Modern Culture - Stinky and Farty

You know the drill - spoilers are likely, so tread carefully...

Pink Jesus Lizard

And so, a week after the streaming release of the awesome Godzilla Minus One we get the antithesis of that movie. The latest instalment in Legendary Pictures' Monsterverse - Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and if another film about a big ape and his giant lizard sidekick wasn't needed it arrived anyhow...

What can I say? I mean, it isn't like anyone is supposed to take these films seriously, is it? There was so much wrong about this movie - there was no logic to a lot of it. Things were said that were contradicted literally seconds later. New titans were introduced with fanfare to last literally seconds; how come Monarch just happened to have a giant Kong shaped exo-skeleton arm complete with painkillers lying around and just how did Godzilla get inside the Coliseum without damaging it and why did he return to it and there wasn't any damage from the last time he left it? In fact, there was so many things about this film that made little or no sense, like how can there be a subterranean level to Hollow Earth? How come Kong seemed to set up loads of traps that only he knew about and when did he do this and why? Why in the Monarch TV series are we told that time passes at a different speed in Hollow Earth but this doesn't seem to apply now? How come the Hollow Earth base is so far away from the main Earth portal? And why did radio contact disappear as they were getting close to the base - why have a base that's far away from your escape route and out of radio range? Why on earth was Dan Stevens channelling Michael Caine as a 1960s love and peace hippy?.

All credit for the LGBT+ Godzilla with his pink sheen and ability to dive off of the rock of Gibraltar or to allow Kong to ride him like a racehorse - if you've never imagined Godzilla running like Usain Bolt then watch this film and have that unfulfilled fantasy become a reality. However, it was nice to see Mothra again, I always wondered what happened to her after Godzilla: King of the Monsters (actually, I never gave it a second thought and neither did you).

This was an unmitigated pile of ape shit, but, thankfully, it didn't really take itself seriously because if it had it would have been even worse than it was. This must surely be the end of the franchise because it needs to be. That is unless the makers of these films haven't finished trashing all the wonders of the modern world, because this time around it was Italy, Egypt, Spain, Brazil and parts of France that got the destruction, maybe next time we can have Kong trashing London and Godzilla stomping all over, I dunno, Machu Picchu. Has anyone ever considered how many people die when these giant monsters kick the shit out of each other in the middle of over-populated built up areas? Absolute horse wank!

Doctor Poo

Honestly? That's 90 minutes of my life I've lost, never to get back. Say what you like about Jodie Whitaker's run it was the stories that did for her and while my jury is still out on Ncuti Gatwa here were two stories that absolutely stank the living room out...

Space Babies was a slight, bottom humour kind of episode that I would not have been proud of. A space station full of babies that can speak and move around on mobiles. There was definitely something a bit creepy about it but probably not the way it was intended. This was full of fart, bogey and shit jokes floating around as the Doctor explains to Ruby who and what he is. I sat stony faced and almost in disbelief at what an abomination of an episode it was. I didn't even raise a smile; this was possibly one of the worst Doctor Who stories I have seen since the 2010 reboot and anyone who condemns Whitaker's run needs to see this pile of soiled diapers (or maybe look at themselves in a mirror).

The Devil's Chord was a tiny bit better, but was so full of chronological mistakes that you would have thought RTD should have done his homework first. The villainous Maestro was another from the Toymaster school of villains - possibly an offspring - and veered between quite menacing and very annoying and then the musical number... I suppose in an episode about music it was bound to happen, but if this is the kind of standard and level we're going to have now with DW then I might do something I've never done since it was rebooted - give up on it...

I still have a problem with Gatwa's accent, which goes all over the place - Scottish, West Country, Patwa and a few other places and his general enthusiasm and boyish charm might be good for a reboot, but, you know, it's a bit too much. I also had high hopes for Millie Gibson but she's grown tiresome very quickly and the entire premise just seems to feel a bit wrong and contradictory to DW stories from the past. I seem to be in the minority at the moment, but I bet you $5 it's not long before everyone feels the same way - this is, if I want to be brutally honest, fucking awful. 

This Farming Life

The first of the last three episodes of Clarkson's Farm is a much more upbeat affair after the tragedy of the pigs. It's about things going right for a change - at least to a degree, especially as Kaleb and Charlie had the misfortune of meeting Rishi Sunak at one point. Kaleb won TV for this week by telling our pointless waste of space PM he had good hair.

