The Running Man (1987)

"I told you I'd be back."

It would be easy to praise this film for its prescience about such things as reality TV cruelty, ratings cynicism and the use of television to politically dumb down the populace. But (with a nod to The Year of the Sex Olympics) this was all done much more intelligently, and with much more metatextual wit, in a 1985 Doctor Who story called Vengeance on Varos. Unfortunately this has probably caused me to underrate The Running Man which is, to be fair, a rather good film of hilariously '80s at times.

It's that far-flung future year of 2017 when a tyrannical government has removed all civil liberties and political rights, replacing them with arbitrary rule and brainless television to whip up the reactionary fervour of the masses- a bit like Fox News but not as evil. 

It's a problem to believe in the future they present, unfortunately, because of the film's sheer Eightiesness. The hairstyles and computer screens date it instantly, and even the opening titles are uncannily like the video to M.A.R.R.S.'s "Pump Up the Volume". It's also a very cyberpunk, dystopian future, which was very much in the zeitgeist at the time, as was this particular sort of scenario, as shown by the above mentioned Doctor Who story. One thing was prescient, though: a stalker called Sub-Zero decades before Mortal Kombat.

Arnie is, well, Arnie, not so much acting as doing his stuff, and Jessie Ventura hand it up delightfully as Captain Freedom. It's a surprise to see Mick Fleetwood and Dweezil Zappa as members of the resistance but they acquit themselves well. 

It's s good film, I admit. It's just that it's hard to entangle from much of the other stuff that was in the zeitgeist at the time and it just doesn't come across as being very original. Worth watching, though.

Citizen Kane (1941)

"If I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a great man."

At the age of 38 I've finally seen this film, and feel a little bit more cultured than I was. It's far too dense with signifiers and crammed with meaning to add much to the decades of critical discussion after just one viewing, yes, but at least I can say what I thought. Essentially, it's exactly as good as people say it is. Sometimes you can go into a film with sky-high expectations and end up a little deflated that it turns out to be merely excellent rather than sublime. I suspect my expectations were lowered a little by the fact that Citizen Kane no longer tends to sit at the top of all these "Top 100" lists as it used to but, well, it should. 

Yes, the whole "rosebud" thing turns out to be a fairly facile revelation about the loss of childhood innocence, but there's a lot more going on than that. Plus the direction is incredible courtesy of a young Orson Welles, and his performance as Charles Foster Kane is spellbinding: a man of depth, wit and charisma and who never quite lets you in. 

The script, too, is as philosophical as a nineteenth century novel, with a line on memory that's redolent of Proust and a clever examination of the newspaper industry's loss of innocence, paralleling Kane's own. Most clever, though, is that Kane is only ever seen through the memories of others, never on his own terms; perhaps we have the cinematic equivalent of the unreliable narrator.

Oh, and at last I get the references in the White Stripes' "The Union Forever".

This is a truly great film and worthy of far more than a hurried blog post written on the 16.09 from Birmingham New Street to Coleshill Parkway. If you haven't seen it, you should bloody well do so.

Fantastic Four (2005)

"A few days in space. It'll be great. What's the worst that could happen?"

I can't remember where, but I recently read an interview with Stan Lee (he's 93, you know) in which he expressed the view that this film was excellent, really captured the four main characters and the dynamic between them, but that the use of Doctor Doom as a character was misconceived. This blog post is essentially me agreeing with him. Who am I to contradict the great Stan Lee? And, moreover, he's right.

(Incidentally, I love Stan's cameo in this film playing Willie Lumpkin, for once not only an actual character from the comics, but one he created).

The four main characters are perfectly written and played. Special praise has to go to Michael Chiklis as Ben, a perfect piece of casting, but Chris Evans as Johnny is also superb, and a very different performance from the same actor's portrayal of Captain America.

However, while Julian McMahon plays the role he's given very well indeed and even wears the costume at the end, this is not Doctor Doom but an entirely different character, which is a shame. That isn't enough to stop the film being very good, but it's a definite black mark.  

Still, I like the way the origin is not dwelt upon, and the script portrays all of the characters exactly as they should be. The relationship between Ben and Johnny, in particular, is perfect. This isn't the best Marvel film adaptation ever, but it's certainly a decent attempt.

The War of the Worlds (1953)

"The Martians can conquer the Earth in six days."

"The same number of days it took to create it!"

Oh dear. This film seems to be well liked. Sorry, but I'm about to give it quite the spanking. Oh, it looks good; the Martians and their craft look great. But this film is a badly written piece of crude religious propaganda with shockingly poor characterisation and hammy acting. Yes, I know it's a melodrama, but it isn't even amusing or gun to watch on a MST2000 kind of way. This is not the worst film I've seen all year, but it is the most disappointing.

Things start on a bad footing with Cedric Hardwicke, narrating and acting as the voice of H.G. Wells, giving us a tour of the Solar System that is shockingly inaccurate even for a time before space probes. Apparently Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are not gas giants, Mercury is the only planet with no air, and Venus doesn't exist. Yes, that's right. They seem just to have forgotten it.

But then the film itself starts. And it gets worse. Oh, it's essentially just Wells' novel transplanted to McCarthy's America, but the film presents a grim picture of California in 1953, where the only thing to do on a Saturday night is a "square dance", whatever that is, with Coke instead of proper drink and, you know, fun. Life for these people can only improve under their new Martian overlords.

And then there's the stifling and crudely overdone Christian element, far too blatant to be a subtext. Now, I may be a Godless heathen myself, but I have no objection to religious subtexts in films. But this is about as subtle as a punch in the face- even the final defeat of the Martians by bacteria is portrayed as a divine miracle. And I get no sense of any true religious feeling; this is churchgoing as enforced respectability and conformity.

So... yeah. I didn't like this film much. Sorry. Still, I have high hopes for some of the films I have lined up...

Goldfinger (1964)

"Some things just simply aren't done. Like drinking Dom Perignon '53 at above 38 degrees Fahrenheit. Or listening to the Beatles without earmuffs."

Well, Bond's taste in music is pants, then.

Let's get one thing straight, first: I liked this film a lot. But... well, I like the James Bond films. I've seen most of them, some several times, but not all them. I haven't seen Goldfinger before for instance. But I'm vaguely aware that the received opinion of this film is that it's amongst the best. But, well, I liked it very much but I liked it's predecessors better.

Why? I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps it feels smaller in scale? Perhaps the locations aren't as big or exciting, with long scenes in golf clubs and dull cells, and Bond spending much of the last part of the film as a prisoner? I think it's mainly that Gert Frobe is ok but not all that good or charismatic. Even the "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" moment underwhelmed me. Has popular culture led me to expect too much?

Still, Connery is awesome as ever.and the full on gadgetry emerges with the gadget filled Aston Martin and a glimpse into "Q" branch. There are some good set pieces, too, most notably Jill Masterson being killed from asphyxiation after being covered in gold paint, as so splendidly debunked in Mythbusters.

Honor Blackman is suitably icy as the deliciously named Pussy Galore, but.. well, the sexual politics of the Bond films have raised a good number of eyebrows up until now, with all the slapping and somewhat unreconstructed attitudes, but Bond quite unambiguously subjects Pussy to sexual assault. It isn't depicted as rape, with Pussy clearly shown to be yielding... but that in itself is troubling.

Still, it has the best theme tune so far and possibly ever. And is still a bloody good film.

Waterloo (1970)

"My God, Sir! I've lost my leg!"

"My God, Sir! So you have!"

There are three striking things about this superb film: Rod Steiger's electrifying, extraordinarily charismatic and career-defining performance as Napoleon, the incredible scope and accuracy of the battle scenes, and the fact that it was made in Brezhnev's Soviet Union with an international cast. That just seems bizarre.

