip the rest of this review...

First off, this links back to the first season by virtue of a tattoo and secondly, you might remember I reviewed a film last autumn called Wind River, with Elisabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner, about the death(s) of a (two) Native American girl(s)? In that, the (second) girl in question died of the cold after running away from something over two miles from where she was found; she had been raped and badly beaten but had actually died from exposure. The FBI cop - Olsen - and tracker who was also a friend of the girl - Renner - trace the killing back to an oil refinery station where it soon became obvious that the remaining people there were responsible for the girl's death and her boyfriend who was killed to keep him quiet about the horrible event. In Night Country there might be a lot of mystic mumbo jumbo but the missing research centre person - the one who seems to have gone mad - was the boyfriend of the woman killed five years prior to this spate of horrendous deaths; he has a tattoo like the dead woman and I think he's led these other men to their deaths because they're responsible for the original murder and he's getting his revenge. if I'm right, this is not only a cop out, but is also lazy TV making dressed up as something fabulous - which it is, if it isn't what I've just theorised. Time will tell...

Next Week... 

Our schedule is pretty much going to be devoted to The Morning Show, the rest of season one and maybe the start of season two. Night Country is going to feature, especially as I try to work out if this is just a re-tread of an old film and I might review the next stage of George Clarke's embarrassing USA journey. Of course, something new might pop up, but one thing is unlikely to change, we won't be watching (IMHO) shite like The Traitors or Gladiators, because we're funny like that...

Besides, having shorter, pithier blogs might be the way forward at the moment; you don't have to feel like you're wading through tons of stuff to see if I'm reviewing anything you'd watch. 

TV Culture - Desperate Measures

Spoilers, potentially 

Ice Ages

We gave up with True Detective about halfway through season two, mainly because it wasn't a patch on the brilliant first series and we never watched the third series probably because it slipped under the radar. However, there has been so much written about season four, subtitled Night Country that we decided to give it a go. One of the places that was raving about it was our old friend The Guardian that managed to give it a 5 star rating based on just one episode.

I checked their review of this and came to the conclusion that they did indeed base their five stars on one single episode, which, while very good, probably didn't warrant top marks - thus making me wonder (yet again) if they get paid to praise things. This is about a small town in northern Alaska that is  just entering a period where the sun never comes up - think 30 Days of Night, except in reality it's about two weeks. A delivery driver arrives at a research facility manned, usually, by six men but the place is empty and has a Marie Celeste vibe going on, apart from a severed woman's tongue on the floor. Enter the chief of police, played by Jodie Foster and pretty much the rest of the episode was spent introducing us to the complicated relationships and characters that make up the town of Ennis. In fact, so much time is spent on the people connected to chief Liz Danvers and her former detective, now a State Trooper, Evangeline Navarro - played by Kali Reis - that you almost forget about the six missing men until a dead man shows a woman where their bodies are at the end of the first episode.

This is very much feeling like a supernatural murder mystery rather than a crime that needs solving from the first hour and there is going to be so many important peripheral characters and stories it's going to probably need a score card to keep up, but it is intriguing, especially as Navarro is hurting about the death of an Inuit woman from five years earlier that has never been solved and believes that what has happened at the research station might be related to it - why isn't explained, yet, but it certainly seems that the woman's tongue is a link to this unsolved mothballed case. One thing this new story does do well is paint a picture of how dysfunctional and potentially awful it is living inside the Arctic Circle in Alaska during a bleak winter. I expect this will become must see viewing over the coming weeks and a welcome addition to the empty schedules.

More Detective Shenanigans

It seems that the theme for new TV in January 2024 is detectives - perhaps the trend over the last couple of years for true crime podcasts and the like has given people the idea that detective TV is in vogue again, when really it's never ever gone away. This time around is Death and Other Details, which I thought started intriguingly, but it appears the wife found it tough going and almost fell asleep. Maybe I need to watch things on my own at times...

To be fair, I didn't really know what to make of it. it's set in contemporary times but on board a cruise liner with a pre-1950s feel. Mandy Patinkin plays a world famous (English?) detective who has been on the slide and Violett Beane as the girl who he failed to help 18 years earlier but is now, seemingly, back in her life not only to solve a murder on the ship but also to find out who blew her mother to bits. This has the feel of a kind of Agatha Christie mystery, but with much more sex and swearing than you'd ever imagine; in fact within ten minutes there's a cunnilingus scene that I expect no one saw, erm, coming, which firmly placed the series on a different footing than maybe it looked like it was heading. I was quite impressed with the premise and the fact that there doesn't appear to be anyone on this ship without some kind of a mystery or a skeleton in their closet - but then again, none of these things ever have 'innocents' in them, they're always packed to the rafters with potential victims and villains. The wife said she'd give the second episode a try, I suppose it's the most I can expect...

