Pop Culture - Classics and Crap Stains

There are some spoilers in this and in the case of old films there are lots of spoilers, but I try to keep the big spoilers out of current TV and newly release films available to stream or if you so wish, buy on DVD.

Dungeon & Dragons

Would you risk your life for the chance to ride a dragon? This is the question Rhaenyra is asking the bastards of Targaryens as her plan to place two bastards on the backs of the remaining two rider-less dragons comes to fruition, despite the disgust of her son and the mass walk out by the dragon keepers.

The penultimate episode of this season of House of the Dragon was a cracking one. Not only does Rhaenyra get her wish, in a most dramatic way, but her estranged hubby gets his arse handed to him on a plate by the new Lord Tully, a mere whipper-snapper of a boy who puts Daemon in such a pickle he can do nothing other than acquiesce to the new Lord's wishes. It was one of those moments when you realise that Matt Smith's character has far more flaws than he lets on as his time going slowly mad in Harrenhal is coming to an end. Meanwhile back in King's Landing, Alicent is going wild in the country to try and regain her poise, while Larys does his best to try and get the damaged king back on his feet. Raena and her nephews are shipped out of their temporary home and off across the sea to lands unknown, but first she wants to find out about this wild dragon. This was one of those episodes that was quite relentless in its content and was arguably the best one of the entire series as we get dragons by the absolute bucket load. Next week should be good.

Unbeatable

Whatever happened to M Night Shyamalan? I mean The Sixth Sense was an extraordinary movie and the one that followed it was arguably the best superhero film ever made, until at least 2008, but in many ways Unbreakable still is the quintessential comic book film. It is an incredible motion picture with almost as brilliant an ending as The Sixth Sense. After these films the director barely made a decent fist of anything...

Bruce Willis is again the star of this, but here he displays as a character so unlike anything he's ever played before; his David Dunne is so understated he's almost a wallflower. Samuel L Jackson as Elijah - or Mr Glass - is, in many ways, also very out of character for Jackson, usually so bombastic and Harlem-esque in the way he plays people. Dunne survives a horrendous train crash that kills everyone on board apart from him and this triggers the attention of Elijah, who believes that Dunne is in some way 'unbreakable' the antithesis of himself, someone who suffers from a bone deficiency that makes breaking them very easy. What follows is a slow but highly effective look at what probably would happen if two comic book characters happened in real life. It is a stunning movie that is packed full of emotions and twists until it becomes clear that Dunne is what Elijah thinks he is. I said in 2000 that it was the best superhero film ever made and while there have been some that are arguably better, I don't think there has ever been one that is so real. It was and will remain one of my favourite films of all time - yes it spawned two sequels, but I don't count them. They just were. 

3 Men in a Boat

The 1970s was the decade I discovered the cinema and in 1975 I discovered Steven Spielberg, the man who would go on to make two of my favourite films of all time. One of those films we watched again on Sunday night and even though it has been nearly 30 years since we last watched it, Jaws is a fucking masterpiece of cinematic history. It is gold standard.

If there are any people out there who haven't seen this film then they need to remedy that fast before films become a thing of the past. It is a perfect example of how to make a movie in two parts - your set-up and your finale. In this case the demarcation line is a long shot out to sea separating the horror that Amity is being subjected to and the hunt for the monster that caused it. Both parts are about one hour long and yet the second half, which is a three hander with Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw, feels considerably shorter. It has brilliant camera usage, interesting thematic twists, umpteen clues to what is going to happen - if there's a gun in the opening reel of a movie then you know it's going to be fired before the end and with this film "Bruce's" demise is actually telegraphed three times in the run up. The thing is, like the floating head in the boat scene that you know is coming but still catches you out - EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. - you're not paying attention to the visual clues, you're engrossed in an almost perfect story. It remains one of the greatest movies ever made because, quite simply, it's one of the greatest movies ever made. 

Invasion Pennsylvania 

There's a lot about M Night Shyamalan's film Signs that could be classed as good, unfortunately there's a lot of bad in it as well. It's a movie that has big boots to fill given the two before it are bona fide classics of modern cinema. This alien invasion film doesn't have any of the subtlety The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable possess and it's spoilt by a strange comedic tonal thing going on.

It's the story of the return of crop circles, this time not by wankers with too much time on their hands. Mel Gibson plays Graham, a former preacher who has lost his wife in a car accident and subsequently lost his faith. He lives on a farm and one day his two kids find crop circles among the corn. At first both Graham and Merrill (Joaquim Phoenix) his brother think it's the work of drunken local kids, but then stuff starts to happen that make them both doubt what is going on. Eventually, it's all over the news - the planet has been invaded by aliens and it's every man for themselves. I suppose the interesting thing about the film is it is set entirely in a farmhouse in Pennsylvania rather than a planet spanning epic like so many other alien invasion things, but that's about it. The rest of it is played out in a strange way - like the director wanted to make an invasion movie that was rooted in real life rather than something fantastical. The problem with it is simple, it doesn't know what it wants to be - is it a sci-fi film or is it a horror/thriller? Why does Mel Gibson seem to be taking it a little less seriously than his character is? It's really a movie about faith and how to rediscover it. It feels rushed and to a degree flippant about its subject material. It's a wee bit like that other alien invasion thing I watched a few weeks ago - Dark Skies - in that it wasn't a half bad film until the actual aliens turned up; then it got a bit silly, a lot contrived and the aliens were defeated unbelievably easily - apart from the one who wanted revenge on Gibson for chopping its fingers off when it was locked in a cupboard... Actually, I know the wife is a fan of this movie, but really it's very much a load of old shite.

Oops I Did It Again

To quote Jim Carrey from the Mask film, "Somebody stop me!" Why? Because I read something in the fucking Guardian and got conned again. I mean, how many times do I have to be fooled into believing something I read in that fucking pointless rag before I stop taking notice of it?

IMDB warned me. It said 6.1 and I figured that being over 6 probably meant it would be reasonable. The thing I didn't pay attention to was the Guardian saying Jericho Ridge was like Assault on Precinct 13 merged with some other classic movie from the 1970s. It listed it as one of the seven - SEVEN - films on [all] TV this week that were worth watching and I fucking fell for it. It was a film made by the British, on location in Kosovo, about an attack on a Hicksville USA police station by unknown assailants while an incapacitated deputy and her drunk prisoner have to survive. No one had a convincing American accent and after an initial opening 15 minutes that was quite poor it just went down hill from there. Several times during the film both of us were heard saying, 'just fucking shoot him' as several characters had an opportunity to end this 87 minute film before it went on and tortured us any further. It was awful; truly awful. As awful as finding mouldy potatoes in a bag. Fuck, I need to stop looking at the Guardian and concentrate on finding an alternative that doesn't make me angry.

A Quiet Pizza

One of the most inventive sci-fi horrors of the last decade was undoubtedly A Quiet Place. John Krasinski's film about aliens who hunt by hearing because they're almost blind was creepy, tense and deeply unusual for its time. In hindsight, the franchise does have logical flaws which are never really thought about - stuff is conveniently overlooked for the sake of action.

