Knights of God: Episode 7

 "Being with you. That's all I ever thought of."

This middle episode is surprisingly eventful and fast-moving as we seem to be moving into a new phase. The world, and the characters, are well fleshed out by now. Of course, Gervase survives the cliffhanger- only to face another at the end, at the hands of a few terrifying Yorkshiremen from the "Wastelands"- but much changes between these two events.

Gervase and Julia are, indeed, reunited, and it's all very sweet. But they are thrust immediately into a shootout, in which Julia's kind farmer's wife benefactor dies heroically but with the young lovebirds escaping. Meanwhile Arthur delivers some more vague but fasdcinating exposition to an unknown military figure, not realising that Gervase, though otherwise himself again, is conditioned to kill him.

Elsewhere, Mordrin learns of Hugo's treachery; it seems this subplot is coming to a head sooner than expected. And it seems that next episode we will learn more of the people of the Wasteland.

I'm loving the world here, the dystopia with BBC computers, as well as the unpredictable plot. And the series keeps improving as it goes on. Thgis shouldn't be so obscure.

Iron Fist: Black Tiger Steals Heart

 "Wow. You are the worst Iron Fist ever."

Oh, Iron Fist, why so inconsistent? This episode is actually pretty good, all about lies, the murkiness of the truth, whom we should believe, whom we should trust. For 2017, it's a pretty accurate harbinger of the directions in which society has moved.

Joy, of course, has been lied to, in that she was not told of her father's resurrection. Now she knows, and Harold is busy gaslighting her, with some success. Yet his temper briefly shows, and he tells his first outright lie. Yes, by murderous means, Harold performs a boardroom coup, getting the Meachums and Danny reinstated. But is Joy beginning to see through him? It's all cleverly done, with much ambiguity.

But the A-plot, with Danny and Colleen, is even murkier. All starts in a lovey-doyey way, with both of them waking up together, the adorable couple. Then Danny is properly introduced to Bakuto, who shows him more about his powers... and shows him footage of an earlier Iron Fist, from 1948.

But secrets are being kept, as a conversation between the seemingly idealistic Bakuto and the certainly naive Colleen attests. And the secret is out- Bakuto, as much as Gao, is part of the Hand, and so is Colleen. The argument between the lovers is heartbreaking. Colleen is sincere... but Danny is right. Bakuto may be less brutal than Gao, but it seems clear that his wider goals are the same- he even slots right into Gao's place in Harold's life.

And then we find out who Sacha Dhawan is playing- Davos, sent to rescue Danny and return him to K'un Lun. Danny's doubts and anger have lost him his power, his chi. And he's accused of abandoning K'un Lun... why? Worse, the two of them are only able to escape because of Colleen deciding what side she's on. I'm genuinely excited to see what happens next, and I haven't always been with Iron Fist.

Secret Invasion: Resurrection

 "Take his face. Now take his mind."

So it begins, a one-off mini-series for which I'm thoroughly unspoiled: I'm fairly familiar with Marvil comics up to about 1993-94, hardly at all after that. I'm aware of the general premise of the storyline- Invasion pf the Body Snatchers, but worldwide, with Skrulls- but no more than that.

So Talos, mourning his wife, is still on the side of the humans, but younger Skrulls, led by young hothead Gravik, seek to take over the Earth- naturally- by seemingly causing a nuclear apocalypse that will destroy all human life but which they can survive. Gulp. And they certainly succeed in detonating a dirty bomb in Moscow.

This is what brings Nick Fury literally down to Earth, but as we're told by several of his old friends- Maria Hill, his old friend Sonya of MI6, an awesomely charismatic performance from the wonderful Olivia Colman- he's seen to have lodst his mojo after Thanos' snap, no longer the Fury who was always three steps ahead. It's a great little character stufdy, and a superb performance from Samuel L. Jackson as a septuagenarian Fury, still the witty spy of old but with a newfound vulnerability.

There's a superbly generated sense of uncertainty and paranoia throughout: trust no one. Talos' daughter Gi'ah has divided loyalties, and my gut reaction is she's likely to die Everett Ross is a Skrull... for how lomg, I wonder? Shockingly, though, Fury kills Maria Hill, deciding she's a Skrull... and she isn't. ouch. It's a moment that packs a punch.

