Pop Culture - Impending Conclusions

Spoiler warning - there might be some.

Twaddle

The first of the summer 'blockbusters' made its way to my television and... well sometimes something can have a reasonable rating on IMDB and it makes no difference to how I've viewed it. Twisters has a 7.1 rating on the film website and has about a 1.7 rating in Phil's eyes...

It was very ordinary and quite dull. I remember the Guardian having an article about it a few weeks ago wondering what happened to the Big Kiss at the end, because the lead characters, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell (apparently Hollywood's latest hotshot and soon to be A lister), were obviously going to make the beast with the two backs at some point so why wasn't there a big kiss to end the film so we all knew what was going to happen? I couldn't care less. It was a fucking noisy load of codswallop, with far too much country and western music, a far too earnest a story and a slightly silly pretext of being able to shut a tornado down if you suck all the moisture out of it - which might be a thing, but feels like a plot device to make this woeful excuse at an action movie and sort of sequel to the original from the mid 1990s, seem relevant. It wasn't even all right; it was two hours of idiots chasing storms; phony villains, rabble-rousing heroes and this is a film we won't, in a few years time, think about watching again. I've seen more exciting foot fungus. 

The Dichotomy

There's something reassuring and extremely bloody annoying about Only Connect. It's comfort quizzing, yet it signals the end of the summer and ushers in colder, darker nights. It's a favourite in this house and we haven't missed a series in well over ten years now.  We punch the air when we get questions right and puzzle over questions that don't appear to have been written by any sane quiz writer. However, there is one thing that we do not like about it. We really don't like cunts who say Hor-Ned Viper. There should be a change in the rules; anyone saying Hor-Ned viper should be shot, in the head, with a bolt gun, with no anaesthetic.

No Joke

It's been nearly five years since we watched Joker and we'd forgotten just how relentlessly grim the movie is. How it paints a picture of Gotham City as a hopeless shit hole that is not in any way looked after by Wayne Industries. In fact, in many ways, Todd Phillips' film makes the Joker out to be some kind of anti-hero, while Wayne is some kind of corporate villain.

I suppose the biggest problem with this is just how grim it is; you almost struggle to have any empathy for anyone. Arthur Fleck (Joachim Phoenix) is a victim of a piss poor mental health programme and the supporting cast all have their own foibles and dislikeable traits. Talk Show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro - in a weird juxtaposition of his film The King of Comedy) is a privileged arsehole; Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) is just a rich, unfeeling thug and even Alfred is portrayed as a heartless pig. Arthur's mother is a delusional psychotic, which Arthur appears to have inherited despite having been adopted and it's just pain and grief and destitution hammered home every second. It's a tough movie to like despite it being a quite brilliant thing. As an origin story for The Joker - Batman's bête noir - it's pretty much perfect, it contrasts well to Matt Reeves' The Batman and it touches on elements of a number of great comics, yet remains absolutely unique. A supervillain movie that has no heroes and where the villain is his own worst enemy. I've seen trailers for the sequel and it fills me with dread.

A Grimm Update

I watched a Tube of You video the other day, it was in a series of 'Honest Trailers' and was about the exalted Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was describing Buffy like someone who was explaining it to someone who had no idea of it in a way that put aside all the emotive parts which made it a favourite of so many people in the 40 to 65 age range. I really must see if there's an Honest Trailer for Grimm because I expect it will be something to behold. We're over halfway through season one, which I have been told can be a bit of a struggle, and we're starting to get subplots introduced into the 'fairy tale creature of the week' formula. I mean, there were a few subplots at the beginning, but they seem to have been completely forgotten about and I don't know if these new subplots are in any way linked, but essentially it's bad acting, poor scripts, lazy special effects and why is every one of these multitude of fairy tale creatures (who all live in Portland, Oregon) so frightened of Det Nick Burkhardt? He might be a cop, but he displays nothing that would make the average creature hiding as a human be frightened of; in fact he's already almost been beaten to a pulp. It is, however, quite a dark and, dare I say it, grim TV show with some gruesome crime scenes and risqué scenarios. Also on the minus side, there's something a bit 'not really leading man' material about David Giuntoli. Having said that, his partner in the police force - Russell Hornsby as Hank Griffin is one truly lousy actor; who looks like a police detective about as much as I look like a naked Karen Gillan. It could be a long autumn and winter with about 110 episodes to go...

Ms Brown's Boys

We completed the Tarantino jigsaw by watching the 1997 Jackie Brown. We don't intend to watch Kill Bill: Vol 2 so that's everything the auteur has made finally watched (as far as we're concerned). It seems weird it took us 27 years to finally get around to it, but there you have it.

It was good to see a film based on an Elmore Leonard story that didn't totally demean women, although apart from the eponymous Ms Brown, most of the other women in this film were depicted in a relatively poor way. Pam Grier was okay in the lead role and she was supported by a fine cast including Samuel L Jackson, Robert De Niro, Bridget Fonda, Michael Keaton and the star turn Robert Forster - another example of Tarantino reigniting the career of an actor who seemed past his sell by date.

