The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967)

 

The film is set in the fictional nation of Sinonesia, somewhere in South East Asia. The President's Chief of Security has recently been assassinated. The regional head of British intelligence, Colonel Baisbrook, recruits two Americans to investigate. Why does he not use his own agents? Presumably either because he had an eye on the US film market, or because he knew Frankie Avalon couldn't do a British accent. Or both. Probably both.

Whatever the reasons for their hiring, the American duo - Nick and Tommy - prove pretty successful in their assignment. They soon identify that the assassination was the work of agents of a beautiful and evil woman named Sumuru, who plans world domination by having her all-female army eliminate male leaders and replace them with her agents.

Obviously, this sort of thing can't be allowed to go on.  Now all Nick and Tommy have to do is stay alive long enough to stop it.

This film is based on a female supervillain created by Sax Rohmer, who is best known as the author of the Fu Manchu series of novels.  What that essentially means is that it is based on stories in which Rohmer swapped his usual gross racism for ... slightly less gross racism and lots more egregious sexism.

Only slightly less racism though, as this film makes clear very early on. President Boong of Sinonesia (yes, that really is his name) is clearly a white guy in very peculiar make-up.

The sexism meanwhile mostly makes itself known through the twin vectors of (a) the whole plot basically being "only an evil woman would be unhappy with men running things" and (b) lots and lots PG-rated titillation: bared thighs, backs and midriffs, as a consequence of the fact that Sumuru apparently believes bikinis to be suitable attire for her army of female assassins.

So, it's racist and sexist; perhaps not surprising, given it is nearly sixty years old.  How is the movie otherwise?

Not very good, frankly.  The plot is weak and formulaic.  And while Shirley Eaton is clearly having a good time vamping it up as the wicked Sumuru, she's rather undermined by the fact that the script makes the villainess her own worst enemy.  Sumuru decides to kidnap the guy trying to thwart her.  Sensible enough.  Having done so, she then ... tells him all her plans. Yes, it's in the context of trying to blackmail him to work for her, but still, it's rather clumsy and an obvious way to avoid him having to do any actual investigation.

The film also features a fair number of efforts comedy.  Many of these seem to have been directly inspired by Looney Tunes, including an obvious variation of Bugs and Daffy's classic "duck season"/"rabbit season" sequence.

The other source of 'humour' is basically 'Frankie Avalon's been in musicals!', which ... I mean, okay, I can excuse one gag in this line, given that he is your star.  But the film returns to the well a number of times, which would rather be like if Deadpool 3 cracks a whole bunch of jokes about the fact that Hugh Jackman was in The Boy from Oz. 

But at least the film will have a big action finale where the good guys (who are all men, of course) storm the beaches of Sumuru's island, right?  A large scale sequence clearly inspired by the James Bond films of the period.  That'll be fun, right?  Well, it would be, if it was executed well.  Alas, it is static and dull, with unconvincing action choreography.

The 60s delivered some fun, cheesy action espionage films.  This aspires to be one of them, but falls far short of the mark.

Stitchers, Season 1 (2015)

 

Kirsten Clark is a brilliant but emotionally closed off Caltech student. Her seemingly cold demeanour is a symptom of her medical condition: temporal dysplasia. This (invented for the show) condition makes a person unable to sense the passing of time. This hinders Kirtsen's ability to form emotional relationships with others, as she does not seem to have normal reactions to events.  An example Kirsten herself gives in the show is that when she was told her foster father was dead, then to her he had been dead forever. 

Kirsten's medical condition is important because it makes her an ideal candidate for a secret government agency that employs a highly experimental process known as "stitching".  This technology allows the subject to view the slowly fragmenting memories of a recently deceased person.  The process is dangerous and can be unreliable, but it makes it possible to find the answers to mysteries that would otherwise go unsolved.

Of course, the government doesn't invest huge amounts of money into a process just to solve a few crimes.  Nor is Kirsten's suitability for the process a mere coincidence.  But you'll have to watch the show to learn the deeper secrets at play here: and you will also need to prepare yourself for not all those questions being answered, because the show as cancelled on a cliffhanger after three seasons.

The real question then is, is the journey good enough to survive the lack of an ending? 

Well.  There are a number of restaurants near my old house, many of which I visited while I was living there. At some of them I had great meals, at some the meal was a disappointment ... but the one that is relevant to this review is the one that was reliably 'alright'. I never had a bad meal there, but I also never walked out thinking 'I need to recommend this place to people'. It was the definition of 'adequate'.

Stitchers is that restaurant's TV show equivalent. The cast are likeable, the episode plots are fine, there's a longer arc at play that - although moving a little slowly, is at least recognisably moving - and I never once shouted at the TV in frustration. But it also never really rises above "an okay way to pass the time".

Let's start with the cast, which includes Alison Scoglietti of Warehouse 13 and Salli Richardson-Whitfield of Eureka. They're both solid hands and I wish they'd been given a little more to do: Richardson-Whitfield is just the tightly buttoned boss lady, while Scagliotti is largely just playing a slightly more sexual version of her Warehouse 13 character.

"I wish they'd been given more to do" is actually a problem all of the actors face with their roles.  The characters in general are a little 'flat' and lacking in much depth. They are mostly a set of plot points in human form.

As for the plots, well like I said, they're fairly solid and there's an over-arching story that is slowly unfolding.  The "stitching" concept is of course pure science fiction plot device, but I'll give the writers some credit here: they're relatively consistent with how their made-up technology works within the fiction.  I've seen plenty of shows where the capabilities and limitations of technology fluctuate wildly to meet an immediate narrative need: I appreciate it when I see a bit more effort expended, as it has been here.

 

Ultimately, though, the show doesn't quite have enough to draw me into watching more - particularly since I know it won't get a tidy conclusion.

 

One last note if you do choose to watch this show: episode "11" of this season is a Halloween episode.  It is actually set before episode 10.  So I suggest you watch it after episode 9, but before 10. Then watch 10 as the season finale - because that is what it is.

Also be aware that that the Halloween episode is quite a change of tone for the show and feels a little out of place in general.  A case I think of forcing a concept onto a show to which it was not especially well-suited.

Ice Cage (2017)

 

A group of people wake up naked in a snowy wilderness, with no clear idea of how they got there.  They stumble their way to an isolated log cabin.  Inside, they find underwear, a dead woman, and a note.

According to this note, one of them killed the woman.  They have until 5pm to work out which of them it was, and punish that person with death.

