Time and the Weather

Funny man Sid James once said, "...There always has been and there's nothing you can do about it." Whether he was talking about the weather or something else I will undoubtedly never know, but if you were to suggest this statement is about the weather then you wouldn't be too far wrong. It has, indeed, always been here and there is, indubitably, nothing we can do about it...

The same could apply to time "...There always has been and there's nothing you can do about it." another thing we endure but have no control over and the two are inexplicably linked - certain times of the year you are largely guaranteed certain types of weather and even with climate change you're not going to get hot sunny days in December nor are you going to get blizzards and hard frosts in July. Time marches on and the four seasons, give or take some weird anomalies, marches alongside. Just, being there. 

A good friend of mine reminded me last week that 2023 wasn't a brilliant year for the weather. To be a little more specific, July and August were crap in Scotland, we had some respite in September, but essentially autumn arrived two months early and nearly twelve months later we're pretty much waiting for summer to return. The thing is, we know that even if we get a glorious September, it's going to be another six months before we actually get a chance of having a summer. 

One thing I've discovered since living here, even if we're actually lower on the map than Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and most of Northumberland, is that summer starts early and is over by the first Wednesday in August. There have been some exceptions, but for the first five full years we lived here May was always fantastic and much better up here than down south. The price we paid for this was that Augusts weren't the sultry dog days of summer they tend to be in the south, usually the wet and the windy outnumbered the warm and the sunny.

So that means while we usually get a similar amount of summer to everywhere else in the south, ours starts a wee bit earlier and ends a whole lot sooner. Except for the last two years, summer has been as rare as rocking horse shit...

Now, with age comes wisdom, or at least you'd hope so, but seeing some of the older people involved in the recent riots or being keyboard warriors on-line you would have to challenge that assumption. The number of older people who are ignorant, intolerant and hate-filled seems greater than it was when I was growing up. Maybe old people didn't express themselves as vocally when I was younger, or maybe I was able to tune them out? The thing is one thing is guaranteed with getting older; time speeds up. Not actually; there is no proof that clocks go faster or that there's only 350 days in the year rather than 364. Time speeds up because we become more familiar with it and maybe for some that familiarity breeds contempt?

If you make the same journey every week, by the time you've done it one hundred times it seems as though it takes no time at all, whereas those first few journeys felt long, tedious and like they were never going to end. I first noticed this when I was driving to London every day; I would get to the Luton Airport turn and think, 'I've got here quicker than usual' except I was still going at 70mph and it was still taking me x number of minutes, I was just used to the journey and therefore the time it took was more familiar to me. If it took an hour when I started, it still took an hour when I stopped. I just felt like it took less time - that hour was familiar to me, therefore it didn't seem as long.

If you are four years of age, a year is a quarter of your life. If you are 60 years old, a year is a 60th of your life. Can you see how familiarity with time makes it seem to go much quicker. Most 10 year olds view the school holidays as a chasm of time. Do you remember cramming four or five things into a day? Now you're lucky if you can do one thing. Yes, the older you get the more responsibility you have, but I guarantee you if you took a day off it would be late afternoon before you know it and you'd be thinking about dinner or tonight's TV only for that to soon become something you did (or didn't do) as you were lying in bed reflecting on your day.

Maybe this is why some people get so bitter and twisted, because they see life whizzing past and there's nothing they can do about it? 

And then there's the fact that when you pass 60 you begin to, morbidly, notice the ages of people who are dying, either around you or 'famous' people. The number who die in their 60s which leaves you with this scary possibility that you might actually be entering one of your last laps around the year. People in their 70s makes you count the years between how old you are now and how many years you have if they made it to that specific age. Then there's the thought of making it to your 80s and 90s; you could technically still have a quarter of your life left, in some cases even a third, but it comes with added bonuses, such as ill health, inability to do the things you can do now, which in turn makes you realise that the things you can do now are considerably limited compared to the things you could do then...

So, tie this subconscious knowledge of your mortality and link it to the weather. Why was 1976 such a great summer? Was it the blistering heat? Was it because we were considerably younger and therefore it felt like it went on for so much longer? Or could there be another factor at play? I often wonder what people who live in Arabian countries perceive as the passage of time, because they live in a place where the weather is pretty much the same every day of the year, whereas we live in a temperate climate, which means our weather changes more often than someone with OCD changes their underwear or washes their hands. 1976 felt like a long hot summer because it was but also because every day felt like an extension of the day before. It was literally blue skies and hot temperatures every day of the week from May to the end of September, with the exception of three days of torrential rain over August Bank Holiday - just to prove the weather loves to be ironic.

Here's another thing about long hot days - you grow tired of doing anything but avoiding the heat, so even if you're at work you often find yourself staring into space, looking for an excuse to not do anything because doing something means sweaty and uncomfortable. When we get great weather, the kind we moan about not having, we then tend to look at it from inside a house (or a car) and think perhaps we should go and enjoy it but it's easier to sit and do nothing. This might not apply to everybody, but it is an actual things; so if you live in countries that have six months of hot sunny weather followed by six months of warm sunny weather perhaps the lack of change makes time drag?

Then there's the thing that pisses me off. I know that at 62 with an underlying health condition that every year has to be savoured and appreciated; that means doing things in the summer that I enjoy because I know I don't do much in the winter. Even if it's little things like reading a book in the sun, sitting in a beer garden having a pint, walking in the sea or going out with a pair of shorts on, these are things I look forward to do doing and every year we have a shit summer I've got one less year to do these things. I haven't sat outside in a pub garden since 2022 and since 2020 even if the weather has been fine going to the pub hasn't been easy at times. There was a time when I'd put shorts on in May and they'd stay on until the end of September. This year I've worn shorts for no more than three days at a time because the rain or the temperature has forced me back into trousers or jeans. 

