My Cultural Life - The God of Unfairness

What's Up?

The first proper week after the festivities always feels a little strange. I saw a meme about how this week is a little like waking up and wondering who you are and why you're here. I think, and I say this from presumption rather than experience, that after two weeks of limbo, getting back on the horse can be a little disorienting. You become accustomed to the fact you've had two weeks of your life disrupted by events you expect will be different (every bleedin' year) but tend to be the same. Like repeating the same thing hoping for a different outcome.

I'm still getting over this virus I had after Christmas. It's my thing; taking longer to recover from things that knock me off my feet than the thing itself. However, I should be really grateful because from what I've heard I was lucky to just get a 'cold', there have been people out there catching all kinds of nasty shit, so I suppose my lack of being sociable saves me from getting shit that might fuck me up even worse. The good news is that at the time of writing this, I am feeling more human again.

I started watching season two of Shrinking, but you won't see a review of it until I've seen all 12 episodes - because I'm not going to do the reviewing things as I watch them thing because it simply means I do more unnecessary writing. I made this point last week or maybe I didn't, but I need a degree of discipline in my format and telling you about the first episode of season two in a general sense means when I watch episodes two, three, four and five over the coming week I will just go back and rewrite, reword or reassemble existing words in a different way, when I can just write it once, when I'm finished...

Pilgrimage

You may recall a few months ago I mentioned that I'd fallen down a West Wing Tube of You rabbit hole, ending up watching literally hours of clips from one of the greatest TV series of all time. During these few weeks I heard about a film that Martin Sheen made in 2010; something his son Emilio Estevez wrote, produced and directed (he also appears in it as well), which on the face of it looked like something I wouldn't go near. The thing was I watched some clips of it and I got this feeling that maybe I should watch it. I don't know why, because a film about an aged optometrist travelling to the south of France to identify his dead son's remains and then ending up completing the journey his son was supposed to make, sounded like something that should appear on the Bible Network or possibly sponsored by one of the major religions, especially as the journey was the Camino de Santiago - the way of St James. The thing was it has sat on the Flash Drive of Doom for over three months and every so often I think, "Shall I watch this?" 

The Way is absolutely fucking glorious. It is an utterly wonderful, beautiful and emotional movie. It is one of the loveliest and saddest films I have seen in many years and it might be because I'm getting old, but I was engrossed from almost the moment it started until the very end when, part of me, wanted it to carry on for at least another hour. Daniel Avery quit his doctorate to go and travel the world; the first thing he wanted to do was walk the Camino de Santiago between France and Spain, but literally a day into his walk - which can take months - he fell victim to bad weather and died. Dr Thomas Avery, his father, a widower, receives the bad news from a French police officer while he's on the golf course with his country club friends. From that point on, it's about Tom reconnecting with his dead son by doing the thing Daniel wanted to do; so Tom walks The Way and stops at every important point to scatter some of his only child's ashes.

Along the way he meets Yorick van Wageningen's Joost - a Dutchman who is doing The Way for reasons which may or may not be truthful. Joost is a pot smoking party animal who wants to lose weight for his brother's wedding, so he can get into an old suit. Joost is fucking excellent and you'll love him within five minutes. Tom and Joost meet Sarah - Deborah Kara Unger - who is doing the walk so she can quit smoking (but you can guess this isn't the real reason) and these three eventually team up with Jack - James Nesbitt - a travel writer with a block who is all front. To say they hit it off would be a lie; they all have their reasons for being there and those reasons mean they walk together, but it's a long time before they become friends, but they're on The Way for the long haul.

I loved this movie. It was a simple tale about truth and commitment; a story about love and loss. It was sumptuously filmed with some great and colourful characters, some genuine moments of the sense that people can love each other regardless of their beliefs or their pasts. It transcends everything and plays out in a spiritual way that's dotted with vibrant and fantastic supporting actors. It's emotional, funny, poignant, sad and one of the best things I have seen in a long time, but I think I already said that. It's not often I will ever award a 10/10 but The Way almost deserves an 11.

This song was on the soundtrack - https://youtu.be/OOgpT5rEKIU?si=Wt_qLwdybjRhDEbh - but the entire soundtrack was great (apart from the Coldplay song). 

