Things I've Seen This Year So Far, Jan- March 2014

These are some things – not all, just some, that I’ve seen so far this year, and my rambly thoughts on them.

1. Prometheus
   (The alien prequel.  Great way to start off the year.  A very good looking film – many echoes of the colouring and set design of 2001, and the Stanley Kubrick films and shooting angles.  Extremely beautiful colours, clarity and set design.  The characters weren’t half bad either: Michael Fassbender stole the film as David; closely followed by Charlize Theron, and then the Captain of the ship.  Rafe Spall was doing an absolutely killer American accent.  Odd they had Americans to do English characters and English characters to do Americans, in such an obvious way.  The main woman, don’t know her name, was one of the most unsympathetic characters in face, that I’ve come across for a while.  I can only assume this was on purpose, but not sure why, as it made it hard to root for her, as she was so annoying.  Her ‘cesarean’ scene was insane enough to be Argento worthy.  The whole film was somewhat of a pinpoint clear fever dream.  Enjoyed.  Most interesting – if flawed – the whole ‘engineers’, God angle wasn’t doing it for me at all.)
2. Castle, Season 1
   (A very nice, lightly touched crime drama.  It’s funny, Nathan Fillion is very gentle and shallow, but promising of hidden depths [well he has to promise some, or we’d get bored].  It means quite emotional or brutal crime can happen, but his unemotional approach, always thinking of the story, allows the viewer to rest and think at the same time.  Its always strangely compelling to watch crime being solved by ridiculously rich people [I love Hart to Hart too – similar light touch, though not quite so light; or Charlie’s Angels – the girls weren’t rich, but they had the resources of the rich and absent Charlie].  I think this series will run and run, as the will they won’t they [lets hope they won’t] has been set up nicely, and the family dynamic of Castle surrounded by women is a good offset to the crime.  Which of course, I enjoy trying to solve.  This is a good antidote to the sometimes harrowing [if increasingly unrealistic] Criminal Minds.  The bit where Nathan Fillion windscreen wipered the villain, and the bit where he told the old man he was to old for sex were laugh out loud funny.  Note on children: if only all daughters were this good. TV children are NEVER realistically done – the One Tree Hill debacle one of the most glaring examples.)
3. Criminal Minds, Season 6
   (I had a break of about 2 months halfway through this.  Not sure why.  I think I wasn’t very impressed by the cliffhanger at the end of Season 5, and unlike everyone else, I don’t think Tim Curry was that great. Then there were a few lacklustre episodes, apart from JJ, which had a great motivational speech at the end.  Then I picked up again and there were quite a few amazing episodes: Corazon, a very good and ambiguously done Santeria/Myambo Spencer Reid episode; The 13^th Step, which was blow me away good, both the Bonnie and the Clyde were amazingly well acted and their rage was…yup, incandescently done; Coda, with the autistic boy, was haunting: that music.  Then there were the Ian Doyle episodes leading up to Prentiss’s faked death – they had a lot of atmosphere.  The acting in Hanley Waters, from the grieving mother was an understated spectacular, too. There were a few uninvolving  episodes and then the last, about the people trafficking, where you never find out why – or indeed, how the hell – that little thin girl is in charge of a huge operation like that, like Hostel, was most interesting.  In the Making Of documentary, it said that the season was about the characters secrets, and I can see how that could be in retrospect, but it felt rather blah in terms of arc while watching, with the season theme not coming across at all.  I still love this show, but the episodes are getting patchy.)

4.     The Mentalist, Season 1
(The Mentalist is a weird one.  The supporting cast make it, oddly.  The lead character is played so lightly and ambiguously, and against grain for his horrible backstory that he remains almost too sketchy to identify with.  Plus he doesn’t do quite enough mentalist tricks to keep me as engaged as I could be…but then, I’m only up to season 2 on this one, we’ll wait and see.  It’s engaging enough that I’m happy to continue.)

