The Town (2010)

 

Four men in masks rob a bank in Boston. In the process they take Assistant Manager Claire Keesey as a hostage, later releasing her unharmed.

After learning that Claire lives in their own home neighbourhood, one of the four robbers - Doug - follows her to find out how much she has told the police, and to ensure that his more hot-headed associate does not kill her to eliminate her as a witness. 

Soon a romance grows between Doug and his unwitting victim, which the bank robber naturally hides from the other members of his gang.

He should, perhaps, be more worried about keeping things from the authorities.  The FBI have identified him as a likely member of the bank robbers, so when they see him spending time with Claire, they naturally develop suspicions about whether she was an innocent victim of the robbery, after all.  She was, of course, but you can certainly see why they would think otherwise!

As tensions grow with his fellow criminals, and the FBI closes in, Doug has to make some difficult decisions that will affect not only his own life, but those of the woman he has grown to love.

The Town is a decently-crafted film with a good cast, but my wife and I were a bit disappointed by it.  In large part, this is because we watched The Town on the back of its trailer, which promised a tense, high octane thriller.  The actual film is rather more restrained in tone and content.  It's probably also therefore more realistic and nuanced.  But expectations matter, so we were a bit disappointed by what we got, since it was not what we were looking for.

The film's other weakness, to my mind, is that I did not much care about Doug as a character, and was not wholly convinced by his and Claire's relationship, once his secret was revealed.  I think the film's grounded tone was also a factor in this.  In a more high octane film, I would probably have accepted "adrenaline-filled situations prompt strong feelings" as a justification.  Without that, I think the film needed to work harder than it did, to convince me that Claire would make the decisions that she did.

Ultimately this didn't quite click for me.

Black Sails, Season 1 (2014)

 

In 1715 West Indies, the pirates of New Providence Island threaten maritime trade in the region. The laws of every civilized nation declare them hostis humani generis, enemies of all mankind. In response, the pirates adhere to a doctrine of their own....war against the world.

One of the most feared of the pirate captains - though one whose crew is beginning to rumble with discontent after months of lean profits - is Captain Flint.  His rivals, such as the equally renowned Captain Vane, sense that he has vulnerable and look to exploit that fact.  Flint himself, however, has a method behind his seemingly erratic decisions: he has a lead on a particularly important Spanish treasure galleon.  One that, if he were to seize its contents, would provide sufficient wealth for a Pirate King to legitimise his kingdom as an independent nation.

Of course, none of his rivals are likely to let Flint just make himself their king, even if he can find the treasure galleon.  And with the latest ship he sacked, Flint took on a new crew-member who is about to complicate ... well, everyone's life quite a bit ... a callow, cowardly, but rather clever youth by the name of John Silver.

Operating as a pseudo-prequel to Treasure Island, this series tracks the exploits of pirates both real - such as Harry Vane, Jack Rackham, Anne Bonney and Blackbeard - and fictional , in the shape of Flint and the future Long John Silver.

Whereas Treasure Island is basically a story for tweens, however, Black Sails is heavily committed to being not at all family friendly.  It is filled with bad language, violence, cruelty, and sex: frequently all four at the same time.  The amount of sexual violence, actually, is something I found quite off-putting.  Do not expect to see healthy romantic relationships here, or even much in the way of mutually satisfying sex going on here.  Sex is a weapon in this show, used to exert power (of one form or another) on others.

I'm comfortable with shows that have a lot of sex and violence - I watched all of Spartacus, after all - but the constant conflation of the two in this show, as well as the unrelenting selfishness and cruelty of most of the characters, ultimately put me off.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

 

Southern California; 1988. Bill S Preston, Esquire and Ted 'Theodore' Logan are lifelong best friends who fill their days with dreams about their future as rock superstars - the minor detail of 'learning to play' being something to resolved at some point in said future.

These halcyon dreams are about to come under threat, however.  Ted's father - who happens to be the local police chief - is tired of his son's cheerful aimlessness and intends to pack him off to military school in Alaska.  The only way the hapless friends can avert this terrible fate is to ace their end-of-year history project.  Which, given that their entire knowledge of Napoleon is that he is "a short, dead dude" seems unlikely.

Fortunately for Bill & Ted, their continued friendship is vital to the interests of the utopian society of 2688.  They send an emissary back 700 years to provide our 'heroes' with a time machine (in the shape of a telephone booth, natch).  With this handy device, the two would-be rock superstars can actually learn something about history, nail their assignment, and fulfil their destiny.

This plan, of course, may not survive contact with the cheerfully hapless enthusiasm of Messrs Bill & Ted.

As cheerful as its well-intentioned if not always well-equipped protagonists, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure became something of a cult hit, with a 1991 sequel and finally, in 2020, a third film in the franchise.  The availability of said third film on streaming services is actually what prompted me to watch the original.  I've seen it several times before, of course, but my wife never had.

