Oscar Night Roundup

Behind the Candelabra: Liberace biopic, about his relationship with his much-younger lover Scott Thorson. If it took place now, it would just be a simple story of celebrity marriage and divorce, but the homophobic backdrop of the 1970s adds drama. Plus you can play Spot Scott Bacula with the supporting cast.

Gravity: Technically impressive adventure story about an astronaut isolated in space after a Russian missile hits an obsolete satellite and sends debris rocketing through orbit; verges on the cliched in places (woman emotionally destroyed by the loss of a child finds The Strength To Carry On, sigh), but it really is genuinely tense and by turns claustrophobic and agoraphobic.

Nebraska: Dementia-suffering pensioner becomes convinced he's won a million dollars, and insists on taking a road trip to Lincoln, Nebraska to collect, visiting his old hometown on the way. A brilliantly credible performance from Bruce Dern, and scarily accurate portrayals of the sort of micropolitics that emerge in small communities.

American Hustle: Clever heist drama, working as both an homage to the mafia/crime films of the 1970s and as an intelligent, complicated story in its own right. A good film to play Spot the Boardwalk Empire Alumnus, and/or Spot Anthony Zerbe, plus Robert de Niro's only good role this decade.

Movie count for 2014: 11

Robocopped

Robocop: Biting, classic satire on privatisation and corporate control, which seriously didn't need a remake, as it's pretty much all still true today. Although it's not often mentioned in reviews of this film, I'd like to flag up Lewis as another of those believably-strong heroines of 1980s fantastic film, and praise it for showing a man and woman having a professional relationship characterised by mutual respect, without degenerating into cliched romance or annoying patronisation.

Robocop 2: Starts promisingly, with the police out on strike and Roboscab, being corporate property, nonetheless carrying on with the crime-fighting. However, the film rapidly forgets about this and degenerates into a bit of a mess; it's not without good ideas and entertaining satire (particularly when it's revealed that the evil corporation is deliberately running the city of Detroit into the ground to buy it out and operate it privately), but the villains are annoyingly cartoony, and there's a bit of a naive-libertarian plotline going (Robocop is given a bunch of ludicrous politically-correct directives which slow him down, but which he remedies by erasing all directives from his databank, but nonetheless carries on doing the right thing because, as we all know, rules and laws just get in the way of The Good Guys). At least Lewis is still in it.

Movie count for 2014: 7

Lovebirds

Bill and Coo: Utterly bizarre; a small-town drama performed entirely by trained birds, and the result is sort of like Tales of the Riverbank crossed with Jour de Fete. Some strange period details as well, such as the "townsfolk" all crowding into a birdie air-raid shelter to escape the baddie, and some predictably godawful puns (a theatrical revue featuring "chorus gulls" is one of the least groanworthy examples). Apparently it won an Oscar, probably in the category of "we have no idea why, but this thing deserves some sort of award". Available in full on Youtube:




Movie count for 2014: 5

Rain and Snow

Elysium: Allegorical tale set in a future where The 99% live in slums on Earth, and The 1% in a sort of astral gated community on a space station overhead. The whole thing is nicely realised, but some of the performances are surprisingly bad (Jodie Foster plays the film's I-can't-believe-she's-not-Servalan character as if she's reading form an autocue), and likewise some of the characterisation (e.g. the badass South African mercenary who carries on fighting on behalf of Elysium even after they've screwed him over and he really should, if consistently characterised, go over to the rebels' side; the main reason he doesn't seems only to be to provide the film with a dramatic climax). Not bad, but I'd expected more from the writer/producer of District 9.

The Abominable Snowman: Beautifully crisp and austere 1950s horror, which rings a nice twist on the well-worn idea that the Yeti are some kind of evolutionary blind alley, while condemning romanticised attitudes to Tibet and unscrupulous exploitation of science. Script by Nigel Kneale, and I want a pair of those cool dieselpunk snow goggles that Peter Cushing wears.

