Death by Stupidity Squad (Review: 'Star Trek: Section 31')

Alternative titles are "Let's Hire Hitler", "I'd happily kill all of these except the haughty Starfleet brunette", "Alias but in the Star Trek universe and awful" and "There are better ways to spend a commute".

So, this 15-year-old girl puts on a proton pack... (Review: 'Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire')

I saw the new film yesterday at a rather different venue to my usual one - the Vue in Leicester Square, which has handprints of some famous actors at the entrance and a time capsule not to be opened until 2093.

The screen was much smaller than the ones in Romford, but all the chairs reclined.

Anyway, my comments on the film:

• Mckenna Grace is again the MVP, as she was in Afterlife. She ends up on her own arc for much of the movie as Phoebe's forcibly benched on the grounds that she is, well, 15. However, she gets to demonstrate the fact that she's a real genius several times, including in the third act. Ghost Corps see Phoebe as the main character going forward and they're not mistaken in that choice.
• Emily Alyn Lind's character is entirely absent from the trailers, but plays a vital role in the overall story.
• Finn Wolfhard isn't frankly one of my favourite actors and I'm not really keen on Trevor Spengler in general. His most notable moment is an encounter with Slimer and that's saying something.
• Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon have a good double act going, with his funny man to her straight woman. The "Busting makes me feel good" bit in the trailers is part of a longer and actually pretty good gag.
• The old gang get some good material to work with, although Venkman doesn't really do all that much in the picture. Winston Zeddemore's overall leadership role works very well and I'd be happy to see him in other movies.
• Kumail Nanjiani as Nadeem is arguably the comedy heart of the movie, with some great gags involving him, especially one bit in the climax.
• Walter Peck is back and is a rather cartoonish foil for the Ghostbusters. The main villain of the piece is far more chilling, pun intended.
• The visual effects look great throughout, although they might have driven the movie's budget up beyond the point it can be profitable.
• The movie doesn't outstay its welcome, although there are some pacing issues in the first half with the climax somewhat rushed. The fact they had to do principal photography with the writers on strike - before the actors walked out themselves - meant that the opportunity The trailers are pretty misleading, but when are they not?
• The 1984 score makes several welcome appearances in this movie.
• The ending is a nice call back to the original movie too.

Conclusion

A highly enjoyable popcorn movie, or whatever your choice of foodstuff is, because I don't eat popcorn. It's not got the greatest plot in the history of movies, but does everything have to?

8/10

Don't mind me. I'm just here for the screaming British woman (Review: 'Damsel')

Millie Bobby Brown is very much one of the main attractions of Netflix. At least they seem to think so, considering that they make big films centred around her, with The Electric State coming next.

Now, I wouldn't call myself a massive fan of the woman in Stranger Things (I prefer other characters in that), but she's pretty charming in Enola Holmes and when I saw this movie was coming out, I decided that there are worse ways to spend two commutes. I watched this on my tablet, so I didn't notice the CGI issues.

So anyway, my thoughts on this:

