Modern Culture - A Mixed Bag

The spoilers are here, there and occasionally everywhere...

Holey Underpants*

If at first you don't enjoy, try, try again. We went into the fourth episode of Fallout with very low expectations. My argument to the wife was, 'We used to give any series four episodes before we gave up with it and this hasn't been that bad, has it?' The thing was I was feeling as though I was convincing myself as well. This series had been too corny and slightly 'crazy' for my liking; there was just a little too much... dare I suggest it... silliness. 

I think we're both glad we did, so here is my review of Fallout: Season one; episodes 4-6: Blimey, we didn't see that coming. It makes me wonder what possessed the makers of this series to have made the first three parts so derivative and slightly corny; there was too much humour and reverential bollocks in it that it almost put us off and I expect anyone else not familiar with the game franchise would have felt the same way. Just what and where was this going? However, almost from the word go in episode four and despite the appearance [?] of Matt Berry's voice as a slightly psychotic organ harvesting robot, everything about this took a turn for the darker. This literally stopped being a 'black' comedy and just became 'black'; it took on a quite creepy and unpleasant feel. It also started to ask questions of the viewer, such as how much have you been paying attention and has everything you've been told actually the truth...

Let's start with the timeline. This is set 218 years after a nuclear war, in what was clearly - or it appeared to be - an alternate 1950s to the one we had. That would make it - the present day in the series - around the 2170s, except it's closer to the 2270s according to some rather large clues given away and while the flashbacks to Cooper Howard's film star days really do suggest a technologically more advanced 1950s, some things about it seem decidedly off-kilter. Coop's wife is spending large amounts of time developing vaults for Vault-Tec - some vaults would be better than others and all of them were being prepared for the inevitable nuclear war - which Coop has been informed is only inevitable because Vault-Tec is going to make sure it happens. Yet, has it really been 218 years because Coop is still 'alive' even if he's now a ghoul and the woman who was leading the revolution against Vault-Tec is very much alive and is now known as Mordeva and has Lucy's father, who himself has a now rather strange history, one which Norm, his son, has been digging into, seems to have links to the distant past as well. Then there's Betty - in Vault 33, who I'm beginning to think is Coop's ex-wife, because of things both of them say. There's also this feeling that everything is going to be interconnected.

The real story now is just who are the bad guys and just what is going on in the vaults, how are they getting their food and what is going on in Vault 31, that has led to every Overseer of Vault 33 having once been a resident of 31. What's the score with Vault 4 and what is happening on level 12 and will Maximus realise that he's being brainwashed with lavish things, especially for him? This has become anything but a comedy and is now a very serious drama with some quirks. Is the Ghoul really the bad guy? What are the Brotherhood of Steel really doing and do they even know it? They seem to be searching for old Vault-Tec equipment - because we now know that Vault-Tec were the people who made their suits and that they were around when Coop was a human because he wore one in the early years of the war against the Reds. How come people from when Coop was normal are still alive now? Even Maximus claims that he was a young boy when the bombs dropped, which suggests either we're seeing flashbacks to a period when California was its own republic or there's been another nuclear war since the first one. It has, without a doubt, turned into a puzzle inside an enigma and now it's dispensed with the slapstick and low level comedy Mad Max stereotypes, it has developed into something really quite good. Is it possible that the flashbacks we're seeing, to an alternative 1950s, are really set in the Republic of California and are set in the late 2050s and fashion has dictated that everything has a retro 1950s feel? I expect some things will be explained, but I suspect we're going to be waiting for season two for anything to be answered.

Fallout - Season one; episodes 7 & 8: the first season concluded in a spectacular way; it exceeded my expectations and set things up very nicely for season two. Things started to fall into place - and many of my questions were answered - and we saw the story from three different perspectives - Lucy discovered one side of it when she finally got Wilzig's head to Mordeva and found her father; Norm found out another perspective when he discovered the truth about Vault 31 and in the past, Cooper Howard discovered all the pieces in between as he found out what Vault-Tec and especially his own wife had planned for the end of the world.

Maximus was given another chance by the Brotherhood when he tried to deceive them over the head and he also discovered just what his brothers had planned and just how bonkers they all are. Coop in the future met Erik Estrada - of CHiPs fame - and killed both of his sons on his way to a rendezvous with the Brotherhood and the raiders led by Moldeva. His relationship with Hank McLean is also explained as we discover just how old some of the people involved in this story really are - how some of them have survived as long as they have is easily explained, others not so much, but it does seem that in Fallout world the laws of physics don't apply so much. The end of the finale has strange alliances formed, more questions answered and decisions to be made. There are still a lot of unanswered questions but I suppose they have to keep things going for the inevitable second season. In the end it was worth persevering with.
* Holey Underpants = something you get Fallout from...

Scary Monsters

I didn't really know what to expect from the Netflix series Baby Reindeer. This Richard Gadd vehicle has had a lot of publicity, mainly because Gadd is a comedian and yet this is pretty much a horror story about his life with a serial stalker. It's based on his own true story, he's changed the names and some of the details. It was brave of him to star in it.

Gadd plays Donny, a hopeful young comedian trying to break through in London and Jessica Gunning plays Martha, a woman who lives in a total fantasy and fabricated world who latches onto Donny when he shows her an act of kindness when she is distraught about something we never discover. From the moment he is nice to her his world is turned upside down; however, it is made worse by his own fascination with the woman, which further fuels her belief that the two of them are destined to be lovers and forever partners or at the very least are involved in a relationship. It is far more disturbing and scary than it is funny, although it does have some humorous moments, this is about psychological obsession and mental health issues that threaten to escalate into dangerous situations. Gadd's character is not only weirdly obsessed by the attentions of Martha, he's also developed his own hang-ups, maybe even sexual peccadillos - he appears to be attracted to transgender women, except is he? He is portrayed as a straight male with a healthy interest in sex, but he is surrounded by all kinds of different sexual behaviours - from an obsessive woman, two very butch gay bosses, his former girlfriend's mother, who dotes on him like her lost son, but also looks at him like she's discovering a lost sexual appetite; then there's his attraction to and time spent on transgender dating sites - he is 'turned on by the different' and Gadd is honest enough to suggest that the problems had with Martha might have been exacerbated by his desire to be the centre of attention or by the trauma from his past that he didn't want to confront but we get to see full on. This is a deeply psychological tale. 

Whatever Donny's interests are they pale into insignificance as Martha turns the screw and begins to assert her lunacy further and deeper into his life. Everything he does she goes out of her way to sabotage as she pops up constantly in his life and drives herself to the brink of illness blatantly stalking him. There are some truly chilling and scary moments and it certainly starts to feel more like a horror story at the halfway point when Martha's obsession turns violent. This is a really disturbing television series and while it is quite excellent it really isn't comfortable viewing. It also deserves to win awards; Gadd is brilliant in it, as is Gunning and it is truly compelling viewing with unexpected things happening and some very difficult to watch scenes. It truly is a unique piece of television and one that I'd recommend people watch. Netflix at its best.

A Gray Tale

We went into The Gray Man thinking we must have seen it because we both remembered Chris Evans looking like a nerdy Freddy Mercury tribute act - I mean, how could we forget a film where he looks so fucking stupid? But it seems that we only remembered the look from things we must have seen on TV or in the press because this Ryan Gosling action thriller was new to us. It's also a Russo brothers film, with a lot of the people who made Avengers: Endgame involved and for all that MCU film's faults, it was much better than this movie.

I think the biggest problem this feature has is that it didn't really know how to pitch itself. Was it a Jason Bourne type thriller or was there an element of 007 in there? It's essentially a movie about covert agents with special abilities and stupid people opting to go up against them. How often in these kind of films are the bad guys told 'He's a fucking nightmare, he's going to fuck up all your men and kill you in the end' so they ignore that and everything they're told happens? Pretty much every single time and this is no different. In fact the only thing about this that is different is the oblique and slightly odd ending, because after the denouement, the 'epilogue' felt more like a set-up for a sequel that hasn't yet happened rather than a conclusion. Too much is left unfinished or unchallenged and the bad guys essentially get away with it leaving their henchman to take the rap. Gosling makes a reasonable action hero, showing off the physique that many thought was fake in the Barbie film, but he was lacking in something - possibly a personality - and some of the 'banter' was tonally very wrong. Evans was remarkable as the sociopathic private sector looney without a care in the world and some of the set pieces were excellent. It was okay. We've all seen better and we've also seen much worse; however, it simply felt like a Ryan Gosling vehicle. A movie that was supposed to go from A to Z but somehow stalled around W and flopped about like a flat fish out of water. It needed a definitive ending not a suggestion that if Netflix were happy with it they'd pay Gosling a lot of money to make a sequel.

Film News

News broke today that Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson were to star in a remake of the 1988 comedy classic Naked Gun. I find this disturbing and worrying and I really hope that the wondrous Leslie Nielsen isn't spinning in his grave at this truly vomit-inducing outrage. That is all...

Mr Bright + Sidekick

Back at Christmas 2017, when we'd lived here less than six months, we had a crappy festive period. I was ill, the wife had just recovered from a bad cold and we missed almost the entire holiday period. Our Christmas night film was something that had been Netflix's Christmas Eve special; a fantasy thriller set in an alternate LA, one with orcs, elves, faeries, centaurs and other fantasy creatures and all having a place in a largely human hierarchy. The film was Bright and it starred Will Smith and Joel Edgerton.

