Posssum

Garth Marenghi did a movie? Well, no, but Matthew Holness did!

Philip is a strange man, who made a puppet. A puppet he wants to destroy. He returns to his old home, to try to do so. But his uncle is there. And so is his past. And it's all unpleasent.

Garth may be black comedy, but this is just black. (If is it comedy, it's way over my head.) Instead it is a portrayal about childhood horrors and dealing with your past. Where your past is represented by a spider puppet with a manniquin head. It's weird is what it is. I would almost say "Lynchian" but that's for better movie scholars than me to compare. Certainly a lot of odd composition of shots and rather jumping around narration, which feels on point for that director.

Sean Harris is playing the lead role, and he does so wonderfully with great affectation. Alun Armstrong is the undle, and is more than suitably creepy. It's a simple shot, mainly in a rather run down area of the country, and the big effect is the puppet... which is also creepy.

Quite a different tone from his other works, but I can believe that Matthew Holness did this, and it is right on spot for him.

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I Protest!

Save our Jobs - Stop the cuts!

People over profits - Stop the cuts!

So we had a wee protest yesterday... and people were there

When workers rights are under attack - Stand up, Fight Back!

And since I was there, I have some comments.... first, being on a Saturday, great so us public servants could be there, but that did mean not a lot of goverment was actually disrupted. And we walked down Tory Street, so the amount of traffic disturbed was... not a lot, aside from a few intersections.

Hey hey, ho ho - This backwards budget's got to go!

I was near the back, so had this big sound going on... which did make it hard to hear there was chanting, let alone join in.

When they say cut back - We stay fight back!

Cut back! - Fight back!

Cut back! - Fight back!

It looks like a good turnout. However, we'll see if anything happens from this.

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The MCU Issue

Talking about Marvel and their issues with trying to get their MCU happening...

A problem, to me, is that we have this media (tv and movies) trying to ape their source, which is... I dunno, 100 comics a month pumping out new stories? Half of which are Spiderman, 2/3rds are X-Men and the rest are everything else.

At least when they are just doing one property, eg XMen or Blade, they were contained and didn't need to worry about the larger universe. But now they want to have interconnectivity across everything, and just aren't getting there.

As much as the problem was "putting out too much" in many ways they weren't putting out enough. You need lots of stories happening if you want to capture the heroes by themselves as well as crossing over, and frankly if they really wanted to, Disney could have several movies and shows in production if they wanted to, but the other side is that costs, a hell of a lot more than comics do, so they can't go down that route.

You end up with as much as an MCU is a good idea in theory, you just can't keep the supply up to meet the demand of what people want. (Which is quality of stories as well as quantity of stories.)

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T^-1^Omen

Oh, hey, this is on Disney, okay I'll watch it there!

A young woman joins a convent in Italy as part of her religious journey, but discovers there is a kid that is a "bad child". Along the way she finds there is a particular sect with their own ideas about how to bring people back to the church, but their plans threaten to overwhelm her.

The conceit of this movie is that they need to breed a proper female vessel before they can breed the antichrist. This aligns with some fundamental Christian beliefs that because Jesus came from an Immaculate Birth then Mary also had to be an Immaculate Birth because how could something not-immaculate give birth to a proper immaculate being (don't ask about Mary's parents, I have no idea). And the main character in this movie is called Margaret. Yeah, I saw the big "twist" coming, although I'm not sure if anyone was supposed to be surprised by it and didn't see it coming?

There are also a few beats from the previous movies, such as a caring figure killing themselves, and strange deaths happening to some. But the whole movie just peaks at around 80/90 minutes and just continues just spinning wheels, playing out the required plot for the rest of the running time.

This movie oddly has big names in it, Charles Dance, Bill Nighy, Ralph Ineson... not sure why they signed on, I can't say this is a super big franchise (although I've clearly watched them).

I have no idea if there will be more. There could be a sequel, of a sort, with characters from this, but frankly they should properly reboot the whole thing into the current time.

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At las-t

I wasn't planning on talking about this, but there is some stuff I had to say.

