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Frank of Ireland (2021)
Don't understand why it's so "Marmite"
People who love it really love it, people who hate it really hate it. I'm not quite sure what some people are seeing and others aren't.
While there is one poor episode which didn't engage me, I did come to really like it and would love to see more. It's cleverer than it perhaps looks and it works on different levels and with different types of humour. I do very much appreciate that kind of work over one-note humour.
I'm not going to spoil it for anyone but the finale of the first series is a cracker, and the actual ending is more thought-provoking by far than anything else you usually find in comedy.
Good performances, good jokes, good cast, good locations, some good recurring jokes (with huge potential, and legs).
It's too early to say but I do think this is going to have the same lasting appeal as Father Ted.
Knives Out (2019)
Another episode of Murder, She Wrote
I'll be upfront about it - it's not a genre I like. To me, it feels like:
1, Give everyone a motive
2, Make the actual motive, means or opportunity convoluted
3, Reveal it slowly in the last 10% of the film with occasional flashbacks to things which make no sense unless used retrospectively and implied as clues
I don't see anything different in this film. I'd praise it if there was a really clever subtext or it said anything about, well... anything at all. It's just a jigsaw, though. Here are some pieces, bit of a mystery about what the picture is, now we've put it together we can see it's:
1, Sydney Opera House
2, A close-up of Ernest Borgnine's face
3, Some hyenas
Well, great, that was worth two hours. What would have been great is if hyena DNA got mixed with Borgnine and he was scampering about the carapace of the Opera House with tails coming out of his face. At least that would present the possibility that humans have even the slightest imagination, rather than perpetually retelling the most tedious parts of our existence and imagining that it means something.
To be fair, it does mean something. But only to the tedious.
The Goes Wrong Show (2019)
Find out the real winner at Christmas!
I don't think it's a spoiler, given the title of the show, to say that this a celebration of things going wrong. It's also a celebration of the cast's attempts to soldier on through it and try to make the best of it. The Christmas story itself is largely inconsequential as it's just a vehicle to cram in as much mayhem as possible. It occasionally feels like anti-Christmas (or an anti-Disneyfied version of Christmas) and is all the funnier because of it.
What's most impressive is the number of different ways that have been conceived for a production to go wrong. It feels like it's been distilled from Acorn Antiques, It'll Be Alright On The Night, the Alan Partridge Christmas Special, but with a flavour of its own too. It's so quickfire that you really need to watch it more than once to catch everything, and it's just as grimly funny the second and even third time around. An increasingly belligerent and cynical Santa ties the whole thing together beautifully, although it wouldn't be the same without a visibly frustrated elf, an invisibly frustrated elf, and a snowman that meets a bad end (how did that do that?)
Very much looking forward to the rest of this series.
The Music of Chance (1993)
A film for those who want questions rather than answers.
If you like films where Eddie Murphy plays a host of parts by donning rubber faces, or a cop who is one day from retirement, or a protagonist who is shot at endlessly but never dies, or films celebrated for destroying the greatest number of cars in chase scenes, or Scooby Doo endings where everything is explained for you, then you probably aren't going to like this.
That is not to say that there aren't good films like that, just that different films have different audiences. I told someone once about The Music of Chance and how I kept going over it in my mind the next day. Twenty five years have passed and I'm still thinking about it. He hinted he was very sorry I'd had to see a film like that, and that's not what films are for. They're just supposed to fill 98 minutes of your life with something until you get onto the next thing. He'd misunderstood that I love that this film had stayed with me, had occupied my time on countless occasions other than one of the many viewings. It's so rare to find something that can compel for many years (the other example which comes to mind is Dogtooth - I think people who like Dogtooth would like The Music of Chance and vice versa).
I'm not going to talk about the plot, more about how this film made me feel. Films, for me, are too often little compartments where everything is neatly tied up and people get what they deserve. Perhaps as an escape from real life, which is nothing like that at all. What The Music of Chance does is make you believe it's allegorical but without revealing the whole. You get feelings about things, rather than solid answers. There are clues even in the names of the characters, as if there's some twisted nominative determinism at play.
There are also moments of deep unease. Not because of a psychopath with a chainsaw, but because you got a glimpse at the bigger picture (but only a glimpse). Things which seem harmless (like a faithful representation of a model village) are imbued with metaphysical dread. As for the ending, I can understand why it would disappoint some but, for me, the slew of questions the film left me with were multiplied by the final scene. It was, in itself, a huge payoff.
I don't generally believe in giving 10/10 reviews because it implies perfection (or close to it). But, in this case, 9/10 doesn't feel right (and I've had 25 years to mull that over). This is a wonderful, wonderful film with great acting but, sadly, more people are going to dislike it than like it, because it's not the kind of thing we're usually presented with. More's the pity!