It's been 6½ years and with a couple of exceptions we remembered absolutely nothing about it at all. This was a story about a human cop, played by Smith, who has an orc for a partner, Edgerton, and orcs are hated by humans because of something that happened 2000 years ago and he's hated by his own kind because he's sold out. Jakoby is the first orc to become a policeman and he is despised by his colleagues, even to a certain degree by Smith. The thing is he's a good cop and he's honest. This is the 1980s Alien Nation updated with fantasy creatures and the villain they are up against is an elf who possesses a magic wand who wants to bring the Dark Lord back to rule the earth. The elf, Noomi Rapace, is a ruthless and violent being with a couple of henchmen almost as nasty as she is and they are desperate to retrieve her wand which has been taken by one of her former disciples.

The problem with this movie is the story is pretty flimsy; the wand is desired by almost everyone and the two cops with the elf in their protection are being chased by literally everyone, yet there isn't really much going on... Well, there is but it doesn't seem to have a direction apart from to lurch from one violent set piece to another. It's a great action adventure but there's this feeling that it's also a bit vacuous; it simply nearly two hours of stuff happening. There's talk about prophecy, hints that Will Smith is a Bright - someone who can wield a magic wand - and there's a couple of FBI Magic Division agents who feel as though they should be in this more or that there's more of a story about them, but like the rest of the film it's all just a tad superficial - all style no substance. It wasn't a bad film, but it wasn't brilliant either. It felt like Netflix thought they could have a franchise on their hands but didn't.

Day Shit

There's some films we've seen before that we can't remember and they were okay and then there's some films we've seen before that after watching them a second time we wish we hadn't bothered or that maybe we could have done something more interesting like dying or having all of my limbs hacked off with a blunt spoon. That was pretty much how I felt after [again] sitting and suffering Day Shift a film about vampires with that one-time Oscar winning Jamie Foxx.

This Netflix pile of shite was everything you didn't want from a vampire film or even a comedy horror film. It had bits that made no sense (or were explained away in such an off handed way that it gave you the impression they made it up as they went along), huge amounts of comedy violence and a script that may well have been written by a dog scraping its arse along some paper on the floor. It was so fucking awful it made other vampire films ashamed to be in the same category. Foxx has been in some stinky films in recent years but one wonders what the fuck he did with his career to have been relegated to the kind of film that Eric Roberts might turn down. It starts quite promisingly with some acrobatic violence as the pool cleaner with the Polish name played by Foxx battles an aged woman finally besting her after being drenched in blood vomit. The problem is she was the daughter of a really high and mighty vampire who is also a real estate mogul and the movie pretty much falls apart from that point on. It has vampires who aren't bad, which gets zero explanation and it has Snoop Dog as a lone cowboy vampire hunter who does stupid things and still manages to be alive at the end. Like Bright, one gets the impression Netflix thought this might have sequel legs. I hope to whatever gods there might be that it doesn't, for the sake of people who might watch it.

Sweet Confusion

The fourth episode of Sugar did not deliver the plot twist that The Guardian said happens at the halfway point of this series, or if it did it went over my head. The episode starts with John Sugar having a medical examination by the 'approved' doctor and a little more of the weird things he's involved in outside of his detective work was hinted at. In fact, he was describing The Thing to the doctor which just makes me think he is really part of an alien invasion, which of course would be fucking ridiculous or a stroke of genius. Maybe he's an angel, that might explain why he's so nice to people?

What is good about this week's episode is we're firmly back in the 'where's Olivia' storyline and we start to discover what her half brother Davey has been up to; just what a slimy piece of shit he is and what lengths his parents will go to to protect him. We also know that whoever John really works for are very concerned about him uncovering things he wasn't meant to, which also involves the nutter Stallings - played by Eric Lange - who is trying to find out what happened to his chief henchman but also shut people up who might know what Davey Siegel has been up to. It's clear that Davey - Nate Corddry - is a dangerous sexual predator and that his father is trying desperately to cover something up he's committed, but what this has to do with Olivia is still not clear - apart from the fact she now knows her half brother is a massive cunt. Stallings has something in his cellar which he refers to as his project, if this is Olivia then I don't see how it's going to end well for her and why her father is so ambivalent about her fate. It's still quality TV, I just wish it was longer than half an hour.

Rebel Poo - The Shitgiver

So my birthday treat was to watch Rebel Moon, Part Two - The Scargiver and this is a film that was 6.8 on IMDB when I downloaded it (less than four hours after it was released on Netflix) and by the time I started watching it was down to 5.3 and when I finished watching it two hours later was 5.1. I'm going to be brutally honest about this - the people who have rated this so low are a bunch of sad pathetic wankers. I know I said this after the first film, but I feel really doesn't deserve that kind of hate. Yes, it's derivative nonsense, but it's entertaining nonsense, with reasonable actors and this time round a simple 'Magnificent Seven' story that was simultaneously boring and mega-exciting.

In many ways this is a far better film than the first part, even if the first hour was as dull as dishwater and plodded along at a snail's pace. It was about bringing in the harvest - as a kind of weapon against the 'empire' and then training the villagers to be an army. I had to laugh at one point when they were totting up the weapons and ammo they had and then they spent ten minutes having villagers firing weapons at straw figures, but you know, that's rather trivial. It's the second half that's worth the entrance fee because however overblown and full-on Snyder it was, it did really work as an ongoing action sequence that was both epic and different from your average BIG action sequences.

There was deaths and shocks, but you expect that; in the Magnificent Seven, I think, three of the team died fighting the bandits and in this one we lose two of the team, obviously heroically. Sofia Boutella still can't act and Djimon Hounsou barked lots of General things at the assembled team and villagers. Ed Skrein went through a prolonged rejuvenation process where the idea he might have some serious brain damage after almost being killed by Boutella's Kora, but he ended up being as psychotic as he was in the first film - no changes there and a bit of a pointless subplot/red herring. The Anthony Hopkins voiced Jimmy (or James as he liked being called) got involved just when things were looking desperate, despite telling Kora that everyone would die and by the end of the movie it was clear that Zack Snyder had been told by Netflix that despite the woeful reviews he had the green light to do a third part because even though they won this battle, there was still a war they had to finish.

It was overblown nonsense, but it was fun entertainment and I've watched some much worse films with higher ratings than this (some of them above this review). I think Snyder is a Marmite director and I think Star Wars wankers have deliberately gone out of their way to sabotage ratings on this film to - hopefully - have it killed by Netflix. of course what they've actually achieved is a record number of punters watching it to see if it's as bad as they were told it was and they obviously didn't because they came back for the second part and they will for the third. I would never have gone to the cinema to see this and I do feel it was a knock off of Star Wars, but in a weird way it was so much better than that 9-part heap of steaming shite. The special effects were better than anything the MCU has done in the last few years and the people making it - the actors - clearly had a lot of fun doing it. I will watch the third part, whenever it comes out and I will enjoy it so much more than any Star Wars film I've ever seen (although I did enjoy the first one, but I was 15 when I saw that, but it still wasn't the best Sci-Fi film I saw that year). Treat yourself to some cheesy wotsits of a film; take it as it comes and don't expect Shakespeare. 

Next Time...

Late Night With the Devil is likely to be the next film we watch; I've discounted a lot of new releases, including Immaculate (mainly because I don't see what all the fuss is about Sydney Sweeney - we've seen in her a half decent film, but other than that, not much has impressed me) and a couple of others whose titles have already departed my brain. The thing is this week hasn't been bad, there has been some quality entertainment in there and I struggle to remain optimistic that this will continue. I think it might be an exception to the rule. The thing is, as usual, you'll find out what nonsense I've watched this time next week.

Pop Culture - The Return of Entertainment

The spoilers are right here and right now, so be aware because they will spoil things for you like moist air spoils fresh bread...

A Right Herbert

Denis Villeneuve makes great films. Arrival is one of the best movies I've seen in the last ten years (although I wasn't enamoured by the Bladerunner sequel) and Dune, Part One is BIG. I mean it's absolutely HUGE. It's a spectacle, an event, an epic like we hadn't seen before.

In many ways, if you compare this film to David Lynch's flawed adaptation from 40 years ago you can see how the human race has advanced, even in our lifetimes. This is a Mozart concerto compared to a Brotherhood of Man album; it's caviar compared to cheesy Wotsits - the two films might pretty much tell the same story but there is no comparison, and yet both films had all star casts and famous people in small roles and followed the book as best they could, given that Frank Herbert's books are largely unfilmable. This, second viewing, was a Saturday night event (as the next part will be a Sunday night event) and considering it was almost two and a half hours long, it pretty much whizzed by. Yet, in many ways, very little happens and there's actually a number of questions that hopefully will be answered in Part Two, but most definitely weren't in this one.

Why does House Atreides bother the Emperor so much that he wants to get rid of them? Is it because the Harkonens are now richer than him and this is a political move to ensure he curries favour with the bald psychopaths? If that's the case, why take Arrakis away from them in the first place? You see, as many people will attest from these blogs, I like to work with logic. A story has to be logical, there has to be some kind of internal logic at play otherwise I struggle with it, so there doesn't appear to be a reason why House Atreides has been sacrificed, unless, of course, it was a move by the people I like to call the Benny Degenerates. If this is literally a long game to get Paul - son of Leto - to eventually become emperor, then surely we could have been sent a clearer message? That aside, I can just about excuse the other plot holes until I've seen the second instalment and this logic plot hole I've highlighted might be explained as well. 