A Quiet Place - Day One is only connected to Krasinski via story and production and where his first two parts absolutely nailed it, this third part left an awful lot to be desired. That's not to say it wasn't an enjoyable movie, it just didn't have enough of anything to put it in the same league as the first two.

This time it's back to the beginning and New York, a city that is so noisy it could give a deaf man a headache. It's the perfect place for the aliens to hunt and they do a great job of trashing the city looking for humans to kill off. Lupita Nyong'o is a dying poet, in the final stages of cancer, who is in the Big Apple for one last time to watch a show courtesy of the hospice she's spending her last days in. She somehow survives the initial attack, along with her cat Frodo, and she's heading to Harlem to relive a moment from her past - a drink and a pizza from a place her father used to go. Along the way she picks up Joseph Quinn - the new Johnny Storm - an English law student who doesn't seem to know what he's doing so he decides to follow the dying woman into the heart of the city rather than head for the docks where the evacuation ships are waiting to save people.

There's lot of stuff in this film that lacks logic - some of it odd, some of it, like I said, where the overall logic of the idea falls a little flat. I liked the first two films, but it wasn't until this latest addition that I started to question the idea. If the idea is to remain as quiet as you can all the time, what about sneezing? Coughing? Farting? Having really bad diarrhoea? Talking in your sleep or snoring? How do you avoid making any noise at all, but more importantly what about the noise the aliens make when they're trashing everything; why don't they attract the attention of all the other aliens who aren't currently trashing things? Do they kill all animals that make a noise? Cows? Birds? Frogs? Insects? Do you see (or hear) what I mean?

Anyhow, the film doesn't have enough action, aliens or interest in it. There's a lot of stuff that happens that revolves around not making a noise, which like the first two films is the reason for this film's existence, but in the first movie the family were essentially avoiding one, maybe two beasties, this film has literally thousands of them and yet Nyong'o and Quinn manage to talk, scream and do all manner of things because of thunder or rain or extraneous noises that they use for cover. It wasn't tense; the characters lacked any real appeal and things that people discovered in the second film seemed to be obvious to people in this third outing even though it was like 48 hours after the aliens arrived. Like I said, it was enjoyable but it wasn't particularly that good. I expect the franchise will die here.

Grimm's Fairy Tales

We finally dipped into Grimm, the TV series that we watched one episode of in 2011 and gave up on. We've returned to it because I've been recommended to watch it by a couple of people and some of the reviews I read suggested that after a slow and slightly crappy start it really developed into an interesting show. I'd just like to say that after watching the first two episodes, I hope that the crappy and slightly slow start is not an indication that the entire 6 seasons will be as cheap and patchy as this. While I was watching the first two parts I was filled with a number of thoughts and observations, which you'll be pleased to hear I'm not going to bother pointing out. It does strike me as something that needs to up its game a little to keep us occupied because had this been a new show we would have not bothered after episode two. It has promise, but it needs to deliver that promise, especially as there are six seasons and 127 episodes.

Into the Woods

I think I'm beginning to struggle with Apple TV's Sunny, the series about a grieving woman and her strange robot. I like weird, but I also like a story that I can follow and the problem with Sunny is that there seems to be a lot of Japanese idiosyncrasies involved and if you're not familiar with the culture - which is difficult for most gaijin like me - then you're onto a hiding to nothing. We're five episodes in and every time you think you're getting a handle on it an episode like this comes along and BAM you're back to square one. This week was mainly being lost in the woods with Mixxy after they run away from Suzy's house that has been ransacked by the Yakuza (last week). The three - Suzy, Mixxy and Sunny are looking for Mixxy's uncle's place but she doesn't seem to know where she's going; there's a sinister looking man hanging about; lots of peeing in the woods and Sunny has developed a big problem with Mixxy and I'm beginning to think the robot might be right. It ends with Sunny disappearing and that rubber finger (from last week) under a pillow. I have to admit, I'm running out of patience.

Out Of Touch

This week's Clooney was one of his first feature films as a star - Out of Sight, a kind of light comedy drama heist movie, with Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle and Denis Farina.

Let's be honest about this. It isn't a bad movie; it's about an escaped con and serial bank robber called Jack Foley - Clooney - and the plan to rob a rich fraudster who ended up in the same prison, who made it clear he had loads of money. That's the premise of part of the story but the part that dominates is the relationship between Jack and the US Marshal - Karen Cisco played by JLo - who he accidentally kidnaps on his escape from a prison in Florida. When I say relationship, what I mean is the outrageously far-fetched and slightly soiled almost wishful thinking that a failed bank robber could start a relationship with a beautiful law enforcement agent after being locked in the trunk of a car with her for a couple of hours and gently stroking her thigh, in a this is clearly not at all violating and creepy way.

The fact that Cisco is attracted to Jack is explained away by the flimsy idea that she has appalling taste in men and ends up making ridiculous decisions with them, such as shagging married men and, in this case, falling for a vaguely suave, but largely dense bank robber who borderline molested her in a boot of a car. This film was made in 1998 by Steven Soderbergh; it was based on an Elmore Leonard book, which might explain why the female character felt more like a wet dream for wankers kind of gal. I just found the idea morally dubious and I'd seriously doubt that this movie could be made now given the suggestions it was implying. There was just something wrong about this film's portrayal of women; something very wrong indeed. 

Fear of the Future

As we're heading towards the end of Evil, it was good to see last week's stonking episode was followed by yet another quite excellent addition. The endgame is approaching so the team are no longer off gallivanting, this is about firefighting and trying to deal with the shit that is known and unknown.

This week was Sheryl's wake, but it was also a time travel story - with a twist - and the beginning of the end of the assessment team as the archdiocese gives David the job of running the parish and then promptly pulls the plug on the team he heads. So Kristen not only loses her mother, but also several other rather important things and then her job; oh and her night demon is back and she's struggling to deal with it and look after baby Timothy, who is now firmly ensconced in the Bouchard house. Leland is in prison and having problems and then he gets a shite attorney, who just turns out to be something a little more than shite. We have five more weeks to go and I expect the next thing on the agenda is solving Ben's Djinn problem. There was no Entity this week, despite David's dilemmas, but there was something we've never seen before in Evil. This season saw the introduction of the word 'fuck' to the show, but this week saw the first pair of tits, the first actual nudity that wasn't a deformed demon. It was almost as shocking as all the events that happened. This show, with or without boobies, is now really 18 rated.

Fox on the Run

I got the impression that while this film wasn't the inspiration for the great Apple TV+'s The Morning Show, it probably was a big influence in it. Bombshell is about the Fox News scandal of 2016 when several women who worked for the ultra-right wing 'news' station went public about the head of the Network - Roger Ails - and his sexual peccadillos and use of his power to influence women into giving him sexual favours. 

