The Dam Busters

War films. These days they're all about the tortured psychology of individual combatants and gory realism. Back in 1955 they were all about celebrating the heroic sacrifices made by often ordinary people (well, men, it was the fifties) or the clever inventions made necessary by World War II.

You know The Dam Busters tune. Or you do if you were one of those kids who made their hands into goggles and zoomed about the playground taking out the Luftwaffe in your imaginary Spitfire during the Battle of Britain. Which is ironic because this movie features Lancaster bombers and is not a retelling of the missions of 'the few' but of the development of Barnes Wallis' 'bouncing bombs' which took out two key power dams in Western Germany.

Michael Redgrave plays Wallis as a quiet genius whose internalised emotions are only depicted by frowns, handshakes or a bit of pacing up and down. His eccentric idea for bombs delivered from exposed and dangerously low heights almost doesn't come to fruition until Bomber Harris himself decides to back the plan and force Whitehall's hands.

Richard Todd's squadron leader, Guy Gibson, is a stoic Adonis who at no point acknowledges quite what a suicidal mission he has been ordered to take on. Upper lips have never been stiffer. That's how men were in those days. Even the cowards. Although they sometimes undermined their own heroism by giving their pet dogs extraordinarily racist names.

What's astonishing is how standard black and white footage of calm seas and cloudy skies somehow provides a perfect chiaroscuro backdrop for the sight of the Lancasters as they finally head for their targets after two thirds of a film about overcoming technical and administrative obstacles. The lack of colour adds a layer of realism that isn't based in reality at all unless the past truly was in black and white. Which it wasn't. Ask Alexander the Great.

It's possible there were only three working bombers available to the film makers as we only ever see three in shot at any one time. How many set off is therefore a matter for historians rather than cinema buffs but very few return. A couple are taken out by enemy flak as they deliver their single bomb payloads, the rest go missing on the journey back to Blighty. Gibson survives (his own account of the mission was one of the sources for the film) but rather than a high octane, Top Gun style celebration of the success of the mission, the film ends on a more sombre note, reflecting the loss of more than fifty men.

There is no sombre reflection of how many Germans would have been killed as the torrid waters of breached dams flooded the land below. We are informed that at one of the targets a power station below the dam is destroyed, something earlier footage alluded to with shots of workers trying to escape rising floodwater. Workers. Not Nazis. Power station workers. Oh well, it was war, remember. Stiff upper lip, eh? Pip pip, old sport, let's watch Top Gun now. Or Top Gear. Old Top Gear.

Carrie Fisher

Her mother, Debbie Reynolds, belonged to an era in which women predominantly played second-string to male leads in the movies; Carrie Fisher came into the industry when it was still chauvinistic but perhaps beginning to show the first glimmers of change. Hence Princess Leia is a curious mixture of sexualised object of the male gaze in ever more revealing outfits as the original trilogy of Star Wars unfolds and a feisty protagonist more than capable of holding her own with and against the major male characters.

To be honest the gender balance is still unequal amongst film makers and amongst consumers - the vile outpourings from some quarters about her weight in The Force Awakens proved that some not only persist with such Neanderthal views but that their expectations of the female body have been distorted by digital trickery and airbrushing.

In the wake of her death at only sixty years of age I have realised that I, like many others, defined Carrie by a single role and had forgotten that she appears in such movies as The Blues Brothers, When Harry Met Sally and Shampoo. I did know she was a Hollywood script doctor although I'm not sure which films she added her magic to. I also knew she was a talented writer and that the excellent film Postcards From The Edge is adapted from her highly successful, barely fictional novel.

Yet still I have seen her as Princess Leia my whole life. In my defence can I just say that while I sometimes recall Patrick Stewart was in the first Dune film and know he plays Professor X, he will always be Jean-Luc Picard to me. And Mark Hamill will always be...oh wait, that's obvious.

I grew up with Leia. I was eleven or twelve when I saw the very first Star Wars film. I was too young to fancy her but she left an indelible impression, both because of the crazy hair and her performance. Arguably she is the best actor in that original film: Alec Guinness doesn't appear to give a shit about understanding his lines, Hamill is Hamill and Harrison Ford is barely more intelligible than Chewbacca half the time. Fisher carries emotional conviction and wields a blaster with ease. And ignores her ridiculous hair with great dignity.

Carrie was wary of fame yet grew to be a fan favourite at conventions for her authenticity and wit. She was painfully honest about her struggles with mental health issues and addiction. If Felicity Jones and Daisy Ridley prove to be as popular with several generations of audiences in forty years time they can consider their careers and legacy to be as successful as Fisher's.