I'm not sure this is quite first rank stuff yet, but I'm enjoying it. Interesting to set something like this in Russia these days, mind, even if it was filmed in Czechia..

Knights of God: Episode 6

" Fire!"

An episode of skulduggery here, yet not one without  the pulling of heartstrings. Scenes with both Julia and Gervase make it c;lear that they love each other. It's cute. Alas, this is a world too devious for such furity of feeling. Mordrin manipulates Gervase further, setting him free to find Julia yet reinforcing- in an extraordinary scene- the hypnotic suggestion to kill Arthur, the enemy with whom he is obsessed.

Yet Brother Hugo plots. The scenes between hiom and Mordrin are great; you can feel the mutual loathing. And Hugo has his own underling to play like a fiddle, again to kill Mordrin. It's a nice parallel as both the leader and the Deputy of the Knights are scheming to different ends. So the cliffhanger shows Gervase in dire peril.

There is humanity too: Arthur is tender and understanding with Gervase's mother. But this is a bleak, bleak world. And a fascinating one. This arc must be near complete but we have quite far to go...

Better Call Saul: Witness

 "Perfection is the enemy of the perfectly adequate..."

Regarding the above quote, this episode is pretty much the former, with the season going in the directions I expected:

The Mike story parallels last episode with a long investigation scene vwithout dialogue, relying solely on superlative directing and facial acting, yet it's compelling. The plot is predictable, yes, but that's the point. That early reveal of Los Pollos Hermanos isn't a surprise, it's the culmination of what we've been waiting for. Then, with that scene of Mike roping in Jimmy to dstake out the restaurant, it's all about making us wait in anticipation until Gus appears... and we're thrilled when he does. Gus is no fool, as Giancarlo Esposito can imply with his facial expression alone.

Even more shocking is when, yep, it's made clear that Mike has been noticed. He's about to fall into Gus' orbit. Things are falling into place.

But the deep, clever drama here is between sweet, trusting, doomed Kim and slippery Jimmy, as Chuck schemes. We see another old/new face as Francesca is hired, a little haphazardly, with Kim being all professional while Jimmy is the folksy charmer. Francesca complains about "too much red tape" in her old job: I don't think shre'll be having that problem again.

It's when Ernesto tells Kim about the tape that things get truly fascinating. Kim does that "give me a dollar" thing from Breaking Bad(!), but she's still dipped her hand in the blood now. She can't pretend she doesn't know, yet she's still blind to the sort of man she's come to love. A con man and shyster who will drag down her professional reputation. A man who isn't violent, mean, verbally abusive or unkind, but a bad and self-centred, amoral man who ruins lives. Including, inevitably, hers. 

We end with Chuck's real trap, his clever, intended use of the tape after so much speculation. Ouch. Hook, line and sinker. This is simply sublime telly.

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

 "Tokyo Police Corporation will give us more plentiful lives..."

Two years after the delightfully depraved Machine Girl, Yoshihiro Nishimura returns with this hilariously blood-soaked masterpiece of an over-the-top gore fest that has a point to it, as dystopias often do.

The film is making no attempt to hide the strong influence of RoboCop- we even have similar delightfully twisted TV adverts- in its Tokyo of the near future where the privatised police force have the silhouette of samurai and are a law unto themselves. There's a lot of savage satire of modern Japan, from corporate culture to sexual harrassment on the bullet train.

There's a lot of grand guignol here. The gore is neither realistic nor intended to be, which actually makes the film feel in less bad taste and less challenging for the squeamish, but there's no denying that it's over the top and pretty much as far as you can go. This future Tokyo is plagued by mutant "engineers", who, when wounded, sprout grotesque mutations from the injured body part... and yes, we see these for all sorts of body parts. Yes, including those ones.

The film is cleverer than it may seem, though. As soon as we get the Key Man's big, over-the-top supervillain origin story we're reminded that he's just a distraction, and that the true enemy is unaccountable power in the shape of police privitisation and corruption. The hero, Ruka, is an honest, good cop, but by the end of the film we realise she's the only police officer in the city who isn't corrupt and sadistic. In hindsight, the fact that the police chief keeps a limbless, disfigured gimp girl as a slave may offer a bit of a clue that these may not be the good guys.

This film is a masterpiece, as metatextual as it is gory, with the script cleverly making explicit that the final scenes are literally Ruka vs. a sequence of end of level bosses. This film very much is the gore fest of reputation, but it's so much more than that.

