Modern Culture - As Black As Pitch

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

Bad Omen

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

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

Sunny With A Chance of Weirdness

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

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

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

Fireballs

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

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

The Old News 

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

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

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

Crispy Fried Knight

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

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

As Grim As Fuck

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

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

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

Hot in the City

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Black as Oil

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

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

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

Time Wankers & The Future

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

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

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

Dead Poo?

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

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

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

How To It Get Back

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

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

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

Insanity

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

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

What The Fink?

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

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

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

Next Time...

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

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

 

Pop Culture: The Insanity Clause

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

Kingdom Come

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

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

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

Dragon Ball Zzzzzzzzzz

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

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

Alien Wankdorf

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

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

A Work of Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Return of the Muslim Grrrls

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

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

Mission Improbable

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

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

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

How to Build a Chatbot

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

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

The Boys Are Back

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

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

FAQ de FUQ

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

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

It's Always Sunny in Kyoto

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

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

Next Time...

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

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

 

Modern Culture - Facebook is Shit & Other Facts

Please be aware there might be spoilers and that the title of this week's blog is a mixture of irony and an attack on that worthless c**t Zuckerberg and his wanky algorithms...

Dragon Lanced

It took nearly four hours, but something finally happened in House of the Dragon and it involved... dragons. It really looked for the opening 45 minutes that we were in for another spellbinding instalment of fuck all. Matt Smith is still having weird dreams and meeting a Scottish witch with strange brews. Alicent is taking 'get rid of this unwanted pregnancy' potions, while Larys plots, schemes and double crosses his way into Varys territory. Then came this odd sidebar, why was the King's Hand really bothering with a pathetic little fiefdom's castle when the people in charge really want Harrenhal - where Matt Smith is? The logic seemed sound but it did seem like a piffling little thing, so piffling that the king decides to enter the fray on his ickle dragon. The episode is called 'A Dance with Dragons' and it culminated with two big battles and really unexpected stuff - two really unexpected stuffs in particular; after umpteen episodes of nothing in particular happening we get one with HUGE ramifications all round. The piffling little thing turned out to be fucking enormous and while it was really only the last 15 minutes, it was the best episode of the series so far - it's now how they handle this bombshell of an episode that matters...

NB: People sometimes wonder why I have such a bug up my arse about the fucking Guardian; well, here's one good enough reason. The day after this episode aired they ran an article about something specific that happens in the show and promptly opened the article by warning people who aren't up to date with the TV series to avoid reading because of spoilers. They then - within a paragraph - revealed something from future episodes via Wikipedia, which regular viewers of the show will not know until they've watched future episodes. The comments BTL were full of attacks at the newspaper and angry viewers who essentially have had their enjoyment spoiled by a newspaper with an almost psychopathic desire to spoil things for its readers. To call them a bunch of cunts would be a disservice to cunts...

Alien Encounters

The 2013 Blumhouse Sci-Fi horror film Dark Skies is pretty much an exercise in sinister bollocks [now there's a concept]. It's actually quite a creepy and slightly disturbing movie until it enters into the world of aliens rather than just skirting around the edges.

Keri Russell and Josh Hamilton's family begin to experience weird shit that is inexplicable. Do they have poltergeists or is one of their kids doing strange stuff, without realising it, in the night? Why is dad always rubbing the back of his ear and why is mom trying to break her head open on a double glazed patio door? Who is the Sandman the youngest son is always talking about? And to be honest, the set up is clever and while it's kind of devoid of suspense or even tension, the build up is quite effective. Then it sort of descends into a schlock version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. JK Simmons comes into the film, in what is really just a cameo role, to tell the Barrett parents that they've got an infestation of Greys and it's not going to end well. It's this point of the film where it sort of loses the plot even though we're not stupid and we know this is about alien home invasion from the offset. It's just so bloody ludicrous, especially when aliens are painted as essentially B movie serial kidnappers with sadistic streaks. What was a tight little mystery ends up being a silly load of bollocks.

Revenge of the Small Guy

The first of this week's George Clooney films is something I had absolutely no knowledge of and given it was directed by Jodie Foster and starred the aforementioned Clooney, Julia Roberts, Giancarlo Esposito, Dominic West and Jack O'Donnell - plus a few other faces you'll know from TV and films - it seems odd that it fell off the radar.

