Pop Culture - A 'Slow' Week

It's mostly about TV this week. I've tried to avoid spoilers but I might not...

The MI5 Run-Around

As we have grown accustomed, Slow Horses starts off with one thing and invariably will end up somewhere else entirely. This superb show is anything but predictable, however there is an element of predictability in the opening episode of the fourth season... 

Gary Oldman is back as Jackson Lamb, the guy running the department where all failed spies go to waste away until they die or get killed off. But of course, as we've discovered, Lamb has apparently no time for his team, everyone thinks they're shite and yet they seem to spend more time solving MI5 problems than MI5 does and this is likely to be another one of those cases. The new series kicks off with Jonathon Pryce (River Cartwright's grandfather, David, who is suffering from early stages of dementia) accidentally killing his grandson with a shotgun, except when Lamb is called to identify the body of his most able bodied but accident-prone team member, he seems less than bothered - usual par for the course antics from a man who makes the Steptoe brothers look well kept. It soon becomes clear that someone wants David Cartwright dead and as he used to be First Desk - ie: head of MI5 - this could be important.

Obviously, MI5 are way behind everyone else, except for Kristin Scott Thomas's Diana Taverner, who hasn't become First Desk like we expected her to be, but is running around sorting out the new #1's problems because he's got chocolate teapot written all over him. She suspects something is going on, but apart from River's apparent death doesn't think this is a Slough House thing. Meanwhile, Jackson has already visited Saskia Reeves' Standish and worked out most of what is happening and mobilised his team of misfits into doing some work. Jackson has a new PA who has already pissed him off - just by being there - and there's a new team member who doesn't appear to do anything and seems deeply disturbed. It's great to have it back. I'll conclude my review next week.

Second Thoughts

This week was all about Victor (Rhenzy Feliz); the boss's apprentice in The Penguin. Oz's young assistant, recruited because Oz could see something of himself in the stuttering young Hispanic, is at a crossroads in his life and has to make some decisions. This played out by looking at Vic's days before the flood and before Gotham's fall. Things didn't seem that bad for him - loving family, girlfriend and mates. Then the Riddler came along and anyone who doesn't have money in Gotham has been paying the price ever since. This episode was really more about decisions than actions. In this case, specifically Vic's reasons for being Oz's new kid; Oz's reasons for now being on Sofia's side (or is he?) considering his betrayal of her a decade earlier and the reasons both want revenge over the wide Falcone empire. This week includes extortion, double crosses and admissions of guilt, but it's just part of the long game. The only problem I have with this is Sofia might be a psychopath but she's as sharp as a razor and some of Cobb's moves can't be going over her head quite as far as they appear to be...

Afterthought

You remember the other week when I was filling space by talking about shit I won't watch, anime with ridiculous names and ... oh yes, talking about anime with ridiculous names, does anyone fancy a season of As a Reincarnated Aristocrat I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World? Who knew? Aristocrats have an appraisal skill; that's what they do! I mean, is life so fucking exciting in Japan that they make boring anime as anti-dopamine for the masses?

Stretch Armstrong

I think Ryan Gosling is a lucky man because he is a film star, a veritable A lister, and yet, by and large, he comes across as really fucking dull, so who better to play Neil Armstrong. First Man is a biopic of the first man on the moon and I'm amazed it weighs in at over two hours, because Armstrong was never a charismatic individual and always came over as a bit boring - almost the perfect choice for first man on another planet - no hyperbole from Neil. It's not an exciting film as you can imagine because you know everything that's going to happen, it's just the bit beforehand that we weren't really clear about. I don't know if this is factually accurate; I can't say if Armstrong and his first wife had a strained relationship (they lasted another 25 years after he walked on the moon) and I don't know if he dropped beads belonging to his dead daughter on the surface. I didn't really care, to be honest. I don't know what I expected really; I knew about NASA and the moon landings and I knew Armstrong was as exciting as watching paint dry. I shouldn't be disappointed that his biopic was meh.

Shameless Copy?

The entertaining thing about Brassic when it started was how it felt like a derivative, there was a charm that made it feel more authentic, not a knock off. Then, at almost the perfect time, ten minutes from the conclusion of season four, it really looked like they were going to wrap it all up and let Vinnie and his chums go their own way, we got a cliffhanger epilogue and everything changed.

It was from that fourth season that things changed. Joe Gilgun started to sound like he wanted to be somewhere else; Damien Molony wanted to be somewhere else, so he did and Michelle Keegan's bright future had come to a stuttering halt - Brassic was now the only thing she had left. There was also a massive drop off of Dominic West from that point as well - he's Vinnie's psychiatrist and large buyer of weed as well as being so much more at times... The thing is, Brassic had its faults but it was fun, even the serious subplots had a pantomime feel about them, but with season five, to try and reinvigorate things and to try and replace what they'd lost, they started to delve into the worlds of Vin's supporting crew and the thing is you don't need to do that. Vinnie has dodgy mates, we don't need to know how they got dodgy.

Plus and especially last series, I started to get increasingly hacked off with the filming schedule and the subsequent editing. What is it with Northern dramas and television? Is it not possible to shoot things chronologically any longer? In the opening episode - a jaunt to Dublin for a 'Fools and Horses' styled 'heist' episode - the filming took place in the spring, summer, autumn and winter and was then spliced together. It might be a small and simple thing but it is disconcerting if you notice it.

There is a familial comfort about this series, but I no longer think it has the strong characters it once had. However, this new season appears to be an ongoing plot inside of an existing narrative - if you know what I mean - there were many questions left unanswered at the end of season five and so far each episode has dealt with one of those questions, while simultaneously introducing new stories that help the story flow. The wife said, 'this is better than the last series, isn't it?' and she's probably right; it does feel as though some of the mojo has been rediscovered. We're halfway through, the remaining episodes will be talked about next week.

Cheated?

The extremely strange Outer Range, the time travel, black hole, neo-western series starring Josh Brolin was cancelled in July; after two seasons and a massive cliffhanger, Amazon pulled the plug on the show leaving anyone who followed it (and enjoyed it) a little disappointed. Brolin said in an interview recently that he'd like to see the story concluded but it was unlikely to happen in the current climate.

This was a TV show with big bucks and big stars but was a difficult watch at times because you never really had a clue where things were going. Brolin played Royal Abbott, the head of a family of ranchers, who it seems came out of nowhere in the 1970s and was adopted by the Abbott family. On his land is a black hole; a seeming portal to different times and alternate existences. Included in this was his wife played by Lili Taylor, his two sons - Lewis Pullman and Tom Pelphrey and his grand daughter played by Olive Abercrombie and Imogen Poots. The biggest problem the Abbots have, apart from themselves, is the Tillerson family who own the next door farm and want to acquire the land where the mysterious hole is. By the end of season two it was more like a game of time-related snakes and ladders than a straight forward narrative, but it was a cracking series that felt like a re-imagining of the brilliant German time travel series Dark - despite there being absolutely nothing to suggest this other than the time travel business. Hopefully someone will come along and try and get a final season made, but with many of this show's stars having moved onto bigger and greater projects, I expect that will be unlikely.