5. The China Syndrome
   (Stanley and I watched this in 2 halves – the first half was conspiracy theorist and tense and full of Michael Douglas looking radical and swivelly eyed.  I did NOT see the second half coming!  Was most shocked when Jack Lemmon got shot.  Most shocked!  Very good film.  Low key and bleak in that lovely way of 70’s films.)
6. Doctor Who: The Moonbase (complete with new animation)
   (Loved the animation [keeping the wibble of that table when the cyber man stood up from the end of real life action at one ep to the animation beginning of the next was both homage and inspired]; found the story engaging and much more satisfying than the book.  Enjoyed almost immensely.)
7. Insidious 2
   (Don’t really remember the 1^st one at all, except a sequence near the end where the father looks for the son.  I seem to remember I didn’t think much of it except for its look.  I enjoyed the 2^nd one far more so, even though it made little sense at first look.  It was a massive collection of callbacks, flashbacks.  Actually an awful lot of fun, and it looked incredibly good. Patrick Fisher had a good time being creepy. Poor Fry, not having seen the first one, got completely lost and fell asleep in  parts.)
8. The Colony
   (Reminded me of lots of other films.  Bit like 28 Days Later, bit like 40 Days of Night, echoes of The Thing in setting.  We thought it was a disaster movie, bit it ended up being a very run of the mill scifi horror.  Lawrence Fishburne was very good indeed, but ultimately the film lost the sense at the end and was stupid.  Was it about NOT becoming animalistic in the face of starvation?  Or the last line where the hero said there was only one rule: survival…and then took his people off to walk through the snow to almost certain death, they were never going to get where they were going, it was too far away.  Was he going to have to turn cannibal to get there, alone?  So the film had a non animalistic rule, then got rid of the rules, he defeated the last cannibal, then set the scene for himself to by implication become the next one.  I think it thought it was clever.  But it was just confusing and not in a good way. Fry disappointed too.)
9. The Call
   (Very nice thriller – made in a derivative but most efficient way. Halle Berry had the most interesting hair in this film.  The killer had a strange sexual fascination with his sister who died of cancer.  I enjoyed this and found it absorbing.  I felt the little end twist was unnecessary – for once, I didn’t want to see vengeance.  Always nice to see Roma Maffia.)
10. You’re Next
    (So good I’m going to buy it.  Full of wonderful old school references, whilst being entirely its own film.  Looked like a 70’s Italian horror, specifically, Alberto de Martino’s 1974 The Antichrist – the wall decorations, colourings etc, lighting…It killed a bit like an 80s American slasher [that is, with American verve, but not Italian delight].  It had a set up like Bava’s Bay of Blood, and others.  Then again, back to the 80’s with the doofus cop – who died a doofus death; which sort of served him right for shooting the most resourceful woman in horror film history.  He also shot her a la Night of the Living Dead plotwise.  It had an absolutely lovely soundtrack – why isn’t it yet available to buy? 10/10.  Wonderful film.  Loved the killer masks too.)
11. The Last Exorcism 2
    (After the first one was so good too… What a waste of space…)
12. The Mentalist, Season 2
    (This came together more than the first one.  Whilst in many ways Patrick Jane is still too oblique a character to identify with more than partially, he is still a fascinating character.  This season gave Cho, Rigsby and Van Pelt some strong moments, and gave little hints as to Van Pelt’s past [still unexplored largely].  The backstory for these interesting secondary characters is as interesting as the main event, crime and character.  The loss of the original boss and gaining of the slightly unrealistic but interesting new boss: strong black woman type, is a useful addition too.  I’m still going strong here.  The feel of the programme is addictive.)
13. Stigma, BBC Ghost Story 1977
    (Very creepy and minimal.  Woman bleeds to death through her skin with no wound, in the exact place a skeleton has a knife found when a large standing stone is raised from their lawn. Is the woman possessed – she acts it when the stone is raised?  Or does she take the dead woman’s sacrifice on so the dead woman can live..?  At the end, the daughter says that the skeleton found must be a witch, and she starts unpeeling an onion.  Creepily.  Why?!  Has she become the witch?  Oh so many questions, hardly any music and such lovely atmosphere.  I will never know about the onion!!!  Wonderful odd little story by Clive Exton.)
14. The Stone Tape
    (Interesting.  The promised building atmosphere of dread that so many fans make much of escaped me completely.  I felt it may have been tighter with maybe 30 minutes less time.  I’m surprised Nigel Kneale wrote something in some ways so loose; Beasts, for example was much shorter and tighter.  Those getting the atmosphere of mounting dread would think every ounce of time was necessary, though, of course.  I also objected to Jane Asher’s half unexplained character of hysterical female – have only one and she be hysterical, hmmm.  But her performance was strong.  I liked the shouty man, he was strangely vivid.  Some of the secondary characters were also good, and the choice of such a male environment, all that loud camaraderie, whilst sort of dated, did add a contrast balance to the silent and more taut bits, where everyone is listening for the ghost.  The idea of ghosts caught in stone – we all know the tape idea of ghosts now – was very nicely explored, especially the very male idea of making it come when you want to, and then try to use the mechanism for commercial purposes!  I liked the idea of layers, eroding over time, but still there and still powerful.  At then end, the green shapes that came at her were intriguing – I tried so hard to make them out – sort of humanoid but not – I liked that, made me lean in, try to think round it, feel round it.  Who says you need CGI?  I got the idea perfectly.  And when I realised she was going to be the next taping, that was quite chilling.  I do think some parts of this will stay with me – as in many ways, it was claustrophobic – always effective as a tactic for horror – and her mounting isolation, and then the shredding of her work at the end, added that bleakness you need from a 70s horror, and was done so well at that time [and so much in so many lesser ways since].)
