SPECTRE (2015)

"Information is all, is it not?"" 

Ok, perhaps this isn't quite as good as its predecessor, but that's a very high bar, and this is nevertheless a fine Bond film. And a highly satisfying payoff to all the long-running plot threads that have been playing out since Casino Royale. Needless to say... spoilers!

It's a huge thrill to see Bond, gone just rogue enough, chasing all the pre-existing clues to an organisation that was always going to be SPECTRE, and an end of level boss, played superbly as always by Christoph Waltz, who was always going to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The backstory is nice, though, with "Blofeld" being Bond;s childhood stepbrother who regards him as a "cuckoo". The fact that his mother's maiden name happens to be Blofeld does, admittedly, feel a little forced... but, dammit, rule of cool.

The set pieces are awesome, right from the start with the Day of the Dead in Mexico City, right through Bond's infiltration of the mysterious organisation's headquarters in Rome through to the final showdown with "Blofeld". Andrew Scott's secondary, bureaucratic baddie ("C"... yes, I get the allusion!) is fun. And there is, of course, a very real subtext to it all with us all merrily handing over our personal data to those evil, MAGA-loving tech bros. In the real world, sadly, there's no 007 to save us from our fate.

The ending is, with the very obvious difference that Madeleine gets to live, somewhat redolent of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with Bond falling in love and choosing love over the job. But, of course, there's one more film of this era to go. If it's anywhere near as good as this, I can't wait.

1917 (2019)

 "Am I dying?"

"Yes, yes, I think you are."

Wow. How else can I begin? This film is at once a tour de force of cinematography, an epic quest that is at times both dreamlike and almost evocative of Lord of the Rings... and profoundly, deeply, realistic. It's a profound work of the cinematic art that will linger in my mind. And I'm sure there are subtexts and metaphors which have just swooshed right over my head.

The cinematography, by the great Roger Deakin, is sublimre, giving us a textured world that feels at once both of its time and utterly real. The first few minutes, from the field right through the trenches and what must be a cavernous set, are apparently a single shot... and the feat is repeated again and again as Schofield and Blake traverse the bleak sights of No Man's Land on their desperate mission.

The War and its very real horrors are superbly evoked- the rats, the mud, the fear, the grim humour, the bloody awful food, the normalisation of violent death. The dialogue feels real So do the characters- we get to know Blake and Schofield very well, and Schofield's slow metamorphosis from reluctance to absolute determination is well-earned and feels real.

And yet... there is also, somehow, a mythic element here, an epic quest, a kind of Odyssey, a picaresque tale of wanderings. It is hard not to see the cherry trees as metaphor- cut down in their prime, but they will grow again. And the poor orphaned baby, with milk from Schofield, is another sign that out of death comes rebirth. And yet, at the same time, war is unremittingly grim.

An extraordinary work of genius. Literally my only criticism is of Colin Firth's moustache.

Sherlock: The Final Problem

"I wrote my own version of the nativity when I was a child. "The Hungry Donkey". It was a bit gory. But if you're gonna put a baby in a manger, you're asking for trouble."

I've not been quick in blogging this episode so I've not failed to notice the divided reaction which seems, anecdotally, to be more negative than not. And one of the main criticisms I hear- that this is yet another non-whodunit- is a valid one in that Moffat and Gatiss are certainly not writing what their audience wants and expects from Sherlock. But here lies, I suppose, the question: are writers mere hacks hired to give an audience what they want, or are they artists who may transcend such considerations? There is, of course, no easy answer, and I do not claim to be firmly on either side. But I will make the obvious point that giving the audience what that want connects very awkwardly with giving them surprise and unexpected events. I will also note that I enjoyed this episode very much. And that Mrs Llamastrangler was deeply affected, to the point of tears at the end.

This episode is a series of interlocking puzzles and fun little intellectual games, all with a touch of the macabre, but it is of course really about the character stuff, an excuse to explore the psyches of not only the fascinating Eurus but also Sherlock, John and the pleasingly foregrounded Mycroft.

If there's a disappointment it's the relative lack of Moriarty, whose games from beyond the grave do not come close to living up to expectations and whose screen time is painfully limited. But Eurus is a superb creation and Sian Brooke gives an incredible performance. It's so very clever that, after all the misdirection hinting at a third Holmes brother called "Sherrinford", this is simply the name of the prison where Eurus does her Silence of the Lambs stuff.