This was pretty much an all-star cast, with Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie, Mark Duplass, John Lithgow and scores of other famous film and TV stars literally sometimes only on screen for seconds. It was like all of these actors just wanted to be involved in this groundbreaking true story that saw Fox News kind of admit some culpability while obviously denying everything. It's quite a shocking movie in many ways and you get the impression whoever made it wanted to make sure that Fox and the Murdoch family came out of this with as little credibility as possible (without facing their own lawsuit). There's not really much to say about it because it's very much in the public domain, but it did do some interesting things, such as show Donald Trump in as bad a light as possible (and he was still President when it was made). It's an informative if slightly cold movie, but it is worth watching if you, for no other reason, want to see Fox News and the Murdoch look bad. The sad thing about it is it probably only changed the culture at this shit stain of a TV network for about 10 seconds.

Inside Out

I'm not a fan of Clive Owen. I think he's quite overrated unless he's in a British film and even then I think he's not a brilliant actor by any stretch of the imagination. He starred in The Children of Men, which is something of a 21st century SF classic so he seems to get a free ride, but normally I see him in a film and I pretty much dread it.

Inside Man is a 2006 Spike Lee heist film about a bank robbery with a difference and as well as Owen it stars Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer and Willem Dafoe. It feels like a straight forward bank robbery movie but there's something slightly odd about it almost from the word go. It's meticulously planned and the robbers always seem one step ahead of the cops and the hostage negotiator played by Washington. He even suspects they're being played by the robbers, but he doesn't know how. They even go to elaborate hoaxes to make the many cops laying siege to the bank believe they're serious if they get their demands met. However, we're talking something very complicated that involves the man who owns the bank and the contents of a safety deposit box, which, oddly enough, he - Plummer - has already hired a top fixer - Foster - to ensure the contents of said box do not fall into the wrong hands.

This is a top film that keeps you guessing right up till the end. You continuously wonder about who is the inside man in this and of course it leads you to having your own suspects and you work out how they're going to get out of the bank but to what end? It's not like they can escape with any money or anything else because they're going to be in custody until they can be cleared of any wrong doing. It's just a taut thriller and a mystery that races along at a cracking pace and simultaneously deceives but doesn't deceive the chief negotiator - who eventually works most everything out apart from the key parts. It's a movie worth tracking down; I can't recall having ever actually seen a Spike Lee film other than Summer of Sam, but on this evidence I might check a few others out.

Next Time...

The big thing for the next few weeks is going to be Evil; if you're a fan you'll know exactly what I mean and why, if you don't then you probably need to invest in it. There'll be the season two finale of House of the Dragon, which promises to be exceptional, but we've seen promise turn into let down so many times before. Sunny needs to give us some rope and show a leg or two because it really is in danger of being given up on with very few episodes (four) to go. We're also going to watch a few more episodes of Grimm, but you won't get reviews of them unless there's something exceptional (or we give up).

The FDoD is getting thin on the ground again with just 20 films on it. Yes, I know, that sounds like an ample amount of choice, but a third of these films have been on it for over two years and that probably means we're struggling to get the enthusiasm to watch them. There are about another 30 films recorded off the TV on the set top box hard drive, so it could well be a case of watching some of these. Obviously while the Olympics are still on we're going to be forcing ourselves on anything that isn't sport, but we also have a busy week with a couple of days probably being television free, so next week's column might be a little on the light side, which I'm sure won't disappoint anyone...

 

Modern Culture - As Black As Pitch

This week, it isn't all about film and TV. There's also mild spoilers awaiting, none more so than subtly in the first review...

Bad Omen

There was a time when teenage me loved a good horror film. I was a huge fan of the genre; loving films like The Exorcist, The Omen, The Sentinel, Halloween, Carrie and a whole bunch of other 1970s films, whether they were about demonic possession, children of the devil or just good old schlock horror. I couldn't get enough of them. Then we had the 80s and 90s and horror movies took on a different feel and videos meant there were always something new and cheap to watch, even the bigger budget films felt a little... shite. By the 21st century my love of horror films had all but disappeared and while I've watched a few over the last 20 years, I can't remember one that was memorable enough for me to want to watch it again, or even something to inspire me to search for something else...

So, we've had The First Omen for over a month and I haven't really felt inclined to watch it. I just didn't feel it was going to be any good and while it was a prequel to the original Omen, with Gregory Peck and Lee Remick (one of the first X rated films I ever saw at the cinema), I simply wasn't that interested. It appears I had good reason to as well. I sat through two hours of it and it was so fucking boring. It captured early 1970s Rome very well, apart from the scene when in 1971 some people attended a disco that was playing Daddy Cool by Boney M, which came out in 1977. This pretty much made me realise that whoever was making this film wasn't historically minded; nor did they really know how to make a horror film. Nell Tiger Free played Margaret, a young American trainee nun in Rome to do the last of her whatever novice nuns do before being ordained and almost from the word go I realised what was going on, who was who and how they all fitted together in the story. Ralph Ineson - he of the deep northern accent - played an Irish priest on the trail of demonic shenanigans and Bill Nighy played a cardinal, so obviously as dodgy as fuck it almost was written on his robes. This was overlong, tedious, not scary and all style over substance. It tipped its hat to the original film, especially in some of the deaths, but in general it just did very little for two hours and even the red herrings were largely signposted as red herrings. I'm sure some people I know will argue with me about how good this film was, but to quote an old friend of mine, "They're wrong."

Sunny With A Chance of Weirdness

Because we're still playing catch-up with Apple TV's new strange show Sunny, we're in a situation where we'll watch another two episodes this week before settling down to a weekly dosage until it concludes at episode 10. For those of you not familiar, it is the story of a possibly widowed woman - Suzie - who has taken possession of a robot in futuristic Japan - there's so much more to it than this, but if I tried to explain I'd probably give myself a headache.

Episode three starts with a strange Yakuza-like women obtaining a fake little finger so she can attend the funeral of Masa - Rashida Jones's  possibly dead husband. This won't be the last time we see this woman and what her links are to Suzie, Masa or Sunny the robot are unclear, but she's obviously as dodgy AF and Suzie is perhaps beginning to realise that she's getting herself into something she has no understanding of and the people she's getting help from are maybe as out of their depth as she is. This episode was all about robot wars - not the concept, but a kind of version of the TV show. It was also about Masa's mother deciding to have a funeral for her missing son because Suzie is mourning over the discovery of his shoes, which aren't his shoes at all. This is one very strange TV show that was further enhanced by the use of the word 'Twat' by a Japanese woman with a slight New Zealand accent. I have no idea what's happening apart from the fact that had Sunny got involved in the robot war fight that Suzie dragged her out of it might have got very messy.

Episode four got incredibly dark. Almost keeping up with a theme this week for bleak and gloomy, Sunny ventured into the world of the Yakuza and left Mixxy and Suzie wondering what the fuck they were now getting involved with. This is an episode full of secrets and revelations and possibly the beginnings of WTF is actually going on. The bad guys are searching for something and they know it's in one of two places - Suzie's home or Suzie's robot. There's also a suggestion now that Masa might not even have been on the plane and whatever happened to him and Zen is sure to become a topic for a future part. One thing is for sure, Suzie has wandered into a world she had no idea existed and even less idea that her 'missing' husband was involved with it. The comedy has been replaced by a dark and dangerous drama. 