The fact that she'd already filmed her scenes for the 2017 follow-up to The Force Awakens will add poignancy and attention to the juggernaut franchise Star Wars has become. She thought, back in 1976, she was spending three months filming a funny little science fiction film with droids and stuff. Well, she was, but she was also about to become a cultural icon, one still revered and respected all these years later. Maybe no actor really likes to be remembered for a single role but what an impact the role of Leia had. That's not a bad memory to leave people with, surely?

Doctor Who - The Return of Doctor Mysterio

The BBC are mean. They are cruel and heartless and they smell bad. They didn't commission a Doctor Who series for 2016. Of all the years to need a Doctor Who series, 2016 is up there with 1990 for definitely needing one (but for quite different reasons). The Doctor would have saved Prince and Alan Rickman and Bowie and, and, and...

Or Moffat is mean. Maybe he was busy with Sherlock. Someone was mean and they smell bad.

Hey ho. Christmas special which makes 2016 a not entirely devoid of Doctor Who year. Yay!

Matt Lucas is back from last year's Christmas special too. Ha, they didn't ask David Walliams back for more, did they? Lucas will be fun in the Tardis but I can't help wanting him to romp around it in his onesie, banging on drums and insisting his name is George Daws.

A real life superhero, in Doctor Who? Sort of. A real life comic book superhero style boy who eats a thing he shouldn't eat and becomes the Clark Kent of the nannying world. And fancies the woman he nannies for. Well, he nannies for her baby, not for her. She can burp herself.

And the splitty head freaks also return from last year's Christmas special. Lots of references to that episode if we're honest which allows for plenty of Doctory emotion. Capaldi can leap from terrible puns to manic activity to deep-eyed sadness in a heartbeat. As regenerations go he somehow manages to channel pretty much all of his previous incarnations yet remain entirely unique.

Forget the plot, it's a Christmas special (did I mention that?) and what matters most is that the spirit of an intergalactic pantomime is invoked and some snow happens at some point. What, no snow? The BBC are mean. They are cruel and heartless and they smell bad. They didn't let Moffat include snow in the budget. Possibly. Or he forgot to ask. He's mean.

Charity Wakefield is a lot more fun than her turn as Mary Boleyn in Wolf Hall led me to believe. Justin Chatwin didn't try to sell anyone drugs like he does in Orphan Black. And Moffat clearly hates hospitals as this is the second time he's made masked medical folk in scrubs get all silent and dangerous on us (The Power of Three, in case you were wondering - actually written by Chris Chibnall who will be taking over as show runner after next year's Christmas special so the surgeons can't relax even though I've got my facts wrong.)

Between now and next year's Yuletide offering is a brand new series coming in the Spring. With a new companion in Pearl Mackie and more Matt Lucas (see that, Walliams, they really like Lucas, don't they?). And I can't wait. So I'm not going to; let me just fix this chameleon circuit first then I'll pop ahead and see what Doctor Twelve is up to with Bill from the chippy.

Ghostbusters

I'm a guy. And I'm a blogger. So I hated this movie, right? Wrong! It's great fun and channeled the spirit of the 1984 original while making a mark in its own right.

Sci-fi geekery is not the preserve of unmarried males anyway so wasn't it about time Hollywood recognised that a good script, decent visual and set up gags and great special effects work for audiences of men, women, hamsters, avocados and Cadillacs alike, regardless of who is starring?

Actually scrub that, the stars still matter: they have to be well cast. And they are. Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones are nailed on perfect for their roles and even have the same SNL pedigree as original stars Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray, both of whom add their support for the revamp with amusing cameos. (Ernie Hudson and Sigourney Weaver turn up in the end credits sequences too, just to flip the bird at the Internet haters who poured scorn on the idea of an all-female cast before a shot had been filmed.)

Slime, spookiness, freakery, physical comedy, gizmos, science gags: the ingredients that made the first version a success are all here with the neat twist of the giant big bad spectre during the finale being a distortion of their own Caspar-like logo. My only complaint is that nobody is warned not to cross the streams with the ghost guns. Or ecto-lasers. Or whatever nerds insist we call them.

I'm pointlessly in love with Kate McKinnon who is one of the finest character actors of her generation and utterly uninterested in the romantic attentions of my gender. But she doesn't dominate as all four leads share out the lines and the action to ensure this is the same sort of ensemble affair that SNL-cast movies always were in their 80s heyday. Oh and Chris Hemsworth has proper comic chops, the handsome, muscled bastard!

Ghostbusters 2 was shit back in the day. Can we have a sequel that doesn't lose the thrills, spills and charm of this one, please? I ain't afraid of no ranty, internet virgins who still live with their moms.

Flight Of The Navigator

Long before being charged with drug, gun and larceny offences, Joey Cramer was a young boy whizzing around in a blob of silver calling itself a spaceship. Joey isn't just tossing about, he is the titular navigator. Although there is a bit of tossing about too. And a fair bit of schmaltz; it is Disney.

