owen-watts

It's extremely rare due to the lengthy and scattershot methods in which I watch television that I'd ever buy a series on DVD midway through watching it but such was the strength of feeling for this 1976 television epic that I just had to. It really is a rare example of something that has both the reputation and the timeless clout to back it up. Robert Graves' devious and addictive dark narrative about power and politics in Ancient Rome has this fantastic sparkle to it that shines even out of the flat 1970s studio presentation. It's not just the peerless cast that help but some genuinely tasteful directorial choices that took me by surprise. The lingering shots are particularly effective. The aging make-up is... certainly a vibe but the acting within the rubbery folds is really wild. It's bristling with "oh-look-it's-so-and-so" moments from the young Bernard Hill to a terrifyingly glorious bit of early Patrick Stewart. Even Nursie from Blackadder pops up. You can see echoes of Claudius in the character-driven betrayal epics of the modern era, and indeed, likely many that come long after my DVDs have all melted.

Pink Panther Odyssey Part XXXXIII

Heavily repetitious with the continual cop beatings which tread a strangely avant line between exhausting and hilariously exhausting. A solid sight gag here or there but a damp and nothingy conclusion. The central mechanic here, constantly returning the lost horseshoe, is pretty fun but not as inventive as it could be. For such a short cartoon this one oddly dragged a bit for me.

::Some bonus trivia to make it up to the word count:: The northwestern sections of the Roman Empire used a device called the "hipposandal" as a precursor to the horse shoe. It involved strapping an entire hippo to each foot of the horse. Hippos were both smaller and more commonplace in that era.

Ooof. This is likely going to be seen as the biggest mistake in the sprawling Ru franchise. As a devout explorer of the wider global spin-offs this genuinely seemed like a genuinely thrilling prospect. Underrated queens like the great Gala Varo and Soa de Muse getting a chance to perform in front of Ru and seen by the wider audience... muddied by naked anglo-language favouritism, awkward song choices, bizarre heavy-handed product placements, bizarre narrative editing choices that feel almost intentionally wrong-footing and ... well what seems like a marketing opportunity for the clear winner from the start. Really firing on all cylinders in the worst possible way. There are a few cute moments dotted throughout but they seem despite, not because, of the show. A serious shame.

I get where the disappointments for this film came from at the time but watching this back-to-back with the drab and lifeless Civil War (and in comparison to the rather dull first) Multiverse was a really magical experience. Relentlessly creative, wildly weird and rattles along at a fantastic pace. It really is the first MCU film in an ice age that feels, sounds and moves like a distinct film in its own right. A lot of the sequences here are really fantastic and full of visual flair, it's Sam Raimi unleashed which I like and Elfman's music is inventive and anthemic. I also love the Wanda villain role, Olsen is utterly terrifying here and there's a logic to it. I also love that (alternate) McAdams is given much more to do. Easily one of my favourite of the entire output, feels properly deeply comic-ey. Hopefully we get more of this.

James Stewart shines, of course, but Anatomy feels far too dryly long-winded and whatever the lawyer equivalent of "copaganda" is. The guy who wrote this was a working lawyer writing under a pseudonym casting himself as likeable ol' Jimmy Stewart, you've got real lawyers in the cast and the actual victims whose case was carbon-copied for the original book tried to sue him. It's all a bit gross. The "hey, what is justice anyway?" cynicism under all of it doesn't quite forgive what plays out but there are parts that feel wildly tonally progressive for the time as all the firsts attest to. A fascinating watch, but not quite a classic.

Blethyn's mannered performance is the core of this and perpetually hypnotic. Coming straight from watching Naked this feels like a breath of fresh air. Secrets is densely layered but a bit baggy to start, all hands are working away wonderfully, and to watch it is to be barking a constant chorus of "look it's so-and-so" especially in the indulgent LCU (Leigh Cinematic Universe) photoshoot scene. Not cartoony, but not unbearably bleak either. Wonderfully balanced and all drenched in them overbearingly melancholic strings. Those big expansive single shot scenes, especially the infamous barbeque sequence, are mesmeric. You wouldn't get maybe half of the dramatic ensemble dark comedies of the decades after without this potentially, eh sweet'aaart?

