Cockneys vs. Zombies (2012)

"I've got tits, you tit..."

Why oh why oh why have I not seen seen this film until tonight, a bloody magnificent triumph that's a cross between... well, like it says over there on the left. But the feel reminds me just as much as Severance, and you can certainly see James Moran's influence in the script.

This is a deliciously plotted and made film, with splendid zombie set pieces, and the decision to make it in large part a riff on gangster movies is an obvious thing to do. But to set so much of it in an old folks' home, with the hero and star being Alan Ford, is inspired. The zombies vs. zimmer frame chase with Richard Briers alone makes the film worth seeing. Then we get Zoe Slater from EastEnders with a series of massive guns and swords, West Ham supporting zombies fighting Millwall supporting zombies, and the bloody London bus. Oh, and that final speech. This is a film that knows and bloody well skewers its zombie cliches.

Not only is it as funny as Shaun of the Dead and, at heart, full of likeable if rogueish characters, but the zombie set pieces look just as good too and the cast, with a last hurrah from so many British acting stalwarts of an earlier generation, is wonderful. I should have seen this film years ago and learned to embrace the awful title. I love Cockneys vs. Zombies.

Henry V (1989)

"I'm afeared there are few die well that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?"

This is the second screen adaptation of this play that I've seen and blogged after The Hollow Crown, albeit one made twenty-three years earlier, and the differences are stark from the opening scene, where Derek Jacobi's chorus awakens us by lighting a match. This introduces two themes: this production's constant okay with light and it's claustrophobic feeling, indoors and on small sets as much as possible and with the location scenes shot so as not to look expansive. Hal finds the crown as uneasy as did his father is the clear message, and his guilt over being an usurper's son, paralleled by his anxiety over the war being just (because sending people to their deaths and their bereaved dependants into penury because of who should be King is totally just, right?) is reflected in the visuals.

Kenneth Branagh is a suitably angsty Henry. Yes, the speeches are present and correct, but this is not a jingoistic Henry V but an anxious one.

The rest of the cast excellent too, including a surprisingly unshouty Brian Blessed, whose message to Charles VI reeks of a menace he hasn't exuded since he was Augustus in I, Clavdivs. And, on top of those mentioned in the tags, we didn't have room for Derek Jacobi, Robbie Coltrane as a splendid Falstaff in scenes nicked from the Henry IV's, Robert Stephens, Paul Scofield, Harold Innocent and a very young Christian Bale. I particularly enjoyed Ian Holm's Fluellen, discoursing on Pompey the Great- for Shakespeare, all Welshmen are in some way his old classics teacher!

This is a superbly visual production, superlatively acted and directed. The emphasis on sparse lighting, points of light in the darkness and claustrophobia gives us an individual version of the play from Kenneth Branagh that is highly effective. A fine film.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

"You gave me life, and then you left me to die."

This is a very different cinematic version of Frankenstein. The point is not that it follows the broad outline of Mary Shelley's novel- which, not splitting hairs, it more or less does, including the Arctic bits- but that it is quite self-consciously made as part of a different genre. This doesn't have the trappings of a horror film and, unlike every other version I've seen, isn't a melodrama. Instead, this is presented simply as an adaptation of s classic novel, owing more to Merchant Ivory than to James Whale or Terence Fisher. The very presence of Helena Bonham Carter would signify that, we're it not for the fact that she would go on to meet Tim Burton.

Obviously, this means a focus on scientific ethics. But Kenneth Branagh's take on the themes of the novel seems to emphasise the Gothic, and not just in terms of mood; he includes the prominent lecture room scene in which Frankenstein stands up for an older, "philosophical" approach to science, and the controversial Professor Waldman (played by John Cleese in an entirely serious role) stands for an older, more alchemical tradition. This makes the monster, in a sense, a creation of the knowledge of a dark past- true Gothic.

It's also worth pondering Branagh's take on the links to Romanticism too, what with the original author being married to a certain writer of Ozymandias (and the thematically relevant Prometheus  Unbound) but not really in tune with the movement. Frankenstein here seems to be no fan of rationalism, yet he is hardly a sympathetic figure.