Also, in case I forgot to mention it, as we get older time goes quicker - yes? Then that means summers are quicker, so are springs, but why do autumns and winters feel like they drag? Is it because of the lack of daylight? Or maybe it's because in the spring and summer when the weather is shite, we're constantly looking forward to when the weather will improve, but during the autumn and winter we know the weather is going to be shite so we don't have the same expectation? I often wonder if winter people have the same perception of time that summer people have? I think they must because the wife is an autumn kind of person and she's always complaining about time flying by. 

Science tries to explain why time appears to get faster the older we are. Scientists suggest everything from dopamine levels to something not dissimilar to what I've been yakking on about - after the age of about 20, humans become more adept at measuring time, which in turn means that as we become better at doing it time appears to speed up. This doesn't explain why as kids we manage to cram a lifetime's worth of fun into a summer holiday or maybe all of that just happened in our heads? We're told that memories are not strictly accurate, so maybe as time passes our memories simply make it feel like we did more when we were kids?

One thing is for sure, most people fear dying when they're young, which is understandable. However, as people get older, move closer to a time when they will cease to exist, very few are as frightened of it. Yes, there is trepidation and some fear, but there's also other things which only older people truly understand. I sometimes feel dreadful - not because of my underlying health issues, or too much booze, or some other reason; sometimes I just wake up, wander to the loo or down to the kitchen and my body aches and I realise that when I was a kid I got what my mum called 'growing pains' and now that I'm older I'm getting what I call 'aging pains'. I mentioned this to a friend of mine a couple of years ago, a man in his 80s, and he said "It doesn't get any better. Some days your body just screams at you for existing." As someone whose legs ache the day after a long walk and my neck and shoulders appear to be rebelling against the rest of my body, the thought of extended pain as I get older is as scary AF. That's before arthritis ravages older bodies. I mean, why do we not tell younger people about how shit it is to get old? 

Maybe this is why some people move to warmer countries. Perhaps it's not so much to do with the weather, but more to do with monotony and it's ability to make you perceive time slowing down? Obviously warmer weather makes the bones and muscles ache less - at least that seems to be the excuse given. There is also this scientific search to understand why we age and to see if we can slow it down or even stop it. Can you imagine a 160 year old person? If they weren't just a wheelchair full of pain and moaning, they'd also get up on the morning of January 1st and by the time they were ready to go to bed it would be the end of September and it would have rained for most of the time...

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.

Modern Culture - Follow the Money

There are some spoilers, mainly in the first review because it acts as a warning more than anything else...

Red Queen Freezes

Oh for fuck's sake. Seriously? Did we just sit through eight episodes for it all the end on a massive fucking anti-climax? It certainly seems that way. Obviously stuff happened, but this entire season, which was all about chess pieces being moved into position, ended with more chess pieces and more positions. I was led to believe this was an extended episode, but in reality it was just ten minutes longer than usual; an extra ten minutes to seriously fuck off people who have dedicated eight bloody hours to this. Yes, we saw a way for Rhaenyra to become queen without bloodshed, which meant Alicent had to acknowledge her mistake and probably give up one of her sons and we saw Daemon take the knee for his wife and queen, but only after he was shown the future by his Scottish muse come witch. But really this was 70 minutes of prick teasing and not very good prick teasing and now we're going to have to wait at least two fucking years before these dragons dance again. Just avoid this show; it will leave you angry and frustrated. 

Fine Margins

The 2008 financial crash did an awful lot of damage and allowed people to blame other people for it - such as the Tories blaming Labour despite Gordon Brown stopping the UK from having to endure the fire sale that many other countries went through (but why listen to history when a lie can achieve so much more?)...

There was an all-star cast for the 2011 movie Margin Call about a fictional bank (probably based on Lehman Bros) discovering they were about to lose everything on the eve of one of the biggest financial disasters ever to hit the planet. Arguably, this film suggests the company discovering they were worth much less than their actual company thought it really was, because of stuff which, even when explained in layman's terms went over my head, was responsible for the beginning of this global economic catastrophe. This had a bunch of top notch actors all vying for power and money; including Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany, Stanley Tucci, Mary McDonnell and Aasif Mandvi (Ben from Evil).

This movie starts with the firing of 80% of the company's brokers, in scenes reminiscent of George Clooney's film (Up in the Air) about company's hiring outsiders to do their dirty jobs for them, but quickly changes tack as one of the guy's whose job was safe discovers something really bad in the forecasts and figures of his company. This isn't an action-packed adventure movie, it's a pacey financial blockbuster that feels just as taut and full of jeopardy. It's about rich people trying to remain rich while not caring about the human debris they leave behind. Ultimately they all lose, but it's a really great movie that I wholeheartedly recommend. 

Not So Fine Margins

It soon dawned on us, about five minutes into The Big Short that we were actually watching the other side of the coin to the film we watched the night before - the one reviewed above this. Where Margin Call was all about the banks doing what they could to stave off disaster, this was about hedge fund entrepreneurs doing the thing that made the things in the above film happen.