I had absolutely no expectations for Michelle Buteau's semi-biographical TV comedy debut but it feels genuinely refreshing and has a real charm to it. It frequently does and shows things you rarely see and has a warmth around the premise that I really took to. You rarely see plutonic opposite-gender friends on TV for one and there was a lot of granular observations about being-aimless-in-your-late-thirties that rang some truths despite all the myriad cultural differences. Nice to see some crossover with the drag scene in there as well. Now I don't think it's perfect by any means and there's a lot here that is clunky but the layering is good and I'm up for more.

Hitchcock's tater-tastic 1970s return to thrillers is a strange sort of beast. Weirdly brutal at times and actually a fascinating window into the grotty bustling capital city of the period due to the extensive use of real locations. You can see the film studies god in action on those impossibly clever shot set-ups but the dialogue is very silly, the tone is all over the place (did we need all those long long minutes where the gag is that the policeman's wife can't cook?) and it generally has the vibe of a much older film caught out of time. Interesting, but not essential. Also I was mostly just watching for the strange venn intersection of Cribbins and Hitchcock.

This surprisingly effective little narrative is a breath of fresh air in the stuffy room of modern Star Wars. A bit like Batman, Star Wars is almost better being silly, and that is what this is. Rebuild the Galaxy is genuinely really fun, has a neat story and some smarter-than-average fandom nods dotted throughout. A relatively solid voice cast anchors the whole thing led by the actually-that-really-works brothers duo of Tony Reviolri and Gaten Matarazzo. The only detracting factor is that this is all a toy advert but then... maybe what makes this solid compared to most recent episodic efforts for the brand is that Rebuild the Galaxy realises this is mostly what Star Wars was in the first place.

We find ourselves with a magical L. A. Noire tinged reboot of Gotham where every character is has shoulders that are about six feet across. The animation and character design doesn't feel too far advanced from Timm's 90s heyday, but Caped Crusader is a fascinating project with some strong world building and solid voicework. It's neither quite monster-of-the-week nor grand-structured-ensemble in terms of focus, with some solid continuity but some characters just dropping out entirely but it does have some great forward momentum. This new old-fashioned take on the Batman mythos does feel oddly refreshingly.

If Allen represents "everybody else" then I think I'm one. Much like Barbie (more of an idea than a person) this film is more of an idea than a film. Much funnier, sharper and self aware than it has any right to be. A real existentialist breath of fresh air regrettably wrapped up in what is just a big naked corporate advert. It's very American but has an oddly British cast. It also strikes me as tremendously inconsistent for a finished film ... where do the CEOs go for half the film? The Mirren-narrator pops in and out and the real world is both super real or also quite cartoony all at once. America and her daughter feel like sketches really, where maybe in an earlier draft they were point-of-view characters that've been kind of roughly shoved to the side but hey, this ain't Toy Story. Tim Allen. Although he feels more like a Ken if I'm honest.

To say there's pressure on thinking this is the biggest masterpiece in sci-fi history is an understatement. The almighty DuneBro empire. However unlike the ponderous Nolan films that are often touted such folk, Dune feels genuinely thoughtful and layered. That being said it's still a deeply po-faced and murky sort of a universe. The only humour is manly snark and all is life or death. The more political Dune is the more I like it, the designs are gorgeous and the cast on the whole are stupendous - but as it baggily stumbles into the third act and the jeopardy lessens, it becomes hard to worship.