Agatha OMG

Do you know, I almost forgot I watched this, it is having such a profound effect on me... One thing is certain about episode five of Agatha All Along is the comedy (what little there was) was drained away with this, rather dark and foreboding instalment.

This is still dull and little boring, although we're learning some things, a couple of them should not surprise anyone. Agatha is an absolute bitch; she's a bad guy and no one has anything decent to say about her. She uses people, manipulates them and then 'absorbs' anything positive from a situation and turns it into her advantage and all of her coven knew this but they still came along for the ride. The biggest problem this show has apart from very little happening is the absence of jeopardy and threat. None of the characters - apart from Agatha - have been seen before, therefore no one has any investment in them and subsequently when one 'dies' it's more of a shrug moment than anything else. The underlying mystery of who 'Teen' is might be interesting now it's clear he isn't Agatha's sacrificed son, especially the closing scene of this part, which suggests he's going to be one of the Romanov twins - the children Wanda had in WandaVision but, of course, were just constructs from her warped and damaged mind. To be honest, that works for me because we're talking magic here and I figure it's a template for 'no holds barred, we can do anything'. 

This week was also another opportunity for the cast to dress up in groovy, multi-coloured outfits like they're about to appear on a 1980s Noel Edmonds TV show. There were also some nods to other MCU films that include magic in them and the Salem Seven showed up again - a genuinely scary bunch of characters, I'm hoping they offer some resistance in the closing four parts because at the moment they're a creepy looking damp squib. This series will not go down as a glorious success.

Next Time...

It's been a busy week and most of the TV viewing has been parts of boxsets. Next week, as well as the latest instalments of Agatha All Along and The Penguin, there will conclusions for Brassic and Slow Horses. In the queue waiting to be watched are season two of The Old Man, that 2022 HBO series Let The Right One In, there's also Grotesquerie and Teacup to be started. We left Grimm at the end of season three with a cliffhanger, but we're trying to have some variety in what we're watching, so we might try and go another week without dipping back into creepy Portland...

There are films on the FDoD and on the set top box hard drive; Caddo Lake and Speak No Evil are two films recently released that will be prioritised over the older stuff. It will be what it will be and you'll be the first to see it, next Saturday...

 

Modern Culture - Blood and Blunders

Frankly, this once, I don't give a shit about spoilers...

BoredPool and Dullverine

It has been almost a year since the last Marvel/MCU film. That was the woefully poor The Marvels, which was considerably worse than I thought it was going to be. You might also note that usually I give an entire column over to the latest MCU film, but this once I thought, 'Ah fuck it. It can slum it with the rest of the shite.'

Honestly? Deadpool & Wolverine is not a good film. It actually gets quite boring after a while as it lurches from one set piece to another; a movie in search of a fathomable story. It rides roughshod over some Marvel history and has unnecessary cameos, which felt more like who they could get rather than anyone top quality or they would have liked. Yes, Chris Evans is good, but where are the other members of this FF? Or any of the others for that matter? The TVA, in this, have driven a Mad Max styled car through the excellent Loki series with their appearance and Matthew McFadyen's Mr Paradox is far too slimy to be anything other than a twat. When you have the third part of a trilogy (albeit one that no one saw coming for a few years) you'd expect it to feel like it was some kind of special event. This felt like they got loaned one of the old location sites used for Doctor Who shows in the 1970s and ran wild with it. Huge swathes of this make no sense at all - absolutely nothing. Why were the army of other Deadpools so determined to kill 'our' Wade and his Wolverine? Is that dog for real and if so was it painful? I felt like I needed to write a concerned letter to the Kennel Club. What about the 'villain' - the bald twin sister of Charles Xavier, introduced in the comics after my time and... um... why is she bald? Charlie lost his hair when he was young to something un-mutant related, so why is his twin sister bald? It was for the look and the style, wasn't it? Bald lady villain look good!!!

This was a truly awful movie. The first LOL moment for me came 100 minutes into it and while there was a second inside the following ten minutes, this is a poor return for a 'franchise' that prides itself on its comedy and despite the first two films being okay, they were far funnier than this. D&W really did feel as though it was written with the exact brief of simply being more Deadpool [Read: Ryan Reynolds] than the first two. I mean, if there was ever a place to use as a dumping ground for bad ideas - Kang maybe? - or a place to literally show where bad ideas go to die, this film could have done it and claimed afterwards that while it was a piss take, the actual continuity in it is proper. Anyhow after all this nonsense, Deadpool remains on his own timeline, which he has made healthier - gosh and darn - and with a heap of luck we may never see a fourth film ever materialise or hopefully an X-Men movie ever again. There's this pained expression on Huge Ackman's face for most of the movie, like he was doing this for a favour and the money wasn't good enough to assuage the feeling of having been conned by an old buddy. What astounds me is the 8 rating on IMDB; the fact that people liked this heap of shite even though it was an incoherent mess of guts and shit. Remember when other people said 'normal' people reviews were the true reflection of a movie because there was no vested interest in it for the reviewer? That's a crock of shit. If you haven't seen this and were considering it, perhaps go for a curry the night before - have extra poppadums, a naan, a healthy starter and a Vindaloo to take home; drink 17 pints of Guinness, eat lots of lentil snacks and avoid going anywhere near a toilet until you're about to start this film; then take a laxative and run.

Bang the Drum

It was a big film 10 years ago. I think it won an Oscar or two and everything from the subject to the way it was played out won kudos and praise from Hollywood and it barely ever registered on my radar. A film about sadistic drum teachers and subservient pupils doesn't really sound like a riveting thing and to be honest, it wasn't that interesting.

It's clear from almost the first minute of Whiplash that Miles Teller wanted to be a brilliant drummer, so that he would help his cause to get there he would allow himself to be mentally abused on a daily basis while simultaneously being treated like a piece of shit isn't really that different from real life, except JK Simmons plays the teacher with a casual cruelty that's about maximum hurt. In fact, it becomes clear this is simply an allegory for any kind of 'domestic' abuse, even down to the desire to return to it even if it is bad for you, the highs are so much better. It is not a likeable film; Teller is weaselly and cold while Simmons is fire and brimstone, in a 'there-could-be-Oscars-in-this-for-us' way and the denouement was a mixture of the sadist and the masochist routine but with a huge nod to how without pain there is no gain. Like I said, not likeable, very American with a message that it is both bad, but good, to live your life this way.