Money Monster is a 2016 movie that is really powerful and completely wrong foots you. Clooney plays Lee Gates, the host of the eponymous Money Monster stock market show; the go to guy for tips and tricks about making money from stocks and shares. He's presenting his usual Friday show but one of his key guests isn't available; a guy who is CEO of a company that has just lost $800million in a market crash. Enter O'Donnell, a disgruntled delivery driver called Kyle, who has lost $60K because of the algorithm malfunction. He breaks into the studio, takes everyone hostage, puts Gates in a vest that is stuffed with explosives and starts demanding answers as to why he lost his money and why it's always the little guy who pays for the rich guys fuck ups. This is an extremely powerful film that changes tack about halfway through. It goes from a siege film to a siege mentality story as we discover there's a lot more to this than we first think.

This is a movie that has Clooney playing the kind of guy you would not expect him to, but gradually he reverts into George Clooney as he goes from victim to the man ultimately in charge of a breaking story that's much bigger than being the victim of an angry young man with a gun. This is something you should try to see if you get the chance; it is an excellent story that, yet again, shows the shit side of the USA, especially the corporate side. 

Political Animal

Ryan Gosling, looking young and not as handsome as everyone claims he is, stars in tonight's double bill of Clooney written, produced, directed and starred in movies. It seems I have a bottomless pit of George films to watch. The Ides of March is about the dirty business of finding a nominee to run for President. Gosling plays a campaign #2 working for Philip Seymour Hoffman, the campaign manager for Clooney, who plays a Democratic governor hoping for the nomination. He's young, clever and probably perfect to set up for a fall. He gets involved with a young intern, who just happens to be the head of the DNC's daughter, but he isn't the only one who has fallen for her charms. This is about double dealing, shit slinging and whether or not you actually have the goods to bring men down. There is a distinct feeling that this is probably very much how US politics works, especially when you get down to the nitty gritty of who is going to run for President. Dog eat dog is too tame a description for it. Brutal, cold and nasty is a better way to describe it all. 

Signing Off

The biopic of Edward R Murrow, Good Night, And Good Luck is another Clooney look at US politics, this time at the award-winning CBS show where Murrow decides to take on senator Joe McCarthy and his Communist witch hunt. It's a bleak, paranoid film that is based entirely on transcripts and eye witness accounts of what actually happened in the 1950s during the trials and for the TV show, the network and the people involved behind the scenes. It is not exactly an exciting film, it's very wordy and studio based, but it is tense and earnest and David Strathairn is quite brilliant as Murrow and Clooney quite subdued as his producer Fred Friendly. This is a snapshot of US history and led to the downfall of McCarthy and the end to a period in US politics that wasn't based on facts but on lies and rumour. This is a great little film, worth watching. 

Attack of the Spider-Men

As I've been nursing another chest infection, it has meant more time in front of the TV during the day and the first film I watched was on E4 and my second outing for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Sony's first actual decent superhero film. A hybrid of CGI and animation that seemed to get all the things it needed to do right.

I've never really warmed to the Ultimate Spider-Man idea of having someone else other than Peter Parker being the titular hero, but the way this first part of the trilogy works certainly made for a refreshing and interesting take on an idea that's now over 60 years old. as we were to find out in the second part, Miles Morales should not have become Spider-Man, especially as his reality already had one, but he did and he took over the mantle with some teething troubles. The reason for this film is really to introduce the [Spider] Multiverse and that is achieved by the Kingpin looking for an alternate reality to bring back his wife and child after they died in an accident he probably caused. So far so Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Wankers and really this is the template for the third MCU Spider-Man film and it does it without the baggage. The animation is intense and different; the soundtrack is not my thing but I see how it works and it's considerably darker than you would think for what is essentially a kids film. If only Sony could make every superhero movie it makes even a fraction as good as this...

We get versions of Doc Ock, Tombstone, The Scorpion and a Kingpin that is a damned sight scarier and nastier than the one that has so far appeared in the Netflix/MCU - we're talking shithouse rat on steroids and more De Niro than D'Onofrio. This is a film that drags you in and keeps you entertained right until the final scene. Marvel/Disney could do with thinking about this as a template for the future rather than pursuing the dead end it's heading for at speed.

Moon Boys

Back when I was a pre-teen and even when I burst into the world as a teenager, there were films that I loved and always watched when they were on TV. These films were usually ones that involved Ray Harryhausen and his stop motion monsters.

The 1964 adaptation of HG Wells's First Men in the Moon was always a favourite and on Monday, still feeling a little on the shitty side, I sat down and watched it. Yes, it's an absolute load of nonsense, but it was made five years before the moon landings; it is based on a book written in the Victorian era and it's that that drives the narrative - the way Victorian England barrelled its way through whatever it wanted to without fear or consequence and this really does a good job of showing that arrogance, mixed with the better side of humanity - something Nigel Kneale, who wrote it would return to again and again. Starring Martha Hyer, Edward Judd and the brilliant Lionel Jeffries as Professor Cavor, this is essentially a slapstick comedy about travelling to the moon in a metal box and destroying an existent civilisation by ignorance and something else that Wells used in his science fiction stories - the common cold. I can see why the 10 year old me loved this film so much; 50+ years later... it's a curio piece at best.

