My Cultural Life - Even Strangerer Things

Game of Things

It's finally arrived; the TV event of 2025 - the first part of the final season of Stranger Things... Let me explain a few [heh] things before we get into this... I thought season one was excellent TV and season two was possibly even better. However season three was all over the place and season four was a massive let down. I think we all expected something more than we actually got. I'm not a huge fan of this show; it's good, but not that good. It's a bit derivative; it borrows heavily from other things and the characters are all over the place at times.

Right. Because of this month's pub quiz, we only watched the first three episodes of the four-part season five preamble. We're saving the 90 minute pseudo-finale for Saturday night, but our Thursday night was Stranger Things night and boy was I underwhelmed. If season four was an uneven mess with a real copout ending, this decided to continue the story about 18 months after the last one ended and didn't bother to explain how or why everything that is happening happened. Some of the crew are now running a radio station inside an army quarantined town that allows the residents of Hawkins to carry on as normal, while not allowing them to leave. There are so many possibly holes in the premise that I didn't even want to think about the plot, which actually seems to be non-existent. I mean, the army now has a base inside the Upside Down and this base has helicopters, RVs and all kinds of shit; in fact if it wasn't for the demigorgons you'd think the USA now controlled this demon realm.

There's this general feeling that the anti-Vecna gang can do whatever they want and the army are only interested in Eleven, who seems to be able to evade detection despite Hawkins being cordoned off from the rest of Indiana. Have they bothered to visit Hopper? Popped into the Byers household or visited the Wheeler's? The army is desperate to get Eleven back in their control but they've obviously not read the scripts of the first four seasons and looked in all the obvious places. Look, I want to like this, but it's just not that brilliant. Vecna also looks a bit like DC's Swamp Thing. It's entertaining and if you can get past the fact that the actor playing Nancy Wheeler is now 30 and her boyfriend is 33 playing a 19 year old or that the D&D gang are all in their early 20s playing 15 year old kids or that they had to recast some characters because they couldn't just set the thing five years later, then maybe you can suspend disbelief enough to think this is fantastic. I can't.

Oh, Yeah. What's Up?

It's always puzzled me how On The Spot Fixed Penalty Notices work. I mean, some bod with a lanyard that says they're an employee or representative of a local council comes up and informs you that because you tipped the dregs of your coffee down a drain you are contravening some obscure act and they are issuing you with a fine. How does that work? Are people that stupid they just give these wankers their names and addresses?

If someone approached me for failing to pick up dog shit (I always do), or dropping a cigarette butt (I don't smoke) and informed me that I am being fined, the first thing I'd say is, "How you going to do that then?" Unless you're wearing a big name badge with your address and telephone number, you don't actually have to give them any of your details. What are they going to do? Demand you give it to them? Complain to you that you're not being reasonable? Threaten to call the police? Given what our police currently spend their time doing, you're probably not old enough or wearing the right T-shirt...

You just walk away. Tell them they have no right to harass you; no law on their side to enforce any obscure by-laws; and there's no obligation on your part to give them any information about yourself. If they follow you, tell them that if they don't leave you alone you will punch them on the nose - a threat of protecting yourself from harassment from some nutter isn't a crime. Threaten them with your dog (or someone else's). Start videoing them and asking them awkward and difficult questions; or better still start making allegations about them while telling them you are live streaming the encounter across social media. "Why did I see you trying to persuade that 11-year-old girl into the back of your van?" That should get rid of them very quickly.

You might think I'm being an arsehole, but remember this, almost every 'enforcement officer' are not employed by your local council but by a private company who can receive between 50 and 100% of the fines they issue. Councils use these companies as a deterrent rather than a revenue stream. Yes, if you're an actual offender who flaunts the law, abuses your rights and causes grief to other members of the public, then you're in the wrong and should be confronted; but you're more likely to be a problem to them if you fall into that category. About 75% of council by-laws are more obscure than an honest person in the Tory party and these companies don't target angry, big or threatening people, they target the weak, the meek and the mild. It's time people stood up to idiotic bureaucracy and the arseholes employed to enforce it.

American Dystopia

Jesus Christ, that was not a clever way to spend a Sunday night. I sat down to what I thought was a political thriller, but it turned out to be a dystopian science fiction film that could be fact inside the next three years. Anniversary is one of the most frightening movies I have seen in many years, it is also extremely good. However, it really isn't for the faint hearted, nor for people fearful that Donald Trump is the start of some fascist takeover of the USA. This film will scare the shit out of you and then squeeze your bowels to get the last drop of poo out of your system and then go on a mission to find some more...

It begins with the 25th wedding anniversary of a restauranteur and his college professor wife. It is a family affair, a big party, where their three daughters and son come along to celebrate the big day. The son, played chillingly by Dylan O'Brien (who seems incapable of making a bad film), has his new girlfriend in tow, someone Mom - Diane Lane - seems to know. A largely incident free party passes by until Mom realises her son's girlfriend - Phoebe Dynevor - is actually a free radical supporter of fascism who she taught eight years earlier at her university and is on the verge of having her treatise on anti-democracy and dictatorship published by a corporation that wants to take over the USA, by force if necessary.

The story plays out over a five year period, coming back every year for further developments and to see how far the USA has spiralled into an age of extreme fascism, where enemies of the state are summarily executed or put in prison for a minimum of 40 years - with no parole. This is a grim and dark feature that feels all the more horrendous because you can imagine it actually happening, over the next few years, initiated by Trump and a Republican Party that has been taking politics lessons from the Nazis. This film should be shown in every school in the USA and everywhere else. 9/10

Spies Like Us

We finally got around to watching The Night Manager. I think we avoided it because it was written by John Le Carre and his spy thrillers are usually less thrilling than wordy. This, however, is an altogether different beast. Starring Tom Hiddleston, Olivia Coleman and Hugh Laurie, it originally came out nine years ago but with a long awaited second series about to drop, what better time than to catch up with the ex-army man with a conscience.

Hiddleston plays the titular Night Manager of a Cairo hotel, he's escaping his military past, preferring a lonely nocturnal existence. When the girlfriend of a rich local thug is killed he vows to get revenge and when MI5 come calling he has no hesitation but to help them by going covert to infiltrate the life of psycho arms dealer Dickie Roper - Laurie. What follows is a twisting and turning tale of how he first gets his foot in the door and eventually becomes a trusted friend of Roper, as he discovers secrets that lead all the way back to Cairo...