There are clever nods to The Musgrave Ritual and The Three Garridebs, but here we are quite moving away from a Holmes canon that the series may have outgrown. Certainly, each character- including Mrs Hudson, Molly and Lestrade, gets what would work as a final scene, suggesting that this may have been intended as a possible finale. I suspect no one connected with the show really knows whether or not Sherlock will ever be back, what with everyone being so very busy, but that this was designed as a fitting finale if need be. I hope it isn't, and I'm sure the creators do too. After all, we end with Sherlock and John both back in 221B Baker Street, and The Dancing Men...

And yeah. Mrs Hudson vacuuming to "The Number of the Beast". Awesome.

Henry VI, Part 2 (Dominic Cooke, 2016)

"O tiget's heart wrapped in a woman's hide!"

The cast also includes Stanley Townsend, Sam Troughton and Jason Watkins and is a superb assemblage of actors not all of whom, alas, can be tagged. This is a superb array of performances.

Anyway, the BBC continue their Season of Shakespeare's Henry VI plays plus Richard III under the Hollow Crown imprimatur, and it's awesome. Here, despite the title, we have the very end of Part 2 and all of Part 3, much abridged. I've seen and read a lot of Shakespeare but these television plays are my first experience of the Henry VI plays.

These plays are early; Shakespeare was much younger when writing them than he was for his more acclaimed plays, so the theme of kingship is not dealt with in the subtlety of the plays he would later write for the decades prior to Henry VI's accession. The dialogue and characterisation are sublime, though; Queen Margaret is delicious, and it's so fascinating to see the young Richard of Gloucester, slowly forming into the Machiavel he will eventually become. Benedict Cumberbatch stands out, obviously, but Sophie Okonedo gives the most memorable performance as z superb Margaret, and Stankey Townsend's Warwick deserves mention too, as does Adrian Dunbar's Richard of York.

It's a gloriously bloody play, with Richard of York's sadistic dispatching at Margaret's hands as its centrepiece. Henry, again, is shown to be a peaceful, harmless wet blanket- something which, for a King, paradoxically engenders civil war, death and untold misery, as Henry sees at his defeat by Edward IV, with father killing son and vice versa. No wonder he goes mad. And in allowing his armies to be commanded by a woman ("The Queen has more success when you are absent"), he fails at what a King was expected to do.

It's a superb production of a gripping play, one I'm glad I've seen. And the end- with Richard plotting his own way to the throne- makes me excited for the next instalment, one much more familiar...

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...

Sherlock: The Empty Hearse

"What did he say?"

"F..."

"Cough."

I'm so very late in writing up this season of Sherlock (and, yet, much else... I have sooooo many sets of notes to write up!) that it feels so much has been said in the blogosphere already about this first episode already, particularly about its interaction with online fandom, with which this episode often feels like a dialogue, that it's supposedly far too metatextual for its own good, and that this episode doesn't really function as a whodunit.

To all this I shall briefly point out that the episode simply had to address the huge cliffhanger at the end of the last series, indeed it had to devote a whole episode to Sherlock's return and it's consequences. This pretty much removes the possibility of structuring this episode around a traditional whodunit format, and what's wrong with a bit of format-stretching anyway? And while, contradictory to what has been said by many commenters, we do in fact get an "official" explanation of Sherlock's survival (with cheeky caveats!), this was never the real point; what people have really waited two years for is the reaction to Sherlock's resurrection, especially from John. And we are not disappointed.

Far more interesting are the characters, the story beats and the series' traditional wit. And the latter of these has always been somewhat metatextual.

With all that out of the way...

The episode needs a murder plot to chug away in the background while all the character stuff happens, but this time it it (rightly) kept in the background, albeit with the character of Lord Moran harking back nicely to The Empty House. The terrorist plot itself is little more than a superficial retread of V for Vendetta, but that isn't a bad thing; this is a nice little shorthand for the viewer so that this subplot doesn't take up too much time.

The thing that is lingered on, and rightly so, is Sherlock's return, and it's consequences. Because time has not stood still over the last two years: John has got engaged (and Mrs Hudson, hilariously, assumes that it's to a man!), although 221B Baker Street is fortunately untenanted. Molly has a boyfriend who looks suspiciously like Sherlock, and the blogosphere abounds with theories on how Sherlock may have survived.