Fishing For a Spark

I doesn't even feel like it was last year we were here talking about the then most recent Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing series and I was suggesting that maybe it needed to go out to pasture, maybe wheel the pair out for a Christmas special every yule where they get sent to ridiculously inhospitable places around the globe as they get older and more likely to have some repeat but deadlier cardiac infarction. So when they concluded said series with a reminder that this wasn't the end of their fishing trips, they were already planning season 6, we all knew that something that probably didn't need to be would be back for another.

The opener took the boys back to Norfolk and in search of tench and carp and it also managed to fit in the chat with the heart doctor who saved Bob's life - as they do every series. One gets the idea that Bob enjoys his couple of weeks filming round the UK with his mate, while Paul has seemed increasingly like he'd rather we doing ten other things - literally. However, that feeling had disappeared slightly with a poignant and slow but graceful episode which saw the boys catch three of the biggest fish we've seen on this show and having done this seems to have allowed Paul Whitehouse to enjoy himself again. There is a strange competition between the two men, one I don't think Bob is aware of, so while Paul was pleased as punch that Bob caught an absolute hefty tench, when he pulled an even bigger one and then a monster carp, there was the sense of competition in his eyes and face. It did feel like it had been given a refresh without doing much than returning to what it became popular for.

Criminal Moves

The Penguin needed to be something extraordinary to pull off even getting close to its first stunning episode and I'm sorry to say it didn't get close. It wasn't bad, but I think I see what the problem is and it makes some sense...

There's this thing in comics that having a run of 6 issues in a popular comic written by different people every month might provide a good idea, but there's going to be something jarring about the stuff that isn't the main story that everyone is sticking with. It's usually dialogue and/or character interaction between each issue that makes it feel a little incongruous. Episode one does such a good job of showing this longstanding knowledge even borderline friendship between Sofia Falcone and Oz, and the conclusion of that episode would have been noted by the Sofia from episode one, but she seemed to be gone in the second part. The interaction between her and Oz was like two strangers at times; conversations you feel would have been had many years before episode one was even thought of. But, meh, it was a small foible that bugged me. Other than that it was yet another episode of Oz causing as much chaos and havoc from inside the Falcone operation while managing never to get the finger pointed at him. I'm hoping that the 'goal' Oz talks about is what is achieved in the coming season and we don't just have HBO trying to recreate the Sopranos using some background Batman cast. 

The Backfire

We return to one of the regular - sometimes rhetorical - questions I ask myself in this blog: why do I believe that The Guardian would direct me towards a good movie when it has systematically failed to do so for the last five years or so? To be honest, the 'newspaper' is batting a very poor 20%, possibly even lower than that, in the 'do I trust the review' game and while this one only got a three-star rank, I entered into it with a degree of, dare I say it, optimism. I don't know why... Could this, for me, be... The Last Straw... ..?

Jessica Belkin has just been promoted to management at her family diner in the arse end of nowhere. She's just discovered she's pregnant, she fucks anything that moves, so the father could be one of a few people and she has an attitude problem that makes you wonder why anyone would want to go near here. On her first night 'in charge' she fires the cook Jake, for no real reason other than she's an arsehole and he's a bit of a twat. She does this because he gets smart about some even wankier idiots who come into the diner and cause a stink. It should have been at this point - about 25 minutes in - when we should have turned it off and watched something else. The acting was poor and there didn't seem to be much of a story. Then the diner is attacked by some dodgy guys on mopeds - possibly the ones who gave her a bad time earlier. Then the film gets turned on its head and even this twist isn't enough to make it better than shite. It's got a 5.3 rating on IMDB; I would have avoided it like the plague, but something about the Guardian review made me think maybe all the people who watched this and realised it was a load of shite, maybe they got it wrong and the Guardian had uncovered a low budget violent thriller that really rocked. Or maybe it would just be like the watery discharge from some one suffering from dysentery, but the Guardian is paid by sadists to tell us crap films are really quite good...

Ring Burner

And so we watched The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for the last time, because we won't be wasting our time if and when they make a third season. It is a television series that looks like it was made by a man who creates fantasy screensavers and backdrops. The dangling plot threads seemed to be 'concluded' in a list - let's start here and work our way through all the different subplots we have running and then we can set things up for the next series and hope we employ someone who knows how to write a fantasy show - and while some died and some not, did I give an actual jot? No I didn't. There were a few nods and winks - the Balrog, Sauron being called LOTR and all the suspense around Galadriel - obviously pointless because we know she's knocking around in a thousand years time, which begs the (unanswered) question about how they're going to pad this series out and what stories will they use. The thing is I don't care. I'm done with it. Dull.

Have You Seen the Witch?

Here's the thing. Marvel doesn't do good quality now; it does Marvel stuff, which covers a shedload of bases and means fuck all in the face of a quality threshold. Agatha All Along is boring, extremely camp, and this week we got another rendition of the witch song from episode one. 

This is simply not that good. It plods along with no real pace, is very wordy and talks about people we have no knowledge of or no interest in; it's either lazy or just not very well thought out. Hahn is borderline annoying and her coven are there to add important link verbiage so she can talk some more about herself or the mysterious new Green witch - Plaza. This week the autumn leaves road takes them to another house, this time to delve into another of the coven's histories and an excuse to dress up and do a sunshine 60s homage pop tune just to ensure the campness is ramped up even higher. MCU TV isn't batting a good average - Loki was superb but they're already ruining that's legacy. The Falcon and Bucky thing was okay and oddly enough WandaVision now feels groundbreaking, the rest are varying degrees of shite, even the ones that you want to like (Ms Marvel) are largely what remains inside a writer's bowels after he's been murdered by a bowel eating killer.  

The Modern Vampire Classic Trashed

If we want to be honest about the two previous Salem's Lot TV mini-series, it would be that neither were that good, probably because they were made for networked TV; so a full-length feature film of the classic modern vampire story and one of Stephen King's seminal offerings seemed like a match made in heaven. Then you hear that it was actually finished in 2021 and a lot of work was 'needed'. I don't think anything was needed apart from maybe a film editor who was allowed to watch the thing he'd been given a pair of scissors to attack. This new film stars Lewis Pullman, my actor du jour and about to grace the Marvel stage as Bob aka Sentry in an upcoming film. He was also Calvin Evans in Lessons in Chemistry and in this he was fantastic. Maybe the reason I'm dwelling on Pullman's past is because this bit of his 'present' stinks like a bucket of fermented shit. In complete honesty, I'm perplexed as to how something like this even gets a release. Has anyone anywhere that writes cheques or gives approval for something or other not seen this? Did they not watch it and go to other people in the chain of this becoming a film and say 'we'd be better off drowning ourselves in buckets of faeces than endorse this amount of digital space'. If you know the story or have seen the other adaptations then do not go anywhere near this; treat it like some idiots have made a Lego version and remind yourself you hate Lego. If you don't know the story then also don't go anywhere near this 'movie'. It will just leave you angry and probably tired; tired of watching so much shit hoping it might be better than you hoped for.