Kids on Drugs

I have to admit, I'm beginning to struggle with this. It's okay, but there are so many inconsistencies in the story; so many contrivances to drive the story alone and so many liberties taken with a lot of things just to tell a story that isn't going to conclude with the end of this series (and isn't likely to have a conclusion, given it's telling a tale in reverse). It isn't just that though, I sat through tonight's fifth episode of It: Welcome to Derry and despite the late arrival of Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise, it just feels like loads of style over any substance. Couple this with various The Shining references now, it's like Andy Muschietti is having a massive Stephen King erection and is using this TV show to have a pointless wank... 

I Saw You Standing Alone

Ethan Hawke is superb as Lorenz Hart, one half of the famed musical theatre combo Rodgers & Hart. Blue Moon is an adaptation of the letters written between Hart and Elizabeth Weiland, over a three year period during the Second World War. Hart was pretty much in the closet and was described by a friend as 'a homosexual man who was infatuated with women.' This film, which could easily have been a play, is based around the opening night of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! Hart walks out of the show after the opening number and retires to the bar where the rest of the musical's main people would be arriving for the after show party. Hart, who was also an alcoholic with mental health issues sets the scene by chatting with Eddie the bar man, a young wannabe musician playing the piano and writer E.B. White. It is clear he is an erudite wit, but also a man struggling with more than just his sexuality in a time of war. He is trying to stay on the wagon, but the impending success of his former partner's new show and the fact that Elizabeth sees him as 'just a friend' weighs heavy on him. This is a Richard Linklater movie, it is full of excellent dialogue, well crafted scenery and Hawke plays the diminutive Hart like he was born to play him. Yet, despite all the superlatives, it starts to grate after a while and if it had been on any longer it might have outstayed its welcome. 6/10

Strange Milk

After almost killing Zosia last week, Carol has been ostracised by the hivemind of humanity. They literally exit Albuquerque en masse, leaving her alone with the coyotes. This both annoys, yet pleases the angriest woman on the planet because it leaves her more time to try and come up with a plan to restore earth to the horrible state it was before the alien viral invasion. Because no one lives anywhere near her, everything she needs is now delivered by drone, as the hivemind has decided that it is too dangerous to remain anywhere near her; this also proves to be interesting clues for Carol. Then she discovers the milk cartons that are not full of milk. They are a concoction of water and some crystalline chemical that she believes might be keeping the 'infected' attached to the hivemind, so she starts making videos to be sent to the other 12 humans to see if they are interested or want to help. I have a theory about where Pluribus is going and given it's by Vince 'Breaking Bad' Gilligan, where I think it's going is somewhere very dark and bordering on unbelievably bad. This was the first hint of a viable subplot and I expect next week's episode will move it forward much further.

Comedy Psychopath

I think the wife is realising just how shit Down Cemetery Road actually is, but we're heavily invested in it and there's only three episodes to go... This week the psycho hitman realises Emma Thompson is trailing him, but she manages to evade him on a night train to Scotland. Ruth Wilson and her squaddie mate are sleeping rough, in Scotland, but he bails on her, leaving her stuck in the middle of nowhere. Then it gets a bit problematic, even more than it has been so far. Earlier on in the series, many of the scenes shot that were supposed to be in Oxford were actually filmed not far from Teddington on the outskirts of London and now the scenes in Scotland were filmed in Cornwall. I mean, if you're going to have a quaint Scottish fishing village in the middle of nowhere try not to have Cornish street names or houses that look about as Scottish as a Jersey cow. There's three more fucking episodes of this shite to go? How is that going to work? Is there going to be one episode that's an interlude where it's all acted out in interpretive dance? Utter  shitting bollocks.

Fab Four

Peter Jackson has taken the 1995 series The Beatles Anthology and remastered it, added new footage and digitised the sound. It looks like it could have been made last week, apart from the fact that the two remaining living Beatles - Paul and Ringo - are now 83 and 85 respectively, but in their 50s when it was originally released. We watched part one and it was fab; I expect the two other parts we have to watch, before the rest is released will be equally excellent. I'm a big fan of the band and I don't understand anyone who can't see how important they were (but I can't understand why some people think Nigel Farage is a decent bloke; it must be because many people are just cunts). 

What's Up Next

The first finale of Stranger Things will dominate Saturday night. Then it will be whatever else that's on next week mixed with whatever films float our boats...

I don't know if it's me but it feels like fewer and fewer things are really impressing me at the moment. I mean, when something is good it's been brilliant, but everything else just seems a bit meh, at best. Maybe I watch too much TV?

We were told that season five of For All Mankind would land this month, but it's been delayed until, by the looks of things, May 2026; that means I can't really think of much to look forward to between now and the end of the year. Maybe there will be something, but I'm not pinning my hopes or holding my breath.

Expect the usual mix next week.

My Cultural Life - Waving & Drowning

What's Up?

You'd think, after 18 months of doing sweet FA (apart from upset people), the Labour government would just rip up its senseless programme notes and start being a Labour government again. The problem is there are very few actual Labour Party MPs left; they're all either Starmer or Reeves clones or closet Tories who thought joining Labour would give them a chance to be MPs again now that the Tory Party is in its last days before complete extinction.

If Labour was to do Labour things it might not stop the rot, but what have they got to lose? They are currently handing control of the country to a racist who works for billionaires; a man who can do literally anything he likes and then deny it and receives no scrutiny at all. One thing I'm absolutely positive about is that a year into Reform's first government there will be more people than ever crying 'I didn't vote for this.' Reform might only get one crack at power, but you can bet your life that it will change so much in those five years that whoever becomes the party in power in 2034 will have a thankless task with no hope of reversing policies designed to fuck us over.

This is why Labour needs to do some radical things. They have to stop pandering to the far right media because the far right media doesn't give a shit about how far right they seem to be, they're never going to support Labour. Why does no one in the Labour Party realise this? Are we really governed by a bunch of people with almost less awareness than the last Tory administration? So, if Labour does some radical things - taxing the rich, super taxing the super rich, borrowing money to pay for infrastructure, which will create jobs, which will create spending, which will create more tax revenues... They can worry about immigration only if people refuse to see how their lives are improving.

You see this is the crux of the matter. Idiots can't see the real problem* despite it sitting in front of them, they want to think it's down to foreigners, to black and brown people, to the disabled, the unemployed and especially to asylum seekers (which they don't trust) and the right wing press isn't offering an alternative narrative. * Incidentally, the biggest reason for everyone being unhappy is actually the cost of living and the fact that shareholders are holding the rest of the country to ransom. However, the right wing press won't suggest this because if the people started to realise that they're paying more because of profiteering businesses who want to pay their shareholders more and more every year that would create problems they can't solve.