This starts with Christian Bale's character realising that literally every single mortgage package offered by US banks was basically not worth the paper it was printed on. That the entire mortgage business was essentially based on a long series of guesses, presumptions and people saying that they thought A would happen so they bet against B and C. I don't for a second feel confident about trying to explain the way this works, but Bale's character, then Ryan Gosling's character picked up on it, who then sold the idea to Steve Carell's company and then a couple of wannabe investors happened on the idea, got their rich and weird friend - Brad Pitt - involved and suddenly three groups of hedge funders and a banker stood to make $billions at the expense of the entire world economy.

The film by the renowned writer/director Adam McKay plays out like a docudrama at times, with loads and loads of guest stars either playing small parts or playing themselves, as they segued into layman's explanations of the complicated stuff that was going on and probably losing loads of people watching it if it didn't have these idiots guides. Whereas Margin Call watched - in almost real time - a bank realise that it was going to go under because of mortgages; The Big Short looks at it over the space of two years, from the point where Bale starts to see the problems with the numbers in mortgages to the same events that happened in the other film. What this film does it try to paint most of the people involved as actual people who realised that despite them making millions and millions of dollars were also making loads of people lose their homes, their jobs and their life savings. They tried very hard to show what a fraudulent world banking inhabited but as Steve Carell said just before he became super-rich, "The tax payer will bail the banks out and in two years the banks will blame migrants and the poor for everything that happened and they'll start again." Which is exactly what happened, because by 2015 US Banks were selling mortgages in the same format as they did before the crash but with different names, proving once and for all that banks run the world and the little guy is fucked.

A Game of Spies

Tony Scott (late brother of Ridley) was renowned in the 80s, 90s and 00s for his action and blockbuster thrillers; like an esoteric Michael Bay he made big bombastic movies and Spy Game is no exception - a proper spy thriller with some good performances by Robert Redford as retiring case agent Nathan Muir and a youthful Brad Pitt as his protégé Tom Bishop - a skilful operative but prone to emotional decisions, something CIA spies should not be. This is a film about trying to do the right thing for an agent who had given so much for the US government and was about to be thrown under a bus to ensure a trade deal between the USA and China goes through. Redford is exceptional as the experienced fixer who has one last thing to fix - saving the life of an agent he cared about. 

Yet there was something just not quite right about this 2001 movie and it soon became clear what it was... Remember last week's blog about the film Jericho Ridge and how it was made with nothing but British actors in Kosovo and the lack of authenticity made it a difficult movie to like even before you realised it was a shite film? Well, Spy Game is essentially a British film with a small handful of American actors and literally none of it shot in the USA and it felt like it at times, especially scenes with Stephen Dillane in - he's a good actor probably best known as Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones, but give him an American accent and make him a department head of the CIA and he doesn't cut it, neither did many of his supporting actors. There's something about Brits doing American accents that I struggle with; I think 90% of the time British actors, especially men, aren't very good at portraying Americans; there's an element of mid-Atlantic about them or a lack of regional accent and for me that spoiled an otherwise entertaining film.

Misadventures

It's a rare thing to watch a movie where Ryan Reynolds plays a role straight and is an absolute douchebag in it, but Adventureland is just that film. He plays or rather is a supporting character called Connell, who is the repairman at the eponymous theme park where Jesse Eisenberg goes to work and meets a bunch of interesting misfits, wankers and Kristen Stewart, who will become his love interest. She's the girl with an 'it's complicated' situation that involves the aforementioned Reynolds. Largely, this is a coming of age movie about a young man whose dreams are dashed when his father's job circumstances change drastically. Where he was going to travel around Europe with his fellow middle class wealthy friends from high school he has to take on a job working at Adventureland because he literally can't do anything else.

What is never said but is pretty much implied is that Eisenberg's old man hasn't been 'moved' he's probably been 'fired' because it's now all about downsizing where it used to be about grand schemes. The situation isn't that dissimilar to Stewart's home life, where she lives almost autonomously from her father and stepmother, who she hates. This is a movie that plays on the USA's unspoken class system; a place where your average Jew is treated with a modicum of contempt; Catholics are all viewed as a bit weird and everyone else is just normal. There's an interesting supporting cast, including Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig as Adventureland's managers and Martin Starr as a nerdy Jewish guy who comes from a very poor family and dreams of having a relationship with any girl. Reynolds plays a man who preys on younger women with tales [read: lies] of things he did as he was making his way up in the music world. He's married and seems to be able to get away with anything because of his 'ineffable' charm. It's a solid, quite enjoyable black comedy set in 1987 which evokes the era extremely well and is by far a more watchable movie than some 'teen comedies' can be.

An Actual Amazing Space

This 12th season of George Clarke's Amazing Spaces is almost over - next week will be the last for now - but I don't think I've ever seen an amazing space quite as bonkers as the one in the penultimate episode. A madman in Coleshill, Birmingham decided to build the world's shortest canal in the grounds of his hotel, float a narrowboat on it, build a fake tunnel, adjacent to it and a lock keeper's cottage. It was, as George said, like someone had transported something from the Victorian age and dumped it in the garden of the hotel. The builder even fixed some piping onto the fake lock gate so it appeared to be leaking, the way proper lock gates do. It cost him £30,000 and I sat and wondered throughout the episode what the fuck was he going to do with it and right at the end we discovered. He turned a 35 feet narrow boat into a swimming pool!

It hasn't been the most inspiring series of this show; in fact even though people are getting more and more adventurous with their plans, this 12th series has felt a little tired, like the concept needs shelving. Even the 'project' that George and his mate Will Hardie hatched seems like an [ahem] stretch too far - turning a scissor lift into a folly. It's a show we'll always come back to, but, you know, it feels as though it needs a shot in the arm but with material and house prices the way they are it's not likely to get put out to pasture any time soon, I'm betting.