Conjunctivitis 

The Wes Craven thriller Red Eye made in 2005 was a recommendation from someone - remind me, when I remember who it was, to not take any notice of them in the future. An 'interesting' fact about this is the picture to the left of this review is the best I could do; it seems there are literally no stills at all from the film that don't carry logos or aren't from the current TV series. But all that aside, this is a really short film; a total of a few seconds shy of 77 minutes and even that felt a little too long. It had a reasonable cast in Rachel McAdam, Cillian Murphy and Brian Cox (the actor, not the physicist), but the script was a bit poo and the film was really devoid of suspense. It was a good idea; terrorists hold the manager of a hotel hostage on a flight to Miami and tells her that her father will be killed if she doesn't phone her hotel and get the room of a visiting senator moved so he (and his family) can be the victim of an Exocet missile attack. But... it just felt like an idea that was stretched out too much even for 77 minutes (so I hope to some deity that the TV series Red Eye isn't using the same plot because that would be stretching it further than knicker elastic as a bungee jump rope). It was a below average film.  

The Golf Gulf

Indulge me for a moment... I have been a fan of golf for most of my life, I played it until the 1990s when the first of a series of slipped discs forced me to become a spectator rather than a reasonable novice. Then the BBC essentially gave up their coverage of the sport and I won't give my money to Murdock, so I pretty much stopped watching golf in in 2017. I liked watching it 'live' so highlights programmes were just... dull. 

Golf films are also something I'm not a huge fan of, mainly because they always look so half-baked and fake. Happy Gilmore is a fantastic comedy film, made me howl with laughter, but it isn't a golf movie. I never succumbed to other golf films until earlier this year when we watched The Long Game which, while good, suffered from that half-baked fake look, especially when it came to the actual golf... Sitting on my hard drive for nearly two years has been The Phantom of the Open, a comedy biopic of the infamous Maurice Flitcroft and his attempt to infiltrate the British Open Golf Championship in the long hot summer of 1976. It had been overlooked on the FDoD for so long I thought it was going to root itself in and refuse to be deleted; but with the actual Open about to start next week, I decided to give it watch.

The thing you need to understand (if you so choose) is that Flitcroft probably had anger and mental health issues. He managed to get a spot in the qualifying rounds of the Open (not the televised one, but the rounds to determine who qualified for the tournament proper), shot an unprecedented 121 for 18 holes and caused anger, consternation and a change in the rules. The 'Open' meant that as an open tournament, anyone could technically apply to play in it, as long as they met certain criteria, which Flitcroft never did. While this film is a comedy it didn't really address the Barrow-in-Furness man's bitterness at what he saw as upper class snobbery that prevented the average man from being involved in the world of golf. After being disqualified from the 1976 Open (for claiming he represented a golf club that refused him entry, not for shooting 121), he tried to enter the competition for years after, using fake names, false credentials and did more to harm the world of golf for the average person than help. This movie ignores loads of the facts to try and make a Full Monty type British underdog slapstick comedy film which, for the opening half an hour, is light-hearted and silly enough to appeal but then gets embarrassing and problematic - from all directions you look at it. It's not bad if you want something that is very, extremely, loosely based on a true story, but it's also cringe making and a waste of Mark Rylance and Sally Hawkins' talents.

Hollywood Mobster

I'd forgotten just how good Get Shorty was. It's a film that the Cohen Brothers would have been proud to have made and yet it's a Barry Sonenfeld movie based on an Elmore Leonard story that twists, turns and generally has you wondering what the hell is going on while never losing sight of the ball. It's very much a work of genius.

It's yet another example of what a brilliant actor John Travolta was, especially during the 1990s and before he started making crap films and being involved with the Church of Scientology. He plays Chili Palmer, a debt collector for the mob who has the simple job of collecting a $15,000 debt that amazingly turns into a much larger deal through a series of mishaps and wrong steps. Palmer first goes to Las Vegas, where he discovers that the guy he's after has done a bunk to LA, but before Palmer leaves he's offered another job of tracking down a Hollywood producer who owes the casino $150k too. This producer, played by Gene Hackman, has a script that is quite brilliant, but Palmer also has a story that could be a film and by the time you're 20 minutes into the movie you need a scorecard to keep track of what's happening. Others involved in this classic are Rene Russo, Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito, James Gandolfini, Dennis Farina and Bette Midler and they all add to a very enjoyable romp where Travolta rises head and shoulders above everyone else as the epitome of cool - something he managed to do for a lot longer than he probably thought.

