Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical (2022)

 "This isn't school. It's a prison."

This is the first time I've seen a film at a cinema for a shocking three years, at the splendid and, I'm pleased to see, expanding Phoenix Arts Cinema in Leicester, and once again the reason was Little Miss Llamastrangler. Many thanks to my brother and sister-in-law for treating us.

The film is,of course, splendid fun for all the family, with delightfully witty lyrics courtesy of Tim Minchin. It is, as it necessarily had to be, a very different beast from the 1996 film, set in a very British 1980s of Irn-Bru and bikes from my childhood. Alisha Weir is a revelation and a triumph as our titular heroine, while Emma Thompson is magnificently evil as Trunchbull, whose cruelty is far more apparent here than in the previous film, although there are also hints of a possible actual hinterland..

It's all about the visuals, though, and of course the brilliant songs. There's far more of a whimsical, mischievous sense of humour here that owes far more to Roald Dahl's writing itself than the previous adaptation. There is, of course, a possible subtext- I love Matilda's comment, upon seeing Miss Honey's home, that teachers must be "really badly paid", plus it's easy to see Miss Trunchbull's Gradgrindian regime as a metaphor for the National Curriculum, which was very much an issue ij the late 80s when the novel was written and the film is set. If so, though, any such subtext is worn lightly. More than anything, the film is great fun. Both Little Miss Llamastrangler and I enjoyed it enormously.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

 "You said I could eat bad guys!"

I only watched this film as an easy watch after a knackering day, expecting a non-demanding bit of third rate superhero fluff- much like this film's predecessor, enjoy it though I did.

Instead, directed by Andy Serkis- he of the recent extraordinary performance in Andor- we have a taut, entertaioning action film that doesn't outstay its welcome and develops its characters superbly. I know not of Carnage and Shriek- they are after my time as far as the comics are concerned- but I really loved them as characters, well written and acted. Woody Harrelson in particular is superb as a serial killer who, we learn only at the last minute, was made that was by child abuse. It just goes to show that those who participate in judicial killing, whether signing death warrants or administering a lethal injection, are as evil as their victims and deserve no less.

Not only the villains are well-characterised, of course. Ediie and Venom's bromance gets a nice little arc, and both of them come to accept that Anne is lost to them, and to wish her well.

The plot is simple yet effective, with the King Kong conclusion an oldie but goodie. This is a film about love, however twisted; about the lingering effects of child abuse; about the evils of judicial killing- those who take part in this vice all die- but, most of all, it's a rollicking ride.

And that mid-credits, echoing Spider-Man: No Way Home: the fugitive Eddie/Venom are in the MCU...?

A Christmas Carol: Part Two

"This is not reason versus fancy, Ebenezer."

Two thirds in and I think I can say that this daring, dark and devilishly clever version of the story is really rather brilliant- give or take a certain two things which I'll come to in the next paragraph. It was all about the Ghost of Christmas Past, though- the last episode will have a lot to squeeze in.

There are a certain two bits of this episode that are particularly edgy, though. It's been a long while since I read the novella, probably more than twenty years ago, but I'm fairly sure that the sexual abuse of Scrooge at boarding school was not remotely hinted at. Nor was his sexual exploitation of Mary Cratchitt for Tiny Tim's operation. These two elements both make Scrooge initially more sympathetic by showing us his "old pain" from his early childhood, but then go on to make us hate him as a sexual abuser. That's brave, and will make it harder to end this satisfactorily- how can such a monster be redeemed? Of course, his shockingly brutal and immoral business practices are shown in greater detail too, so there's a wider picture here. And it's notable that the multiple plot threads of the first episode (Marley's angle, Mary's source of money) all feed like tributaries into one here.

What we have here, I think, is a very modern deconstruction of Victorian Britain and its literature, not limited to the fairly foregrounded references to Hard Times as seen in the quote. Of course sexual abuse was never mentioned- but it was rife, as it has been throughout history. And so, of course, was the sexual exploitation of desperate women by powerful men. Both evils are still with us today, but in Victorian times there was the added evil of a woman always being judged harshly for any sexual act  not with a husband, circumstances be damned. In any Victorian novel, any woman such as Mary, however blameless, would die- I'm thinking of The Odd Women and Tess of the d'Urbervilles but the tendency was, I think, universal, How will this series deal with Mary?

There's an awful lot that the third episode needs to do. But this episode has been masterfully done, with some brave decisions, certainly, but handled with skill.

A Christmas Carol: Part One

“Bah humbug!”

It's quite a statement of intent to begin an adaptation of A Christmas Carol with a boy pissing on a bloke's grave, but that's what happens here. It's a very clear sign that the three hours of Dickensian drama that lie before us are going to be devoid of the normal schmaltz and sentimentality.

This is a grubby, harsh and, well, Dickensian London, just before Christmas 1843. It's a time of poverty, suffering, starvation and sickness, long before the Welfare State and, indeed, probably where we're headed in the next few years, unprotected by EU membership from Trump's rapacious designs on our food and our health system and where the Welfare State is becoming deeply unfashionable to those in power, much like such things as objective truth, the BBC, an independent Civil Service and, you know, institutions that one imagines a "Conservative" ought to want to preserve. But I digress. At least, in 1843, things were getting better. They had Sir Robert Peel, not "Sir" Iain bloody Duncan Smith.

None of that hope means much to poor Bob Cratchit, forced to work for an unusually lean Ebenezer Scrooge in the shape of Guy Pearce, a cynical smartarse who manages to be just likeable enough as an antihero. There's a long scene of dialogue between Cratchit and Scrooge, with Cratchit anxious to get home for Christmas Eve from his job as a human photocopier, or "clerk" in 1843 speak, which nicely gives us all the necessary exposition about his family's unfortunate situation and their respective situations. This side of thngs is almost traditional.

However, all this stuff with Jacob Marley and a very hellish Purgatory (it's all very Catholic but then it's a concept rather necessary to the idea of a ghost)- it's all very dark, scary, visual and not in the novella. Nor is this odd little sub-plot with Mrs Cratchit's cousin. And surely if, on Christmas Eve, Scrooge is told there will be three ghosts on successive midnights, this will take him long past Christmas morning?

This is brazen, bold, brave and different. Is it going to work? Well, the jury's out.