Let's Talk About...

... the weather. 

I don't tend to have that many other blogs now. You might get three or four politics blogs a year and one sport blog (that is incoming in the next week), but most of my blogging is about TV and film and when I do get the urge to moan about something else; usually it's the weather. Where we live in Scotland, the far south west, it is actually lower down than Newcastle and most of Northumberland. We get a very temperate climate; winters are hardly ever really bad, summers are rarely stifling. We have a microclimate that is, by and large, very pleasant, but because we're in the north it always feels as though we get seven months of autumn and winter and only five months of spring and summer. So when summer has been as shite as this one you kind of feel cheated out of it, especially when you get old. Let me be straight about this; being in your sixties (and older) is a little like being on a rollercoaster with no brakes; things just speed up like crazy.

Just recently I looked at the calendar on the longest day of the year and the next thing I know it's the fucking second week of August and while we might have had a grand total of eight days where the temperature got above 20 degrees, we've had ONE day that really felt like proper summer, when I went out in a shirt and shorts and thought I was over dressed and because of the acclimatisation, that day was only 23 degrees, which has been the warmest day of the year for us. The highest since we've lived here has been 32, but on average we get two or three days when its above 25 and about a dozen days when it's around 25. More importantly, we get about 30-40 days of above 20 and the rest are usually mid to high teens. The problem is, the locals will tell you that autumn pretty much starts the day of the Wigtown Show - that's last Wednesday when you read this. The nights start drawing in faster after the end of the first week of August; it's actually noticeable - one minute it's light at 9pm, the next it's getting dark at 8pm and by the time the autumnal equinox arrives it's dark by 7pm.

The other thing about turning 60 is whether you like it or not you start noticing that people of a similar age or ten years older than you are dying, which brings home your own mortality and that pisses me off because I'm running out of summers and while I don't want 40 degrees that Northampton has had in recent years, I love a bit of sunshine - it makes me feel good. 

Of course, there's not really anyone you can blame. I mean, you can but it isn't going to do any good and the people partially responsible for climate change aren't interested in Joe Blow whinging at them; they're being whinged at by experts and ignoring them. The last year I remember the summer being so bad was 2012. It was a weird year, the Queen's jubilee - the year her and Philip almost froze to death on that barge on the Thames as the UK experienced one of the wettest and coldest summers on record. That was the year we were handed a free holiday to Wigtown, a place 14 years earlier I vowed never to return to. Our holiday coincided with the London Olympics and that first week was the best week of the entire summer and we got lovely warm and sunny weather here, which helped us fall in love with the place...

Every year it seems, someone is glad to see the back of it. Everyone has their own annus horribilis, but it does seem like it's something that repeats itself more often. It isn't just the weather that fucks up years - death, illness, unexpected pressures on finances and mental health are all things people are never prepared for and 2024, all eight and bit months of it so far, hasn't been memorable for any good reason. Even our fabulous new kitchen has the stain of us knowing it was the last thing our dear friend George completed before we were robbed of him by a destiny that is neither fair nor forgiving. The forecast for the next couple of weeks suggests more changeable weather and before we know it September will be here, the BBC weather presenters will be talking about autumn and Christmas will, again, just be round the corner. Why is it that the months of November through to March always seem to last twice as long as the months of April through to October?

A Serious Meh

This week's Cohen Brothers film we hadn't seen before was the 2009 Jewish black comedy drama A Serious Man. It really is a Hebrew movie, set in Minnesota in 1967, in a Jewish community that could easily have been mistaken for Israel. It is probably the most Jewish film I have ever seen and I mean that in a most definitely not anti-Semitic way.

Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, a professor who lives with his wife and two children in a suburban area of Bloomington, Minnesota. His life is looking pretty good until one morning he goes to his office and speaks with a Korean student who has failed maths but leaves him a $3000 bribe to change his mark. This seems to be the starting point for Larry's life to fall apart. His wife wants a divorce, his son is a pot addict, his daughter doesn't seem to do much apart from wash her hair, he has a subscription record company on his back for a subscription he knows nothing about, he's up for a tenure at the college he teaches at but they're receiving libellous letters about him and he thinks his gentile neighbour is stealing some of his land. oh and his brother, who has a very productive cyst on his neck, is staying with them and hogging the bathroom. It is a very surreal movie.

And that is about it... Over the space of about two weeks, leading up to his son's Bah Mitzvah, Larry's life falls apart, but in many ways so does a lot of the people around him. The man his wife wants to leave Larry for dies in a car accident; Larry is involved in his own car accident and his brother is arrested for gambling and sodomy. Larry gets no joy from his rabbis, his legal bills are horrendous, someone is stealing money from him and it is in many ways just a relentless midlife crisis for him and even when it looks like his life is turning a corner the end of the film seems to simply start a new cycle of misery. I suppose it's a typical Cohen Brothers movie, but it feels like an acquired taste, something where you need to have a rudimentary understanding of the Jewish faith to be able to understand what is going on and it is neither very funny or dramatic. It was all a bit meh.

Ain't No Sunny-shine

The sixth episode of Sunny was... virtually free of Sunny. It was about Suzie (with an i and an e not with a y as I did last week) and it was about Mixxy and it was about Hime, the Yakuza woman with half a little finger missing who is played by someone called You. However as Mixxy is played by someone called Annie the Clumsy, then having someone called You seems almost normal. Suzie is played by Rashida Jones, btw, she's Quincy's daughter - that's Quincey Jones (the guy who produced Michael Jackson, no the MD played by Jack Klugman). if this paragraph seems to be going all over the place then welcome to the world of Sunny...