Still, it's an extraordinary piece of cinema and one of the most accurate historical films ever made; even the dialogue is mostly documented from real life and I recognised a few of Wellington's. The only inaccuracies I could spot were the constant references to "Belgium" (not a country until 1830) and the slight musical reference to the modern German national anthem as Blucher's Prussians arrive to save the day. This is anachronistic; the tune existed at the time but it's lyrics were a paean to Emperor Franz of Austria, hardly a friend of Prussia. The Habsburgs were hardly friends of pan-German nationalism, which in any case wouldn't really become a thing until after the revolutions of 1848. Anyway, the film...

 Steiger steals the show as Napoleon, a charismatic genius refusing to give in to the failing health of his body, but Christopher Plummer also deserves high praise for his unflappable and blunt Wellington, refusing permission to have Napoleon assassinated ahead of the battle as such things are Simply Not Done. The opening scenes are extraordinary, though: Napoleon rants and raves like Hitler in Downfall before finally abdicating, only to escape from Elba with but 1,000 troops and suede power again through sheer magnetic charisma. It's eyebrow-raising here to see a somewhat corpulent Orson Welles in a cameo as Louis XVIII.

This is a true epic in scope, both thematically and visually. If you haven't seen it.. sorry for the spoiler, but Napoleon loses. Sorry.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

"Deep penetration!"

What? It's just a line in the film. What?

I loved this film when I saw it first at the Cannon Cinema in Hinckley, Leicestetshire at the tender age of fourteen, and watched it many times during the course of the '90s. It has a real nostalgic power for me. And yet. X it's still a good film. Very good even. And yet... it's dated a little, hasn't it?

At the time the special effects were amaaaazing. They were what made the film look awesome. Looking at the T-1000 twenty-five years later, though, and it's just... early CGI. And without the wow factor of the special effects the film stands revealed. It isn't really a suspense thriller like The Terminator; it's more a straight-up action film, a film pretty much made up of a series of set-pieces bolted together. It works, don't get me wrong, but the first film was better.

It still works well as an action film, though, and the many set pieces that make up the film are extremely well made. It's even sweet to see Arnie's T-100 as a surrogate father to John. It's interesting, too, that this very testosterone heavy action film gets a fair bit of narration from Sarah Connor, both part of the narrative and it's chorus. This a female predictive gets done degree of apparent control over the narrative. I also like the visual parallels to the first film at the beginning and end. We even get a bit of social commentary on sexual abuse in mental institutions.

Not as interesting as its predecessor, then, and it's dated a bit, but it still needs to be watched every now and again because nostalgia. Always worth a revisit.

Leave 'Em Laughing (1928)

It's a little odd, these days, to see a cinematically released comedy short that is but 21 minutes long, shorter than an episode of the typical sitcom even on commercial television. But this is bloody brilliant; the best of physical comedy which was never the same again for the generations of performers who grew up with sound. 

The visual comedy here is first class, from the slapstick of the concluding road dodgems sequence to the early scenes with Stan's aching tooth. Laurel and Hardy are geniuses without sound as much as with. This is bloody brilliant; obviously it's out of copyright so just watch it on YouTube if you've twenty minutes to spare and fancy a chuckle. Silent comedies just haven't dated in the way that some comedy from later on has done.

Well, the nurses have flapper hairstyles, the cars are 1928 vintage and have cranks, and our two stooges sleep in the same bed with nary an eyebrow raised, but you know what I mean...

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

"My family's always been in meat..."

This is the template for a certain kind of slasher and, surprisingly, whereas the budget is obviously limited, it's rather better than both of them, the film being full of incident and suspense. It's also notable that, while there are a few brief and therefore effective moments of gore, the film relies much more on the suggestion of blood and gore than in showing it in any great detail. This kind of slasher is never going to trouble the "best ever" lists, but it's one of the best of it's kind.

Much of this comes from a clever plot structure and the device of having one of the characters be a wheelchair user. The kids are picked off at regular intervals throughout the film, providing us with regular bursts of excitement, and the early scenes with the hitchhiker give us some early incident and foreboding.

It matters not that we know perfectly well that the hitchhiker will turn out to be one of the baddies, or the petrol station owner. Predictability is the point. This is a well-executed film which, while part of a genre which is somewhat limited and reliant on simple melodrama in the absence of any extra little metatextual touches, justifies its status as a pioneer within that genre.

From Russia with Love (1963)

"Red wine with fish- that should have told me something!"

Two films in and we still haven't quite hit the formula as it would be. There's another perfect, fully-formed Bond villain- a cat-stroking head of SPECTRE whose face is unseen and who is, as yet, unnamed- and this time there's a rather extensive gadget, handed to Bond by Major Boothroyd of Q branch (not "Q"), this time played by Desmond Llewelyn. It's early days still, though: it's 1963, and in the final sequences Bond even wears a hat.

It's a good film though, making the most if it's glamorous Istanbul location with a set piece in the Hagia Sophia, although this contrasts somewhat with the cramped surroundings of the Orient Express.

The film is again carried by the remarkable Sean Connery, although another acting highlight is the rare appearance of George Pastell in a film not featuring Egyptian mummies. Pedro Armendariz gives us a likeable, worldly-wise Karim Bey, although it's obvious from an early stage that he's going to die. Such is the rhythm of films like this.

Daniela Bianchi is a rather passive and restrained Bond girl; that's a tradition which had still to evolve. At this point the films are still reasonably faithful adaptations of the novels, even to the absurd point of the clearly Scottish Bond being referred to as an "English gentleman. It is again, though, a bloody entertaining film.

Taxi Driver (1976)

"Some day real rain will come and wash these scum off the streets."

What to say about Taxi Driver that hasn't been said already? That it's a towering cinematic study of loneliness and of the kind of dangerously alienated outsider who will one day explode horribly, that Robert De Niro's performance here is one of the greatest performances ever?

There's not much new to say about this justifiably acclaimed film, really. But I'll try.

Travis isn't just alienated and alone- he talks to lots of people but connects with none of them- he's stuck in a dead end job with no hope, probably a virgin, and left with nothing but his macho fantasies, his dislike of what he doesn't understand and his need to find people to whom he can feel superior. The taxi, with its separation from the passengers, is a fitting metaphor for Travis' disconnection from the world.

There are some superb performances from a young Jodie Foster and Harvey Keitel, but the film relies on De Niro as much as any production of Hamlet relies on the actor playing the Dane, and he's just as good here as any of the best screen performances in that role. It's something about his eyes, his delivery. He inhabits Travis, perhaps the most frightening character in cinema, a character who is wound up tight and inevitably going to unravel.

The film gives us a surprising and unexpected "happy" ending as Travis escapes in caught from his clumsy attempt at political assassination and instead ends up lauded as a fifteen minute hero for violently rescuing the twelve year old Iris from her pimp, but even this makes us uneasy. Travis' life is no better than before. He's snapped before and he'll snap again. We end the film with all the tension of a time bomb waiting to happen.

As usual for Scorsese we get a superb soundtrack and impeccable direction for this art film about working class alienation, which sounds almost Marxist for a Hollywood film. 

The Doctor Who Pubcast

Here's Nick and myself with the latest splendid podcast..

http://dwpubcast.podomatic.com/entry/2016-01-05T11_14_44-08_00

Sherlock: The Abominable Bride

"I fear she has branched into literary criticism by means of satire. It is a distressing trend in the modern landlady."

Well, wasn't that superlatively brilliant? Oh, the present day scenes were a little pointless in terms of content (I hate Sherlock's "mind palace", too) but I suppose they had to be there to justify this episode happening. Everything else was awesome.

There's a lot here for fans of Conan Doyle's original stories by delightfully mashing A Study in Scarlet with A Study in Pink, introducing us to Sherlock with Victorian trappings. It's a real treat; all of the characters as portrayed by the actors we know work just as well in a Victorian setting, as well they should, and we have lots of fun with all of them, including Mrs Hudson. Even Mycroft (Mark Gatiss in a fat suit) and Molly Hooper (er, in a moustache, but nicely illustrating the episode's themes) make appearances.

The central image is delightfully grotesque, too- a gun totin' and bloodied bride, reminding me of the character from Kill Bill. So too is the use of Watson's stories for the Strand magazine, and the suggestion that there's a distinction between the "real" Holmes and the one who appears in the stories.