Labour is doomed. They are about to go the same way as the Tories. By 2030 the political landscape of this country will see the Labour and Conservatives only achieving 20% of the total vote; the other 80% will be thrown at Reform, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cyrmu, the SNP, the Green Party and even independents who will win seats by campaigning on local issues. It might be that the only way to stop Reform from destroying what's left of the country will be by having a rainbow coalition, one where the Labour Party, ironically, holds the balance of power. However, they can stop this. They can be more like the party people voted for and then spend a lot of money educating people that foreigners aren't the reason lives are shit. 

I'd like to see Labour MPs standing up for themselves and their party by challenging the right wing biased media. Saying things like, "Laura, tell me, why are you so focused on a mistake made by the chancellor or the wrongful release of a few prisoners? I don't seem to recall you scrutinising the Tories who tried to defraud the tax office, or who gave billions away to their mates during Covid, or those that partied while the rest of the country was in lockdown or even the 800+ prisoners wrongly released in just the last year of their government. It's like you have an agenda; do you have an agenda, Laura?" I'd fucking cheer at the TV if an MP actually challenged these so called 'journalists'.

Juno Temple's Nipple

One of the surprise box office hits of the summer was Roofman, a film that tells the true story of Jeffrey Manchester, a criminal with a good heart, but a criminal all the same. Channing Tatum plays the eponymous Roofman, a man who breaks into places through the roof and robs them, but is very nice to victims. Manchester is a ex-serviceman with an almost genius mind, but he couldn't hold a job down so he turned to crime and eventually got himself caught. He then escaped from prison and started a new life as John Zorn, met a woman, fell in love and lived a normal life, while living in a vacant space inside a Toys R Us store, where his girlfriend Leigh (Kirsten Dunst) worked.

For almost six months, Jeffrey/John lived a 'normal' life, but a dishonest one while still on the run. He joined a church, did family things and eventually fell in love, so when he decided he needed to escape or be caught, he planned one last heist and that's all I'm saying. It's a really good film, considerably better than I expected, which is why it was a big success in cinemas, in a summer that yielded few massive hits. So, why the heading? What about Juno Temple's nipple? Well, the British actress plays the girlfriend of Manchester's buddy Steve, who is helping the convict do a flit to Venezuela and there's one scene where her nipple pops out of the top of her dress. I couldn't really understand why it was even in the film; yes, there was a scene with Channing Tatum's arse as he ran naked through Toys R Us, but Juno's nipple felt almost exploitative. It didn't need to be there and while it didn't ruin an entertaining movie, it really could have been avoided. That's how prudish I've become in my old age. 7/10

Eye Eye

After last week's first 'treading water' episode, this week It - Welcome to Derry moved the story along by going back into the distant past to explain what lives under Derry. In many ways, it was an important part to the story, but equally it also felt like more filler. Is this a show about proving the black cinema owner (would that even be a thing in 1962?) isn't a child killer? Or is it about the US Army trying to find whatever lives under Derry so it can be used as a weapon against the country's enemies? Even if it is the latter, no one is sure what they're looking for or if it's even a viable idea. One thing is sure, some people know about the 27 year cycle of horrors including some adults. Something else that bothers me about this show - I mentioned the prejudice porn a couple of weeks ago - is the playing fast and loose with the degrees of tolerance and racism in 1962. One week every single black character is acting like it's Jim Crow time and this week Hanlon's wife is talking to racist policemen like it's 2025 and she thinks they'll take notice of her. Tonally, this is all over the place.

That's not to detract from the general okayness. This isn't a bad series, it's just written by a man - Andy Muschietti - who wasn't born until 1972, his formative years will have been the 1980s, so it feels anachronistic at times because the cultural difference was vast. This, however, is a small gripe (but one that grates at times), because if I had a big gripe it's how over four episodes we're not really much further on than we were in the opening minutes of episode one. I'm not sure any of the three interwoven subplots are good enough to hold this together, plus Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) still hasn't appeared and I'm not sure that's a good thing. I think this isn't proving to be as excellent as the opening two parts suggested it was going to be; there doesn't seem to be a real direction and this week a creepy fishing trip and some crazy eye hallucinations felt like the horror is gradually being ramped down.

Gone Fishing

And so another series of Mortimer & Whitehouse Gone Fishing draws to a close. We watched the final two episodes this week and it might surprise the casual viewer or people who don't watch but are aware of this programme that they seem to catch fewer fish every year (and it's always expertly edited so you never see a hook - or the damage it does - when a fish is landed). The emphasis this series has been on Ted's age (and his absence from the final episode), the accommodation that Bob sources and scenery - it really is screensaver TV with a hint of gentle comedy. There's going to be a Christmas Special and I expect there will be a ninth series, but as our two hosts will be a couple of years shy of 70 next year I wouldn't be surprised if they call it a day, especially when the old dog is too weak to be dragged around the country.

Deliberately Contrary

Apologies if I bang on about something I consistently bang on about, but The Guardian's reviews are so obviously 'paid for content' now that it's as clear as a nose on a face. Just recently they have raved incessantly about the new David Duchovny series Malice, giving it four stars, while IMDB has it at 5.6 - which for a TV series that's less than a week old is pretty shit. Then there's the BBC thriller The Ridge which it claimed was a 'superb thriller' and 'sure to keep you watching until the end...' That's currently at 5.3 on IMDB. 

So when it was raving about the 2024 movie Bone Lake and gave it a four star rating I was immediately drawn to IMDB to see what 'real' people thought of it. It's been out a year has several thousand reviews and currently is 5.7, which I suppose is just below average, but also a rating to be avoided. It also claimed Playdate was a lot of fun with its three star review and if you tuned in last week you'll know exactly how well that pile of shite performed both with me and IMDB. The Guardian seems to be drawn to crap films that are rated in the 5s, which suggests to me that either their reviewers are just idiots or there's this deal where crap films' producers pay the Guardian to give extremely positive reviews that fly in the face of actual real peoples' opinions. The paper has, so far, in the last couple of months got one review right, the extremely entertaining All Her Fault, which was as good as the paper claimed it to be, but there's also the review of Pluribus, which it also raved about, but was clear from almost the opening paragraph that the reviewer hadn't actually watched the opening two episodes or if they had they didn't take any fucking notice of them...

The thing is me moaning about The Guardian is a little like me recommending Apple TV+ shows to you. Most of you either a) Don't read the Guardian or b) don't subscribe to Apple TV+, so it's just me doing the equivalent of shouting into the abyss. I want that once excellent newspaper to have more comments sections available, especially for its reviews, but they patently avoid doing that, which just further confirms my belief that most of the paper's reviews are paid for content. The other reason for me believing this are the number of crap reviews it gives for big studio pictures, because these big studio pictures don't wave a wad of cash at Katherine Viner's reviews editor and beg them to be kind. It was once a proud and worthy newspaper, it's now run by a bunch of neo-liberal cunts!