This is, as I said, an epic. The Atreides are given the spice world and replace the bonkers Harkonens; Duke Leto wants a better relationship with the indigenous Fremen, while his wife is grooming their son and heir to be something altogether different - a male Bene Gesserit, possibly for even bigger things. The agreement to leave Paul and his mother Jessica alone to live is something the Harkonens have no interest in, but they survive the slaughter and get away to join the Fremen in the desert and that is essentially the film. Other stuff happens, but it's all essentially ... not padding, but fleshing out. Paul not only has Bene Gesserit powers, he also is regarded as the Messiah and he scares people. You wonder why because Timothee Chalamet is a weedy little fucker, but that's maybe part of his charm and power.

Part Two is scheduled for tomorrow. I really can't wait. After weeks of largely sifting through shit to find some nuggets, it was great to watch a film - albeit with some plot holes - that didn't treat me like an illiterate twat... 

Another Right Herbert

The first thing about Dune, Part Two you notice is that it starts literally a couple of minutes after Part One ended. Paul, his mum and the Fremen are taking the body of Jamis back to their settlement and are attacked by a squad of Harkonen psychos. Once they've been despatched - and frankly if the Harkonens can hover and float about in their war suits you wonder why they bother with 'foot' soldiers - the film settles into essentially 90 minutes of 'How Paul becomes a Fremen'.

Like the first part, a lot of time passes with little happening but that's fine because this is still an epic story and epic stories deserve to have time taken over them. What we do discover is why the Atreides were sacrificed and that Paul is just one of the Bene Gesserit's myriad of schemes; some put in place in case others don't work. They are the real driving force behind this story and I imagine the other stories in the Dune Universe. But the real thing in the first 90 minutes is how Paul Atreides becomes Paul Muadib Usal, honorary Fremen and would be Messiah. How he conquers lots of obstacles and learns to be a desert man. However, one thing puzzled me (and the wife) and was never explained - how do you get off of a sandworm after you've taken a ride on it. It was never shown and given how huge, destructive and dangerous they are, getting off of one, especially when you can place special compartments on their backs to keep vulnerable people in, is never shown and that bugged me.

What I will say is - and stop now if you haven't seen this and intend to - while it concludes many things, it clearly sets us up for Dune Messiah or Part Three, because it ends with conclusions but also with beginnings and unfinished parts - such as the birth of 'The Abomination,' the fight with the other Houses and whatever happens to Chani. It is a cracking film, but it's also a bit like The Empire Strikes Back (except in this case it's the Empire Gets Royally Butt Fucked). It's not an ending, just a stopping off point. I don't think this duology, which will eventually become a trilogy, will ever be anyone's favourite film series, but it is quality filmmaking with a great cast of actors and a story that is both as old as the hills but also refreshing and bold. Denis Villeneuve is apparently going to adapt Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama as his next project - that is also something decidedly weird and believed to be difficult to film.

Ship of Fools?

So... one of the televisual highlights of the last couple of years was the German/Netflix production called Dark. It was almost perfect even if it had subtitles and got very very weird in the final series. The people responsible for this work of pure unadulterated genius were also responsible for the TV series 1899 about mysterious goings on aboard a steam ship that finds its deserted 'sister' ship somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.

Unfortunately, instead of being a quality follow up series it becomes this week's first flop. We managed two episodes of the eight, but it was so bloated and uninteresting we decided to give up. The thing about Dark was it made sense even if it was dealing with some weird time travel business. Not once in the first two series did we stop and think 'WTF' - I mean, we did, but in a good way. 1899 was just strange with an assortment of characters none of which were particularly likeable and while I'm sure it would have made sense in the end (despite being cancelled, I was informed that the eighth part has an 'explanation' of sorts), I just wasn't interested in it. It was boring; very boring and felt like it was being weird for weird's sake. It's a shame, I was expecting something like Dark but instead got something like ITV's Passenger.

Sweetness

[heh heh] The Guardian currently rates Kate Winslett's The Regime as 'quality TV, guaranteed to make you laugh - 4 stars'. IMDB currently has a 6.1 rating for it. I know which one I believe. That said, the same newspaper gave the new Colin Farrell TV series Sugar a two-star rating and found lots wrong with it and complained about an apparent plot twist halfway through the series of which we've only got access to the first two - which I think is a bit shitty, a bit spoilery. It's literally a review that says 'we liked it but halfway through there's a plot twist we didn't like so we now think it's shit. You're going to have to wait for it because you're just the paying public.' I think that's a fucking dereliction of reviewing duties. How dare that abysmal pseudo-right wing newspaper talk about something that happens in an episode we won't see for at last three weeks. It's pseudo-spoiling; it's trying to come across as better than people watching on a weekly basis - we know what happens and we don't like it, but you plebs are going to have to wait to find out what, ner ner, ner, ner ner. Fuck the Guardian and anyone who thinks it's a good newspaper...

As opening episodes go these were absolute corkers. It was everything you want from a mystery thriller. Just enough story, intrigue and hints of what's to come. A good introduction to the main character and his people and a nice juicy missing person's case that is obviously not going to be straightforward or easily solvable. Sugar is the kind of thing I expect from Apple TV; there's an element of class about it that won't even be spoilt if the plot twist halfway through is that John Sugar is an alien or a transsexual dolphin. This is well made entertaining, intriguing TV and we definitely need more of it.

John returns to Hollywood from a relatively straightforward case in Tokyo and takes on a new job without his 'boss' knowing, or more importantly, she did know she just didn't want him to take the case on - he needs a holiday. It's about the missing granddaughter of a famous Hollywood producer and John is a huge film buff and this is something that's right up his street. We quickly discover that he's also not your average PI; there's a Holmesian logic about his actions and the questions he asks and the things he looks for. He's also an incredibly nice man; he's a polyglot, nice to dogs and everyone who meets him is pretty much blown away by his charming arresting personality. He also has a problem, but what that problem is more than likely is what the plot twist is going to be (and why I'm erring towards extra terrestrial as the moment). I liked the first two episodes; I expect we've found something weekly that's finally going to fill some of the void left by all those other Apple TV shows we were banging on about until last January when TV became shit again.

Episode three, which like two, was about 30 minutes long and felt as though it needed to be longer was just as entertaining, but some of John Sugar's mystic was being unravelled. He's either a spy (or an alien working undercover) because he's a member of a polyglot society that are charged with watching rather than getting involved and Ruby is likely to be his handler. It feels slightly unnecessary in the context of the detective aspect of the series and could be what the Guardian was banging on about. My gut feeling is while whatever secrets John is hiding and part of might be important to his character development, it's Olivia's disappearance and the myriad of stories emerging from this that is holding my interest, because that's what drew me in originally. There is definitely something going on with the Siegel family and Sugar is beginning to realise why Ruby didn't want him to get involved with this case because it appears to be more than just a single can of worms. Intriguing stuff, even if John's subplot feels misplaced.

Thieves Like Us

Had Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead been half as good as the prequel, Army of Thieves then we'd be talking about a quality zombie movie rather than an absolute heap of steaming shite. This is a heist comedy and it pretty much hits the right notes for most of the film. Yes, there's an element of corniness about it, but not from where you might expect.

This is about 'Ludwig Deter' the safecracker from Snyder's Las Vegas set Zombie faeces and how he became a safecracker, when he was just simple Sebastian Schlencht-Wöhnert - a bank teller and part time opener of locks. He gets recruited by Nathalie Emmanuel's Gwen, who is part of a team of international thieves and these include Guz Khan, Ruby O Fee and a massive twat wannabe Huge Ackman clone played by someone called Stuart Martin. You can imagine the two women as part of an international heist team, but the men... not so much. They want to crack the three most difficult safes in the world - or to be more precise, three of the four most difficult safes, all named after Wagner's Ring Cycle and posing a huge risk for Sebastian and his new team of bad guys, especially when the buffoons from Interpol get on the scene. What follows is an entertaining and really likeable romp that doesn't have the happy ending you would hope for, but anyone who's seen Army of the Dead will understand why - that film really wasn't as good as it could be, while this, directed by Matthias Schweighöfer (the guy who plays Sebastian/Ludwig) is good and is worth watching as long as you ignore the epilogue if you haven't seen Snyder's really bad zombie flick.

Retro Apocalypse

Right... I'm not sure how I'm going to do this because when you get entire series dropping in one lump (and then have a what's going to happen segment at the end of the first episode), it's difficult to review. We're not going to watch this in the allotted span of a week's blog [it's late Thursday night as I write this] so I either write this as a few episodes this week and the rest next week - by which time anyone wanting to watch the entire series will have binge watched it or given up entirely - or I come up with a different approach... So I decided to try something a little bit different. It might work, it probably won't. This could all have been edited out by the time this goes live on Saturday. Who can say?

Fallout - season one, episode one: The End: I remember when the first Fallout computer game came out in 1997. A friend of mine - who later became someone I really didn't like being in the same room with - was mega excited about it and that just about concludes my knowledge of the game. I remember watching him play it a couple of times, but I was probably stoned and therefore unlikely to remember anything. The guys in the big metal suits seemed to ring a bell, but even that might be some kind of subliminal thing where I'd seen their picture somewhere and just assimilated it, like I do with all the knowledge that makes me good at pub quizzes. The thing is, while the rest of the world - Gen Zs and Millennials mainly - have been wetting themselves about the new Fallout TV series, it's largely gone over my head. I've seen a few of the trailers and thought it looked both interesting and expensively made, so if it had a good story as well, we might be onto a winner. Episode one - The End - was just over an hour in length and does a good job of setting us up for what to expect, or at least it does enough to make me retain some interest.