The Masque of the Red Death: Roger Corman is the sort of guy who can produce Sharktopus one minute and something this beautiful the next. A lovely, postmodern and pop-art take on Gothic horror, with a theological debate woven into the subtext; it loses a couple of Cool Points for some Coarse Swordfighting, but gains them for having Nic Roeg as a cinematographer.

Animal Farm: CIA-funded (no, really) 1950s take on the Orwell novel. Mostly a pretty good rendition with an appropriately Soviet animation style, and the fact that it cut out some of the novel's subplots wasn't a problem, as it made the film more streamlined. However, the ending is where it really goes into Cold War propaganda overdrive; where Orwell ended on the downbeat note of having the animals looking from the pigs to the humans, and not being able to tell which was which, the film has the animals, led by Benjamin the donkey, staging a second revolution and driving out the pigs. OK, but what then? A donkey-led dictatorship? A nominal animal democracy under the secret control of the human farmers? Answers, please, CIA.

Movie count for 2014: 4

The Repeated Meme: Bubbly Personality Masking Bossy Control Freak

Central Premise Recycled From: "The Pandorica Opens" via "A Town Called Mercy" and "The Parting of The Ways".

Moffat Auto-Recycling: Moppets, doggerel rhymes, character aging while other characters stay young, the Doctor having a fling with a sexually rapacious older woman, a future crypto-Catholic church that's a lot more sexually liberal, the Doctor as Wild West sheriff of a town with a daft name, Scottishness when Capaldi turns up, the Greatest Hits Reel featuring the Crack in the Universe, the Weeping Angels, the Silent, the Dalek dickheads, Amy. A bunch of the Doctor's enemies ganging up on him.

Not Stolen from RTD, Honest: Pretentious narration track opening the episode. Companion inviting Doctor for Christmas dinner with the family. The companion's mum is an interfering bitch, but her surviving grandparent is rather nice. Clara lives on the Powell Estate these days, apparently. The Doctor in old-guy makeup. As in "The Parting of the Ways", the Doctor tricks the companion into going back to Earth to keep her out of danger while he faces the Daleks, though Clara's rather more passive about this than Rose was. Companion travelling by hanging on the outside of the Tardis. Daft sobriquet for the Doctor ("The Man Who Stayed for Christmas"). Naked people (somehow linked with regeneration-- Captain Jack in "The Parting of the Ways", and the Doctor in "Journey's End"). The Doctor not regenerating into another form straight away, but taking the time for a protracted goodbye. The Doctor in love with his first companion (since he cares enough about Amy that it's her he sees as he regenerates). Post-regeneration Doctor talking about his new organs.

Evil Household Objects: None, but there's a slightly undercooked turkey.

Doctor Who! It's the question the Crack in the Universe is asking.

Hats! The wig's a good variation. One of the Christmas Townies wears a smoking-cap, a garment whose design originally derived from the fez.

Moppets! Too many of them around Christmas Town.

Clara's Job This Week: Christmas dinner chef and needy crushed-out girlfriend.

Murray Gold's Christmas Number One: He doesn't get one. Has there been a budget reduction?

Gratuitous Continuity Frakups: Clara sees a Silent, and doesn't immediately lunge for it and kill it. The Angel that trapped River in "The Angels Take Manhattan" gripped her wrist but didn't send her back in time because the Angel was too weak to do otherwise, but that's apparently been forgotten in Clara's similar encounter. Once again the designers seem not to have noticed that those semi-circular things in the Tombs of the Cybermen were climbing aids, not design elements. In "Asylum of the Daleks", the Dalek dickheads were created through exposure to nanogenes, and yet here, though the Doctor and Clara are undoubtedly exposed to same aboard the Papal Mainframe, they show no signs of changing. Regeneration energy is now powerful enough to take out a fleet of Daleks. Although it's established in "The Day of the Doctor" that the earlier Doctors in multi-Doctor stories don't remember their events, somehow the Matt Smith Doctor knows that the Jon Pertwee Doctor stole the Seal of the High Council from the Master in the Death Zone. If the events of Trenzalore have changed so the Doctor didn't die there, then the Intelligence can't have gone to the Doctor's tomb in "The Name of the Doctor" and Clara can't have done her trick of splitting along the Doctor's timeline, and thus goes from being The Impossible Girl to being The Irrelevant Girl.

