The Boys: Beware the Jabberwock, My Son

 "It's an absolute wonder to me that you've all managed to live this long..."

Oh my. Only The Boys could possibly do flying killer sheep infected with Compound Vi quite like this episode. As ever, this is exquisite.

So many little touches. I love, once again, the little bits of Vought advertising excess, with its tone deaf attempts at diversity and the blatant not to Kevin Feige's public unveling of the next raft of Marvel films.

There's so much more, though. The ending, when Billy Butcher reveals what his real, devilishly clever plan was. The links to Gen V. Homelander's slowly successful corruption of Ryan. Ashley's cold betrayal of the ex-sub whoi dumped her, framimg him and ensuring his horrible death. Seeing Stan Edgar again, and his commentary on everyone. Firecracker really going all out to destroy Annie.

And yet there's real heart here. Frenchie's terrible guilt, and Catholic guilt at that, over all the muders he's committed... and what it spurs him to do. 

But the real, incredible, heart-wrenching tragedy here is, of course, Hughie and his dad, with a tour de force performance from Simon Pegg. The dynamics between Hughie and both his parents here is utterly incredible. 

And yet, even here, there's glorious amounts of gore. Ah, The Boys. Like nothing else on telly, and I love it so much.

The Boys: The Self-Preservation Society

 "There's always a choice!"

This is an extraordinary- and unusually serious- episode where lots of threads come together and we realise just how damned elegant the plotting is as Homelander reveals the Boys to the surviving Seven- and greatly enjoys doing so, right bastard that he is.

Poor Annie is shot by both sides, as Howard Devoto would have said: suspected initially by Homelander of being in league with Hughie while Butcher remains convinced she's a fully invested member of the supe conspiracy. We also get origin stories, sort of, for both Homelander and Butcher, the damaged indivuiduals at opposite poles. Homelander was raised as a lab rat, while we learn that Becca, after being raped, became pregnant with Homelander's child and died horribly in childbirth.

Parallels abound. After being fugitives the Boys finally accept Fed protection after MM persuades Butcher, and suddenly the Feds have leverage to kep supes and the US military separate. And then... suddenly emerges a terrorist supe in Damascus. Oh dear. Then we have the only comic relief with the Deep in Nowheresville, Ohio... except, on what I suppose could be a kind of poetic justice, a girl hes invited to his room, well, rapes him. In the gills.

There's a lot of pain here. MM's wfe seems to dump him. Annie feels understandably betrayed by the man she trusted. Everthing is very dark. It's all quite masterfully done, and here comes the finale...

The Boys: The Name of the Game

 "What do I look like?"

"Like you're starring in the porn version of The Matrix."

This is something Mrs Llamastrangler and I have just decided to start watching... and it's rather good. I have no knowledge of the original comic books by Garth Ennis (whom I know well from Preacher- and no, I haven't seen that series yet), but this is certainly very much reminiscent of Watchmen, at least superficially.

This is, essentially, a world where there are superheroes... yet, beyond the surface, those superheroes are amoral,  money grabbing, corporate bastards who behave like the very worst kinds of rock stars in the days before punk, and worse. We have two POV characters through whose eyes we see this world. The first is Hughie, whose girlfriend is gruesomely killed by speedster A-Train in suspicious yet covered-up circumstances and who, while struggling against a history of meek unambition, strives to get justice. We also have Anna, a privincial superhero who achieves her dream of joining the Justice Lea... er, the Seven... and ends up sexually abused in a shockingly #MeToo moment. These people are above the law, and it stinks.

We also have the awesomely sweary New Zealander Butcher, who enlists Hughie in his quest to encover the superheroes' many transgression. This is a superb basic concept, and an admirably successful first episode which succinctly introduces the many characters while balancing humour and tragedy superbly. More please.

Ready Player One (2018)

”Ninjas don't hug!"

 Well, that was certainly superb. Who'd have thought it; a film from Steven Spielberg with no didactic music, no real stars and a very fresh feel. This film is hugely entertaining and so very 2018.