It starts in the 1950s with a former famous cowboy actor working children's birthday parties - because he was probably a bit of a pinko liberal (from what one of the parents said) in a world that looked similar to 'our' 1950s, but with technological advancements that looked very out of place. There's a threat of a nuclear war but everyone is just trying to enjoy a kid's birthday party; that is until a nuke goes off in the city, followed by a number of other nukes - we're in a war and given the amount of nukes going off, one that isn't going to have a happy ending for many. Fast forward 218 years and the world is a desolate and broken place and inside one of the many underground 'cities' are the people of Vault 33 and the daughter of their leader - Lucy - who is trying to find a husband who isn't related to her so that breeding can take place without genetic problems. She's paired up with someone from Vault 32 and a wedding is arranged and all will be good in Lucy's life. That is until her brother notices that the 'guests' from Vault 32 are all dishevelled and smell, then chaos ensues. Lots of death and blood and the people from Vault 32 aren't from there at all; they are in fact raiders from the outside world. The chief raider sort of knows Lucy and her father, who she kidnaps and we're introduced to our first mystery.

Meanwhile, there's this Brotherhood of Steel, protectors of the USA (or what's left of it). Guys in big metal suits, with their own squires - all very knights of the round table kind of thing. The squires are chosen from people who do all the shit jobs as training to become squires and eventually become 'knights' - among these is Maximus, who gets a job as a squire because his mate, who was to become a squire, gets seriously injured in what looks to be a sabotage - was it Maximus who did it or someone else?

While all this is going on we're reintroduced to the cowboy from the opening scenes, now referred to as The Ghoul, because he's over 200 years old, has no nose and is being kept alive with some substance and woken up every now and then so the guy who is keeping him in this state can do something that isn't clearly explained. The Ghoul is taking on the same job that the Knights are - searching for someone who has escaped 'The Enclave' - which we know nothing about as yet - and is valuable.

This is where we're at with the first part. Introductions and mysteries, which I suspect will be explained as we move further into the realms of this new post-apocalyptic world. Was it good? Well, it wasn't bad. It pushed enough buttons for us to be looking forward to the next episodes. I kind of think it's a shame that it couldn't have been released like an old fashioned TV series, but box sets and streaming is taking over the world and I'm an old cunt with no input or say in the matter. Episodes two and three will follow this.

Season one, episode two: The Target: Something I've touched on in the past is how I'm not really a fan of Mad Max - the idea of post apocalyptic slapstick has never really pushed any of my buttons and with the second episode of Fallout we got introduced to the population of the world outside of the Vaults and there was this lack of credibility about them. 

As with the first episode, we're following Lucy, Maximus and the Ghoul, but this starts off about Michael Emerson's Wilzig - the guy who worked for the Enclave who has defected from there with his dog and is carrying some 'secret' that could change the world. He has a bounty on his head which the Ghoul, the Knight called Titus and the woman who kidnapped Lucy's father want, but before the end of the episode, Titus is dead and the 'town' called Filly has been pretty much levelled by the Ghoul and Maximus, who has taken on Titus's armour. This was a violent episode that explained a little more about the way of the rest of the world and how Lucy is like a fish out of water. Oddly enough, it's she who ends up having to rescue Wilzig and he gives her some excellent advice.

This was also the first signs of a slight ... I dunno, disillusionment? Bewilderment? Possible lack of interest? The aforementioned Mad Max style of natives coupled with a distinct effort for this to be as much a black comedy as a post apocalyptic thriller grated on me a little. The comedy doesn't push any buttons with me and we're not really learning enough about our playing field for me to be caring about any of the players. The seeds of concern were planted by the end of this episode.

Season one, episode three: The Beginning: Except, it wasn't really the beginning. We had some flashbacks to when Coop (later to become the Ghoul) was a famous cowboy actor with his black wife and mixed race daughter in a USA that hated communists but clearly was not as racist as it really is; the main thing was more travelling towards the ultimate destination which Lucy is hoping will mean the release of her father - in what, I have to be honest is a very altruistic and slightly insane concept given what she's faced since she left Vault 33.

This was, I'm sorry to say, more of the same, although thankfully fewer moments with the people who inhabit the place. There is an encounter with a Gulper - a mutated fish thing with human fingers for teeth, who has stolen Wilzig's head and the Ghoul loses the stuff that keeps him alive and instead of trying to track down Wilzig's head - which is inside the Gulper but with enough time to retrieve it before it is digested - decides to take Lucy somewhere else. Maximus turns up and with the help of his new squire beats the creature by what appears to be pulling its insides out through its mouth. By the time we finished the third episode I could see the wife's eyes were beginning to glaze over and I could tell she was thinking that we were watching yet another TV series that she wasn't going to want to stick with.

We're almost halfway through and I expect next weeks blog will be more akin to a general review of the last five parts rather than this breakdown. This isn't going to be for all tastes and spending so much time on it here feels like an overindulgence for something I'm not sold on.

Next Time...

Probably the conclusion of Fallout and the next episode of Sugar will dominate the TV part, we might dip into Baby Reindeer. On the film front there have been a number of new releases this week and virtually all of them have been discarded through lack of interest; we might give Wicked Little Letters a try - especially as the Guardian hated it - and I've added a few movies we saw in 2020 and 2021 to the Flash Drive of Doom given our collective shit memories for what happens in films.

It has been a better week for televisual entertainment, but I can't help feel that I'm no longer easily pleased (if I ever was) and probably much harder to please, especially as I'm too quick to find fault in things, even if it's deserved. You know, nothing beats a simple story well made with good actors and a solid script. You don't need to be as complicated as a Rubik's cube to entertain and having a simple story isn't a sign of weakness. 

I'm not the kind of person who TV or film is made for nowadays, the same as I'm not who phones and the internet are aimed at either. This is something that will become more apparent as time passes. We shall see, I suppose, won't we? 

Modern Culture - Picking Carrots out of Vomit

Do you know something? I don't give a flying fuck if I spoil it for you. Half of the shit I've watched deserves to be spoilt if you're going to be as stupid as me and watch it in the first place...

Jurassic Wank

"Let's watch something stupid and throwaway." So we did. That was watching Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, a film that doesn't start off badly but falls down a very strange rabbit hole of pseudo-science, arms-dealing and script-writing lunacy about halfway through.

This really is a movie in two parts - three, if you count the monster in a haunted house finale as different from the middle part which was just plain bonkers. What starts off as a seemingly humanitarian mission to save as many dinosaurs from the rapidly exploding Isla Nubla quickly becomes something else entirely. Rafe Spall - often a massive twat in many things he's in - recruits (a slender) Bryce Dallas Howard to help save as many of the lovable reptiles as possible from the island that housed the dino-park and she recruits Chris Pratt because the velociraptor is one of the treasures they want to keep (quite why they would want to save something that has proven to be a voracious and deadly killer soon becomes clear, but no one really thought about that) and he's the go-to man for velociraptors.

These two former items travel to the island with two of Howard's cronies - both fish out of water - in the company of a bunch of mercenaries who quickly make their presence felt leaving our heroes stranded on a melting island. Why would these people be so disposable? Because Rafe Spall is bonkers and he has lots of money making schemes up his sleeve involving selling dinosaurs to the highest foreign bidders, so covering up the deaths of some people is but a fly in the ointment of his megalomania. This is where it stops being an action thriller and turns into a black comedy with few laughs. It's like King Kong chained up in that theatre all over again as the latest big scary dinosaur escapes and causes havoc like we've all seen before. It's at this point where it becomes like a slasher movie set in an old creepy and creaky house, except Michael Myers is actually a dinosaur with claws and big teeth. 

It is two hours of bollocks; pure unadulterated bollocks, but it's got its own likeable quirks; Pratt isn't just Star Lord and the special effects were, as usual, top quality. The bad guys all died in horrible, toothy, ways and even though she had her leg opened up by big nasty dino's big nasty claw near the end, Ms Howard (daughter of Happy Days' Ron) forgets to limp in the closing scenes. We also had more clones, a strange guardianship and some pointless cameos and it all set itself up nicely for the next instalment, which we have planned for later this week. Huzzah and rawr...

Big Dump

Big Mood had some good things written about it. we managed to get 17 minutes into it before switching off. This is, allegedly, what passes as 'cutting edge comedy' in 2024. I really should stop being influenced by what the fucking Guardian says; their reviewers are literally all cretins and morons.

Jurassic Pork

I feel like a sexist twat - not literally or maybe it is literally rather than metaphorically... I dunno... but I do because I seem obsessed with Bryce Dallas Howard's expanding waistline. I think during the making of Jurassic World Dominion she either was given free rein of the catering truck or she might have got pregnant or something because she seemed to put on weight during this film and by the time she made the execrable Argylle (about a year after this) she was the size of an elephant [a little Banana Splits cartoon reference there to The Arabian Nights].