Things That Aren't Actually Continuity Frakups: Really, people, there's no problem with the Doctor leading the Silent into battle-- so long as *they* remember what they're supposed to be doing, it doesn't matter if *he* does. Although it's not stated in the story that Clara's "mum" is actually her stepmum, it's not impossible, which explains how Clara suddenly has a mother despite her mother's death being a plot point last season. Likewise complaints about Clara's middle-class family living on a council estate overlook the scenario that it's Clara's flat and, like many budget-conscious young professionals, she's renting an ex-council property.

Continuity Resolutions: We learn what it actually was that the Doctor saw in Room 11 in "The God Complex" (the Crack in the Wall), and an explanation of why the Doctor is the thirteenth Doctor despite only 12 appearing in "Name of the Doctor" (Tennant managed to regenerate back into himself).
 
Other Frakups: The Doctor spends 300 years in Christmas Town, and yet somehow the culture, economy and political system of the place fail to change? Apply that to England in 2013, and we'd be living in a country with a politically active monarch, voting rights restricted to property-holding men, slavery legal, no steam engines or electric grid, and periwigs and frock-coats the height of fashion. Why does the Punch and Judy show feature a Monoid as a villain-- they weren't actually monsters, just an enslaved species, so it's a bit like featuring an Ood as a baddie. The lighting filters on the estate sequences mean that Clara's supposedly cooked turkey looks half-raw. Out of the several possible scenarios through which the Doctor might gain extra regenerations, they have to pick the most banal.

Nostalgia UK: The usual gratuitous Doctor Who continuity references, e.g. mentioning Terileptils. Also gratuitous cross-programme intersectionality as Clara's family watch "Strictly Come Dancing". Don't know if it's deliberate or not, but it's really funny to watch the sequences with little Amelia in her red wellies and hat running through the Tardis, while thinking of Don't Look Now.

Item Most Likely to Become a Toy: On the basis of past Chrismasses, I'd say "nothing". However, the wooden Cyberman is exactly the sort of variation CO seem to like (q.v. the rusty Cybermen and transparent Angels of earlier years), so it might actually make it. Also they usually do a post-regeneration Doctor figure, so we're likely to get a Capaldi in Matt Smith's clothes.

Airplane flicks

Pacific Rim: Interested to see this as a lot of my progressive friends have been hailing it as a new, racially and gender conscious direction for action flicks. My take: it gained points for having a great romance storyline-- rather than the hero having to Win The Girl or Rescue The Girl, the girl and the hero grow together and come to love each other as a consequence of events-- and for having a decent multiethic cast and a nice meaty role for Idris Elba. It lost points for killing off the sole black character in the third reel (seriously guys?) and for having only one major female character. Otherwise: enjoyable, but basically like Neon Genesis Evangelion without the Jungian psychology.

World's End: SF as metaphor, with weird events in a small English town serving as a bassline to Simon Pegg and his buddies working through their issues about growing up and getting old. Nicely dystopian, but is there some sort of rule that every British production now has to employ David "Stemroach" Bradley in some role or other?

Movie count for 2013: 72

Barbarella, she's a fella

Rewatches:

Barbarella: Cheerfully surreal French comic-book adaption. I've seen it at least three times, and, if humanity ever does make it into outer space, I hope it's in spaceships with furry shag-pile interiors.

The Hunger Games: A rewatch prior to going out to see the sequel. Actually rather better than I remember it being, and a witty allegory of our times.

Dr Strangelove: Iconic anti-nuclear comedy; Peter Sellers good in all of his roles, but curiously, although Slim Pickens is absolutely excellent as the pilot Kong, one sort of feels like Sellers should have been in the bomber sequences (as was originally intended). In hindsight, a crucial influence on most of the 1960s comedies that followed.