I realised what the end of part five meant - Sunny has been kidnapped by Hime (played by You, not 'you,' obviously) and is being used as collateral so that she can get Suzie into her lair and get her to see if she can crack Masa's laptop password - which she does. There's lots of strange dialogue, oh and Noriko - Masa's mother and Suzie's mother-in-law - has deliberately gotten herself arrested for shop lifting and provocative behaviour. Hime seems to believe that Masa has something very valuable on his laptop that will benefit her greatly, but my guess is she won't find anything because I think whatever it is the Yakuza are looking for is inside Sunny and when she finally makes an appearance - in the final ten seconds - the only thing she can do is malfunction and fall over. I know the wife has just about run out of patience with this series and I totally understand why; there are four episodes to go and I want enough to happen over the next four weeks to make it worth the slog, but I think we won't get any answers until episode nine, at the earliest.

Dead Funny

As satirical mockumentaries go, Drop Dead Gorgeous was both funny and slightly silly. Set in Minnesota, it reminded me of Fargo in many ways because everyone talked the same way as they did in that Cohen Brothers film and this almost felt like some kind of spiritual cousin.

Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards, Amy Adams and Brittany Murphy were among the contestants in this spoof of mid-west beauty pageants. Kirstie Alley, Allison Janney, Ellen Barkin and Mindy Sterling were some of the adults, with Alley the slightly deranged pageant organiser who just happened to have her own daughter (Richards) in the competition. Inside the opening ten minutes one of the contestants dies in a mysterious tractor explosion and before the finale of the contest another two have mysteriously died; yet the police don't seem unduly phased. Several attempts are made on the life of Dunst's character, including one that blows her mobile home to pieces and leaves her mother (Barkin) with a can of beer fused to her hand and still the police don't see anything odd.

It is a very funny film that borders on the realms of bad taste but never really steps over the line. The mockumentary feel is a bit weird to start with but you soon realise that it's probably the best way to showcase the numerous characters in the movie and how they fit into the scheme of things. Without ever really doing anything but filming it, the documentary crew begin to clearly show that Alley is a psychopath intent on her daughter winning the pageant and going to the state finals and that her husband - owner of a furniture business - has bought off the judges to ensure their daughter wins. Their daughter who might be quite pretty but is spoiled, narcissistic and as raving mad and self-centred as her mother. 

Fear of Doppelgangers

If the last two episodes of Evil have been two of the best, this one was most definitely one of the weirdest... The series has almost finished, there is just two weeks to go. What I believed was a 15 episode season, is actually 14 and even that is a little on the strange side. Episode 10 was the death of Sheryl, which was also, essentially, the season finale. What we have with episodes 11 to 14 are either bonus episodes or an unnamed four-part season five and obviously these two most recent parts have followed on from E10 in the feeling that all is coming to a head. This part though felt simultaneously like it was treading water and hurtling towards a conclusion - no mean feat.

Kirsten, Ben and David are asked by Sister Andrea to look into the strange case of the son of her former lover, who believes he is possessed by his own doppelganger, who self-immolated a couple of weeks earlier. Meanwhile as Leland looks certain to be locked up for the rest of his life something both weird and violent happens and he's no longer in the pickle he was. The church has sold the diocese for £85million and Kirsten was due to come into money but that has now evaporated, while Ben is getting job offer after job offer all at exponential pay increases. We also almost see Kristen naked, seemingly following on from last week's first bit of nudity and the violence and swearing levels have been ramped up yet again. Armageddon is coming, the assessors are going to be out of work, the Entity has disappeared and people are starting to act out of character or through a sense of fear and dread. I expect the next two - concluding - parts are going to be tumultuous and final. 

Next Time...

There's two more episodes of Evil to go and then another regular view will bite the dust. Speaking of conclusions, I have the final six-part season of The Umbrella Academy to watch. The wife gave up on this after season two, so it's one of the few things I've watched myself; finding the time to do that could be interesting as I tend not to like watching TV in the day time...

Sunny is still hanging in there and, frankly, with just four episodes to go I suppose we'll finish it, but it needs something happen - but to be honest that can be said about a number of TV series at the moment. 

In the world of film (or specifically the FDoD), there's about the same as there was last week because I downloaded a few things in the last week, which has mainly comprised of the majority of the films we've watched this last week.

Obviously, on a different note, the football season restarts, the Olympics finish and networks start to gear up for the (dreaded) autumn; or at least one would hope they do. It seems the BBC is simultaneously promoting and besmirching the name of Strictly Come Dancing - a show that celebrates over 20 years of being one of the jewels in the crown of the corporation and a television programme that we have NEVER watched and we're not about to start. If I wanted to see 'celebrities' dancing on the TV, I'd take loads of drugs and imagine it.

 

Pop Culture - Classics and Crap Stains

There are some spoilers in this and in the case of old films there are lots of spoilers, but I try to keep the big spoilers out of current TV and newly release films available to stream or if you so wish, buy on DVD.

Dungeon & Dragons

Would you risk your life for the chance to ride a dragon? This is the question Rhaenyra is asking the bastards of Targaryens as her plan to place two bastards on the backs of the remaining two rider-less dragons comes to fruition, despite the disgust of her son and the mass walk out by the dragon keepers.