I really didn't expect this belated fish-based Pixar film to be any good, having recently noped-out of a Pixar film for the first time (Cars 2, never again), but Dory ends up becoming one of the most effective mainstream neurodiversity trust-and-tolerance narratives I've ever seen. Usual casting caveats aside (although The Wire-but-cockney seals were something else) it's a briskly paced, has some solid setpieces and a near-relentless pace of solid gags. Sure you lose some of the widescreen majesty of the first and Nemo himself felt a bit cast-aside (mild fish pun) but it has bags of heart and as a sequel it was the polar opposite of... well you know. Wheels. Not good.

Going into this I'd been led to believe it was one of the weakest MCU films which does it a serious disservice. Sure the plot is super contrived and a lot of it feels quite arbitrary. Certainly Eccleston's anaemic villain is rightly seen as a huge missed opportunity (not to mention Sif who just wanders around). However it is incredibly gorgeous and still has a palpable physicality about it that a lot of superhero blockbusters struggle with. Asgard looks wonderful, the costumes are great and it's bristling with weirdly specific British and Irish actors like the great Justin Edwards, Clive Russell... Tony Curran! Time has been kind to this perfunctory little sequel I think, in the face of some of what came later.

Pink Panther Odyssey Part XXXXII

A weirdly poor effort which either nicks from or pays tribute to a bugs bunny cartoon which does feel surprisingly off for the Panther. Pink joins the army, and that's enough for a slew of repetitive gags and damp squibs. The brutality of military police is quite funny and the ending is refreshingly daft but it's very flimsy.

::Bonus trivia to meet required characters::

The Bugs Bunny cartoon it's aping is "Forward March Hare" from 1952 directed by the legendary Chuck Jones who around the time of G. I. Pink was winning Oscars for boundary-pushing short animated films like "The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics"

Wolfing down a huge amount of MCU films in a very short time, as I have found myself doing in the last year or so, makes you appreciate the differences. Going straight from one of the more ponderous and formulaic entries to this is quite the tonal whiplash and I found myself liking Vol. 2 much more than the original film. Drax is written better, the main character arcs all work well and the finale is pretty great. The issues I have with this spacey pocket of the universe are still there though, it's pretty blokey and Peter's dogged pursuit of Gamora never feels less than greasy. The "ugly" joke as well only serves to highlight the "men can be giant trees/racoons/planets women can only look like women" issue. Beside that, Guardians 2 was a pleasant surprise, and in the top ten MCU efforts for me.

This Brazilian take on the saturated goofy snark of Tina Fey's ouvre landed on Netflix in the great before times and I was always rather fond of it. Centering around the titular Samantha who is a washed-up child star trying to both relaunch her career and cope with the legacy of her porblematical kids show. It's got the characteristic mash of dopey and sentimental you get with contemporary shows like it and the cast are rather charismatic, particularly her hapless footballer husband Dodói played by City of God's Douglas Silva. It's cancellation didn't necessarily devastate as it didn't feel like it had a great deal more to say after the second season. But as an introduction to bizarre Brazillian culture and a very silly sort of a show I'll remember it fondly, if folks are looking for an odd international version of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt then you could do much worse.

Planet Earth II from the recent-but-distant past of 2016 was the second in the landmark series of Zimmer + Attenborough + BBC + loads of lovely cameras. It really is peak "stick it on a massive television and melt into it" television and is notable not just for a couple of landmark sequences (I well remember the fevered talk of the breathtaking Snakes v Iguanas sequence which still feels more frenetic than what you'd get in a contemporary action film) but for the transition to 4K which still sits as the pinnacle of sharpness. As such. Split into different biomes, the one episode that still really shines in my memory is the last with "cities as environments" the hyenas creeping around ancient nightime Harar, the peregrine falcons soaring through the glass canyons of New York. It really doesn't get better than this.

Weirdly I saw this before I saw Iron Man 3 (I know, I know) but Kingsley is having a whale of a time portraying Slattery and that alone really makes this this pulpy little one-shot worth seeking out. He imbues his pompous actor character with such a strikingly clear David Thewlis energy that it makes you wonder if it's a tribute or an insult. I like the tying-up of the subplots and how it builds into Shang-Chi (and how you can watch these things in retrospect and know they pay off rather than worry they are leading to nothing). The smart 1970s aesthetic is sharp and the Sam Rockwell cameo is fun if lightly offensive. It's a satisfying little short, this. Marvel should have got into doing these instead of post-credits sequences like Pixar shorts.