It tells the story of a heist within a heist within a heist as Brown is arrested - she's an airline hostess - returning from a flight to Mexico because someone has snitched on her to get his own back on the guy she works for - Jackson. It's from this point that things get complicated, with a Bail Bondsman called Cherry - Forster - getting involved because of his attraction to Brown and it soon becomes a triple cross affair as Brown and Cherry work out a way to get her off of her arrest, rip off Jackson and not make the ATF cop - Keaton - think he's been double crossed. It's a good film, but at two and a half hours it really is about an hour too long and most of that hour is full of jive talk and really quite unnecessary filler that doesn't add to the texture of the film at all.

Sunny With A Chance of Something Happening

With three more episodes to go I suppose we have no other options than to see this out. That's just 90 minutes to find out what the fuck is going on and how it's all linked. This week Suzie shouts at Mixxy, who goes all out of character and shouts back, accusing Suzie of many things and not allowing her grief to be used as an excuse. Suzie almost confesses why she originally came to Japan, while Noriko's prison sojourn takes a slightly darker turn with the suggestion she's there to find things out. Himé (played by You) is on the verge of losing any control she might have had over her branch of the Yakuza as he father dies and apparently transfers power to her rival in scenes that might make some sense in the next few weeks. Himé (played by You) does suggest that what's she's doing is bringing the Yakuza into the present rather than being stuck in the past. Sunny wakes up and is acting like a spoiled teenage brat. It makes no sense; it's not very good any more; I feel obligated to finish it.

Bad Monkey in Bad TV Show

The last time I was harping on about people needing to get rid of their shit streaming service and invest in Apple TV+ the superb cross-genre TV show Sugar was concluding and it seemed that the streaming service could do little wrong. Then Sunny came along and gradually the shine went off of Apple - what with Presumed Innocent, Lady in the Lake and a couple of others failing to hit the mark, it really looked as though the 'station' has quickly bottomed out. So there were high hopes for the new Vince Vaughn detective series Bad Monkey, about a failed cop getting involved in the mystery of a severed arm. To be honest, the opening ten minutes did seem like it might be something interesting and mildly amusing, but as the opening 56 minute episode went on the more I felt myself wishing it would end. The adjacent subplot based in the Bahamas about a development company building a holiday complex on some guys beach house felt ... out of place and decidedly amateurish - like Death in Paradise but with less soul.

Bad Monkey is pretty poor TV. It doesn't feel like there's a good enough plot here for a man who wants his badge back to be obsessed with. None of the characters are particularly interesting or likeable and it felt like it wanted to be seen as a stylish TV show, but it even failed at that. You know I use the expression 'style over substance' a lot? Well, this has no substance and its style is outdated and of little interest. We had two episodes to watch, we gave it one and I should have turned that off with 20 minutes left. Avoid like the plague.

Free AI

Three years ago, when this film was originally released, the threat and presence of AI in the world was still very much a thing of the future to most people. Chatgtp (or whatever it's called) and other AI things were still a way from being rolled out and the idea of a free-thinking AI was very much in the realms of the Terminator movies. So Free Guy, brought to us by two-thirds of the latest Deadpool film - Shawn Levy and Ryan Reynolds - had an element of being a bit far fetched. 

The story of a NPC - Non-Participating Character; a background object put into a game to be either used as kill fodder or to pad out the apparent more realistic scenes - a guy called 'Guy' who suddenly starts developing his own thoughts and ideas and goes off program is, in 2024, a far better idea. A kind of meta-Terminator redux, if you will. Of course there's a reason for this and the reason is down to clever programmers and an idea that you can create an algorithm that will eventually think for itself and while this is what is now happening that has heads of countries, industries and people worried about the future, this film makes it a cross between a video game - maybe a film about a video game, such as Wreck-It Ralf - and James Bond/Jason Bourne. The problem this film had three years ago was it was difficult for someone like me to fully explain it because I'm not a gamer and I knew little about AI. Now, I'm still not a gamer and still know very little about AI, but I did understand the subtext of this movie and why it was happening.

Reynolds is Guy who through meeting the girl his character was always longing to meet suddenly starts to develop understanding and an inquisitiveness that leads him down the path of enlightenment (to a degree). His obsession with meeting this girl again means he eventually becomes part of the game he's meant to be in the background of. He becomes a hero in a game where being the villain is the main purpose. Jodie Comer plays his dream girl, while Joe Keery is her ex-developer partner. These two created an AI game that was stolen by the increasingly annoying Taika Waititi and turned into Free City, a kind of hybrid of every shoot'em up that's available now and it's up to Guy and his dream girl - Millie - to try and find the back door to expose Waititi's arsehole character's theft of other developers' ideas. It is a special effects feast, has some genuinely funny moments and is actually a far better film the second time around than I remembered it being in 2021.