Fireballs

In many ways, this is a tough review to write. Only the Brave, the 2017 biopic about a group of Arizona firefighters is a fantastic film; truly exceptional, but it's tough to review it in the way I usually review movies. It's because I don't want to give anything away and by saying that I probably create an air of expectation and presumption.

Josh Brolin leads a band of amateur firefighters in the town of Prentiss, Arizona. They're very good at what they do but in a typical US way are not appreciated, even derided, by 'professionals', because they don't have accreditation. When they achieve this, by doing something that Brolin's Eric thinks has seriously harmed their chances they get to prove just how good they are. Joining his team is a recovering addict, played by Miles Teller - who played Reed Richards in the abysmal Fantastic Four reboot about ten years ago - and other stars include Jennifer Connelly, Jeff Bridges, Andi McDowell and James Badge Dale. It's a tale of camaraderie and devotion, about a group of people who have to trust each other; have to look out for each other and have each others' backs. It's been airing on Film4 recently and if you get the chance you should watch it; it's, like I said, a truly fantastic film and you deserve to watch it, especially if you like true stories that will make you feel...  

The Old News 

It's Sunday. By the time any of you read this almost a week will have passed and what is BIG news tonight will be old news by next Saturday. The fact that Joe Biden has dropped out of the Presidential race was quite remarkable, although a little expected.

The President barely knows who he is and is 81 years old, which means if he had done the unthinkable and beat the Crap Orange Shitler he would have been 85 by the time he was due to stop being POTUS. Joe's problem is simple, he doesn't look with it, in fact he looks like Cary Guffey from Close Encounters of the Third Kind - you know, the kid who was abducted by the aliens and always looked bewildered - and if you ever watched the documentary about the making of the movie you'd completely understand why that is and probably why Joe looks the same whenever he's on TV. 

The thing is while Kamala Harris is probably really awful and you'll hear all kinds of negative things about her, she does offer one thing that maybe many people didn't see coming. She's a brown woman and this puts the Donald in a difficult situation - or it should do. He got away with his attacks on Hillary, but she was a privileged wealthy white woman and the wife of a former President. He also got away with his 'racist' attacks on Barack Obama. The problem he has this time is if he attacks Harris because of her gender and her race he's going to alienate a lot of potential voters; he's also going to show his true colours - a racist, misogynist, sexist pig or that he's not as popular as he was in 2016. He's also going to have to deal with the fact he's only three years younger than Biden and there are going to be calls for a new generation of Presidential candidate; someone who isn't old and psychotic. This might not lose the election for Trump, but he might have to start doing something he's not used to doing - arguing politics rather than making personal attacks on his opponent or yelling about how great he is. If he gives Harris the moral high ground - and remember she used to be the Californian DA so she knows how to deal with rapist felons - Trump might struggle to regain it and you can bet a rigged assassination attempt that he doesn't have the brains to do anything but shit and stamp in it. 

Crispy Fried Knight

Something unusual happened in House of the Dragon. While not a lot happened, a lot actually happened. It seemed like another meandering episode, but in reality it was the most decisive and important episode of the entire season. So many of the chess pieces got moved around and into position that it was almost difficult to follow.

In fact so much was going on in this week's instalment one wonders what the makers were thinking in the previous five episodes. This was pivotal in so many ways - Daemon might be going mad and having flashbacks, but his new Scottish muse has been busy in the Riverlands clearing the path he needs to gain their loyalty. Rhaenyra is on the verge of a lesbian affair with her confidante, which almost felt like it was always on the cards, while her plans to find distant ancestry of the Targaryens to ride the spare dragons has an unfortunate beginning; that is until something unexpected and unusual happens with one of Corlys's bastards. Alicent's life continues to fall apart as her mistake just keeps giving and giving and her sons - one who has usurped the throne and the other who thinks he should be king but is now too fucked up to do it - are clearly at odds with each other and probably to their own detriment. Rhaenyra's new love interest has a brilliant idea to cause trouble in King's Landing and there's a rogue dragon and a big bugger to boot that is following Lady Rhaena around. It's building up to be an interesting climax over the next two weeks.

As Grim As Fuck

This week's first Clooney movie was the 2020 Netflix sci-fi film The Midnight Sky, possibly the least likely George Clooney film you will ever see. This is about as bleak a motion picture as you will ever see and that isn't the reason it has such a poor rating on IMDB. That said, its 5.7 feels a little unjust; it's not a bad film, it's just not very good.

Clooney plays Augustine, an astrophysicist who is on a polar station waiting for the end of the world - an unspecified ending that is likely to have a 100% death rate. His story is told in a series of flashbacks - some as long as 30 years, others just three weeks. He has some form of disease that is killing him and he needs a form of dialysis to keep him alive, without it he has days to live. Everyone else on the station has gone, he is alone, waiting for the end of the world. He discovers that a space mission is heading back to earth and he really needs to stop them because a return would mean the crew's certain death, but his polar station doesn't have the power to contact a spaceship deep out in space, so he needs to go to a more powerful observatory, much further north in the arctic. Add to this a young girl who seems to have been stranded with him, who he starts to become responsible for.

This is a relentlessly grim movie. There is almost not a single glimmer of hope or good luck; it is simply one bit of bad news after another; like the writers and director are saying, "When the end of the world arrives there's not going to be an iota of a happy ending." This film offers no hope, nothing to hold onto, except the two remaining astronauts, who have to leave earth and head back to a moon orbiting Jupiter, which might mean the start of humanity again, but probably a short lived line of inbred freaks - given how fucking miserable this film was. It was also a bit dull and boring; it had action in it but all that action did was point out something new that could, would or did go wrong. It really was one of the darkest, bleakest, devoid of hope movies I have ever seen and even the one shred of relationship that kept the film going turned out to be a slight twist in the tale and a longwinded hallucination. I do not recommend this; I'd advise anyone thinking of watching it to simply run a hot bath, slash your wrists and die...

Hot in the City

One of the highest rated movies on IMDB. Regarded by many as a classic of cinema in general, not just the 1990s and featuring two of the most iconic names in American cinema; Michael Mann's Heat is a film that has alluded me for 30 years. I just never got around to watching it and now I finally have I'm a little perplexed about why it is regarded so highly...

It is arguably an hour, at least, too long. It has a number of dead ends and a couple of subplots that lose all of their impact. Al Pacino is absolutely Al Pacino in this film; playing a police Lieutenant who is so like Al Pacino it's almost a parody. Robert De Niro is surprisingly svelte but is largely De Niro. A bad guy who you don't fuck with who is loyal to his friends and an absolute motherfucker to those who cross him. This is a clever idea, it's a good story, it starts extremely well - a heist goes slightly tits up when the new guy decides to kill the security men in a wages truck and as a result one of the regulars calls him 'Slick' which eventually leads to someone who knows someone else knowing who the bad guys might be. It's proper police procedural with a dash of that Miami Vice swagger of the 1990s. The problem is it starts to get too clever, even having a meeting between Pacino and De Niro so they can almost compare the sizes of their egos. Like any good film, the near three hour running time did relatively whizz by, but it was still too long and I'm not sure the story warranted it. There were subplots that ended up being a little unnecessary and inconsequential. It was a bit style over substance and, dare I say it, a little far fetched in places. It was absolutely jam-packed with famous people, some who would go on to bigger things and others who were maybe on the slide a little. It might have an 8.3 rating, but it could be that its reputation is what has made it such a classic.