New movies:

Black Swan: A lot better than I'd been led to expect, being a visual exploration of the mind of a ballerina who is cracking under the pressure of dancing the lead in Swan Lake, and blurring the lines between reality and demented fantasy with Verhoevenesque abandon.

The Hunger Games II: Catching Fire: I'd thought the book was pretty weak, but the film fixes most of what's wrong with it, adjusting the pacing and providing a much-needed third-person perspective. The games sequence is well realised, the new cast were great and the younger cast clearly gaining in skills; however, Peeta is starting to look a bit like Link Hogthrob.

Judge Dredd: Starts nicely, but rapidly degenerates into an amalgam of overused Hollywood sf-action-film cliches-- Bladerunner-lite cityscapes, parental issues, lawman framed for a crime he didn't commit, emotionally frigid man taught to feel by the love of a good woman, annoying comedy sidekick with mad haxx0r skillz; a friend/partner/brother who turned out bad and got shopped by the hero and is now back for revenge, and so on. In a parallel universe, Rico Dredd is the hero of this one.

Walkabout: Beautiful and tragic film about two children lost in the Outback, who meet an aboriginal youth on a walkabout and seemingly enter a parallel Australia, existing among the wild animals and both ignored by, and ignoring, the "civilised" world only steps away from them. One of the best uses of montage ever.

Movie count for 2013: 70

50th Anniversary Repeated Meme: I Hurt Myself Today

Any excuse to include a picture of Sara Kingdom.

Central Premise Recycled From: The Three Doctors (Clara: “There's three of them now!” Kate Lethbridge-Stewart: “I think there's a precedent for that.”).

Moffat Auto-Recycling: Moppets (see below); the Doctor's mad romance with a beautiful historical figure, including antics on a white horse. Something nasty's happened to seemingly innocent statues. Sonic screwdriver as penis-substitute (The Curse of the Fatal Death). Nasty aggressive aliens which turn out to be OK sorts, once you negotiate with them. The Doctor as saviour, particularly of small children. Trenzalore.

Recycling Other People: The Moment is a mashup of Neil Gaiman's Sandman characters Death and Delirium, and Gaiman's own Idris from “The Doctor's Wife”, with an arguable element of Head Six from Battlestar Galactica thrown in. The Big Red Button from “Journey to the Centre of the Tardis”. A ghost shows the Doctor events to come (Trial of a Time Lord and/or Warriors' Gate). Nightmare of Eden featured images containing real live monsters which get out and wreak havoc (there's also elements of the wizard art in the Harry Potter series). The Bad Wolf makes a reappearance. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life features a Machine That Goes Ping. The Sarah Jane Adventures episode “Mona Lisa's Revenge” featured paintings coming to life. Memory-wiping people and Captain Jack's repeated deaths (Torchwood). Wish for the Doctor to save you and he will (qv Russell T. Davies). Alan Moore and David Lloyd's DWW comic “Black Legacy” involved a superweapon with a personality. Gallifrey's fate is a mashup of what happens to the Fendahl's planet in “Image of the Fendahl”, and how the Master hides his Tardis in “The Keeper of Traken”. "The Judgment of Sutekh" by Lawrence Miles (history has been rewritten, but nobody knows about it).

Moffat Simultaneously Recycling Himself And Other People: Motorbikes in the Tardis (The Doctor Who Telemovie, The Idiot's Lantern and The Bells of St John). The gag about Queen Elizabeth I marrying the Doctor has been ongoing since 2007. The Silent also memory-wipe people.

Evil Household Objects: River Song's red shoes are deadly enough to warrant inclusion in the Black Archive.

Doctor Who! “I'm looking for the Doctor...” “Well, you've certainly come to the right place...”

Hats! Tennant and Smith meet fez-to-fez.

Moffat Moppets! The imminent destruction of Gallifrey is made poignant by the device of including as many gratuitous sad-looking children as possible, including one carrying a stuffed rabbit (well, if Gallifrey has cats and mice, presumably it could have rabbits as well).

Murray Gold's Top Ten: The Gallifrey battle scenes provide yet another opportunity to go all Carmina Burana on us. Carl Orff *did* write a few other pieces, you know.