Iron Fist: The Mistress of All Agonies

 "Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is leave."

Argh. This episode could have been really good. The ideas are good, the plot is even good. It's just... the script and some of the performances are not up to par.

I'd exempt Wai Ching Ho from that though. She's a chillingly evil, gaslighting power who seems powerful even when tied up and interrogated, perhaps partly because she "spend most of the 17th Century being interrogated. Then there's David Wenham as the resurrected Harold, a kind of evil Captain Jack Harkness who, Ward is told by a rival, is fated to become a little more evil with each resurrection.

Harold has quite the journey, first acting like the wandering monster in Frankenstein before remembering who his is, ultimately killing his underling suddenly and callously on a whim. He's a dangerous man, manipulating Ward into the clutches of the same psychiatrist who "treated" Danny. And then Joy has the shock of her life, falling right into his manipulative clutches. If handled better, this could have been superb, with both Gao and Harold being manipulative and evil.

But there's more- Sacha Dhawan as an assassin after Danny. Our- and Danny's- proper introduction to Bakuto. Who is he? He certainly knows a lot, to the point of knowing more aboiut what the Iron Fist can do than Danny does.

This should be good. This is a fascinating plot, on paper. Why am I not enjoying this? Because by this point things are feeling a little off.

Better Call Saul: Mabel

 "For ten minutes today Chuck didn't hate me..."

This opening episode of the season was written and directed by Vince Gilligan himself. That certainly explains the quality of the writing, and the direction, upon which Mike's subplot depends to a huge extent. That this is a superb piece of television hardly needs mentioning.

Let us begin with Mike. His arc is extraordinarily based on visuals, montage, facial reactions, superb direction, Jonathan Banks being an actor of the very first rank. The upshot seems to be that this season will follow Mike's pursuit of who lies behind Hector Salamanca, whom we know to be Gus. Is this episode a statement of intent from Gilligan himself to that effect? Or am I entirely wrong?

Then there's Jimmy. Oh, Jimmy. We start with a flash forward to the monochrome life of "Gene" in Nebraska, deeply frustrated and unfulfilled, in a deeply revealing scene. Gene, Saul, Jimmy: all are very different personas.

We have the fascinating contrast, as a marker in the season opener, between Kim and Jimmy. Kim is professional, agonising over a bit of puntuation while taking on some of Jimmy's tiresome old clients while Jimmy just... well, does his thing. And receives a visit from an aitr force captain that harbinges that monochrome future. 

Then there's Chuck. There's the brothers bonding over childhood stuff... but Chuck has the recording. And a plan. Is this brother versus brother, step vs, counterstep, to define this season? Is this episode a statement of intent from Gilligan himself to that effect? Or am I entirely wrong?

Be that so or be it not, this is a triumph of the televisual art.

Clerks (1994)

 "She broke your heart and inadvertently drove men to deviant lifestyles."

I haven't seen this wonderful film since I was at uni. What took me so long? It is, first of all, hilarious. But, for this fortysomething, it's so gloriously, nostalgia-inducingly '90s, and my '90s. The '90s of slacker culture, Grunge, Douglas Coupland and lumberjack shirts. Oh, and landlines and video stores.

The soundtrack is glorious too- Soul Asylum, Bad Religion, proper '90s stuff. But the film is far more than just a comedy. The structure is based on Dante's Divine Comedy. Yes, I know it's filmed as it is because it was made on the cheap, but it looks so wonderfully arthouse, which somehow works.

The characters are superb too. The put-upon Dante, our audience identification character who isn't even supposed to be here today, seems decent on the surface. But there's no two ways about it: he's being unfaithful to his very lovely girlfriend, and gets what he deserves.

Both he and Randal are aimless in their McJobs, suitably for the zeitgeist but reflecting a more prosperous age where such directionless apathy was a luxury that could be afforded. We explore that lifestyle here, with Randal at least having some self-awareness.

Most of all, though, the comedy is wonderful, real, inspired, and contains nuggets of wisdom. I can certainly confirm milkmaids exist. I am a bearded example. I'll get the latest date no matter what.

I think it's going to have to be full steam ahead with the View Askew-niverse for me. It's been too long.

Iron Fist: The Blessing of Many Fractures

 "Are you a moron? You thought you could end a criminal conspiracy by destroying a few test tubes?"