So... we watched the second episode and we both agreed when it had finished that we wouldn't bother with a third. It's not often I agree with IMDB on things, but this was an 8.5 when I downloaded it and was 6.8 when we started watching it and I think that's a fair estimation and I expect it will sink lower. It's another one of those 'I don't give a shit about any of the characters and their rich privileged lifestyles'. I disagree with the critics opinion of Mandy Patinkin's English accent; it does sound very English, it just doesn't have an accent; it's just how you'd imagine a Englishman to speak if you didn't come from England. 

The thing about this series is there just seems to be too much padding, too much trying to be clever and too much unnecessary sex in it - I used to like shows with too much unnecessary sex in them, but now it just feels like a way to get people watching; I find it exploitative. The main problem with the story is like all detective stories everyone either has a motive or a reason for the murder of Imogene's mother and the murder of the man on the boat and I'd like some twists on old stereotypes, this doesn't have it. I don't think it has any staying power which is why we're not staying with it...

First Time Out

For a bit of added nostalgia we watched the very first episode of QI, from 22 years ago, it had Danny Baker (now disgraced), John Sessions (dead), Hugh Laurie (massively huge in a famous kind of way) and a very youthful and squeaky Allan Davies, all overseen by a thin and equally youthful Stephen Fry. It was all very mannered with no screens and a distinctly Ask the Family vibe, oh and you understood the scoring. Baker was annoyingly clever; Sessions knew far too much and should have won, Laurie was surprisingly reticent and Davies was... well, Davies but squeakier. It probably took a few years to forge the madness that made it such a popular series for so long. It was fun watching it though and we're going to watch the rest of the A series because it's been so long since we saw it we cant remember anything at all.

Sheer Heart Attack

Our dip into the BBC archives continues with the fabulous 1994 series Cardiac Arrest, which while a wee bit dated still packs a punch and makes you realise that not a lot has changed in the NHS in 30 years, 18 of them under Tory rule. We polished off the first series in two sittings.

Starring - among others - Andrew Lancel, Helen Baxendale and Ace Bhatti, it essentially follows the misadventures of various doctors from junior to consultant and the various stages of arsehole they become. It is hard-hitting, funny and extremely realistic - a kind of Carry On Doctor for the age. It was TV-meister Jed Mercurio's first TV series and if you didn't know he was a doctor before becoming a TV script writer you do now. This is a rude and no holds barred TV show that shocked a lot of people back in the 1990s but also attracted a large following, making it one of the most respected medical dramas the Corporation ever did. I expect things haven't changed for many doctors in 2024 and you quickly decide who you like, who you hate and who you'd like to see get punched by the poor bastards on the end of their arseholery. Classic stuff.

Bloody Hell

He's back! The nicest man on TV is travelling the world again for our entertainment. Wilderness with Simon Reeve is a new four-part documentary series with the fantastic Reeve venturing into some of the remotest parts of the planet in search of stories that no one else bothers with. 

This first episode he's in the Congo Basin, the vast, second largest rain forest on the planet and a place that, oddly enough, I was only thinking a few weeks ago appears to be one of those places that no one visits and good old Simon pops up there. However, instead of his usual cutting edge reporting, this was more about crossing one of the most inhospitable jungles on the planet and meeting some indigenous tribes that frankly deserve to live on earth a lot more than probably anyone else and, of course, Simon is just so bloody nice that everyone wants to mother him.

If I've never told you this before, the wife and I have a competition with Reeve's programmes, it's called The Bloody Hell Count, because Simon says 'bloody hell' an awful lot, so each new episode we watch, we both have a guess to how many bloody hells he'll say with whoever gets it right winning and getting to guess first next week; if neither of us get it right then whoever guessed first guesses second next. Don't tell me no one else does this? I just won't believe you. This week: I guessed One bloody hell, the wife guessed two bloody hells and there was a total of three bloody hells (not including any bloody hells that are said in the preamble before each episode starts, because there's one in that). We both know that next week's episode, in the Andes, already has one bloody hell in it, so I'm guessing first and I'm stuck with thinking that might be the only one or could there be more. I mean, if there was three this week there's a good chance he won't want to use up his quota of bloody hells or equally if everyone does the Bloody Hell game he might try to equal his record of four or even go for five or more... Honestly, his shows are bloody brilliant and if you don't watch them you bloody well should!

Next Time...