Black & White Lives Matter

Sometimes a film really does have an all-star cast, yet despite this we had never watched A Time To Kill. I don't really know why, I mean, it's a Matthew McConaughey movie and we literally have never seen him in anything we haven't enjoyed. Why this has Sandra Bullock as the lead in the credits must have been a bit of a wrench for McConaughey because this is his film, even if it also has Samuel L Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Donald and Kiefer Sutherland, Brenda Fricker, Oliver Platt, Ashley Judd, M Emmett Walsh, Charles Dutton, Patrick McGoohan and Kurtwood Smith. He commands it from the moment he first appears and it's probably the role that made people go 'Oh, this guy's good!'

It's a '90s set courtroom drama about a man who murders two child rapists after they rape and beat his daughter and leave her for dead. Against a backdrop of racial tension in the deep south, this is a nasty, unrelenting movie that is both compelling and difficult to watch. It paints a very good - but bleak - picture of what the USA was like and possibly what it is going to become again now that the Orange Cunt is back in charge. It does suffer from some 1990s filmmaking problems, but the story and execution is way more important; it's also - amazingly - directed by Joel Schumacher without his usual bombast. This is a quality film and you might catch it on Film4 or even All4. It deserves a big 8½/10.

Zombie Horse Shit

Oh Lupita Nyong'o... Did you need the money? Was it a case of a few weeks in Australia taking in the sun and sea, make a shit film and then return to being a promising actor? Because that's what Little Monsters felt like; an ill-advised excursion into zombie comedy horror that was really a redemption story, except the redemption should have come from me and anyone else by NOT watching this absolute heap of shit. It was mildly amusing in a really annoying way for the opening ten minutes - long before the zombies arrived - with Alexander England playing a complete arsehole who just annoys everyone he's near because of his selfish whiny nature. Then there's a zombie outbreak and a quiet corner of Australia is turned into the most boring zombie apocalypse I have ever seen. This was 28 Days Later on mogadon, the Walking Dead performed by somnambulists; it was simply awful. Bad special effects, bad acting - even from Josh Gadd, who is so good in Wolf Like Me, and a film that was not funny, nor scary or even slightly jeopardous. Why was this made? Who greenlit this gobsmackingly woeful excuse for a film? 2/10

Somebody

If Little Monsters was a trashy 'monster' movie, then Nobody was a trashy action thriller. The big difference - other than being different genres - is that Nobody didn't take itself seriously even if it was a brutal and violent movie. Bob Odenkirk - about as far removed from Saul Goodman as you could imagine - plays mild-mannered Hutch Mansell, an accountant for his father-in-law's manufacturing company who also just happens to be a very handy man with anything that can be weaponised. He was what covert ops people called an 'auditor' - the last person anyone ever sees before things... stop. The idea of Odenkirk as an action hero is quite unlikely, which might be why this movie works so well. It really is just a slight story that spirals out of control because Hutch had an itch that needed to be scratched. The levels of 'revenge' he goes to to 'pay back' a Russian mafia boss are so good you want to punch the air at times and all because someone - unrelated - broke into his house and stole some money and a watch. Had this not happened, the rest of the film wouldn't have and it would have been a three minute film about a boring accountant in a loveless marriage with a son who has no respect for him and a young daughter that feels sorry for her daddy. It is very trashy; there's a number of plot holes in it, but they're so unimportant that you don't really care about them and there's an irreverence that makes this a feel good film with one of the highest body counts you will ever see in a contemporary movie. 6.5/10

Healthy?

Apparently, too much vitamin B6 has a detrimental effect on peoples' health. Don't get me wrong, I think being kept up to date with what is good or bad for you is a positive thing, but it's getting to the stage where I'm beginning to wonder how our ancestors managed to live for more than 25 minutes, let alone grow up, have families, leave legacies and eat whatever they could afford...