Clara's Job This Week: Schoolteacher, at Coal Hill School. At least she seems to have given up dying for the moment.

Continuity Frakup of the Week: At least three, all deliberate. Tom Baker's presence as The Curator, and the number of regenerations the Doctor has used so far (plus Moffat's own remarks on the same), are sure to keep the hashtags active until Christmas. Less remarked-upon is the fact that one of UNIT's pictures shows Mike Yates with Sara Kingdom-- did the First Doctor secretly drop round UNIT in the 1970s/1980s, or did the parallel-universe Sara of “The Destroyers” get her hands on a Dalek time machine?

Other Frakups: One UNIT soldier sports a full beard (perhaps UNIT has laxer hair regulations than the rest of the military?). The hut in the desert contains leaves and agricultural equipment (that's one rapid desert?). Although the Zygons copy clothing and accessories, they don't copy Osgoode's inhaler or, apparently, Kate's mobile phone (since, when Kate changes into her Zygon form in the Black Archive, her phone doesn't change too).

Continuity Resolutions: Most of the problems with the Zygons get either resolved or flagged up, e.g. how they manage to know so much about the people they duplicate, and the fact that their shape-shifting includes clothing and accessories (though not inhalers). The memory thing explains how none of the past Doctors and companions involved in “The Five Doctors” remember its events.

Hurt or Eccleston? Regeneration scene aside, about the only lines that would need changing were Eccleston to play the War Doctor are the one calling John Hurt “Granddad”, and the one referring to his “posh gravelly” voice (but substitute “Jug-Ears” and “Northern”, and you'd be fine).

Nostalgia UK: It's an Anniversary Special, so practically every second minute involves some sort of shoutout to past history. So many people have been involved in spotting them that I'm just going to refer you all to Google.

Item Most Likely To Become a Toy: It just amazes me that there has been no release of a John Hurt action figure yet; although apparently a War Doctor Sonic Screwdriver was released as a convention exclusive at the Doctor Who Celebration. Oh, and if anyone from Character Options is reading this (evidence points to no, but what the hell), I'm adding a request for a Night of the Doctor McGann to my usual request for a dress-up Madame Vastra and Jenny.

In between the TV box sets...

Point Blank: Classic, surreal, 1960s thriller that views like a Jacobean revenge tragedy.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within: Uneven but enjoyable computer-animated based-on-a-videogame film. Low points: a bit cliched, a bit derivative of EVA and other Japanese standards, plus, sigh, the sole black character dies in the third reel. High points: a surprisingly non-cliched ending to the romance plotline, some spectacular, almost photorealistic CGI, a heroine whose look appears to be based on Clea Duvall, and, well, Steve Buscemi like you've never seen him before.

Drag Me To Hell: Wicked and postmodern return to form for the Raimi Brothers; a horror film which subverts the moralistic cliches of the American teen-horror genre, and takes a gleeful swipe at the selfish and overprivileged while it's at it. Plus best CGI goat ever.

The Constant Gardener: The premise is interesting enough-- quiet civil servant investigates his wife's murder and discovers she was about to go public about the nefarious activities of pharmaceutical multinationals in sub-Saharan Africa-- but the story takes way too long to tell, and Ralph Fiennes, as the hero, is a little too uncharismatic to hold the viewer's attention.

Movie count for 2013: 63

Doctor Who and the Repeated Meme Toywatch: How Did We Do?

The Name of the Doctor: Predicted Whispermen. Didn't get so much as a Richard E. Grant in a tophat, let alone John Frakking Hurt.

Nightmare in Silver: I correctly predicted the new-look Cybermen. What I failed to predict was the sheer amount of Hedgewick's World merchandise, presumably so fans can pretend they were there as if it were a real theme park and all that. However, given how terribly naff the whole thing was, I don't think they want to be reminded.

The Crimson Horror: Still waiting for my Madame Vastra and Jenny Dress-Up Playset.