You can probably work most of it out for yourself - what we are carrying on watching plus whatever happens along to fill the voids, which, as I said last week, isn't looking too full a schedule. I'm sure many of you would have no problem with a streamlined TV review blog for a few weeks/months, especially how bloated they became at times last year. 

Film Culture - A Mixed Bag

As most of the films reviewed are old then bollocks to your spoilers. If a new film is reviewed then I won't spoil it for you unless it's shite, therefore saving you from having to watch it.

Being Rimmed

What I find really hypocritical is that people can slag off Rebel Moon like it's this uniquely awful film (which it isn't, but I can see why certain people would think that) and yet somehow Pacific Rim gets a free pass from major criticism. I mean, yes, it's not exactly something that has been done before; there is a uniqueness about it in terms of films made anywhere other than Japan, but it is an absolute load of  testosterone fuelled bollocks.

The special effects are awesome. The idea of a giant robot beating a giant monster with a ship is brilliant, but other than that... people complain about Marvel films? This is a Guillermo Del Toro movie; he's a fucking fantasy auteur; his films are usually viewed with wonder and awe even if they're complete manky testicles. This film was also the first to spotlight Charlie Hunnam's complete and utter inability to do accents; his USA accent in this wavers about and sounds vaguely Geordie sometimes and even the Northern Irish he so badly mastered in Rebel Moon. He is also not a very good actor, which begs the question of how he's become such a busy actor. The crazy thing about Pacific Rim is it's actually a comedy; despite untold destruction, loss of life, bonkers violence and the Chinese Kaiju Mafia. I don't think it was intended to be a comedy, mainly because it's absolutely and utterly unfunny, but the double act of Burn Gorman and Charlie Day was so bad, in a comedic kind of way, that no one in their right mind would take it seriously. I mean, if you're going to have a serious sci-fi film, you don't have Laurel and fucking Hardy as your two key scientists...

It's just a long fight scene with some exposition and back story thrown in to pad it out and as I said to the wife; we had Cloverfield in 2008, Godzilla in 2014 and this in 2013, despite big fuck off monsters, giant robots and other stuff I can't be arsed to think about, giant monster movies didn't really take off; even the Godzilla/Kong franchises have largely had a cult following and can't be called box office gold. Big monster films pretty much don't have much going for them after you've had them fight each other or fight giant robots - they're essentially boxing films crossed with Mexican wrestling on acid. Pacific Rim does have Idris Elba delivering his 'Today we're cancelling the apocalypse' speech, which is not Shakespeare and sounds like something someone would say in South London, but other than that it's just a giant robot beating the shit out of a monster with a ship and nowt else.

Connexion Française Un

Classed as one of the all-time classic films, the seminal 1971 movie The French Connection hasn't dated well, although as a snapshot of New York in 1970 it's probably quite accurate. Filmed in an almost documentary style, this is a feature that is stark and grainy with a relatively simple story that unfolds over one hour and forty five minutes.

One of the first things you notice is just how young Gene Hackman looks and just what a callous, racist bigot his character 'Popeye' Doyle is. His partner in the film is Roy Scheider - he of Jaws fame - as 'Cloudy' Russo, who also acts as Popeye's conscious. This isn't a loveable film; filmed throughout the harsh New York winter of 1969/70 it does nothing at all to glamorise police work and instead focuses on just how mundane and boring the job can be and how a lot of police work was done on hunches and gut feelings. Fernando Rey plays 'the French connection' - a Marseilles-based heroin dealer trying to break into the US market, which has had a drought for months. Tony Lo Bianco plays the chameleon like Boca negotiating the deal and it's all directed in a distant, almost uninterested way by the brilliant William Friedkin, which is probably why it feels like a documentary at times. There is no real back story; we don't learn about the characters lives or loves, especially the cops, and the lines are blurred between good and bad guys - such as when the two French dealers are fine dining in a top class French restaurant, while Doyle and Russo are freezing their arses off over the street and grabbing pizza slices and lukewarm coffee.

There is a lot to admire about the film, but ultimately it doesn't deliver a fulfilling ending; for all the meticulous planning, the denouement is half-arsed and the main antagonist escapes and it's probably extremely indicative of what really used to happen in the drug squads of major US cities all the time. It might be a classic, but it no longer feel compelling viewing and from a personal observation, the wife struggled to stay interested in it or awake.

Calling Occupants... 