J-Lo is Atlas, an AI analyst who has a troubled past. Her mother created an AI robot that turned on humanity then left for Atlas to grow up. When she's an adult she tracks down the robot to a far off planet which is no trouble to get to, but they are all attacked when there. To survive, she has to pair with a mech suit and together they have to somehow find a way to take the robot down.

In her youth Altas had a tragic love experience, and now much learn to love again to overcome her troubled past... I mean "trust AI". Certainly I obviously can't say this is a reductive story where a woman has to love again, but some how I just did.

No, this is all about AI. She had trouble with AI in her youth, and must learn to trust AI again. Yep, that's definitely an original story and not just an unoriginal idea with a post-it note of "AI" slapped on it.

J-Lo is.. in this movie. I have no idea what she's been doing, but she said yes to this. Simu Liu is here as the evil robot, and he doesn't do anything at all (but cash in the cheque, I guess?). Slacking off from MCU is easy! We do have Sterling K. Brown and Abraham Popoola giving fun performances (in that they at least seemed to be having fun here). Mark Strong is here, not as Sinestro, but I guess he can't be Sinestro in everything?

This movie certainly continues the AI theme by everything being computer generated aside from the actors themselves. I'm sure there are other physical things they were in, but everything else is bland, brown, and generic computer asset.

This is on Netflix, one of their "let's throw money at films and hope to make it back". Best of luck, but I don't think this is going to be one of those hits.

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Uncivil Wah

Alex Garland tells a non-politcal story about a war... what? I'm exaggerating about his intent, but... not by much.

There is a war in America when Texas and California join forces and... okay, wait right there. That would never happen under any criteria, so even as much as you just want a casual backdrop to put your movie against, when you start with something so stupid, you so completely undermine your own movie people are never going to take you seriously.

But anyway, a group of journalists want to travel across the country to interview the President, who does not give interviews, because they think a big event will come up that will be a final(?) big push. We follow them as they travel and encounter various eff-up situations and try to be journalists in the face of all this. In particular, we have two harded journalists, one at-the-end journalist, and a youngster who wants to become a war journalist.

So this movie nearly has something to say about being a war journalist. Especially with the newbie coming to grips with what the hardened people have to deal with, and seeing that even the hardened people are barely coping. But it doesn't quite get there, and this idea would be better as a documentary (of which there already are some) or, if you really want to get in and show off action sequences, then a biopic or something.

But we also have the American Civil War aspect of this and... in this regards the movie has entirely shot itself in the foot by just trying to be "war is bad" and not being about any war in particular, and has nothing to say or do with the concept of this being an American civil war. That concept totally has legs, yes, along the more obvious lines, but this is just nothing in comparison with what it could be.

Kirsten Dunce is good, Wagner Moura is annoying, Stephen McKinley Henderson is fantastic, and Cailee Spaeny has a career in front of her. The director wanted to show off them in war situations and also get cool action shots to pump up the action side of it.

So he wants his cake and to eat it too, and has neither.

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Ministers of Gentle Warfare

Ah, the movie where Henry Cavill IS James Bond!

Gus is a hardcase, but when Britain needs someone to carry out an unsanctioned mission against the Nazis, he's the chap they get. He gathers his own small crew of men, and they go off, with an undercover agent and a spy lady, to capture a core boat in the Nazi war effort.

This is "based on" Operation Postmaster. I'm willing to accept there was an Operation Postmaster, and it did involve dealing with the boat, but I doubt they were all as suave and unruffled as portrayed here. Although I do hope that Nazis were dealt to as much as they were here.

As everyone has British Stiff Upper Lip, there isn't much to distinguish Henry Cavill from Alan Ritchson from Babs Olusanmokun from Eiza Gonzalez aside from their physical appearances (because their personalities were pretty much interchangable. Indeed you could swap about Gus for Appleyard and I doubt anyone would notice). The sequences are well shot, the dialogue is fine, and Guy Ritchie is giving us a solid picture without being too exciting.

And Cary Elwes effortlessly dominates every scene he is in. Yay!

A decent watch, but not an amazing one.

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