Knights of God: Episode 5

 "I find history rather boring..."

Sirprisingly, Gervase's gets relatively little screen time here. Plotlines elsewhere develop. Hugo's splendid;y arch scheming continues as he turns the senior Knights slowly against Mordrin. Edwards learns, and is devastated by, his son's apparent treachery... and is a little bitter at Arthur for setting things in motion. Again, we get vague references to Gervase's "true nature".

There's no longer quite the need for so much world building as the premise is by now established, but one again this vaguely Arthurian future Britain is fascinating, very V for Vendetta, a low tech, lived in near future. It has none of the corporate trappings of cyberpunk but the cynicism and lived-in look of Aliens and Blade Runner... on an ITV budget.

Of course, the point is that we (and Gervase) must think Julia dead, although we are allowed to see the truth. But Gervase, I suspect, will not turn against the Knights but follow them with deepening bitterness. The ending is heartbreaking, with Julia unable to go to him and declaring her love. This is good stuff.

Monsters (2010)

 "Amigos? These guys have guns!"

This low-budget debut from director Gareth Edwards, a native of my neighbouring town of Nuneaton, is quitely brilliant, leveraging its tiny budget to combine horror via suspense with arthouse, bordering on arthouse, techniques. The scenes feel semi-improvised, which improvs the effectveness enormously, This is a film which manages to be superb by aiming relatvely low yet hitting the target.

Critics have, er, criticised the core performances of Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able, which I find bewildering. Both Andrew and Sam feel like real people and not Hollywood cyphers, and are all the more compelling for it. It also very much shows, not only in the camerawork, but also in the line delivery, that the scenes and dialogue are semi-improvised. This is enormously effective and removes the arificiality of scripted acting that we so often overlook. The characters feel real ro the extent that Andrew really is a bit of a creep, especially in a post-#MeToo context.

Thie whole premise- a NASA probe falling to Earh and releasing alien life into northern Mexico which is swidtly quarantined- is an obvious metaphor for refugees, particularly with the presence of a wall on the US southern border before Trump had even thought of such a very stupid idea. There's a nice little scene where out American protagonists are repped off by traffickers.

The film rather cleverly uses its low budget to its advantage, using television broadcasts and signs to build context to the world we see as Sam and Andrew make their way through the Infected Zone. The alien monsters are glimpsed only briefly until the end, using the devastation they leave in their wake to evoke their destructiveness. Only at the end do we see them as fully realised Lovecraftian horrors.

An excellent film. Not bad for a Codder.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

"I've got a bad feeling about..."

"Quiet!"

"What...?"

I really am a long way behind on the Star Wars films considering I claim to be a fan. This is actually the most recent I’ve seen and I only saw it last night; I really need to get a move on, especially as this is really quite superb.

Part of what makes this film so good is a combination of a fast, action-filled plot that never feels slow; this is a fast-paced action film in the Star Wars universe. But there’s something else, too; all the “main” Star Wars films up to this point, good and bad, and including the prequels that I will blog one day, may have been full of droids and starships but we’re essentially stories told within the fairytale mode. This is not.

Hence we have characters, with arcs, but they are secondary to the plot, and there’s a constant mood of grittiness and a focus on just enough downbeat realism. This is the Star Wars universe, and the theft of the Death Star plans is pretty damn pivotal, but these people lead hard lives based in the reality of resistance to tyranny, not myth. So Jyn- a very different part for Felicity Jones after playing Jane Hawking in The Theory of Everything- has had a harsh life, and her character arc is to reconcile with her father, who had once seemed a traitor, and lose her apolitical cynicism to risk everything in getting the Death Star plans to the Rebel Alliance. Wonderfully, the blatant weakness in the Death Star which allows one hit to destroy it is a deliberate piece of sabotage by her father Galen. But there’s never much hope; idealistic, good people can be heroes without being fairy tale heroes.

Take Cassian; a hero of the rebellion, certainly, but one characterised by the kinds of difficult moral choices that always define resistance against tyranny in a world that is real, not fairytale. When we first meet him he shouts a man in cold blood for the greater good. His mission to kill Galen is secret and cynical, although in the end he doesn’t shoot. And his big speech, where he agrees to join Jyn in her mission, is about how he and his mates have done terrible things, but all in the name of the empire.

We also have K-2SO, the Marvin the Paranoid Android of Star Wars, voices admirably by Alan Tudyk; the blind warrior monk Chirrut, a standout performance by Arizona Ahmed as Bodhi, and a few other heroes who undertake a deeply entertaining, exciting and doomed mission. This isn’t a fairytale and no one is getting out alive. A brilliant film.

Except... well, the CGI resurrection of the late Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin just looks weird, and is a troubling can of worms to open. And the CGI restoration of Carrie Fisher just looks wrong. But these troubling aspects can’t take away from the fact that Nuneaton’s own Gareth Edwards has given us something very special. The codder done good.