The Batman (2022)

 "It's all connected."

While the later films didn't quite manage to maintain the excellence, one would perhaps naturally assume that Christopher Nolan had perfected the Batman film back in 2005 with Batman Begins. Yet it would seem not. We have a new contender.

So why is this film so good? Wisely, it skips the origin story and, notably, focuses on a very realistic portrayal of Gotham, with zero supernatural or sci-fi elements. The film is superbly and stylistically shot. Robert Pattinson is perfect as Bruce Wayne, while Zoe Kravitz and Jeffrey Wright also excel.

The use of villains is also excellent. This is a brilliant way of using the Riddler, while Penguin is toned down to become a mere mob boss, no doubt to appear again. The character of Selina Kyle is very well written indeed.

Yet this is at root a crime film very much reminiscent of the Saw franchise and not only in its visual style. Not necessarily in terms of the tiresomely excessive gore but the elements of those films that were actually good- the dark, almost hopeless feeling that violent, corruption and despair are ever-present, and the complex, multi-layered mystery, something which works supremely well here and makes everything feel very fresh indeed.

Yet what works even better is the way the Riddler is reinvented in the vein of Jigsaw, as a crusader for truth. Even better, there's a thread of Gotham having dark secrets in its past, which is used to comment wryly on the extremely harmful conspiracy theory online culture that exists today. It makes the point, rightly, that conspiracy theories are not mere harmless fun.

I hope this film is the first of several. It certainly seems to be setting things up for the future. Overall, though, this film is a triumph..

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

 "You said I could eat bad guys!"

I only watched this film as an easy watch after a knackering day, expecting a non-demanding bit of third rate superhero fluff- much like this film's predecessor, enjoy it though I did.

Instead, directed by Andy Serkis- he of the recent extraordinary performance in Andor- we have a taut, entertaioning action film that doesn't outstay its welcome and develops its characters superbly. I know not of Carnage and Shriek- they are after my time as far as the comics are concerned- but I really loved them as characters, well written and acted. Woody Harrelson in particular is superb as a serial killer who, we learn only at the last minute, was made that was by child abuse. It just goes to show that those who participate in judicial killing, whether signing death warrants or administering a lethal injection, are as evil as their victims and deserve no less.

Not only the villains are well-characterised, of course. Ediie and Venom's bromance gets a nice little arc, and both of them come to accept that Anne is lost to them, and to wish her well.

The plot is simple yet effective, with the King Kong conclusion an oldie but goodie. This is a film about love, however twisted; about the lingering effects of child abuse; about the evils of judicial killing- those who take part in this vice all die- but, most of all, it's a rollicking ride.

And that mid-credits, echoing Spider-Man: No Way Home: the fugitive Eddie/Venom are in the MCU...?

Andor: One Way Out

 "I burn my decency for someone else's future..."

This is an extraordinary episode of television. Obviously the focus is on the priso escape, a heost in reverse, full of drama and tension. But, more than that, it's about the intense and extraordinary performance of Andy Serkis, whose performance deserves recognition come award season, as Kino Roy, a man of such intense and nuanced character who saves everyone yet must be left behind because he cannot swim. It's that good. That alone is enough to elevate this episode to the sublime.

And then we get Luthen, coordinating the Rebellion, making harsh decisions, choosing to let the empire kill fifty men rather than reveal the existence of a spy. And his speech, when challenged by the spy, is a thing of art, expressing the moral ambiguities which one must face when destroying fascism.

Thois is an upbeat episode. A moment of triumph, as five thousand men escape. Yet the existential horror of tyranny remains. The Empire is not some movie serial space tyranny. It is Lukashenko. It is Khamenei. It is Trump. It is Crown Prince Mohammed. It is Putin. As ever in Andor.

Andor: Nobody's Listening

 "I can't help him. I can't help anyone."

Andor continues to be the best television exploration of totalitarianism. Where to start? With Dedra being menacingly evil while having Bix tortured, with her being scarily efficient at uncovering everything? With Mon Mothma be caught with her funding rebel activities, and by the way Vel is her cousin? 

All these things emphasise the sheer intensity of Imperial oppression. Yet there are those who benefit. Dedra, despite the tightrope she walks. Syril Kane, who seems to be obsessed with her as much as his own ambition. That's a fascinating and creepy dynamic.

But the focus is on that prison, The horror of it, the hopelessness of escape. Yet, slowly, even Andy Serkis' prisoner supervisor starts to see the hopelessness as an old man, forty shifts from release, has a stroke and is euthanised. And it's realised that no one ever leaves; released prisoners are simply reassigned. There are only life sentences. That's evil.

And even the supervisor turns against them.

This is bleak, powerful stuff.

Andor: Narkina 5

 "You think the Empire stops to catch its breath?"