Sherlock's reveal to John is hilarious, of course, coming as it does in the middle of John's proposal to Mary, who is quite wonderful. Hilariously, Sherlock's explanation is punctuated by various acts of violence on him by John, which lead them to be thrown out of various restaurants and have to continue their conversation in progressively shabbier eateries. Mary, of course, likes him.

Mycroft knew, of course. And he and Sherlock have an insightful chat, over games of chess and Operation, about Sherlock's feelings of isolation without John there to be with him during his cases. But John, adrenaline junkie that he is, is quickly bored without the fix that Sherlock's cases give him, and quickly gets himself kidnapped for reasons which will go unexplained for a couple of episodes. This gives Sherlock a good chance to bond with Mary as they set out to rescue him.

We end with all back to the original status quo, and with a glimpse of a mysterious baddie. This episode is a wild ride, but it is far from self-contained. Sherlock suddenly feels far more like a serial drama than it did. Onwards, then...

Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall

“Don’t be dead. Will you do that just for me?”

OK, I’ll say it straight up: THIS POST IS RIDDLED WITH SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE EPISODE THEN LOOK AWAY NOW. SERIOUSLY. I MEAN IT.

Right, now that the formalities have been dispensed with… that was excellent telly. Superb, in fact. Steve Thompson has come good at last. Even so, it wasn’t quite as good as either of the Steven Moffat scripts (it lacked the spark and wasn’t quite as clever), or as good as Mark Gatiss’ The Great Game (the cleverest of them all). That’s to praise with faint damn, of course, but Thompson is no Steven Moffat. Similarly, we Doctor Who fans know all too well that Toby Haynes is a first rate director (I bet the Nina Simone stuff was played back during recording. Nice.), and he's done a first rate job here. He’s no Paul McGuigan, though. Then again, who is? Actually, let’s not allow the fact that other episodes of this superlative series are even better distract us from how bloody good this is.

The framing device, with the first scene being John telling us that Sherlock is dead and the story then unfolding in flashback, is utterly predictable, but that’s the joy of it. And yes, even the fact that it’s undercut in the final scene by a blatantly not-dead Sherlock is predictable. But again, that’s the joy of it. The cleverness is in the little things and the characterisation.

A lot of stuff pays off here, from Donovan’s suspicions about Holmes to Holmes’ relationship with the lovely Molly; at last he finally says something nice to her, and a bloody good thing too! I just want to hug her whenever she’s on screen. I suspect she had a lot to do with how Sherlock faked his death, although there’s quite a lot to be explained. There was a body! It was buried! And yet today we find out that a new series is on the way. Yay!

Both Cumberbatch and Freeman are extraordinary here, giving us a much wider emotional range than they’ve previously been called upon to show. But it’s Andrew Scott who’s the revelation here, managing to square the circle of being suitably and terrifyingly psychopathic without crossing the line into pantomime villain territory. This is Moriarty as the Joker, and it works. He’s a very disturbed individual, with a death wish because he’s “bored”. He defeats Sherlock, yet he’s the one who is, seemingly, genuinely dead. His own life means less to him than the silly little game he's playing. He’s clever enough to virtually warp reality itself, creating a world in which Sherlock is a fraud, but what does it bring him in the end?

Interestingly, this is an episode in which all the clever people fail. The fall of Sherlock, the apparent death of Moriarty and the accidental betrayal of his brother by Sherlock can perhaps be set against the humanity of John and, arguably, Molly, who finally gets at least some appreciation from the man she loves. Even Donovan and the journalist (it’s great to see Katharine Parkinson, but even better to see the tabloids getting skewered)) are arguably portrayed as too clever for their own good. This is the triumph of the ordinary. Appropriate; this episode is clever but, compared to other episodes, not too clever. But it certainly has heart.

Still, I thought last series ended in a big cliffhanger… how will they get out of this one? I suspect empty houses may be involved somehow…

Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia

“You don’t trust your own secret service?”

“Naturally not. They spy on people for money.”

Well, what a very cheeky resolution to the cliffhanger that was. It was an anti-climax of sorts, but in such a knowing way that you’re too busy admiring the chutzpah to mind. I love the ringtone. In fact, although I wasn’t sure before, I think the silently mouthed “sorry” may have entirely won me over to Andrew Scott’s Moriarty.