The sixth episode was almost wall to wall positivity. Jeremy's mushroom idea literally exploded as he grew probably too many to be able to sell them, it was a huge glut of mycelia (but it did give me some ideas). Then there was the appeal against West Oxford Council who had deemed literally everything the farm was doing as illegal and wanted to shut him down. The independent ombudsman decided that Jeremy's projects were fine, he could build a bigger car park, he could keep his shop, his burger van and even open a café closer to the shop. They could have toilets and anything else they wanted and it would be for a provisional three years before the decision would be reassessed. The weird thing was as we watched it, we felt that justice had been done and Clarkson got what was deserved - leaving us in a strange position of rooting for a right wing millionaire's battle against bureaucracy. Oh and there's the goats - cute and funny with added unintentional cruelty; almost worth watching the entire series for.

However, all that joy and good news turned a bit mouldy in the penultimate episode. While there's a great deal of positivity about the construction - in swift time - of the car park and the impending birth of new piglets, there's the usual 'oh shit, we didn't see that coming' disasters on the horizon, especially as the farming year and this season draws to a close.

The series concluded (it's been renewed for a fourth season despite 'fears' that it would be canned because of Clarkson) with a sort of a cliffhanger-ish 'will they, won't they' get the harvest in and then make any money episode. There was good news, not so good news and some bad news and then an absolute sort of jaw dropper of an ending when we get yet another example of why farming is almost a vocation rather than a proper job. It's unusual that TV series, especially 'reality' ones get better with age but this is an exception because over the last four years we've grown to know and love certain characters and their lives are important to the people invested in the show. This year it was gobbledegook Gerald's battle with cancer that sat around in the background and whether Kaleb's first year as farm manager would be a success and there's a moment in the final episode when you really get to see what farming means to the young fella. I look forward to season four a lot more than Clarkson's Grand Tour specials, because they've lost their sheen while this one still polishes up a treat.

Notts Again!

I'm getting to the stage where reviewing each episode of Welcome to Wrexham might become a chore for me to write and one for you to read. I mean, it's a cracking documentary series with honest to god real people padding the football bits out, but unless something spectacular happens it might be best if I started giving this a miss and not reviewing every episode. 

This week as well as a focus on the women's team, there's a look at a men's support group featuring Wrexham supporters and the return of the old nemesis Notts County in League Two. With them in second and Wrexham in third is was, yet again, another do or die game, especially as the Welsh team had recently been stuffed 5-0 by eventual title winners Stockport County. we know how this finishes, we have a pretty good understanding that 50% of the rest of the series will be looking at individuals, either involved in the club or supporters from Wrexham and there will be a couple of episodes that will be Rob and Ryan heavy. It's still entertaining and enjoyable, but reviewing it on a weekly basis might become a bit like me reviewing my nightly bath...

However, I will add that the following week's episode focused on what Rob and Ryan are doing for the City of Wrexham as a legacy of their time at the club and it was both interesting and enlightening. These guys have a mission that entails more than just them being successful owners of a football club and the way they have endeared themselves to the place is worth a mention. It is also worth mentioning that this episode has a musical number based on how to properly pronounce McElhenney, which is one of the funniest things ever to appear on this show.

What Ho and Spiffing 

The first thing you realise about The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is how much the cast, especially Henry Cavill seemed to thoroughly enjoy making it and it's no wonder because it's a bally good bit of action adventure in a WW2 setting that's (loosely) based on a true story.

Cavill plays Gus March-Phillips, a real life unorthodox army officer who was given the job of recruiting a top secret team to infiltrate and destroy the Nazis supply chain to the North Atlantic which was creating havoc for the Allies and preventing the USA from getting involved in a war that it looked like the UK was on the verge of losing.

This was great fun with lots of almost comedic violence, excellent set pieces and lots of very funny bits as Cavill and his team, which includes Jack Reacher's Alan Ritchson - proving he can actually act - as a Danish psychopath who cuts Nazi hearts out for fun and Alex Pettyfer as Geoffrey 'Apple' Appleyard, an army officer, spy and reconnaissance man - have fun on the west African coast. Guy Ritchie does an excellent job at keeping the movie moving at a cracking pace and there's not much else to say apart from if you get the chance to watch it, do so, it's my film of the week, so far, even if it has little or no competition.

Blub and Chunder

It was time to give the fourth and worst Thor film a re-watch and I feel it's necessary to be as fair and even handed as I possibly can. Thor: Love & Thunder is a fucking abysmal load of shite and should never have been allowed to have been made...