It's been a while since we watched Contact. I asked the wife to buy me the book for Christmas as I used to have it, read it way back when it was released and wanted to read it again. The film won't spoil it because the book is a bit different from the film, which considering it was a late 90s Robert Zemeckis film seemed to struggle a little with the special effects and did another excellent job of showing us all what a monumental fuck up it would be if aliens came to earth and the Yanks were allowed to deal with it. There's this amazing thing about alien contact films that suggests the 'hoisted by their own petard' Americans would seriously consider anyone able to travel here from billions of miles away some how inferior to us or would be scared of their bullets and bombs. I think only Close Encounters of the Third Kind is probably the only big budget 'alien contact' film that hasn't had some American trying to kill an alien, blow up their ship or sabotage events - it's enlightening that filmmakers not only understand this but include it in their films, but if we really aren't alone, we're going to be stone age man compared to visitors and we should probably be a little more humble and less hot headed - James Woods character - Michael Kitz, chief security advisor to the President - in this was the epitome of shoot first and ask questions if we can be arsed.

Jodie Foster plays the astrophysicist who discovers the signal from an alien race while scanning the stars for signs of life and then becomes a bystander as far more 'important' people take over. There's a whole bunch of famous co-stars including James Woods, Matthew McConaughey, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, David Morse, Rob Lowe and Tom Skerritt (reuniting Hurt and Skerritt from Alien) and it's a good film, yet somehow manages to be less warm than the book, which was the brilliant super-astronomer Carl Sagan's only fiction novel. I often wonder what possible directors would make of this if it was made again in the 2020s, because this was obviously hampered by technology both in a studio and in the real world. The way of journeying to the stars was innovative and the scepticism was handled well, but... it needed to be like Independence Day and have fictional politicians and not be set in a world that existed where this didn't happen.

I have to say that however brilliant Jodie Foster is as an actor, she does have this coldness about her that I think didn't lend to her performance as Ellie Arroway, who needed to be warmer and more passionate than she was depicted.

Comedy Balls

Taika Waititi makes comedy films; some are successful, some are hit and miss and some bomb. He became popular with Marvel for his Thor films - one which was excellent and another that was shit. He is the epitome of up and down and his latest film - for Amazon - Next Goal Wins is a heavily fictionalised version of a true story about the American Samoa football team's attempts at... well scoring a goal, let alone winning a football match.

If you know the story of Thomas Rongen - played here by Michael Fassbinder - you'd know that much of the story of this film has been tampered with to make it 'better' and to be fair to Waititi, he literally tells us this right at the beginning of the movie. However, it only sticks to some of the facts, even if it embellishes most of them and makes up  a load of others. Yet it managed to give me more LOL moments than a lot of things over the last few weeks and it certainly is a proper feelgood film that doesn't so much have a happy ending as a fitting one. Fassbinder sort of phones in his performance and as a Dutch American he sounds very Irish at times; I expect most of the Samoan actors were amateurs but they were great and the entire idea of a team of misfits kind of doing this football thing for the pride of their island really works, even if American Samoa had to take on a slight comedy island persona to help make the film flow - which they apparently were not happy about. It isn't a masterpiece, but it is a film that should leave you happy you've watched it. As a football fan there are many liberties taken, but I can live with that because at the end of the film I was glad I watched it. 

Total Relentlessness

Remember Arnie's Total Recall? Well, the 2012 remake with Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel is a much better film, despite what the IMDB rating suggests. This version is an absolutely relentless action sci-fi thriller that really doesn't hang around and whizzes through its near two hour run time like an express train. It's full of dead ends, red herrings and characters you think are important that turn out to be expendable or not as relevant as you might think and unlike the original you get a much more coherent story and a 'wife' who isn't killed off promptly. In this, "Quaid's" wife - Beckinsale - is a relentless killing machine who isn't playing by her orders because she is somehow pissed off with her assignment and then with her boss for giving her this assignment.

There is a slight amount of corniness and it's got a very British feel to it, but the special effects are excellent, the film has a real Bladerunner feel to it and there are a lot more twists and turns than the original, which really did have awful corny moments. Whether Farrell makes a decent action/adventure hero is a difficult one, especially as he's now too old for that kind of role, but he isn't bad in this. In fact, the only actor who I felt struggled was Beckinsale, who you would have thought might have learned something about film acting from her Underpants films... Oh yeah... How silly of me? Some parts I had problems with, but I expect this stayed closer to the book than the 1990 Arnie film; I just wonder why it was made at all. The movie also has cameos from Bill Nighy, Bryan Cranston, John Cho and Bokeem Woodbine, who might have been a bit of a drag... [I thenk ewe, I'm here all the time...]

Self-Importance

Every time I see Jake Johnson I think he's Oscar Isaac's long lost brother and while he's never been in anything I can say I've truly hated, he's also not been in much I really like - apart from Safety Not Guaranteed, which I think is a cracking film and he's really good in that, even if he's playing a self-obsessed arsehole.