The episode begins like the Space Fall episode of Blake's 7 as a pseudonymous Andor and others are transported to a  prison planet, but soon takesa darker turn as we are forced to see the shher awful grind of life in an Imperial factory prison.

Yet the prison works also as metaphor for totalitarianism under Empire, with all civil liberties and natural justces eroding into utter tyranny. Yet, like a boiled frog, much of the populace, particularly privileged senators on Coruscant who, unlike a Mon Mothma desperately trying to hide her illicit funds, come out with statements like "If you're doing Nothing wrong, what is there to fear?" 

Yet all prison sentences are doubled. Arrests and imprisonment are, as we've seen, arbitrary. One is reminded of the vile, disgusting, tyrannical leaders of Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, Belarus, Saudi Arabia and others. Palpatine is no different, but there is hope despite the oppression. As Luthen says, tyranny begets rebellion. And I suspect we're seeing that in the person of Kassian. Even Bix is arrested...

Absolutely first class.

What If... Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?

 "You believe the cure for human suffering is more suffering?"

This is a fascinating episode. Killmonger saves Tony Stark... so he remains a playboy and never becomes Iron Man, leading to so much stuff not happening. For much of the episode we have basically decent but still very playboy Tony Stark.

But that's not what this episode is about.

It's about Erik Killmonger, and his lifelong concealed rage. Rage against racism. Rage against colonial exploitation. A rage that leads him to use Ulysses Klaw while he remains useful but kills him as soon as he slips into very Sith Efrican casual racism redolent of those days, within living memory, when South Africa was not so civilised. 

Stark still tries to be a hero in the end, but Killmonger is a fascinating and complex character amongst many in a nuanced and highyly satisfactory episode that packs so much into half an hour.

It's great to hear the voice of Chadwick Boseman. He's in this a lot, and he must have been dying. Was he too sick to appear on film but determined to make as much of a mark as he could in the time he had left? A sad thought.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

"Ah, Skywalker. Missed you I have."

I'm a fan of Star Wars, in the ordinary sense of the word. Sufficiently so that I watched every Star Wars film at the cinema from Return of the Jedi in 1983 to The Force Awakens in 2015 at the cinema, incuding the horrible special editions of the original trilogy. Sufficiently so that I could spend talking about the old Kenner action figures. Suffciently so that I've blogged the '80s Ewok TV films.

That it's taken me so long to watch this film is a testament to how real life has changed for me these days, and little else. Let's just say that, with a daughter, a disabled wife and a full time job, free time is not what it once was.

But that’s not the only reason I mention this. Because I’m a fan, but not a fanboy. And I’m vaguely aware of the fact, if not necessarily the details, that the fanboys wee split over this film. And I have no idea why. It’s a splendid bit of blockbuster fun, with real heart at its core and great characters, and absolutely in the spirit- and indeed structure- of the original trilogy.

That last point, after this second film, is now abundantly clear. Hence Han, in the last film, fulfilled the role of Obi Wan, whereas Luke here is Yoda, in terms of plot function. Leia has a large and rather touching role, rather fitting as a send off for the much-missed Carrie Fisher. But the main protagonists are or course Rey, Finn, Poe and Kylo Ren, the next generation. And rightly so.

I love how the film knowingly echoes the sort of things earlier Star Wars films tended to do, but does unexpected things at the last minute. So Ren shockingly kills Snoke as Vader killed Palpatine- but not because he’s had a moral reawakening, merely because of personal ambition. Laura Dern’s unlikeable Vice Admiral Holdo turns out to be right, brave and clever all along. Luke is not even there in his final, epic fight with Ren- the second member of the original cast he’s now slain. Best of all, Rey is not Luke’s daughter or any such thing, just a poor person from nowhere. Social mobility is a thing on the Star Wars universe.

I can see how some may dislike Luke’s characterisation here; they have a good case to make, but good drama should be unpredictable and challenging by definition. Arguably it may be out of character, but by sleight of hand it works. As for those lonely, virgin little boys who stamp their tiny feet at the fact some of the cast have the temerity to not be white or male (gasp), let us leave them to their crippling loneliness.

I didn’t just like this film. I loved it. Waiting three years was absurd.

A Christmas Carol: Part Two

"This is not reason versus fancy, Ebenezer."

Two thirds in and I think I can say that this daring, dark and devilishly clever version of the story is really rather brilliant- give or take a certain two things which I'll come to in the next paragraph. It was all about the Ghost of Christmas Past, though- the last episode will have a lot to squeeze in.

There are a certain two bits of this episode that are particularly edgy, though. It's been a long while since I read the novella, probably more than twenty years ago, but I'm fairly sure that the sexual abuse of Scrooge at boarding school was not remotely hinted at. Nor was his sexual exploitation of Mary Cratchitt for Tiny Tim's operation. These two elements both make Scrooge initially more sympathetic by showing us his "old pain" from his early childhood, but then go on to make us hate him as a sexual abuser. That's brave, and will make it harder to end this satisfactorily- how can such a monster be redeemed? Of course, his shockingly brutal and immoral business practices are shown in greater detail too, so there's a wider picture here. And it's notable that the multiple plot threads of the first episode (Marley's angle, Mary's source of money) all feed like tributaries into one here.