Is one of them really a killer? Can they find a way out of this predicament? Who brought them here?  These are all questions that seem  impossible to answer, but they are going to have to try.

Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that each of the people in the cabin attended an erotic party the previous night.  Their reasons for being at the party vary wildly, as do their responses to their current situation.

Naturally, as time elapses and stress mounts, their differences of opinion on what to do grow starker and more embittered.  They've already been told that one of them must die ... but will it end up being more?

This film can also be found under the title Snowbound, which is how it is listed on IMDB.  It's a low budget, high concept thriller-style 'horror' film.  

Like a lot of such films, I think it struggles to deliver on the promise of the premise.  As I have noted before, writing good endings is a lot harder than coming up with an intriguing initial hook.  The basic scenario is an interesting one, but I was less convinced by the resolution. I can see that they were going for psychological horror, "what would you do if your life were on the line?" but the actual scenario presented seems implausible, and the ending lacked clarity.

An area for which I have seen the film criticised is the acting.  I think this is a little unfair.  It is evident that English is not the native language of many of the cast members, which is a significant impediment.  Given that significant disadvantage I think they do a solid job.  They emote reasonably effectively, if sometimes in ways that feel a bit "stagey".  Probably a bigger issue for me is that the majority of the characters they are playing are not very likeable people.  It's difficult to care much about the fate of most of these folk.

Production-wise, it's clear that the film-makers have worked hard to minimise costs where they can.  Some of the methods used are obvious techniques, such as limiting the cast and sets. The film has only a quite small number of speaking roles and almost all the action happens either in the cabin, in the woods directly outside, or in the mansion where the sex party took place - basically just three locations.  There are some more sophisticated and clever cost-cutting strategies, though,  I particularly liked the use of a model of the cabin, owned by the 'mastermind', to stand in for the cabin itself at times.  This allowed them to tell us what was happening in the cabin without avoid the need for expensive effects.

The cinematography - by Halayna Hutchins, who would be tragically killed in 2021 in an on-set accident on the film Rust -  is a strong point.  It's well thought out and executed.

As an example, as noted in the synopsis, the entire cast starts nude.  But if you came for the titillation, you will be likely disappointed by the opening sequence.  The cinematography here eschews ogling the actors' bodies, while also nimbly and cleverly averting overly blatant contrivance to avoid incidental skin.  There's little sense of artificiality, which shows care, attention and judgement.

There is more overt nudity later, in the flashbacks to the sex party.  This may be a positive or a negative, depending on your perspective. Also, while I have no first hand experience of sex parties, I doubt that anyone would be allowed to wander about with a mobile phone so obviously!

Ultimately, this is probably one to watch more for the potential of the ideas than the actual execution of them.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Season 2 (2014)

 

The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. find themselves in the unfamiliar position of being persona non grata. The recent subversion of their organisation by the terrorist group Hydra has made the US government deeply suspicious of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s personnel and resources. Even though the team helped thwart Hydra's plan, the continued independence and secrecy exhibited by their leader, Phil Coulson, is not something the authorities are willing to condone.

Operating from a secret base, the team seeks to continue their efforts to find and assist powered humans, and to thwart threats to world security - even as they themselves are seen as one of those threats.  They'll certainly have a busy time, what with seemingly immortal Nazi scientists, brainwashed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and an entire secret civilisation of super-powered "Inhumans" emerging from the shadows.

Plus of course there's still the lurking threat of former team member Grant Ward, who previously betrayed the others to his secret masters in Hydra, but who is now pursuing his own independent (but no doubt sinister) agenda.

I enjoyed the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and went into this second year with hopes it would build on that solid foundation.  Alas, by the time the credits rolled on the final episode of this series, I was well and truly done with the show.

So what was the problem?  The writing, basically.  It's got a lot of issues.

The first issue is the villains, who are almost entirely dull. The initial Nazi scientist antagonist is a one-dimensional cardboard cut-out knock-off of the Red Skull. He was thankfully disposed of earlier than I expected, but only to give way to a boring and unconvincing "alternative S.H.I.E.L.D." scenario that appears to exist purely to delay pulling the trigger on the Inhumans storyline, and which progresses almost entirely on the basis of everyone involved making bad decisions at every turn.

And then there are the Inhumans themselves. This was the introduction of this group into the MCU, in preparation for a planned film that never eventuated - instead in 2017 we got the 8-episode TV series that proved a critical and ratings disaster. Things aren't much better here, to be honest: the same problem of "why is everyone in this show so committed to doing counter-productive, self-destructive things?" recurs.  It's a problem that even ultimately undermines the season's only fun villains: Grant Ward and his new ally Agent 33. They're quite engaging for much of the series, perhaps because they are mostly in secondary / supporting roles that don't require them to do too many stupid things to make the plot "work".

Alas, as stupid as the villains often act in this series, they are no match for S.H.I.E.L.D. themselves. Coulson and his team are grossly, absurdly, comically incompetent, continually making egregious errors for what seems to be no better reason than "the writers couldn't be bothered to come up with a better explanation".  It frequently feels like the villains are only a threat at all because the heroes are just so bad at this.

The terrible plotting is a real shame, because for my tastes it ruins the good work being done in other parts of the show.  The on-screen cast remain likeable and work hard to make the show watchable.  There's some good work in particular from the folks playing Fitz and Simmons, who are given more to do here than just spout the technobabble that defined their season one roles.  Both performers make good use of the opportunity.

The show also expands its cast in this season, with three new arrivals to the team. The newcomers are all quite fun, but to a significant extent the writing isolates them: they have their own little deal that makes them a separate little triangle to the 'original' group's pentagon.  This is a shame, as when they do interact with the original group they introduce some good new dynamics such as the Mack-Fitz friendship.

Sadly, the solid work of the main cast - and also a number of fun guest stars - simply can't compensate for the constant urge to shout "Why are you people all so bad at your jobs?" every time the writers have the characters shoot themselves in the foot.

A deeply disappointing and frustrating season to watch.  I will not be returning for season  three.

Skin Deep (2015)

Leah is a tightly wound young woman with a bad boyfriend, a worse medical condition, and a severe case of denial about both.

Caitlin is a queer, clinically depressed pysch student with an alcohol problem and a severe case of still being hung-up on her ex.