This is a fun film.  It's occasionally dated in its sources of humour and its use of slurs, but the basic geniality and decency of the protagonists carries it past those minor hiccups without too much difficulty.

Until next time:

Wynonna Earp, Season 1 (2016)

 

Wynonna Earp is the great-great-granddaughter of the legendary Wyatt Earp.  Growing up in the rural town of Purgatory, she was a notorious wild child and troublemaker, and both she and the town were pleased to part ways as soon as possible.

Now 27, Wynonna reluctantly returns to her hometown for the funeral of her uncle.  The number of people who are unequivocally happy to see her back - including Wynonna herself - is exactly one: her sister, Waverly.  The number who are very much not happy, on the other hand, is far larger.  For some this is simply that she isn't inclined to be nice to people she doesn't like - which is most people.

For some others in the town, though, the reasons for their dislike run much deeper: they are literal revenants from hell, the demonic physical forms of the spirits of the 77 outlaws Wyatt Earp killed with his legendary revolver.  And Wynonna is The Heir, the latest in the Earp bloodline to have the ability to actually send them back to Hell.

Honestly, Wynonna would prefer not to have this whole demon-fighting destiny and just leave Purgatory in the dust, but Waverly, recent arrival Deputy US Marshal Xavier Dolls, and a handsome stranger with some distinctly old-fashioned attire all seem keen for her to take on the task.  As for the revenants themselves, well ... they have plans of their own, and you can bet none of them are good news for the Earps.

Wynonna Earp is an urban fantasy series developed by Emily Andras, based on the comic book by Beau Smith.  Andras previously served as executive producer and showrunner of Lost Girl seasons 3 and 4, and there are definitely some strong similarities between the two shows.  Deeper than the fact that they are both urban fantasy shows, mind you: each features a strong, feisty brunette with a special bloodline.  Each features a strong emphasis on relationships featuring non-romantic love between women.  Each features non-heterosexual women.  Each features a female lead who is unapologetic about her own sexuality and sexual choices.

Now none of this is to say that the shows feel the same, or to suggest that they don't have their own identities.  They are definitely different in many of their details, and Wynonna's sexuality (and cleavage) is not so central as Beau's in Lost Girl.

If you did like Lost Girl, though, you should definitely at least give this one a look.  It's a fun urban fantasy show with smart, capable - but definitely not infallible - main characters, and it doesn't take itself too seriously.

 

The Dry (2019)

 

Aaron Falk is an Australian Federal Police investigator, specialising in financial crime.  He lives in Melbourne, but the funeral of his childhood friend Luke Hadler brings him back to Kiewarra, the small rural town in which he grew up.

Luke's funeral is a difficult occasion for the town; it appears he killed his wife Karen and their son Billy before taking his own life, leaving only the infant daughter, still in the crib, alive.  Even under better circumstances, however, Falk's return to town would have been a reluctant one: he left twenty years earlier to escape harassment when he was suspected in the death of his girlfriend Ellie.

But when Luke's parents ask Falk to stay and investigate the crime, he reluctantly agrees.  This naturally makes many of the locals angry, particularly Ellie's father Mal and her brother Grant who brand Falk a liar and a murderer.

Is Luke's death the murder-suicide it appears to be?  Is the man investigating it himself a murderer?  You will of course need to see the movie to find out.

Or you could read the book on which it is based.  Released in 2016, Jane Harper's The Dry is an internationally award-winning mystery novel.  As you might imagine from that, it's a very good read indeed.

And to be completely fair, the film version of the tale is a solid movie with a good cast.  The problem for me, as someone who has read the novel, is that it's a bit too faithful.  I know some people hate it when films change things form the book, but I'm firmly of the opinion that different forms of media have different needs, and this adaptation basically hews as close to the book as it can, and therefore felt a little bit stale to me.

Obviously, if you haven't read the book, you won't have that issue.  And it is a decent film.  If this is a genre you like, and you either haven't read the book or don't care that there will be literally no surprises here, than you'll probably like this.

Looking for Alaska (2019)

 

In 2005, awkward high school student Miles Halter leaves his Florida home to attend Culver Creek Academy, a boarding school in Alabama.  Miles is the kind of teenager who is obsessed with the last words of famous people.  He only ever reads biographies, generally skipping straight to the end when he does so.  He is particularly obsessed with the last words of 15th century French writer Francois Rabelais: "I go to seek the Great Perhaps.", and hopes to find his own "Great Perhaps" at his new school.