Organised Criminals

Another thing we've 'taped' off of Film4 in the last year was James Gandolfini's final movie The Drop, a tale about a Brooklyn bar that is used by Chechen organised crime as a money laundering joint. The star of The Sopranos plays second fiddle to Tom Hardy's Bob, his cousin who works for him. Bob has a heart of gold and only seems to look out for people and dogs. When their bar is robbed by some local thugs, their 'bosses' give them a limited amount of time to recover the stolen money and make good, meanwhile the local PD is sniffing around under the guise of hunting the robbers, but they're really trying to find out what they can about a cold case murder investigation. Noomi Rapace also stars in this as Bob's potential love interest and what seems like a sweet love story wrapped around an organised crime story actually has a slightly sinister feel about it and a last 15 minutes you probably wouldn't have seen coming. It's likely to show again on Film4 and is worth a solid 6.5/10.

Why I Love/Hate the USA

In a week that felt like it was fast becoming one of those weeks where everything is slightly worse than you expected, along comes something superb; something that almost brought a tear to my eye; something that perfectly illustrates my belief that the USA is the worst country in the world with some of the nicest people trapped living there. That something was Code 3. What a fantastic movie. No, really, it's phenomenal. It stars the excellent Rainn Wilson as Randy, a paramedic who is on his last day doing a job he's spent 18½ years doing, but he needs to get out.

This film follows the 24 hours of his final shift and frankly it's an hour and 40 minutes of sheer brilliance. You will laugh, you will want to cry, you will be astounded at how frank and real it is; how visceral it allows itself to be, yet you will still feel like you have watched something important, that will make no difference at all. I cannot recommend this enough; you will see few films better than this in 2025. This gets a rare and warranted 10/10.

Ho's Da Man

The wife finally decided it was time to watch the most recent series of the ever-dependable and quite brilliant Slow Horses and guess what? It is quite brilliant and always dependable. This series initially focuses on Roddy Ho, the wanker who monitors all the surveillance and is the IT wizard at Slough House, he is also a massive (mentally ill) cockwomble. He falls victim to a honeytrap that sets off a series of events beginning with a mass shooting in a suburb of London, a plot to destabilise the capital and the deaths of 22 penguins. Is this all to do with the upcoming mayoral election or is there something more sinister afoot and what have the Libyans got to do with it all? I know I bang on about Apple TV+ but this alone is worth the subscription price (or the 'risk' of downloading their shows illegally). This is one of the most enjoyable TV shows of the 21st century and Gary Oldman is just so good as the amazingly grubby Jackson Lamb.

Up Shit Hole Street

In many ways, Down Cemetery Road seems to be turning into an almost watchable show. I did manage to work out what it was that bugged me about it and that was the fact that all the characters in it are from a 1970s sitcom performing in a 2020s espionage and action thriller. There was less poor humour in this fifth part and more clues to ... well, not so much what is going on, because we know that, more about different parties staying ahead of other parties that mean them harm. It's the antithesis of Slow Horses, despite being written by the same man; whereas that is full of genuine humour from its slightly OTT characters, this feels like a try out for something that never got (or should never have been) made.

Tick, Tick, BOOM!

The worst thing about the finale of The Morning Show is that if there's going to be a fifth season it won't be for another two years. There have been times during this series where I've wondered just where it's going, but that's par for the course. There has been a paucity of certain characters and a feeling that everyone has moved on, but it's always felt like it was going somewhere and it did with a finale that was always going to happen, it just depended on who was going to light the blue touch paper and whether they were going to retire or go up with it. In this case, we won't find out until that fifth season even if this series completes its story.

There shall come a reckoning and this show always delivers that, if it's Mitch driving off a cliff or if Bradley is going to get out of Belarus alive, there are always shock departures and consequences because of that. There was more than one bad guy this time around and whether all of them will be around in the future just makes the anticipation for series five all the greater. This is one of the best TV shows being made - long may it run.

Miserable Old Bastard

The wife binge watches The Chase, usually during periods when she isn't working. What she does is record episodes from the TV and when she's off work - like she is until February - she will do some of her craft work with the quiz show on in the background. She's a huge quiz show fan and now she doesn't go to the pub quiz as a player it's taken on extra value for her. It keeps her mind sharp.

I find the show tedious and heavily weighted in favour of the Chasers, most of which I think either the wife or I could beat in a general knowledge competition. I find Bradley Walsh to be somewhat disingenuous as a host who makes it look as though he's on the quiz contestants' side, but he's really just ensuring that the ratio of times the Chasers are beaten is kept to a minimum. I would not be welcome on this show, for a number of reasons, but the biggest is no doubt the contestants and my general disdain for many of them. Yes, sometimes there are people on this show who have fantastic general knowledge skills and have analytical minds to be able to work out some of the ridiculously difficult questions that are often thrown up - which doesn't help my general cynicism for the show - however, there are some thick-as-horse-shit people on this and I would probably insult them and abuse them if they did anything but allow themselves to be eliminated...

Why do people who have trouble finding their arses with a map and a compass want to go on TV just to be humiliated? It's not even 15 minutes of fame because the only people who are going to remember them are themselves. It's also probably the most difficult quiz show outside of University Challenge and Only Connect, which further puzzles me why idiots would want to go on it. They get fuck all in the cash builder, then take the low offer - usually intelligence insulting - and if they get through the first stage, are then useful for fuck all in the final chase where invariably they hit the button and say 'pass' before any of the clever people on their team get a chance to answer. What incentive is there for any half decent player to go for any large sum of money when they might end up sharing it with someone who doesn't know how to piss into a bowl?

Where's Portillo When Needed?

How can something so stunning be turned into such a boring TV documentary? New Zealand By Train was actually made a couple of years ago, by a New Zealand production company and it was as dry and uninspiring as you could possibly imagine. So when Channel 4 got hold of it the first thing they did was get Julie Walters to narrate it. The problem was they kept the original script and Walters could have been pissed as a fart and reading it naked with a massive dildo keeping her company and it still would have been dull. The scenery, especially in the south Island segment, is to die for, but the two 45 minute parts were just massive snoozefests. It was like they had all of these fantastic places to promote but they opted to make it sound like watching paint dry, maybe to put people off of going there.