Canine Blues

The thing about Dog is that it's a simple story about a former soldier given the job of taking a dead veteran's dog back to his funeral in Southern California. The dog - a Belgian Malinois - worked with one man and now that man is dead the general belief is the dog goes to the funeral and then to an army base where she's going to be euthanised because no one else can work with the her. It's a road movie over five days and it's enjoyable, quite emotional and Channing Tatum is a bit of a plonker. The thing is, like the dog, he has no direction any more. He's not getting back in the army, despite his wishes and while the dog's journey might be a backdoor back into it by the time they get to the funeral there's always going to be one outcome. It's a good film, not a great one, but worth your while, especially if you like dogs. 6/10

No Entry

Matt Reeves is a great director. There's a sense that whether it's a blockbuster or an 'indie' take on something big, he's the go to guy at the moment. The Batman was a unique take on the DC mainstay, while his POTA reboot makes the original series look as bad as the 1970s TV series. He was also the guy who directed Cloverfield, the found-footage film that essentially kickstarted his career. The fella is just good at making films (and he's pretty good at producing films and TV as well) despite the fact he hasn't actually made that many. So, it was time to revisit his breakout movie; the remake of the Scandi horror flick Let the Right One In, rewritten and retitled Let Me In. Starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Kodi Smit-McFee, Richard Jenkins and Elias Koteas - as a detective on the trail of possibly a Satanist cult; this is a modern (although it's set in 1983) vampire story with a twist. It's like an indie film, but it's also like a psychological study. It's understated, yet really quite nasty. There's an icky feeling attached to it, without it ever feeling like it's crossing any lines and it's as disturbing as fuck. It examines all manner of themes - alienation, loneliness, domination, bullying and what indicators do you need to see that someone might be on the verge of becoming the next psychopath.

In many ways, it's not a patch on the original, but it doesn't try to be. It almost tries to be a companion piece, even if the stories are incredibly similar. It's also really noticeable that Carla Buono plays Smit-McFee's mother and while she appears numerous times, I don't think the viewer sees her face once. Although that might be allegorical in a way, because the adults in this film all could serve a purpose - like never naming a pet because you might one day have to eat it, I think Buono was never shown because once you see her face, she could become dinner. It was maybe not as good as I thought it was 15 years ago when it came out, but this downbeat and cerebral horror movie still deserves a 7/10.

Antisocial Media

A bit of preaching to the converted, but it seems that the world's richest people now want to rule the world. That plastic-faced lump of human waste Elon Musk is buying a lot with his right wing views, while the autistic wanker of the world, Mark Zuckerberg, has decided that fact checking is for 'libtards' and we're in for a proliferation of all kinds of bollocks that someone will think is true.

Couple the above with The Donald's desire to acquire both Greenland and Panama (and everybody said he wouldn't get involved in world politics) and we're heading for a period in mankind's history where maybe living in a quiet corner of Scotland (not that far from one of the Orange Shitler's golf courses) might have been a really sensible decision by me...

ET Bone Home

It has been 40 years since we last watched John Carpenter's Starman and considering this was made seven years after Close Encounters you would have thought it had been made ten years before it. This is the only time that a Carpenter film ever had an Oscar nomination for - Jeff Bridges in the Best Actor category - and while Bridges is adequate as the alien taking the form of a dead husband, it really is just a really naff feature. I wanted it to be as good as I remembered it being, but I think tastes have grown more sophisticated over the last four decades and while the subplot is about what the US army would do to an alien invader, the main thing about this is trying to get an alien to assimilate into humanity and the way humans think and feel. Karen Allen does a reasonably good job as the widow suddenly thrust into a strange and inexplicable situation where her dead husband is suddenly reincarnated, right in front of her in her own lounge, plus you know she's going to end up boffing the alien too. Meanwhile, Charles Martin Smith is admirable as the SETI scientist who, at least, understands that for an alien to come here then there's a chance its going to be considerably more advanced than us. The special effects are from 1984 and the USA is depicted as a collective group of arseholes - so nothing there has changed much (except it does the usual good job of showing that the poorer you are in the USA, the more human you become). It's also a movie that leaves so much open at the end it was almost like they expected to do a sequel. It feels as dated as its age and maybe if I'm still alive when I'm 102 I'll watch it again. 4/10