What we have here, I think, is a very modern deconstruction of Victorian Britain and its literature, not limited to the fairly foregrounded references to Hard Times as seen in the quote. Of course sexual abuse was never mentioned- but it was rife, as it has been throughout history. And so, of course, was the sexual exploitation of desperate women by powerful men. Both evils are still with us today, but in Victorian times there was the added evil of a woman always being judged harshly for any sexual act  not with a husband, circumstances be damned. In any Victorian novel, any woman such as Mary, however blameless, would die- I'm thinking of The Odd Women and Tess of the d'Urbervilles but the tendency was, I think, universal, How will this series deal with Mary?

There's an awful lot that the third episode needs to do. But this episode has been masterfully done, with some brave decisions, certainly, but handled with skill.

A Christmas Carol: Part One

“Bah humbug!”

It's quite a statement of intent to begin an adaptation of A Christmas Carol with a boy pissing on a bloke's grave, but that's what happens here. It's a very clear sign that the three hours of Dickensian drama that lie before us are going to be devoid of the normal schmaltz and sentimentality.

This is a grubby, harsh and, well, Dickensian London, just before Christmas 1843. It's a time of poverty, suffering, starvation and sickness, long before the Welfare State and, indeed, probably where we're headed in the next few years, unprotected by EU membership from Trump's rapacious designs on our food and our health system and where the Welfare State is becoming deeply unfashionable to those in power, much like such things as objective truth, the BBC, an independent Civil Service and, you know, institutions that one imagines a "Conservative" ought to want to preserve. But I digress. At least, in 1843, things were getting better. They had Sir Robert Peel, not "Sir" Iain bloody Duncan Smith.

None of that hope means much to poor Bob Cratchit, forced to work for an unusually lean Ebenezer Scrooge in the shape of Guy Pearce, a cynical smartarse who manages to be just likeable enough as an antihero. There's a long scene of dialogue between Cratchit and Scrooge, with Cratchit anxious to get home for Christmas Eve from his job as a human photocopier, or "clerk" in 1843 speak, which nicely gives us all the necessary exposition about his family's unfortunate situation and their respective situations. This side of thngs is almost traditional.

However, all this stuff with Jacob Marley and a very hellish Purgatory (it's all very Catholic but then it's a concept rather necessary to the idea of a ghost)- it's all very dark, scary, visual and not in the novella. Nor is this odd little sub-plot with Mrs Cratchit's cousin. And surely if, on Christmas Eve, Scrooge is told there will be three ghosts on successive midnights, this will take him long past Christmas morning?

This is brazen, bold, brave and different. Is it going to work? Well, the jury's out.

Black Panther (2018)

“It's hard for a good man to be king."

This is a hard film to review objectively. It's clearly a significant cultural artifact, far more so than a normal MCU film, and has connected with the African diaspora worldwide for its Afro-Futurism, a big part of a cultural movement that includes works such as Janelle Monae's ArchAndroid, and which constitutes a positive look at the potential of African achievement in spite of a background of colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade.

The central conceit of the character of T'Challa has been, of course, for 52 years, that he's the king of a fictional African nation- Wakanda- that secretly defies all African stereotypes to be the most technologically and socially advanced nation on Earth. It's an African paradise, yet the cause of a central debate between the traditional view of the late T'Chaka- Wakanda is for the Wakandans, not for all Africa or the world, and it must be protected; and the view-,expounded with militancy by Erik Killmonger, that Wakanda must share its bounty with the world. This is an interesting central dilemma, but one fundamentally divorced from real world concerns. And, while it's good to see a positive portrayal of Africa and Africans, it's also a little disturbing to see Wakanda presented as a mish-mash of various West African, East African and South African cultures, not all of them Bantu, as though they were the same- and they are not; sub-Saharan Africa is huge and impossibly diverse. I'm not sure that the message that African cultures are pretty much the same is fundamentally a positive one, whatever the merits of the film's upbeat message. Is it only white and Asian people who are allowed to have distinctly different ethnic identities?

Still, the film works as entertainment in the traditional Marvel mould, and Chadwick Boseman's lack of charisma is well compensated for by an awesome and largely female cast. Ryan Coogler has made a film that looks superb in every way, with nothing in the visuals that I can fault. But, much though I enjoyed the film, with its black female Q, its James Bond pastiche antics and the big final battle with war rhinos(!), the film is merely good, not great.

Fantastic Stan Lee cameo, mind, though obviously bittersweet...