Superficially, perhaps, you could say this film is a bit like Tron, being set mainly in cyberspace with a corporate baddie. But, in truth, the film goes so much deeper, and has so much more to say, than the cool visuals and the myriad, admittedly awesome, pop culture references. And that isn't just about today's gamer, streaming and Twitch culture (Mrs Llamastrangler knows much more about all this than I do) in spite of the many obvious references.

It's 2045, and what we see of the world (well, Ohio) is grim and poverty-stricken aside from a few corporate bigwigs. People live in "stacks", trailer parks stacked on top of each other, and escape their lives through ubiquitous VR and, in particular, through the Oasis, a VR oasis invented by the late James Halliday and his mate, played by the superb Mark Rylance along with the ever-splendid Simon Pegg, both bizarrely with American accents. Through this world we follow Wade, love interest Art3mis and the slightly undeveloped rest of the gang as they try to complete the online quest left by Halliday to gain control of his empire.

Put like that it seems almost pedestrian, a kind of cross between Tron and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but it’s so much more than that. The commentary on escapism into an online world, a kind of VR Second Life where capitalism continues to operate as avatars depend on “coin” for how they look and what they can do, is acutely clever. So is the hint that not only has pop culture become, well, culture, but that the immediate access to cheap music and films will mean the pop culture of the late twentieth century will remain relevant and new pop culture will fail to be supported. There’s IOI with its “loyalty centres”, or debtor’s prisons, a serious potential future problem if debt laws are not reformed. There’s a reminder that reality is what actually matters and that being online is but an extension of this. There’s s love story. There’s the Holy Hand Grenade. There’s MechaGodzilla. This is easily the best new film I’ve seen for a long time.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

“I’ve got to do a wee first.”

It’s hard to write objectively about a film you’ve seen as many times as I’ve seen this one. I saw it at the pictures back in the day and make no bones about the fact that I love everything about it. It’s funny, it’s brilliant and I’m two years younger than Shaun; this is my generation.

Obviously the whole thing is a tribute to George Romero, with zombies standing for both consumerism and the autopilot nature of the rat race; several times Shaun gets up and gives a zombie-like yawn, and in the background of the early scenes there are many instances of blatant zombie behaviour that look normal in the context of the morning commute. This is at once very funny and making an effective point. This sort of thing punctuates the film.

But of course this is a comedy, and a very good one, the first of Edgar Wright’s trilogy featuring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and the last one of the three that I’ve blogged. It’s not so long, this being 2004, since Spaced, so it’s good that Jessica Hynes makes an appearance and indeed is the hero of another film- a nice touch; Shaun and co don’t save the world; other people do. They just want safety,  comfort and a pint until this all blows over.

The British TV comedy cast is uniformly brilliant, and both Pegg and Frost are superb. Kate Ashfield deserves praise for her performance as Kate; the straight role is often underappreciated in a comedy. There’s lots of visual comedy for which Wright deserves much credit. And the script is bloody genius- I love the moment when they’re choosing what records to throw at the zombie. And, of course, there’s the heartwarming ending. I’ve seen this film about half a dozen times and, yes, I will see it several times more.

The World's End (2013)

"What the fuck does WTF mean?"

I like Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Nick Frost, I really do. I loved Hot Fuzz and Paul and said so. I loved Shaun of the Dead and must blog that one day. It all amounts to a fine back catalogue. But this film... isn't really all that great. And there's not really all that much to say about it.

I mean, the plot's ok and the acting is as superb as you expect but, well, this is a film about middle age disappointment, with Gary a drunken failure wanting to relive the glories of his youth while his mates all have at least something to show for their lives at the halfway point. And... that's all this film is about. Dull and patronising themes of middle age and growing up. Even the threat- a load of robot invaders who want to enforce conformity, all naturally for our own good- is a bit meh, a kind of intergalactic parent, the man trying to hassle us. It all falls a bit flat for me. Perhaps it's because I'm a couple of years short of forty but don't really identify with any of this. As I approach middle age I've neither gone off the rails, failed to grow up not stopped being the person I've always been, and as such I don't really identify with the film's somewhat cliched message.

Mind you, it has a nice little subtext about the distressing decline of the modern pub. But that's about it.

Paul (2011)

"Sorry you got killed by my Dad."

"That's fine."