The two strangers meet after Leah’s boyfriend fails to pick her up after a hospital appointment.  As first encounters go, it is not a positive one: Leah thinks Caitlin is rude, while Caitlin thinks Leah is uptight.  To be fair, they both have a point.

However, Leah's continued, out of place presence nags at a the back of Caitlin's mind, and she eventually makes another approach to the stranger in her neighbourhood.  It's awkward and not entirely successful, but it is the first step toward the two women spending an unexpected day and night together.

Which is a set-up straight out of the romance genre playbook, but that's not actually where this film is going.  Instead, Skin Deep is more of a meditation on the challenges we may need to overcome in our lives - mental illness, physical illness, toxic relationships - and the ways in which we self-sabotage, because sometimes it is easier to accept a known level of failure than to risk more pain by chasing something better.

Leah and Caitlin spend the day learning about each other, and in the process learn about themselves.  Which may sound horribly twee, but the script wisely avoids too trite an ending.  Both characters do find some new hope, and perhaps a better way forward with their lives, but it's clear that they still have a lot of work to do to really become "well", if such a thing is even possible.

This independent Australian film was shot in just 10 days.  Its Aussie heritage is evident not just in the accents of the cast, but in the dialogue itself, with the use of slang such as "stoked!".  And there's perhaps nothing more quintessentially Australian than the following exchange between the two leads:

Caitlin: "C'mon, get up!"
Lead: "Why? What are we doing?"
Caitlin: "I dunno, but it's gonna be (expletive) stupid."

I don't think there is anything especially novel being offered here, but Skin Deep explores two interesting, flawed people and the journey they share together, and it managed to keep my interest.  It's solidly made and acted - especially given the fast shooting schedule - and I didn't regret the time spent watching it.  If you're in the mood for a slightly quieter bit of story-telling, it may serve you well.

Scorched Earth (2018)

 

In the not-too-distant future, the world is ravaged by brutal climate changes, colloquially known as the Cloud Fall. The combination of pollution and relentless mining of Earth's resources through industrialism has left the environment nearly unlivable and extremely hostile to human habitation. Humanity is forcefully reverted to a simpler lifestyle, relying on barter for the two most valuable resources now: Water purifiers, called tabs, and silver, ground up to line the interior of breathing masks, to keep out a painful and fatal airborne disease known as Black Lung.

Outlaw gangs plague the trade routes and threaten the settlements of this future world, just as they did in the American West of the 19th century.  As a consequence, bounty hunting has become a lucrative, if dangerous, business.  One of the most successful hunters is a woman named Gage.  Hearing of an unusually ambitious outlaw named Jackson, who is building a whole town for criminals, Gage decides to adopt the identity of a criminal she's just killed, and infiltrate Jackson's organisation.

Of course, not every bandit in this town is welcoming of newcomers, even  ones they believe to be criminals like themselves, and for Gage, as a successful bounty hunter, there's the added risk that she will bump into someone who recognises her.  

Whether Gage can keep her real identity a secret or not, it seems inevitable that this is going to end in blood.

There's quite a lot of overlap in the structure of post-apocalyptic narratives and westerns; both tend to feature isolated enclaves of civilisation, gangs of thuggish, predatory hoodlums, and one or more dangerous drifters who decide, sometimes reluctantly, to protect the former from the latter.  Like the 1980s offering Steel Dawn, which basically re-used the plotline of Shane, this film leans heavily into the obvious parallels.  Scorched Earth basically is a western; it has gunslingers, outlaws and horse-based transport, and the settlements of the future look like they're straight out fo the Old West as well.  I wouldn't be surprised if co-opting the western sets and costumes saved the production some money, or at least made production easier, so it's not an idea without merit.

The film itself, though, has issues.

First things first, Scorched Earth stars former MMA fighter and noted transphobe and anti-vaxxer Gina Carano in the leading role.  I almost didn't watch or review the film because of her involvement, but ultimately decided to let it through on the basis that the movie was made before she publicly revealed her unpleasant and dangerous beliefs.  If her presence is a red line for you, I respect that.

The non-Carano cast is better than you might expect for low-budget fare like this.  For instance, perennial science fiction TV stalwart Ryan Robbins (from Sanctuary and Continuum, as well as recurring roles in a host of other shows such as Arrow, Riverdale and Falling Skies) turns up as the primary antagonist. I'm used to seeing him in more sympathetic, likeable roles, so it was interesting to see him portray a would be criminal tyrant.  I don't think he quite had the necessary menace to be truly compelling in this portrayal, but he was decently fun to watch.  Jackson's a fairly good villain: educated by the standards of the setting, a thinker and planner. He's more than just a thug. He does goes out like a total chump, though, which rather undercuts the film.

Something else that rather undercuts the entertainment value of the movie is that all of the characters in the film, and the narrative itself, seem very determined to be unpleasant.  Gabe's an awful person.  So is almost everyone else, but most of them aren't the supposed protagonist.  Worse, the one time Gabe shows a moment of generous spirit, the decision nearly gets her killed. It all works out in the end, because the bad guys do the stupid bad guy thing, but it's hard not to read the film's philosophy as 'altruism is a weakness'.  

Even if Carano's politics aren't a red line for you, you're betting off skipping this.

Screamers: The Hunting (2009)

 

Following the dangerous escalation and purported destruction of the automated killing machines known as Screamers, planet Sirius 6B has been left deserted for some twenty years.

Or so all the records claim.  But when his ship picks up an SOS signal from the supposedly empty planet, Commander Andy Sexton leads a team to investigate.  Once the squad arrives, they find a group of human survivors eking out an existence in an old military outpost, but more important, they discover that the threat of the Screamers is far from over.  The killer machines have continued to evolve their camouflage and infiltration techniques, and Sexton's team soon finds its numbers dwindling.

Can the surviving team members survive the Screamers and find a way off-world, or are they doom to die gory deaths amid the ruined wastelands of Sirius 6B?  For that matter, could they suffer an even worse fate than that?

Made nearly 15 years after the original Screamers (linked above), Screamers: The Hunting is a made-for-TV sequel that features Arrow's Stephen Amell (not looking quite as buff here as he would for his most famous role) and Gina Holden, who for while there seemed to be making something of a career of being in not-very-good science fiction shows that I nonetheless enjoyed (Blood Ties and SyFy's Flash Gordon, specifically).  It also boasts a small role for Lance Henriksen, who was turning up for a lot of science fiction movie cameos at the time.  Presumably the thought process there was to cheaply cash in on the Aliens connection.