This is as good as television gets. Let’s just take the superlatives and the gushing as read so we can talk about it, shall we? I’d just like to emphasise that, although the performances are uniformly great here (Mark Gatiss’ arch performance as Mycroft has also won me over at this point, and Steven Moffat’s script is extraordinary even for him, Paul McGuigan has to be singled out for special praise. He must surely be the finest director working in British TV. There are so many little tricks that take my brat away here, from the parade of clients at the start, the flashback to the mystery of the hiker with Sherlock discoursing to Irene, on her sofa, in the middle of the field (Douglas Adams, anyone?); to Sherlock’s subsequent change of location from the field to his bed, in one shot; to all those little tricks with text on the screen that we’ve come to know so well- I love the question marks! This is all shot as wittily as it is written.

There are so many threads to this intricate story from the very beginning, as we’re immediately bombarded with multiple problems, not all of which are red herrings. But the intricacy of the storyline doesn’t mean that character is at all neglected; in fact there’s loads of character development here. Sarah is long gone; John has since had a string of girlfriends, all of whom have dumped him because his most important relationship is clearly with Sherlock. Sherlock is shown to be much closer to Mrs Hudson than we’ve seen before. There are heavy hints, after Irene “dies”, that Sherlock may have a recurring habit of turning to some rather dodgy substances when emotionally low. John and Mycroft are clearly much better acquainted by now. But we can’t go any further without talking about Irene Adler.

Ah yes, “The Woman”. I’m not sure that such a vague “brand” name would be much good for a dominatrix advertising her services, but perhaps she doesn’t need to, and that’s the point. She’s such a brilliant and multi-faceted character, played to perfection by Lara Pulver. She’s Sherlock’s match, and literally, er, beats him at one point, but she isn’t quite his mirror image. She isn’t exactly a repressed “high-functioning psychopath” like Sherlock; she’s very self-controlled but emotionally relates to other people in a very normal way. It isn’t about the intellectual challenge for her; it’s about playing power games. And there’s a very sharp distinction between her and Moriarty, too. Moriarty is a disturbed psychopath, whereas Irene’s power games are obviously all about the fun, and even more obviously sexual in nature. She’s not interested in power for its own sake, but only in fun, and the slightly more mundane matter of personal protection through the possession of secrets. And she’s so, so sexy. I hope she’d be gentle with me, but I so would.

The “other woman” (and one we’ll be seeing a lot more of in future episodes, I expect) is Molly. And we seem to get an explicit contrast between her and Irene. She’s jealous, obviously (Sherlock “recognises Irene’s “body” through “not her face”), but her reaction to Sherlock’s faux pas at the Christmas party is very revealing; she seems to actively enjoy being on the receiving end of Sherlock’s unintended verbal humiliation. It’s hard not to see this as an obviously intentional binary opposition between her and Irene.

Oh, and his infatuation with “The Woman” leads to much dialogue speculating on Sherlock’s sexuality. It seems most likely to me that he’s asexual, and that his attraction to Irene is genuine but has nothing to do with squishy body parts and nothing to do with her gender. He’s capable of bonding with others to an extent (I love the conspiratorial naughtiness between him and John in the palace) but he seems to have no sexual urges at all. She obviously likes him, though, even though she never refers to him as anything other than “Mr Holmes”.

We have some wonderfully metatextual fun here, as always; the parade of cases at the start are blogged about by John under such titles as “The Speckled Blonde” and “The Geek Interpreter”. This is cool, although it also carries the worrying implication that Moffat believes there probably won’t be another series so he might as well use up the titles. Of similar coolness is the fact that Sherlock is always being mistakenly assumed to always wear a deerstalker, based on a single photograph! Even better is his very individual method of calling the police.

There’s a lot of delightfully cheeky lèse-majesté here, too. I love Sherlock’s quip about his illustrious client (there goes another title…) being “someone with a navy”, and the fun with the ashtray and God Save the Queen on the violin. I bet Brenda watched this, too! It would also be fun to speculate on which young, female royal Moffat had in mind, but I’m not touching that one with a bargepole.

The final fifteen minutes are pretty much orgasmic. The bang bang bang of inspired revelations is just exquisite, but not quite as cool as Mycroft’s observation that Sherlock chooses to use his intellect not to be a scientist or a philosopher, but a detective, and once wanted to be a pirate. He may be asexual, but he certainly has a romantic side. And this is the final thing we see, as swords flash in Karachi and rumours of Irene’s death are about to be exaggerated. This might be a little implausible, if we were to nit-pick, but it’s so, so cool, and the moment has so been earned. As I said, this is as good as television gets.