It's well directed, as everything by Douglas Mackinnon invariably is, with plenty of Sherlock's trademark visual storytelling tricks, a magnificent escape from dull realism as well as being extraordinarily clever.

There are plenty of nods to the canon, from the acknowledgement that The Blue Carbuncle is a bit pants to the five orange pips (and the use of Klan like hoods at the end ties into this, if I may spoil a century old short story). The ghostly figure haunting Sir Eustace through the mist even calls to mind The Hound of the Baskervilles. Most intriguing is the mention of Itene Adler, and the hint that the "real" Holmes has a more complicated reason for lack of interest in women than the canon version. And then there's the cocaine. And Reichenbach. Yes, even Moriarty works in this context.

The big reveal- that behind all this are a protocol-female just secret society out to get votes for women and punish abusive men- is both wonderful and a satisfying payoff to the wry commentary on gender politics as seen throughout the episode.

And then it's the present day. And Moriarty's back. Not that he isn't dead or anything, but he's back anyway. And we probably have years until the next episode...

A Man for All Seasons (1966)

"You lay traps for me!"

"No. I show you the times."

This is, obviously, an excellent film even if, like myself, you're somewhat sick of the excess of Henry VIII; can't historical dramas show a bit more interest in other periods. But we should pause and remember that this film is somewhat biased; there's a reason why it's one of the Vatican's official favourites. This is, quite literally, a hagiography. And, while I will leave the sectarian tiresomeness to those whom believe in God, I have to point out that Sir Thomas More himself tortured (personally!) and burned people at the stake because their religious beliefs did not accord with him. This makes his death seem rather less unjust; indeed, he died rather less painfully than most of his victims. More was no saint, whatever Pope Pius XI may have said.

But what of the film? Well, it's superb. To start with, look at the cast. Standing out is an excellent (and very young) John Hurt as the slimy and ambitious Richard Rich. Susannah York is excellent as Meg. Orson Welles, no less, plays Wolsey. But best of all is Paul Scofield himself, whose extraordinarily subtle and dignified More may be the highlight of his distinguished screen career.

But the script is the real star. The theme is of the rule of law, and how it protects us from both arbitrary tyranny and Hobbesian chaos. More's undoing, of course, comes because Henry, Cromwell and Rich are not as unscrupulous as he is, and will happily cut corners. The contrast is between More and Rich; More is willing to die rather than lie before God on an oath, while Tich casually perjured himself- and sacrifices More's life- for the sake of a petty little promotion.

More is forever cautioning people to avoid condemning themselves through what they say; careless talk at Henry's court cost lies. More believes that the age old religious tradition of dissembling will save him, but it does not. We proceed inexorably to his inexorable death, his world slowly narrowing; I love the shot of seasons and time passing as seem through More's tiny cell window. The end finally comes, the axe falls... and fade to black. Superb.

Dredd (2012)

"Life without parole? That's a deal you're offering?"

This film, unfortunately, exists in the shadow of a much bigger and distinctly awful film made in 1995 and starring Sylvester Stallone who (shock horror) removes his helmet. This film, on the other hand, tells a tale on a much smaller scale and, in Karl Urban, has an actor good enough to entirely subsume his ego beneath the helmet. He's sublime.

There's a monologue at the start establishing judges, Mega City One and the Cursed Earth, but this is essentially set entirely in one tower block controlled by one criminal gang. Dredd is the Dredd we know, hardly a character with depth or development potential, so he's paired with rookie Judge Anderson, a pysychic who is put through a baptism of fire before finally (and understatedly; no sentiment here!) passing her assessment. Olivia Thirley is essential in a much-needed past to add character and drama, not to mention oestrogen. Lena Headey is similarly excellent as Ma-ma, the big bad.

The world of the comics has been thoughtfully recreated for cinema. Given the grotesques and slightly cartoonish artistic style of the comics, a slavish recreation would not have worked, but its spirit remains even though there has been a necessary injection of realism. The grotesquerie and dark satire is all present and correct, and Dredd even gets a kick-ass speech. The effect of the slo-mo drug is achieved with particular creative brilliance in what is an extremely well-directed film. Dredd is nothing less than a triumph, with the decision to go small-scale completely vindicated.

I, Robot (2004)

"Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?"

"Can you?"

This is the only film, as far as I know, that's been adapted from an Isaac Asimov story. And, Ironically, it's based on one of the few pieces of Asimov's SF writing that I've never read. I've read all the Foundation stuff, the Elijah Baley stuff, The Stars, Like Dust and sequels, and all of Asimov's work after 1980 that reads like very good Isaac Asimov fanfic. But I've never read any of the Susan Calvin robot stories. Oops. I suppose I'm not overly qualified to blog this film. Oh well.

While there's a low of fascinating philosophical stuff on both the Three Laws and the prospect of robots nicking people's jobs (very topical), this is fundamentally about the question of what if a robot was to exhibit sentience- what these days we call the Singularity. The theme is essentially the same as Short Circuit, but done with some intelligence.

The script is superb. I've no idea how faithful it is to the source material but it's certainly faithful in spirit to Asimov. Will Smith is excellent casting, charismatic and likeable as the technophobic, irreverent yet philosophical Spoon, while Bridget Moynahan is also excellent as the icy Susan Calvin, in personality almost a robot herself. Sonny the robot, incidentally, is voices by Joss Whedon favourite Alan Tudyk.

The design is also a triumph- the robots look great, and the world of 2035 is just futuristic enough to convince without being futuristic enough to alienate. It's a very contemporary view of the future, with none of the gleaming silver corridors of yore; instead we get a post-Cyberpunk, post-Blade Runner, lived-in future.

There are big action sequences, yes, but this film dares to be, at its heart, intimate and philosophical, and is all the better for that.

Happy New Year...

...and all that. I'm somewhat drunk.

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

"I never think you should judge any country by its politics. After all, we English are quite honest by nature, aren't we?"

I've seen a fair few Hitchcocks but, shockingly, this is the first film helmed by the great Sir Alfred that I've blogged. It's an early, pre-Hollywood film, but all his gifts for suspense are already on evidence. Engaging characters, a worry script and a solid presence- an old lady mysteriously vanished from a moving train and people start denying that she was ever there- make this a bloody good film. Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave are superb as leads.

The characterisation, direction, dialogue and acting come across as fresh and mover considering the film's age, and I love the two cricket-obsessed Englishmen. The plot twist is also handled extremely well and successfully as the conspiracy unravels and peril (I love that word) ensues. This isn't perhaps one of the best known Hitchcocks but it's certainly a bloody good film.

Short Circuit (1986)

"Number Five is alive!"

I remember seeing this on video in the '80s and, being nine or ten, quite liked it. I had fond memories of the film so, I thought, why not blog it? It'll be a pleasant jog through memory lane, right?

Er, wrong. Watching it as an adult, the film isn't exactly awful but it's functional, by-the-numbers, slow and, despite the cuteness and coolness of the robot itself, not more than mildly engaging.

But there is, of course, another thing, a film that makes the film quite arse-clenching embarrassing to watch in 2015 and, surely to Hod, in 1986 as well.

Yep, it's all about the character of Ben, a character who is supposed to be of South Asian origins with an Indian accent. I vaguely remembered that the film had an Indian character but it's something to see that the character was played by a white actor, in brownface. Yep. This really happened. Ten years earlier or so you'd just sigh and reflect that this sort of thing used to happen... but this is happen 1986. And it isn't helped by the fact that the character is written and played as a "funny" foreigner with "hilarious" malapropisms. I've just looked around the Interweb and, while there are a few appalled bloggers out there, most people (then and now) seem not to be particularly concerned that all this might be just a little bit incredibly racist.

The early scenes between Number Fove and Stephanie (Ally Sheedy is rather good) are entertaining, as are all the scenes where the robot runs rings around his pursuers, but that isn't anywhere near enough to make up for the character of Ben. This is a film I once remembered fondly, but it's probably best forgotten.

We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story

"Sometimes you need to bow to the talent!"

