The Tractate Middoth

 "The other day I was forced to open a hotel door of my own volition!"

Don't worry; this is just a one-off diversion from Life on Mars and The Crown, but Christmas is coming; it would be remiss of me not to watch and blog this splendid adaptation by Mark Gatiss, who also directs, of one of M.R. James' most well-known stories.

And the whole thing is simply a triumph. The direction is magnificent, evoking horror with suspense, and the appearance of the ghost (That skull! Those spiders!) is as impressive as the way it's carefully shot. The cast is similarly magnificent, with a young Sacha Dhawan deeply effective as a leading man, and a strong cast of British character actors from Louise Jamson to Roy Barraclough to Burbage's very own Una Stubbs as a wonderfu comic grotesque. John Castle is, as ever, a splendidly hissible villain. And there's much actor-spotting fun as the Master chats to his mate, a pipe-smoking Nathan Barley.

What holds it all together, of course, is the story, puzzlingly not adapted since 1966. But this adaptation was made with a real love of the source material, and it shows.

This House (National Theatre Live, 2013)

"A Conservative Government eventually falls because they believe themselves entitled to power. And Labour Governments always fall because they don't."

The National Theatre are streaming one free recording of a play on YouTube, and for one week only, until Thursday I believe, the chosen play is James Graham's funny, tragic, human and wonderful tale of politics and desperation charting the Parliamentary struggles of the Labour Government between 1974 and 1979 and that fatal confidence vote.

It's an interesting experience to watch a stage play via a recording, and a reminder of the way the medium uses clever staging instead of boring realism- hence the dances as Commons votes and, most wonderfully, the use of a big blue cloth and David Bowie's "Rock and Roll Suicide" to evoke the moment where John Stonehouse (look him up) does his Reggie Perrin thing. In fact there's a superb use of contemporary rock throughout, much of it Bowie- particularly clever is the use of "Five Years" to evoke the various MPs who die during the 1974-79 Parliament.

We see few Government or Opposition ministes, at least no more than cameo's; this is the story of the two teams of whips, all of whom we come to know. It's a splendid ensemble performance, although I fear the two standout performances- Phil Daniels as Bob Mellish and Vincent Franklin as Michael Cocks- are on the Labour side. But there's plenty of politics- we have hints at the Tory shift to the right under Thatcher and the end of the Butskellite consensus; Labour's future in terms both of Militant sabotage and the slow replacement of all those working class men with young professionals, represented here by future Chief Whip Ann Taylor.

This is dramatic, funny, thoughtful; an examination of the game of politics, the stakes and the moral compromises involved, and of course the often enormous human cost. It's a wonderfu production of a wonderful play

Iron Man 3 (2013)

“Gods, aliens, other dimensions- I’m just a man in a can.”

 I rather liked this film the first time I saw it. And this time around it still struck me as well-directed, very much so in fact, well acted and characterised with Downey and Paltrow as superb as ever. And perhaps this time around the identity of the “Mandarin” was less of a surprise. But the film seems to be lacking something.

Perhaps it’s the lack of a real supervillain. Perhaps it’s the deliberately small scale of the film (compared to Tony’s last outing, at least) with his anxiety attacks in the wake of the events of The Avengers- which is actually a good character point, Tony Stark bring the kind of rich, powerful, arrogant type who needs vulnerabilities to remain sympathetic, although Downey’s huge charisma does a huge job on its own. But ultimately the film feels entertaining but, well, insubstantial by MCU standards. And it never quite convinces how he gives up all the armour at the end.

There are some very good bits. The twist with the Mandarin is brilliant, and Ben Kingsley gives us a superb comic turn, and the Mandarin videos themselves are a superb visual riff on the iconography if the “War on Terror” which feels oddly retro six years later. Guy Pearce is ok as Killian, although his accent slips in places. Don Cheadle further cements himself as a mainstay. And there’s a lot of fun with armour, and various bits of it. But this film is unexpectedly inconsequential. Even the post-credits sequence is a bit of a damp squib.

Frozen (2013)

“The cold never bothered me anyway.”

Little Miss Llamastrangler turned four on Monday, and I didn’t get a chance to watch anything last night. So here’s a blog post about what is a) Little Miss Llamastrangler’s favourite film, although other Disney princesses have risen a lot lately in her estimation and b) a film I’ve seen a million sodding tunes and might as well vent about the fact while acknowledging that the film is bloody good for what it is and, indeed, a class A substance for little girls.