Wanchorman

It took me 20 years to watch Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and the wait wasn't worth it. It's very silly. It has some genuine LOL moments - most of them courtesy of Steve Carell, who was by far and away the funniest person whenever he was on screen. I struggle to see why people think Will Ferrell is funny or even talented - he's like a poor man's Steve Martin; someone I also struggle to find funny... But what about the film? Well, it felt a little like that great Apple TV show The Morning Show but set in the early 1970s and written by a kid who likes fart gags. It was about the appointment of the first female news reporter for Channel 4 News in San Diego and it was childish nonsense. The 'story' was largely superficial and, yes, I know, it was supposed to be a silly comedy produced by Judd Apatow and directed by Adam McKay, a man whose films I usually love, but it felt like one long badly written sketch for SNL. However, I was slowly racking up the Marvel references made during the film - from an early Johnny Storm joke to a Thor nod at the end - so there was something... Plus there's a post credit cameo from Smokey and the Bandit 2 - which was ace i9n a post modern humour kind of way! I have the sequel to watch as well and the masochist in me will probably see it next week. 5/10

And Finally... I Lied

I started watching season two of Shrinking, but you won't see a review of it until I've seen all 12 episodes ... This was the first line of the third paragraph of this week's blog; you read it about ten minutes ago, at most. I lied, I need to talk about it, just briefly because there will probably be a proper review next week.

I remember this unexpectedly making my Top Ten TV shows of 2023. I also remember raving about it being excellent television. Season two - of which I am half way through watching - is even better than last year. It might be because I'm more familiar with the characters and feel a little more invested in it, but this story of three psychiatrists, their friends and patients is heavenly TV. It ticks every box; there isn't a dislikeable character in it and all of them are unique, well written, rounded and funny in their own ways. Harrison Ford is a revelation as the lead quack whose health is deteriorating because of Parkinson's disease and even the normally annoying Jason Segel is really good. The two best characters - if such things exist - are Christa Miller as the neurotic, self-obsessed next door neighbour Liz and the fantastic Jessica Williams as Gaby; one of the partners in the practice, who literally only has to open her mouth and you're laughing; she is sexy, cool, geeky and I do apologise, but I would... Stay tuned. 

What's Up Next?

Well, Severance is back this coming week and I expect it will be as strange and mysterious as the first season... However, this is a TV show that needs to be finite and given the huge success it was for Apple TV+ I get the horrible feeling that instead of a season of explanations, we're going to end up being mired in new characters and a lot of obfuscation regarding whether it moves forward or not. I hope I'm wrong, but it was left at such a point in the four main characters' lives that to ignore that might be seen as taking the piss. I hope I'm not disappointed. That said, like Shrinking I might (have to) wait for all the episodes to drop before watching it because we watched it as a box set the first time around and one suspects watching it as a weekly might lose some of its mystique and impact.

The Flash Drive of Doom is full of things we either don't want to watch again, yet, or newer stuff that have been sitting on it for a while that simply do not float our collective boats, at the moment. Most of the film reviews this week are from things we recorded off of Film4.

I don't remember a start of a year that has been so devoid of interesting TV. The BBC has been promoting the hell out of The Traitors, a reality TV show that we find about as appealing as having to spend the day sitting in a bath full of someone else's runny shit. The coming weeks also have the return of shite like Dragon's Den and that wanker Alan Sugar in The Apprentice - both fucking awful TV shows that we have never watched a single minute of. That said, we have never watched an episode of Strictly Come Dancing nor have we ever succumbed to watching anything with the words 'Reality' and 'TV' in. I find it wasteful and destructive to watch TV that highlights the worst in human beings; I mean most people are just worthless cunts at the best of times, so why subject myself to them when I could be doing something interesting like self-harming...

Next week will be whatever next week brings.  

My Cultural Life - New Year, Newish Look

Welcome to a new blog. A bit like the old blog but slightly different in that this won't just be about films and TV, it will also be about music, books and my life, because I expect 2025 will be different - well, it's more hope than expectation, but I'll be 63 in April and I've got to do more than just sit in front of the TV and then tell you about it while trying not to spoil things for those of you who might not have seen what I was watching...

Christmas Repeat

Facebook memories has become a useful tool in many ways, especially around things like birthdays and, of course, Christmas and the New Year. I've been doing Facebook for 17 years in June and that's longer than I want to think about - I mean, it still feels newish.