The film itself probably doesn't deserve a 5.6 rating on IMDB. Why? Because it's no better or worse than the other two films in this second Jurassic trilogy; in fact, if nothing else it was considerably less far-fetched than Fallen Kingdom and that - with its 6.1 rating - says something when you're talking dinosaur films. At least Dominion only had one wanker in it, albeit with minions who didn't deserve to live, although one did - Dichen Lachman. Not that she had a huge role to play, but she wasn't a nice person and deserved the same fate as this film's rich wanker playing God. This time around it was all about stealing two children - Blue's self-reproduced off-spring 'Beta' and the Lockwood clone, Maisie. Taking them to a BioSys facility in the Dolomites for something to do with giant locusts, or maybe not, as it seemed the recurring scientist wanted to cure the world of giant locusts but the rich wanker was thinking about promoting his locust immune crops.

Along for the ride this time with the chubbier-than-last-time Ms Howard, was Chris Pratt, Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum, all reprising their roles from earlier films. There was a couple of other additions to the cast but you don't really care who or what they did because this was all about the T-Rex, the weird dinosaur with Freddy Kreuger hands and the giganotosaurus - the largest predatory dino ever to have existed. Yet, it wasn't even about those, because this had more dinosaurs than you could staccato wank at - it was brimming with them, this was dinosaur bukkake; the movie positively ejaculated new reptilian bird-like things at the audience while reminding us that the franchise is like 30 years old and Laura Dern looks rough for a woman who was only 55 when she made this, but that's me just sounding sexist again. I mean, to be fair, Chris Pratt was looking his age and Goldblum and Neill looked like they were both in their 70s (which, of course they were). Apparently, Scarlett Johansson is going to be in the next movie, which might be a new trilogy or might just be the death knell of dino-films; who can say?

So, in a nutshell - kidnapped children, Maltese bike chase, planes, trains and automobiles, Italian mountains, lots of dinosaurs, fake sincerity, double crossing, more trying to kill the lead actors, big dinosaur fight, snow,  velociraptors, squirting dinosaurs, failed computer systems, race against time, tunnels with lots of irrelevant shit in them - and dinosaurs, giant bugs on fire, cattle prods, huge weight gains and fake news reportage. Someone suggested I should give Daniel Craig's James Bond films a try, but I said no because there isn't enough dinosaurs in them and I don't count Judi Dench as one. Bazang!

Dead Ending

Over Easter we finished the 1990s hospital drama Cardiac Arrest, something I've waxed lyrically over a couple of times during the last few blogs. Accompanying it was a short programme interviewing Jed Mercurio, the now famous writer and former doctor behind the show who wrote it under the pseudonym John Macure. It has been a fond trip down memory lane, even if the only thing I remembered about it was the totally shocking ending, where one of the many characters we'd grown to love over the 27 episodes was about to meet a very untimely end. That final episode called Death Do Us Part was a real twisting finale with the title likely to apply to all manner of characters in the show before picking one of the least likely candidates out at the very end. It's available on iPlayer for a few more months, so if you've never seen it and fancy some funny but equally hard-hitting medicine then treat yourself to this and allow your mind to boggle at how in the 28 years since the last episode aired nothing has changed... 

The Emo-man

Remember when I used to write at least once a week that I'd seen a film but I couldn't remember anything about it? Then I said I wasn't going to bang on about it any more because it seemed that everything I watched had been erased from my memory? Well, we watched The Batman and it's been less than two years since we did and I'll be buggered with a brontosaurus if I can remember much about it at all. It was like watching a film that I thought I'd watched but maybe only a dream or perhaps I watched an extended trailer and took it for granted I'd seen it before...

This was Batman as a Nirvana track; about as gritty and dirty as you can imagine with 95% of the film taking place at night and 90% of it in the rain. It was filmed mainly in Glasgow and Liverpool so that explains the weather. It is also a Matt Reeves film - the guy who bought us the recent POTA trilogy and this was about emo Bruce Wayne and his bulletproof alter-ego The Batman and in some ways it is possibly the best Batman film of them all, but in other ways it isn't really like a Batman film at all. Yes, the titular superhero is in it an awful lot, sleuthing and knocking heads together, being an honourable vigilante, but it was so grungy and emo it could have been an extended video for a Seattle rock band.

Robert Pattinson is Bruce Wayne, mumbling through his eye-liner and being all dark, brooding and about as menacing as Robert Smith from the Cure. Zoe Kravitz is Catwoman without ever being called it. Jeffrey Wright is an okay Jim Gordon; while Colin Farrell is absolutely unrecognisable as the Penguin. Paul Dano plays the Riddler, almost always one step ahead of everyone, but like any good psychopath is just itching to be captured so he can watch his final act to play out from the comfort of his cell. There's a bunch of other known and local actors in it making up the numbers in what was a really atmospheric and shadowy movie. It just felt like it went on too long; yes, there were some interesting twists on the Batman mythos, but it was all a bit allegorical and full of hidden meanings, not just with the Riddler's puzzles and cryptograms but in the way the story unfolded. I think Pattinson was too emo; too dark and moody and not bulky enough, despite looking like a tank in his outfit. It was the problem I had with Christian Bale in Christopher Nolan's trilogy. Ben Affleck might have been a relatively unpopular Batman but he was the right shape. It was an enjoyable romp but it's dark and gloomy feel made the almost three hour run time feel like a long night at a bad Fields of the Nephilim concert...

Ball(s)

Did we watch Sphere when it came out in 1998 and forget everything about it because it was so bad or did we simply not bother with it in the first place? I fear, this is a question I'm never going to be able to answer. All I do know is that we watched it this evening and was left with the overwhelming feeling that, once again, I should have bowed to my better judgement. 

With a cast including Dustin Hoffman, Peter Coyote, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Liev Schreiber and Queef Latina and a director of the calibre of Barry Levinson, based on a Michael Crichton book, how could this science fiction film be anything but a massive hit; I mean... Men in Black for starters and that cast? Hoffman, Coyote... It would take something unnatural to ruin this, surely? But, you see, there's a catch and one I have to confess to. This movie may well have been seen and forgotten about, but equally it may never have fallen on my radar, but it tickled my interested button last week when I read an article in an on-line film magazine about the 50 worst films made by brilliant directors. Nothing leapt out at me that I either didn't remember or was never likely to watch, apart from Sphere. I checked IMDB and found it had a 6.1 rating, which is above my usual threshold and therefore it was a shoo-in to be watched.

A group of disparate professionals - a psychologist, a biologist, an astrophysicist and a mathematician [walk into a bar] are summoned to a site somewhere in the middle of the Pacific ocean, with them is a senior figure in an organisation called OSSA [I dunno] who tells them they've been summoned because they've found a spaceship on the ocean floor, thought to have been there for 288 years and they were the best qualified civilians to investigate. The lead civvy - Hoffman - wrote a guideline for the first Bush administration outlining what to do in the event of an alien invasion, so he immediately was considered; the others - Schreiber, Stone and Jackson were all people that Hoffman suggested would be suitable, based on what he knew ten years earlier - which becomes clear was nothing. It should also be noted at this point, they were doing a lot of adlibbing - there was no definitive script, so they were making up dialogue as they went along and at times boy did it show.

The twist here is while the Navy were involved, the only 'suit' was Coyote and he must have been told to be as different from his ET persona as possible because, well, he was. The five enter the spaceship ridiculously easily and soon discover the ship came from... dun dun dun... the USA. It had obviously travelled through a time loop from probably 2043, but maybe 21, 22 or even 2343 after an unexplained something or other happened. The crew were all dead and there was clearly more adlibbing than one would have expected because the script was fucking atrocious. Then shit starts to happen; people get killed off, almost without explanation, they start talking to an 'alien' called Jerry - via a computer screen - and then more people get killed off as we start to wonder if something is going on here... You see, they had discovered a giant golden sphere in the middle of the spaceship that reflected no faces or light and it could be that as many as three of the crew might have ventured inside said sphere and been 'changed' by it, given the ability to conjure up anything they might fear, thus placing everyone in peril. Queef Latina was attacked and killed by malevolent jellyfish (a manifestation of something Dustin hates) that managed to penetrate technologically advanced underwater suits, yet super poisonous sea snakes (something else Dustin was scared off) attacked him but didn't kill him. Everything is a dream, nothing appears to be real and all the time Sam Jackson is reminding everyone that because the ship was from the future and no one knew about this happening, they all must die.

It was stunningly bad. It was so bad that I'm sitting here thinking it could be one of the worst things I've ever seen because narratively it was just a hysterical cacophony of (bad) lunacy; so much made no sense. Such as what possessed Stone to ignore watching out for her mate, in case he got into trouble at a 1000 feet down, and go to the spaceship - the one that's been there almost 300 years - to see if she could find some food or maybe a special bottle of wine and then not even remotely understand how fucking insane she sounded just speaking those words? Oh and the ending... Don't get me started on that, because it would take up an entire blog just to explain what happened and not even delve into the realms of why, where or even how. So much talent on show, so little talent used...

Like a Rich Man's Benidorm

The White Lotus has garnered praise from all corners of the press - from my hated The Guardian to the Times and even websites dedicated to film and TV, it is top rated and I'd never been in the slightest interested in finding out why. So, we decided to give it a shot and we watched the first season over three nights and here's what I thought...