One gripe I have is the title- Frozen, not The Ice Queen, the name of the actual Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. This is rather similar to Disney’s version of Rapunzel being called Tangled; they seem to like their past participle form of verbs. I bet if they ever do a version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff they’ll call it Trolled.

But I must admit this is a solid tale, and positive in a lot of ways. They’re really trying to avoid the trope of pretty princesses being all passive in their dresses while princes, i.e. men, have all the agency. This is a love story between two sisters in which Elsa’s sisterly love, not the kiss of a prince, saves Anna from eternity as a frozen statue. Prince Hans, Anna’s initial love interest and indeed fiancé, turns out to be a blunder and a cad and she ends up with the thoroughly working class Kristoff. Best of all, we learn that “conceal, don’t feel” is not the way to go- a nice little metaphor for expressing your true sexual orientation, whatever it may be.

Also, Olaf is funny, and has the best song.

Frozen isn’t perfect- Anna and Elsa are still feminine stick insects who look thin and pretty- but it’s a positive variation on what went before, and I’ll grudgingly admit that it managed to entertain me. Well, the first fifty times at least.

Man of Steel (2013)

"What are you smiling about, Captain?"

"Nothing, Sir. I just think he's kind of hot."

Usually I'd write a review based on the general premise of the film in question being good, bad, or indifferent. That's a rather challenging thing to do here. I mean, yes, ok, the film is good. It works. It's a solid start to the DC universe. But there are flaws, real flaws. The film gets away with it, in no small measure because of a solid script by the ever-dependable David S. Goyer and, interestingly, Christopher Nolan and the inspired casting of (thankfully moustache-free) Henry Cavill. But...

Here's the thing. Zack Snyder is technically a superb director. The whole thing is well shot in the extreme, even if it's CGI'd to death. It looks amazing. But it all feels (Russell Crowe as Jor-El aside, oddly) not quite persnal enough. There's just enough charm to get away with, but no more. And the direction: yes, it's clever. But at the expense of the storytelling- not enough to damage the film, but I'd say Snyder needed to watch it if not for the fact that #MeToo seems to make any such advice irrelevant.

There's a lot to praise, though. Traditionally dull Krypton is given CGI alien beasts of burden, an internal politics and a genetically caste-based culture against which Kal-El's birth is a rebellion in the name of freedom. I like that. I also like the characterisation of Zod here; he isn't a moustache-twirling baddie but a general, with his fanatical followers, who only wants to save Krypton. At the expense of our little human species, naturaally.

Lois Lane is presented well here, as a tenacious journalist who figures out who Clark is early on, saving us an awful lot of tiresomeness. Perry White is a bit more nuanced. Jimmy Olsen, er, isn't in the film. But it's a well-done and thoughtful approach to Superman's origins and the ideal first film for the new DC Cinematic Universe. They need to run  with it, so what next. Batman? The Dark Knight? No, those are both taken. So how about Batman: The Dark Knight? Yes. Colons are good. And the next film is in no way going to be a disaster. Right?

The Wolverine (2013)

"A man who has nightmares every night of his life is in pain.”

I know my 1980s Marvel, more or less. But I admit I never read the Chris Claremont limited series (we true Marvel zombies never use that awful phrase “miniseries; that’s for the Disgruntled Competition) on which this film is based. It makes no difference to how unexpectedly bloody good this film is, though.

The plot is intricate, exciting, James Bond-like and am excuse for loads of great Japanese set pieces, the highlight being a fight atop a bullet train. The direction is superb, with flashbacks of Jean Grey constantly beckoning a weakened Logan towards easeful death. And no cool Japanese trope is left unused. We even get a convincing romance between Logan and Mariko, although no one is getting married on this occasion.

There are continuity questions, of course; how come Logan remembers Nagasaki in 1945 if his memory was wiped at the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine? It’s also odd to see Viper as the villain in a Fox film where, of course, they can’t make any mention of HYDRA. And the use of Silver Samurai is certainly unexpected.  But the film isn’t really about any of that. It’s a superb action film about family and mortality. With ninjas. And possibly the finest film in the X-Men franchise up to this point. This franchise may lack the central quality control and planning of the MCU, but its individual films can sometimes be just as good. And now, it seems, it has the post credits sequences too...