Disney but with a tinge of darkness too. Cramer's character David is whisked off at uber light speeds  to be studied by presumably non-anal probing type aliens. And then he's brought back. Oops, it's eight years later. David has officially been declared dead by heartbroken parents and much missed by his little brother. For tear jerking it's right up there with The Bridge To Terabithia.

NASA have discovered the silvery blob spaceship and taken it to a NASA place of secrecy where they also take David once it becomes apparent that he has all manner of alien information and star charts in his brain. But it's not there for the humans, it's information the ship needs as it is a sort of AI cleverclogs machine that just happens to have lost some vital data on crash landing on the return trip to Earth. Data without which it cannot get home, nor take the other specimens it has collected back where they came from too.

The walking foot that is a hardly-out-of-her-teens Sarah Jessica Parker helps David escape his comfy NASA incarceration and he gets himself inside the ship. He and the blob zoom about, forging a buddy buddy act after trading species insults, and David eventually decides that he wants to leave with the ship - which he has named Max - because the world has moved on eight years and he is stuck as the same twelve year old boy he was when he disappeared.

Spacey craziness happens in a low budget 2001: A Space Odyssey way and David wakes up back in 1978, finds his parents the right age, his brother still a bratty little twot, and all right with the world. Ahh, that's nice. So it was all a dream? Well no, because he's got a tiny cute but potentially bitey alien in his pocket. Which is better than drugs, guns or stolen money, right?

X Men: Apocalypse

Personally I'd have called this episode in the lives of everyone's favourite mutants (or most hated, sorry Magneto) "How The Professor Lost His Lustrous Hair". Fortunately for everyone I'm not a Hollywood scriptwriter and it's called Apocalypse instead.

But it's not just a coming apocalypse, it's the Apocalypse, the originator of the term, the main man when it comes to mayhem. And he's been stuck under tons of rubble for centuries which would put a crimp on most people's day so no wonder he wants to destroy the living heck out of everything.

He supercharges the powers of some minor mutants (Ben from Eastenders with steel wings anyone?) and one already big and one eventually to become more important character - Magneto and Storm to you and me - and captures Professor X so that we know he's proper evil, not just a bit of a bad guy.

So, a little like First Class, it's up to the kids to kick Apocalypse's ugly face in. Well the kids and Mystique and Beast. Lots of the mutants trying to save the world and Prof X's hair are blue so presumably none of them voted for Trump. Trump better not piss them off, they've got tremendous powers, tremendous.

While the younger versions of Cyclops and Jean Gray are well played and Jennifer Laurence tries hard to learn a third facial expression, the movie is more memorable for the action and effects than the script and character interaction. The obligatory shots of world landmarks being destroyed have a slightly new spin courtesy of Apocalypse souping up Magneto's skills so he can manipulate the magnetic forces of the planet and turn all metal things into a stroppy giant gyroscope.

Apocalypse wants to regenerate into Xavier's body which would give him the power to control every living soul on Earth. Can Nightcrawler manage to avoid being distracted by also having been in Slow West with Fassbender and save the professor? Well yes, just about, but not his hair, which all falls off as the transference begins but is not finished.

But Apocalypse isn't finished yet. Oh no. He has a mental punch up with Xavier (like in their minds, not as an adjective, although that works too) and the combined forces of the younglings can't stop the ancient bastard. Enter Jean Gray, unleashing her full powers for the first time. Oh boy, she's super destructy, isn't she? She could probably use that sort of power later on in life. Or earlier on in a previous film.

Avengers, Batman v Superman with all manner of added freaks, X Men - gangs of super powered heroes are big box office news these days. The comics they originally came from first appeared in troubled political times when the world needed heroes. Perhaps we're back to that future, or is that a different type of film altogether?

Die Hard

Apparently it's Christmas or something coming up. Which means I get to watch all the Christmas movies. And nothing says movie or Christmas like Die Hard.

Firstly, what's with Bruce Willis's nose? Like me, I bet you only noticed it's a weird nose when Thingyamebob Levett-Bloke had to have his nose made all weird so he could be a younger version of Willis in Looper. But once you've spotted it it's like the Kirk Douglas chin dimple - it becomes far larger in the mind than it actually is in real life. Willis' weird nose is bigger than Alaska to me, these days.

This doesn't stop him flying off to see his wife for Christmas and saying yippie-kay-ay, motherfucker. He claims it was an ad-lib to make the crew laugh during a sequence of retakes on a tough day of filming. It's not even an accurate ad-lib as Roy Rogers never said it. The closest any singing cowboy came to it was Bing Crosby in a very forgettable western from the thirties or forties. No, I haven't done the research, why should I?

