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.