It's good to know that these types of dramas are still happening even though all new drama has been sadly banished from BBC 4. This particular example is merely quite good rather than great, but long may this sort of thing continue.

The main interest for most of us, of course, is the casting. Shane Ritchie for Bill Pertwee works well, John Sessions as Arthur Lowe works well (although I'm glad they used real footage from Pardon the Expression as watched at home by Jimmy Perry), although the casting of Michael Crichton as Arnold Ridley doesn't work. Crichton is a bloody good actor but he's just, well, nowhere near physically frail enough. It's Keith Allen who really steals the show, however, as sceptical BBC executive Paul Fox.

You're reminded of just how counterculture and creative the BBC was in 1967; Jimmy Perry served in the war, yet he dresses like a hippy, as do an awful lot of people. There's a nice little in joke about Jon Pertwee turning down the part of Mainwaring because of money; shades of how he left Doctor Who there.

This isn't exactly a televisual highlight of 2015, but it's a pleasant way to spend an hour, with plenty of in-jokes for British TV nerds like me.

Dr No (1962)

"Tell me, does the toppling of American missiles really compensate for having no hands?"

Time for my first Bond film, I think. I'll blog them all as and when, but in order. I'm not really a hardcore Bond fan, but I've certainly seen and enjoyed a lot of Bond films and I'm expecting to have a lot of fun along the way.

My first observation is that Sean Connery is superb, and oozes charisma: all the other British characters are very, very public school, yet Connery manages to pull off the character of Bond, comfortable in casinos and colonial gentlemens' clubs, while maintaining his working class Edinburgh accent, and pulls it off. In an age of strict actorly RP he's unique, and he pulls it off brazenly and brilliantly. This film is a triumph in no small part to his charisma.

My second observation is that all the women seem to have been written by fifteen year old boys but, hey, that's Bond. No Bechdel test here.

My third observation is just how long ago this film was made. Yes, everyone dresses as though they're in an episode of Mad Men but, even more evocative of just how long ago it was, this film is set in a Janaica that's still a British colony, with a Governor General and everything.it seems the Winds of Change haven't reached gale force yet. Still, the film deserves credit for not being particularly racist for its time, although I notice that, in the case of Quarrel, the trope of the black guy getting killed is present and correct.

It's a reasonably faithful adaptation of the novel- a more cinematic spider is substituted for the centipede, but this is a much more straightforward adaptation than what came later. There are no gadgets: Major Boothroyd (not called Q) only appears in a rather pointless scene where he replaces Bond's gun. One thing is present and correct, though: "Honey Rider" is (titter) the first of many, er, hilariously naughtily named Bond girls. And Dr No is the archetypal Bond villain from the start, with the lair and arch dialogue down pat.

I suppose I have a hard time believing that anyone could have believed that "dragon" was a flesh and blood creature, but other than that very minor pint the film is superb, and it's easy to see why the Bond films continued.

The Third Man (1949)

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Yes, it had to be that quote. Predictable but necessary.

This film is, essentially, superb. It tends to suffer somewhat from the overly high expectations one tends to have for films as critically acclaimed as this, but I won't discriminate against it for that. The film didn't choose to be so hyped. In truth, this film may not be quite amongst the best ever made but it is, nonetheless, utterly superb.

I won't recount the intriguing plot with its twists and turns and the gradual reveal of the story of Harry Lime, played with splendid charisma by the great Orson Welles. But the script paints as dark a picture of human nature as one would expect from the typewriter of Graham Greene. Vienna is made to look awesome by Carol Reed in its monochrome splendour, and the cast is superb. This is a Vienna still under occupation by the four powers, where even minor aristocrats resort to the black market to survive. This once-great imperial city has fallen very far indeed, with its grandiose Habsburg architecture seeming to mock it. 

Above all this film has atmosphere, pervaded as it is by a sense of doom and pessimism. And above it all floats that zither tune. This is a film that everyone should see.

Daredevil (2003)

"I want a bloody costume!"

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.

I remember seeing this at the pictures when it came out. As far as I can recall I didn't hate it. I may not have been overwhelmed but I was, at least, moderately whelmed. This time, though... oh dear. I'm afraid this review is going to be quite the spanking.

Please understand that this film isn't awful merely because it stars Ben Affleck, which is never a good thing, or even that Affleck is in even worse form than usual. Jon Favreau is awful (he should stick to directing), Jennifer Garner phones in her performance, and while Michael Clarke Duncan is a good actor he's miscast as the Kingpin. He has a kind face. You just can't cast him as a baddie, although it doesn't help that the Kingpin's lines are the worst in the film. Only Colin Farrell manages to shine by, wisely, chewing the scenery with gusto as it's the only thing you can do with lines like that.

And that brings us to the script, a steaming pile of dung. It beggars belief that anyone seriously thought this script was ready for production. It's clear from the performances that the cast doesn't exactly believe in it. None of the characters are well-developed. Far too much time is spent on a totally unnecessary recap of Daredevil's origin- why are superhero films always doing this?- and Daredevil doesn't act or feel like Daredevil. He kills. He beats people up and generally behaves like a homicidal Batman. It just feels wrong.

At least we can keep ourselves entertained by counting all the names of comics creators here. I'm not sure how Joe Quesada feels about giving his name to a rapist, but Kevin Smith gets a cameo as "Jack Kirby" (and Frank Miller gets a brief cameo as, naturally, does Stan Lee) and Jack Murdock has recently fought "Miller, Mack, Bendis" and is seen fighting John Romita.

Still, this film is a turd. It's not even entertainingly bad. For the morbidly curious only.

Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song

"What's that? Are you... thinking? Stop it. You're a man. It looks weird."

The Moff ended the series just gone by subverting the Big Epic Season Finale through rejecting all of the epicness in favour of a more human, character-based episode. Here he uses the Christmas episode to give us a perfect little character piece, albeit with plenty of entertainment along the way. This is almost certainly the swansong for River Song, and an extremely fitting one, and rumour has it that it was almost- but not quite- the Moff's last script for the series. Long may he reign, say I.

The plot is a glorious Christmas caper, but we shall say little about it other than to note the nice little nods to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and The Brain of Morbius. There are some splendid comedy turns from Matt Lucas and (in a part that must have been enormous fun to play) Greg Davies. Oh, and I love the way the Doctor defeats Hydroflax's body by using the fact that the stock market is so utterly incomprehensible. But the episode is essentially both a screwball comedy and entirely about the relationship between River and the Doctor. So let's proceed to talk about nothing else, shall we?

The main conceit, of course, is that River spends the whole episode failing, rather amusingly, to notice that the man she's with is the Doctor. In a lesser script this could have made the character look stupid, but not here; it's nicely counterbalanced by River being portrayed as cool and resourceful. Indeed, the Doctor/companion relationship is essentially reversed to the point where River holds the Doctor's hand and runs and, in the episode's funniest scene, the Doctor pretends to be amazed that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside, seizing the chance to do it "properly". Both Kingston and Capaldi are superlative, and so is their chemistry together; the two of them on screen together work wonderfully well as a believable couple. Capaldi's ongoing moments of annoyance at River's other "husbands" are a joy, as is River's casual comment that she's always "borrowing" the TARDIS without the Doctor ever noticing.

And yet.. River is sad. Her diary is running out of pages, and the man who gave it to her would have known how many pages she needed. Silence in the Library beckons, especially as the Doctor here gives her the sonic screwdriver that she uses in that story. A nice touch, although the sonic trowel is cool and perfect for an archaeologist, as my fellow Time Team fans would know.

The scene where the penny finally drops for River ("Hello, sweetie"- more role reversal between them) is wonderful, as is her passionate speech about the Doctor; she loves him with all her heart, but you don't expect a phenomenon as big as the Doctor to love you back as a mere mortal would. And she's fine with that.

Their last ever date before River's death (I love the revelation that River's last night will last 24 years!) is wonderfully written with dialogue that sings like the towers, which are themselves a metaphor for the awesome monolith that is the Doctor. It's the perfect ending to what may well be the finest ever Christmas episode.