Terrorists who are really just highly ambitious burglars take over the building Willis's wife works in and people begin to die. Most of the dead turn out to be the gang of bastards after the millions in the vaults. Yup, John McLane (that's what we have to call huge, weird nose Willis in this film so we can suspend our disbelief), becomes a massive fly in the bad guy ointment. And cuts his feet. And learns what a TV dinner feels like. And hopes he hasn't completely screwed up his marriage by not moving away from New York when his wife got her job.

But we all know why we think it's a Christmas movie, right? Well yes, it is set at Christmas but that's not it. Memes have brainwashed us all into no longer accepting that Christmas is happening until we see Hans Gruber falling to his death from a great height. In slow motion. In a splendid suit. As Alan Rickman,

Oh Rickman, you silly man. Dying just after Bowie in January of this year and thus not quite being mourned as deeply or as properly as you should have been. Oh the wand-fans cried for you but many of them have no idea of your prior history as an incredible and hardworking character actor, lighting up such diverse movies as Truly, Madly, Deeply, Dogma, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and so many others. And your nose was just about perfect,

It's easy to forget now that Die Hard has become a fully milked Hollywood franchise that this first outing from 1988 changed action movies forever. And changed Willis's life. Without this film, would he have been considered for Fifth Element, Twelve Monkeys, Pulp Fiction, The Sixth Sense or Lucky Number Slevin? Possibly not and they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to worthy movies starring that weird, ginormous nose. And of course Looper.

Willis is more coherent than Stallone or Arnie and also possesses something neither of his main 80s/90s action hero rivals did - a sense of vulnerability in the eyes which allows him to go all out action man without becoming too much of a parody or unbelievable figure. He's Everyman. If Everyman has a gargantuan nose made of weirdness.

Now I have a machine gun. Ho. Ho. Ho.

Star Wars Is A Folk Tale

What do you mean, no it isn’t? You are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor. Star Wars IS a folk tale. Not because The Emperor looks like a witch who can make magic jism erupt from her fingers in ‘Jedi’ – I am talking about the original movie. Which isn’t called ‘A New Hope’ unless you are a moron. Or under the age of 40. I don’t care what Lucas spewed up and spuriously called plot in the second trilogy and, as I say, I am only focusing on the 1977 movie here. If you don’t like that, go draw some bitchy comic book art stuff or write in your fanperson blog that I am fatter in the head than Jabba is in the gut.

If your problem (and you’re bound to have one if you’re a Star Wars fan reading a piece by another Star Wars fan) is with me calling the movie a folk tale then strap in and don’t get cocky: I know a few manoeuvres. You don’t need to see my identification, by the way.

Vladimir Propp was a Russian clever person of note during the early Soviet era although his work was unknown in the Western World until 1958, by which point he was a much older clever person of note. Why am I troubling your space brains with him? His specialisms included folklorism and while his ‘Seven Characters’ theory was based upon Russian folk tales it has been applied to plays, novels, movies and other more general types of narrative since ‘The Morphology of the Folktale’ was translated into English in 58.

For Propp there are seven archetypes which generally exist within any tale. On occasion one or other of the archetypes may be lacking from a specific story but overall the theory still stands to this day, even if we include modern modes of storytelling such as video gaming or graphic novels. The seven characters he identifies are:

1. The villain (struggle against the hero)
2. The donor (prepares the her or gives the hero some magical object)
3. The helper (helps the hero in the quest)
4. The princess (person the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative)
5. The false hero (perceived as a good character in the beginning but emerges as evil)
6. The dispatcher (character who makes a lack or need known and sends the hero off on their quest)
7. The hero (AKA victim/seeker/paladin/winner, reacts to the donor, weds the princess)

Getting the picture or do you still imagine that hokey critical theories and ancient texts are no match for a good blaster at your side? I’ll walk you through them. These are the droids you’re looking for.