• The movie takes rather a long time to get going. It's about thirty minutes before Elodie is yeeted into the dragon pit.
• MBB is admittedly one of the common type of "slightly haughty posh British actresses"; or that's the sort of roles she plays outside of Stranger Things. Playing a noble lady therefore comes across as fine, but without a great dialogue coach, she's not going to pass as a shop assistant from Romford, unlike say Michelle Dockery.
• Elodie screams a lot. Like seriously a lot. In fairness, much of it is in circumstances where screaming is to be expected, but MBB is definitely getting the reputation as a scream queen out of this. The actress has a wonderfully expressive face and can do a range of emotions very well; there's a good overall progression to her arc in this movie. A movie openly feminist and released on International Women's Day to boot.
• Another aspect is that this is basically "Millie Bobby Brown does a striptease". Well, part of one. Her dress gets progressively torn to shreds over the course of the movie and by the end, she's gone from "royal ball" to "Romford nightclub and having fallen down the escalator at the Brewery". She gets some fairly nasty injuries, but most of them are healed and nothing ends up detracting from her beauty at the end of it.
• There's some deep horror stuff in all of this, because Elodie isn't the first young woman to have been fed to this particular dragon by a long chalk.
• The plot is a pretty good one, although some of the character motivations at the end are a bit odd and the conclusion of the story leaves some big questions open about the future.
• Shohreh Aghdashloo has exactly the right sort of voice you'd want for a dragon; reminding me of the late Sir John Hurt in Merlin.
• Ray Winstone does Ray Winstone, just Ray Winstone with a castle. Now, I say that Pegasus was a one-trick pony, but I get a feeling that he was slightly miscast in this one.
• Robin Wright as an evil queen is arguably the best of the rest of the cast; one notes that one of her early roles was of course in The Princess Bride. None of the others really stand out.
• One can't help but notice the resemblance in names between "Elodie" and "Eleven". No-one makes an "El-o-die" pun, which is a pity.

Conclusion

A decent enough film, but not a true great. Definitely saved by Millie Bobby Brown.

7/10

Boiling Point (2021)

Watched this film today in anticipation of the new BBC1 series - while not the best thing I've ever seen, it's technically brilliant, being done on in one continuous take (the ad breaks of Film 4 mean that was less obvious). It's also a reflection that many of the big disasters in life happening through no malicious act, just a series of small, inadvertent errors.

Stephen Graham is a superb actor.

7/10

SAG-AFTRA and WGA Strikes

I support the unions in the States who are striking for better pay and conditions for jobbing actors, who won't earn anywhere near as much as the big $100,000+ an episode stars. AI is a concern, but it's not good enough yet to supplant a decent writer and may never be.

But sadly, even giving them everything they want won't fix the serious issues in the industry. It has become bloated, with too high salaries at the top, too many content providers and a dearth of decent ideas.

We are going to see a major contraction in content creation over the next few years and that will make things even harder for many.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Saw this on Thursday evening after work - I like to go at times without noisy kids - and found it to be OK. It works best as a set-up for Phase 5 and not as a stand-alone story. There's certainly some entertaining moments, but it doesn't have enough to really fill the whole two hours and none of the guest characters are memorable.

The main thing is the huge number of effects, some of them a bit ropey, most notably MODOK, which looks like something from a 1990s comedy show. There have been reports of "crunch" caused by late reshoots and artists being pulled off to work on Black Panther - I wonder how bad it was before any "crunch".

In any case, while the MCU is still good, four films and four TV series a year is too much. Robert Iger's return as Disney CEO will hopefully lead to a focus on quality over quantity; The Marvels has been put back to November. Three and three is a decent amount - two and two might be even better.

6/10

The Power of the Dog

Watched this today. Not a dog's breakfast, but I've seen much better films. The Academy remains out of touch with the tastes of the wider public.

Softie, James Softie (Review: 'No Time To Die')

It's been almost six years since the last Bond film, Spectre, was released. In case you're wondering, I did a review for that one as an exclusive for a now defunct RPig club's magazine.

The long gap has been down to problems both filmic and non-filmic. MGM has had real money problems and is now owned by Amazon. Danny Boyle was initially hired to direct this film but it seems creative differences led to "Jai Ho" becoming "Heave Ho".

Then Covid-19 hit, throwing a wrench into the film industry. The movie had already been made by this point, but with cinemas shuttered and a streaming release simply not an option - Disney have just made an out-of-court settlement with Scarlet Johannson over not making Black Widow exclusive to the former - it sat locked away for 18 months.

So, has it been worth the wait?

****

My general review structure for Bond goes as follows - "See the world, meet interesting people, sleep with the attractive female ones and kill the bad ones". The last two often overlap in Bond of course.