15. Chiller Series (1995)
    (An anthology series ofhorror stories.The Prophecy – got a feeling I read the book of this one a long while ago. Sophie Ward is beautiful and expressionless, and Nigel Havers manages to be far more convincing whilst also being expressionless – how on earth does that work??   Toby – a very good moment at the end, where the immediate thought is to assume that the baby is now haunting daddy as mummy is dead…or you could take it as a moment of jawdropping guilt on the part of daddy, who realises he has been gaslighting his wife all this time, driven her to suicide and will now have to live with the outward manifestation of his crime for the rest of his life – in the form of the thoughtform he conjured by pretending it so strongly…actually, a very dark story, for all its superficial, and seemingly simple. The Mirror Man – John Simm [who I discover, has the same birthday as me but is older by one year!], gives what can be described as a powerhouse performance.  Brilliant.  A poor story, but a great actor. The Man Who Didn’t Believe in Ghosts – this was quite a strongly done story, Peter Egan was quite an annoying shit in it.  There was a strange and disturbing rape in it halfway through, which the story didn’t actually need, but felt strangely real, as if it could have happened in real life.  Number Six – children self selecting via Eeny Meeny Miny Mo to be victims of the druids under an oak tree in a town filled with scared and skeletal faced grown ups shot in wide lens! Best thing about this episode was Don Warrington, great to see him in anything. And very good that the little child with the very vulnerable face didn’t die.  Weird ending to that episode.  Whole series – very patchy.  Had good moments.  Toby and The Mirror Man felt like the best episodes, for holding together and atmosphere.)
16. Carrie       (2013 remake)
    (Ack – see my blog post.)
17. Carrie (original)
    (Still brilliant.  See my blog post!)
18.  Haunted: The Ferryman (1974)
    (A 2 parter broadcast over Christmas back in the days when we did that kind of thing. Very effective use of classical music.  Very strange atmosphere and very strange ending – who did she sleep with and was she pregnant??  I would like to visit that pub, it was a beautiful location.  Jeremy Brett was satisfyingly posh and confused yet still arrogant, the whole way through.  I blame things like this for my unjustified view, growing up, that all people live in nice houses with nice gardens and go on nice holidays to beautiful remote English places and drink cocktails at 6ish.  Programmes like this watched when too small to understand the world – and the fact that these people are frightfully upper middle class and I wasn’t and could never be! – confused my tiny mind for quite some considerable time, as a growing up person.  And left me nostalgic for a past I never possessed in the first place, and cross that I seemed to be out of a club that I wasn’t aware there were rules I could never adhere to, to get in!  Ah – only Blackberry Juniper could get cross and class conscious about a little Christmas ghost story of 1974 that I enjoyed…)
19. Haunted: Poor Girl (1974)
    (The twin of the last.  Shown later the same month.  This was more of a supernatural psychodrama.  About unsuitable sexual attachments [the boy to the governess; the governess to the Lord of the Manor; the Lord to whoever – and the frigidity of Angela Thorne’s character, played incredibly well].  And about getting possessed by the spirit of the future.  Fascinating: slow but riveting. Amazed the child does not seem to have acted in anything else – or perhaps it’s just that IMDB doesn’t list theatre engagements? This would have made an incredibly good book – but could only have been done convincingly for TV exactly when it was, 1974.)
20.  Rec: Genesis
    (With Fry – who didn’t rate this, but I thought it was quite good.  Sort of marred by the over romantic element which was corny; but I can see where they were going with it, so it wasn’t a wasted idea.  Fry would have said an ok horror completely ruined by vomit inducing idea of true love, possibly.)
21.  Castle, Season 2
    (Not quite as good as Season 1, though some very nicely themed episodes.  I don’t quite buy Esposito and his partner as a comedy double act; it needs to be a bit stronger.  But the work between Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic is lovely, and the way their cases pan out and wind and turn – very nice.  Good fun viewing, and a very nice ‘will they won’t they no they aren’t’ final moment of the series.)
22.  Diana, 2013
    (I seem to have a bit of a weakness for soppy films about the royal family, when I’m largely uninterested in them in everyday life. This one seems to have been hated by most people.  It did have lots of flaws: a very partial representation of [what we know of] Diana’s character and hopes, dreams, ambitions etc; a very partial and almost nonexistent representation of her children, that side of her life [though that may have been due to legal reasons]; and an almost nonexistent representation of how she dealt with the press, except for near the end.  It all felt like a romantic love story that was rather doomed played out on an epic scale.  You can really see the way Americans find our monarchy romantic – all the trappings etc.  You can see why they have Dallas and Dynasty and the Kennedys!  Over here, I don’t know how representative I am, but I tend to think the Royal Family are outmoded, cost far too much money and whilst they do good charity work – so do film stars and other famous people…but I don’t resent them hugely the way some do.  I have a rather blah attitude, really.  I didn’t mind this film; though I feel it was more fictional in portrayal – in the sense that the real Pakistani Heart Surgeon featured as the hero hated it, and he was there…)

And now – I’m off to read, and watch something else, in my child free hour this morning.  I’m watching Scorpion Tales at the moment, another 1970s anthology series, of thrillers this time (bit like Thriller, but shorter and written by different people), so that’ll be in my next rambling of what I’ve watched.  Who knows what else will be, I am just going where my momentary fancies take me.