I actually watched it to see if Dunedin featured - a place where an old friend of mine lives - unfortunately the railway track doesn't go that far south, ending in Christchurch and then going west over the Southern Alps. They still managed to shoehorn some of southernmost part of the country in, probably because other than fabulous scenery there isn't much to see in the south. That said, from the fleeting examples we had of the North island, there doesn't appear to be much of that worth seeing either. Honestly, if this was a promo video to get people fired up about visiting New Zealand they would have been better off filming some sheep having sex.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere

The guy in the picture is the man in Paraguay, the one the hivemind of humanity knows very little about. The opening 15 minutes of episode four of Pluribus featured him and what happened in the period around when Carol phoned him. He appears to be much more suspicious than Carol, who incidentally has been storyboarding a plan of action while finding out things she didn't really want to know. There were hints of an ongoing story emerging, because while the premise is great, it needs to have a forward moving story. While it is arguably the least engaging episode so far, you now know a lot more about the hivemind and it doesn't stop it from still feeling a wee bit sinister.

A Crime Caper

I've never seen Catch Me If You Can, the Steven Spielberg film about the teenage fraudster who became a lawyer, a doctor, and an airline pilot as he tricked his way to embezzling over $5million. Leonardo DiCaprio is Frank Abignole Jr, a man who posed as all manner of respected positions and exploited the banking system while staying one step ahead of the FBI agent on his trail, played by Tom Hanks. It's a pleasant enough feature and a regular favourite on the telly, but it's the story of a man who is very good at committing fraud largely down to people being too trusting and the easy number of ways you can defraud the US government. 6/10

What's Up Next?

Television is going to be taken up with the first part of the final season of Stranger Things. Between now and the end of the world, we will have the final 283 parts to enjoy until the day before the apocalypse the final FINAL finale will be shown to the 17 people remaining who have a TV set...

Other regular TV will be viewed and I will be dancing around IMDB to give myself an idea what to not watch or what I'm going to have to search carefully for to ensure there are subtitles attached.

I'm going to the pub for the first time in three weeks tonight; it's only the second time in six weeks (and the last time was to present a pub quiz while I felt like shit), so there's no Saturday night classic or any other denomination of film or TV to watch.

As usual...

My Cultural Life - Scary Monsters?

What's Up?

Does anyone else find it ironic that the BBC is coming in for criticism for all manner of dodgy things? The reason for this was the stupid editing of a Donald Trump speech from 2021 and subsequent accusations that the corporation is institutionally corrupt (I wouldn't argue with that regarding its news department) and having a left wing agenda (which is as comedic as the funniest comedian to ever have lived).

The BBC News departments is anything but 'left wing' and the fact people are accusing it of being left wing suggests it isn't right wing enough for certain people. I mean, let's just look at a recent news story - the mistaken releases of some criminals. BBC News and especially that boyish-faced twonk Chris Mason, who has seamlessly replaced Laura Kuenssberg as the far right mouthpiece of the company, managed to keep this story in the news for over a week, yet during the last year of the last Tory government over 800 prisoners were wrongly released. Can you remember any of these being given the scrutiny and the political spin that the BBC has chucked at it recently? No, of course you haven't. That's because the BBC's political staff are largely Tory supporters, ex-Tory party SPADs and former Young Conservatives. 

This isn't me just making shit up, their political allegiances are available for all to see if people just bothered to look. The thing is no one wants to look or even scrutinise the scrutinisers. 

What Panorama did was absolutely wrong, but mainly because Trump says enough bullshit for them to never have to fake one of his speeches. Why did it do what it did? Who knows, apart from the fact that the level of journalism at the BBC is nowhere near the level it was when they employed real journalists instead of pandering gobshites who are suddenly realising that their own political choices are no longer particularly relevant. Oh and Robbie Gibb, one of the board members is a Boris Johnson sized cunt with an agenda designed to destroy this jewel in British broadcasting's crown. Remember, the more right wing you are the less free things there should be...

Thoroughly Modern Monster

There is a scene in Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein where Victor Frankenstein's brother asks which part of the monster was its soul located and I felt that was a poignant moment, because however brilliant, evocative and stunning the cinematography is in this movie it is simply the same story that has been done before and Mary Shelley's novel is pretty boring, especially when it's been done to death, this seemed without a soul. The difference here is that Victor - played by Oscar Isaac - is a complete bastard who deserves no sympathy at all, whereas in earlier films he was always, somehow, been depicted as some kind of tragic figure.

This is a bit dull despite looking sumptuous; it focuses on the humanity of the 'monster' and the monstrousness of its creator. There is a sort of subplot involving Victor's brother's fiancée, played by Mia Goth (keeping her clothes on for once), who is about as fucked up in the head as you can imagine and a lot of the film takes place on the Scandinavian ship that bookends the story. Jacob Elordi plays the creature and his accent wavers all over the place, but there's a hint of the Lincolnshire Wolds in there and he looks like a composite of Doc Manhattan (from Watchmen) and the race of aliens who created the alien xenomorphs. It's a spectacle - as you'd expect from the director - but it's also a little bit boring and overlong. I feel like it deserves a higher score, but I'm struggling to think that it deserves a 6.5/10.

As an aside; it has always perplexed me that Frankenstein simply didn't bring a dead body back to life; why the fascination with assembling a person from body parts sourced from multiple corpses? There's some kind of perversity going on there which no adaptation has ever explored...

Unum

Of course it's set in New Mexico; everything Vince Gilligan does is set in Albuquerque or thereabouts. Pluribus is about as far removed from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul as you can imagine. This is an 'alien invasion' show that doesn't have any aliens and there isn't an invasion. Something sends Earth a chemical concoction that is basically a virus that turns everyone on the face of the planet into a member of a hive mind, apart from 12 people, of which Rhea Seehorn is one of them. Quite a few people die (almost 1 billion) as a result of this 'virus' and Seehorn's wife is one of them.

Gilligan cut his teeth on The X Files and this feels like an extended episode of that mixed with a nightmare and after the second episode, I just have to emphasise how strange and unsettling this TV show is and how unique it might be, despite skirting round the edges of classic sci-fi. Most of the second part was taken up with disposal and explanation; but it's the latter we'll focus on, because Carol has had a lot explained to her and it hasn't made any difference at all, in fact, it's probably made things worse. For starters, we find out exactly how many people died from the 'virus' and secondly we also discover the 12 people left on the planet unaffected have a power over the rest of the world that is both deadly and tragic. I can't tell you enough that this is supposed to be a comedy but it feels anything but at the moment; yes, there are funny moments and the premise lends itself to comedy extremely well, but this is frightening, psychologically disturbing and weirdly compelling. One thing is certain, I have no idea where this is going, but Gilligan will, because he's renowned for planning entire stories out before the first episodes are even made. 