It's My Column and I'll Whinge...

I have not been allowed to comment on the Guardian webpages for over a year; like renowned writer Naomi Wolf, I was banned from having an opinion because I challenged the paper's stance on Israel. I wasn't abusive, I simply asked a question and found myself banned for life - gleefully told by a power mad moderator in an email when I asked why I had been stopped from commenting.

A couple of friends of mine took hold of the gauntlet and began commenting, as they say, BTL (Below The Line) and they haven't yet been banned, but regularly have their comments 'moderated' because they allegedly break the newspaper's Community Standards. However, if you fancy ploughing through the pages of community standards you will be hard pressed to determine whether they are objective or subjective. It appears that The Guardian's 'moderators' are allowed to interpret what people comment; effectively giving a small handful of people almost Nazi-like rights to control the discussions.

One of my friends avoids politics completely, but spends a lot of time on the articles about Culture, which allow comments, and she has discovered the same approach. In this instance, the paper's 'moderators' will allow criticism of reviews, but not criticism of the paper's reviews position. It does appear that many of the reviews that appear are contrary to what we shall loosely call 'general consensus' - for example; a recent film release I Saw the TV Glow has some truly abysmal ratings on line - IMDB gives it a 5.9, TMDB gives it a 59% - which is the same as a 5.9. Rotten Tomatoes has it higher, but a quick search through the internet for reviews of it sees it sit between 50 and 70%; it's an average film, apparently with a 'specific' audience in mind. The Guardian gave it 5 stars and suggested it was 'one of the best genre films of its time.' My friend pointed out this in a comment that fit all the criteria of the paper's community standards and an hour later found her comment had been removed, moderated, censored and all because she challenged the suggestion that the film was only really liked by The Guardian.

Now, my mate Chris wonders why I have such an obsession with the centre right leaning piece of shit Guardian newspaper and this is just one of many reasons. I supported this newspaper from 1990 until two years ago when I cancelled my subscription because it no longer felt parallel to my own beliefs. I still use the on-line version, especially for sport, culture and big news stories, but oddly enough I do this because I haven't trusted the BBC for much longer. I am essentially politically and culturally bereft; there isn't a media outlet that I feel is close to what I want and there is no longer a political party that appeals to my very left wing attitudes. The only reason I still look at it is a mixture of habit and the fact there isn't an alternative and I do like to be as up-to-date with the world as I can be. However, if ANY of my friends and acquaintances asked me I would almost be inclined to recommend the Daily Mail or Express over the Guardian, because, quite simply, you know what you're getting with those Nazi rags, the Guardian is exceptionally good at gaslighting; at painting this picture of objective impartial journalism, but in reality it's a neo-Liberal clickbait heap of populist shite. 

Black as Oil

Jesus, we're having a fun-filled week so far... It's just Wednesday night and so far our 'entertainment' has been black and fraught with grimness. It's been a week to match the weather, relentlessly dark and gloomy. This was further extended with the viewing of yet another film we'd avoided watching for a long time...

Syriana is another George Clooney film jam-packed full of optimism and happiness... It's a great movie, but it's another relentlessly grim offering, this time about what a fucking shady, sinister and nasty business oil is and how the US government, specifically the CIA, keeps America's interests ahead of everyone else.

This is a story told in almost staccato fashion. I don't think any scene lasted more than a couple of minutes, as it jumped back and forth between a number of characters as they wheeled and dealed or plotted and schemed all in the cause of 'freedom' and money. It follows a number of threads - the CIA agent (Clooney), the businessman (Matt Dillon), the Arab prince (Alexander Siddig), the Senate investigation (Jeffrey Wright and a bunch of others) and the fundamentalist Muslims intent on destroying something that is never made clear but is all tied in with the merger of two of the USA's largest oil firms. This is a movie that only has happy endings for the rich as they get away with stitching each other up while others pay the price. It's a nasty film with no real heroes, but those who come out of it with credit don't last long enough to make any change. it's about corruption spreading down from the highest levels and it might be fiction but you know it's based on something factual. It's an intense and important movie and I can't believe it took me almost 20 years to watch. 

Time Wankers & The Future

This week of doom and gloom might have had a bright spot - the new Time Bandits TV show from Apple TV - a brand synonymous with good quality. Except, it's shite. I mean proper shite. Taiwa Takiti's oeuvre seems to be one good project in every ten and this was not the one. I'm sure it might have improved, but we literally said 'no more' after about 20 minutes. Given the appalling score it has amassed on IMDB less than 48 hours after its release, one gets the impression that torture would have been preferable. Watch this at your peril and don't be disappointed when you think punching yourself in the face is more enjoyable...

That said, talking with another mate this week, we came to the conclusion that TV and film might well be struggling. The internet is fast becoming something aimed at Millennials and younger; there's a general disregard for Boomers, Gen Z-ers and anyone born before modern technology was king; the feeling seems to be these people either evolve or they're going to die soon anyhow. Maybe entertainment is going the same way? Apparently under 25s spend more time looking at TikTok and Reels on Facebook than they do watching actual, physical television; this isn't going to change because streaming services think that revamping old ideas for the 21st century might bring a new generation back to television or the cinema - for it to do that it needs to have a level of quality (and be original). 

Think of it this way - when video technology arrived it revolutionised certain areas of the entertainment industry; by the 1990s CD and DVD technology looked like it would be dominant, making cassettes and video obsolete. By the 2020s streaming had made all these former cutting edge tech look like wireless from the 1930s. I can't see what comes next (because I'm old and out of touch), but if there's a logical evolution after being able to stream stuff to any device in your home or pocket then we'll go down that route. If these things don't make enough money for the creators then we'll eventually see a decline in content made, or at least content that people over the age of 40 want to watch or listen to. Many modern musical artists are dumbfounded by the idea of 'albums' and I'm sure that there are many 15 year olds out there who think the idea of going to the cinema a bit of an anathema. Could we be seeing the beginning of the end for the traditional entertainment industry?

Dead Poo?

The Irish Times ran a review of Deadpool & Wolverine on Tuesday. I believe there was more, but the takeaway line from it was, "Awful. Truly awful." It would seem that, in general, the film is garnering three star reviews; on-line geeky places seem to be giving it four-ish, while esoteric and erudite places, such as the Irish Times, are much less forgiving...