But how long will we have to wait for more Doctor Who?

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

"Is there a garbage chute? A trash compactor?"

Well, that was a little bit awesome. First point: this is going to be a very positive review. Second point :SPOILERS. This is going to be one very spoilerific blog post. If you don't want to see the scores, look away now.

We see lots of Han and Chewie, a fair bit of Leia, some of Threepio, less of Artoo and only a final glimpse of Luke. And, unlike the prequels with its forgettable characters, here we have the very likeable and interesting Finn and Rey, and it is the success of these two new characters, above all, that makes J J Abram's sequel such a triumph. He's also realised what good Star Wars should be: not so much science fiction but the feel of myth with the trappings of science fiction.

It's brave to hold off the appearance of any familiar characters for the first part of the film while we get to know Rey and Finn, but it works. Rey is a deliberate parallel of Luke on Tattooine, poor but noble and waiting for a family that will never come- but the Force is strong in her. Finn is a stormtrooper with a conscience, already a rich and powerful background for a character. It helps that both of them are played so well.

And then Han and Chewie appear. It's so good to se them, and Harrison Ford is so amazing you forget how old he is. He gets a huge role and gets to be really heroic- and at the endowed see why, narratively, it had to happen: killed by his own evil son. Whose mother, Leia, now leads the Resistance and is as cool as ever.

The First Order, who have taken over from the Empire, are superb baddies and... well, they're Nazis, aren't they? There were so many punch the air moments with the reveal of various old faces- Admiral Ackbar! Nien Nunb! Yes, lots of the plot beats feel familiar, but so they should. The plot feels completely Star Wars. Everything looks good, with a proper, finely balanced Star Wars aesthetic for all the aliens and all the decor. J J Abrams has done an amazing job.

The Longest Day (1962)

"Cor, stone the crows!"

I'm not a particular fan of war films, but I'm not prejudiced against them either. After The Dam Busters and Battle of Britain it's time for this epic saga of D Day which, shockingly, is the first film I've blogged to feature John Wayne, Henry Fonda or Robert Mitchum. Those are three omissions I'm certainly glad to rectify.

John Wayne doesn't get all that much screen time as Colonel Vandervoort, but he dominates the film. He's sort of the David Bowie of acting (those are two names you don't often hear together!); Bowie has a restricted vocal range but sings well within that and is careful always to stay within his range; he's primarily a songwriter and musician, not Freddie Mercury- as "Under Pressure" demonstrates. John Wayne may not be the most versatile actor, and he has presence and charisma rather than talent, but in the right role he can be truly extraordinary. This is one of those parts.

Films like this don't always quite work (hello, Battle of Britain), feeling disjointed and lacking in spirit, but this film is both masterly structured and full of heart and pathos. Little vignettes like the American shooting a surrendering German and then asking what "Bitte, bitte" meant, or the poetic scene late on with the lost American soldier and the crippled and philosophical British parachutist whose painkillers are wearing off. It's a nice touch that the German and French characters speak in their own language with subtitles and, while the Canadians are insultingly  downplayed, both British and American forces get a lot of screen time, with the slight bias towards the USA being understandable because of Omaha Beach being the bloodiest and most dramatic.

It's a long film, but manages not to drag, balancing the large scale with the human experience well. The ending feels sudden, but I suppose that's realistic. A much recommended film.

Kick-Ass (2010)

"How do I get hold of you?"

"You just contact the mayor's office. He has a special signal he shines in the sky; it's in the shape of a giant cock."

This is a brilliant, quotable, comics-literate film, adapted by Jane Goldman from the graphic novel by Mark Millar and, er, I like to think of myself as comics-literate- I mean, I've read most things by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller when we all thought he was good, Garth Ennis etc, but I haven't read much by Mark Millar. I'm impressed, though.

It's a witty and knowing look at the super hero trope from a writer who knows these tropes. It's also highly metatextual and you know how I love that sort of thing; I particularly adored the bit where Dave points out that we shouldn't assume he survived just because he's the narrator. And Mindy. Mindy is the coolest thing ever, and possibly the finest exponent of extreme swearing in cinematic history. Yes, we could finally have the first genuinely brilliant film since Leaving Las Vegas that Nicolas Cage (brilliantly cast) has appeared in.

The concept is brilliant: what if someone in the real world tried to be a superhero, without powers and where punches do actual damage and stabs mean extensive hospital treatment? This is done with wit and charismatic performances, making a film that whizzes by most enjoyably. And a bloke even explodes in a microwave at one point.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2012)

"I finally got everything I wanted- and I'm wearing tights."

Yes, I'm finally starting to go back to the Marvel films that I've seen but never blogged. Captain America: The First Avenger may not be among the very best of Marvel's recent efforts but it's a damn fine film, with a proper and well-thought through usage of Cap's origin to tell a good story while remaining faithful to the spirit of Simon and Kirby's original. It's usually a bad idea for superhero films to begin with the origin story but this is an exception.

Oh, and there are also a couple of fun cameos from Jenna Coleman and Natalie Dormer.

We begin, after a brief establishing scene of something found in the ice in the present day, in Nazi occupied Norway, with a nice scene involving David Bradley, the Red Skull and some dialogue that firmly ties the Cosmic Cube (as it isn't called here) to Norse mythology as a nod to the recent Thor. We then move on to establishing the personality and, importantly, the heroic character, there already, of the 90 pound weakling version of Steve Rogers, rattling through the origin and the super soldier serum stuff while also establishing the excellent Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, here shown as a sexy ice maiden frustrated by the glass ceiling. She really ought to get her own series.

We also, interestingly, get the origin of HYDRA: a faction of Nazi scientists led by the Red Skull that, in an interesting twist, "declares independence" from Nazi Germany. That's a departure from the source material which shores up HYDRA much better as a long-term antagonist.

It's a nice touch to have Cap initially reduced to a performing monkey selling war bonds, giving a credible reason for the costume and also allowing us to see the actual original costume from Captain America Comics #1, a copy of which is actually seen in-universe!

It's nice that the Red Skull's, er, red skull only gets revealed halfway through, to dramatic effect. And interesting that Cap's shield is pure vibranium here: it seems that adamantium belongs to Fox.

This is a brilliant film: it has the script, the characters, the action sequences and the pathos to be, if anything, a slightly underappreciated gem. Cheeky of them to give Samuel L Jackson such billing for such a tiny cameo, mind.

Grimm: Maiden Quest

"I think we're grasping at feathers..."

A bit more of a genuine story of the week, this, with a relatively interesting and chivalric "a" plot in which three contenders compete to kill a rather nasty individual for the honour of a lady's hand in marriage and there are, for once, no links with this season's Big Bad. There's even a nice twist in that the test was really intended for the "maiden", not the suitors. It's a good episode as always, if not a standout one.

Main plot thread aside, Reggie Lee continues to be perfect as Wu, here on even more than usually wry form. We also see Nick and Adalind continuing to bond over parenthood, the awkwardness perhaps a little less each time. Sean is invited to support a friend's bid to be Mayor of Portland, which is bound to be significant. 

But the big event comes at the end, as Nick finds a hurt Trubel, presumably escaped...

Daredevil: Shadows in the Glass

"You're my son! You should be a king, not some fat little pussy."

At last we get an episode about the very interesting figure of Wilson Fisk, played interestingly by Vincent D'Onofrio as a crimelord who believes himself to have noble aims and who is, against type, an introvert. At last we get to see the childhood experiences that made him this way, a take of poverty, debt, extreme '70s-ness, domestic abuse and child cruelty, all on the part of Wilson's father, Bill. Who, incidentally, he kills with a hammer and, in a nice touch where we see his daily morning routine, he always wakes up to memories of that day.

In the present, though, Fisk is slipping a little, as Madame Gao kindly reminds him, and it's only with Vanessa's love and support that he's able to end the episode with a more or less firm grip on his mojo.

Incidentally, Fisk speaks both Mandarin and Japanese, which seems to point to an extended history in Eastern parts of the world of which we do not yet know.