However... There is a chance that some people might not have worked out what this series is about. I read a review of the third episode about two hours before I watched it and the person reviewing it couldn't understand why Carol (Rhea Seehorn) was so miserable and this made me wonder if people actually take any notice of things. I mean, I could bang on about how The Guardian's reviewer clearly didn't watch the opening two episodes when they wrote their initial review of the series, because they got key points completely wrong, but what the reviewer did get right was the fact that Seehorn's character is the most miserable person on the face of the planet, even before all but 12 people became essentially one giant hive mind. This was perfectly illustrated in an opening flashback scene when her late partner took her to an ice hotel in Norway, where instead of enjoying a fantastic holiday with the woman she loved, she moaned incessantly about the cold and ice. She's just incapable of being positive, therefore in this new world where everyone is cheerful and helpful, she's miserable (and dealing with grief and alienation issues).

The third episode perfectly illustrates this as Carol simultaneously realises that the rest of the population is there to give her absolutely anything she wants and that she now lives in what is essentially a very scary place that she seems to have complete control over, until the hive mind comes up with a way of infecting her with the same virus and turning the remaining 12 humans into... well... what the rest of the population is. This third part is still very creepy; the entire premise is disturbing, especially the fact that Carol's free will is living on borrowed time and it doesn't matter what she does she can't escape Helen's memories, because they exist in every single other living human being (bar 11).

Anyhow, I've written far too much about a series that probably very few of you will watch unless you subscribe to Apple TV+, which I really think you should if you like a higher quality of television (or you could simply download the station's shows illegally). I will say one thing in the not-so positive - I'm struggling to see where this series is going to go; what ultimately is the goal of it? It needs a subplot to sit and grow and there hasn't been any sign of one yet.

Kidnapping

So far this week the least scary thing I've watched is the monster movie. This week's box-set binge was All Her Fault, based on the terrific reviews I'd read, which don't always prove to be accurate - as I've often mentioned in the past. It stars Sarah Snook as a mother who arrives to pick her 5-year-old son up from a play date and not only isn't he there but the house belongs to someone else. How this happens is explained quite clearly as there is a frantic search for the missing child and eventually the police are involved and it appears that the nanny of acquaintances might be responsible for the abduction. Except, in the final scene of the opener, we fast forward 27 days and there's something far more sinister and strange afoot. 

This was a seriously fraught and at times scary series that has soap opera levels of WTF, especially episode five, which is one of the most intense hours of TV you will see in a very long time. It is full of both likeable and dislikeable characters, all with their own secrets and living lies who do themselves no favours with their attempts at obfuscating their own truths which bring them under more suspicion. It gets a little 'out there' towards the end and you could argue it has an extremely contrived premise, but on the whole this is a superb series that begs to be watched and it has extra added WTF value, because... well, it just does. Oh and it has one of the best villains I think that has been created in many years, mainly because you know the person is a shit but you never realised just how much of a shit they are until the very end.

The Future in the Past

It: Welcome to Derry settled into a groove with the third episode. With a total of eight in this opening series it was always going to happen, however, this played a two hander, with Dick Halloran and Levi Hanlon meeting properly, having a moment at 10,000 feet and then one inviting the other over for dinner. The Major thinks there's something strange about the corporal but the word 'shining' is never mentioned. Meanwhile, the kids go in search of capturing photographic evidence to try and help Ronnie's father from certain death as he remains in prison charged with murders he didn't commit. There are also flashbacks to 1908 and references to 1935, both parts of the 27 year cycle and so far there hasn't been any sign of Pennywise, apart from his name.

This was not as scary, nor as disturbing as the opening two parts; it almost had a Stranger Things vibe going on at times, while the tying up of the past with the present was quite clever, but whether we'll see the 1908 characters again - in the third and final series - remains to be seen. This felt a little like taking two steps forward and then two steps back, but was still entertaining.

To Belarus Without Love

Bradley (Reese Witherspoon) is being detained in Belarus on trumped up espionage charges leaving Alex (Jennifer Aniston) to try and come up with a deal, somehow, to sort out the problem. She turns to ex-boyfriend and billionaire Paul (John Hamm) to try and broker a deal with a Russian oligarch 'friend'. Meanwhile, the grieving Cory (Billy Crudup) turns to Selene (Marion Cottilard) for support, unaware that she is the villain here, on several levels. As the deal to free Bradley falls apart, it sets everything up for a finale that is guaranteed to be as explosive and heart wrenching as this show always manages. The Morning Show is superior TV at its best.

You've Got to be Joe King

Stephen King's less prolific son has a new book out, reviewed in the Guardian. It might get read or I might not bother; it depends (probably on Christmas). The thing is, like all Guardian reviews I felt compelled to have a rant about it... The book Joe Hill's King Sorrow is about an evil dragon and my 'favourite' newspaper, and the reviewer Alison Flood, made the cardinal sin of comparing it to Joe Hill's father (which is a cheap jibe at the worst of times), Flood said, quite categorically that it was a little like an homage to King's 'best' book, which she claims is It, a book that clearly isn't even in the horror writer's top 20.

It is a rambling, sprawling mess of a book, with an extremely questionable denouement, which has had to be changed in the two adaptations because having a conclusion that involves five teenage boys deflowering a teenage girl so that they 'become adults' and can deal with the monster (portrayed as a clown) better, is arguably a bit fucking [ahem] close to the mark. I know it's all subjective but I expect if you held a poll with King fans very few would have the overlong late 1980s horror novel (written when King was at the height of his addiction problems) at the top of their lists.

One other point. King and his wife Tabitha, both intelligent people, writers with good careers, called their son Joseph King? Really? Joe King? No wonder he's opted to abbreviate his middle name Hillstrom as a surname, because all joking [chortle chortle] aside, calling your son Joe King is probably the result of both parties being off their tits on something. Just ask Frank Zappa. 

Thursday Flops

We had a double bill of flop films on Thursday. I forgot to check IMDB again when we set Play Date up and we lasted less than ten minutes before turning it off. When it was downloaded it was 6.9 and that was on Wednesday evening, 24 hours later that had dropped to 5.5 and I expect it will get even lower. Fucking insult to an idiot's intelligence.

Then, we decided to watch The Smashing Machine and while this wasn't shite, it was extremely dull and that was after less than 20 minutes. With the knowledge that it was, in fact, over two hours long and the wife asking if it got interesting (like I would have known, I was also watching it for the first time), it was switched off and we went in search of something more interesting instead...

Preposterous Bollocks But Fun

The real puzzle is how anyone managed to find a way to make a sequel to The Black Phone. I mean, the killer got killed and that was pretty much it. However, Scott Derrickson, who isn't a bad director, somehow managed to resurrect The Grabber as a post modern Freddy Krueger - from A Nightmare on Elm Street - and The Black Phone 2 became a reality.