So it has a decent enough cast, but how does it compare to the original movie, overall?

Well, I think the short answer is that it's technically better than the original in most respects, but it's frankly not as much fun to watch.

The technical improvements include the visual effects.  Screamers: The Hunting definitely profits from the advancements in cinema techniques since the release of the 1995 movie: while it was almost certainly considerably cheaper to make than the original film, the improved make-up and effects technology allow it to look better in almost every request.  It's still a long way short of the quality of a big budget film, of course, and you'll almost certainly spot a few flaws, but honestly the visual effects were technically more competent than I expected them to be.

The script also has some strengths over that of the original: in particular, the strategy of the Screamers makes a fair bit more sense this time.  It's easier to see how the actions the killer machines take contribute to their primary goals, rather than just contributing to "and now we can have a twist for the audience, let's hope they never stop to think about whether this makes any sense".  It also offers some ideas about Screamer development that are potentially interesting.

Unfortunately, despite those strengths, the script is definitely not short of weaknesses.  The human characters are uniformly as dumb as rocks, probably even more than in the 1995 film, and the potentially interesting ideas about Screamer development seem to mainly exist purely to set up the ending.  And said ending is utterly goofy and laughable.  Even more than that of the original film.  Which is saying something, given how goofy the end of Screamers was.

Only for hard-core SF enthusiasts, this one.

Screamers (1995)

 

In the year 2078, the planet Sirius 6B, once a thriving mining hub, has been reduced to a toxic wasteland by a war between the mining company, known as the New Economic Block ("the N.E.B."), and "The Alliance", a group of former mining and science personnel.

The war came about when the miners discovered that their extraction of ore released toxic gases.  They went on strike, and the mining company hired mercenaries as strike breakers.  Without the industrial scale or numbers to match the N.E.B., the Alliance looked to bolster their forces by creating "Screamers" — autonomous, artificially intelligent self-replicating machines that hunt down and kill N.E.B. soldiers on their own.

The war has reached an exhausted stalemate when a group of Alliance  troops recovers a message from a dead N.E.B. soldier, killed by screamers as he approached the Alliance compound, guaranteeing safe passage through N.E.B. territory to discuss a truce.  Their commander decides to at least hear the offer, and together with a new recruit from Earth, heads out across the wilderness.  It should be relatively straightforward; with their Alliance transponders, they should have nothing to fear from the Screamers.

But the thing about creating autonomous, artificially intelligent self-replicating machines is that ... well, they are autonomous, intelligent and self-replicating.

Screamers is loosely based on a short story by Philip K Dick, whose work also inspired Total Recall and Bladerunner.  I'm giving the film a qualified recommendation not because it's genuinely good, but for its ambience (it feels nicely desolate, paranoid and claustrophobic); for the gall of its blatant Terminator/Aliens mash-up of a script, and for one of the most laughable ending stingers ever offered up by a horror film.

All that faint praise aside though, I do have to give the film some credit for its technical aspects.  It generally makes good use of its limited resources, with well chosen locations and some decent practical effects.  It's all pretty impressive for a budget that was about one fifth that of something like Terminator 2.  The only real weak point in the effects is that a few the green screen overlays are ... not well executed.

The cast, headed by RoboCop's Peter Weller, are also a cut above what you might expect from a low budget science fiction horror film.

Where the film falls down a bit is the script.  I've already mentioned the liberal 'inspiration' it draws from other, better known films, but that's not the big problem.  The big problem is that the antagonists' strategy - and in fact, the plot in general - makes no sense whatsoever.  Moment by moment, the film is generally engaging enough that you don't worry about it as you're watching, but it doesn't bear much scrutiny if you think about it afterwards.

Overall, Screamers feels like elements of a much better story with some interesting themes; "what does it mean to be 'human'?" for instance; have been shaken up in a big bag with a lot of overly familiar action-horror film clichés.  The resulting film is a decent if slightly nonsensical watch; but it's a shame it falls short of what it feels like it could have been.

Andor, Season 1 (2022)

 

Cassian Andor is a thief and scavenger whose home planet, Kenari, was rendered uninhabitable by a botched Imperial mining project.  

Despite the Empire's role in his planet's demise, Andor has little interest in ideas of rebellion or resistance.  His concerns are far more personal and selfish.  They include looking for his sister, who he believes may also have survived Kenari's destruction, looking after his adoptive mother, and making enough money to be comfortable.

The first of these objectives is about to render Andor's life very complicated, however.  His search for his sister leads to a fight with two security officers.  When Andor accidentally kills one of the two, he murders the other to cover his tracks, then looks to sell some black market technology so he can flee off planet.  His escape route turns out to be the Rebellion, who hire him to help complete a daring robbery.  His payment is both his passage off the planet and a big pile of credits.

Andor intends this to be a one-and-done deal.  He has no intention of joining the Rebellion on a full-time basis.  But as he soon discovers, even if you're not looking to be the enemy of a fascist autocracy, such autocracies are often more than willing to treat you as their enemy, regardless.

Andor is almost certainly the best piece of Disney-era Star Wars media, an intelligently written, well-constructed, well-acted dramatic thriller with steadily rising stakes and consequences.  It's a level above the simple nostalgia rush thrill ride of The Force Awakens or the self-consciously Campbellian SF-western stylings of The Mandalorian.  This is a show which has a deeper and more relevant theme at its core.  One that drives the action - and the actions of its characters - in meaningful ways.

This is a show about the  many costs of resistance to a fascist regime, which can physical, psychological or financial, or all three.  More than that, though, it also examines the cost of simply not actively collaborating with such a regime.  These costs are less immediate and even less certain than those of active resistance, but nonetheless very real.  The only 'safety' in such a regime is to actively participate as one of the agents of its oppression.  And even that is not the guarantee it might appear.  As anyone who has seen a Star Wars movie already knows, in the Empire, failure can be punished with lethal force.

Andor just wants to be left alone, and would happily ignore the Empire's oppression if it was not oppressing him.  This makes him a hard character to like, but also I think an easy one to understand, and one with a lot of clear room for growth.  He's perhaps the most interesting and complete character the franchise has yet offered up.