Karen and Foggy end up having to confide in Matt about the whole Union Allied thing and he agrees to help them, directing their researches into areas much less likely to be physically risky for them- rather hypocritical of him.

Importantly, Daredevil finally talks to the magnificent Ben Urich, telling him about Fisk and everything he knows. But Urich's subsequent article is somewhat ruined by Fisk's coup de main in stepping out from the shadows. It's yet another superbly paced and crafted bit of telly throughout. Daredevil just gets better and better the further in you go.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Gone

"There was a voice, before. It made my coffee dance."

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a serious and harrowing episode of Buffy must be followed by a silly and light-hearted one. Hence this little romp where Buffy has a lot of fun being invisible and eventually even cheers up to the point where she no longer has a death wish.

Not that the whole episode is silly, though: Willow may be a magnificent sleuth here, but this is where her cold turkey from the crude drug addiction metaphor of recent episodes really begins. Buffy gets a visit from a social worker at the worst possible time, and her custody of Dawn is under threat.. but, fortunately, due to hi-jinks the clock us reset on that one. Phew. 

The sex scene between invisible Buffy and Spike is fun (once again it seems Buffy is rather rough and dominant in bed: wonder if Riley is visiting dominatrixes now?), but what happens afterwards is new: Spike actually kicks Buffy out because she's just using him for sex. Wow.

And we end with the Scoobies finally realising that Andrew, Warren and, of all people, Jonathan seem to be this season's big bad. Enough to make you miss Glory...

Daredevil: Stick

"In my experience there are no heroes, no villains, just people with different agendas."

I've only read parts of Frank Miller's fabled run on Daredevil, so I'm not too familiar with Stick, the Hand and all that. So I came to Stick pretty much for the first time here. I found the character (and performance) fascinating, and this very different episode (placed just after a turning point) to be one of the finest so far. It's time to give the arc a bit of breathing space- although Karen and Ben Urich make progress in their investigation into Fisk's misdoings, and include Foggy in their plotting- for a bit of a flashback and a bit of a character piece for Matt.

We first meet Stick in the title sequence as he carries out a rather cool assassination, establishing that, unlike Matt, he has no qualms about killing.  Then he and Matt meet up, establishing that Stick once meant a lot to Matt, but that he just upped and left, twenty years ago.

Cue flashback, Matt as a kid, Stick's training of and impression upon the young boy to whom he's given hope, and how Matt's natural affection for this gruff new father figure drives him away,disgusted at the young boy's sentimentality. Our old blind Spartan does not much care for sentimentality, or baggage.

Twenty years on they set out on a mission together, looking for a MacGuffin called Black Sky which is being delivered to Fisk. But this is a background in front of which Daredevil's good liberal conscience clashes with Stick's more cynical ways. This "Black Sky" weapon seems to be a little boy and Stick, to Matt's utter disgust, has no qualms about just killing him. The ends justify the means.

An excellent episode, mostly because of Stick, but it's also firmly convinced me how much I really like and respect Ben Urich as a character.

Grimm: Lost Boys

"Two things I know about kids. One: they're the future and should be cherished. Two: they're lying little bastards."

There seems to be a theme developing: are all this season's episode titles going to be based on films?

Today's story of the week is tragic: a bunch of homeless kids, all different kinds of Wesen, who periodically kidnap women who've been kind to them- in this case Rosalie- to be their "mother". This situation can hardly be allowed to continue: in a very true piece of social commentary, the kids are just swallowed back into the care system, which is crap.

Except... this isn't quite a "story of the week", as the governor of the kids' new children's home is chanting "Occultam Libera". So far every episode is tying in. 

In other news Sean receives news about the Royals: it seems that Viktor has killed the King and seized the throne like the badass he is. So I assume, after whatever behind-the-scenes stuff led to his abrupt departure last season, that Alexis Denisof will be back, and kicking arse.

It's also interesting to see Nick's and Adalind's, er, charming new home, and to see them bond a bit- she was the first woge he ever saw! But there's an awkwardness there. Adalind seems to feel awkwardly indebted to Nick and never expected him to step up as a father like he had- and had to; the character would never have retained our approval otherwise.

And yet, randomly, on the street, Adalind is approached by a former work colleague: she can have her old and rather highly paid job back whenever she wants it. This gives her a hell of a lot of security.

Oh, and that Royal bloke who visited Sean to update him on the gossip? It seems he has Trubel...

Anyway, good stuff.

Grimm: Clear and Wesen Danger

I'm "Not even a Grimm can stop what's coming. Occultam Libera!"

The second episode of the season seems at first to be settling into a story of the week but, of course, those never happen these days. So this episode isn't really about murder and embezzlement: the point is that the particular type of Wesen that did it causes marks with its four claws that are just like those on the symbol found on the wall at the scene of Chavez's death. It's all there to seed the season arc.

There's one little retro nod to the old days of stories-of-the-week, though: Sean assigns Hank a new partner who knows nothing of Wesen and who can't be told everything. Hank is frustrated, essentially taking the role of Nick (still on gardening leave) during the first couple of seasons.

Nick, Adalind and little Kelky move into Nick's home and, yes,it's awkward. Perhaps parenthood will bring them together as a couple now? Or would that be far too obvious? Either way, Monroe drops heavy hints that they should maybe leave that house after all that's happened.

It's an entertaining episode. Still have absolutely no idea what to make of this season, though. It already feels so different...

The Human Centipede 3: The Final Sequence (2015)

"These films risk causing harm! They should be banned!"

Oh yes. Here we are again. There was absolutely no way I could ignore this film. And in glad I didn't. It's gloriously awful, and easily the best bad film I've seen all year.

The acting has more ham than a ham sandwich, with Dieter Laser chewing the scenery with gusto as disturbingly sadistic US prison governor William Boss. Boss is a believer in mediaeval torture for prisoners, and is horrible to his pretty secretary Daisy, whom he bullies terribly and forces to give daily blowjobs, and swallow. Oh, and he abandons her to the mercies of rioting prisoners, and ends up accidentally including her in the human centipede.  He's not a nice man, or stable.

His accountant, Dwight, is a truly awful Laurence R Harvey, horribly miscast. Dwight has a bright idea based on a certain two movies he's seen, and we inevitably end up with a massive human centipede as penal policy.

This is a very silly film that revels in its B movie status, completely different in tone from its two predecessors and especially from the rather serious second film, with its social conscience. I suppose there's a bit of satire there aimed at the American attitude to capital punishment, but if so it doesn't run very deep. But it's a fun way to spend ninety minutes. Well, except for the castration scene. That was gross.

Kidulthood (2006)

"You can put it in my arse as well. It hurts, but I don't mind."

This is an extraordinary debut from Noel Clarke as a writer and, which is sort of the point, a bloody good film. Doesn't half make me feel old, though, and I'm only 38.

Are teenagers really like this in London, with the bullying, the drugs, the incomprehensible slang, the relentlessly hard gang mentality, and the horrifying level of bullying? I'm 38, and I feel old. I don't live in London, fortunately, but I'm still terrified about the bullying my daughter could experience when she starts school.

It's a brilliantly directed film, with some wonderful touches, and a superb script is brought to life by a largely unknown cast, although Cornell John and Alison Newman are both familiar faces from Eastenders. It deals with bullying, gang culture, teen suicide, teen pregnancy, and, in a subtle way, racism, although this seems to be one issue which is actually shown to be less of a problem than one might expect. Most depressing, perhaps, is the universally subservient attitude the girls have towards the boys: it's as if feminism never happened.

All this builds towards a tragic and dramatic ending which leaves us wanting more. This isn't necessarily the sort of film is usually watch, and I only watched it because it was written by Noel Clarke of off of that Doctor Who, but I enjoyed it immensely.

Doctor Who: Hell Bent

I"I insist upon my past!"

This is a brilliant season finale and a brilliant proper farewell to Clara, yes. That would be enough to make it brilliant. But there's more. Much, much more. Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I much prefer the littler, more character based stories to the big overblown epics: give me The Rescue over The Dalek Invasion of Earth any day. And Moffat clearly agrees. So much so that he takes the big, epic Gallifrey story we've expected for so long, only to swat it away in favour of a nice little intimate character piece.