The film works well enough; Bonham Carter is excellent in the film's (and novel's) only significant female role from the pen of a daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft. Branagh is competent although, outside classical parts, he is not the most charismatic of actors; next to Colin Clive and Peter Cushing his take on the character is not overly memorable. Robert De Niro is superb as always. But there's a reason why film versions of Frankenstein lend themselves towards melodrama. This is a good film but not a great one, simply because the source material doesn't really lend itself to a straight adaptation.

Torchwood: A Day in the Death

“I am literally too cool for school.”

I’ve never come across any of Joseph Lidster’s Big Finish work so this is the first work of his I’ve encountered, and it’s a damned impressive debut. After a short and almost perfunctory introductory few seconds of “Torchwood is ready” we move straight to Owen via a monologue and montage, showcasing the excellence of both writer and director.

To briefly cover the regulars who are not Owen, this episode sees a lot of mentions of Gwen’s now very imminent wedding, while she very capably seems to assume the mantle of leadership for large chunks of the “B” plot (concerning an energy spike from an item in a collection of alien artefacts kept by eccentric millionaire Henry Parker) and, interestingly, Jack lets her. I’m not sure whether this comes across as strength or weakness. Certainly, he makes a hash of things early on while relieving Owen of duty to have medical tests and make coffee(!)- surely he could have put that a bit more diplomatically and got a slightly less negative reaction.

Tosh gets a hard time this week, with an upset Owen saying some very hurtful things to her. And by now it’s clear that she really does love him, or thinks she does at any rate. Is this going to go anywhere in the long-term? Tosh hasn’t necessarily looked weak in earlier episodes which dealt with her apparently unrequited feelings for Owen, but there now seems to be a very real risk that she may do so. That would not be good.

But of course, this is all about Owen, and the episode is more or less dedicated to an almost poetic reflection on what has happened to him and the implications of what it does to a person. Particularly horrifying is the moment, after Owen (accidentally?) cuts his hand, when Martha makes it clear that neither this nor any other injury he suffers will ever heal again. Owen is, as he says, made of glass. Ageless, sexless, unable to eat, drink, or even feel Martha’s hand, he has continued existence but is unable to truly live; what, then, is there to live for? This is our main character theme, achieved through great dialogue and great direction. The episode is full of great little visual sequences and great little monologues which are quite staggeringly effective.

The episode’s framing device is great, too. Owen is narrating this to Maggie (only named, significantly, at the end when we know she won’t jump), about to commit suicide exactly one year after her husband died in a cruelly random car accident just an hour after they were married. She and Owen are both faced with the consequences that come from life’s random cruelties, and have to decide whether life is worth living.

But there’s a deeper theme, too; that we are all mortal, and that this makes us all mortal in the end. The whole episode pretty much functions as a memento mori; there’s a series of shots of Owen’s extremely luxurious apartment making it very clear that he’s a very wealthy man, but it all means nothing now. There’s a direct parallel here with our villain (well, sort of), Henry Parker (Richard Briers, this time without a toothbrush moustache). Parker is an old man who has experienced so much of life- fighting in the war, travelling, marrying, becoming widowed- and has made himself rich from his own efforts. But he is dying; like Owen, he finds that his power, status and material possessions mean nothing to him now. He is alone, as we all are in the end, afraid of death and the strange “darkness” of the Torchwood afterlife, which both is and isn’t oblivion. This is classic memento mori stuff; every time I watch it I’m reminded of lecturers banging on about Hans Holstein’s The Ambassadors.

Importantly, the episode never allows the bleakness to be undermined by a too life-affirming message; the message seems to be that life is mostly crap, but there’s also the odd bit of hope- that’s pretty much what Owen says to Maggie, and pretty much the message that the alien McGuffin of the week is there to symbolise. It gives false hope to Parker, who dies in spite of his clinging to the belief that it is keeping him alive, but real hope to both Maggie and Owen. There’s also a lot of this, I reckon, in Owen’s fantastic speech to the security guard.

A triumph of both writing and direction, and an acting masterclass from Burn Gorman, mean this gets an easy 5/5, and it goes straight into the chart at number two.

Doctor Who: Paradise Towers

Part One



“Are these old ladies annoying you?”

“No!”

“Are you annoying these old ladies?”

The very first scene makes it clear that the incidental music’s going to be awful, but very quickly it’s also clear that this is going to be far better than Time and the Rani. Instantly the dialogue is much better, and Sylvester McCoy is now playing a different and more Doctorish figure. Gone are the malapropisms and gullibility, in are some intriguingly Troughtonesque qualities- this Doctor is an unprepossessing figure but we’re left in no doubt as to the sharpness of his mind.