Discussion of the plot in a review like this is difficult, especially in light of the ending, which will attract quite a good deal of comment, especially once the Americans in particular actually get to see it in theatres. Craig is the first Bond to have had a "last film". Connery decided to quit during the filming of  You Only Live Twice and the producers wanted him to do another film after Diamonds Are Forever. Moore was hired on a film by film basis for his later movies and although recollections differ, it was clear after A View To A Kill that it was time for him to go. Dalton and Brosnan ultimately were victims of events.

So, in a manner akin to the final story for a Doctor Who lead actor, there's clearly a definite decision to give him a fitting send-off; Craig has very much saved the franchise and given it the best box office performance it has had to date with Skyfall.

The five Craig films form an overall narrative arc and there is a firm sense of closure at the end of the film, which is going to make things rather interesting for the next fellow.

The movie looks spectacular, having been shot before Covid made foreign travel rather more difficult. Jamaica is the spiritual home of 007, the books having been written there, and the tourist board will be glad of the screen time.

The Bond franchise gave the film world the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios - there is another stage named after Sir Roger Moore - and also Leavesden studios. The former, which sustained some damage during the production of this film, provides the setting for the spectacular climax of the movie and the main villain's lair is classic Bond.

From "half-monk, half-hitman", James Bond has softened very much during the franchise. This movie does something that none of the others have done and it allows the character to have something to fight for rather than "Murder" being "Employment".

The other MI6 regulars are great fun, with Ben Whishaw a worthy successor to Desmond Llewellyn - and openly gay as well, which shows how far the franchise has come in 50 years. Lashana Lynch's Nomi can truly claim to be Bond's equal in a way that some previous claimants didn't because at the end of the day, Bond still needed to rescue them. Ana de Armas gets to kick butt and look good doing it, but you don't miss her once she's gone. Plus Felix Leiter gets another fun out.

Madeline Swann... not my personal cup of tea. Never has been. Just a bit dull really. If I was Bond, she wouldn't be my first choice to settle down with!

The villains... kind of let the side down. The main plot is somewhat timely with Covid and the ideas involved in it are explored fairly well, although a big plot hole does emerge on further examination. It could have been fixed with a few extra lines and the finale would still work as well. Blofeld isn't hugely engaging (he needs a cat to work properly) and while Rami Malek has done great work in the past, Safin really isn't an example. A Russian scientist gets a suitably destructive response for a nasty comment.

The action is spectacular; the hard-hitting (and also rather loud in my screening) style of the Craig era works well. This Bond bleeds. So do quite a lot of other people. I need to check the kill count for this, but it's probably a record.

****

Conclusion

It may be 2 hours and 40 minutes long, but it doesn't feel like it. Definitely one of the better Craig films, although it isn't a Casino Royale or Skyfall.

Well worth seeing and this will definitely make a billion dollars.

9/10

Black Widow & Loki

Went and saw this last weekend. Definitely highly recommended, with a great story and excellent characters. Florence Pugh is worth the price of admission on her own and definitely deserves a long stay in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

As always with Marvel movies, you should stay right to the end of the credits; there's a scene that is well worth seeing.

Also, Loki is well worth watching on Disney+; it very much fulfils its glorious purpose and while Tom Hiddleston is brilliant, Sophia Di Martino is the icing on the cake.

All in all, Marvel is doing very well at the moment and What If? in particular looks very interesting.

Well, I won't be calling the refund department (Review: 'Ghostbusters', 2016)

Now I've made my moans about remakes in the past and I'm going to take them back. While some remakes are unnecessary wastes of time, this one most certainly isn't.

****
When a female-led remake/reboot of the 1984 comedy classic Ghostbusters was announced, it was controversial to put it mildly. I won't go into all the sordid details here; Google will be able to help you.

I decided that I would wait until the reviews came out and decide whether to see it at the cinema or wait for a video release. The reviews have been pretty positive from many quarters, so I made my way to my 'local' (Vue Cinemas in Romford) on Wednesday to see it.