What these memories also do is show me how bloody often I've been ill over the holidays. This was our 8th Scottish Christmas/Hogmanay and it was also the fourth time one or both of us have been ill. Fortunately (if that is the right word), it was only me this time and it waited until December 28 before it hit me. What had been a teensy sniffle on the 23rd, 24th and 25th, got a bit more snotty on Boxing Day and the 27th and then whatever virus I'd managed to catch took hold and by New Year's Eve I'd broken out the emergency antibiotics and steroids.

A cold will probably be the death of me. In many ways it was the death of my mum; it was a cold that made the previous chain of events (my dad's non-fatal heart attack and the subsequent days that followed) a concoction of imminent death. Of course, we didn't know this at the time, but less than 3 weeks after my dad came out of hospital, my mum was in it and dying. When I was diagnosed with COPD, the doctor - a lovely woman called Helen Mead - said as I was leaving her office, "Oh and try not to get any colds; colds are bad for you." I've been told by a number of health professionals since that it was very unprofessional of her to say this, but I think it was her way of saying that at some point in the future a cold will be my undoing.

Jeez, this is maudlin, you're probably thinking? The thing is mum died when she was 64 and I'm zeroing in on that number and with COPD, my anxiety issues, propensity to get viruses and lack of any discernible social life - since COVID - I made a decision at the end of November to do stuff. So I signed up to a Tai Chi class; I have gotten involved in helping the newly acquired community buy out of the pub (and will work there for free if they'll have me - at least until they're up and running) and I have a bunch of other things on a 2025 list of things I need to do to get me back being the Phil I once was. It might be a resolution I screw up, but I've never been one for New Year change, so why not start now?

So this new blog is going to be more than just what I watch on the Smart TV in the living room. It might not seem that different for a while, but I have things to read, to listen to and to get involved with that I hope will be more interesting than weekly updates of what I think of a 10 year old TV series I've just got around to watching. That said, we ended 2024 with something altogether better than I expected...

Creep

What a simply superb movie Heretic is. Who would have thought that a) a film about two Mormon missionaries on a recruitment drive and b) Hugh Grant being Hugh Grant in a totally scary way, could be such a barnstormer of a feature? Not me for starters. I'd had this for a couple of months and I kept putting it off, preferring to watch anything rather than see if all the critics were right. They were. Heretic is a modern horror classic because like any really good horror film, it's totally plausible. Grant plays Mr Reed, a man who lives in a lovely - very British looking - house, who has expressed interest in talking to the Church of the Latter Day Saints, so he is visited by two young and idealistic young women. The moment they walk into his house it looks like a bad idea and if you have any idea what the film is about then you're looking at all the clues and thinking exactly what you're supposed to be thinking.

For a movie that is mainly set in Reed's living room, parlour and cellar, it pretty much whizzes along and about a third of the way through any atheists out there will be totally enjoying Hugh Grant's speeches about religion; by which time all the two women want is to leave - something both of them now realise isn't going to happen. This is a clever, nasty and quite shocking feature and was the perfect way to end 2024 - we watched it NYE - if you haven't seen it, then I recommend you do and if I had to give it a rating - my rating rather than an IMDB one - then I'd give it a solid 8/10.

There is also a weird connection between The Hollies, Radiohead and Lana Del Rey, but you'll need to see it to understand it.

Invisible Touch?

Unlike many old films I review, I'd never seen the 2000 adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho and after finally watching it I'm glad I'd never watched it and wish it had stayed that way. It's a very confusing film that made little sense to me until about the halfway mark when I started to realise that everything in it was going on in his head. Now if that's a spoiler then tough because this film is a quarter of a century old and if you haven't seen it by now then you're never going to. Possibly the funniest moment in this darkly comic movie was Bale discussing his love of Genesis (the pop iteration of the prog band) and his admiration for Phil Collins, which, if nothing else, proved categorically that this was indeed a comedy. What was real, what wasn't? Was Christian Bale actually playing someone called Patrick Bateman or was his name Davies? In the end it made little sense and I felt it was badly acted - apart from Bale - and was mindblowingly bad. I rate this a 3/10 and a recommendation to watch something more interesting instead.