Journey to the Centre of the Tardis: I predicted ash-zombies, but no. You could always make your own by taking a Doctor and a Clara figure and subjecting them to intense heat.

Hide: Well, I sure didn't see this coming. Kudos for surprising me!

Cold War: Ice Warrior, though that was an easy one as they'd already released the prototype by the time the episode aired. This is unexpectedly neat, though.

The Rings of Akhaten: I suggested the grill-mouthed stalking thingies. But no.

The Bells of St John: Clara. Albeit strangely flat-headed and yellow of skin.

The Snowmen: Neither Snowmen, nor Great Intelligence Novelty Snowglobe, have manifested. Do they just not do merchandise for Christmas episodes anymore?

The Angels Take Manhattan: I predicted new Weeping Angel variants; we get that, and, more interestingly, this. This is also amusing.

The Power of Three: I said Character Options would be missing a trick if they didn't release novelty desktop Cubes. They didn't.

A Town called Mercy: I said this was one for the action-figure customisers, and, well, it was. You'll have to make your own cyber-cowboys.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship: Likewise. Go buy your own triceratops (PS, isn't he adorable?).

Asylum of the Daleks: Daleks.You were maybe expecting something else?

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe: I predicted Tree People. We didn't get them, so you'll just have to carve your own.

Alien Nation

Hancock: Starts off as a comedy based around the idea that superheroes, if they existed in real life, would not be a good thing to have around-- which is not exactly original (coughWatchmencough) but is well done here, with a showily heroic stunt by the eponymous superhero being followed by a newscast in which the mayor bemoans the cost of the property damage. About halfway through, though, it completely forgets about that and becomes again a much more conventional superhero movie, even down to ignoring the abovementioned cost of the damage. Will Smith deserves a better vehicle.

Paul: Alien mythology gets the Shaun of the Dead treatment. Should get way more notice than it does; it's witty, knowing, funny about nerd culture without being nasty, there's a nice bait-and-switch at the climax, and the CGI alien's got brilliantly rendered eyes.

Brick: Raymond Chandler story set in a high school, as a teenager sets out to wreak revenge for his ex-girlfriend's death. The experiment was interesting, but I found it a bit too hard to suspend my disbelief to actually enjoy it.

Scott Pilgrim Versus the World: Didn't expect to love this one, but I did. It was funny, postmodern, and cute, with characters I universally enjoyed, and set in Toronto. A feel-good flick, but one you don't have to feel guilty about watching.

The Birds: Flighty socialite makes a play for cute man, only to be attacked by birds representing the unbridled id of his mother. Seriously, it's true.

Movie count for 2013: 58

Could do better

American Gangster: Disappointing film loosely (very loosely) based on the life of Frank Lucas, a black gangster who made good in the drug trade of 1970s New York. Unfortunately the decision to portray him as a cultured, noble, even heroic man, and to downplay the appalling way he treats his subordinates and family members, means that what could have been an interesting and complex exploration of how intelligent and ambitious members of minority groups are drawn to crime (q.v. Scarface), instead winds up giving a pass to a deeply awful human being. The period detail is nicely done, though.

Kick Ass II: Disappointing adaption of the comic, which strips out the wicked subversiveness and just presents us with a right-wing nerd fantasy.

Movie count for 2013: 53

Sharxploitation

Sharknado: Likely to be voted badflick of the year; Birdemic-level plotting, acting, direction, CGI and continuity (the use of stock footage to simulate a flooded-out Los Angeles means the water levels apparently rise and drop dramatically from one second to the next). But then, that's about to be expected. Bring popcorn.

Ghost Shark: A surprisingly better movie than the above (and as such a worse badflick, but never mind); there are some decent touches of direction, and, for a change, we get to see the shark victims' families grieving instead of having them just treated as targets. However, there's enough sketchy CGI and daft continuity to keep fans of the genre happy.

Movie count for 2013: 51

A Hitch in time

A Field in England: Psychedelic tale that might be about a group of deserters during the English Civil War who take drugs and go mental, or might be about the Devil, or might be about the nature of English identity. Either way, it's brilliant.