And he's not the only rich and interesting character her, as Andor looks beyond its title character to show us the ambitions and struggles of several other interesting characters.  The naively doctrinaire Syril Karn, who believes in the Empire's right to power because it has the power; the idealistic but ruthless Luthen Rael, who is compelled to fight tyranny but who makes himself as hard and terrible as those he opposes to do so; the ambitious Imperial officer Dedra Meero, who may I suspect find herself chewed up by the machine she serves; and of course senator Mon Mothma, who may have to sacrifice her principles - perhaps even her daughter - to fund the resistance against the Emperor.

It's a great, layered show, showing the messy consequences of an oppressive regime in all their myriad forms.

As far as weaknesses go?  I will admit that I found the first episode a little slow, but by the end of the second episode, I felt fully on board.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Season 1 (2013)

 

Skye is an orphan and hacker who lives off the grid as she endeavours both to discover the truth of who she is and the truth she believes is being hidden by shadowy government organisations like the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division - better known to fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Nick Fury's SHIELD.

Skye is therefore rather surprised when senior SHIELD agent Phil Coulson recruits her as a member of the team he has assembled to investigate superhumans and other related phenomena; which incidentally run much deeper than even Coulson himself is aware.

Together with the other members of Coulson's team, Skye begins to work both to protect society from superpowered threats, and also to guard innocent superhumans from exploitation by unscrupulous organisations.

Of course, Skye once believed that those unscrupulous organisations included SHIELD itself.  And while she and her team all seem to be motivated by a desire to help, it may be that for certain other elements of the organisation, those beliefs had good foundation ...

This TV series spin-off of the MCU was co-created by Avengers director Joss Whedon, and makes considerable use of that big screen connection.  Guest appearances by multiple actors from the MCU movies, such as Samuel L Jackson, help to give the series a 'bigger' feel. 

These guest spots also help connect the series to the wider MCU, which is important because the show definitely ties into the films.  This first season, for instance, is set in the aftermath of The Avengers, includes references to Iron Man 3 and Thor 2, and has a strong link and lead-in to Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

In some ways it must be said that the show needs that feeling of scope and connection, because its TV resources sometimes make it feel a bit small.  In particular, the effects budget is definitely too lean for what it has to try and take on. The effects are frequently a weak element of the show, being at best mediocre and sometimes - such as with the backgrounds in the shots out of their plane's loading bay - distractingly poor.

On the plus side, the casting team have done a good job.  All the main cast members do a good job in their roles. Their characters aren't all that nuanced, on the whole, but they are likeable and have enjoyable dynamics between them.

Writing-wise, the show does suffer from occasional annoying Whedonisms such as building up a dramatic moment only to 'ironically' undercut it and make it absurd, which feels like an awkward and slightly desperate effort to come across as hip and cool.

Overall though, if you are a fan of the MCU, you will probably enjoy this first season of Agents of SHIELD; it is pretty solid superhero TV.

Sicario (2015)

 

In Chandler, Arizona, FBI Special Agent Kate Macer leads a raid on a Sonora Cartel safe house where her team discovers dozens of decaying corpses hidden in the walls.  

Following the raid, Kate is recommended for and joins a Joint Task Force overseen by CIA operative Matt Graver and the secretive Alejandro Gillick. Their mission is to flush out and apprehend Sonora lieutenant Manuel Díaz, currently operating hidden in the US.

After a violent gun battle during an extradition mission, Kate learns that task force's real objective is to disrupt Díaz's drug operations so he will lead them to his boss, drug lord Fausto Alarcón.  Not only this, but it soon becomes clear that any and all tactics and methods will be used to achieve this goal, including illegal ones.  Kate grows more and more uncomfortable with the situation, but what is there that she can do about it?

Sicario is well acted by a talented cast, beautifully shot, and has very well choreographed action scenes.

And it loathed it.  It joins High Plains Drifter on my list of films I actively resent having watched.  It's a thoroughly repellent movie that takes as its thesis "the only way to defeat evil is to ally yourself with greater evil".  

I'm sure that some might argue for some other interpretation, perhaps that it's trying to depict the way such methods harm the people who use them.  But that's simply not supported by the film's actual content.  Instead, every effort to follow the regulations is shown to be counter-productive, while Alejandro Gillick is a murderous, torture-using thug who is repeatedly shown to the most effective member of the team.  The script actively endorses the horrors he inflicts on his victims.

And let's be clear, those victims include Kate Macer.  She is repeatedly physically assaulted, endangered and gaslit by Gillick and Graver, the latter of whom eventually makes it clear that she was brought on board solely as their patsy.  This behaviour culminates in a direct threat to murder Kate and stage it as a suicide if she does not help them cover up their illegal activities.  Over the course of the movie they tear apart Kate's life, her career and her mental health; and then they ditch her and the movie ends.

I don't care how technically well made this film is; it's misanthropic, nihilistic, torture-endorsing garbage.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022)

 

Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Walters just wants to focus on her legal career and isn't really interested in becoming a superhero. But when your cousin is The Incredible Hulk, you don't always get a choice in these things.  In this case, accidental exposure to her cousin's blood leaves Jen with her own case of a burly, super-strong, green-skinned alter ego.

On the plus side, Jen doesn't have anywhere near the anger management issues of her cousin.  Life as a woman has taught her a lot about controlling her negative emotions.  So she figures she can just continue living her life as she has been.

That works about as well as you might expect.  A superpowered influencer named Titania attempts to trash Jen's courtroom in a big to escape her own trial. One 'Hulk out' moment later, the escape attempt is over; but so is Jen's case and her career as a public prosecutor.

Jen finds her only job offer is from the firm Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway, which specialises in cases involving superhumans.  And they want 'the She-Hulk', not Jennifer Walters.  Oh, and her first case is to try and win parole for her cousin's former adversary, The Abomination.

Things can't get worse from here, right?  Well, unfortunately for Jen, this is the 21st Century, and there are always to tear down and humiliate powerful, successful women.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law blends elements of two different runs of Marvel's She-Hulk comic.  One is the series where she was a lawyer who happened to have super-powers.  The other is the series where she knew she was in a comic book and would often break the fourth wall to talk to the writer or the audience.  The show similarly has Jen pause the on-screen action to directly speak to the audience.

Acknowledging the audience can be a risky technique to employ.  It's not uncommon for people to find that it jars them out of their suspension of disbelief, for instance.  And some people find it reduces their emotional connection because the characters are acknowledging that it is 'fake'.  Still, there are plenty of cases where it has worked, often in comedies; which She-Hulk definitely is.

Directly addressing male privilege and toxic masculinity are also risky things to do; if you mock man-babies, they will react badly.  And indeed, they predictably lost their minds about this show and tried to review bomb it.  Thereby rather proving the show's point, if you ask me.