I am genuinely flummoxed by this. It's a truly difficult thing to adapt into anything other than a min-series, yet this was almost all over and done with by the 90th minute. The makers saw fit to add things that were not in the original, yet take other bits out that might have helped the narrative a little. It had clearly been hacked to pieces almost to the point where certain characters literally have no reason. Take Pullman's Ben Mears - in the original, he was drawn back to Salem's Lot because of a scary thing that happened to him in the allegedly haunted Marston House. His arrival in the town coincided with the arrival of the vampires, thus making his 'past issues' now his present issues. He did return to write a book, the thing was he didn't know that, he just used it as an excuse. In the film, he turns up, says he's researching for a new book and you're left with this... emptiness. Mark Petrie in the book was many things, but this story was his journey from point A to Z; in the film he's a plucky little black kid who beats vampire familiar's to death with a poker. The way the film jumps around, people turn up unannounced or some of the dialogue doesn't seem to have any relationship with what's going on suggests that this was an even longer pile of shite and they took a hatchet to it to cut their losses. It has a 5.8 rating on IMDB already, that will drop as it is deserved...

Next Time...

More of the same. 

 

Pop Culture - (Black) Holes (to Fill)

The usual spoilers apply, but I will avoid them with new stuff, especially if it will really spoil it for someone who hasn't seen it yet...

P-P-P-Pick Up A Penguin

Colin Farrell is another one of those actors that we haven't seen appear in anything that hasn't been at least half decent. Earlier this year he was in the sublime genre-twisting Sugar and he's back, reprising his role as Oz Cobb in The Penguin, a direct sequel of sorts to The Batman.

This new HBO series literally follows on from the closing scenes of the Robert Pattinson/Matt Reeves film from 2022, with Oz seemingly cut adrift now his boss Falcone is dead. However, we discover that even his boss had their own bosses and his boss also has a son who, despite being a drug addict, is in line to take over the business. Oz is one step ahead of everyone it seems as he does what is necessary to keep his name out of all the 'fun and games' that is about to happen involving Gotham's two biggest crime families. This is cracking stuff and it's a surprising take on the Penguin because he might be a thug and a psychopath, but he's also got a soft side and one that is being delved into with this series. It's going to be a good old fashioned crime caper, but it will have twists and turns as well as moments that make you wonder if Oz is really the criminal he likes to think he is. The opening episode is brilliant and has a couple of superb set pieces that will make any viewer realise that this is a new show that doesn't need The Batman in it to make it unmissable. Plus Farrell is unrecognisable and unbelievable - this is a series not to be missed.

Loop the Loop

You think you've seen all the time loop films and suddenly you find two more you haven't. Last week it was Before I Fall and this week it's a new film starring Mary Louise Parker and the fantastic Ayo Edebiri (Syd from The Bear) called Omni Loop.

I'm slightly confused by this one on a number of levels. For starters, when I downloaded it at about 5pm on Saturday afternoon it was rated at 7.2 on IMDB and by the time we watched it on Saturday evening about 7.30 it had dropped to 5.5 and this time I take issue with this. What I was also confused about was the film itself, which might be why the rating has dropped like a stone. Yet, not being able to understand the film is absolutely no reason for it to be rated so low. It's an extraordinary movie that deserves our appreciation rather than receiving brickbats. Why is it extraordinary? Probably because it takes the time loop/paradox idea and turns it on its head. The weird thing is it might have a low rating but all the reviews are positive; this is a case of wankers rating it low because they haven't got the emotional maturity to understand something as poignant as this...

The movie begins with Parker in a hospital bed, her family is discussing her condition with the doctor who informs them that she has a black hole in her chest and she probably has about a week to live. This revelation plus a few other more subtle clues tells us we're not in our world, but that is inconsequential. What is important is that Parker is living in a time loop thanks to some pills she found when she was 12 which had her name on them. Take a pill and you go back a certain amount of time; for Parker she takes a tablet just as she's about to die and she wakes back up in the hospital room awaiting diagnosis and literally lives the same week over and over again, until she decides to do something about it thanks to a meeting with someone (Edebiri) she had never noticed before. This new person is a young scientist, just like Parker's character, and the two of them try to solve the conundrum of Parker's time travelling and where the pills came from in the first place.

The problem is because it is Parker's loop, only she ever remembers anything, so she must spend time convincing Edebiri to help her and we eventually learn that the two women have virtually spent a lifetime trying to work out what the hell is going on and are no further to finding out the composition of the pills than they are finding out where they came from and how to solve the riddle. I suppose the inconclusive nature of much of the movie - the genuine paradox - could be what bothers people who watched the film who either don't have a brain or expected something more like Looper, but it ends up being very similar to Before the Fall without ever falling into the old redemption thing. This is a sweet and gentle 'sci-fi' film, all about living life and accepting failure. I was none the wiser at the end than I was at the beginning, but I did think it was a superb film made with love and attention to detail. It is allegorical and while you might end up wondering what you've watched, you won't feel disappointed by it - not if you have a heart. I love time travel movies and this one just made me remember why. 

Moaning Live

Has there ever been a day time TV show quite like Morning Live? It pretty much sums up the UK without ever summing up the UK. It is a place devoid of politics and any other contentious issue, such as religion or sex and places itself firmly at the foot of middle class Britain.

Gethin Jones and a bunch of female presenters bring you a daily dose of anodyne and terrifying. This is a show that tells you on a daily basis to watch out for all those horrible scams and scammers, yet tries to get you to believe that it's the 1950s and everyone gets on with everyone else. This programme rarely talks about the divisions in the country and tries to focus our minds on the key things - such as Strictly Fitness, a five minute homage to the celebrity dancing shite, where people are encouraged to get that little bit of exercise because it will make their lives richer and full of meaning. There are cooking tips, celebrity gossip and chat and lots of tips on how to avoid anything that might cause a problem - personally or publicly. It does have an almost daily feature about how to beat the scammers. It is PCTV... Except, if you really break down the 'walls' of this show, you will notice that a large percentage of it is warning people about the nasty things other people do, while simultaneously telling us to 'love they neighbour' and how everything is great. 