24 Hour Party People (2002)

"It's a shame that you didn't sign the Smiths, but you were right about Mick Hucknall. His music's rubbish, and he's a ginger."

I haven't really touched on music that much in this blog which is odd, as I'm rather obsessed by it and have been ever since I first heard Nevermind. I was a late starter; I didn't really bother with music at all until I was sixteen, but Nirvana and the whole Grunge thing meant a whole lot to me as a teenager. That sort of naturally led to Metal bands like Metallica, Pantera and Sepultura, American indie bands such as Sonic Youth, the Butthole Surfers and the Pixies, classic rock, '70s punk, post-punk, and eventually '70s reggae, blues and 20^th century composers like Penderecki, Glass and Xenakis. Basically, I likes me music. I'm sort of centred on the point where rock meets indie, and I'm a long-haired man who wears band t-shirts, but I'm more omnivorous than that might imply, although I'm not one for the late '80s baggy scene, and I've never been to a rave although I've dabbled in a bit of hardcore and gabber.

So I find myself identifying more with the first half of this film musically than the second. Joy Division and New Order are right up my street but I never really much bothered with the whole Madchester thing. I own both albums by the Stone Roses, and they're very good, but I don't know the Happy Mondays beyond the singles. But the whole story is such a fantastic ride, as rock n' roll always is. We see the great times, the sex and the drugs, but also the darkness as Ian Curtis quietly hangs himself after watching a Werner Herzog film. And hanging yourself is a painful, lingering, horrible way to die. The film also doesn't flinch from the awkward fact that the Hacienda, being awash with ecstasy, was funding gangs and guns and death, and Tony Wilson's flippant attitude to this (from real life, I assume, as his cameo appearance seems to imply a level of creative approval) doesn't exactly paint him in a good light. That's precisely why I don't take illegal drugs. Prohibition may be bloody stupid, but that doesn't mean that bootlegging is ok.

That aside, though, and noting his confessed neglect of his second family, the man is pure punk rock. The whole ethos of Factory Records- of total creative freedom for the bands- is wonderful, and economic reality can go to Hell. I'm just about old enough to remember when selling out was something that simply wasn't done, and signing to a major label was always something to be sheepishly apologised for although, in hindsight, that world came to an end when Sonic Youth signed to Geffen. Also wonderful is the way that he talks, and his unashamed refusal to downplay his education. As a fellow English graduate (although Nottingham, not Cambridge!) I love the speech about the "free play of signs and signifiers" in response to Rob Brydon's journalist accusing him (not unreasonably) of fascism because of Joy Division's rather dodgy name. The point here, of course, is that actually he does need to point out the irony of the Durutti Column's name, because these cultural references zoom straight over most people's heads. We see this sort of thing throughout the film; Ian Curtis doesn't even get the W.B. Yeats reference. I like this, though. There's too much inverted snobbery about. Why shouldn't we live in a world where tramps and game show hosts can quote Boethius if they want to?

There are so many stand-out performances here (I'll come to Steve Coogan in a bit), but Andy Serkis was particularly great as Martin Hannett. This is more or less a who's who of British comedy and drama performers, though, from Peter Kay to Simon Pegg. And the cameos, from Mark E. Smith (I spotted him!) to Howard Devoto (if you haven't heard Magazine's Real Life, get the album now) are a nice little extra bit of metatextual fun in a film where there's rather a lot of it, courtesy of screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce.

Rob Brydon has only a minor role but this is, I suppose, pretty much one of those Michael Winterbottom films with him and Coogan, all of which are rather good. The style is certainly very much in line with The Trip et al, with a lot of damage being done to the Fourth Wall. It's so very fitting that Coogan as Tony Wilson not only addresses the camera but does so as an unreliable narrator. Coogan has not only the talent but also the charisma to do this superbly. He also plays the moments of real feeling behind the façade; the scene where he's alone with Ian Curtis' laid-out corpse is genuinely moving.

The moment of nemesis is a magnificent conclusion as the Hacienda finally closes and Tony Wilson invites the punters to loot the place. The place certainly had its dark side, very much so, but this film is a joyous celebration of what now seem to be old-fashioned values of independent record labels, creative freedom and vibrant, changing music, unlike the stagnant scene of today with its landfill indie and chart music strangled by the dead hand of svengalis and talent shows. Er, said the old fart. But I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the bad old days of svengalis and staid musical conservatism, which came to an end when the Beatles came up with the radical practice of writing their own songs, thereby slaying that dragon. But it never really went away. I've always thought that the rock n' roll revolution of the '50s and '60s was a one-off, an injection of African rhythms into the mainstream of Western popular music, which had already been heralded by jazz and blues which now took over completely and gave rise to so much that was new and alive and wonderful. There will always be new music worth listening to, but those days now seem to be more or less over as a dominant part of mainstream culture. Musically, it's 1955 again. This film is a reminder of better times.