This film obviously plays on the whole '90s "aliens and men in black" trope that was so big back then, mainly due to The X-Files. The X-Files didn't create the "men in black" trope, or that specific type of alien, but it brought it into the mainstream so that films like this could use it. This whole type of science fiction may be nearly twenty years old, but the characters are no spring chickens so it's sort of appropriate. Still, it's odd to see Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in such a very American setting and the film very much plays on that.

We start with our two British comics geeks, appropriately for Pegg's and Frost's first Hollywood film, at the San Diego Comic Con. The soundtrack, appropriately, is "Another Girl, Another Planet" by the Only Ones. They follow this, of course, with a more-eventful-than-planned road trip to Area 51, during which alien-related hi-jinks ensue and they make the acquaintance of a nice Christian fundamentalist girl. Oh, and there's a resurrection. And much riffing on E.T. 

Pegg and Frost are playing the same characters as ever, this time called Graeme and Clive, except that they play ever more middle aged versions with every passing film. This means that their characters become increasingly childlike, and this film only narrowly avoids a real bête noir of mine- an interest in sci-if, fantasy, comics and the like being used as a signifier of immaturity. Just you wait until I get to Buffy season six...

Paul himself is fantastic, and the early scenes between him, Graeme and Clive are a joy. Wonderfully, Paul smokes weed ("the stuff that killed Dylan"), has seen Predator and knows popular culture, so he should know how awkwardly close he is as a character to Roger from American Dad.

This is a superbly funny film with some very witty riffs on various tropes and a sublimely high standard of swearing. 

Hot Fuzz (2007)

“Well, I see you’ve arrested the whole village.”

Obviously I love this film. That won’t surprise you; I’m exactly the sort of person who would. I’m a huge fan of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright, I loved Spaced, and I’ve seen enough action films to get the metatextual nods. Plus, more generally, I’m a geek.

I’ve been in more than my share of sleepy English villages like the one in this film- pretty, genuinely nice, but also rather stultifyingly conservative (and, indeed, generally Conservative) and not good for one’s privacy what with all the gossip. Still, I may prefer cities these days (though I actually live in a village at the mo, albeit not one like this), but I remember the relaxed attitude to underage drinking back when I was a lad. Halcyon days. Still, I can’t really quibble with the film’s broad suggestion that there’s something potentially rather dark lying beneath the close-knit conformity of village life. And this is a perfect depiction of this sort of village, so much so that I can even forgive the use of The Kinks’ The Village Green Preservation Society.

The main thing is, though, that this is a brilliant comedy, and Simon Pegg puts in a typically superb performance as Nick Angel, the perfect cop who annoys everyone with his smartass ways but slowly and gradually lightens up a bit. It’s very noticeable that this isn’t the sort of part you’d usually associate with Pegg; he’s a much more versatile actor than one might assume.

Pegg aside, Nick Frost is also excellent, albeit in the sort of role he usually plays; Timothy Dalton twirls his moustache gleefully while also attempting a West Country accent, and there are roles for such British comedy luminaries as (deep breath) Steve Coogan, Bill Nighy, Bill Bailey (whose character is at one point seen reading Iain Banks’ excellently weird and suitably dark and rural The Wasp Factory!!!), Jim Broadbent, etc. For a geeky actor spotter like me this is Heaven indeed.

The conceit of this film is, of course, to take the tropes of the Hollywood buddy buddy cop movie and transplant them to a leafy little village in the West Country, which cannot fail to be funny. The climax to the film absolutely delivers on this score, and throws in a weird cowled cult into the bargain. We get a very, very funny angle on the cliché that is the montage (see the next blog post!!!) and scenes that look uncannily like Operation Wolf (late ‘80s shoot ‘em up game, for all you non-thirtysomethings out there).

See Hot Fuzz. It’s well good.

Doctor Who: The Long Game

“Look at me- I’m stupid!”