Take Monday 23rd September's edition. There's a 'peoples surgery' discussion where people write in and ask (the most anodyne) questions they're seeking help and guidance on and often it's about things their neighbours do that they either like or dislike or are concerned about. Take this morning's effort; someone wrote in to complain about their neighbour's CCTV cameras suggesting it was an invasion of their own privacy. The advice given was 'have a nice conversation with them. See if you can offer them any suggestions or make it clear that you are worried about an invasion of your own privacy and see if you can come to a mutual agreement. Maybe offer solutions as to how they might be able to solve the problem they're trying to video...' ad nauseum. I mean, if someone has CCTV cameras trained on doors, gardens and drives then they're obviously concerned about burglars, trespassers and want to see who is coming to their house when they're not in - how is having a nice chat with them going to change this? If people are worried about others possibly training their cameras on them or their property - why? What do you do that you don't want others to see? And yes, I understand privacy, but this came across as a mewling and simplistic response to a question that felt manufactured. The problem I see here is the show spends half the time talking about horrid people and neighbours can be horrid people. When is something like this not going to end in an escalation and more conflict?

There was also the question of lopping off branches and overhanging garden debris from neighbours, which was quite useful in that you don't have to return it to the owners side of the garden; it might be nice to offer it to them - 'would you like this shit I've hacked off your shit tree?' - but absolutely don't just dump it over the fence because this might cause problems... I suppose we live in a world with decreasing amounts of common sense and having a show that shows you how to wipe your arse properly is probably needed... 

Trailer Trash

So, after nearly a year (was it really that long), we're awash with superhero films, TV series and trailers again. This time it's Thunderbolts* except ... how do I put this? The first teaser trailer actually landed on June 20th and can be seen here: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=thunderbolts+trailer&mid=0BE8A780CDFA1BEE7C200BE8A780CDFA1BEE7C20&FORM=VIRE and has Steven Yuen as a mysterious man seemingly chatting with Nick Fury and the subsequent video has the Taskmaster from the Black Widow movie and Zemo in it, plus a General Ross played by Harrison Ford with a moustache, which we know he loses because he makes a big thing out of it in the most recent Captain America trailer...

What that trailer does do is suggest this new team of anti-heroes must face Sentry and that they will lose. However, the new trailer looks to be a different beast entirely, even if Sentry does appear in it, albeit as 'Bob' (played by the excellent Lewis Pulman). There's no President Ross, no Steven Yuen, no old style Taskmaster and no Zemo. The reasons for these omissions have been explained but not officially. To be honest it doesn't give any idea what the plot might be apart from they've all been thrown together because someone is either out to kill them or is manipulating them enough to get them to work with each other. Don't get me wrong, as someone who has watched all the films and all but one of the TV shows, this has an appeal about it, but it would have been nice to have some idea what it's about. The first teaser trailer gave us that, but there have been rumours of extensive re-shoots, rewrites and recasting, so who can say.

The new teaser trailer is available to watch in a number of places, including IMDB, but here's the Tube of You link: https://youtu.be/v-94Snw-H4o?si=c8--G8ogIMnNPk4e and let's hope that it's a good film because when you hear about all those re-shoots, rewrites and recasting all I can think of is that woeful Marvels film from 2023. Oh and I'm sure someone will tell us what the * means at the end of the title...

Memory Banks

There's a reasonable film hidden away in Blink Twice, the problem is there are lots of problems with it. For starters, Zoe Kravitz's debut feature film is absolutely tonally wrong; if it was trying to make a statement about the subject which the second half of the movie deals with, then it didn't do it well.

The film starts with Naomi Ackie sitting on the toilet looking at her phone and seemingly swooning over disgraced tech billionaire Slater King - Channing Tatum. The key to that last sentence is 'disgraced' and yet she's still swooning over him. She and her best pal - Alia Shawcat - have waitressing gigs at a big party, hosted by the aforementioned billionaire and before you know it they're both invited back to his private island for a holiday for (possible) sex and (lots of) drugs and well, not a lot of rock and roll (but some cheesy 70s disco). In fact the first 40 minutes of the movie are just watching privileged people having fun with a couple of lower class girls along for the ride.

However, things start to go wrong when Shawcat is bitten by a snake and something in her changes. By the way, we're told the snake's aren't deadly, they just give you a nasty bite - but someone is literally harvesting them... Now, this is where it gets tonally awkward, but to tell you why would absolutely spoil the film completely. What I will say is if this film is a message about powerful men abusing vulnerable women then it's done in a really exploitative way and considering it was directed by an - one would say - emancipated women, a solid actor and the daughter of a rock icon, you would have thought it wouldn't have gone in the direction it did, or maybe she wouldn't [read: shouldn't] have made this film. It's not bad, but it is, especially the ending that is supposed to make you think Ackie is extremely emancipated, but just tells you a lot of things you don't want to think about women - such as they'll do anything for a bit of money and power, and I don't think women - most women - work that way.

Abruptly Grimm

Yeah, I know, I said I wasn't going to review this every week, but we're halfway through season three, I feel it's appropriate to update those of you who give a shit about my regular viewing habits. I read this review, which I think I mentioned in a previous blog, about the guy who went off the series when it started to become a bit more of an ongoing story series rather than standalones. What I'm finding is that the ongoing storylines are okay; especially the way Nick is assembling his own Scooby Gang of allies - human and Wesen - but some of the other ongoing plots are growing a little tedious. I never have and doubt I ever will warm to the 'Royal family' subplot, which Captain Renard is part of - it had better be worth it in the end. While Portland being the centre of weird and fucked up murders and deaths is starting to feel a little tired - I've said it before but how come so many Wesen live in Oregon? The most jarring thing about the series, which, of course, was always a problem with network TV series, is the way everything concludes so quickly. You know each episode is 42 minutes long and unless you suspect a continuation story, you know it will all be concluded by the 41st minute so that an extra wrapping it up minute can be tagged on at the end. It just feels a little rushed and convenient, especially as the ongoing nature of the series isn't about cases but about the ongoing relationships that Nick and his associates have. Yes, there will be references to the kind of Wesen met before, but it's like once one thing has been concluded it is condemned to the same memory black hole as the film reviewed above this had as a subplot...

A Family History

It's been 13 years since we last watched The Descendants, a George Clooney film which I suppose is best described as a tragi-comedy, but is really about dealing with a tragedy in the best possible way (or not, depending on how you look at it). I'm not being helpful, really. This is a movie about a rich man whose wife is fatally injured in a boating accident and the time between that accident and when she dies. it sounds very morose and maudlin, but in reality it's a good story made better by excellent actors.