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

"I'd rather been a good man than a great king."

I've pretty much decided that I need to get a move on with watching all Marvel films, especially MCU ones, and probably DC ones too. Without being anal about it I'm going to try and make half of the films I watch Marvel or Disgruntled Competition ones until I'm caught up. After all, I've certainly already blogged a fair proportion of them.

Anyway, let's talk about Thor: The Dark World. I liked it. A lot. It's not one of the most talked-about Marvel films over the five years since its release, but the MCU films never step below a certain level of quality. This being the second film, we already know both all the Asgardians and the whole gang of Jane, Eric and the wonderful Darcy, whom we fall in love with all over again. It's great to enjoy characters we already know rather than having them introduced to us. Highlights are the perfect reunion between Thor and Jane and the scene with Eric in the mental home, complete with Stan cameo. The film has wit, heart and excitement, and lots of each. You can tell it's Marvel. It also has, unexpectedly, Chris O'Dowd of all people in a moderately large part.

The baddie is Malekith, back from  the Walt Simonson days, played by Christopher Eccleston who, despite the unpleasantly snooty things he's since said about the part, does a perfectly good job. We also get Kurse, although with a very different, Beyonder-free backstory. And CGI trolls. Lots of them. Tom Hiddleston playing Loki with an extraordinary range of emotion, Frigga dying, a touching father/son scene in which Thor refuses the throne from Odin on the grounds that the decisions of kingship would mean he can no longer be a good man. It's fun to see London, too, and amusing that the convergence of the Nine Worlds should happen at, of all places, Greenwich. And, as ever, the MCU version of Asgard is great; powerful alien beings with 5,000 year lifespans whose advanced tech is always described in gracefully magical language, the perfect expression of Arthur C. Clarke's adage about sufficiently advanced tech being indistinguishable from magic.

If that wasn't good enough, we get Thor coming back to Jane at the end, and an intriguing post-credits scene involving the Collector and more plot-heavy talk about Infinity Stones. A brilliant film, the perfect blockbuster- well, it's MCU.

Oculus (2013)

"It was the mirror..."

This could have been a very good horror film. The central idea is sound, indeed very good, if a little derivative, and the performances (though Karen Gillen's accent slips) are generally good. This isn't, however, much of a start for Gillan's post-Doctor Who film career.

The concept- a mysterious mirror of a MacGuffin manipulates reality around it to cause murder, violence and gore and is resistant to scientific inquiry- is strong, and making the protagonists two siblings trying to make sense of their parents' deaths ten years previously increases the drama. The use of two parallel narratives, the present and the past, works well. The ending is particularly clever and horrific, with Tim being arrested for a murder he didn't commit in both time zones, and I love the philosophical implication that reality itself is subjective.

However, the realisation of this is hampered by the direction. Oh, it looks professional in its way, but it's over-glossy and suffers from that modern curse of MTV-derived directorial styles that simply don't work on a horror film. One is left to wonder just what a previous generation would have made of this script.

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.

Curse of Chucky (2013)

"It's a doll. What's the worst that can happen, eh?"

This film is genuinely bewildering. After two comedy instalments the franchise returns to its roots with an absolutely first class straight-up horror film. So why on earth did this triumph of a film go straight to video? A pen pusher somewhere has some explaining to do.

We are first introduced to the characters trapped inside this particularly large house, none of whom are likeable aside from the wheelchair-using Nica who, according to the grammar of these sorts of horror films is fated to be the only survivor. The snobbish, grasping  and unpleasant Barb, we know from the start, is due a particularly nasty death. She's a bad sort, plotting to put Nica in a home so she gets the house. Still, she's really struggling financially; she and her odious partner Ian may have to send their daughter Alice to state school. Grr! Oh, and Barb is having an affair with Alice's nanny Jill. As the only sexually active couple in the film they obviously have to die. Nice bit of misdirection, though; we're initially led to think it's Ian.

The scene with the rat poison in the food sets the tone nicely; this is how to do Chucky, with humour, yes, but real menace. On top of this, like any good slasher this is grounded in solid characterisation of the potential victims

. 

