April-August Mini-Reviews: The Films & Shows

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝐾𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑑𝑜𝑚: 𝑆.4

The instant Uhtred of Bebbanburg gets back to Bebbanburg, this series ends. That’s the common refrain about ‘The Last Kingdom’, at least, and I’m less and less convinced it’s true, and more and more convinced it’s simply what Netflix encourages you to think in order to keep you binging. Plenty of characters in this story achieve everything they want, and then have to fight to keep it, more often than not losing it entirely in the process and creating compelling drama as a result. Refusing to actually let this possibility come within view of the lead character is the reason Uhtred gets within inches of claiming his home in this season, fails laughably, and then instantly forgets both the failure and seemingly the attempt; of course this is what has to happen. Allowing Uhtred to actually risk all and fail would be to take an at best limited instrument of character and show him for the power fantasy he actually is. No matter the improved production values, the move from the BBC to Netflix has not been a positive one for this declining show.

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𝐵𝑟𝑖𝑑𝑔𝑒 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝐾𝑤𝑎𝑖

A thoroughly weird viewing, this one. Give me the name ‘David Lean’ and I think of my treasured blu-ray copy of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, one of the most luminous and well-done restorations I’ve ever seen besides ‘The Red Shoes’. The streaming service on which I saw this was not prepared to shell out for a HD version, and the jolt from the dip in image quality was keenly felt. Nonetheless, much as nothing was ever going to touch ‘LoA’ for me, I couldn’t fail to be gripped by the mad endeavour that is the building of the bridge, and by the wire-taut suspense of that finale.

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𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑜𝑠𝑡

Steven Spielberg’s name is a funny one to be drawn to for comfort viewing, isn’t it? But this and ‘Bridge of Spies’ are very much that for me; films I like to watch again and again, assured as I am of a baseline of quality and a relaxed but firm command of tension, cinematic space and framing. Neither starring performance is exactly a masterclass of acting, but the whole effort — of talented people doing what they do best at a solid high bar — is a wonderful sight.

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𝑂 𝐵𝑟𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝐴𝑟𝑡 𝑇ℎ𝑜𝑢?

Sometimes I think that the people who sang the praises of ‘No Country For Old Men’ as a ‘bleak masterpiece’ and similar such rot back in 2007 should’ve taken just a moment to remember ‘O Brother’. All the puckish, cheeky humour that ‘No Country’ hides away in the corners of the story, ‘O Brother’ throws up in great quantities, and it is often a deeply, absurdly, deliciously funny movie. Even if I can take or leave the badly-aged results of all the once-pioneering digital colour correction, which at times outright scar the eye.

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𝑊𝑢 𝐴𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑠

Oh lawd, what wonderful trash. A splendidly daft idea for a wire-fu B-series, complete with a vast gulf between the good actors and the bad. Killer fight scenes, mind. Cheers Alexis for all the giggles on the watch parties.

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𝐻𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑎ℎ 𝐺𝑎𝑑𝑠𝑏𝑦: 𝐷𝑜𝑢𝑔𝑙𝑎𝑠

‘Douglas’ is an excellent stand-up show, and I don’t blame you if you read that, or see the show, and find yourself a little disappointed. Gadsby’s previous special, ‘Nanette’, was a stunning piece of work, a vicious tearing-down of comedy’s capacity to turn self-effacement into self-humilation, and was as heartstopping as it was funny. ‘Douglas’ is, by contrast… pretty much just very funny. One can hardly blame Gadsby for the trick failing to work twice in a row, but the letdown is palpable regardless.

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𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑜𝑑: 𝑆.1

Oh dear, Ryan Murphy. The thing about selling a dream is that a dream falls apart the moment reality intrudes, and ‘Hollywood’ can never keep reality out long enough to let you really enjoy the show. Yes, this is hella queer, deliciously so. Yes, it’s got a great soundtrack and summons up the stereotypical impression of late-50s Hollywood very effectively. Yes, its cast is (mostly) top notch. The falling-off is in the writing, which utterly fails to give its characters any inner life outside of the specific oppression they serve to break up in the fantasy sequence that wraps up the show. A great start that made me think, at last, that Ryan Murphy had pulled off something good, only to realise that he had outdone his own prodigious craptitude once again.

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𝑅𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑦

…alright, fine, I completely fell in love with the Princess. And this movie. How the hell could I not, in a film this close to perfect?

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𝐿𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝐹𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐴𝑛 𝑈𝑛𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑊𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑛

Settling down with this neglected DVD and realising with some alarm that I now have the same white temples as Stefan the hero (read: asshole), I remembered the joy of seeing this grim heartbreaking classic in a university classroom almost a decade hence. ‘Letter…’ is a splendid circular tragedy, carried by Joan Fontaine out-acting every other person onscreen and making you weep for a woman whom you really, really wish wasn’t so beholden to a bastard as bad as Stefan.

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𝐶𝑖𝑟𝑐𝑢𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐵𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑠

Weary as I am of the way Netflix makes every documentary it produces ‘feel’ slickly identical to one another, I’m not sure what to say about this one, thanks to its own seemingly-bewildered tone. Yes, the story of the Circus of Books and its once-crucial, now-waning position within L.A. gay culture is an interesting one worth recording with plenty of laughs and tears, but the removes the doc puts itself and the audience from the subject are aggravating. It never stops being faintly scornful of the whole project, perpetually surprised by the “strangeness” of an establishment like the CoB.

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𝑉𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑠: 𝑆.1

Two powerful performances carry a show that I’m not entirely sure would work without them. George Blagden and Alexander Vlahos as King Louis and the Duke of Orleans respectively are so, so good in this show that their grappling for respect (and power) almost sweeps away every other actor onscreen, and certainly leaves the overarching conspiracy plot slightly less impactful than the brothers’ personal war. Still, utterly gorgeous television.

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𝐴𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑁𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

‘A.N’ is a movie at war with its own finale. This is a wonderful irreverent, foul-mouthed and youthful movie that is very, very good at looking at the landscape of social media and identifying it as prime fodder for a thriller centred around rising tension and escalating hostility. The movie goes from bad step to worse step smoothly and carefully, making space for a huge range of characters along the way, and more or less peaks at a harrowing scene of home invasion, and then… cuts away from the tension exploding, skips over the pieces being picked up afterwards, and ends on a joke. It’s a deeply dark joke, mind, but whether or not it’ll work for you I could not say; all I know is that for me, it made an otherwise good film feel bizarrely lop-sided.

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𝐵𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 & 𝑅𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑠

Ah, old friend. A movie I haven’t really say down to watch since 2007, and how horrible it was to see it again and realise that its subject matter is all the more pressing 13 years on, and its conclusions look all the less likely unless actual momentum can get behind the present advocacy for socialism, workers rights, and basi human dignity in the teeth of failing capitalism. ‘Bread & Roses’ is superb, if slightly dated, as an introduction to Ken Loach’s humanistic and deeply angry work, and Elpidia Carrillo’s ferocious monologue near the film’s end is indescribable acting.

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𝑅𝑎𝑛

(TBA!)