Telstar (The Joe Meek Story): Biopic about the early experimental-pop pioneer, his temper and his misguided relationship with a blond would-be music star. The music is good, the story is tragic, and one can have great fun spotting the BBC sitcom stars dotting the supporting cast.

 Public Enemies: Inexplicably boring story about the pursuit and eventual shooting of John Dillinger. Also with some deeply dodgy gender issues regarding Dillinger's relationship with his girlfriend; the way he treats her, the only way she'd stay with him that long is if she's some sort of emotional cripple a la Natural Born Killers, but instead the whole thing is played just as her being naturally attracted to a strong man.

Hitch: Entertaining biopic about Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma during the making of "Psycho", focusing on Hitchcock's personal doubts and fears and Alma's frustrations as the aide-de-camp and primary collaborator of a great director. Not deep, but literate.

The Girl: Appalling biopic about Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren, which somewhat unbelievably portrays Hitchcock as a sexually rapacious bully who was obsessed with Hedren and never made a good movie after she quit (OK, "Topaz" was terrible, but "Frenzy" and "Family Plot" weren't bad). Completely undermined by any documentary about Hitchcock and/or Hedren ever.

Also went to a free screening of "Skyfall", but was rained out halfway through.

Movie count for 2013: 49

Clashing symbols

Clash of the Titans: Cheerful abuse of the legends surrounding Perseus and the Medusa, motivated by the success of the Star Wars franchise and in hope of sparking a Harryhausen revival. The stop-motion animation is brilliant in places (nobody can fault the Medusa sequence, even now), but they upstage the principal actor, and there are some particularly bizarre moments (what exactly was the business with the giant vulture all about?). Sian Phillips had, not so long before, told Gareth Thomas that he was "prostituting his art" for appearing in Blake's 7; presumably her presence here is simply because she was told she'd be acting with Sir Lawrence Olivier, Maggie Smith et al.

Movie count for 2013: 44 plus A Field in England.

Never having to say you're sorry

Natural Born Killers: Movies don't come much more Nineties than this, with everything from the visuals to the casting to the story being as postmodern as possible. It's like a strangely fun drug trip overlaid on a grim reality of child sexual abuse, murder, rape and grievous bodily harm, but as such, and as something that could probably never have been seriously made in any other time period, it works.

The Abominable Dr Phibes: Continuing the theme of film and period, this is an enchantingly beautiful example of the early-Seventies horror film, with stunning design, amusingly Clouseauesque policemen, an Edwardian setting with unremarked anachronistic touches, Vincent Price conducting an engaging and believable performance while only speaking about four times in the whole film, and a zany plot involving murders based on the Plagues of Egypt. The only problems were 1) that I clearly know more about biology than the film's intended audience, so I just found the killer fruitbats and brown-painted lab rats way too cute; 2) the really awful burn-victim makeup on Vincent Price at the end of the story and 3) Phibes' assistant Vulnavia getting murdered at the end (which was rather nasty, and unnecessary-- I'd been pretty sure up till that point that she was an android).

Dr Phibes Rises Again: Inevitable disappointing sequel to the above. The policemen are correct and present and Vincent Price is still brilliant, but there's no real theme to the murder spree this time, Dr Phibes talks so much you wish he'd just shut up, Vulnavia turns up played by a different actress and with no explanation as to why she's not dead, and the plot holes a lot less easy to gloss over. No wonder there was never a Phibes III.

Love Story: 1970s version of a kitschy Victorian novel: two students meet and fall in love, he defies his parents to marry her, she supports him through his law degree, and then dies of a wasting disease which might possibly be leukemia, albeit without the more gross symptoms. I might have felt sorry for them if they weren't both such irritating entitled jerks.

Movie count for 2013: 43 (plus A Field in England)

Trial Run

Town on Trial: Started out as a sort of 1950s version of Southcliffe, with John Mills' detective finding his efforts to investigate a murder in a small town being thwarted by local politics and personalities. Falls apart towards the end, though, when the murderer turns out to be someone rather unlikely and the explanation even less likely still. People drive Fifties cars so fast that when the brakes are applied, the car keeps going for several seconds; it's a wonder Mills himself doesn't wind up adding a few more deaths to the killer's total.