The first three episodes laid the foundations but I'm not sure what kind of building it was for. We're introduced to the Mossbacher family; a mega-successful mother who owns her own search engine and works with the Chinese and comes across as something of a snob, her needy lawyer husband who thought he had testicular cancer but doesn't but gets traumatised by the fact his father had a secret gay life and died of AIDS and not cancer. Their two children, Quinn - addicted to computer games and porn who is perpetually bullied by his older sister, Liv, who is an elitist Gen Z snob and is there with her best friend, Paula, who is more interested in having sex with one of the staff. They are an awful family, but in many ways the most normal of the three different 'families' we're introduced to.

Then there's Rachel and Shane Patton - the honeymooners - he's a Class A wanker and she's way out of her depth - also his mother who helps ruin Rachel's time by turning up unannounced - she's a nice girl, her new husband is a monstrous rich cunt. Finally there's Tanya McQuiod, an unbelievably needy and neurotic woman who is at the resort to dispose of her overbearing mother's ashes. These are all white privileged uber rich people that deserve absolutely no sympathy from the viewer. However, as The White Lotus is supposed to be this exclusive chain of fantastic resorts, it doesn't deserve any sympathy either, apart from some of the staff who, like all hospitality staff, are treated worse than shit on the sole of someone's shoe. The resort manager is Armand, a gay Australian who has been drink and drug free for five years and takes his job very seriously, except this latest intake of wealthy arseholes has driven him over the edge...

The thing is it isn't that funny; it does have funny moments but in general it seems to be several characters in search of a plot or even a story. It's like they're all vying to see who can be the most obnoxious of them all, apart from Rachel who has just got unhappier over the first five episodes and is hinted at in the show's prologue to be the dead person being loaded on the plane at the beginning. It's not bad; but I'm struggling to understand why there is so much love directed at the show because it isn't really anything special. It's just, as I said, a show about white privileged wankers and how fucking annoying they can be and personally I don't really get a hard on about TV shows about privileged people, regardless of how badly they get fucked over in the end.

The second half of the debut series was considerably more ... vibrant. Armand's falling off the wagon really causes problems; Shaun Patton becomes even more of an arsehole now that his mother has turned up on his honeymoon, poor old Rachel is beginning to look as though she'd rather be dead than be married and Tanya continues to be a very odd woman, leading a hotel employee on while eyeing up a single guy. The Mossbachers are really beginning to show their true colours especially Mark who appears to be a desperately unhappy man with a horrid wife. Meanwhile, Armand is really pissing off Shaun, which makes Shaun even more of an arsehole than he was already, but, of course, something happens to really tip things over the edge... 

The problem with the conclusion of this is simple, much of it makes little or no sense; such as Quinn's story and his parents complete lack of caring, or the pointlessness of Tanya's story (yet she's the only character to reappear in the second season); even how Shaun literally gets away with murder. The beginning promised an interesting whodunnit, but even that seemed to be glossed over and stuff happened to characters that made little or no narrative sense. This had people do things that you get the feeling they wouldn't have done had it been scripted by someone with a semblance of the real life, or they're just presuming that rich people and those connected to them go 'off-piste' a lot. The reason why I was never interested in watching Succession is because I don't give a fuck about rich people, even if they're being fucked over. I find obscenely rich people obscene and vile, so I don't really enjoy anything about them in TV series, unless it's a fleeting guest shot that ends violently badly. The jury is out about season two - it rests with the wife, because I don't think this deserves its 8 rating on IMDB; it was a bit facile and I didn't really root for anyone; even the staff were dislikeable.

And Lo, There Shall Be an Ending (NOT)

If the final episode of Resident Alien is the final FINAL episode then it's been left on a cliffhanger... No, not a cliffhanger, just a bunch of unfinished story lines. It spent 35 minutes of this alleged final episode tying up loose ends and then pulled a big fucking shark out of the closet and began jumping over it all over again. If it reappears I won't be watching it. I do feel slightly concerned because I have believed that my old acquaintance Pete Hogan, who created and wrote the comic for Dark Horse, probably had no idea the TV show had ruined his clever idea so badly, but he appeared in the final episode. Nice gesture, but if it had been me I think I'd have preferred to have been put at the bottom of a trench and had concrete poured over me - the quick drying stuff. This has been such a shit show that it gives shit a bad name.

The New Adventures of Star Fleet Jesus

Just as Resident Alien finishes, some other shit comes along to fill its void. Yes, that unbelievably bad Star Trek spin-off Star Trek: Disco Very is back and it's even more shittier than before. It still wants to be Star Wars and it still wants to make Michael Whatserface the 31st century Messiah, because, I mean she's so fucking important and reverential, how can anyone possibly defy her effulgence? 

Just when you thought they'd wrapped everything up and gone to the great Star Trek graveyard in the sky, Paramount+ went, "Tell you what, do you fancy doing another 8 episodes? You do? Great, we don't care what the fuck they're about, here's lots of money and you can use Doug Jones again..." Star Trek: Discovery was a bad idea after the second season; in many ways having a spaceship that was about a fucking thousand years ahead of any other Star Fleet vessel was always going to be a problem, especially when you decide to rewrite Gene Roddenberry's ideas and give Spock a black human adopted sister who was NEVER EVER mentioned ever by any previous incarnation of Spock EVER...

This time the crew has been reunited to chase two mercenary traders across the galaxy for a book that was written by a Romulan 800 years earlier - in Jean Luc Picard's era - that not only explains the history of all humanoid life (as covered in an episode of ST:TNG) but also purports to have made a weapon out of this technology that could, yet again, have devastating results on all universal life, again and while David Cronenberg goes out of his way to tell Michael Whatserface that it's above Top Secret so he can't tell her anything about it, he goes ahead and does anyway, because she's really female Star Fleet Jesus. The fat girl - looking even fatter and with really bad skin - is back in it in a big way, so are the gay couple, the transgender person and the weird physically enhanced with computer tech humans, oh and Doug Jones as the spindly insect like alien who's porking a Vulcan with whatever the spindly insect aliens use as penises. Please don't think I'm being an aged right wing arsehole, but this show doesn't appear to have any white, heterosexual male characters. It's like they've been outlawed...

IT'S FUCKING APPALLING!!! It's sanctimonious horse wank. It's condescending science fucktion. It's super advanced technology with Neanderthal men and women trying to operate it. It expects the viewer to be dazzled and awestruck, yet it's lacking in so many things and for a show set a thousand years into our future, there's so much ignorance and prejudice that one wonders if the writers of this show realise it's fucking Star Trek... I've witnessed animals have more fulfilling shits than this fucking awful - AWFUL - load of vomit. It really isn't very good. It should be avoided like a teenage girl would avoid a really drunken uncle at a wedding or someone with explosive diarrhoea - the kind that comes out of every hole not just an anus. I will not entertain this bile ever again. The people who make this are cunts. Massive cunts.

Next Time...

I'm looking forward to Sugar mainly because the Guardian hated it - so it must be good and I like Colin Farrell. Knox Goes Away was an 8.5 on Wednesday, when it was released, it's now a 6.9 on Saturday, so I expect if it drops below 6 by next week I won't be watching it - it's a Michael Keaton film about a hitman with dementia. Fallout drops in five days and the trailers have promised so much, so we're bound to hate it (and I really don't like Walton Coggins) and there's going to be other stuff - new and old - that I'll subject myself to and rise above the tortuous pain to try and entertain you all; or I might just go mad and wibble for 2000 words (which might be equally as entertaining - who can truly say?).

Oh and Dune (gets watched again) and Dune Part 2 will be the big things. So it might be a better week.

Pop Culture - It's Just a Fantasy

The usual spoilers apply and I think there might be a few here so tread carefully young padawans...

One Episode Problem

If you're going to have a high profile, big budget Sci-Fi thriller from the people who brought you Game of Thrones, you'd best make sure that you don't have one absolutely spanking episode and seven quite dull ones, because that's what we had with 3 Body Problem.

I don't know if the reason for this series is to watch 'primitive' man have set back after set back, but that's pretty much what we got as the San-Ti looked down on us and saw that they don't really have to worry that much because we're great at failure. So much of this series appeared to have some kind of internal logic driving it forward; the things that linked the six characters introduced towards the start of it; but by the end three of them had died, all in vain, one had given up, one felt like everything she'd done had been wasted and the usually wasted one found himself elevated to one of the three most important people on the planet and in immediate risk of imminent death.

Whatever logic there appeared to be was a red herring. In the end it was like the last three episodes were simply treading water; three episodes dedicated to the creation of a spaceship that could reach 1/10th the speed of light to intercept the San-Ti in 200 years that failed because of piss poor manufacturing (and quite dodgy special effects). Everything about this felt... slightly pointless. Like one of the three most important people in the world said to someone who would die accidentally because of a fluke of nature, "It's all happening in 400 years and none of us will be alive then and I don't intend to have any children so it doesn't matter to me..." Or words to that effect.

3 Body Problem is an epic story; I'm told there are ideas and concepts being explored in future seasons that are quite mind-blowing, yet one of its problems is it's just a bit too boring. It needs a bit more action; it needs to be less cryptic; it needs to explain how and why the San-Ti managed to create a cult of nutters on Earth prepared to do their bidding; it needs something to fucking happen. It all just a bit too wordy and some of the dialogue is annoying. Why wasn't Saul told that once he became - once it was announced that he was - one of the three most important people in the world that that was his life fucked; he couldn't refuse it, he was it and he had to suck it up and see what happens? Why didn't they give him a bullet proof helmet, especially when there was an attempt on his life pretty quickly after the announcement? No, he wasn't shot in the head but the would be assassin pretty much said what we were all thinking - if he was that important, why aim for his heart when a headshot would have been more efficient? If you're fighting an omnipotent opponent and they're bothered by certain individuals, wrap them in cotton wool and hide them away, don't let them wander around where all manner of people who might have been got at can kill or maim? I know, they have to make a TV show, but if they're going to make a TV show about an alien invasion where the aliens are so advanced that they use other dimensions to get their information, at least write it like you understand what that means.