It appears that if you didn't watch Loki, you might struggle to actually understand much of the plot and others suggest it spends far too much time in the Mad Max landscape and not enough time being funny or action-packed. Another review I read suggested it would have worked if the Wolverine they used had been one that we were familiar with, rather than a new iteration and one, quite damning opinion, suggests that if it had spent some time on a story rather than an endless parade of B list characters and variants it might have been almost passable as a feature film. One thing is for certain, it's going to make a lot of money; less certain is whether or not it's going to save the superhero film and specifically the MCU franchise. I know I'm a cynic, but I never felt it would; I just believed it would make enough money to keep Disney from pulling the plug in 2024.

The forthcoming Fantastic Four film is to be set it in the 1960s in an alternate reality as the FF and their sworn enemy Doctor Doom battle Galactus, a female Silver Surfer and Annihilus (from the Negative Zone, which is aligned to the Quantum Realm) for the fate of the planet. Given that the film is expected to end with the FF in the MCU's universe, I'd say they fail in their battle. The film is due to drop exactly a year to the day I'm writing this - July 25, 2025 - which is likely to be an incredibly fast turnaround given four of the last five MCU films have all had extensive re-shoots and the FF film has literally just started shooting in London, this week. One thing is for sure, it needs to be a success. 

How To It Get Back

Maybe it was the plan. Maybe having four weeks of continuous inanity was the idea, to lull us into a false sense of something and then BAM! After nine weeks of mediocrity, Evil finally reminded us what a fucking brilliant show it was and can still be with an episode that was like a category five hurricane!

How to Survive a Storm sounded like it was going to all be about New York facing a category five hurricane - a once in a lifetime occurrence - but it was also about metaphoric storms and a massive event. This was by far the best episode of Evil of the entire four seasons and there have been some bloody excellent ones to choose from. This was an absolute plot episode; it had some of its now customary comedy, but in the end it was tragic; utterly tragic, as one of the regular cast bites the big one and leaves the rest of the show's characters reeling from the shock. It was one of those episodes that suggested from the start that it might be the end of one of the characters and then it went around throwing curve balls in to make you wonder just who it might be - would it be Kurt? Andrea? Sheryl? One of the kids? Maybe even Leland? 

In the end it was a shock but it really makes the last six parts take on a completely different feel. There's no escaping the fact we're on the final lap now; that the end is nigh and while we pretty much all know that good will triumph over evil, one wonders at what cost. This was Evil at its very best; a TV series that isn't frightened to do scary, unexpected things. This is the reason fans of this show watch it; if you haven't seen it then try and track it down, because it's episodes like this that make it special.

Insanity

It's been 16 years since we last watched Tropic Thunder. It was an absolute classic movie first time around and watching it again reminded me of one thing I'd forgotten all about - it's one of the funniest LOL films of all times. It is simply insane and one wonders if it could ever be made in 2024.

This has an all-star cast that is off the map. Literally everyone who was anybody in 2008 was in this film at some point; I'm surprised Pacino and De Niro weren't in it, because... well... because Tom Cruise! He's not even the star of this film but he steals it like a cat burglar. He plays fat, balding millionaire Les Grossman, the producer of Tropic Thunder, a film about Vietnam war heroes and he is just as insane as everything else in this utterly crazy movie. It stars Ben Stiller - as an action hero; Jack Black as a drug-addicted comedy actor and Robert Downey Jr as a FIVE time Academy Award winning character actor who has undergone surgery to be able to play a black army sergeant. It also has so many cameos and supporting actors than you can shake a stock at - Nick Nolte, Danny McBride, Jay Baruchel, Steve Coogan, Matthew McConaughey and many more. If you weren't aware, it's the story of a film being made that goes a little off-piste and ends up being a movie about idiots managing to stay alive in the face of lunacy. It's just funny and incredibly not PC - from a white actor playing a black man to a baby being thrown into a swamp with malice. It's just what we needed after a week of doom and gloom and things we didn't see coming. It was like someone let the pressure off and if you've never been keen on this classic film I can't understand why, it's brilliant.  

What The Fink?

Sometimes watching films you've heard much about but never seen doesn't pay off. This week that has largely been a feeling of being underwhelmed. If the three highly rated movies we watched for the first time this week only Syriana managed to entertain (and that was a pretty grim thing). To round the week off, we finally got a round to watching the Cohen Brothers' Barton Fink and by the end of the it we wished we hadn't bothered...

The frequently excellent John Turturro plays the eponymous Fink, a New York playwright who, after a hit Broadway play, is offered the chance to go to Hollywood and work for a major motion picture producer. He is an ambitious, but fragile and complicated man; he views his art as torment and doesn't want to sell out for the Hollywood buck, but he accepts the job and finds himself in a seedy rundown hotel that is nothing like as fitting as his $1000 a week salary offers. It's a movie that desperately needs something to happen and when it does it's quite unexpected and shocking as the borderline black comedy takes an incredibly sinister turn of events as Fink wakes up one morning next to a brutally murdered dead woman (this is a 1991 film that has been on TV several times, so I'm not giving anything away to most people who suffered watching this). 

It is an unbelievably dull and tedious movie that wanders around for over an hour before something happens and then it goes from being a dull and tedious movie to being a dark psychological examination of a young man's madness. It is not an enjoyable experience; it is yet another dark, almost pitch black motion picture and what 'humour' there was felt tonally wrong. I have heard so many positive things about this and I suppose it's very much a brilliant piece of filmmaking that needed a fantastic story to go with it and one about a tortured writer struggling to write a superficial wrestling flick seemed almost trite. It's not a film I'll watch again.

Next Time...

What is going to happen in the next Evil? It's one of those points in the life of any TV series where following on from something so extraordinary is a massive ask. Sunny continues, as does House of the Dragon - Sunny was a great idea done weirdly, but now seems like it might be something almost normal; while Dragon has had some moments but in general it's been dull. We also now have Grimm to watch; over ten years since it first appeared. I managed to get hold of all six seasons and I just hope it lives up to the recommendations I've seen.

In the film world, the FDoD is constantly being replenished; this last couple of weeks has seen me add heist and classic films to it, including Jaws which we reckon we haven't seen since the 1990s. I just fancied watching it again, as well as Unbreakable and a few others. Plus, there's a chance the new A Quiet Place film might be out. Hopefully, next week's entertainment will be that, entertaining rather than the largely dark and moody week we've had. We need a week full of distraction so we can avoid the Olympics. 

 

Pop Culture: The Insanity Clause

The spoilers are few and far between, but there are some, so be careful how you tread...

Kingdom Come

Director Wes Ball was onto a hiding to nothing. Matt Reeves' Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy was damned fine movie entertainment and this new potential trilogy needed to be something special. Well, fear not POTA fans, the director best known for music videos doesn't disappoint; Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a bloody good film.

This latest instalment begins with three young apes out hunting for eagle eggs; it is many generations since the death of Caesar and apes are now the dominant species. These three belong to the Eagle Clan, a tribe of peaceful, mountain living apes who train and use eagles to hunt for fish, which they then smoke to preserve them. The trio, led by Noah, the son of the eagle master are being followed by an Echo - what these apes call humans - and through a series of unfortunate events, Noah must go out and hunt for an eagle's egg again before the next day's big ceremony. What he does stumble upon is another clan of apes, ruthless and murderous ones led by a gorilla, who have wiped out a party of outliers from his village in pursuit of the human that has been following Noah.