Iron Fist continues to be inconsistent. This episode is, on the whole, quite good. The opening is clever: Danny suspects that Gao is after his friends, Colleen makes sure Claire is safe... and Danny finds the corpse of Harold, naturally assuming the Hand was responsible, with Ward, of course, not only allowing him to think so but twisted the knife. The contrast between Danny's naive goodness and Ward's damaged cynicism could not be clearer. And the contrast permeates the episode.

Ward and Joy are offered a prisoner's dilemma of a severance package: it must be accepted by both or neither. Both play games behind each others' backs, with Joy ultimately outsmarting her brother and rejecting it, believing sjhe can fight back. Yet she does so in a way she sees as being Ward's... gathering dirt on the board. The key brother/sister scene is very touching, with Ward resolving to tell Joy all. Yet he can't, seeing blood everywhere like Lady Macbeth, something that will surely continue... and ends by being a total arse to her. Yet again.

Danny, meanwhile, supported by a loving Colleen and a wisely critical Claire (I love the letter from Luke!), rather naively resolves to go to China and get at Gao there, which leads to some rather cool adventures, not least with a drunken boxer, although I'm not sure how he can still afford this after having been ejected from Rand, knowingly or not. There are some great character scenes with him, Colleen and Claire and much discussion of the ethics of killing and revenge. Yet the most cutting comments come from the boxer: is Danny really motivated by his loyalty, as Iron Fist, to K'un Lun? 

We end with triumph, as Danny captures Gao, but not before it looked as though he would kill her. It seems it was indeed Gao who killed his parents. 

This is actually good telly. Who knows what next episode will be like.

Carry On Cruising (1962)

 "He's one of the biggest bull shippers in the business."

Well, there are a lot of Carry On films. They can't all be good.

I suppose this is a transitional film in some ways. It's the first in the series to be made in colour, most obviously. It's 1962. The Sixties haven't exactly started swinging yet, but perhaps there's something in the air. We are, as Philip Larkin put it, between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles' first LP. So we have, I suppose, a few tentative steps in the direction of the naughty humour for which the films will soon become known. Very tentative steps, mind.

Unfortunately, the film just isn't very good. Charles Hawtrey's absence doesn't help, but the script just isn't as funny. And the format is tired, worryingly similar to the film's recent predecessors. Sid James is stuck in another straight role as a captain having to cope with members of his crew being replaced by incompetent newcomers, a familiar format. This both wastes James' talents and is worryingly repetitive.

The main performances can't be faulted. Kenneths Williams and Connor are superb, as is Liz Fraser/ Esma Cannon, again, is an inspiration. But some of the more second string performers aren't bringing much to the party. Worst of all, the jokes just aren't as good. This is more of a straight farce than previous films, almost but not quite in the usual style.

Still, I suppose we're bound to get the occasional dud. Here's hoping the next one will be better.

Enys Men (2022)

 "Trim your feeble lamp, my sister!"

I'm only 25% Cornish, I've never listened to an album by Gwenno, and I've only actually visited said great country once, but you know what they say: ottuma ugens mil gernow a vynn godhvos a reson.

Aren't online translation thingies great? Anyway...

This is an extraordinary, unique, and very Cornish film, which uses incredible cinematography and the uniqueness of the Cornish landscape to create a mood. It's at once increasingly unsettling as the run time moves on and visually poetic to its core. It's both arty and horror. Think The Wicker Man crossed with Un Chien Andalou, but with more lighthouses, chapels and ghostly tin miners. 

The narrative is, and this is the whole point, far from linear. The film consists entirely of Mary, a botanist, alone on the island to study some rare flowers, and we follow her routine with its subtle little variations. There are ghosts, yes, but what sort of ghosts? Do they belong to the island or to her psyche? It's nice to see a creepy turn as a preacher by the great character actor John Woodvine, still charismatic at ninety-two.

The film is slow, despite not being overly long, but the slowness is the point. Everything is a visual metaphor, and the visual metaphors are the narrative. There's probably little more than a hundred words of dialogue, and some of them are in Cornish. It's a film I'd recommend to fans of thoughtful, artistic horror. But if you enjoy this sort of thing, and having to concentrate, this is one of the finest films I've yet seen from this decade, and certainly the best directed.