Clooney is Matt King, a lawyer and the trustee of a family fortune tied up in a lot of Hawaiian land owned by his extended family. His wife, the aforementioned fatally injured woman lies in a hospital bed unlikely to get better and they have two kids - daughters - aged 17 and 10. Matt has always been, by his own admission, the secondary parent, but now he has to step up and become 'dad' while they all deal with the tragedy that is about to befall them. Matt can't understand why his eldest daughter - Shailene Woodley - has such a hate on for her mother and is such a rebellious and problematic young woman, until she tells him that her mother and his wife was having an affair and was planning on leaving him. as you can imagine, this causes untold extra stress on Matt, who is already struggling to deal with the situation. It's from this point on where dad and his two daughters begin to bond like never before, as they steer their way through the shit that is about to happen and Matt's eldest helps her father do some things that only make sense when you realise that Matt is actually a really nice guy, just a bit on the boring side and probably senses that his wife's infidelity wasn't helped by him.

There are some interesting cameos in this movie; Matthew Lillard (Shaggy from the Scooby Doo films) plays Brian Speer, the man who had an affair with Matt's wife. Robert Forster plays Matt's father-in-law, a man with a serious blame problem. Beau Bridges plays one of Matt's cousins and another of those cousins is played by Michael Ontkean, sheriff Harry S Truman from Twin Peaks. The interesting thing about this cameo is Ontkean is on screen about eight minutes in total and doesn't utter a single word. This is a movie that has some funny moments; it's very tender and deals with a difficult subject in a gentle but honest way and everyone in it is excellent. I remember really liking it first time around and I haven't changed that opinion 13 years later. Alexander Payne, the film's director, was also the director of The Holdovers, one of the best films of 2023, set in the late 60s about a teacher having to 'babysit' a number of boarding school students unable to join their respective families for the holidays.

An Army of Shite

I find, or rather I have found, since doing this blog on a regular basis that films tend to age well. I reckon at least three quarters of all films I've watched and then watch again end up being more enjoyable. Maybe it's because I pay more attention or I can follow it better. This was definitely not the case with Army of the Dead.

Zach Snyder's most recent entry in 'the dead' series is essentially a heist movie with zombies and where it seemed to be an interesting and stylised piece of shite the first time around it was just extremely dull and almost [ahem] predictable on second viewing. I just seemed to recall it being more exciting, with more zombies and a bit more character development for a film that's almost two and a half hours long. Interestingly, the prequel - Army of Thieves is a much better film and if you've seen that and not seen this then don't watch this because it's a load of crap. Or if I wanted to be all down wiv Dead Las Vegas I'd say a load of craps. Dave Bautista plays a man who has got out of Vegas once before but is tempted to do it again for $50million. All he has to do is rob a vault of $200million and he can keep a quarter of it and distribute it between his team as he sees fit. Others are in it as well, including 'dead' veteran Garret Dillahunt and Tig Notaro. It's much worse than other Snyder films, much worse. Avoid like a plague of super zombies.

The Tolkien Thing

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is up to its penultimate episode of its second season. There was a lot of action. People seemed to die. The ring maker sussed out the bad guy. It's looking grim all round. There's one episode to go.

Witchy Women

After a very promising beginning, the third episode of Agatha All Along gives us an explanation as to why some of the media outlets who got the first four episodes before anyone else thought it was slow. The explanation is it's slow. After a very speedy first two parts, this one made like a sloth and chilled.

In fact, I'd be hard pressed to tell you what happened. The witches entered a smart looking house and are promptly set a task for which they have 30 minutes to solve. They don't know what the task is, how to solve it or what is going on so they sit around and drink some wine and get all paranoid about everything. Then the woman who isn't a witch has some stuff happen and then she dies, I think. I say I think because it struggled to hold my attention. The rest of the witches now know that Teen has an enchantment on him and there's a long and very specific scene where someone tells the 'Teen' that Agatha sold her own child for the Dark Hold and it was done in such a way, if the Teen turns out to be her son I will be very surprised. This needs some pace and the feeling of jeopardy and movement because it stopped stone dead here. We know that Audrey Plaza re-enters the show next week and while she's not the fabulous nerd queen she was about ten years ago, she can still bring more to the party than any of the other actors in this.

Incidentally, the wife isn't a fan. I thought the first two parts had something going for them, but she informed me as we were about to watch episode three that she isn't impressed and thought it was a bit boring and meh. After watching the third part, I'm inclined to agree. However, we tend to forget that this was supposed to be released last autumn, but got pulled from the schedule and had some rewrites and re-shoots take place over the last twelve months - and there were problems with this last year, which meant there was a question mark hanging over whether it would eventually make the TV screens. It could be that time has made us forget this was almost cannon fodder for a struggling 2023 MCU and seems to have arrived the past conveniently forgotten about...

Barely a Growl

What's not to like about a film with Brad Pitt and George Clooney - even now, with them both in their 60s. The problem is it needs to be something special and Wolfs isn't that film. I simply didn't know what I was watching - comedy, drama, mystery, I was never 100% sure.

These now veteran actors play the same role, ostensibly, as two 'fixers' called to do a job where only one of them would do. This never happens; they didn't even know each other existed and it gets stinkier from that point on. I'm not really sure where the film even is a film... The men are called to clear up a mess - the DA is in a hotel room with a dead young man and she needs the mess clearing up. There's a thinly plotted bit of nonsense about how the two men have to work with each other, but for a large part of the rest of the film it was just the two actors sniping at each other. The thing is the dead young man also has a large quantity of narcotics on him and apparently this makes it more complicated until the dead kid wakes up because he's not dead and really, at this point, the film becomes a bit pointless, but it still trundles along for another half an hour or so with stuff that feels contrived and unrealistic. These guys must have read the script, they must have seen how ... meh ... it looked on paper? Pitt and Clooney don't need the money, do they? If so, why? They look like some middle aged guy's parents - maybe even gay parents. 

Next Time...

Does it even matter?

Modern Culture: Old Demons and New

Spoilerific wassnames abound...

Twisting the Witch's Tail

So here we are. The latest Marvel TV show and absolutely a direct sequel to Wandavision even if it's only a direct sequel by virtue of it being set in Westview and featuring a lot of that show's original cast. 