****
Ghostbusters revolves around Erin Gilbert (Kirsten Wiig), a professor who discovers that her old friend Abigail 'Abby' Jones (Melissa McCarthy) has published a book that they wrote five years earlier on ghosts without her permission. When she goes to confront her about this  she finds herself teaming up with Abby and her nuclear scientist friend Jillian to investigate a haunting at an old mansion. The trio, teaming up with a subway worker, find themselves facing the threat of a paranormal invasion of New York.

****
One thing that went through my mind while watching this movie is 'this is a femcom'; the film does feel very much aimed at women in its overall tone and depiction of the male characters. It also might explain the gender divide in the reviews.

Anyway, the plot is rather different from the original as the Ghostbusters find themselves having to deal with internet trolls, bureaucrats a hostile media and sky high property prices. Not to mention a crazed man out to unleash chaos on the city.

The movie in itself takes a little while to get fully going, but once it does, it's a real (proton gun) blast. I had a big grin on my face throughout much of the film, especially the action packed finale, which features stuff that wasn't possible effects wise back in 1984. There are also a set of wonderful cameos from the surviving leads of the original film; as well as a nice tribute to the late Harold Ramis (Egon) who died in 2014.

The four leads are not carbon copies of the original team; each is their own original character.

Erin is the 'straight woman' of the piece; managing to keep her cool despite everything that gets thrown at her, including a large quantity of slime. She also wears the world's smallest bow tie. Bow ties are cool and I like her hair as well.

Not being familiar with Melissa McCarthy's work, I found her pretty funny in this film; she handles the physical comedy very well and has just the right amount of frustration in her performance.

When I saw the first promo picture of Kate McKinnon (currently on Saturday Night Live where she does a great Hillary Clinton) as Jillian Holtzmann, with a shock of blonde hair and chewing gum, I thought 'I'm going to like her'. Looking like Egon, but acting like a crazier version of Venkmann, the gun-licking bit from the trailer isn't the goofiest thing she does in the film; she's a scene-stealing ball of irrepressible adorable energy and Jill is my new favourite Crazy Lady of STEM. Sorry, Root, please don't taser me.

Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones) is the weak link in this film. Criticised for being a black stereotype (although the role was originally intended for McCarthy), she's the 'street smart' member of the team with a strong knowledge of NYC history, but to be honest, I just found her character too shrill for my tastes.

Finally, there's Kevin, the ditzy male receptionist played by Chris Hemsworth, known for playing Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He's really good here and if it wasn't for the presence of McKinnon, he'd steal the show.

Conclusion

While not exactly an Oscar-winner (although you never know, it may get nominations in the technical categories), it really doesn't matter. This is 116 minutes of great fun.

And I mean 116 minutes; make sure you stay right to the end of the credits.

8/10

Don't be fooled by the Ankh that she's got, she's still Jenny in Half a Frock (Review: 'Logan's Run', 1976)

Jenny Agutter, to me, is Sister Julienne in Call the Midwife. I'm somewhat surprised she's only 63, because it seems like she's been a part of British media for longer than I can remember, most notably in The Railway Children.

So, watching Logan's Run via Amazon Video, it was a bit of a surprise to see her as a twenty something starlet... in an outfit less Call the Midwife and more Call the Cardic Nurse, Stat!

Anyway, more on that later.

****

Logan's Run is loosely based on the 1967 novel of the same name by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, albeit with some heavy changes.

In the year 2274, the remnants of humanity live hedonistic lifestyles in a sealed city run by a computer. It's a idyllic life if you like free love... but the drawback is that you die at 30; either by vaporisation in a strange ritual or if you try to run, via the Sandmen, the city's human law enforcement.

When one runner, Logan-5, hears of a rumoured safe home for runners 'called' Sanctuary via a woman called Jessica-6, the computer assigns him to find it and destroy it, making him a Runner as well in the process...

This review contains some spoilers.

