Stargate (1994)

 "There can be only one Ra..."

I've never seen any of the subsequent telly series, but I have seen this film before, back in the '90s, hiring it from the local video shop. I enjoyed it then... and I absolutely adore it now.

I'm told there were all sorts of behind-the-scenes headaches for the film, it wasn't expected to do well, and it was a massive surprise when it turned out to be a huge hit. Yet it's simply very good, a very '90s twist on Erik Von Daniken with Egyptian gods as ancient aliens, with a superb and well-placed plot, a brilliant series of concepts and very strong central performances from James Spader and Kurt Russell. 

The visuals, the aesthetics of the gods are awesome. The first sight of Horus is well-shot and effective- and it's a surprise to find him being played by a young Djimon Hounsou. The pyramids, the three moons in the sky... the visuals are as good as the plot.

The whole thing is very much plot-driven, and the conceit of seeing everything through the eyes of Daniel Jackson works well, as we are introduced to the backstory of the Stargate at a point where the authorities are on board and plans already laid.

Yet there is humanity too. Both Daniel and Colonel O'Neill are three-dimensional, flawed but ultimately good people, and the people enslaved by the "gods" manage to seem like real and likeable people despite speaking an unknown language. And the ending is deeply satisfying.

This is simply a great concept, executed superby. That's why it's a great film.

What If... Peter Quill Attacked Earth's Mightiest Heroes?

 "Bummer. I thought you were the dude from Van Halen."

Yes, I know. I'm doing so much telly at the moment, and it's a struggle to keep up. I blame all the new telly. There's this, there's Fool Me Once, there's Echo after this. I fear that Twin Peaks and the Batman movie serial may have to take a very temporary back seat, but they're very much ongoing. Same with Robin of Sherwood.

Anyway, I enjoyed this. There's character stuff with PeterQuill as a kid with Ego as the main threat. There is, perhaps, an overly neat resolution. But it's fun seeing an Avengers team form in 1988. We get a young Hank Pym, Bill Foster, and the fortysomethings are represented by T'Chaka... and both Peggy and Howard must be nearing retirement age. Peggy isn't aging bad. The Winter Soldier is well handled, though, and Thor is fun. 

One complaint, though: the United States has many fine ales and a proud brewing traditiob. But its bottled "light beers" are unfit for human consumption. Thor and T'Chaka endorsing "light beer" is the most unrealistic thing in this episode.

The Thing (1982)

 "I'm trying to get some sleep. I was shot today."

Yes, it's absurd that I'm seeing The Thing for the first time in 2022. I suppose I have half an excuse that I saw thiis asa kind of remake of The Thing from Another World, and had to see that first, but even so.

This film is superb, basically. Not because it reinvents the wheel; it doesn't. It's a very straightforward base under siege story, where the entire cast spends the film paranoid, ascanyone could be the unnamed alien creature. The creature looks amazing; Alien has had a definite influence. There's a character called Fuchs. Titter.

But, essentially, this film is as good as it is pretty much entirely because of John Carpenter's first class direction. That's pretty much it. The way he shoots the snow; the way he shoots the shadows. The sheer bloody tension that anybody could be this shape-shifting alien. This gloriously slimy, '80s alien aesthetic that never stops being awesome, and is splendidly pre-CGI.

The film is entirely set, barring a brief expedition to some dead Norwegians and a millennia-old flying saucer, in and around one compound in Antarctica, full of central heating, booze, weed and a computer version of chess that I swear I once played on the Acorn Electron. The ensemble cast makes the film almost as much as the direction, but obviously Kurt Russel deserves special praise. Yes, it's a sausage fest, with no oestrogen to be seen and the Bechdel Test failed spectacularly.

This film doesn't do anything radical. It just does jump scare sci-fi horror really, really, really well.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

 "I'm a reasonable guy. But I've just experienced some very unreasonable things."

I've only seen two of John Carpenter's films before- Halloween and Christine. Both, to some extent, are genre films. This is a massively mainstream Hollywood blockbuster. And it's awesome. I don't care if it flopped. You can't trust the judgement of the general public. You, dear reader, have impeccable taste. But people in general are rubbish and like rubbish things. I'm sure you agree.