No Muppet Show

I really don't think Benedict Cumberbatch does a good American accent, but it seems other do, because this time he's a New Yorker whose child is abducted in the unusual six-part series Eric.

It's set in 1985 and Benedict plays Vincent, the son of a real estate millionaire, who has made a name for himself as a puppeteer on a Sesame Street type kids TV show called Good Day Sunshine, but he's an egotistical alcoholic who has a destructive relationship with his wife - who is having an affair with a soup kitchen worker. Their son, Edgar, wants to be like his dad, but in a creative sense and is trying to invent a new character for the show, which his father is vehemently against - the new character not his son's ideas. When Edgar is abducted one morning - a morning Vincent should have been taking him to school - everything is thrown into disarray. The cop in charge of missing persons is also involved in something; he's secretly gay and lives with his partner who is clearly dying of AIDS. The cop - Mikey - thinks a dodgy club called Lux might be involved in the disappearance and things get murkier still when an undercover drug cop is killed in an hit and run accident, less than a day after a confrontation with Mikey inside Lux. But the thing that lifts this into the realms of truly weird is Eric, the manifestation of Edgar's creation for his dad's TV show - a six foot tall monster who looks like a cross between the Gruffalo and Bluey. It's full of twists, turns and things that don't make a lot of sense, at least until the end. It's one to watch out for.

Tits and Hacks

What do Wolverine, Storm, War Machine and Chili Palmer have in common? I'll give you a clue; it lives underwater and has a long nose... We'd never seen Swordfish. We knew little about it apart from the now infamous Halle Berry gets her tits out scene and when we finally watched it I couldn't understand why we never got around to watching it. It's a cracking movie.

Huge Ackman plays a hacker who is out on parole from Leavenworth and living in a trailer in Texas while his daughter lives with a drugged up mother in the home of a porn mogul. Don Cheadle plays a FBI agent who seems to be chasing his own tail at times, while Halle Berry is a DEA agent deeply entrenched in John Travolta's covert group who claim to be top secret government an anti-terrorist unit attempting to embezzle $9billion from a dead government account. This is a brazen, rude and confident movie that is action-packed and keeps you puzzled throughout most of it, from the WTF opening to the 'this is what we do' explanation to the unexpected twists and turns that keep you absolutely nailed to it. There's maybe a little too much sexploitation going on, but you kind of realise that it's all part of the hustle and that hustle is far reaching and knows no limits. This is a great film that shocks and surprises and while it's 23 years old, it doesn't feel that dated.

How To Save A Life

What we had here was a slightly throw away story wrapped around an essential plot episode. The halfway point of the final season of Evil was big on plot and slightly superficial on our heroes.

While Ben, David and Kristen try to track down the subject of one of David's visions to save his life, Cheryl, sister Andrea and Father Frank carry out a christening in the most unlikely of circumstances with everything trying to prevent them from doing it. You see Cheryl has a plan to screw up Leland's plans, even if it ultimately means her death and now she has the church's support, even if Father Frank has no idea what he's really doing. Meanwhile David's remote viewing is being screwed up by coincidences he couldn't see until it was literally at the end of his nose. What we also had here was no mention of last week's cliffhanger ending [I told you so!] and no unnecessary children, Djinns, unwanted girlfriends and not much of the Vatican. It was a plot episode hidden away inside a salvation story with the three main characters having little or nothing to do with anything. 

Butcher's Last Stand?

Let's put it this way; there has been no sign of Billy Butcher being saved, so unless there's a Deus Ex Machina waiting in the wings, next week could be the last episode we see Karl Urban in for The Boys.

Lots of revelations this week, far too many to go into without really spoiling it for those who are playing catch-up, but it seems that the now fired Sage was always so ahead of the curve that her biggest mistake was not letting anyone else in on her nefarious plans; the thing is now Homelander has got rid of her (and she isn't dead), is she going to end up being the help The Boys need in preventing the assassination of the new President or are they going to need help from elsewhere? Maybe it's going to be Ryan, who finally seems to be tiring of his natural father's megalomaniacal bullshit and could be the best weapon to fight him. Or perhaps Hughie got through to Victoria even if she didn't seem to have been changed after they had a final meeting. If this is Butcher's last stand then I hope the show is brave enough to let him go and focus on a new look team of anti-heroes next time around. Perhaps it's time for A Train to go to the light side? Or maybe whatever happened to Butcher in that caravan a few episodes back is going to be the saviour of him? Whatever happens this is a series that needs a new direction to stop it from just being a re-tread of everything that has happened before.