1. So the villain is obviously Darth Vader even if in the 1977 movie his struggle with themain hero is restricted to sniffing his Force credentials on the wind like a stinky bloodhound and then chasing his backside in a pimped-up Tie Fighter. He’s dressed all in black, for heaven’s sake (see also ‘Star Wars is a Western’ which I haven’t actually written yet but I will. Oh I will.)
2. The donor has to be Obi Wan. In folk tales it’s often a crusty old person who passes on a magical artefact to the young protagonist and they don’t come older or crustier than that crazy old man in the desert. He not only gives Luke Skywalker (skip ahead a second to number 7 if you must) ‘his father’s’ old lightsaber, which is a pretty magical artefact, he also teaches him that a million voices can cry out in terror and then be silenced. Quite why he was educating Luke about the protests Tony Blair ignored before going to war with Iraq, who can say, but he also taught him about the Force itself.
3. While he might feel somewhat aggrieved to be considered a ‘helper’ Han Solo is not the hero of the piece. He’s a classic anti-hero, the likes of which crop up more readily in modern narratives, perhaps, but there is no denying the fact that without his help, his ship, his guts and lust for Leia…er…a reward…er…insert something more honourable here yourself…without Han, things would be far worse and Luke would die at the end.
4. This princess is actually a princess. She very much does not marry the hero, however. That would be sick. I mean, just thinking about the fact that they kiss is disgusting. I have to watch that little exchange over and over to judge how disgusted by it I am on any particular day. She is the object of the hero’s initial pursuit, though. Just don’t leave them alone together in a bedroom before someone can tell them a little more family history.
5. Oh hi, Guido, I was just going to see your boss. Tell Jabba I’ll explain number 5 after I’ve done six and seven.
6. The dispatcher. A clinical, almost mechanical word. Which is extremely appropriate. The character who sends the hero off on his quest in the first place, who makes the hero aware of a lack of connection between a secret message from a princess and a mad magician, is none other than your favourite droid R2D2. “Help me Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope.” If Luke had not seen this glimpse of Leia’s message he’d have carried on being a farm boy forever. Or until the sand people came back in greater numbers and ate his face off. (If you say C3PO is your favourite droid you’re just weird).
7. And the hero is Luke. We’ve established this already. Duh!

Which leaves us with the small matter of who character number 5, the false hero of the tale might be. If I were including the other two films of the trilogy then I  might argue that we see this archetype turned on its head and reversed as false villains who later turn out to be less villainous than we expect. We see this embodied by both Lando and, eventually, Vader himself. But I’m not including ‘Empire’ and ‘Jedi’ so shut up you near-sighted scrap pile.

No, the false hero of Star Wars, the first (and second best) individual movie is George Lucas. In 77 he gives us one of the most iconic and near-perfect science-fiction films of all time. We love him. He’s our hero. Incidentally he actually repeats this feat three years later, presenting us with an even better movie. So, for two thirds of the initial trilogy he makes us feel like he is the most incredible writer/director in the universe. Then he finally shows his Sith roots. He starts to spoil it with those goddamned Ewoks. And then he mugs us all off with a massive delay so that we are totally willing to go to the cinema to watch the prequel trilogy even though we’ve grown up and kissed other humans on the mouth (not our own sisters) by the time these films get made. And then, and then. 

Well, do I need to say why he becomes the ultimate villain of the whole Star Wars verse? Let’s start with Jar Jar Binks, shall we? Then there’s the fact that Attack of the Clones spends about fifteen hours demonstrating what we already know – the fact that Anakin Skywalker and Princess Amidala are going to, you know, do it and make twins – when the love affair between Han and Leia in the originals is conveyed far more effectively and less didactically with a handful of surly exchanges between the pair. Darth Maul and his redunculous sex-toy lightaber, anyone? Ewan McGregor’s appalling attempt to impersonate the castrated public schoolboy vowels of Alec Guinness? Okay, that one is McGregor’s own fault unless Lucas refused him a voice coach. Let’s say Lucas DID refuse McGregor a voice coach; I loathe Lucas. He killed a once precious thing. He’s a villain. He's evil after all. I like Vader more than I like him. And then, and then…he sold the rights to bloody Disney!

Which might not be awful as they were at least smart enough to bring in J.J. Abrams as director for the 7^th movie. Time will only tell if Abrams blots his own copybook in the same spectacular manner Lucas did. There is an echo of the pre-pubescent boy I used to be screaming “I’ve got a bad feeling about this!” right now.

*Pauses*

*Adopts Peter Griffin voice*

Shut up, Meg, I know I ended up including all the other films too.

*Pauses again*

*Same voice*

And that’s why Star Wars is a folk tale.

Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse

Let’s get something straight from the off, it’s pronounced Hess-uh, not Hess. Rudolph Hess was a Nazi gimboid. Hermann Hesse was a genius of the written word in a psychological development of the individual protagonist across the course of a novel sort of way. Rollicking good novels, too. You should try Siddhartha. But also read Steppenwolf as it has a band named after it and everything.

Published in 1927, Steppenwolf is as close to autobiography as Hesse ever got. If you discount the collected essays and personal works gathered together after his death as ‘Autobiographical Writings’ of course.

The novel tells the story of Harry Haller (both names begin with H, isn’t that coincidental?) who is a grumpy middle aged type living somewhere in the decadent ruination of Weimar Republic era Germany. Haller fears himself schizophrenic because he must somehow exist within a society whose values he does not truly share and whose customs he finds perplexing at best, ugly and debasing at worst.