The Keep: Has two big problems: 1) it's actually three movies. There's a movie about a squadron of Nazis who occupy a Romanian town, throw their weight around, and wind up being picked off one by one by the local vampire/spirit, who is both a protector to and terror of the local people; a movie about a Jewish Holocaust victim who makes a deal with the devil to exterminate all Nazis everywhere in revenge; there's a movie about a demon-slayer who tracks down and slays a demon. Wedging them together into the same movie leads to confusion at best and cognitive dissonance at worst. 2) History. Actually, the Nazis got on pretty well with the Romanians, meaning the movie would be better off set in Hungary or the Ukraine, which also have a tradition of vampire legends. Problem is, if you're making a Slavic vampire movie for American consumption, you're going to hit the lowest-common-denominator issue that "everybody knows" vampires are Romanian. The 1980s effects are good; the castle set is nicely weird; Tangerine Dream are operating below their usual standard musically.

Movie count for 2013: 39 (I've also seen A Field in England, but I want to watch it again before I review it).

Great and Terrible

The Blue Lamp: An interesting ethnographic document about a now-lost time in British history, a society traumatized by WWII, in which both law enforcement officers and traditional criminals fear the rise of new, young and violent juvenile offenders. Oh, and Dirk Bogarde shoots Jack Warner at one point.

Les Miserables: I'm impressed. A cast that size, and not a single one of them can sing and act at the same time. Likewise, who casts Sacha Baron-Cohen as Thenardier and then gets him to underplay the role?

Oz the Great and Terrible: Actually neither great nor terrible but sort of banal, being Generic Disney Plot #48 (self-aggrandizing liar gets into trouble by lying, but redeems himself by admitting that he's lied and learning to Just Be Himself) mapped onto Oz, and lacking the weird surrealism of the original novels, the charming Freudianism of the film, and the witty revisionism of Wicked. Also, insert rant here about movies in which, at the end, The Hero Wins The Girl, as if The Girl is some sort of award to be given out for good behaviour. I think having more movies in which the hero's personal development turns out to be its own reward would lead to much less confusion and disappointment when its juvenile audience gets to relationship age.

Movie count for 2013: 37

Off to see the wizard

The Wizard of Oz: One of my favourite films, which I rewatch every few years just to remind myself how brilliant it is. However, my purpose in watching it this time is to apply it to a couple of David Lynch films:

Lost Highway: Opens with a headlong race down a road, yellow stripe prominently featured. Patricia Arquette starts the film as the Wicked Witch of the West: long dark hair, long dark dresses, black fingernails. She also clearly lives in the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks, if the red-themed decor and curtains are any indication. Bill Pullman then meets a wizard at a party and is pulled into a strange world where he is Balthazar Getty, Patricia Arquette is now the Good Witch Glinda, short blonde hair, white (later green) fingernails, and the local decor is predominantly green (i.e., emerald). However, through the predominantly-red garage he is drawn to a murderous encounter in which he meets the Wizard again, and returns home.

Mulholland Drive: Opens with a jitterbug (as in a deleted scene from The Wizard of Oz). Two men dining at Winkies' restaurant discover the Winkies' leader, the Wicked Witch of the West, living behind it; meanwhile, the events of Lost Highway are reenacted as a young person responsible for a murder wishes hard enough and the world changes, everyone in it takes different roles, and the dark-haired murder victim comes back blonde. The club Silencio is, once again, evidently the Black Lodge.

Movie Count for 2013: 34

Payneful

Max Payne: Dreadful video-game adaption with an utterly predictable twist, slightly mitigated by the probably-unintentional subtext that the supposedly drug-induced visions of demons are actually real.

A History of Violence: Rewatched to prove a theory that this film is to Banshee what Star Wars is to Battlestar Galactica. It's true.

Movie count for 2013: 31