Sherlock: The Great Game

“Any ideas?”

“Seven, so far.”

Blimey. This is not so much a story as a television equivalent of one of Conan Doyle’s collections of short stories from the Strand magazine, with a connecting twist. And yet, it fits together, and it fits together so well. This is a superb piece of television, and proof that, although his work on Doctor Who may not always have shown it until recently, Mark Gatiss is a bloody fantastic writer. And, by the way, after last episode’s stint by Euros Lyn, a bit meh in comparison, Paul McGuigan is helming this one.

The opening, in Minsk, is deft and witty although, following a line in the first episode where Holmes mentions sending Mrs Hudson’s husband to the gallows or some such barbarity, it continues a rather worrying pro-capital punishment trend. Less of this, please.

Gatiss is obviously rather more of a Holmes fanboy than Moffat, or at least shows it more. This is no bad thing. Sherlock shooting at the wall, Sherlock not realising that the Earth goes round the Sun (which will be important later, and also introduces a theme, about which more later on), Sherlock’s criticisms of John’s blog- these things are a joy. Not only is the latter the sort of metatextual fun I always love, it’s doubly so, as the text is referring not only to itself but to the text that inspired it, which is also referring to itself. I love this sort of thing. And yes, when Lestrade mentioned that everyone at Scotland Yard was also following John’s blog, I did indeed have an orgasm.

Gatiss, as is his privilege as showrunner, inserts himself into the narrative as Mycroft, and gives a wonderfully knowing performance, both in his acting and in the lines he gives himself. The character of Mycroft is, of course, fundamentally metatextual: he has all the observational powers of Sherlock, yet he exists purely as comic effect and plot convenience, and the wonderful thing is that the character himself is intelligent enough to realise this, and to tip a knowing wink to the audience. Anyway, he’s here to introduce The Bruce-Partington Plans just as Lestrade who, admittedly with a somewhat meatier role, is referencing The Five Orange Pips.

Pip one is a pair of trainers. Is that not a glorious sentence? The villain- and, let’s be clear, there’s no mystery that it’s Moriarty- is a right bastard, putting a collar bomb on the first of three victims. This one, at least, lives, unlike the third. It must be a horrible way to die.

Moving swiftly on past Molly and her new boyfriend Jim (“gay!”), whom she presumably parades in front of Sherlock out of spite, we solve this first puzzle and have John in an amusing scene with Mycroft. We do, of course, know that this will dovetail with the main plot(s), for such is television drama, but the comedy is well fun.

Pip two is the Ian Monkford stuff, where Sherlock, by pretending to be an old friend of Ian’s, hugely offends his wife. Yes, this may illustrate his “sociopathic” side, but it’s retrospectively clear that he suspects her of profiting from Ian’s disappearing act. Anyway, this one’s solved too. Incidentally, Sherlock seems to have an iPhone GPS, as I do. Yay consumerism.

Anyway, pip three concerns a star of daytime telly, and Sherlock dully immerses himself in the online forum of said show. This links quite strongly to the earlier-mentioned solar system stuff; something which might normally be dismissed has having suddenly become relevant. And the idea of Moriarty as a consulting criminal (this is not in Conan Doyle, and is in fact an inspired innovation) is developed here.

We’re introduced to Sherlock’s “homeless network” which, however heartless a concept it may seem, is just a modernisation of the “Baker Street Irregulars”. And pips four and five, neither of which get much action via Sherlock’s new pink phone, involve a dead security guard and a fake Vermeer painting, and said memory stick.

Oh, and the Czech assassin is “The Golem”, and he turns out to be Nosferatu (which I will, at some point, review along with, yes, Shadow of the Vampire), showing that Gatiss has at least a passing acquaintance with my beloved German silent films.

It turns out that pip number four revolves around a supernova in 1858. Clever, as is our security guard. Dead, as is our professor, to the sound of Holst’s The Planets. I love this plot. We get, of course, a resolution to the Bruce-Partington stuff before we move to the big confrontation with Moriarty (on this viewing, Andrew Scott is an inspired choice) at the pool.

The bit where we suspect, just for a moment, that John may be Moriarty (!) is inspired, but instead we get a Mexican stand-off, and a cliffhanger…