Only it’s kind of three books. Hesse deploys the Gothic artifice of concealing several narrative voices within a single tract. Bram Stoker over-complicates Dracula with various letters inside the text; Hesse expands Steppenwolf by preceding Haller’s main text with a preface by Haller’s landlady’s nephew who claims to have discovered the manuscript after Haller’s disappearance. And to keep the reader on their toes there is also another manuscript contained within Haller’s account of his life, a treatise of The Steppenwolf. The treatise seems to confirm Haller’s concerns about his schizophrenia while also allowing Hesse to have a good old rant about the failings and fallacies of bourgeois culture.

But it’s not all portmanteau texts and up yours capitalism. Oh no, there is Hermine, an alluring woman Haller falls for, a mysterious magic theatre marked ‘For Madmen Only’ and a shamanic weirdo called Pablo who with Hermine prepares Haller to enter the magic theatre.

Critics can often focus on the personal crisis of Haller, arguing that it reflects both the decay of the German economy during the Weimar years and the cultural devastation of the National Socialist regime which followed. Which overlooks several key factors, most pertinent of which is the fact that at the time of Steppenwolf’s publication a certain Adolf Hitler was barred from public speaking and the Nazis would not gain a real foothold within the German political psyche until after the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

What those same critics have also failed to recognise is that Steppenwolf is not a tale of tragedy but of triumph. Haller’s entry into the magic theatre at the end sees him apparently descend into the sort of fragmentary madness he has feared throughout his account of events. Yet, as Hesse himself was to adamantly argue time and again, the letting go of all cultural and personal expectations that takes place during Haller’s experiences in the magic theatre symbolises transcendence and liberation, not madness and catastrophe.

Or, it’s a freaky, psychedelic nonsense of a book, beloved by hippies and unwashed counterculture personages who simply refuse to get a haircut and a proper job. My hair is really rather short and this is one of my forever all-time must read again and again books. Hmm, shot that 60s stereotype down in flames eh. What? My job? Er, I’m a reality tester for the Foundation of Futurekind. Yes I am. Don’t bother with the white coat brigade, they’ll only liberate me from the shackles of your still bourgeois, still frightened, still life, stilton in a panini, Waitrose-scented social manacles.

I’m Spartacus. I mean Steppenwolf. And so’s my non-existent wife.

Big

Imagine a film executive today being pitched a movie which involves a pre-pubescent boy becoming Tom Hanks overnight yet still being the boy inside and coming close to having an affair with a woman whose massive hair is only permissible because it's the 1980s. The film executive would mutter the word 'pedicure'. Their secretary would inform them they mean 'paedophilia' and the movie would never get made.

Luckily we didn't have people like Jimmy Savile or Rolf Harris in the 80s so it was a more innocent time. What? We did? Oh god. I'm so glad the police rushed round thirty years later when one of them was already dead and one was crumbly and ancient. That'll show them.

But back to Big. Be careful what you wish for. That's the message, folks. It's not even a particular selfish or greedy wish. It's something most small lads and lasses have thought to themselves at some point - I wish I were big. Yes, they say 'were' because they know proper grammar and aren't chavs.

Be careful what you wish for otherwise your best friend will have to remind you you're only a kid once you've played a step on keyboard and got a job in a toy company thing place.

Be careful what you wish for otherwise your poor distressed mum will think you're dead and that's just cruel, even if she does go on to play Jeff Bridges's girlfriend in The Fisher King.

Be careful what you wish for because you'll have to wear wanky 80s suits with wanky 80s shoulder pads in them.

Be careful what you wish for because those I Tell Your Foreskin machines are practically extinct now and if you did make a wish on one, chances are it would be scrapped and recycled into a home barista machine by the end of the week and you'd be stuck as Tom Hanks forever meaning you'd almost die in an Apollo mission, move to Philadelphia and become HIV positive, parody yourself in the Simpsons movie, talk to a freaking basketball whilst growing a stupid scraggly beard on an island where only you, the basketball and a movie studio film crew are to be found, chase Leonardo DiCaprio a lot when he's decided to be a conman. And other exhausting antics.

Big is the best of the magic-realism movies of the 80s. Splash was just The Little Mermaid with Darryl Hannah in it. Or someone else: she was rather interchangeable with several other actresses in those days. Whatever, Splash doesn't come close to Big. Batteries Not Included doesn't either. Nor Rain Man as he blatantly couldn't control the rain so it isn't even a magic-realism film at all.

Hanks is great at conveying a boy stuck in the body of a child. Thank god they didn't cast someone who might have taken that literally such as a once black but rapidly becoming white pop star with a tendency to grab his own genitals when dancing.

But the most important thing to remember is be careful what you wish for. Oh I said that already. Er, the scenes with the sword fight and the invention of the Internet are brilliant but may never have happened apart from during my light nap one Christmas Day when I was watching Big for the fiftieth time.

Be careful how much turkey you eat.

