Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

 "What is your name change logic...?"

Shang-Chi, particularly the Doug Moench incarnation, is a distint and fond memory I have from the '80s reprinting, here in the UK, in the pages of Action Force, the tales of the '70s... from which creator Steve Englehart had ejected himself in protest of the racism.

And here we have the problem. Because the '70s comics were based quite heavily and unironically on the works of Sax Rohmer (look him up), with its heavily racist tropes of the "yellow peril" and Fu Manchu, a characte whom... well, if you know the character, and don't cringe, you're being racist, however much you might try not to be.

I must admit, if anything has happened in the comics with Shang-Chi since 1983, this middle aged man knows nothing of it, except to hope it's not bloody racist shite.

Fortunately, this rather entertaining blockbuster film ignores all that. Shang-Chi's father is not Fu Machu(!) but, er, the Mandarin, complete with rings, and Shang-Chi himself has a rather awesome love interest in intelligent waster Katy, not to mention a rather awesome sister.

Disregarding cameos from Wong, the Abomination(!), Captain Marvel and Bruce Banner, and of course the ever- steady post-snap reality, this rather enjoyable film feels, at the momentt, as semi-detached from the wider Marvel universe as one could imagine right now. Yet it's excellent, essentially a Marvel-approved, strictly non-racist,  highly enjoyable Hollywood version of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and films of that ilk. Not massively deep, but superior blockbuster fodder.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

"You always were a cunning linguist, James."

I know, it's been a while since GoldenEye. But it took a while before I could face another Bond after that, and it was with all due trepidation that I sat down to watch this. It's a relief to say, then, that Brosnan is better, if still hardly my favourite Bond, and that this is a good if not great Bond film- it says a little in the middle, perhaps, and the whole thing is an extremely formulaic Bond-by-numbers but done well enough, and I think that's what's required at this stage. This is only the second film after a large gap, and there's a need to re-establish all the many tropes.

So we get a notable return to tradition after GoldenEye's sometime iconoclasm, with a notably less spiky relationship between Bond and Judy Dench's M. But we get a decent pre-titles- the Russians are goodies; it must be the '90s- and a mildly disappointing theme tune from Sheryl Crow, and off we go.

This film's Bond villain is the media mogul Eliot Carver, played with splendidly scenery-chewing relish by Jonathan Pryce as he arranges conflict between the UK and China purely to make money. He gets lots of zeitgeisty speeches about the power of the media that date the film enormously; it won't be long until the Internet starts to topple the likes of him off their perches. And I notice that Bond has his first mobile phone, although from the dependably sarky and now octogenarian Q, who has been there since From Russia with Love.

We get a splendid cast as usual, even with the likes of Jason Watkins, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Gerard Butler and Hugh Bonneville with small parts as naval officers. This is hardly one of the greats, but Bond is back on track.