Agatha All Along is in many ways, at this early stage, a bit difficult to explain. It's nine parts and we've seen two of them and they do little more than set us up for what will happen; or at least that's what I think is going to happen. It starts with what appears to be a TV show with Agatha - Kathryn Hahn - as a worn out police detective, back from suspension, trying to solve the death of a Jane Doe. Whether this will have any bearing on the rest of the series is unknown, but my guess is there will be some link otherwise it was a detailed set up that wasn't a set up at all; just a cruel unbroken joke played by a now dead former hero who created a place where she and the Vision could live happily ever after. In fact 25 minutes of the detective series is played out, and then thanks to Audrey Plaza as Agatha's sworn enemy we get dragged back into the real world - the post Wanda Westview; a place that is still traumatised by the Scarlet Witch nearly three years after she left. A mysterious (and very camp) kid is trying to show Agatha who she really is because he wants her to take him on to the Witches' Road - a place that is dangerous but can bestow anyone who completes it with what they are missing to make them whole again. The kid doesn't appear to be able to tell Agatha anything about himself and if he tries his mouth either gets sewn up when he speaks or his voice just fades away. His presence is enough to shake Agatha out of her funk and into action. However, at the same time Agatha's sworn nemesis, someone with a black heart (Plaza again) attempts to kill her and she persuades her enemy to allow her to restore her witchy powers so she can be bested as a complete witch and not weak and powerless. 

With this challenge accepted, she then needs to recruit a number of witches with different powers to create a new coven to be able to go to the Witches' Road and much of the second episode is spent finding the right witches - all of whom have their own problems and most know and despise Agatha but are all drawn to her and her desire to restore what is missing from her life. The five witches and the mystery boy, now known as Teen, begin their journey and we have no idea what is going to happen. I have to say that this might have worked better without all the trailers, because the opening of the first episode and its impact is kind of lost when we know it doesn't have a huge role to play in subsequent parts. There is an element of 'musical' about it but not in the way you may have been dreading and it absolutely doesn't deserve the 6.8 rating on IMDB, but less than 24 hours after it came out it was as low as 6.5. If you read those reviews you will see a thread of misogynism and stupid boys who want their superheroes to all be male and rugged but heroic - a kind of unspoken homoeroticism lurking in the background, I have no doubt. It was okay. it looks very good and the dialogue is snappy. It wasn't what I expected and therefore I'm intrigued.

Something Orcish

So, what happened this week in the programme with almost the longest title on television (as you will find out later in this week's blog, there is something with an even longer and more bewildering title than...) The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Well, one of the two little Irish Harfoots, Nori, is suddenly being depicted as quite elven and sexy. it's weird, but she seems to be wearing eyeliner and has shed a couple of stones. I don't know if they're deliberately sexing her up or if there's some other reason for it, but she's absolutely being portrayed as something other than cutely frumpish, as she was. The 'Gandalf' character is spending time with Tom Bombadil, who appears to be teaching him how to magic proper. In Numenor there's a revolution going on involving a sea creature and the blind ex-queen and the rest of it was just Sauron being Sauron and deceiving elves and orcs and humans. Last week there appeared to be an episode of building up for something to happen and this week was the beginning of something happening. I expect next week will be the start of other things happening and episode eight will have things happen, but not tumultuous things because Amazon hope to make three more series after this. Woo and indeed Hoo. I doubt we'll be joining them on that journey should it arise.

Overrating the Cannibal

It's been over 30 years since we last watched one of the most famous films of the last 40 years. The much praised, but largely overrated The Silence of the Lambs. If ever there was a film that lives on a reputation it is this one, with its overwrought performances and highly telegraphed set pieces.

The film that put Anthony Hopkins [back] on the map and reinvigorated Jodie Foster's film career is actually a very slight thing and feels very dated and pseudo-psychological now. Jonathan Demme's seminal movie won Oscars and high praise, but now feels a little tawdry and cheap. Some of the shock tactics of the opening minutes feel a little sleazy now and the relationship between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lector feels quick and contrived. There are some good parts of this movie - Lector's eventual escape from the police is quite a clever thing - but in general it just feels like style over substance. The fact that the serial killer in this film was a former acquaintance of Lector's feels a little too coincidental, or that the FBI would send a trainee to talk to a maximum security lunatic because they know he'll be more inclined to talk to an 'innocent' than anyone else also feels like a plot device rather than clever writing. It is a good film - for its time - but there is much about it now that feels sensationalistic and to shock. I've seen better films with fewer points on IMDB's rating system, especially in the last week or so...

Spare Us the Cutter

If you ever fancy going to the theatre and you don't know what to see then I'd advise you to find a stream or DVD of The Outfit, a film made in 2022 with the fantastic Mark Rylance in it.

This 'movie' is set in one place - a tailor's shop in 1956 Chicago where Rylance plays Leonard Burling, a Brit living in the USA and running his own bespoke men's outfitters. He's also a front for a local mob family; a place where people drop things for the 'family'. He works with a young local girl called Mabel, played by Zoey Deutch, who is sleeping with one of the mob family but doesn't think Burling knows about it. The entire film is about the mob thinking they're on the verge of joining a crime syndicate but have suspicions that there is a mole inside their organisation and the way everything spirals out of control, but how Burling keeps on top of the escalating situation with the same kind of aplomb as his suit making skills. It's an intriguing little 'film' but it's not exactly action-packed, has as many British actors in it as American and Simon Russell Beale as the crime boss is extraordinarily bad casting - this fine actor does British and aristocracy fantastically well, but Chicago crime boss? Nah, not so good. It would have made an interesting one act play and feels a little like the kind of thing that was made during the pandemic. I'm glad I watched it, but somehow I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone else.

Things I Will Never Watch

There's a lot of stuff out there that I see - on Torrents sites and on film and TV sites - that either astounds me with the titles or makes me think I'm never going to watch anything called that as long as I have a hole in my arse. You may have heard of some of these; a few of them are anime series, so you expect them to be a little weird...

Take The Ossan Newbie Adventurer Trained to Death by the Most Powerful Party Became Invincible for example; this anime series could be about anything and it might help if it was translated into a form of English that is easily understood. It's a Japanese series about a man who served the strongest fighters who decides to start fighting himself when he reaches middle age. Looking at the pictures of the series on IMDB I expect it has lots of 'action' sequences and no end of buxom women who all look like slightly constipated elves.

Staying with anime, there's the humorously titled A Journey Through Another World Raising Kids While Adventuring, which is obviously relatively self-explanatory. One wonders why the Japanese can't give things catchy titles, in this case something like Irresponsible Wankers. Then there's That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime which is such a good title I'm not even going to google it. I'm just going to leave it there and you can use your imagination...

Four Go Flatting was almost impossible to find, but it turns out it's a New Zealand reality show about four intellectually challenged individuals who leave the safety of their parents' homes and get flats. I just hope New Zealand TV is less exploitative than US or UK TV.  Ancient Aliens has been going for 20 seasons; it began in 2009 and basically explores the relationship between science and mythology - or in other words it extrapolates a scientific thesis and then equates it to some bollocks. There's this British TV show called Strictly Come Dancing that appears to be about a number of dominatrix that learn to dance while having orgasms, which sounds quite good but looks gaudy and has awful presenters. 