Set four years after the original, Finn - the hero of the first film - is still hearing phones ring, has taken to beating other kids up and smokes a lot of cheap weed. His psychic sister Gwen is having freaky dreams involving their dead mother and Ethan Hawke's Grabber, something is afoot. The two with their friend decide to go and work at Alpine Lake Camp - in the middle of winter, despite both being at school still - as trainee counsellors at this Christian kids camp because that's where their mother once worked and Gwen thinks there's something they need to do there.

This is essentially Gwen's film as the Grabber is actually after her to pay Finn back for killing him. It is also the place where he committed his first three murders and the premise is they have to find these kids' bodies to prevent the Grabber from using this to power himself back into reality. It is utterly bonkers/idiotic, but it's also quite atmospheric, looks really creepy and was considerably better (ie: more enjoyable) than the two films we had earlier switched off. It's not a patch on the original, but it has its moments and doesn't really leave anything open for The Black Phone 3, so expect that at some point in 2029. 6/10

A Long and Winding Road

Down Cemetery Road is the compelling argument why you maybe shouldn't get an Apple TV+ subscription. I'm finding it extremely tedious and unbelievably far-fetched, in a 'this wouldn't happen in the real world' kind of way. I know Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson are quality actors, but this really feels a little beneath them. The mix of bad British humour with psychopaths and contract killers just doesn't really work for me. It's quaint in a punch in the face kind of way and at least we're half way through it now because I'm not enjoying it at all and I don't want to keep asking the wife what she thinks because if she is enjoying it I expect she'd give up on it if I told her I think it's worse than maybe catching rabies from a puppy...

What's Up Next?

Roofman is on the agenda, as is One Battle After Another. I'm sure there will be some other films but it really depends on what's floating my boat on a certain day.

In TV, next week is the week before Stranger Things comes back for its final season, which, I have to say, the trailers for it aren't grabbing me by the balls at all. I think I got pissed off with season four and its ability to go nowhere badly.

As usual blah blah blah...

My Cultural Life - This Is All You Have Left...

What's Up?

Have I mentioned that I've not been well? I have? Oh, well, I'm still not well. This is becoming slightly concerning, but apparently nothing to worry about, really. The wife has had the same virus for two weeks and she usually kicks colds and flu in the nuts while laughing like a maniac...

I had my Covid and Flu jabs on Wednesday and the very nice nurse who administered them - she was called Susan - told me that she hasn't known an autumn like it for persistent viruses and because of my COPD it was probably just taking a wee bit longer than normal to get over it. I hope she's right because it has been relentless and really doesn't feel like it's getting better. The thing is, unlike other viruses where I've literally just wrapped up in a duvet and waited for it to end, because I'm not the only one suffering I've been a trooper and carried on doing things I probably should have taken a rest from. That said if it carries on for much longer I feel like writing a strongly worded letter of complaint... The problem is, who do I send it to? Probably Nigel Farage, mainly because he's a massive cunt. 

Unsettling and Unpleasant

I'm torn as far as It: Welcome to Derry is concerned. Without wishing to sound odd, I find the prejudice to be both unsettling and almost pornographic. I'm well aware that being black in the past, especially the 50s and 60s was a dangerous and horrible time, but there's almost a pleasure being taken about showing white people being as prejudiced as possible and because there are a number of black people in this series there is a propensity for vile and hateful racism, which part of me feels doesn't work even if it's truthful and obviously amplified by my knowledge of Stephen King's Derry. There's something counterproductive about it, especially in these racist-fuelled times.

However, this isn't Stephen King's Derry, this is Andy Muschietti's Derry from his adaptation of It. In his films, the story is set in 1988 and then 30 years later; in King's book it is the late 1950s and the late 1980s; it has been updated, so to speak, to make it more relevant. Therefore this TV series is set in 1962 and some of the familiar names are the parents of characters from the films. One of the quirks of King's book was the fact that whatever was under Derry, masquerading as Pennywise the clown, could 'help' people who got older to forget the horrors they might have seen as children, so I get the potential explanation of why so much is happening in 1962 that is never mentioned in Muschietti's films or the source material. It just sits wrongly with me. I find it contrived and also a little strange.

What is unsettling is the horror, because it is fucking out there. There is a genuinely disturbing feel about the scenes of ghoulishness and they are, I imagine, quite scary and the kids involved in them have to be given credit for coping with the sick mind that devised them.  However (again), I'm finding the idea of Jovan Adepo as an air force major with no sense of fear - therefore he's going to see what is happening rather than whatever the alien under Derry wants him to see - a little convenient, especially as this is a series that will be told in three parts, each series set 25 years further in the past. Don't get me wrong, this is expertly made, the sets are phenomenal, but it feels constructed; there's a sense that it doesn't matter, that we're just playing out something that will ultimately just be there for the scares and any solution or explanation will be exchanged for really chilling and nasty special effects. I'm enjoying this, but I'm not sure why...

Ripper, Mate

Despite having watched From Hell shortly after it was released on video in 2002, we remembered almost nothing about it, therefore it was like watching it for the first time. Johnny Depp (again) does a surprisingly good East End accent, but his Inspector Abberline, the psychic detective is a bit too fantasy even if the story is most probably as close as we'll ever find out about the true story of Jack the Ripper. Based on the comic by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, there's a little known controversy about the original comic as a south London comic shop owner always claimed that Moore stole the story he had relentlessly researched, but in truth most of the information that has been dressed up in the Hughes Brothers film is probably out there in the public domain and with a little supposition and extrapolation you can come up with variations of what probably did happen. As a film, it was quite good, even if it felt a little like style over substance. Victorian London looked fabulous and the squalor of Whitechapel depicted extremely well. The ending? Well, I got the impression they wanted to have something positive come out of it, even if it didn't end positively for Abberline. 6/10

Sunday Night

We did something 'normal' on Sunday. We watched the telly (or iPlayer to be precise). First we watched Whitehouse & Mortimer Gone Fishing, which felt a little ... weak and short. After that we watched this week's Landward, which, for the benefit of those of you outside of Scotland, is Scotland's version of Countryfile, but considerably better and more relevant.

After this we watched QI:XL which was one of the better episodes, but that was probably down to Aisling Bea being on it and she always brings a touch of surrealism to the show and brings the best out of Alan Davies. Then we watched another episode of the repeated Simon Reeve: Tropic of Cancer, which we had seen before but is always worth rewatching, even if it was getting on for 15 years old. After that we finished the evening off by watching one of the new episodes of Pointless, which I believe is now the longest running 5.15pm quiz show the BBC has ever had.