The penultimate episode of this season of House of the Dragon was a cracking one. Not only does Rhaenyra get her wish, in a most dramatic way, but her estranged hubby gets his arse handed to him on a plate by the new Lord Tully, a mere whipper-snapper of a boy who puts Daemon in such a pickle he can do nothing other than acquiesce to the new Lord's wishes. It was one of those moments when you realise that Matt Smith's character has far more flaws than he lets on as his time going slowly mad in Harrenhal is coming to an end. Meanwhile back in King's Landing, Alicent is going wild in the country to try and regain her poise, while Larys does his best to try and get the damaged king back on his feet. Raena and her nephews are shipped out of their temporary home and off across the sea to lands unknown, but first she wants to find out about this wild dragon. This was one of those episodes that was quite relentless in its content and was arguably the best one of the entire series as we get dragons by the absolute bucket load. Next week should be good.

Unbeatable

Whatever happened to M Night Shyamalan? I mean The Sixth Sense was an extraordinary movie and the one that followed it was arguably the best superhero film ever made, until at least 2008, but in many ways Unbreakable still is the quintessential comic book film. It is an incredible motion picture with almost as brilliant an ending as The Sixth Sense. After these films the director barely made a decent fist of anything...

Bruce Willis is again the star of this, but here he displays as a character so unlike anything he's ever played before; his David Dunne is so understated he's almost a wallflower. Samuel L Jackson as Elijah - or Mr Glass - is, in many ways, also very out of character for Jackson, usually so bombastic and Harlem-esque in the way he plays people. Dunne survives a horrendous train crash that kills everyone on board apart from him and this triggers the attention of Elijah, who believes that Dunne is in some way 'unbreakable' the antithesis of himself, someone who suffers from a bone deficiency that makes breaking them very easy. What follows is a slow but highly effective look at what probably would happen if two comic book characters happened in real life. It is a stunning movie that is packed full of emotions and twists until it becomes clear that Dunne is what Elijah thinks he is. I said in 2000 that it was the best superhero film ever made and while there have been some that are arguably better, I don't think there has ever been one that is so real. It was and will remain one of my favourite films of all time - yes it spawned two sequels, but I don't count them. They just were. 

3 Men in a Boat

The 1970s was the decade I discovered the cinema and in 1975 I discovered Steven Spielberg, the man who would go on to make two of my favourite films of all time. One of those films we watched again on Sunday night and even though it has been nearly 30 years since we last watched it, Jaws is a fucking masterpiece of cinematic history. It is gold standard.

If there are any people out there who haven't seen this film then they need to remedy that fast before films become a thing of the past. It is a perfect example of how to make a movie in two parts - your set-up and your finale. In this case the demarcation line is a long shot out to sea separating the horror that Amity is being subjected to and the hunt for the monster that caused it. Both parts are about one hour long and yet the second half, which is a three hander with Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw, feels considerably shorter. It has brilliant camera usage, interesting thematic twists, umpteen clues to what is going to happen - if there's a gun in the opening reel of a movie then you know it's going to be fired before the end and with this film "Bruce's" demise is actually telegraphed three times in the run up. The thing is, like the floating head in the boat scene that you know is coming but still catches you out - EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. - you're not paying attention to the visual clues, you're engrossed in an almost perfect story. It remains one of the greatest movies ever made because, quite simply, it's one of the greatest movies ever made. 

Invasion Pennsylvania 

There's a lot about M Night Shyamalan's film Signs that could be classed as good, unfortunately there's a lot of bad in it as well. It's a movie that has big boots to fill given the two before it are bona fide classics of modern cinema. This alien invasion film doesn't have any of the subtlety The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable possess and it's spoilt by a strange comedic tonal thing going on.

It's the story of the return of crop circles, this time not by wankers with too much time on their hands. Mel Gibson plays Graham, a former preacher who has lost his wife in a car accident and subsequently lost his faith. He lives on a farm and one day his two kids find crop circles among the corn. At first both Graham and Merrill (Joaquim Phoenix) his brother think it's the work of drunken local kids, but then stuff starts to happen that make them both doubt what is going on. Eventually, it's all over the news - the planet has been invaded by aliens and it's every man for themselves. I suppose the interesting thing about the film is it is set entirely in a farmhouse in Pennsylvania rather than a planet spanning epic like so many other alien invasion things, but that's about it. The rest of it is played out in a strange way - like the director wanted to make an invasion movie that was rooted in real life rather than something fantastical. The problem with it is simple, it doesn't know what it wants to be - is it a sci-fi film or is it a horror/thriller? Why does Mel Gibson seem to be taking it a little less seriously than his character is? It's really a movie about faith and how to rediscover it. It feels rushed and to a degree flippant about its subject material. It's a wee bit like that other alien invasion thing I watched a few weeks ago - Dark Skies - in that it wasn't a half bad film until the actual aliens turned up; then it got a bit silly, a lot contrived and the aliens were defeated unbelievably easily - apart from the one who wanted revenge on Gibson for chopping its fingers off when it was locked in a cupboard... Actually, I know the wife is a fan of this movie, but really it's very much a load of old shite.

Oops I Did It Again

To quote Jim Carrey from the Mask film, "Somebody stop me!" Why? Because I read something in the fucking Guardian and got conned again. I mean, how many times do I have to be fooled into believing something I read in that fucking pointless rag before I stop taking notice of it?