Other than that, it was a fucking awful film. I kind of hoped that on second viewing it would be better and to be really honest there are some excellent scenes - in isolation - it's just spoiled by being tonally wrong and Chris Hemsworth (and Russell Crowe and Tessa Thompson and Natalie Portman and Taika Waititi, maybe even Christian Bale). Knowing now, as I do, that many original scenes were scrapped - including a briefer and more pleasant meeting with Zeus - and scenes featuring some characters from previous Thor films were also binned, this really was the first MCU film to suffer from executive input and editing by collective wankers. There is also something off about the entire story, with little or no explanation as to how Gorr becomes Gorr or who bestowed him with power and the god killing sword. Plus there's this real problem with Jane Foster's cancer, her becoming another Thor and how this film was the first real effective spike driven into the heart of the MCU's future. The goats, however, were funny even if their presence in the film was abstract at best. It's time Marvel lost Hemsworth and relaunched Thor from another multiverse, maybe played by Alan Ritchson, who really has the build to pull it off and does a half reasonable Scandi accent (see the review directly above this). This really is an MCU movie to avoid; it's like having the choice between a bucket of vomit thrown at your face or a bucket of diarrhoea instead... 

Allegoryville

In 1999, the wife and I watched a film that I loved and she was ambivalent, at best, about. 25 years later, we sat down and watched it again and I still loved it and the wife thought it was an excellent film - funny how time changes some things for some people but not others...

Starring Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, JT Walsh, Joan Allen and the brilliant William H Macy (as well as a couple of Buffy alumni and a bunch of young people who would be well known for film and TV roles in the subsequent years), Pleasantville is a really good movie, serving as an allegory to 1950s America and how it has changed but in many ways stayed the same, rooted in a past that really didn't exist outside of television. This is a fantasy that doesn't need scrutiny; if you watch it there's no point in trying to work out why it's happened or even how because it's telling a kind of fable and doesn't need to be bogged down with logic. Maguire and Witherspoon are bickering siblings in 1997 when an argument over a TV remote control brings a mysterious TV repairman to their door (played by the legendary Don Knotts) who gives them a new remote that zaps them both into the sterile and U rated world of Pleasantville - a TV show that Maguire obsesses over, allowing the siblings to fit right in because of his encyclopaedic knowledge of it. This world of black and white order suddenly gets an injection of reality and gradually the siblings - initially - and then the rest of the town start realise there's more to life than the orderly way they live in this glossy black and white 1950s TV show, where the worst teenagers get up to is holding hands and every husband returns home from work to find his dinner on the table, presented to him by a loving and perfectly manicured wife.

What it really does is use Pleasantville as a mirror on society and how it is prejudiced and chauvinistic but that's okay because this is the US of A. As more and more of the townsfolk, mainly teenagers to begin with, start becoming colourful and daring, the older more staid members of the town rail against it; imposing rules and preventing 'coloured' people from having the same freedoms as black and white people and suddenly things take a scary turn for the worse with book burnings, beatings and raw emotions replacing the cold logic of an ordered society and naturally as these things happen more people become coloured. It's probably a little heavy handed in its allegory, but, you know, sometimes that's needed, especially when you're dealing with Americans, because they're not the most rational people at the best of times and there is a sense that even today many of them want to live in an age that none of them truly remember (a bit like Brextremists and their desire to return to the 70s when they were children and the shit we lived through felt like an adventure). It's still a wonderful film and probably Tobey Maguire's best performance, before he became Spider-Man and saw his career nose dive and fall. The great thing about it is how the people of Pleasantville change but also the siblings also change, helping everyone to become better people. It's probably a bit too altruistic for 2024, which is why it's such a valuable film.

A Detached Existence?

We finally got around to starting to watch Severance and while this part of the review only covers the first episode, I have to say it was unexpected in how it was delivered and when a friend of mine said the first couple of episodes were slow and it didn't start getting weird until episode three, all I could think was 'it gets weirder than this?!?'

It's about a group of people who work for Lumon Industries and have all agreed to be 'severed' - to allow the company to split their lives in half - meaning the time they spend at work and the time they spend at home belong to two separate people who are also the same person. When they work at Lumon they have no memory or recollection of who they are in the outside world and vice versa - when at home they have no idea what they do at work, only that they work at Lumon and they have been severed, so they have no memory of what they do. This alone is as weird as fuck, so if you add to this even more weirdness then you can see why it has been one of the highest rated TV series of the last 20 years. The first part is all about introducing us to the SVR'D department - possibly a department that has severed people because of the security and nature of the work they do, which we don't really know and are given few clues about. We're introduced to Ellie R, a new recruit and someone who has agreed to have her mind split in two, and Mark, recently promoted when his former supervisor Petey 'leaves'. We also meet their two colleagues and two of the management team; we also get a hint that the board are forever and always watching - creating an even more sinister feel.