I’m amused by the caretakers- yes, they’re an obvious dig at the kind of bureaucracy you find when complaining about parking tickets (yes, I have bitter experience of said purgatorial incidents), what with the “little Hitler” moustaches and hilarious salutes. But I’m seeing another cultural reference here. Apologies to those in other lands who will be mystified by the reference, especially as it’s the second time I’ve mentioned it in the Marathon, but the magazine programme That’s Life, with its odd mix of brilliantly puerile humour and consumer affairs, was pretty much at the height of its popularity when this was broadcast. And it popularised the idea of the “jobsworth”- the stubborn official, usually in a peaked cap, who hides behind rules and regulations. I suspect it’s a rather heavy influence here.

There are also the Kangs, who may be played a bit to stage school-ish to really convince, but are great in that they seem to have come straight from the pages of Halo Jones or the like- in fact, the influence of 2000 AD feels very strong. We have different groups- Kangs, red and blue; caretakers; and the old ones or “rezzies”. It’s all very urban and studio-bound, and it’s the kind of allegorical sci-fi that shouldn’t really be judged as realism. This is such a refreshing change. It seems like ages since I started wishing for something new to replace the Saward nihilist agenda, and at last it seems to be here. It feels as though a new generation has taken over, one which takes its cultural cues as much from comics as cinema.



Part Two



“Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat!”

I’ll admit the sets look very cheap and aren’t always realising the script very well, and the costumes don’t feel quite in tune either, but the script is carrying the story well enough for this not to be as big a problem as it could have been. This may feel very fresh and new, but in contrast to the more “traditional” Time and the Rani, which nevertheless utterly failed to characterise the new Doctor successfully at all, here we have the magnificent scene with the Doctor deceiving the caretakers to let him go by quoting the rulebook. Not only is this brilliantly and fundamentally Doctorish, it also manages to define this Doctor as very different from his predecessor. Suddenly, Sylvester McCoy is the Doctor.

The incidental music still isn’t very good, but it now occurs to me what it reminds me of; the music to late ‘80s console games, especially Revenge of Shinobi on the Sega. That’s just me, right?

I’m not sure what to say about the performances- the Kangs, and especially Pex, while not badly acted, don’t seem to match the type of story, and sadly Bonnie Langford feels out of place in this environment, fond as I am of her and the character she plays. But I think Clive Merrison is spot on and, for all the criticisms of his “over-acting”, Richard Briers is fantastic, giving a broad performance entirely appropriate for the character. The Caretaker is a character I can easily imagine turning up in Judge Dredd or Tharg’s Future Shocks, which is a good sign.



Part Three



“But… blue Kangs have won!”

There’s another great moment for the new Doctor is his confrontation with the Chief Caretaker early in the episode; from a position of being interrogated in a chair with a light being shone into his eyes he manages to gradually reverse the roles, ending the scene by shining the lamp at the Chief Caretaker, a very Troughtonesque thing to do.

Oh, and it’s a bit shocking to see a DVD being played in an episode of Doctor Who broadcast in 1987! This is the part where it’s most clear that this is supposed to be at least partly a comment on the phenomenon of tower blocks (via J.G. Ballard, of course), something not really borne out in the rather unimaginative corridor sets.



Part Four



“We’re very sorry for what we did and we won’t do it again.”

For the first time in a while we get a well-structured and satisfying final episode which wraps everything up nicely. And I’m beginning to notice that each episode starts with a quick outside shot, a nice touch. On the other hand, I could have done without Mel screaming in the swimming pool. And where did her swimming costume come from, anyway?

Mainly, though, we finish up with good stuff. Richard Briers plays the possessed Chief Caretaker very well indeed, and Pex’s sacrifice is pleasingly redemptive. Best of all, we finish up with a feat notably not achieved by the previous story; a new Doctor we can be enthusiastic about.



I should emphasise the bad things a bit more than I have been; the general poorness of the costumes, sets, and the general studio-bound claustrophobia. But the script makes up for it all, really- fresh, new, creative, and giving the impression that a new generation has taken over. I was going to only give it a 4, but what the hell… 5/5.