IMDB warned me. It said 6.1 and I figured that being over 6 probably meant it would be reasonable. The thing I didn't pay attention to was the Guardian saying Jericho Ridge was like Assault on Precinct 13 merged with some other classic movie from the 1970s. It listed it as one of the seven - SEVEN - films on [all] TV this week that were worth watching and I fucking fell for it. It was a film made by the British, on location in Kosovo, about an attack on a Hicksville USA police station by unknown assailants while an incapacitated deputy and her drunk prisoner have to survive. No one had a convincing American accent and after an initial opening 15 minutes that was quite poor it just went down hill from there. Several times during the film both of us were heard saying, 'just fucking shoot him' as several characters had an opportunity to end this 87 minute film before it went on and tortured us any further. It was awful; truly awful. As awful as finding mouldy potatoes in a bag. Fuck, I need to stop looking at the Guardian and concentrate on finding an alternative that doesn't make me angry.

A Quiet Pizza

One of the most inventive sci-fi horrors of the last decade was undoubtedly A Quiet Place. John Krasinski's film about aliens who hunt by hearing because they're almost blind was creepy, tense and deeply unusual for its time. In hindsight, the franchise does have logical flaws which are never really thought about - stuff is conveniently overlooked for the sake of action.

A Quiet Place - Day One is only connected to Krasinski via story and production and where his first two parts absolutely nailed it, this third part left an awful lot to be desired. That's not to say it wasn't an enjoyable movie, it just didn't have enough of anything to put it in the same league as the first two.

This time it's back to the beginning and New York, a city that is so noisy it could give a deaf man a headache. It's the perfect place for the aliens to hunt and they do a great job of trashing the city looking for humans to kill off. Lupita Nyong'o is a dying poet, in the final stages of cancer, who is in the Big Apple for one last time to watch a show courtesy of the hospice she's spending her last days in. She somehow survives the initial attack, along with her cat Frodo, and she's heading to Harlem to relive a moment from her past - a drink and a pizza from a place her father used to go. Along the way she picks up Joseph Quinn - the new Johnny Storm - an English law student who doesn't seem to know what he's doing so he decides to follow the dying woman into the heart of the city rather than head for the docks where the evacuation ships are waiting to save people.

There's lot of stuff in this film that lacks logic - some of it odd, some of it, like I said, where the overall logic of the idea falls a little flat. I liked the first two films, but it wasn't until this latest addition that I started to question the idea. If the idea is to remain as quiet as you can all the time, what about sneezing? Coughing? Farting? Having really bad diarrhoea? Talking in your sleep or snoring? How do you avoid making any noise at all, but more importantly what about the noise the aliens make when they're trashing everything; why don't they attract the attention of all the other aliens who aren't currently trashing things? Do they kill all animals that make a noise? Cows? Birds? Frogs? Insects? Do you see (or hear) what I mean?

Anyhow, the film doesn't have enough action, aliens or interest in it. There's a lot of stuff that happens that revolves around not making a noise, which like the first two films is the reason for this film's existence, but in the first movie the family were essentially avoiding one, maybe two beasties, this film has literally thousands of them and yet Nyong'o and Quinn manage to talk, scream and do all manner of things because of thunder or rain or extraneous noises that they use for cover. It wasn't tense; the characters lacked any real appeal and things that people discovered in the second film seemed to be obvious to people in this third outing even though it was like 48 hours after the aliens arrived. Like I said, it was enjoyable but it wasn't particularly that good. I expect the franchise will die here.

Grimm's Fairy Tales

We finally dipped into Grimm, the TV series that we watched one episode of in 2011 and gave up on. We've returned to it because I've been recommended to watch it by a couple of people and some of the reviews I read suggested that after a slow and slightly crappy start it really developed into an interesting show. I'd just like to say that after watching the first two episodes, I hope that the crappy and slightly slow start is not an indication that the entire 6 seasons will be as cheap and patchy as this. While I was watching the first two parts I was filled with a number of thoughts and observations, which you'll be pleased to hear I'm not going to bother pointing out. It does strike me as something that needs to up its game a little to keep us occupied because had this been a new show we would have not bothered after episode two. It has promise, but it needs to deliver that promise, especially as there are six seasons and 127 episodes.

Into the Woods

I think I'm beginning to struggle with Apple TV's Sunny, the series about a grieving woman and her strange robot. I like weird, but I also like a story that I can follow and the problem with Sunny is that there seems to be a lot of Japanese idiosyncrasies involved and if you're not familiar with the culture - which is difficult for most gaijin like me - then you're onto a hiding to nothing. We're five episodes in and every time you think you're getting a handle on it an episode like this comes along and BAM you're back to square one. This week was mainly being lost in the woods with Mixxy after they run away from Suzy's house that has been ransacked by the Yakuza (last week). The three - Suzy, Mixxy and Sunny are looking for Mixxy's uncle's place but she doesn't seem to know where she's going; there's a sinister looking man hanging about; lots of peeing in the woods and Sunny has developed a big problem with Mixxy and I'm beginning to think the robot might be right. It ends with Sunny disappearing and that rubber finger (from last week) under a pillow. I have to admit, I'm running out of patience.

Out Of Touch

This week's Clooney was one of his first feature films as a star - Out of Sight, a kind of light comedy drama heist movie, with Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle and Denis Farina.

Let's be honest about this. It isn't a bad movie; it's about an escaped con and serial bank robber called Jack Foley - Clooney - and the plan to rob a rich fraudster who ended up in the same prison, who made it clear he had loads of money. That's the premise of part of the story but the part that dominates is the relationship between Jack and the US Marshal - Karen Cisco played by JLo - who he accidentally kidnaps on his escape from a prison in Florida. When I say relationship, what I mean is the outrageously far-fetched and slightly soiled almost wishful thinking that a failed bank robber could start a relationship with a beautiful law enforcement agent after being locked in the trunk of a car with her for a couple of hours and gently stroking her thigh, in a this is clearly not at all violating and creepy way.