Facebook is Shite

Regular readers will be aware that I'm having problems posting the links to this blog on my Facebook page now. There's a number of reasons given: spam, misleading information, attempts to lure people away from the platform, fishing for likes and while this blog could be construed as spam with misleading information that attempts to lure people away from the platform, I really take umbrage at suggesting I'm some kind of millennial fool who is just doing this for likes. I think anyone who knows me will happily agree that I couldn't give a shit what people think of my blog and if everyone hated it, even ignored it, it wouldn't stop me from doing it.

The thing is, I don't seem to be alone with problems from Zuckerberg's bloated piece of donkey shite. I know of friends who are still being sanctioned for reactions to shit that any ordinary person would have banned from the app years ago. You can't wish ill will on someone who posts 'video nasties' or racist polemic, which in any civilised society beggars belief. Someone can advocate the deaths of refugees but try wishing the same on that person and find yourself in trouble. What kind of fucked up world do we live in where someone calling out heinous behaviour is worse than the person who is being heinous?

I run a wild mushroom foraging page; it has 6.5k members - so is deemed 'small' by Facebook algorithms; every day I get fake accounts trying to join the group. They're easily identifiable and usually they're all linked by liking or being friends with an outfit called The Soul Trippers Club; this is essentially a drug dealing page that promotes things that are illegal in many countries. Every time I report a fake account nothing happens, but if I allowed one of these accounts onto my mushroom group they would spam it with whats'app addresses and links to places where you can buy magic mushrooms. The only conclusion I can draw from this is this page of scammers pays Facebook to 'advertise' therefore they're exempt from scrutiny. Facebook is a free thing, but needs to make money. Another page I own - a Spurs fan club page with over 20K followers - is regarded as a business by Facebook, despite the fact if I tried to make money from it Spurs would sue my arse. I've told Facebook numerous times that it can't be a business, it's a fan page, but they ignore everything, because they can and because they're above any form of scrutiny from any of the world's governments. They are a law unto themselves and everyone who uses the app has fewer rights than a dog does in North Korea.

Trailer Trash

Two Marvel trailers dropped this week: Agatha: All Along which actually looks completely different to what I expected. It certainly doesn't look like a musical series and it does look dark and decidedly creepy. It drops in September and on the evidence of the trailer alone looks worth an hour or two of my time. However, that's been said before of MCU TV and some of it has been shite. 

We're finally getting a glimpse of Captain America: Brave New World and it also looks like it could be quite good, apart from the fact we know there have been more reshoots than a porn film about multiple orgasms. Harrison Ford seems like a strange choice to replace the departed William Hurt, given Ford is about 85 and, you know, you have to wonder how much time is on his side. It also appears to have Giancarlo Esposito in it as a bad guy and there's a guy who looks older than his 66 years. Plus, as you can tell from the picture above, a new Hulk is on the horizon and this probably moots my point about Harrison Ford, especially if General Ross gets permanently turned into the newest version of the many Hulks that currently inhabit the Marvel Comics Universe [there was only the Hulk and She Hulk when I read comics].

The film looks like it's trying to go for that Steve Rogers movie feel and I like the fact that Ford tells Anthony Mackie that he's not Steve Rogers as it kind of grounds the movie a little. I just hope it's a coherent thing and not an incoherent mess, like many superhero films that have had multiple reshoots often turn out to be. Both this and Agatha: All Along trailers are on the Tube of You.

But that's not it... There's another 'superhero' movie coming out; this time a new actor playing an old 'hero'. Jack Kesy is Hellboy in Hellboy: The Crooked Man, which on the face of it looks low budget and like they're trying to squeeze the Mike Mignola super-demon into a horror picture about a character also created by Mike Mignola. It looks like a mash-up and Kesy's Hellboy looks far worse than David Harbour's dreadful version from a couple of years ago. This appears to be the hero drafted into helping solve the riddle of a nasty serial killer in a Hicksville back country and the trailer - also available on the Tube of You, looks truly fucking woeful. 

Next Time...

No Friday night telly for us as I dragged my sorry bronchial arse to another of my new pub quizzes. So, what can you expect next week? What about the season finale of The Boys, the highly anticipated Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and the hope that House of the Dragon remains interesting and the anticipation that it will just slope back off into mumble jumbo land. We have things to finish and stuff to start and a bunch of finals to miss on Sunday. Some summer would be nice...