Again we’re introduced to this week’s setting by means of on-screen media- a developing RTD trope- but this time it turns out to be the focus of the story as well. We also have an extra character in Adam, allowing this to be the first of two sort-of Doctor-Lite stories. And at last we get to a story I’ve been confidently expecting to award less than 5/5 to, which was going to be a good thing- after all, giving 5/5 to every story since Rose would be rather embarrassing, wouldn’t it. Er, well…

Annoyingly for my plans, we get a rather good beginning. It’s the year 200,000 (that RTD likes his big round numbers, don’t he?), it’s Satellite 5, and it’s the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. I remember being a little underwhelmed by the design four years ago but this time round I couldn’t see what made me think that- and it’s supposed to look rather less impressive than the Doctor’s expecting it to in any case. It’s all looking very 2000 AD, too, with Kronkburgers and all. And, as we’ll see, the way the subtext is done feels very 2000 AD, too. Much like the last two McCoy seasons did, in fact. There’s another thing I’ve learned from this Marathon; there’s far more continuity in style and content (Ace is also a kind of prototype Rose) between the McCoy years and the Eccleston years than I’d previously appreciated.

TV news is produced here, and it’s staffed by journalists, one of whom, Cathica, will be our audience identification character for this evening. And the journalists exist in a claustrophobic corporate atmosphere in which the ultimate is to be promoted to Floor 500, where “the walls are made of gold”. In the hands of a lesser writer this would already be food enough to supply the subtext for a forty-five minute tale. But we also get Simon Pegg and some interesting character stuff between Rose and Adam. On the one hand Rose is enjoying the chance to pose as the experienced traveller, but it’s clear that she’s unimpressed by him. He’s overwhelmed and needs to get away, and in doing so both rejects Rose’s lifestyle and subtly disappoints her. But worse, he has a selfish agenda.

There are increasing hints that all is not well; Suki is promoted to Floor 500, but we’re told, ominously, that those who go there never come back. Worse than that, though, is that Cathica, and those like her, are supposed to be journalists but show little or no curiosity for the world around them. Things just go unquestioned; Cathica hasn’t noticed the lack of aliens until it’s pointed out to her, casually guessing that security must have been tightened because of vaguely defined “threats” (“The usual stuff”)- a blatantly obvious bit of contemporary satire which I don’t remember noticing at the time and which also seems to have gone unnoticed in the media just a couple of weeks after RTD’s “massive weapons of destruction”. It just goes to show how much you can get away with in terms of satire when there are elements of the fantastic to hide it behind.

Things are not as they should be. Humanity’s development has been set back ninety years, and News Internatio- er, Satellite Five has been there for 91 years. Most damning of all is that the Doctor and Rose, who’ve only been there five minutes, instantly work out what’s going on and quickly get themselves to Floor 500 while Cathica just worries about getting into trouble and constantly fails to spot the obvious.

Adam, meanwhile, is behaving rather less impressively than the Doctor and Rose, having surgery to implant an “info-spike” for the purpose of relaying future tech to his family’s answer phone back in the 21st century so he can get rich. It’s a funny scene, but the consequences are going to be deadly serious, as the Doctor and Rose finally reach Floor 500 where they meet the Editor and his boss, the Jagrafess. And going by the beast’s appearance, it looks as though they got the real Rupert Murdoch to play him. Now there’s an impressive piece of casting.

We get a bit more juicy subtext which tears wonderfully into the tabloids’ favourite hobby horses (“Create a climate of fear and it’s easy to keep the borders closed,”), including a bit which has improved with end- the Editor represents a consortium of banks! But, essentially, our heroes are in dire peril, not helped by the fact that Adam has been an utter pillock and shown the Editor all of their innermost secrets. Fortunately, though, Cathica, “a member of staff with an idea,” has been listening, and saves the day. It’s the first time, but not the last, that an incidental character ends up as the hero, having been made a better person by the Doctor’s example- another fine RTD trope. And her ordinariness is wonderfully emphasised by the Editor’s dismissive “Who’s that?”

Adam, on the other hand, is dumped back on Earth for being such an utter pillock, and the family answer phone feels the wrath of the sonic screwdriver. “I only take the best,” says the Doctor. “I’ve got Rose.” In no way is this tempting fate for the next episode…

Er, it really has to be another 5/5, I’m afraid. Sorry. Duly embarrassed and all that. You never know, the season could still end up with less than a perfect score. It could happen. Seriously, though, it’s really surprised me how much I liked this. It’s the second new series story to enter my top ten, and the best so far of the twenty-first century.