This is what your average person does, apparently...

Body Swaps

It's not often I stumble on a film that I didn't know about that I also overlooked on IMDB, but the Ryan Reynolds vehicle Self/Less was very much something I missed. This movie poses the question - if you could transfer your brain into a brand new body would you do it even if there was some morally dubious shit entangled in it? Ben Kingsley plays a dying billionaire in New York who discovers there is a way to have his mind transferred into the body of a younger man, just so long as he gives up his old life and accepts his new self and enjoys his new life. The body he ends up in is Ryan Reynolds, who he thinks is a lab grown clone, but is in fact an ex-army veteran in a lot of medical debt. What follows is an interesting and action-packed romp that was stymied by some glaring plotting errors. It was a relatively fun way to spend a Monday night. 7/10

Chip and Pinned

Watching Upgrade again, we'd forgotten quite what an unusual but enjoyable movie it was. Starring Logan Marshal-Green as a car mechanic involved in a carjacking that leaves him a paraplegic and his wife dead. He is offered the chance of having a chip installed that will restore his motor functions and this helps him go on a revenge mission to catch the killers. It's a bleak futuristic story with shady Elon Musk type characters and psychopaths galore. It's a darkly comic tale with a couple of very nasty twists at the end that is only really spoiled by the cop whose job was to track down Marshal-Green's attackers but spends most of it trying to prove that the person she's supposed to be helping is really a bad guy. 7/10

Down Shit Street

So... the third episode of the Emma Thompson detective series Down Cemetery Road has been watched and it really would be so much better if it dispensed with the poor attempts at British humour and had just concentrated on the story of why the MoD appears to want to kill off eight servicemen who they've already faked the deaths of. This is pretty much the premise of the story from what you can make out in the latest instalment. The big black guy who saved Ruth Wilson from the psycho black guy is a veteran who is trying to save the people that the MoD want killed and that includes - possibly - the little girl who didn't go boom in the Oxford house. This is contrived and really a bit trite but at least the third episode has made it feel like it's worth sticking with for at least another week.

An Offer You Can't Refuse

Last year, a biopic came out and yet it's taken over a year for it to end up being streamed. The film called Waltzing with Brando is the story of Marlon Brando's ill-fated attempts to build an eco-friendly house on a remote Tahitian island with the help of a pioneering LA architect called Bernard Judge - played by John Heder. Brando is played by Billy Zane who absolutely nails the actor and really deserves accolades for his portrayal. This is an absolutely charming movie; it's funny, sexy and very very involving and pretty much as true as it happened. There's not much else to say about it apart from the fact that everybody seems to have a great time making the film and I had a great time watching it. 8/10

Idiot Box

"Good morning and welcome to Morning Live. On today's show we have loads of information to make your life easier. Such as features on how to wipe your arse properly, what the right type of clothes are for the weather outside and this week's top 100 scams and how to fall for them. But first over to Gethin with an important feature. Gethin?"

"Yes, thanks Michelle. Have you ever gone outside and noticed wet stuff falling from the sky? This is called rain and in olden times when this happened people used one of these [holds umbrella up]. This is an umbrella; don't be put off by the strangeness of the word, it is specifically designed to keep rain off of you and it's very good at it. Former Olympic athlete Greg Rutherford has been out on the streets of Salford showing people how it works..."

FML.

Family Tragedies

The biggest let down in last week's The Morning Show was the lack of Cory Ellison. Billy Crudup is consistently the best thing about this brilliant series and when he's missing it never feels quite as good. This week he takes centre stage, as does Jennifer Aniston's Alex Levy, but the two never appear together, because this is about their parents. In Cory's case his mother who is beginning to suffer from dementia and Alex's father, who she probably wishes was suffering from it. This is the tale of two parents and how they can differ so diametrically. It is an episode that is both unbearably sad and fabulously nasty and all the while the story continues. Said story is going to bite someone on the arse big time, but it all depends on whether Bradley can get her story, which just happens to be in Belarus. One of the best episodes in its four seasons.

Island of Lost Dreams

This seems to be the week where we watch charming films, because for the second night in a row we sat down and watched a movie that was simply lovely. The Ballad of Wallis Island is the tale of a two-time lottery winner who devises a scheme to reunite his favourite band and get them to play a private gig for him on his island. The lottery winner is Charles, who is essentially really annoying; the kind of bloke you want to avoid at parties; one who never seems to stop talking and most of what he says is cringeworthy. Written and starring Tim Key and Tom Basden, the former pays the latter half a million quid to perform on his beach and also pays his former partner nearly the same amount to come and get the old band back together. She's played by Carey Mulligan and the former duo have a lot of baggage, much of which Basden is still holding onto.

This is a truly charming story of lost loves, finding new ones and rekindling flames that should have stayed dead. The music is lovely, the scenery is spectacular and it's also very funny in a really touching way. This is a truly nice film and I recommend it to anyone who likes a good British film. 8/10

A Not So Wonderful Life

We settled down to watch the new Guillermo Del Toro Frankenstein movie for our Friday night entertainment, when it soon became apparent the copy I had obtained was in Indian, this meant we had something of a dilemma. I could have tried to obtain another copy of the film (with subtitles because of the bits that aren't in English - a common problem I have now with downloaded movies) or we could watch something else and save the monster film for tomorrow. The alternative was Good Fortune, which is essentially a post modern contemporary version of It's A Wonderful Life.

This is a film by and starring Aziz Ansari, with Seth Rogan and Keanu Reeves and it has to be said it is everything I despise about the USA in a film about what is absolutely fucking horrible about living in modern day USA. Ansari plays a gig economy worker who literally can't earn enough money to survive, who gets a job with a self made wanker - Seth Rogan - but makes a mistake and is dumped on his arse by said wanker. Keanu plays Gabriel, a low level angel, responsible for protecting people who text and drive at the same time, who decides he wants to help a lost soul and what follows is a life swap film where Aziz becomes Seth and vice versa. It is an enjoyable and slightly infuriating movie with undertones of Scrooge and is also a touching romance about how, sometimes, having everything you could wish for doesn't give you everything that you want. It was a good compromise to the monster we had lined up and yet again we have watched a good film this week. 7.5/10

What's Up Next?

There will be Frankenstein. There will also be Pluribus, the new Vince Gilligan series with Rhea Seehorn. The latest episodes of the things we're watching at the moment and there's also a couple of films that haven't been watched yet, including Black Phone 2 and The Smashing Machine, which, to be fair, sounds like a Northerner's way of describing a really excellent bit of machinery.

Lovely. Smashing. Great.

But that's next week...