The rogue apes destroy Noah's village and take all the survivors hostage leaving him injured and alone. He decides to track his villagers and swears on his father's lifeless body that he will save all the apes. Along the way he meets Raka, an orangutan who is believer in the ways of the one true Caesar and they eventually allow the human who has been following Noah to join them. It turns out that she is not like the herds of wild humans, she is clever and is able to speak and is more like a human before the plague wiped most of them out. They eventually end up captives of Proximus Caesar and his army of apes who are trying to break into what looks like a giant nuclear bunker and we have an exciting and tense finale. This is a movie that relies heavily on special effects, yet despite some poor examples of bad SFX in recent years, this knocks the ball out of the park. It is an interesting story that doesn't hang around and leaves us most definitely with a bit of a sequel territory ending, one which feels a little sinister considering it's humans and not apes we're talking about. It's a good movie and was far more fun than watching the Euro finals.

Dragon Ball Zzzzzzzzzz

And then it simply reverted to type... House of the Dragon used up its action quota last week and returned to an hour-long snooze-fest yet again with machinations, Machiavellian scheming and huge amounts of fuck all happening.

Last week we had dragons and death, this week we had the king still alive - barely - but, of course, we knew that already thanks to the fucking Guardian's obsession with spoiling things for its readers. We had more of Matt Smith not achieving what he wants because his dark arts don't appear to work very well in the area of Westeros he's trying to woo. Meanwhile Rhaenyr's son is off doing deals with people, deals that might not happen and Aemond has taken control of the Iron Throne, which was undoubtedly his plan from the offset. There's a dragon's head paraded through the streets of King's landing where the people are getting progressively unhappy about there not being any food and rotting rat catchers hanging from the balustrades. It's just dark and miserable and yes things happened this week, but seriously, having ten minutes of action every five hours does not make this a good series.

Alien Wankdorf

After an hour of Independence Day: Resurgence I was wondering why it had such a poor rating on IMDB. I mean, it wasn't a brilliant film, but it wasn't a 5.2 rating. Then gradually over the last 40 minutes or so I realised why...

They didn't have an ending. They had a reasonable sequel to the 1996 original, but once they got into 'we're just re-treading the original' territory, they completely lost the plot - literally and metaphorically. We're talking about a movie that literally does what long running TV shows do to reinvigorate audiences - it jumped a shark. Except this time it wasn't a shark it was a 'what can we borrow from the never before considered Alien vs Godzilla to make this a better film?' Just consider that - Alien vs Godzilla, what an absolute hoot of a concept. I'd pay 11p to see a film like that; 500 foot tall lizard versus acid blood spurting killing machine; or better still 50 feet wide face huggers injecting an alien egg into Godzilla - imagine what the hybrid of that would look like; fuck me, what a brilliantly stupendous idea and do you know something it would have been better than this. I'm not even going to bother with my usual "Here's a recap of the plot and story, maybe with a spoiler or two" because I'd rather inject acid into my testicles. Like I said, the first hour was a half decent film, the second half was like someone kidnapped the director and substituted him with a dyslexic octopus with seven arms and brain damage. So little made sense that I wanted to go and live in an active volcano.

A Work of Art

This week's first Clooney (and last) was a re-watch for The Monuments Men, based on a true story about the US Army recovering stolen works of art and trying to return them to their rightful owners. Obviously, had this been a UK operation the works of art would be in British museums while we argued that they were safer being protected by British museums rather than where they were before.

Billed as a comedy drama, this is a movie that's thin on the comedy side and what there is of it is light and gentle. For the most, this is a dour and sad film about a group of mainly elderly men charged with doing a job that barely anyone cared about and still needed justification after millions of treasures were liberated. Clooney, who co-wrote and directed it as well as being one of the lead actors, doesn't make bad films and sees himself as a renaissance man, mainly because he appears to cast himself in films that you'd imagine Cary Grant might be in if he'd been born 30 years later. He's joined by Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, John Goodman and Cate Blanchett in a film that doesn't really do a lot. That's not a critique, as such, it's just for something 110 minutes long there are very few set pieces and not a lot of the war. If you can have a gentle war movie then this is probably it.

C.I.Aye.Aye.Aye.Aye.

Here's the thing about the 2003 movie The Recruit, with Al Pacino, Colin Farrell and Bridget Moynahan - we had never seen it and yet before it even started I guessed the plot twist.

However, despite guessing the denouement from the description on IMDB, it didn't help me to understand what the film was actually about. Let me explain: Colin Farrell is recruited by Pacino to join the CIA; Farrell's father went missing in 1990 and Pacino suggests, while recruiting, that the father may have been an undercover operative rather than working for Shell. Farrell joins the CIA, goes through extensive training but finally screws up and is let go before he graduates. It is here that Pacino re-enters his life, offering him the job of NOC - Non-Official Cover; basically an untethered spy with no safety net. Pacino says there's a mole in Langley and he needs Farrell to find the mole because he went through training with her. It's very tense and full of twists and turns until the ending, which I said I saw coming before I even started the video. The thing that bothered me was why. Why did the film and the story exist? There was clearly a mole, but what was the mole doing? Why did the mole recruit someone to find out about another supposed mole and if the information the mole was searching for was just a ruse to uncover a mole what was the point of the cover story in the first place?

It's a good film, but it didn't really make sense. If the mole needed the files because it would have uncovered him what was he being a mole about? What was he selling and who was he selling to? It appeared to be a film about style over substance rather than a logical narrative. I discussed this with the wife at the end because I thought maybe I'd missed something, but she felt the same way. it seemed to be a red herring that only became an actual thing when the mole admitted he was a mole to the people who thought the recruit might have simply gone rogue because he had not been accepted into the CIA. It was a confusing mess; not a bad film, but it needed an actual reason for existing not just an excuse for something to happen until it didn't happen any more...

The Return of the Muslim Grrrls

We Are Lady Parts is back! Over two years after it rocked the comedy world and it's finally rocking it again. I think there's been a dearth of decent comedy for years on TV, but this series about a group of Muslim women with punk aspirations is top drawer!

Not a lot has changed but what has is positive. Amina is discovering an assertive side to herself that was missing from season one; she's also quite smitten with a folk club wanker much to Ahsan's chagrin - now he realises that Amina is the girl for him. Ahsan's sister Ayesha is still as hard as nails and has a new girlfriend who might just prove to be useful as well as sexy. Saira is struggling with being 30 and with the band's stalling in its quest to become the UK's premier all female Muslim punk band. While Bisma's loved up, trying to deal with a rebellious daughter and agonising over her image of being a bit mumsy. Meanwhile, Mumtaz continues to hide behind fabulous burqas and manage the band while exploring new avenues for her record company that has yet the produce a record, which Saira wants to start producing but the band need money to afford it and they're not exactly rolling in it despite building up something of a following - all of which eventually comes to an unexpected head. This new series is about selling out, staying strong and finding directions - with an episode that's anything but comedy halfway through. It gets very dark for a while and I very much doubt there'll be a season three, which is a shame, but it has unexpected guest stars along the way including Malala Yousafzai and Meera Syal and is fucking brilliant!