And it's blatant. Yes, we have Gallifrey, the Citadel, the Chancellery Guards and the Matrix. We even get Donald Sumptrr, no less, as Rassilon. Except... the first twenty minutes of the story consists of the Doctor emphatically rejecting the epic power of the Time Lords in both the narrative and the wider mythology of Doctor Who: his relationship with his companion is far more important than all this fanwank.

Hence the Doctor assumes charge in Gallifrey through doing did all, by his Time War reputation alone. Hence the fact that Rassilon, that iconic figure of Time Lord mythology, played by Donald Sumpter in a real casting coup... is casually expelled from the narrative at a very early point on the episode. This episode is about Clara's death, the Doctor's hubris at refusing to accept it (very The Waters of Mars), and how this is making shades of the old War Doctor seep through. And it's Clara who saves the day. "Run, you clever boy, and be a Doctor".

Not that there isn't some glorious fanwankery, of course. Most brilliant is our first male-to-female regeneration, which has a nice transsexual subtext. Also, Ohica and the Sisterhood of Karn are back for absolutely no reason other than that they're cool, which is absolutely right. It's 2015, and Doctor Who still shows the unmistakable influence of Terrance Dicks, as it should.

The real emotional and dramatic centre of the episode is its second half, from the point at which Clara is extracted to the Matrix from a point just before her death. She's trapped between moments, with no heartbeat, and will eventually have to be returned to her timeline, and death. From this point, Gallifrey and all its flummery are but a MacGuffin in the service of Clara's relationship with her mortality and the Doctor's hubris in bending the laws of time in forever postponing her return to her death.

Clara is horrified to hear that the Doctor spent 4.5 billion years in the confession dial. For her. She, unlike him, appreciates that she has to die. It's in the nature of things, and she has had an amazing life.

The ending is inspired. The Doctor and Clara run away in a TARDIS just like throne he stole all those years ago, with an uber-retro interior exactly as designed by Peter Brachaki, right down to that thingy off the ceiling that was quietly dropped after An Unearthly Child. The Doctor has no solution to Clara's mortality other than procrastination- but isn't that the case for all of us? None of us know how much time we have, so we need to make the most of what time we have.

The Doctor doesn't understand: he just wants her to live. He intends to wipe her memories of him so she will have a better chance of survival, but that misses the point: our memories are our life. And it is better to die young with strove of amazing memories than to die old after a life unlived. 

And this is the bit where we find out what the framing device with the diner was all about. The climax happens at the very end of history, where the Doctor and Clara meet, inevitably, Ashildr. It is she who points out that this is the prophecy referred to as the Hybrid. Pleasingly, it's left open whether or not the Doctor is actually half-human (shudder!) or whether the "Hybrid" refers to both the Doctor and Clara. 

We end with the Doctor in a retooled TARDIS, with a new Sonic Screwdriver, adventuring again. Meanwhile, Clara and Ashildr have their own retro Type 49, its exterior stuck as an American diner...

Oh, and it's just occurred to me: the diner in The Impossible Astronaut was Clara's TARDIS, parked a few feet away...

I can't even tell you how brilliant a piece of telly this is. I'm utterly floored by it.

Grimm: The Grimm Identity

"Do you have Trubel or not?"

"I can't say."

"You just did."

In a sense, this episode wraps up the end of the previous season, the elephant in the room being that everyone needs to adjust to the fact that Juliette is dead. But there's a real sense of a radical realignment to an entirely new story arc, stopping the Royals entirely as an antagonist for a while. Chavez dies in this episode, but it seems the dramatic purpose of the character was always to seed the story arc for Season Five.

Chavez worked for some kind of mysterious organisation, but she and her colleagues are dead, and Trubel is still missing. Chavez' last words to Nick are to "be prepared" for "what's coming". Apparently "they're rising everywhere" and "it's war". That'll be the focus of Season Five then.

Aside from this, Sean has put Nick on gardening leave as he so obviously needs a test and, oh yes, there's the small matter of Nick becoming a father at the most awkward moment possible. It's a boy, and Adalind wants to call him Kelly, after Nick's mother. It's a sweet gesture, but am I the only one who likes proper, traditional names...?

A very interesting episode and s totally new direction. I've no idea how this season is going to go.

Doctor Who Pubcast

Here's a bite size Christmas Pubcast from Nick and myself...

http://dwpubcast.podomatic.com/entry/2015-12-01T10_53_22-08_00

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

"Now, in those days, I had hardly any trouble with the Sixth Commandment..."

This is, I believe, the blog's first Ealing comedy, and it's certainly a fine one to start with. It's a gentle comedy, witty, original and a highly entertaining way to while away a couple of hours. Dennis Price is an excellent star, Alec Guinness plays all his parts with aplomb, but the real star is the script.

This is a very British film about class, as the impoverished yet high-born Louis d'Ascoyne plots to bump off his relatives, all of whom look suspiciously like Alec Guinness, so that he can become the 10th Duke of Chalfont. This is done via some entertaining and delightful murders, a witty script, a clever twist at the end involving a love triangle and Arthur Lowe, and a superbly effective non-linear structure as Louis, to be changed in the morning but nevertheless fawned over as a duke, writes his memoirs from his condemned cell.

There's a startling use of the "n" word towards the end which jars somewhat, but there's little count in criticising a film made in 1949 for racism when all involved are long dead. It's a witty and delightful film which should be seen by all, and has made me keen to see many more Ealing comedies.

Doctor Who: Heaven Sent

"I've finally run out of corridors..."

Wow. One one level this is a cross between Cube and Blink, but it's a fascinating thing to do with the penultimate episode. Structurally this is just treading water until the finale but the reality is much more interesting than that. This is Moffat, forever doing the big story arc stuff and the donkey work, getting to do a quirky and unusual episode on his fourth year as showrunner: his Midnight or Turn Left. It's also a tour de force of a performance from Capaldi. Whichever way you look at it, it's bloody good.

What elevates it to the sublime, though, is the twist at the end with the teleporter- although what happened to their being called "transmats" in Doctor Who? Proving my theory that, if you're teleported, you die and are replaced with a copy, untold different Doctors have repeated the same day for billions of years, burning themselves at the end of the day so another Doctor can repeat the cycle. It's a kind of Prometheus myth, and it's genius on all sorts of levels.

At the beginning I was wondering if we were looking at the return of the Vashta Nerada, but there is so much cool stuff here, from the Doctor's nightmare to the shifting rooms of the castle- reminded me of both Cube and Castrovalva- to the revelation that the Doctor left Gallifrey not because he was bored but because he was scared. Best of all is the respect shown to the late Clara: the Doctor spends eons mourning, literally, and her presence is everywhere. Her death matters.

At the end, though, we get a revelation: the infamous Hybrid isn't half-Dalek... it's the Doctor!  Is he half-human after all? What's going on? Whatever, we're in for a showdown under Gallifrey's burnt orange skies...

Doctor Who: Face the Raven

"I guarantee the safety of Clara Oswald."

At last Doctor Who does a story in that strange genre of otherworldly streets in our world, of China Mieville and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. It's brilliantly atmospheric and really fits into Who although (yes, I'm coming to the elephant in the room, just wait)..) in an episode like this it isn't developed much and is pretty much reduced to some very interesting background colour.

It's also nice, after Flatline, to see a developed, maturer version of Rigsy. I like the character and wouldn't mind seeing him again. Similarly, Ashildr's reappearance is very welcome and she gets more good character development. I love the idea that, being immortal but with a finite memory, she remembers Clara only from reading her own diaries.

But... yeah. Let's spend the rest of this blog post talking about Clara's death, shall we? Because that's where the episode stands or falls. It's certainly a much-telegraphed death throughout the whole season, but this episode in particular goes out of it's way to show Clara having fun during her travels with the Doctor as never before. And this is her downfall, her carefree adventurer's spirit that leads her to do something brave, reckless and foolishly heroic. Arguably, she dies from being Doctorish. It's his influence that kills her. Except that the Doctor is privileged by the narrative to get away with outrageously foolish acts of heroism, whereas Clara, however awesome, is just... human. And it's that heroic hubris that kills her. She behaves like a Time Lady, and a human just can't keep doing that and live.