The End of the F***ing World (2017)
Out Of This F***ing World
Some people may say this is a story about a teenage sociopath who wants to progress from killing animals to murdering his new girlfriend. That may be our starting point, but what unfolds is transformative for the two leads. While both James and Alyssa kill, they each do so out of caring, not hate. It's often the parents and other adults who are the villains of the piece. Those who have had the time and experience to develop empathy, but yet haven't.
There are some moments of hope that people aren't all bad, and that not all authority is corrupt; notably Gemma Whelan and Matt King's police officers, and Leon Annor's security officer. James and Alyssa are less binary and each shows a developing empathy for those suffering or in danger. They both act unselfishly and, fittingly, the final moments are about self-sacrifice.
Although there is comedy here too, not least in the internal monologues that show what James and Alyssa say isn't really what they think (the one time Alyssa does say what she is thinking is actually rather sweet). Jessica Barden's character has the best line of the whole series, telling her father to stop quoting himself. We're all thinking it, but she says it. That is not to downplay Alex Lawther's contribution. His journey from an empty and unfeeling human towards something more caring and more vulnerable, is gradual and poignant.
Credit should be given to both leads, but the acting is first rate all round. Some clever casting too, with Navin Chowdhry, Felicity Montagu, and Matt King all playing against type. Felicity Montagu is only on screen for a few minutes but steals the scene (from behind a locked bathroom door, no less), her treatment of poor Frodo a passive aggressive microcosm of the narrative, where the denouement sees Frodo with no choice left but to just leg it. Very clever, given how it all ends. Even Frodo's birth name speaks of a lack of empathy in his own parents, more intent on their own fancies than caring about the effect on their child, spending his entire existence explaining that yes, it's really his name.
This will naturally draw comparison with Natural Born Killers and Badlands because of the subject matter. Really, though, it's a coming of age story, and a reminder that we largely choose our own path as adults, regardless of how much our parents messed us up before we turned eighteen.
We never find out what happened to Frodo. Wherever he is, I hope James and Alyssa changed his life, and that he is happy. I hope the same for all of us.
Their Cousin from England (1914)
Flatulence, assassination, and egg whisks!
A strange film in that none of the principle actors (apart from the eponymous Algy, the English cousin) remained in the industry long after this piece was shot. Although the Gray family appeared in many of the "Algy" films, they were often portrayed by different actors and had different characteristics. It is said that the Grays are based upon a family that the writer became obsessed with and whose lives he was ejaculated from, leading him to discontinue his association in real life but continue it fictitiously within these films. In many of the films, he appears to be pursuing a personal vendetta against the real-life family who spurned him.
Ostensibly a silent comedy about a wealthy American family and their strange cousin who visits from England, these films have a dark underbelly of obsession, revenge, and cruel humour. The character of May Gray is repeatedly portrayed with an egg whisk despite society railing at her inability to use such a device (due to having several more hands than is normal, but very many fewer fingers). The father of the family is portrayed with chronic flatulence and while we don't hear this due to it being a silent film, the lack of sound appears to have led the writer to exaggerate the visual effect of the flatulence. In one scene, early special effects show the destruction of a barn as the result of Mr. Gray parping his way through the Hallelujah Chorus. In another, a horse is converted into the mere skeleton of a horse by his foul emission.
As a study of one man's bitterness and lack of social awareness this piece, created by him, paints a compelling picture of how mistaken he is in his view of other people and their motives.
Lucy (2014)
Incoherent
This isn't a film which bears close scrutiny. It appears to have been developed from the mashing together of a few factoids, without any deeper understanding or research.
i, The three million year old skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis named "Lucy" evidences the progression of skull size and brainpower in our species' development.
ii, Lucy was named for a song which many believe is about drugs.
iii, The odd idea that seems to have taken hold that we only use 10% of our brain.
Add in a superhero element, some strands of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Christian deity themes of omniscience, omnipresence, and Michaelangelo's Creation of Adam, obligatory violence and a car chase.
As a thesis, it fails utterly. As a distraction, it was enough to keep me watching to the end; a ridiculous end, at that, where Lucy turns herself into graphite powder and a suspiciously long USB stick (as if that's what humans are fashioned from).
There's the usual Hollywood fare of casting an English-accented male as a baddie, zero concern for incidentals who die as a result of the plot, a deep confusion between intelligence and memory, and a professor whose gibberish is eaten up by other academics because he talks slowly and appears to be amusing himself in his own mind with hyper intelligent asides (even though he actually seems to be thinking about some cat videos he saw on YouTube).
There's enough in the film for reviewers to hang a theory on but it's all so incoherent. People will always try to connect dots that really aren't connected; it's human nature. If I made a film about Fred Flintstone, a tortoise, some spam, and Donald Trump's elbow, someone would make a connection. Admit it - you want to.
All that said, the car chase was rather spiffy, and I liked the font used to display what percentage of her brain Lucy was using. The rest was risible. It's what I expect from Hollywood, but not really what I've come to expect from Luc Besson.