Ghostbusters - the female version

So, I've watched the trailers for the Paul Feig Ghostbusters remake due out later this year - and I have to say that it's not that bad. Self-referential humour is very much the norm these days - and for those complaining about the black character; 1) I know more than one person like that in RL and 3) she's the sensible, practical one, which is actually a bonus. Not perfect, but a sight better than many black characters over the years. If the reviews are good enough, I might even go to the cinema for this one.

I appreciate that people might not like it and feel it's another cash grab, but cash grabs are older than you might think; Abbot and Costello were doing cash grab films... and in fact the first remake was in 1904... of the 1903 film The Great Train Robbery i.e. the first American film with an actual narrative plot...

A pale imitiation of reality (Review: 'The Imitation Game')

Fans of Benedict Cumberbatch will no doubt be interested in his latest film, due to be released in the US on 28 November, but already out in the UK. The Imitation Game is a biopic of Alan Turing, the gay mathematical genius who developed the Turing Bombe and later the world's first electronic computer Colossus at Bletchley Park, helping to crack the German Enigma codes and shorten the war by two years... then ended up being prosecuted for homosexual activity. This resulted in his undergoing chemical castration and later suicide. That's not a spoiler by the way.

As a fan of him myself (although not in that kind of way), I went along to see the film last weekend and frankly, I wasn't impressed. General rule of thumb for me is that if I start looking at my watch, there is a problem with your work.

****
Cumberbatch does a very good job at playing the eccentric Turing; a man not known for playing nicely with others and of course an under-appreciated genius in his time (Enigma was kept secret until the early 1970s, not for fifty years like the final caption says). He gets a lot of funny lines in the peace. That is frankly the best part of the movie... and the rest isn't that great.

Let's start with the plot. It's your standard Hollywood-ised biopic, where Turing and his team of geniuses struggle against a sceptical authority figures (Charles Dance doing what Charles Dance always does) to find a way to crack the Enigma code in a timely manner. The narrative jumps from the war to the late 1920s to 1951 like an Enigma rotor; a frankly unnecessary device. It ignores the fact that ULTRA was a huge operation involving a few thousand people and omits one key figure entirely, Tommy Flowers, who actually built the (many) Bombes that Turing improved from the Polish bombas. It feels very trite at times... and it delays revealing the name of one key character until a key plot point; some of us who know our history would have liked to be able to spot that one coming.

Another problem is Keira Knightley, playing Joan Clarke, a close friend of Turing and an expert mathematician. Unfortunately, I just couldn't take her seriously. I was thinking to the effects "I've seen you half-naked in perfume ads and I'm supposed to think you're a maths genius?" Call me judgmental... but the real Joan Clarke was apparently quite plain.

Cumberbatch doesn't actually kiss any men in this movie (IIRC), making it a male version of Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl"... an attempt to avoid controversy for the US market perhaps?

Conclusion

Save your money and buy a book covering the real story. Cumberbatch doesn't make this worthwhile.

5/10

James Bond: Skyfall

5 November is a good time for a spot of gunpowder, treason and plot. With production about to start on Bond 24, I have finally managed to complete my re-watch of the Bond movies with Skyfall. Quantum of Solace drags at 100 minutes... this flies by at 137.

The cinematography here is superb and there is a lot of great atmosphere throughout. The action is excellent across the entire movie and the acting is overall very good as well - with most of the cast returning for the next film, it will be interesting to see how they develop, especially Q.

Weaknesses? The plot isn't the greatest and lacks the overall epic-ness associated with 007. Silva? He tries to be menacing, but the guy largely comes across as pathetic and in bad need of counselling.

Conclusion

Perhaps not the all-time great that it was thought of at the time; but still an impressive Bond movie even on second watch.

8/10

50 Years of Bond

A short clip that sums a lot of things up:

Skyfall

On or shortly after 26 October 2012, I will be visiting a cinema to watch the fifth James Bond film I've seen in one. It's got an intriguing title and an intriguing premise.