Mark - in the real world - is out having a meal when Petey from work - a man he doesn't know in the real world - approaches him and sows the seeds of doubt about the entire severance programme and what it might really do and we also discover that Mark's direct supervisor is also his next door neighbour in the real world, but whether she's been severed or not is not known... 

Episode two just ramps up the weirdness (I know, I've said this word a lot), but also adds creepy and sinister to the thesaurus of descriptive words attached. One wonders where and how this series will go forward, especially given that the Ins (people who work inside the severance department) do mundane and strange jobs with no real suggestion of possible excitement; whereas the Outs (their other selves) are full of possibilities mixed with misanthropy - Mark, for instance, is a recent widower and borderline alcoholic. This is one of the most intriguing series I've watched in a long time. I hope we're not let down by it.

Sweet Sensations

I absolutely adored this series; it's one of the best I've seen this year, even if it was too short and not enough explanation was given. Sugar concluded in a (here's that word again) weird way, but leaves it wide open for a second season, which may answer some of the nagging questions left, such as why the aliens were really on earth and who the people who ended up hunting them at the end really were.

Olivia's story had pretty much concluded by the end of last week's episode, but there was to be an epilogue that I figured no one saw coming because the twist in this tale was never hinted at; it was something John sensed when he listened to the serial killer's CD diaries. Yet it wasn't just that; he had never been given a clear reason from his 'colleagues' as to why they didn't want him being involved in this case and that was what was bugging him - such as why his 'people' knew that Olivia was okay when John finally started to unravel the messy story.  John had mentioned his sister a number of times throughout the show and we finally found out the story behind her, what we didn't see coming was who might have been involved in her 'disappearance'. 

The serial killer story was complex and it seems that Olivia's brother might have been inadvertently responsible for his half sister's abduction - although this was never really made clear. Whether the killer's family knew about his foibles is possibly something we'll find out in series two - because I've no doubt there will be one - because the family are far too 'big' for this to just vanish into thin air. What we do know is there was someone else - someone John is friends with - witnessing the killer's deeds and this will undoubtedly be the main thrust of any second series, because this person holds many secrets, some of which John needs to know. Why his people could have departed with stuff like this up in the air is an interesting question which might never be answered but equally for a race of largely peaceful and observant aliens how they could be okay with what transpired offers up questions of an altogether different kind. There was one really nice moment towards the end when john reveals who he is to Mel, she was, after all, his unofficial partner during this and helped save his life; the scene was absolutely heart warming.

At the conclusion we have two aliens who remain on earth and they are on a collision course, as long as they can evade being tracked by the powerful family of the serial killer. This also leaves the question of why the aliens would out themselves to a serial killer or his powerful family or what John's problem with the shaking hand and dizzy spells were, or even why the Siegel family seemed so ambivalent about Olivia disappearance, at first. In fact, when you start digging there are a number of loose ends which some of are unlikely to ever be answered...

It was at times confusing and we were fed so many red herrings that it made your head spin at times, but this was in no way the shark jumping rubbish that a number of critics claimed. Yes, it was fucking unusual and left field to have a Philip Marlow like detective who also happens to be an alien observing life on earth, but equally it gave it a depth and a direction that was unexpected - all in all it was a superb series, well shot with good dialogue and a slightly detached feel throughout - which, of course, is probably explained by the twist (which I was spot on about from the very first episode). 

Colin Farrell was excellent (and he's back as the Penguin in a spin-off series from The Batman later in the year), I want to see him as John Sugar again, with more emphasis on who he is and where he comes from. As I said in an earlier review, I expect the next season to be more 3 Body Problem than Maltese Falcon.

Next Time...

Will I give up on Doctor Who? If I do it will be a remarkable desertion given I've lived through some stinkers of series since the reboot happened. I'm not giving up on Welcome to Wrexham but I'm giving the reviews a break for a few weeks and I'll return to them as the series draws to a close and there's the rest of series one of Severance, other than that the TV front might be a bit thin on the ground again. Movies... the same; the FDoD has less than 12 movies on it (if I discount the eight Harry Potter films the wife wants to watch again and three Lord of the Rings films that I want to watch but suspect the wife isn't bothered about). We are going to watch Man of Steel again and Arthur the King is a new film that isn't about Camelot but is about a dog and an endurance athlete. It's going to be a case of what we see is what you get...