The second Ant-Man is free from the Edgar Wright spectre which dominated the first movie and the handling of the tertiary characters is far stronger here. The size-play here is put front-and-centre in most of the setpieces which works really well but there's a strong forgettable element to the whole endeavour which is the central issue that you could excise the entire Ghost plot with no affect to the film at all. Same with the romance between Lang and Pym which feels almost laughably perfunctory. Beck's score throughout is weirdly intrusive and annoying. These are the only things that stick out really but it's a punchy and fun entry into the canon which gives it a slight advantage in my mind than some of the more memorable but less enjoyable endeavours.

I watch a lot of Pink Panther so leaking into the contemporary works of Pratt felt like a natural place to spill into but Roland and Rattfink is not it. A heavy-handed bit of 1960s satire which tries to augment the usual funny set-pieces with some arch commentary. The aerial combat stuff that this first one is built around works fairly well but the need to hitch a kind of moralizing gag on the end really undermines whatever "out-of-sight-man" point they were trying to make. There were seventeen of these made in all and nothing about this first one makes me keen to pursue the rest of it. Yikes.

I saw this a few months ago and a lot of it still is encrusted across my brain in sickly yellow hues. A prime bit, if not THE prime bit, of 90s French weird cinema. Couldn't have been made anywhere else or anywhen else, and is clogged together out of the detritus of the 20th Century film landscape that came before it. Or congealed. I love how it didn't feel the need to justify anything about itself or explain much, the opening titles alone are an artistic beacon of intent. I love the physical sensation of it and the palette but the story itself didn't really hang together. It feels more of a prelude than the main event. Still, it's all up in my brain now, even a plunger wouldn't get it out.

One of a raft of cultish British films that acts as the cornerstone of the emergent genre "Folk Horror", Satan's Claw feels like an overlong episode of an anthology TV series. Or indeed a whole series of self-contained stories that's been stuck together. A very inconsistent and fragmentary experience with some fascinating choices. Not least of which the beguilingly idiosyncratic cinematography from Russell's pal Dick Bush. Inarguably though you can see that the real influence is that dreadful unsettling undertone that runs underneath all of it. Everything feels a bit wrong and off and you can clearly see how it spawned a multitude of Gen X filmmakers and creatives.

Strange is a better ensemble character than a lead, and I enjoyed him far more in his supporting outings. All that and it's not nearly STRANGE enough. MCU films are usually a watered-down concept made safe for complex box office reasons but this one stings the most as you could have really gone to town here. The psychedelic touches are way too light and Giacchino is hobbled to only a few proggish touches in the score which you only really get to hear over the credits. The big complex twisty set pieces and the finale particularly, in deference to most MCU films, are the only interesting things in the film. The core story is weepingly thin, with McAdams apparently "intentionally underwritten" character like a ghost. Built upon the captivating story of an arrogant rich surgeon becoming an arrogant rich sorcerer which could only be of interest to men who buy fancy leather watches. So it has something else in common with Inception apart from the twisty architecture then.

I'd seen Strangelove as a teenager but on re-watching I was captivated by the performance of George C. "Patton" Scott who is delivering the most bewilderingly proto-Tim Robinson esque unhinged character. I actually thought it was more effective than the Sellers trio and the idea that Scott was doing this "unintentionally" and Kubrick foxed him is a nice story. I kind of want to believe this of all takes now. That and the R. Lee Ermey-esque glory of casting Slim Pickens. These performances, and the tone of the thing which must have seemed so crass in the depths of the cold war are glorious, but it's more than that. Paired with the layered incelly impotence running through everything, those sexual overtones really speaks to something much deeper about violence and violation. It's such a deliciously timeless thing.