My biggest problem with 3 Body Problem is more to do with the fact the actual 3 body problem isn't what we're dealing with now; that seemed to be a gateway to finding clever people who somehow were going to help the San-Ti when they arrived here (even though it's in 400 years); what was the point of all of that; the point of the VR creations; the point of why the San-Ti have left their world. My problem is it doesn't seem to have a point; it's just a deathly slow alien invasion story with random characters who might, but probably don't, have something to do with the outcome. Obviously I'll watch season two. 

Trailer Trash

Kong X Godzilla: The New Empire is something that comes out before this blog goes live, yet I almost feel as though I've seen most of it. Literally something like 11 minutes of the film has been released in trailers and while the film is obviously not 11 minutes some films are ruined by 30 second trailers.

The sad thing about this over-over-hyped stinker, which I am waiting patiently to watch, is that at this point in the calendar there is no worldwide streaming date for Godzilla: Minus One, a film that actually won a friggin' Oscar. Lauded as the best Godzilla film EVER, it had a good cinema run but no one has bought it up for a streaming service, while GxK:TNE will probably hit streaming sites by May...

Back to the new film, it's about Kong and Godzilla teaming up to beat a giant Orangutan, a giant spider and another giant lizard, while some accomplished actors look on while counting the wads of cash they were given to star in this shite. I can't wait. 

Metal Heads

So... Twisted Metal then? I think the best way to sum it up is we gave it an entire episode but by the end of that we decided perhaps it wasn't the kind of thing we liked. I know we seem to do this a lot now, we gave it a chance, but I kind of think that the opening five minutes did it.

The thing is neither of us have ever really been Mad Max fans and while I was a bit of a fan of Carmageddon in the 1990s, I was in my 30s rather than my 60s. We both quite like Anthony Mackie, but he needs to be in something that is a complete package, not just him and a lot of nonsense surrounding him. I wasn't convinced that there would be enough in the story to keep me interested and the idea of car chases, gun fights, big explosions and dialogue that was clearly written for and aimed at people 40 years younger than me has made me realise that things like this are going to happen to me a lot more as I crawl towards my ultimate end. I mean, we gave up on Domino Day because it just wasn't our thing and it felt like it had been plotted and scripted by someone who's big on TikTok or something; this was in the same arena. It simply wasn't the kind of thing that we like, so we're not watching any more of it. You can have a go at persuading me that I've made a fundamental error, but I suspect no one will...

Blind Man's Not Bluffing

So Fede Alvarez - the director who is responsible for the new Alien reboot and the Evil Dead reboot started out by directing a short - 88 minutes - crime thriller with a dash of horror called Don't Breathe which starred Stephen Lang, best known for appearing in crap low budget films you may never want to watch (again). He's in the same league as Neal McDonough and possibly even Eric Roberts, although maybe not that low down the list of has-beens.

This is a film about a trio of burglars who break into peoples' houses because one of the burglars' father works for a security company and house keys or alarm codes or something. They get a tip off that an old blind man who has inherited a shedload of money from a settlement after his daughter was killed might be their best way of hitting the big time and getting away from Detroit. All they have to do is get into the house, steal the money and get away. However, the old blind man is an Iraq war veteran, he has a big fuck off Rottweiler dog and his house is locked up tighter than Fort Knox. This doesn't deter our three intrepid burglars, unfortunately when things don't go the way they plan, two of them find themselves in a fight for their lives and survival. They also discover a woman, tied up in the basement, who is the prisoner of the blind man ... what the actual fuck have these guys wandered into?

It becomes pretty much a straightforward survival horror film from that moment on and if you want to be analytical you also start to wonder how a blind man has achieved so much, such as being able to kidnap and keep the woman who accidentally killed his daughter locked in a dungeon, in a sophisticated series of straightjackets and wires and pullies. His abilities are touched on, but really it's just a bad taste nasty torture porn wannabe with a lot of cheap thrills and some extra nastiness thrown in for good measure. I can see why the director is destined for better things; there's was a real sense of claustrophobia about the film and the way it was made, but as a horror/slash/thriller it was... I dunno, average at best. As usual there's a sequel/prequel out that has a much lower rating on the film sites and wasn't made by Alvarez and we won't be dipping our toes into that particular cesspool. 

Lancashire Hot and Cold Pot

Chronologically, Passenger is absolutely fucked up - how is it that it starts on a snowy night and the very next day it's the middle of summer, then it's the winter again, then the summer, then maybe the spring or possibly the autumn? What about the vehicles? You have the local coppers driving around in a Metro - something we haven't seen for probably 30 years; a detective in an old Volvo, but also in a 4x4 with spotlights and very modern. The décor in most of the shops and pub feels like it's in the 1980s, even the police station is odd, yet everyone has smart phones. Even computer games look like they're from the age of Atari ST and yet it seems to be contemporary...

Someone described it as Happy Valley meets The League of Gentlemen, whereas the Guardian - my 'favourite' newspaper for making up reviews based on someone's synopsis - gave this four stars and suggested it was, yet again, something it clearly isn't. Passenger is possibly the weirdest thing to appear on ITV in a long time. Is it a supernatural thriller? Is there something paranormal going on? Why does everyone seem to hate each other and shout a lot? Why is there a fracking site run by one - posh - man and who are the people protesting outside it? There's even a suggestion that people who live in Chadder Vale in Lancashire (but actually filmed in West Yorkshire) can never escape the place, that there's a curse on it. Oh and what the fuck got out of the van at the beginning of the first episode and why are people disappearing?

Wunmi Mosaku - last seen in the brilliant Loki - is the former Met police detective who is bored and would like some real police work to do but has a CO who seems oblivious to everything and wants her to investigate missing wheelie bins and coughing cats. This is a strangely comical series that tonally isn't a comedy at all, it's more surreal than anything else. It has myriad plot lines, with larger than life characters, stereotypical characters and chronologically misplaced ones as well - everything about this series feels slightly wrong and then there's the seasons. Surely people who make TV series must realise that people will notice that in one scene it's freezing cold and there's no leaves on the trees and the next scene it's obviously July. The opening episode did have a local DJ suggesting that the snow was a bit of a fluke, but that, IMHO, was just lazy scriptwriting because it was obviously filmed across a six month period to the point where even the sunlight varied from scene to scene. Or maybe it's just like that up in the high peak regions of Lancashire? Oh and David 'Frank Gallagher' Threlfall's in it, playing the posh bloke who owns the fracking site and lives in a caravan, was the victim of the town's most hated resident who has just out of prison and doesn't appear to remember anything he's ever done...

We got halfway through; watched the first three episodes in one sitting and figured we'd watch the other three the following night. Then I saw its rating on IMDB had dropped to 5.7 and decided to do something I usually avoid; I read some of the IMDB reviews and a couple of them with spoilers and it appears that all six episodes are like the first three, there's little or no explanation and it appears to set things up for second series. So, this is going the same way as Twisted Metal, it's consigned to the rubbish heap of time; there will be no reprieves, we waste too much time on unfulfilling garbage. It's just a shame because I like Wunmi Mosaku, I think she's a good actor. Anyhow, there is literally Nothing To See Here!

Keep on Shitting

I decided that it was time to give Venom a second viewing. Don't ask me why, given how bad Sony Marvel films are, but obviously this was the exception to the rule. That rule being that all Sony films are dribbly shit, but Venom isn't quite as bad. Except, it really is. It maybe has one or two redeeming features but I'm hard pressed to tell you what they are. Tom Hardy is okay as the disgraced journalist Eddie Brock; Vanessa Williams looks bored and like she'd rather be somewhere else as his ex-girlfriend and Riz Ahmed is just fucking awful.

You know things are problematic when the Venom from Spider-Man 3 isn't the Venom in this film. Instead, it's obviously set in an alternate Spider-Man universe (the one that doesn't have a Spider-Man in it) and the symbiote is one of many that has been found in space by super-billionaire psychopath Ahmed. There is no real explanation why Venom is called Venom, why Eddie's physiology works better than other humans or, more crucially, why this film was ever made in the first place. It's got some half reasonable special effects some of the time, but Venom and his abilities are largely rubbish; Hardy's version of Brock is a bit too comical and this is essentially a 'comic book movie' rather than a superhero film. It's quite violent and nasty at times and Kevin Feige and the people at Disney must really loathe Sony and the rubbish they spew out of their festered arses that use the Marvel logo. There's even a set up for the sequel that is both lame and without any real point unless you know the comics - but why would you want to watch a film like this unless you were familiar with the comics and/or had some brain function problems?

Life Afterlife

Regular readers of these blogs will know (or remember) that I don't think Ghostbusters is a very good film; it is essentially a Bill Murray vehicle that had a catchy tune and caught a wave of goodwill that turned it into a huge blockbuster movie. watching it many years later and it has many, many faults. 