The main thing Miles finds, though, is a group of friends: his room-mate Chip "The Colonel' Martin (who nicknames the very lanky Miles "Pudge"), Chip's good friend Takumi, and their mutual acquaintance Alaska Young.  Surprise surprise, Alaska - pictured front and centre above - is smart and beautiful and Miles is instantly smitten.  Alaska has a boyfriend, though, so Miles is mostly confined to staring wistfully at her and hoping she will notice him.

Which is frankly not terribly healthy behaviour, and for me, one of the weaknesses of this adaptation of John Green's novel is that it fails to communicate that as clearly as the book did.  When I read the novel, it was clear that it was a deliberate deconstruction and challenge to the 'magic Pixie dream girl' trope - the idea that a beautiful woman comes into a man's life, teaches him to really live, and then conveniently dies or disappears so that the story can stay centred on him - that is so common in fiction.  The pacing in this eight part serial, to my mind, skews too heavily toward indulging Miles's obsession, and too little toward examining it.

I was also irritated by how often and how much the series dwelt on the cruelty and cliquishness of high school kids.  It definitely contributed to my overall feeling that at eight episodes in length, this is at least two episodes too long.

The young cast here are great, and they deserved a better-paced, better constructed script.

If you want to look for Alaska, I recommend you do it via the book.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

 

More than sixty years after the events of the first Wonder Woman film, Diana of Themiscyra still yearns for the man she lost in 1918.  In between bouts of wistfully remembering him, she's working at Smithsonian as an expert in antiquities and moonlighting as a costumed superhero.  When she thwarts a robbery at a jewellery store, it turns out said store was a front for an antiquities smuggling ring.  The FBI asks the Smithsonian to identify the smuggled artefacts and one item in particular comes to the attention of both Diana and her new colleague, the socially awkward geologist Barbara Minerva.

This artefact also comes to the attention of glitzy, charming "entrepeneur" (actually, grifter) Maxwell Lord.  The financial house of cards that is Lord's "business" is about to collapse, and - this being a comic book movie - his plan to rescue it is to gain control of a magical artefact that grants wishes.  No prizes for guessing that the item Diana and Barbara have is the very one he wants, and that actually utilising it is a very bad idea indeed.

I'm not generally a fan of DC's po-faced, grimmity-grim superhero films, finding them dour and dull.  So the first Wonder Woman was a nice surprise package for me, and I was hopeful that this sequel would also prove an entertaining watch.

Alas, it's a disappointing.  I lay the blame for this heavily on the writing, which makes a wide variety of mistakes, starting with the contrivance of Diana still being all hung up on Steve Trevor, six decades after his death.  Yes, it let them get Chris Pine back.  Yes, it thematically ties into the "get what your wish" thread of the plot.  It is nonetheless very ham-handedly done, and leads to some questionable behaviour by the main characters.  Also, maybe don't make the most important thing in a woman's life be the man she knew for a few months a literal lifetime ago.  

"Very ham-handedly done" is something of a recurring issue, in fact.  The script mishandles almost everything.  Vital plot elements are hand-waved in without any foreshadowing or grace.  The pacing is wonky, with overly drawn-out special effects sequences that achieve no narrative point.  But most of all, the emotional beats are both over-the-top and undercooked at the same time.  They're very loudly communicated, but not given time to breathe.  It's like the movie is shouting the cliff notes of the script it should have had.  "DIANA IS SAD!  DIANA IS HAPPY!  EVERYTHING IS AWFUL!  EVERYTHING IS OKAY NOW!"

The cast work hard, and it's just about watchable as a result, but ultimately, this film is a significant misfire.

We Are Lady Parts, Season 1 (2021)

 

Amina would probably describe herself as a pretty conventional British Muslim woman.  She is sincerely but not fanatically devout, dresses conservatively, and is attempting to find a suitable life partner through the auspices of a Muslim-specific dating app.

About the only thing Amina does that's a little unconventional is teach guitar to kids.  When her young charges experience a severe case of stage-fright, she agrees to accompany them to ease their nerces.  Though only from off-stage, as to appear in front of an audience would be immodest.

Of course, an accident ensues and Amina's secret playing is discovered.  But that actually proves to be as much an opportunity as a humiliation, because in the audience on the day is Saira, the leader and lead singer of "Lady Parts" a punk band comprised entirely of Muslim women.  Lady Parts desperately need a lead guitarist, and Saira is convinced that Amina is exactly the person they need for the job.

The other members of the band, and Amina herself, are less convinced.

We Are Lady Parts is a fun comedy about finding yourself, your voice, and possibly even your passion.  It's got a great cast and it rolls along as a nice clip.  It's perhaps not especially ground-breaking in its themes, but its choice of point of view characters is a fairly novel one in western media and helps it feel fresh.  At six roughly half-hour episodes, it also doesn't draw out its storyline, and it ends with a rousing finale.

Recommended.