Mission Improbable

Based on the Mark Millar comic, Wanted really was a Mission: Impossible for 2008. Jam-packed full of improbable stunts, crazy set-ups and bonkers car chases, it really felt like a blockbuster movie despite lacking big stars. Yes, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman were probably A list, but James McAvoy - a fine Scottish actor - wasn't really action hero material - at least that's what it felt like for a while.

The set up is simple, McAvoy plays a meek and mild insurance manager struggling in a dead end life until he's recruited as an assassin by The Fraternity. He is told his father was the best of them but has been killed by a rogue agent determined to kill off all the Fraternity and especially McAvoy because he's potentially brilliant and possibly the only man who can stand up against the rebel called Cross. The first hour of this movie is pretty sadistic as McAvoy gets beaten to a pulp learning the ways of the Fraternity until he's ready to learn their secrets and it's these secrets that start him (and us) to doubt the voracity of this group. Crazier stunts and set-ups continue until we start to understand what is really happening, leading McAvoy to an inescapable conclusion - he's not a good guy, he's working for the bad guys.

Yes, this is based on a comic book that's about super-enhanced assassins, but there are some really far-fetched things that happen in this film; things that don't really make that much sense and are given little or no explanation. It is like the director is saying 'you know this is bollocks, so try not to think too hard about it.' It also suffers from poor dialogue and plotting, but don't let that spoil it for you. It's an absolute riot of stunts and violence, totally bonkers and for a 2008 movie it's got chutzpah by the gallon. This is the kind of film that some of MI films needed to be, in terms of giving Nathan Hunt stuff to do that made the previous films look simple. It's not a great movie and there's something facile and superficial about it, but it's an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours.

How to Build a Chatbot

While much goes on in the background, the main theme of Evil for the last few episodes seems to be keeping the gang away from the stuff that's going on in the background. Cheryl schemes, Leland plays high stakes poker and the story of the Antichrist becomes even stranger.

This week's episode starts with Father Frank getting text messages from his long dead friend the Monsignor that soon turn into voice messages. It appears that a Chatbot service is going rogue, so rogue that the provider has contacted the church to help them understand what the hell is going on. Soon Ben, Kristen and David are having conversations with people who are no longer around, except that's not quite true as Kristen does something altogether off-piste and ends up with a bright red thong, delivered to her door. I have to admit that the huge amounts of comedy that now pervade this series is beginning to make it difficult to take seriously; it has always had elements of comedy but now it seems to be a comedy series with added supernatural horror. The problem with this episode was the main story didn't make a lot of sense. I actually couldn't wait for the episode to end as I found it tedious and a little boring - the first time that has happened in three and a half seasons. Gone are the shock horror WTF moments this show used to have and they've been replaced with a Satanist pantomime that needs to get back to what made this an excellent series.

The Boys Are Back

It took a long time, but finally The Boys changed the direction it was going and went full on dark and psychotic. There were a number of unexpected deaths in this finale and the end of Billy Butcher turned into something altogether more sentient and cancerous...

This was a finale that finally got down to the pulse of the show; a series about out of control supers and a band of rebels trying to bring them down, except nothing went truly according to plan and we were left with everything on the brink of madness. It appears that Sage's plan really was being played out how she foresaw it; everything else was just smoke and mirrors and at the end Homelander was totally in charge of a country that was utterly divided, with half of it terrified. The Boys, with a couple of exceptions were all incarcerated and everything has gone to shit. This was the direction the show has been crying out for; the nastiness that has always been played for laughs finally gets a wiggle on and gets all serious on our arses. Season five needs to carry on in this vein otherwise this utterly stand out episode will have been wasted. It's just a shame we had to wait so long for this series to grow some proper, actual balls.

FAQ de FUQ

The 2009 'film' Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel was obviously made a few years before 2009 as lots of people were smoking in the pub and that ban was enforced in 2007. Another thing about this 'film' was it felt like a three-part TV comedy show stitched together to make a 'film' of about 80 minutes long.

Chris O'Dowd, Dean Lennox Kelly and Michael Wootton play nerdy mates who work in dead end jobs and meet up at the pub after a stressful day to talk shit. The focus being on O'Dowd who is obsessed with time travel (aren't we all?) and when he goes to the bar to buy three beers he meets Cassie, a time traveller from the future. This sets in motion an hour of crazy timey-wimey nonsense, which plays on all the tropes of time travel and paradoxes, but in a largely hysterical and not very funny way. It also definitely suffers from a sort of Am-Dram-ness that sort of makes it even more shit. Don't get me wrong, I've seen much worse than this, but they were all bad films, this wasn't really a movie - as I said - and it never felt like we were watching anything that was ever going to be more than a sum of its parts. I want to say that O'Dowd and Kelly were wasted in this, but they clearly hadn't been drinking or taking drugs so they had no excuse. Anna Farris, as the time traveller, felt and looked far too old, even if she was only just in her 30s and everyone else wasn't very good. It was a poor effort and one of the least enjoyable things about time travel I have seen, matched probably only by the most recent series of Doctor Who. Not recommended.

It's Always Sunny in Kyoto

And we definitely needed something to replace the other weird TV shows we'd grown accustomed to and were going to have to wait yonks before they returned. The only thing that seemed to fit the bill was the new Apple TV show called Sunny, so we watched the first two episodes of that...

Sunny stars Rashida Jones as a slightly misanthropic American who moves to Japan to get away from something but ends up meeting Masa, falling in love and having a child - Zen. However after about 13 years, Masa and Zen go on a trip and are lost in a plane crash, leaving Suzie on her own and not really coping with her grief. Then along comes some strange Japanese guy who presents her with Sunny, a specially programmed robot designed by her husband - who she thought worked in refrigeration - from IMACorps that is designed to be exactly what she needs. Sunny is slightly annoying but also a little on the creepy side, especially as 'she' can turn herself on whenever 'she' wants to. Gradually Suzie starts to discover that Masa had something of a secret life - nothing sordid, but most definitely a little on the fucking weird side and what starts as a slightly comedic look at grief in a foreign country starts to get a little disturbing and strange, especially as someone, somewhere, wants to know more about Suzie or thinks she might lead to them knowing something more about Masa. This is, on face value, something that looks a bit silly and uninteresting, but it soon kicks those ideas into touch and leaves you feeling disoriented and eager to discover the secrets it holds.

Next Time...

Evil needs to re-find its mojo, while the Dragon thing needs to stop prick teasing and get on with stuff. Sunny looks like it might fill a void and there are a couple of other new TV series that might get a look in over the coming week.

There's a whole bunch of films remaining on the replenished FDoD and the fucking Olympics are here to delight some people and be avoided by me, so expect even more films to be watched, especially as I've recorded about ten extras from Film 4 in the last two weeks.