The Penultimate Evil

If I want to be honest, there's going to be a lot to cover next week if the final episode of Evil is going to leave no subplot unresolved. Ben's Djinn, Kristen's numerous problems, from one of her daughters being a demon to Timothy possibly still being the anti Christ. David's crisis of faith, his remote viewing, his new job on Vatican security detail and, of course, there's the end of the show and the impending apocalypse/Armageddon - all of this needs resolving, without contemplating the will they, won't they issue between David and Kristen. Whatever will happen to Sister Andrea and, of course Leland Townsend - the best worst villain in TV history! I know, that's a brave suggestion, but honestly, in four series he has been beaten, knifed, kicked, hit by a car. mentally tortured and all manner of unfortunate humiliations have been dumped on him; for the main antagonist of a show he's had very little actual success; he's a comicbook villain who is still here by virtue of the fact he has friends in very low places...

Speaking of demons, hell and Satan, this penultimate part reopened a question I have asked a couple of times in the last year or so since I've become hooked on this show - just who is the evil one and are we heading towards a conclusion that will throw the entire idea of good versus evil into the air? Is the church really good and are these houses of demons really that bad? It would be a crazy way to end it if we find out that the three good guys have been working for the real bad guys all along. The reason I say this is because David has new wranglers and they seem as sinister as anything the devil has thrown up. The Vatican has always seemed to be a bit creepy since the word go in this show and there is a two pronged attack in this episode, with the Holy City asking the team to do one more assignment to determine whether a Stephen Hawking-type physicist is 'good' enough to join a consultation council the Vatican is developing to help prevent global climate change. Then there's what happened to David's previous wranglers and the sudden placement in Rome. This is weird and a bit fucked up and as usual while it plays a big part of this last but one episode, it also feels like a distraction from everything else, which includes the de-consecration of the church and the ending of it being a place of worship. The Catholic Church does not come out of this particularly well.

Like I said, it feels like there's going to be a lot to sort out and all I know about it is it will be the final episode; there won't be any reprieves or moving the show over to Netflix; the story of Kristen, David and Ben will conclude next week and those of us who have watched this show will feel like something is missing from our lives...

Dead Clean

We ended the week with a dark but gentle comedy about people who clean crime scenes. Starring Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, Sunshine Cleaning is a slight story about people struggling with their place in a society that judges you if you haven't got the status others require you to have.

Adams plays Rose, a single mother working menial cleaning jobs and spending two evenings a week being fucked by her ex-high school boyfriend, who is also the father of her son. The reason they're not together is because he chose to marry someone else, of better standing in the community. Blunt plays Norah, Rose's younger sister and a bit of a rebel with a poor employment history and an attitude. They both look after and in turn are looked after by Alan Arkin as their father, Joe - a man with lots of brilliant ideas who is unable to make any of them work (mainly because his brilliant is other peoples' bad ideas). Rose wants the best for her son, who is clearly on the spectrum and possibly mildly autistic, and her son has been kicked out of junior school for doing strange things his teaching staff are unable to deal with.

Rose's married shag - Mac played by Steve Zahn - suggests she should go into the crime scene cleaning business because there's lots of money to be made from clearing up blood, brains and dead detritus and that is what she does, taking her feckless sister along for the ride. They prove to be good at it and Rose strikes up a friendship with the one-armed owner of the cleaning supplies business, while Norah tries to track down the daughter of the first case they deal with. It's not a long movie, it weighs in at a smidge over 90 minutes and it's really just a snap shot of their lives with little concluding and a few false starts and endings along the way. It's a gentle film even if it deals with tragedy; there is a comedic vibe to it but these are from circumstances and reactions rather than jokes and while you could argue that little happens, it is a sweet, good natured movie about struggling people in a country that I have grown to detest because it isn't the land of opportunity, it's the country of blame and lawyers and people screwing others to gain a footing. I really enjoyed it, but yet again it shows us what a fucking horrible country the USA is and why the Yellowstone caldera exploding would be a good thing...

Next Time...

Despite my best intentions, I didn't manage to start watching the final season of The Umbrella Academy, maybe I'll find some time next week? However, the highlight (I hope) of this coming week is going to be the finale of Evil. I don't want to be disappointed; I want it to have a fitting final episode and one that at least gives us closure on a number of issues (as an article in an on-line publication points out, there are at least 10 outstanding subplots and questions that need answering).

Sunny reaches episode eight of ten and one hopes that it has something satisfying happen. It'll finish in the first week of September (boo*), in the same week as Slow Horses returns (yay), so while I hate the idea of another autumn and winter when we've had so little spring and summer, at least there will be some stuff to help the weeks fly past as we all hurtle towards our certain deaths. 

In the film world... well, there's a few new movies that might get watched and obviously a shit load of back-up films on the FDoD and the TV box thing. I'm not even going to waste my time (or yours) by hypothesising what I might watch next week because it probably won't resemble what I actually get around to seeing.

One thing is certain, this coming week my football team kick off their opening game of the season on Monday night; we have family visiting (and the weather forecast is shit - surprise, surprise) and therefore next week's blog might be bright, breezy and shorter than usual. But it might not...

* Boo that it's September, not boo that Sunny is ending.