Anyway, it's Bond. Even the worst of those are watch-able.

In which Tokyo gets blown away - literally (Review: 'Akira')

I don't think irony is the correct word for starting to watch a film that features a Japanese city getting blown up in the opening scene on 6 August. If anyone can help with this, please let me know.

Japan has a rather different attitude to the animated medium than "the West". In the latter, animation is viewed very much as a medium for children, with what adult-orientated stuff there is tending to be things like South Park and Family Guy.

The Japanese medium of anime demonstrates a rather more "mature" way of doing things. Seeing that Syfy was showing 1988's Akira (dubbed into English, BTW), considered one of the classics of the medium and a good introductory work, I taped it*. Let me be the first to say that this film is definitely not for the kiddies - the BBFC rated it a 12 in 1988 and you can make a very good case that it should actually be a 15. Strong language, some nudity and a lot of bloody violence dominate the film.

So, onto the plot, an adaptation of a 2182-page six-volume manga that does make some major changes to condense the story into two hours. In 1988, World War Three broke out and in the process Tokyo was destroyed. 31 years later, Tokyo, now Neo-Tokyo, has been rebuilt. However, it's a city very much on the edge. Riots are frequent, as are terrorist attacks. Motorcycle gangs (they're called bōsōzoku in Japan) openly fight each other in the graffiti-covered streets. You wouldn't want to visit there for the upcoming Olympic Games, let alone live there.

A pair of gang members, Kaneda and Tetsuo, are engaging in a running street battle with some clowns (literal clowns, not what Don Flack from CSI:NY would call "clowns", so not one for those with coulrophobia), when Tetsuo sees a mysterious grey kid and crashes his bike. The military arrive and capture the pair of them.

Tetsuo starts developing mysterious - and destructive - powers, such as blowing people away. He escapes and goes on a very violent rampage. Kaneda and his friends, as well as some terrorists he's met along the way, have to stop Tetsuo before it's too late.

The film is a deeply complex one, with dozens of layers and a plot that you really need Wikipedia to fully get to grips with. At times highly trippy (Tetsuo sees some truly weird hallucinations at one point), at others, it is extremely dark. We see Tetsuo, who had been bullied when younger and has an inferiority complex, turn into a truly nasty being, literally and metaphorically. The government of Neo-Tokyo are venal and corrupt, the security forces highly brutal nearly to a man (it's worth noting that the Colonel is the only military character who emerges with any real credit). The word "dystopia" genuinely applies here. The ending is fully understandable, if not necessarily entirely morally justifiable.

The English language voice acting is of a high quality, but special attention must be directed to the animation. With a budget estimated to be over a billion yen (about $11m), a record for a Japanese animation, production was done by a special committee called the AKIRA Committee. Every sen of it shows on the screen. The climax itself features detail in an animation that would be impressive in a Pixar film today.

Problems with Akira? Mostly minor ones of sufficient magnitude when taken together, dock this down a point. I also get a feeling the version I watched got edited a bit for commercial presentation.

However, none of these are sufficient to ruin what is a superb film, which I would highly recommend if you're at all interested in Japanese media. Or just great film in general.

9/10.

* Mind you, if you're a member of Generation Y, chances are you've watched some anime without knowing it. I'm talking about Pokémon.

One crew, one ship, one more time...

Clear Skies III trailer (76.9 MB)

Seriously, it looks awesome.

Product placement 2

A follow-up to this.

Just re-watched the James Bond film The Living Daylights (still great) and have observed that you're going to need the product warning before all of them...

Mr. Bond is a living Brioni-clad Walther P99-carrying Aston Martin-driving advertisement...

(This post does not contain paid for advertising).

Trapped in Terra

http://www.trappedinterra.com/

(Contains strong language)

I've found this via a guy advertising it at RPG site Myth-Weavers. It's worth checking it; it's hilarious and very well-written. I'm looking forward to the next episode.