The fact that Cisco is attracted to Jack is explained away by the flimsy idea that she has appalling taste in men and ends up making ridiculous decisions with them, such as shagging married men and, in this case, falling for a vaguely suave, but largely dense bank robber who borderline molested her in a boot of a car. This film was made in 1998 by Steven Soderbergh; it was based on an Elmore Leonard book, which might explain why the female character felt more like a wet dream for wankers kind of gal. I just found the idea morally dubious and I'd seriously doubt that this movie could be made now given the suggestions it was implying. There was just something wrong about this film's portrayal of women; something very wrong indeed. 

Fear of the Future

As we're heading towards the end of Evil, it was good to see last week's stonking episode was followed by yet another quite excellent addition. The endgame is approaching so the team are no longer off gallivanting, this is about firefighting and trying to deal with the shit that is known and unknown.

This week was Sheryl's wake, but it was also a time travel story - with a twist - and the beginning of the end of the assessment team as the archdiocese gives David the job of running the parish and then promptly pulls the plug on the team he heads. So Kristen not only loses her mother, but also several other rather important things and then her job; oh and her night demon is back and she's struggling to deal with it and look after baby Timothy, who is now firmly ensconced in the Bouchard house. Leland is in prison and having problems and then he gets a shite attorney, who just turns out to be something a little more than shite. We have five more weeks to go and I expect the next thing on the agenda is solving Ben's Djinn problem. There was no Entity this week, despite David's dilemmas, but there was something we've never seen before in Evil. This season saw the introduction of the word 'fuck' to the show, but this week saw the first pair of tits, the first actual nudity that wasn't a deformed demon. It was almost as shocking as all the events that happened. This show, with or without boobies, is now really 18 rated.

Fox on the Run

I got the impression that while this film wasn't the inspiration for the great Apple TV+'s The Morning Show, it probably was a big influence in it. Bombshell is about the Fox News scandal of 2016 when several women who worked for the ultra-right wing 'news' station went public about the head of the Network - Roger Ails - and his sexual peccadillos and use of his power to influence women into giving him sexual favours. 

This was pretty much an all-star cast, with Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie, Mark Duplass, John Lithgow and scores of other famous film and TV stars literally sometimes only on screen for seconds. It was like all of these actors just wanted to be involved in this groundbreaking true story that saw Fox News kind of admit some culpability while obviously denying everything. It's quite a shocking movie in many ways and you get the impression whoever made it wanted to make sure that Fox and the Murdoch family came out of this with as little credibility as possible (without facing their own lawsuit). There's not really much to say about it because it's very much in the public domain, but it did do some interesting things, such as show Donald Trump in as bad a light as possible (and he was still President when it was made). It's an informative if slightly cold movie, but it is worth watching if you, for no other reason, want to see Fox News and the Murdoch look bad. The sad thing about it is it probably only changed the culture at this shit stain of a TV network for about 10 seconds.

Inside Out

I'm not a fan of Clive Owen. I think he's quite overrated unless he's in a British film and even then I think he's not a brilliant actor by any stretch of the imagination. He starred in The Children of Men, which is something of a 21st century SF classic so he seems to get a free ride, but normally I see him in a film and I pretty much dread it.

Inside Man is a 2006 Spike Lee heist film about a bank robbery with a difference and as well as Owen it stars Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer and Willem Dafoe. It feels like a straight forward bank robbery movie but there's something slightly odd about it almost from the word go. It's meticulously planned and the robbers always seem one step ahead of the cops and the hostage negotiator played by Washington. He even suspects they're being played by the robbers, but he doesn't know how. They even go to elaborate hoaxes to make the many cops laying siege to the bank believe they're serious if they get their demands met. However, we're talking something very complicated that involves the man who owns the bank and the contents of a safety deposit box, which, oddly enough, he - Plummer - has already hired a top fixer - Foster - to ensure the contents of said box do not fall into the wrong hands.

This is a top film that keeps you guessing right up till the end. You continuously wonder about who is the inside man in this and of course it leads you to having your own suspects and you work out how they're going to get out of the bank but to what end? It's not like they can escape with any money or anything else because they're going to be in custody until they can be cleared of any wrong doing. It's just a taut thriller and a mystery that races along at a cracking pace and simultaneously deceives but doesn't deceive the chief negotiator - who eventually works most everything out apart from the key parts. It's a movie worth tracking down; I can't recall having ever actually seen a Spike Lee film other than Summer of Sam, but on this evidence I might check a few others out.

Next Time...

The big thing for the next few weeks is going to be Evil; if you're a fan you'll know exactly what I mean and why, if you don't then you probably need to invest in it. There'll be the season two finale of House of the Dragon, which promises to be exceptional, but we've seen promise turn into let down so many times before. Sunny needs to give us some rope and show a leg or two because it really is in danger of being given up on with very few episodes (four) to go. We're also going to watch a few more episodes of Grimm, but you won't get reviews of them unless there's something exceptional (or we give up).

The FDoD is getting thin on the ground again with just 20 films on it. Yes, I know, that sounds like an ample amount of choice, but a third of these films have been on it for over two years and that probably means we're struggling to get the enthusiasm to watch them. There are about another 30 films recorded off the TV on the set top box hard drive, so it could well be a case of watching some of these. Obviously while the Olympics are still on we're going to be forcing ourselves on anything that isn't sport, but we also have a busy week with a couple of days probably being television free, so next week's column might be a little on the light side, which I'm sure won't disappoint anyone...