Comanche Run

If you want to be honest, when a franchise as big as this one boasts the original, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the best of the bunch then any discerning movie goer would question whether watching any of the sequels is worth the time and effort. However, Prey the 2022 prequel to Arnie's Predator is an incredibly well done, back-to-basics, film that is worth your time, even if you don't like sci-fi films with ugly brutish monsters as the main antagonist. This is set in North America in 1791 and is all about Amber Midthunder as Naru, a woman who wants to be a warrior but isn't taken seriously by her elders and 'betters'. All of her attempts to prove herself either fail or fail spectacularly; that is until a Predator arrives on her peoples' reservation and starts hacking the heads off its prey.   

This is an excellent addition to the franchise, with possibly only Adrien Brody's 2010 sequel Predators also worth your time and effort. Midthunder is excellent (as is her dog) and this absolutely is a full on, no time to rest, thriller with nods to the original film as well as some ingenious ideas. It deserves a solid 7/10 and a thumbs up from me if you've never seen it. Don't be put off by the sci-fi monster premise; this is about emancipation as much as it's about alien creatures with advanced weaponry for the 18th century.

Beach Bums

The documentary about the history of The Beach Boys has been floating around my hard drive for over six months. It's something I've wanted to watch but never got around to it, so on New Year's Day afternoon, we settled down and watched the film that is currently available on Disney+. It's very comprehensive up to a point and spends best part of two hours looking at the period between 1961 when the Wilsons' decided to start a band and goes up to the mid 1970s when the band had fallen into decline and were no longer the superstars they had been. While it does a really good job of telling the story of their success and the savant genius that Brian Wilson was, it skirts over issues in their later life and careers that might have made this an even more enjoyable (and truthful) documentary. 

I suppose this was a celebration so the darker moments in the band's career were overlooked or simply airbrushed out. There was no mention of Dennis Wilson's ostracization and drug struggles or his death which was accidental but could have been suicide. Neither was there any meaningful mention of Carl Wilson's struggle with cancer before he died in the late 1990s. The Mike Love controversy was swept over briefly, with no real mention of the huge rift that formed between Love and his cousin Brian Wilson, which led to the two not speaking for years after Love - rightly - sued for loss of royalties. The problem was he sued Brian and it wasn't really Brian's fault his father was a complete cunt.

I learned a lot of things that I never knew, like Glen Campbell was a member of the band for a while in the 60s or that effectively there were two Beach Boys - the studio band and the touring one, because Wilson - who is clearly on the spectrum - kept having breakdowns when he went on tour, so stayed in the studio composing all their hits with Phil Spector's session band The Wrecking Crew. Anyhow, if you want to have a nostalgic two hours of songs we all know and many of us grew up with then this is worth your while. I give it a wobbly 6.5/10.

Pot Sounds?

Honestly, this is what I should do more with this blog... Much of the focus of the Beach Boys documentary was on Pet Sounds, the groundbreaking (really?) album which many believe was the best thing the Californian band ever created [read: Brian Wilson]. So after watching the documentary, I gave the album a couple of listens to. This is what I think... 

The documentary has Al Jardine claiming he played the album to Lennon and McCartney and they were so blown away they listened to it three times. This may well have been the case, but one suspects because of the rivalry built up either side of the Atlantic by the people associated to the bands, Lennon and McCartney wanted to see what they're rivals were up to next and maybe they were impressed by it or maybe they thought, "If this is the best Wilson can do then lets go into the studio and blow him away!" Pet Sounds is a Beach Boys album. It has less surfs up type songs and a few things - God Only Knows and Wouldn't It Be Nice especially - that showed they were capable of doing something other than derivative pop. It doesn't float my boat and I like the band's hit singles - but that's about as far as it goes. This has some excellent hits on it and a bunch of meh other tracks that didn't - for me - show the genius of Brian Wilson. Yes, as an arranger and producer he was good, but probably with the exception of Good Vibrations (which wasn't on this album) there hasn't been anything really innovative and even that classic single is still the Beach Boys. Considering they pretty much went into decline after this album, one wonders if people view this with rose tinted glasses rather than with a serious critical hat on. It's okay, but if I hadn't already owned it, I wouldn't go and buy it.