It's got Tom Hanks in it, did I say that? Be careful what you wish for. For instance, I wished to write a decent review of Big but I came up with this pile of shit instead. Sorry. It's because really I'm a five year old trapped in the body of Tom Hanks. He's evil. He won't let me go. Someone call Yewtree. 

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Not having been an avid viewer of much in the way of JJ Abrams' output prior to the first instalment of his rebooted Star Trek, I must say that film made a huge impression on me. I'm a Whovian more than a Trekkie but do have a soft spot for Kirk and the gang (not a 70s funk band), and the camera flaring, explosion heavy, fire-everything mentality of Abrams' first Trek movie was pitch perfect. High expectations came with me when I headed for the second instalment, then.

Largely I was not disappointed although a little of the joy of seeing some wonderful reinterpretations of familiar characters was burnt out first time around (except McCoy - he's hilarious all day long). The action scenes are, if anything, even more tense and I literally found I was holding my breath towards the climax when a massive star ship plummets towards Star Fleet headquarters in a death-dive. Breathe, damn it, breathe; dying at the movies is a silly way to go and it makes your face all purple.

The Kirk/Spock bromance continues to dominate but, just so religious types and those from the Deep South (Croyden) can assure themselves the Captain and his First Officer are not actually getting it on, Spock's unlikely relationship with Uhuru is still ongoing. She, like last time, has a few key scenes of her own (Nichelle Nichols must be envious) as do most of the supporting cast - Sulu, Chekov, McCoy. Scotty actually does a lot of running around and is integral to some of the later action which must have been such a rush for Simon Pegg. Yet his accent is so erratic that I wonder why they bothered with it.

After all, the main villain of the piece (and here comes a spoiler) is none other than Khan (KHAN!) but Benedict Cumberbatch shows no interest in trying to emulate Ricardo Montelban's Hispanic tones. Yes, that's right, you read me right - KHAN! Only this time around it is Kirk he comes close to killing (does actually kill him but not for long - watch it if you don't know already). And this time it is Spock who yells 'KHAN!' in the manner of a man who is attempting to expel a particularly reluctant stool which he has inexplicably named.

Saw it coming, to be honest but it works. Boy does it work. Bang, crash, fight, boom, plunging ships, gravity failing on the Enterprise - I was as caught up in the action as a five year old boy is caught up when the string connecting his gloves half strangles him as he puts on an oversized raincoat.

I love how Abrams plays with the existing mythology of Star Trek. He's allowed, it's an alternate timeline. Thus Khan is more charming and yet even more vicious than his counterpart in the original movies (and, indeed, the TV series). Thus women only have to look at Kirk to start removing their clothing. Thus Nimmoy can give Quinto spoilers mid-film, the sneaky so-and-so.

Overall I think the first film just edges Into Darkness for invention and interplay between the main cast. Khan is a far better villain than old grumpy-face Nero, though, so maybe it is a question of swings and roundabouts?

If you love spacey stuff, big a bang a boom stuff, action happening so fast you cannot keep up with it all stuff and hand-held, edgy camera work (which everyone praises Abrams for yet overlooks the fact that he sort of nicked it from Joss Whedon's Serenity), then you will love lots of the stuff in this movie. And if you don't like any of that stuff: 

1. what are you reading this for? and, 
2. you and I cannot be friends any more.

Monty Python And The Holy Grail

Monty Python's Flying Circus began to air when I was a tiny, tiny boy. I doubt I saw or heard a thing. But a few years later I did hear things, strange voices coming from my older brother's bedroom. He had bought, or been given, Matching Tie and Handkerchief, a record containing the voices of the Pythons, performing variations on some of their television sketches as well as brand new material which would only have worked as audio anyway. I was entranced. I was in hysterics, I barely understood a word when it came to the social comment and satire but what I did take in I memorised and spouted back to school friends the following day. They fell about laughing too.

I should explain. I have a decent ear and tongue for mimicry and a habit for echolalia which ensured my regurgitated Pythonisms were pretty accurate and definitely inspired some of my mates to ransack their older siblings record collections too. 

And then the BBC benevolently began to repeat the television shows from the beginning, all the way through to the final series, the one in which John Cleese did not appear but, if memory serves, sketches about eating beans and farting, and the Spam song did. You might imagine there could be no higher level to reach for an eight or nine year old Pythonist than to be able to watch them do silly walks and fail to sell a scrap of cheese on TV as well as listening to them on record any time I chose (Matching Tie and Handkerchief was swiftly followed in our household by several other Python records including the hilarious and slightly swearier Live At Drury Lane). But you'd be wrong. Because in 1974, in a rare fit of decent parenting, my father took my brother and I to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the cinema!