The ending is excellent, too, with a flashback connecting things nicely to the first film, and if that's not enough we even get a particularly nice cameo at the end. This is one of the best slashers ever. Really.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

"There is even talk... Of an election!!!"

It's hard to say much about this middle part of the trilogy without rehashing things I've already said about the previous film, well-made and good though the film is. Again, it's overlong but gets away with it. And again it's good in the same way as the Lord of the Rings films were good, but less likely to attract the attention of the academy due to lack of novelty.

Not that I mean this as any kind of negative criticism, but this film is more of the same, a splendid turn from Stephen Fry aside. Again, we have the parallel stories of Smaug's gold and the "Necromancer" actually being Sauron. The latter of these two plot threads is essentially what pads out the film, along with a greater emphasis on the dwarves' culture and history (they aren't just after gold, as they essentially were in the novel) and fleshing out the nature of the city of Dale. And then there's the Elven stuff, and Legolas. There's even a bit of political allegory, given the isolationist and Neville Chamberlain-like policies of the Elven king in the face of an obvious Hitler analogue

(Legolas, is, of course, a Wood Elf. Fitting, as there's always a touch of plywood to Orlando Bloom's performance. Boom boom.)

Probably the highlight of the film is Bilbo's awakening of Sauron. Which not only looks amazing but is absolutely made by the excellent voice work of Benedict Cumberbatch. It's odd, of course, to see him paired in this context with Martin Freeman, his erstwhile Baker Street chum, but these scenes are superb. 

It's a superb film, really, and the ending has you on the edge of your seat. At least, it does until Ed bloody Sheeran opens his stupid mouth...

Despicable Me 2 (2013)

"Good day, Mr Sheepsbutt."

"Ramsbottom!"

This is a bloody good film and well funny although, of course, it's now impossible for Gru to be a proper super villain again. Instead he works for a group of comedy special agents while having a love interest, looking after his daughters and losing Dr Nefarious to a proper supervillain. It's a predictable set-up, but who cares; it's funny.

Seeing Gru playing the part of dad to his three cute little girls will never stop being funny, and the birthday party at the start is hilarious. Not quite so comedic, but heartwarming nonetheless, is his developing relationship with Lucy Wilde. Her introduction, though, having a gadget for everything, is highly amusing.

Also amusing is the idea of Gru now using all his supervillain stuff to, er, make jam. The minions are funny and cute, obviously. My favourite scenes are probably the ones during Gru's date with that horrible conformist woman. And, when it seems that plot convenience is to separate them, there's a hilariously tense scene with Gru trying to pluck up the courage to pick up the phone and ask her out. Inevitably, the girls end up with a new mum.

All of that sounds excessively soppy for a comedy, and it is, but again who cares as there are laughs aplenty. This is just as good as it's predecessor.

Much Ado About Nothing (2013)

"When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married."

This may be one of the most low budget films I will ever review for this blog, yet it is quietly wonderful; filmed entirely in the grounds of Joss Whedon's house in classy monochrome, a cast of Whedon's usual suspects combine with the enforced creativity of filming caused by the restricted locations to create some real magic.

Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof have always been actors worthy of the greatest roles, and they both shine as Beatrice and Benedick. Clark Gregg, a natural at benevolent authority figures, is an excellent Leonato, while Sean Maher is suitably sinister as Don John. Fran Kranz (against type) and newcomer Jillian Morgese are also highlights as Claudio and Hero. The cast is rounded out by Reed Diamond as Don Pedro and, intriguingly, Nathan Fillion in a comic role as the delightfully soft man of malapropism a Dogberry.

The different rooms of the house are nicely used to separate the characters during the masked ball, but the best framed scenes are those whereby first Benedick and then Beatrice are made to "overhear" talk that the other loves them. Denisof's comic acting is superb here, but both he and Acker are also naturals at delivering the ensuing soliloquys.

This is one of Shakespeare's most enjoyable comedies, with much wise philosophising on the ways of love and relationships, although even those, such as myself, who are burdened with a "y" chromosome find it hard, looking across the centuries, not to notice the appalling gender double standards at play here. Leonato, in particular, is not a sympathetic character to modern eyes in his denunciation of Hero at her aborted wedding, but Clark Gregg deals with this as well as can be done.

I urge you to see this wonderful film. What can be better than both Joss Whedon and William Shakespeare?