Anyway, this is bloody good. It seems to give quite a positive depiction of Chinese culture to my ignorant eyes, but this was 1986. There's plenty of scope for cultural insensitivity to have happened which will have sailed right over the head of this Leicestershire lad. Yet it seems to me that, whatever flaws I cannot see, the film shows a lot of affection to Hong kong kung fu movies, and with bloody good direction to boot.

Kurt Russell is an idiosyncratic, mildly humorous, action hero- the working class man as decent bloke rather than as the bigoted wanker that modern expectations may demand. It's quite refreshing to see a leading man from a time where politics wasn't composed of this culture war nonsense and Donald Trump, if rather more compos mentis in 1986 than he was in his rather confused presidency, was rightly dismissed by the Jack Burtons of this world as a rich wanker.

This is a wonderful, very '80s film, with an equally '80s soundtrack and splendid performances from all involved, not only the wonderful Kim Cattrall but a load of Chinese-American actors who seem to have few other credits. It's as good an '80s blockbuster as any of its many competitors.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

"They shot my nuts off!"

Wow. I know I tend to like Quentin Tarantino's films a lot. \but this, of the ones I've seen, which are most, this is his masterpiece.

Superficially, perhaps, it has many of Tarantino's tropes- his usual cast members; his signature sudden acts of graphic violence punctuating the narrative as if to shift the narrative from slow ad dialogue driven to fast and action-driven; the way he somehow makes everything seem, somehow, both natural and curated.

And yet... fundamentally, this is very different. For a start, the direction, while masterful, is restrained stylistically in a deliberate move to foreground the script an actors. His disinclination to do this in the past has never, of course, been a problem- there's a reason he's a famous director- but here he chooses to foreground the script and the performers.

 This feels, incredibly for a Tarantino film, not so much like the Western that it undoubtedly is but a serious stage play that evokes no less a writer than Arthur Miller. The characters- acted superbly, with Samuel L. Jackson and Jennifer Jason Leigh (weirdly, I'm familiar with her from Atypical) standing out, are well fleshed out, and there's a very prominent theme of race of the original American (and British, and French, and Dutch, and Spanish, and Portuguese) sin of slavery. This film has a lot to say of the difficulties involved in being black and American, in still living in the country in which you (or in the Major's case, you) were enslaved.#

The narrative- in chapters, framed by the music of Ennio Morricone, is masterful, mostly observing the Aristotelian unities but with necessary but restrained flashbacks, is both gripping and beautiful. One of the last films I see during the '10s may well be the best of the decade.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 (2017)

“I have sensitive nipples!”

Yes, the Guardians of the Galaxy are back. Wisely, James Gunn is also back to write and direct, and the soundtrack plays just as part a role. What we have is more of the same, which is no bad thing. This sequel may not be quite as good as the first film but it has the same humour, the same relatable characters in a very cosmic setting, and the same sense of style.

It even has a heart, with the message that men like Yondu who bother to raise children are proper fathers, whereas giant planets like Ego who bugger off to destroy all life in the universe are not. We also have a touching and hilarious romance of sorts between Drax (who gets the best lines, again: “I have famously huge turds”) and the innocent Mantis. The reconciliation between sisters Gamora and Nebula is heartwarming, and we are told the horrible truth that Thanos (Not in the film but ever- present) used to make his daughters fight and Gamora always won, and each time he would replace a part of Nebula’s body with machinery for losing- truly horrific. Baby Groot is cute. And Rocket Raccoon is everybody’s favourite arsehole.

Ego, of course, can’t always be shown as a giant planet on the screen, so Kurt Russell plays his human avatar, although we certainly get to see Ego as we know him, a living planet with a face. Mantis is as we know her from Steve Englehart. And the Stan Lee cameo is intriguing as we briefly catch him reminiscing to Uatu, suggesting that all his cameos may have seen him working undercover for the Watchers. Ego is a Celestial, apparently; they obviously look quite different in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Howard the Duck gets another cameo, played by Seth Green. And the ending seems to hint at the creation of Adam Warlock, no less.

We get a dramatic and very sad ending bringing everything to a splendid confusion, and some properly cosmic post-credit scenes. I’m glad it won’t be another three years until we see these characters again.