It's certainly a visually effective companion death, worthy to sit alongside Katarina, Sara Kingdom and that Alzarian boy. And, as an episode, it's a superb way of telling a companion death. Except... I'm not sure it's a sufficiently big and important death, season arc-wise, to honour such a huge and awesome companion like Clara, once a mere "Impossible Girl" plot point under Matt Smith but who blossomed into awesomeness under Peter Capaldi. What we have here is a very good episode by promising newcomer Sarah Dollard on its own terms which doesn't quite succeed at the huge wider job it had to do.

Oh, and the Doctor has been captured, by persons unknown. Let's not assume they're necessarily Time Lords. I mean, they obviously are but let's not...

Angel: Dad

"You don't have a woman's touch. Whatever your taste in clothing may indicate."

On the surface this is s light episode having some fun with Angel's utter obsession with his baby- and I completely understand, having become a father this year myself! Fun is had with Angel's newbieness, but the threat is serious: so many demons and forces wants the prophecies baby for their own nefarious purposes that the hotel is under siege and our heroes are all, it seems, doomed. Except a bit of clever resourcefulness on the part of Lorne and Angel not only saves the day but puts the baby- Connor- under Wolfram and Hart's reluctant protection.

It's also, of course, the episode where Lorne, what with Caritas having been destroyed again, moves in to live with Angel and co. At last he's a guaranteed cast member every week. The gang is growing.

It's a fairly frothy episode, yes, an episode in which Angel's vampire face calms the baby(!), but behind it all lurks Holtz, revenge served cold, and a plan to make Angel really suffer. It's an enjoyable, frothy episode, but I'm sure that more serious fare is to come.

Cosmopolis (2012)

"Talent is more erotic when it's wasted."

I haven't read the original Don DeLillo novel, or indeed anything by him: bad English graduate! But as a script it's superb, fizzling with ideas of Great American Novel standard. And on top of this we get the inspired, stylised directing style of the truly great David Cronenberg. Not all his fans will agree- this is significantly artier date than his better-known work- but it's among his best.

The ideas are superb. Eric Packer is a twenty-eight year old finance billionaire, and he's profoundly alienated from his world. But this alienation isn't existential angst, not even when he murders his own security guard on a whim in a presumed reference to The Outsider. No, this is something much more modern, alienation caused by the deeply abstract, chaotic randomness of our financial system. None of us understand it, but all of us gamble on it in some way and it has the power to wreck our society with crashes and economic storms. And none of it is real, not any more. Not even money is real: most money in the world is just IOU's written by banks, and if it was all called in then the system would collapse. It's absurd, but not in an old-fashioned existentialist sense. It's post-modern capitalism, heady and dangerous, and Eric employs a "head of theory" to pontificate about it. This is a world where financial markets can be thrust into uncertainty by the interpretation of a pause in the speech of the Chinese finance minister.

Eric, over the course of a day, seems to engineer his own self-destruction- casually ending his marriage by blatant infidelity, gambling his fortune on a Quixotic gesture against the yuan and, finally, seeking death. Only there can be find reality.

The visuals of the film complement the themes superbly: most of it is set in cars, and Cronenberg lingers over their erotic visual power in ways that remind me of Crash. The effect is claustrophobic: Eric is limited in where he can go by the chaos (that theme again) of the New York traffic as the president visits, and we see this with the narrow spaces in which he spends the film.

I'm not a fan of Robert Pattinson but he's superb here. And Paul Giamatti is outstanding. But isn't he always?

This is a brilliant film, one packed with far more meaning than I've been able to tease out, and a thing of true beauty. It is also, incidentally, notable for its positive portrayal of Muslims. A superb film.

The World's End (2013)

"What the fuck does WTF mean?"

I like Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Nick Frost, I really do. I loved Hot Fuzz and Paul and said so. I loved Shaun of the Dead and must blog that one day. It all amounts to a fine back catalogue. But this film... isn't really all that great. And there's not really all that much to say about it.

I mean, the plot's ok and the acting is as superb as you expect but, well, this is a film about middle age disappointment, with Gary a drunken failure wanting to relive the glories of his youth while his mates all have at least something to show for their lives at the halfway point. And... that's all this film is about. Dull and patronising themes of middle age and growing up. Even the threat- a load of robot invaders who want to enforce conformity, all naturally for our own good- is a bit meh, a kind of intergalactic parent, the man trying to hassle us. It all falls a bit flat for me. Perhaps it's because I'm a couple of years short of forty but don't really identify with any of this. As I approach middle age I've neither gone off the rails, failed to grow up not stopped being the person I've always been, and as such I don't really identify with the film's somewhat cliched message.

Mind you, it has a nice little subtext about the distressing decline of the modern pub. But that's about it.

Doctor Who: Sleep No More

"Don't watch it!"

Wow. That was brilliant. Genuinely chilling, possibly the scariest episode of Doctor Who ever, and certainly Mark Gatiss' best ever script.

The "found footage" nature of the episode means that it has to be bloody well shot, and it is. The future world is sketched out just enough- a colony on the Neptunian moon of Trition, Indo-Japanese and, in a nice touch, polytheistic. It's the 38th century and, clearly, the capitalist worship of work for its own sake is as bad as our world, with the invention of "Morpheus" to remove the need for more than a few minutes' sleep. So we can work more, of course. Heaven forfend that there would be any other reason.

The plot is fiendishly clever, at one point turning on the delightfully metatextual point that, in this episode of found footage, there are no cameras to be seen. Even more metatextual is the final, terrifying cliffhanger: everything we've seen has just been a charade. The real infections the footage... which we've just seen. Brilliant.

Also worthy of praise are Capaldi, for his extraordinary and gripping delivery of the exposition, and for the superbly effective appearance of the "Sandmen", which add so much to the episode. The idea of the Sandmen- monsters made from sleep dust which arise if we deprive ourselves of sleep for too long- are a decidedly Moffatian idea from Gatiss' pen.

Also worthy of praise, in a very interesting part, is Gatiss' former League of Gentlemen comrade Reece Shearsmith. It's nice to see some consistency in giving the casts northern accents- Nagata's lines are even scripted to be Geordie! 

So, yeah, right up there with the best. A sublime bit of telly. Interestingly, though, it ends with the threat still out there but, apparently, an unrelated episode next week. So what twist on the two-parter format are we getting here...?

Daredevil: Condemned

You "Letting the police do their jobs; that's what I pay them for, isn't it?"

This is clearly a turning point, the episode in mid-season where Matt and the Kingpin have a sort of confrontation, albeit only by telephone, and where both Fisk and the script attempt to push the apparent similarities between the two. It's a bloody good bit of telly.

The episode, following last week in which Fisk blew up all the Russians' buildings in Hell's Kitchen, is largely a two-hander between Matt and Vladimir in which they slowly come to understand each other before Vladimir, inevitably, is shot by the NYPD who are so hopelessly in Fisk's pockets.

Foggy and Karen, though their relationship continues to deepen, take a bit of a back seat. Ben Urich, meanwhile, gets closer to the truth about Fisk; I suspect that he, once he establishes the relationship with Daredevil that we know from the comics, will be instrumental in Fisk's downfall. But not, alas, before facing much mockery as a representative of the old media in this digital age which is, alas, not so friendly to crusading investigative journalists.

This episode also serves to indicate how completely the police force is compromised by Fisk's money, and how many of them are in his pay. It's truly shocking. Something must be done.

Alas, the episode ends with Fisk blackening the name of this mysterious man in black, manipulating the media with frightening ease. Matt is so affected by this that, effectively, through fear of his potential notoriety, he dumps Claire. And they were such a perfect couple.

Still, Matt now has a name: Leland Owlsley: for us comics fans the Owl...