Chase Me

The wife is a big fan of The Chase, but it's because she's a quiz fan more than anything else. I am also a quiz fan - obs - but this is a show that infuriates me (much like many afternoon quiz shows). Why does it infuriate me? Well, for two reasons. The first is the incredibly stupid people who appear on it. Do these people understand that they're on a quiz show so they need to have a rudimentary understanding of general knowledge? And secondly, why do people go on this show to take the low offer? I mean, you get an opportunity to go on a show, they're already highly unlikely to win the jackpot - I think it happens about once in every 12 shows - so you might as well take what you earned in the cash builder because taking the low offer is just an insult to your team mates.

I've always said if I went on show - which is as likely as me being the next Doctor Who - I'd probably get edited out for telling my team mates if they take the low offer I won't try in the final and they will be on their own with their limited general knowledge. I think it's just people who want to be on TV, getting their 10 minutes of fame and coming across as chicken shit wankers to the rest of the nation. Twats, all of them. 

Dick in a Vice

If a modern actor deserved high praise it's probably Christian Bale for his ability to transform himself for whatever role he's playing; from dodgy skinny boxers to Batman, Bale has been chameleon like in his career, but none of them are a patch on his Dick... I am of course talking about his Dick Cheney - former Vice President of the USA, as well as many other positions within Republican administrations - Chief of Staff and Defence Secretary to name but two. Bale's performance as Cheney in Adam McKay's Vice is quite remarkable and I'm still wondering if he simply put on a lot of weight or a fat suit, because whatever he did the make up department deserved an Oscar. But not just for him, also for Sam Rockwell, who I said just two weeks ago was at his best in The Way Way Back (which also starred Steve Carell, who in Vice plays Donald Rumsfeld), but was also pretty damned good in this. Rockwell was made to look so much like George W Bush that you literally needed to do a double take at times.

Vice is essentially a biopic of Cheney's life - because the man was so secretive much of this movie was conjecture and presumption, but you really get the impression that apart from some artistic licence this was probably what happened and points the finger squarely at the former VP for much of the mess the world is in today - the rise of the Right Wing, the proliferation of capitalism and all those wars that Halliburton has made so much money from - a company that Cheney was CEO of and may still have links. I have said for many years, like other people, that Halliburton is one of the corporations that run the world and this excellent, if not quite scary movie, goes a long way to corroborate that hypothesis. It was our first time watching this movie, another one which we should have watched much sooner than now. It's not the film of the week but it's pretty close and I give it a solid 7.5/10 - it could almost have been an 8 but the depressing nature of the truth got it downgraded by half a point.

Arthouse Thing

What do you get if you cross John Carpenter's The Thing with a David Cronenberg homage made by a French film 'auteur'? You get The Substance, a movie that seems to have really shaken up the film world - a body horror that really is about bodies and a performance from Demi Moore - considering she's 62 - that deserves a positive acknowledgment. She plays fading Hollywood star  Elizabeth Sparkle who hosts an aerobics slot on morning TV. It's not often a woman of Moore's age will wander around for most of a movie with no clothes on - although to be honest, for her age and with NATSO she's in pretty good shape - so all credit to her for doing this with the kind of confidence she showed in the early 1990s. 

In real terms this is a tough film to review without giving anything away or sounding sexist, but I suppose Coralie Fargeat's movie - which actually feels like French film - is about sexism, ageism and being left behind for younger, brighter things. Elizabeth Qualley plays Sue and her unique relationship with Moore is explored in a sinister and strangely addictive way. This is a violent, sexual and bleak feature with most of the dialogue being supplied by the other main actor, Denis Quaid - as both women's producer. It is, I suppose, quite a darkly comic turn, with some excellent, but stylised special effects. Did I enjoy it? Not really. I thought Moore was okay until her life started to fall apart - literally - and that's when she really showed that she is, at times, an exceptional actor. It's a cold and detached look at the decadence of fame and beauty and what people will do to hang on to these things. It has been highly praised in critical circles, but is a difficult movie to like, so I'll go down the middle and give it a firm, but saggy 5/10.

What's Up Next?

I'm still trying to decide what I'm going to do when we come to TV coming back. The plan is with Box Set releases then I'll review the entire series and when there's a big weekly show that returns then I'll see how I'll approach that when it happens. There will be stuff before hand but Severance is back in February and by then I should have got into some kind of groove.

So probably a selection of old and new films until the TV is back, with maybe some other stuff thrown in to mix it up a bit. As with last year, it's a wait and see thing! Ciao!