The excitingly titled Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives would probably have been more fun if it had been called Dinners, Drive-Bys and Daves, but it wasn't. This is more self-explanatory than the above anime series. DD&D has been going almost 20 years and started in 2006. It's essentially a guy driving round the USA looking for the eponymously mentioned places and rating them. Imagine Man versus Food but with no challenge, less critique and a real dick presenting it. Talking about shows that would benefit from slight name changes - making the programme far more interesting - take Cheap Irish Homes presented by Maggie Molloy; this series explores what you can buy in Ireland for as little money as possible. However, had it been called Cheap Irish Holmes it conjures up everything from a rubbish detective from Dublin to a crap Cork-born 800m runner...

Finally there's this thing called Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power which, I believe, is a gay dating show about who has the tightest sphincters on the block. If I didn't know what Bluey was I'd want it to be the adventures of a frozen corpse and the show called Beat Bobbie Flay should be about acts of violence towards someone called Bobby but it's a cooking show. Damn. 

Over and Over Again

I thought I'd seen every time loop/reliving the same day film worth its salt, but something turned up that I'd not heard of so I had to give it a chance. Before I Fall is essentially a YA emo version of Groundhog Day and here's something unusual, the following paragraph contains a massive spoiler...

Ennit weird when you watch a movie with an actor in it you're not familiar with and a couple of days later you watch another film, made five years earlier, and it has the same actor in it. This has happened with Zoey Deutch this week; she played Mabel in The Outfit and is the lead in this film about a high school graduate reliving the same day - February 12 - over and over until she does the right thing. What the right thing is probably sets it aside from all other redemption arc time loop films because usually the main protagonist relives the same day until they do something altruistic, change their outlook on life and everyone lives happily ever after. With Before I Fall this is indeed the premise and like Groundhog Day it doesn't matter what Sam Kingston - Deutch - does - lives, dies, etc - she wakes back up at roughly the same time the next day. There is this slight twist in that she doesn't always wake up at the same time, but most of the following day goes very much how it went the first time. You can see a lot of movies with a similar theme in this - it's not original - but I suppose what sets this apart from other films of the same ilk is - and here's that spoiler so look away if you ever decide to watch this - this one doesn't have a happy ending, at least not for Sam.

It's not a bad film if you like this kind of thing. It follows the same well worn path except this is focused on these teenagers and the lives they lead and the good or bad decisions that are made. There are so things that happen in it that make me wonder if so much change could be enacted in such a short space of time and there were elements in it that felt a little uncomfortable for a PG rated movie clearly aimed at teenagers and with a slight whiff of God about it. Don't get me wrong, this doesn't feel like a religious film, but it delves into the kind of tropes that you'd expect to see in a film made by The Bible Network, even if God is not really mentioned at all.

A Pause for Thought

Horror films. Ghost stories. Monsters. Psychological thrillers. Well, maybe not so much that last one, but I'll tell you why later. The first three are all designed to scare us, either by trying to be frightening or with jumps and good editing. The thing is we all know [that kind of] the supernatural is a fairy tale with monsters and fewer princesses. 

Imaginary monsters really don't exist and ghosts? I don't know. It's probably got to do with how humans are a range of areas on a spectrums except this spectrum is the sense of possibly seeing on a different level to others and even then they might not be ghosts but an altogether more science fiction thing, which we don't need to bog us down. Monsters aren't real (apart from human ones), zombies, the walking dead, ancient creatures, modern ones - none of it real. The supernatural is a fantastic creation of human imagination probably based originally on what you couldn't see at night.

So, why do they scare some people and others watch them like a boring sports game? And why can't we all understand that what is about to happen is on film, it's a story and people are not eaten by giant slug monsters living in ancient woodland. Ever. Horror films only work if you're gullible enough to believe the myths they're peddling. However, psychological thrillers tend to be scarier because they deal with human beings and as we're all well aware humans are fucking nasty creatures capable of mindboggling acts of depravity. The reason they can be very scary is because, unlike fictional monsters, we all know it would not be impossible for us to fall victim of someone very sick and twisted.

Picking on the Wrong Person

There's been a lot of good things said about Rebel Ridge over the last couple of months. It's basically a thinking man's First Blood - the debut Rambo film before he went really gung ho. It's the story of a man on a mission to save his cousin who unfortunately runs into the wrong cops on his way to paying his cousin's bail money. From then on in it was just a matter of time before this movie went BANG!

Brit actor Aaron Pierre plays Terry Richmond, a former army training officer who has sold most of his stuff to fund the bail of his cousin, who might have ratted on some dodgy guys in his past. Richmond is in a race against time to get his cousin out before he goes to the local penitentiary - on remand - because if he's recognised he could easily be killed. Unfortunately, for Richmond, he's black, on a push bike and the target of a couple of overzealous and racist Hicksville cops. Now what these dodgy boys in blue have is an obscure law on their side that means they will keep Richmond's $35000 and he won't have a leg to stand on, even if he fights it legally - the money is lost. However, it turns out the money is lost to a bunch of corrupt local police officers and they don't like a black guy causing waves. Then some shit hits the fans and the police try to back track and in doing so they inadvertently make matters even worse.

This film could easily have simply fallen into a revenge thriller category, but a young paralegal wants to help, even if it's putting her safety at risk, because it seems a number of people are being held in prison for crimes that don't carry prison sentences, but the money involved always ends up in the chief's pocket and appears to be funding the police force - which had its funding cut after a civil case for wrongful arrest goes against them. From this point on it's about trying to prove the cops are corrupt without killing any of them, but doing enough damage to really upset a few people. It's perhaps a little overlong at just over two hours, but it rattles along at a pace. Don Johnson is good as the chief - he's having something of a renaissance in recent years - and naturally it leaves you with yet another sense of the USA being the shittiest place on the planet to live. Aaron Pierre is not someone I'm familiar with but he plays a surprisingly menacing dead pan American with some special moves.

Next Time...

The Penguin is on the agenda as well as the third part of Agatha All Along. The Middle Earth nonsense creeps towards its final episode and we've happened upon a two year old TV adaptation of Let the Right One In which we're going to be watching. We'll have the usual amount of Grimm, we're on season three now and despite them being in the same format as the previous two seasons, the subtitles don't work any longer - which is a pain in the arse. You probably might not maybe here about that, because if you've seen it, it was a long time ago and if you haven't seen it and are tempted by it you're not going to want to read my reviews of a series you haven't caught up with yet.

There will be films, there always is.