Overall, I thought there was a lot to like about She-Hulk.  Tatiana Maslany is predictable excellent in the lead role, demonstrating once more her exceptional range and adaptability.  She is ably supported by the rest of the cast, as well.

I also liked that the show makes clear that Jen wants to be accepted and respected for her purely human abilities, such as her intelligence and hard work, and not just for the super-powers that have been dumped into her lap.

There were a lot of complaints about the visual effects, particularly She-Hulk herself.  In my opinion, these are overstated, and probably at least in part stem from the above-mentioned man-baby review bombing: complaining about special effects rather than the "toxic masculinity is a problem" themes gives plausible deniability about why the review bombing is happening.

Do I have any complaints?  Just one, really.  The show's finale ties heavily into the 'breaking the fourth wall' aspect of the series, and it certainly went in a direction I did not expect. I can't say that I liked it very much, honestly, and I was not alone in this. I thought it was an unsatisfying way to resolve things.

On the other hand, I know some people really did like - it is definitely a controversial choice that has provoked a lot of interesting discussion - so you may really enjoy it.

Even though I didn't much care for the final episode, I enjoyed the show overall am I glad I watched it.  I would certainly give a second series a shot.

Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

 

Ten years after the destruction of the Jedi and the establishment of the Galactic Empire, Obi-Wan Kenobi is in hiding on the desert planet of Tatooine, where he watches over the young Luke Skywalker.

Kenobi's mission requires him to keep his head down and avoid drawing any Imperial attention.  The Empire's Jedi-hunting Inquisitors are ruthless and effective, and respond to even the faintest hint of Jedi activity.

Despite many temptations to take a stand against injustice, Kenobi refuses to abandon his charge.  Nothing is important enough to abandon Luke.  Or so he thinks.

But then word comes that the young Princess Leia Organa has been kidnapped, and - as you almost certainly already know, unless you've lived under a rock for the last four decades - Leia is every bit as important as Luke.  It seems that Kenobi will have to buckle on his light sabre for one more mission, after all.

Obi-Wan Kenobi never quite managed to make me forget that the fates of many of these characters have been thoroughly defined over the past four decades, but it is honestly about as good and exciting an adventure as it can be, given the canonical narrative straight-jacket within which it must work.  While the futures of major Star Wars characters like Obi-Wan, Leia and Darth Vader are already established, the show wisely looks to introduce new characters about whose lives and fates real tension can be established.  It also does a surprisingly deft job of allowing Kenobi to have a planet-hopping adventure that could reasonably have gone unmentioned before now.  Smart scripting work, overall, even if it can't entirely take eliminate the weaknesses from being a 'flashback' story.

The show also profits from strong central performance.  Ewan McGregor is predictably excellent as Obi-Wan, very much channelling that Alec Guinness vibe for the role; but he is well-matched by the precocious Vivien Lyra Blair as young Leia.  She's an excellent choice, believably a younger, spirited-but-still-naïve version of the character as played by Carrie Fisher.

On the villainous side, Moses Ingram does good work in the role of the Jedi-hunting 'Third Sister', slowly revealing a more complex character than her brash aggression initially suggests.  Regrettably, Ingram suffered a lot of racial abuse and death threats online over the role, which were completely unjustified and hateful, and regrettably show how many people still want Star Wars (and for that matter, other media) to go back to just being all white dudes.

Another thing I enjoyed was the show's choice to depict Owen and Beru as much more than just the querulous aunt and uncle of A New Hope. It's a nice acknowledgement that, with all that was ultimately revealed in the films, they had to be very brave to take him in.  Of course, when the original film came out, little of that context was there!  It's good to see the writers recognising that it makes sense to change their characterisation, given the way the franchise has developed since then.

On the subject of the franchise's development, I do hope to see less trading on nostalgia in the future, with Star Wars. For one thing, there's really only so much space between the lines to fill in this earlier material.  For another, a franchise that is constantly feeding on its own history like this is not growing or evolving, and will ultimately become stale.

Until then, though, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a solid show, and well worth your time if you are a Star Wars fan.  Just don't be a Star Wars fan who is also a racist dirtbag, please.

The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

 

Audrey Stockman spends her birthday upset after being abruptly dumped by her boyfriend Drew.  What may be most galling of all is that only her BFF Morgan seems suitably upset on her behalf.

There's more to Drew's sudden break-up than Audrey knows, however, as she learns when she is abducted by two mysterious men.  They inform her that Drew was actually a CIA agent, and has gone missing.  They ask her to let them know if she hears from Drew, then let her go.

This is pretty much the signal for Audrey's life (and Morgan's, since as besties they are kind of a two-for-one deal) to become very complicated.  Spies, assassins and all kinds of other dangerous individuals are suddenly very interested in her, and in particular, in an old trophy of Drew's that she has in her possession.

Armed only with their moxie, Audrey and Morgan now have to stay one step ahead of everyone who is chasing them, while trying to unravel the significance of the trophy.  It's going to be a wild ride!

I very much enjoyed The Spy Who Dumped Me, and think there is a lot about it to like.  For one thing, stars Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon have great chemistry together and are a huge amount as the out-of-their-depth Audrey and Morgan.  For another, when the humour works, it really works - the carjacking scene may be one of the funniest things I've seen this year.  The script also maintains momentum pretty well; I was never bored.

But it is still a bit of an uneven movie in some respects.  One of the key ones is that it attempts to blend outrageous farce - such as the carjacking scene, to name but one example - with extravagant, high octane, high body count action scenes.  It's at times a bit jarring to see Kunis and McKinnon being affably goofy amidst the carnage that is wrought around them.

Overall though, this was pretty good fun.  Glad I watched it.

She-Wolves of the Wasteland (1988)

 

It is the bleak post-apocalyptic future. The “bacteriological wars” have devastated the Earth. All human men are dead, and only small numbers of women have survived to eke out a pretty miserable existence in the wasteland the wars left behind.

The most powerful figure in this world is the Reverend Mother, who commands an army of bounty hunters that terrorise the other woman.  The Reverend Mother also allegedly commands 'dark powers' and seems to have some source of 'seed', with which she impregnates slaves dubbed 'breeders'.

She is not a nice person.

Keela is a pregnant breeder who escapes the Reverend Mother's clutches and goes on the run.  But many bounty hunters pursue her, and she is soon on the cusp of being re-captured.