Self Reliance is a film written, directed and starring Johnson and while it's not a bad movie, it also doesn't feel like a fully thought out concept and the predictable bits were very and the other bits were weird but didn't feel weird enough. It's a bit of a curate's egg type of thing... Johnson plays Tommy, a man fast approaching 40 who seems to have a pretty dull life that has a routine that he's happy sticking with. He's two years out of a long time relationship, his family are worried about him and out of the blue US comedian Andy Samberg turns up - playing himself - offering Tommy the chance to change his life by getting involved in a reality TV show that's shown on the Dark Web. All he has to do is survive 30 days without one of the show's hired assassins killing him and he wins a cool million dollars. He even has a loop hole, he has to be alone when he will be killed, so if he can spend all of that time with someone he can't be touched.

The problem is everyone thinks he's lost it; no one wants to spend every waking moment with him and he grows increasingly more paranoid every day as he closes in on 30 days. Are the people stalking him just in his mind; has he imagined everything? Was Andy Samberg really there? Is he really being filmed 24/7 with micro cameras? Is he actually going slowly mad because of his life which seems to be a massive failure? Even the denouement could all be in his head and while there is a final scene that seems to confirm he went through everything by the time we reach it the joke has worn thin and maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all. 

Anna Kendrick plays Maddy, a desperately lonely woman who poses as another person in the game, but she finally gets cold feet when they meet an alleged other game player who essentially scares the shit out of her because she thought Tommy was just a needy man who was falling for her and not really on the run from assassins. There's also a number of 'ninjas' in it, people in fancy dress who may or may not be killers and heaps of paranoia and deranged shit. But considering it weighs in at just under 90 minutes you're kind of wishing it ended quicker and not necessarily for a conclusion, more... to just have it end. It actually gets a little boring and a little too needy; like Tommy's problems have transferred into the film and it needs to be liked as much as he does. It kind of fizzles out like a can of coke left open all night; there's little effervescence left when it all concludes.

Lacking in Dungeons not Dragons

I suppose the most memorable thing about last year's Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves was the fact it was such an enjoyable romp; probably the most entertaining fantasy comedy since The Princess Bride (which, I have to admit, I've never had much time for). But as the subhead says, it didn't have many dungeons - none, really. It did have at least two dragons...

Chris Pine, who has never really been any good as anyone other than Captain Kirk (mkII) still felt like his role as Ed could have been done by anyone else, but he was all right. Michelle Rodriguez was also okay as Holga, Ed's right hand woman, with a penchant for small men, but neither lead characters felt like they were the first people approached for their respective roles, I might be wrong, but they did seem like strange bits of casting. However, the film was very good; it went along at a cracking pace, had some genuinely funny bits in it and Hugh Grant is always a good value for money villain, even if he was really just a stooge for Daisy Head's Sofina - a red witch hell bent on revenge for her ancestors.

Essentially it's a film about a band of thieves who try one job that was too big for them and Pine and Rodriguez get caught and slapped into prison, which they escape from and go in search of Pine's daughter and the other members of their band only to discover that Grant's character has become the head of a large kingdom and the daughter has been brainwashed into thinking her father is a shit dad. From this point on it's about retrieving stuff to help them get their revenge on Grant, running across assassins, ghosts of ancestors and a fat dragon in the underworld, which added extra comedy. I have to admit it was enjoyable in a throwaway kind of way, the special effects weren't bad, but some of them weren't brilliant and at just over two hours it might have been a teensy bit too long, but I laughed a few times and didn't feel as though I'd wasted my time at the end, which I count as a win at the moment.

Coming Up...

A slightly pointless subhead because I have no idea what might be released this coming week or so, nor do I know what I'm likely to watch on either the Flash Drive of Doom or the magic TV recorder box thingy. Unlike TV - which you wont be seeing a blog about this week - films tend to be random and very much depend on what we fancy, what we've got and whether things I want to see are out yet. For instance, I'd love to see Godzilla Minus One, it has great reviews, a high IMDB rating and looks really good, but there's absolutely no date for a stream to surface and even if one does I want it to have proper subtitles. Oh and we won't be watching Wonka because modern 'musicals' tend to be a load of shit, even if this film has been rated by 'some' critics (and we all know who that 'some' is...).

We do have last year's animated Spider-Man film to watch, but I get the impression the wife isn't keen, especially as I've had it for six months and she's never said, 'Ooh let's watch that.' There's Napoleon, but frankly I'm in the undecided court about that and Killers of the Flower Moon needs three and a half fucking hours and needs to be riveting. There is a grand total of 39 unwatched films not counting the 15 or so on the TV recorder thing, so it's going to be pot luck between now and the next time this appears (which is likely to be in about two weeks).