I know there are a lot of people who hated the reboot in 2016 with the all girl Ghostbusters, but that was a considerably better film on just about all levels and in 2021 there was Ghostbusters: Afterlife which rebooted the original franchise and divided the critics. Some hated it, others thought it should never have left New York (that would be the Guardian) and some thought it was a touching and excellent homage to Harold Ramos who died a few years before this was made. It is, in my never humble opinion, the best Ghostbusters film of the lot. It has flaws, but in general it is a film that respects the originals, fleshes them out, pays tribute to the original actors and brings an entirely new feel to the 'franchise'. Ghostbusters is thought of as an excellent kids film (and really, the original was anything but) and this does a great job of making it a creepy kids film that also works on a number of levels.

Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd are excellent; Finn Wolfhard has a role that in many ways is befitting an actor with his lack of talent; Logan Kim is quite excellent as Podcast, but the film is McKenna Grace's; she is the real star, the real keeper of Harold Ramis and Egon Spengler's flame. She is quite brilliant as the 12-year-old granddaughter of the dead Ghostbuster (who is brought back by the powers of CGI). This movie might transplant the action from NY to Oklahoma, but it also explains so much about the first film while simultaneously tying it into this new one that you have to admire the writers of this; it deserves an A+ just for being able to do that. It was also great seeing Dan Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson and even Bill Murray reprise their roles and even Sigourney Weaver (looking fantastic for a 71 year old) manages to get in on the act in the post credit scene. This is not a rubbish unnecessary sequel that wasn't needed; it is an emotional and thoroughly enjoyable romp that actually could have done with being a little longer with more ghost action. It's Wednesday night and it's been the best thing I've watched this week so far...

*Please be aware that we were unaware that this film was the Good Friday BBC film. Had we known that we would have watched it on TV rather than watching it off the Flash Drive of Doom. Thank you. 

From My Archives

In January, of this year, something popped up in my Facebook memories. It was a 13-year-old blog I had written, similar to these blogs wot I now write and it was praising a new US TV series called Shameless (US). As you can imagine, this was a US version of the hit Channel 4 comedy drama from the turn of the millennium, written by Paul Abbott about a dysfunctional family - transplanted from Manchester to Chicago for this revamp. Shameless (US) became one of our favourite TV shows for almost a decade. It made the UK version pale into insignificance; it was for eight of its 11 seasons one of the best things to ever appear on any television and I used to bang on about it in every single incarnation of this blog.

It starred William H. Macy (as Frank Gallagher), Emmy Rossum (as Fiona) and an unknown young actor called Jeremy Allen White (as Phillip 'Lip' Gallagher), except he was quite low down in the cast list despite having a crucial role to play in the entire series. He was quite brilliant as the errant but brilliant eldest son of the feckless Frank; a boy genius with the world at his feet but possessing a Gallagher gene that meant that every time he was on the verge of becoming something he'd fuck it up. In my original review of Shameless (US) it focused on what a great adaptation it was, but pointed out what a unique and talented actor White was. I was very clear that he was the real star of this show and he was going to go on to great things as an actor. With all modesty, I have to say, am I a fucking prophet or what? His latest TV show The Bear is one of the three best TV shows currently being made anywhere in the world (it's so good, he's finished filming season 3 and is already shooting season 4); he's appeared in a couple of films over the last 18 months and is about to play Bruce Springsteen in a biopic. That last bit doesn't fill me with a lot of anticipation because I'm not a fan of 'The Boss' at all, especially as I've said for the last 13 years that the biopic he should be in is one that focuses on the Hollywood great Robert Mitchum. However, this is one case of 'I told you so' that I'm really proud of.

The Last But One...

There was a couple of moments in the penultimate episode of Resident Alien where it forgot it was a comedy and remembered that originally there was also an element of drama in this series. There was also a lot of tying up subplots that you'd completely forgotten about and all of them had to do with parenthood. D'Arcy's lousy relationship with her mother and revelation from her father. Asta discovering her birth mother is an absolute bag of shit and coming to an understanding with her own estranged adopted daughter. The mayor and his wife realising that something is very wrong regarding alien abductions and Harry reconnecting with his son, who wants to kill him. Out of all of these it was the mayor's wife who stole the show and Harry did an abnormally human thing at the end of it. The problem, of course, was all of that was not enough to save it from the usual dross we've become accustomed to. The finale promises very little.

From the Actual Archives

It's funny how films from your past; from your youth, that have such an impact on you can feel like a different planet when you watch them 30 years or so later. The wife once said this was one of the scariest films she'd ever seen, but tonight she looked at me like I'd imagined her saying that. I've always thought The Haunting was a classic and in many ways it is, it's just... well, much of the drama is just badly written overwrought nonsense.

Made by Robert Wise in 1963, it is regarded by many to be a great horror film, but in reality it's a psychological thriller that might be a ghost story or it might be the manifestation of the some psychic abilities that the main character - Eleanor Lance - had. I can understand why Stephen King was so taken by this film and why his own book Carrie borrows so heavily from themes in the original Shirley Jackson novel. Hill House might be a cursed and haunted house, but is what happens over the three days to the group of investigators really ghosts or the conjuring of things from the deranged mind of someone with a short but effective history of telekinetic/poltergeist exposure? Is this a proto-Carrie?

The film does a good job of setting up the house as the bad guy; unexplained deaths, curmudgeonly owner who forced his daughter to live in a house with no straight lines, barely any natural light and corridors like mazes. So when Richard Johnson (as Professor Markway, the lead psychic investigator) turns up with Eleanor (Nell), Theodora (Theo) and Luke Sanderson - who expects to inherit the house one day - it's more about the strange and unusual relationships that will be formed between the four people. Nell is there as she's been invited because of a strange phenomena that took place when she was 11 - the house where she lived with her mother and sister had stones rain down on it for three solid days. Theo is there because she's got telepathic abilities and the two women are opposites of a coin - Nell is meek, weak and timid, while Theo is sexually charged, confident and aggressive. Markway doesn't do a very good job of vetting his team of investigators and it soon becomes clear that Nell is damaged goods and Theo is a wind-up merchant, but the first night they are beset by a ghostly presence that only seems to affect the women, from this point on tensions increase and relationships fracture as the house does its best to create divisions and mistrust.

However, while it was probably quite a brilliantly scary film in the 1960s and even beyond; it has dated terribly and feels overwrought, overacted and badly scripted, with Markway, especially, suffering from such poor scripting that one wonders if he's an investigator in anything, given his lack of seeming experience, especially dealing with individuals. Much of what makes the film creepy is the use of camera angles, the filming techniques and the soundscape. The use of stark black and white - therefore just grey tones - make everything seem ambiguous and it is an example of brilliant filmmaking, it just no longer feels as though it has been executed well. Julie Harris is excellent as the troubled Nell, Clare Bloom oozes bi-sexuality as Theo and Russ Tamblyn, in probably his most serious role, makes up the numbers. There is a good cameo from Lois Maxwell as Markway's wife and Rosalie Crutchley is the most sinister thing in it as the housekeeper Mrs Dudley, with deadpan delivery and a complete lack of any kind of emotion. It is still a very good film, it's just no longer scary and is of an age.

The Real Deal?

It seems that almost every week now I end up watching more shite than good programmes and this week was no real exception. From average TV blockbusters, to things I didn't even bother finishing to crap comicbook films to one-time classic cinema that has dated like year-old bread, so what a way to finish off a largely crap week of telly; with a 1986 Arnold Schwarzenegger film that was so bad it makes one wonder how he became anything more than a one-hit wonder after Terminator. 

Raw Deal really is a load of shit. Arnie plays a small town sheriff, who used to be in the FBI but lost his job because he was a little too handy with his fists and guns. He gets approached by Darren McGavin, an ex-FBI colleague who offers him the unlikely proposition of going rogue and helping bring down the Chicago mob by pretending to be a crook, infiltrating said mob and bringing them down from the inside, but in a Alias Smith & Jones twist, Arnie has to fake his own death and then has to become a mob enforcer without any back-up or safety net with only a vague promise that he might get his old job back. Obviously this sounds too good to be true and Arnie fakes his own death and becomes a mobster, in what can only be called the most PG rated mob movie ever made - almost in homage to the aforementioned 1970s TV show, Arnie works his way up in the mob by literally killing nobody, that is until the end when he kills everybody. Things you need to understand about this film as it is currently featuring as a late night Film4 thing is that Arnie couldn't act in those early films and he really couldn't. This film has Sam Wannamaker in it - as the mob boss - this is a serious actor with serious awards and film roles in his past and even he can't make it rise above piss poor at best. The aforementioned McGavin - you know, Night Stalker - dials in his role and is as convincing as someone trying to sell you London Bridge and the action sequences... I don't really know what to say about them apart from there isn't much action, even when guns are involved. This is a woefully inadequate action film that I hadn't seen for 37 years and will never see again.

Why did I watch it? I'm kind of stumped about that. I see movies on Film4 and ITV4, films from my youth, most of which are an enormous disappointment, but I think 'I'll have some nostalgia and relive great films from when I was in my 20s or 30s,' but what I actually get is a reminder that film and TV even a little as 20 years ago could be utter bull's tits. Obviously, that's not to say that film and TV isn't still but even modern shit films and TV isn't as bad as this.

Next Time...

Who really cares? You'll get what I watch and have to suffer/enjoy it or you won't bother. I think I only do this now to see how inventive I can get with my reviews.