Enter Phoenix, a bikini-clad warrior woman who rescues Keela and takes her to a secret valley of clothing-averse Amazons where they can be safe.  This safety lasts just long enough for Keela to have her son (a male child!  Dun dun dun!) before she and Phoenix are on the run again.

Also known as Phoenix the Warrior, this 1988 release was the last film of Persis Khambatta, who is best known for playing Lieutenant Ilia in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  Perhaps it goes without saying, but this is quite a big step down.  

Upon release, this film almost certainly banked on the promise of skimpy outfits and/or topless women in order to draw video rentals.  And to be fair, it does shamelessly deliver both of those things, as well as a lot of the big, big hair you'd expect of the genre.

Unfortunately, it fails to deliver decent acting, competent fight choreography, or a script that makes a lick of sense.

The lack of decent acting will become apparent as soon as you start the film.  Any given five minutes of the film's runtime tends to mostly consist of people not quite looking at the camera while woodenly spouting some kind of exposition to move the film along to its next set piece.

For fight choreography, while none of it is good, the hysterical stand-out of ineptitude is the bounty hunters' assault on the friendly amazons.  It mostly involves lots of women standing awkwardly in place while firing at other women a few yards away.  Despite the short ranges, the vast majority of attacks miss.  Which to be honest is probably not surprising given how uncomfortable they all look with their weapons.

Meanwhile, the film's script seems to have taken its plotting structure straight out of an old school cinema serial - just about every 15 minutes there's a miniature cliff-hanger where one or more of the good guys gets captured, only for the entire situation to be resolved about thirty seconds later so they can set up the next capture sequence.  The most egregious example of this is probably the wacky cult of deformed mutants who worship a mangled concept of TV as "the spirits of the airwaves".  These are abruptly introduced out of nowhere, capture the heroes to hand over to the big bad, then vanish completely from the film never to be mentioned again.

Lots of things happen in She-Wolves of the Wasteland.  Few of them seem to mean anything or lead anywhere much, though, and the script shows little interest in examining the consequences of its own events, or even giving us closure on the fates of major characters.

Only for hardcore fans of trashy 80s post-apocalyptica.  Like me!

A Star is Born (1976)

 

Famous but self-destructive rock star John Norman Howard bails early on a concert and heads off to a bar to get even more drunk than he already is.

There, he meets the talented younger singer Esther Hoffman.  John immediately recognises her potential to be a star.  There's also an instant attraction between the two, though the romance is not exactly a smooth one: John's frequently selfish and inebriated behaviour sees to that.

Nonetheless, the passion burns through the problems.  They marry, and Esther proves every bit the star John believed her to be.  In fact, her career quickly rockets her toward fame and fortune that eclipses John's own.

While his faith in Esther has been vindicated, John struggles with the decline of his own career.  The fact that this is in large part a result of his own  behaviour is not lost on him, and if anything makes the decline harder to bear.

Is Esther's love enough to sustain John, or will his self-destructive tendencies spiral out of control?

I very much enjoyed the 2018 version of A Star Is Born.  While I enjoyed this version too, it was definitely not to the same extent.  A big factor in this was the music.  While Barbra Streisand is a great singer, the songs simply aren't up to the same standard.  There's nothing here that is anywhere near as memorable as 'Shallow'.  To my mind, in a film so heavily focused on the music industry, this lack is a major weakness. 

John Norman Howard is also a much less likeable character than the more recent film's Jackson Maine.  His behaviour is more obviously and directly harmful to those around him, not just to himself.  Also, these actions seem to be driven more by anger and resentment, rather than weakness.  I can understand why someone would fall in love with Jackson Maine, despite his obvious problems; I have a harder time understanding Esther's fierce commitment to John in the face of his poor treatment of her.

Now obviously there are plenty of people who fall in love with toxic partners in the real world; but fiction generally has a higher 'believability' bar to clear than real life.  I didn't feel that this script ever quite cleared that bar.  Esther's "love" felt more like infatuation with John's stardom and gratitude for the help he gave her in her own career.

 

The basic plotline remains a compelling one, however; there's a reason Hollywood has made four different versions of this film; and the cast are all good.  If you simply can't get enough of A Star Is Born formula, but have already watched the 2018 one a dozen times, this one is worth a look.

A Simple Favor (2018)

 

Widowed single mom Stephanie runs a small scale vlog focusing on parenting tips, crafts and recipes.  She's chronically perky and wholesome, a super-mom whose domestic focus and over-active involvement in school activities leads to a lot of snide comments from the other parents at her son's school.

It's thus a case of 'opposites attract' when Stephanie becomes chums with the swaggering, martini-swilling, decidedly non-domestic Emily Nelson.  Emily's son attends school with Stephanie's kid, and the two mom's bond over after-school playdates and more than a few stuff drinks.  They share secrets; Emily her frustration over her husband's lack of success, Stephanie a past sexual indiscretion quite at odds with her 'nice girl' persona.

Despite their many differences, and Emily's sometimes aggressive demeanour, Stephanie soon counts the other woman as her closest friend.  So she is deeply worried when, after dropping off her son 'for a few hours', Emily does not return.  After 48 hours with no word, she persuades Emily's husband to contact the police.

What has happened to Emily?  Stephanie intends to find out.  People may discount her as a lightweight stay at home mom, but she's determined to not going to give up on her friend.

That determination might prove a lot more dangerous than Stephanie expects ... can she get the answers she wants before the questions get her into something she can't get out of?

A Simple Favor is a fun black comedy that profits immensely from excellent performances at its core.  Both Anna Kendrick (as Stephanie) and Blake Lively (as Emily) do a great job throughout the film, whether performing together and separately.

This film is something of a modern take on the noir tale; we have the femme fatale, the flawed but persistent investigator, the unwise love affair, the innocent dupe ... and of course murder and betrayal.  These ingredients  have however been re-imagined and re-combined in ways that the screenwriters of the 40s would definitely never have considered, which helps keep the whole thing feeling fresh.

The twisty-windy plot that unfolds is perhaps ultimately rather far-fetched and improbable, which might present an issue for some viewers, but I found that it rattled along with enough verve that I didn't really mind.  Anna Kendrick deserves a lot of the credit for this, I think, as she does a great job of showing us the any facets of the more-complex-than-she-appears 'good girl' Stephanie, and depicting her character's slow evolution from would-be wallflower to determined amateur sleuth.

This is a fun romp. Recommended!

One final note: thumbs up for the script's overt messaging about just how much work is involved in being a stay-at-home parent, and the criticism of society's tendency to underestimate its value.

Steel Dawn (1987)

 

Nomad, a swordsman, wanders through the desert in a post-World War III world. He searches for his mentor's killer, the assassin Sho.

Nomad's travels bring him to the settlement of Meridian, where he finds work on a farm owned by the widow Kasha (who is, of course, young and attractive), and becomes friends Kasha's son, Jux.

Meridian, however, is not without its troubles.  A local landowner named Damnil has employed a gang of thugs to harass the town and gain a monopoly on the local water supply.  Kasha and Jux are among his targets.

When Nomad proves more than Damnil's thugs can handle, the land owner hires a deadly assassin - Sho, naturally - to get rid of the interloper.  The stage is set for a showdown.

Steel Dawn owes a considerable debt to the western Shane; in that film, a drifter comes to town, befriends a young boy, and helps small land owners stand up to a corrupt cattle baron.  It is of several films that star Patrick Swayze made with his real life wife Lisa Niemi; she plays Kasha, of course, a role that features some hysterically 80s hair.

Released in the same year as Dirty Dancing, this low budget post apocalyptic adventure attempted to try and cash in on the (unexpected) success of that film and Swayze's resulting surge to stardom.  The effort was unsuccessful.  There are good reasons for that, I think.  Much of the fight choreography is mediocre, and the script - in addition to being heavily derivative of another, better film, is pretty weak.  It has a tendency to try and skate by doing just the absolute minimum.

As an example of this, there's a brief scene early on where Nomad meets a dog.  The encounter is not hostile, and the dog then disappears from the screen for almost an hour, before abruptly turning up once more to rescue Nomad from imprisonment.  That kind of Doggie Ex Machina needs more effort to set up.  At least show the dog hanging around the farm and Nomad throwing it some of his food, or saving it from mistreatment.

The best part of the film?  Probably Brion James.  Best known for playing big dumb bad guys, he here gets to play the role of Nomad's big dumb sidekick, and is really rather fun.

Overall, this is only for fans of 80s post-apocalyptica.

Saved by the Bell, Season 2 (2021)

 

After a year of learning from home, the student body returns to Bayside High.  This one again includes the transplants from the far less wealthy Douglas High School, which was closed due to budget cuts.

The kids - and their parents and teachers - will have to face a new host high school tribulations and wacky shenanigans this year, most significant of which is the regional 'Spirit Competition', in which the Bayside kids will face off with their nemeses from nearby Valley High.

All is fair in love and war, and the Spirit Competition is absolutely a war.  The jinks, they will be high.

This second season of the sequel-slash-reboot of the 90s TV series of the same name picks up more or less where the first season left off, albeit with the acknowledgment that an entire school year pretty much happened off screen.

The cast remain great fun, bouncing off one another well, and while the writing is often deliberately overboard and exaggerated, it is overboard and exaggerated in really smart ways.  A lot of time and attention was spent on getting just the right mix of silliness in place, such as the amusing little references to Elizabeth Berkley's role in the notorious box office bomb Showgirls.

It's also nice to see more long-form story telling taking place over this season.  While every episode continues to feature an immediate focus and plotlines that are resolved within it, the writers have also included the loose season-long arc of the Spirit Competition as a framing mechanism for the episode-by-episode shenanigans.  This helps make the season feel more connected and less 'episode of the week'.

It also results in some entertaining character arcs.  Coach Slater and Mac Morris both get solid character development as they learn a few life lessons while remaining still recognisably the same people, and Aisha's new romance is all kinds of adorable.

Alas, the show has not been renewed for a third season.  I would absolutely have been turning up for Senior year, if it was.

A Star is Born (2018)

 

Ally is a waitress with aspirations to be a singer-songwriter.  One night she is performing an Edith Piaf number at a local drag bar, she is spotted by country rock superstar Jackson Maine.

Maine is struck by Ally's powerful vocals and stage presence.  It doesn't hurt that he finds her easy on the eyes, as well.  The two go on an impromptu, rather rambling date, where Ally sings some of the lyrics she has written.

This new relationship with Ally, and the energy she brings to his life, his music and his tour, revitalises Jackson at a time when his alcohol and drug problems were beginning to damage his career.  The two fall in love, get married, and make beautiful music together.

But as Ally's star begins to glow ever brighter, Jackson feels the shadows creeping back.  Can Ally's light really keep his darkness at bay, and what will be the repercussions for her, if it can't?

This is the fourth filmed version of A Star is Born, and the third to be set in the music industry (in the original, the setting was Hollywood itself).  It's not technically a musical - no-one narrates their feelings or provides plot exposition via song - but music is definitely an integral part of the story.  And on that front, it is a triumph.  The smash hit "Shallow" is clearly the stand-out number, and has sold over 10 million copies worldwide, but all of the original songs, principally written by the film's two main stars in collaboration with Lukas Nelson, are impactful and memorable.  They are a key part of the movie's success as a work of entertainment.

The casting is also excellent.  For me, Lady Gaga was a real revelation as she proved more than capable of holding her own as a Hollywood leading actor.  I can see from IMDB that it was not her first role, but it does seem to be the first on this kind of scale, and she looks entirely at home.

The rest of the cast is also good.  Bradley Cooper does a good job of making Jackson Maine into a flawed man, bordering on a screw-up, while still remaining sympathetic.  Sam Elliott is as dependable as always.  Perhaps the biggest surprise outside of Lady Gaga was seeing former shock comedian Andrew Dice Clay turn up as Ally's father, Lorenzo.  Apparently this is a role that Robert De Niro was interested in, and I have to say that as good as De Niro is, I don't think the film lost anything at all by using Clay.

If I were to make one complaint about the film - and it's me, so I will almost always find at least one complaint to make - its that the narrative ultimately centres Jackson more than Ally.  Despite the fact that Ally is the bright new star, and the one on the rise, the film is much more about how her arrival and ascent impacts Jackson, than on Ally's experience.  When this story gets filed for the fifth time - which is almost certainly will, though perhaps not in my lifespan - I hope that we finally get a version that centres the female character's experiences and ambitions.

That one quibble aside, however, this is an exceptionally well-made film.  It's not as emotionally powerful on the second and subsequent viewings as the first, but few things are.

Well worth seeing.