Whichever Beatles album I listen is my favourite while I am listening to it. Whichever pre-Parenthood Steve Martin film I watch is my favourite while I am watching it. I have no favourite amongst the five different men who have captained Liverpool football club to five separate victories in the European Champion's Cup. I have some preferences when it comes to who plays Doctor Who but basically love them all and love the show forever and ever. But when it comes to Python movies, no matter how brilliant I know the others are, Holy Grail is...well it's the Holy Grail of films by Monty Python.

A word of warning. If you like Python but loathe those who sit there watching their movies reciting every line simultaneously with the cast onscreen, do not ever watch Holy Grail with me. You'll hate me, I'll tell you to go and do something physically painful to your rectum and we may never mend our friendship again. Best if you go and watch something else on the iPlayer. Or set fire to an effigy of me. I can't help it. Remember what I said about mimicry and echolalia? It's quite possibly medical so play nice and stop hitting me.

Knock, knock, knock. Penny! Knock, knock, knock. Penny! Oh wait, that's something else.

The Holy Grail is quite simply the silliest, funniest, Grailiest, Pythoniest film there has ever been. Or will ever be again. Apart from their other films but minus the Grail bits. Much of what I now call my own political perspective can be blamed on the movie too: 

"Autonomous dictatorship comes from a mandate from the people, not some farcical aquatic ceremony."

"How do you know he's a king?" "Because he hasn't got shit all over him."

The movie is quite possibly also responsible for me knowing what the term 'oral sex' meant by that age. And for teaching me that to some people being spanked is not a torment but a sexual pleasure (not for me, thanks, I'm a Quaker). It is most certainly fully responsible for the fact that when people are arguing loudly and pointlessly I feel an impulse to shout "She turned me into a newt." After which I would obviously wait for a stunned silence to ensue and eventually add "I got better."

I might not have learnt much genuine Arthurian mythology from this film but I did learn something far more valuable; all mythology is open to ridicule. Myth, even if it is based on a tiny percentage of fact, becomes quite risible to succeeding generations who fail to recognise their own cultural risibility because clothing, fashions, languages and social behaviours ebb and flow like excreta spiralling along an open medieval sewer.

Most people don't come to Python for the cultural education. They come for the silly voices, the maniacal set-pieces, the slapstick and the references to bodily functions. And why not? But to overlook the way even an historical piece like Holy Grail says as much about the early 1970s as it says about the Dark Ages, is to overlook the fact that as well as being hilarious and suspiciously fond of cross-dressing for a role, the Pythons were/are highly intelligent people with a great deal of social awareness. 

What's that you say? You don't agree with me? Then I fart in your general direction! I wave my private parts at your aunty. Your mother was a hamster and...(it may be best if you sod off now, I can keep this up all night).

Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD

Released on 5^th August 1966, a year after Dr. Who and the Daleks, this sequel is probably slightly superior to the first Regal Films production yet fared less well at the box office. Again based on a Terry Nation storyline which had already appeared on television in the canonical world of Doctor Who, Milton Subotsky’s screenplay was also worked on by David Whitaker who, like Nation, had himself written several Hartnell era stories for the show. Gordon Flemyng was again directing and musical lessons had possibly been learnt from the first film as the incidental music is less frantic and supports the action more successfully although there is still a tendency towards the twee rather than truly dramatic instrumental interludes.

Peter Cushing returns as Dr. Who, the human clever clogs who has built the Tardis. Roberta Tovey is back playing Susan but her older sister is nowhere to be seen. Instead a niece of the Dr. is on board, Louise(Jill Curzon). Joining them, after a failed attempt at foiling a robbery from a jewellery, is Bernard Cribbins as Special Constable Tom Campbell. Yes, Bernard Cribbins who would stamp himself all over the revived TV show between 2007-10 as Wilfred Mott, grandfather of Donna Noble.

Happily the producer has clearly realised that the slapstick interludes given to Roy Castle’s character in the first film were incongruous and Cribbins is not burdened with such light relief duties, instead largely being allowed to play a more straightforward action hero. There are quite a few heroic types: Ray Brooks handles the role of David, the young man with whom Susan stays at the end of  the TV version of this plotline. Dortmund, the leader of the human underground resistance shows great courage in sacrificing himself to save others mid-movie.

If Dr. Who and the Daleks plays on Nazi tropes, Invasion can be read as a version of the French Resistance while Hitler’s soldiers were occupying their country. Which also means the evils of collaboration for some characters, as evidenced by two women in a lonely cottage who betray Susan to the Daleks and the supercilious Philip Madoc playing an opportunistic swine with no discernible allegiance to either humans or Daleks. Yes, Philip Madoc who would later appear in the real Doctor Who on four separate occasions, most notably in classic Tom Baker serial The Brain of Morbius.

Beyond the theme of occupation the main premise of the film is that the Daleks are using human slaves to dig down into the centre of the Earth in order to set an explosion which will strip the planet of its magnetic core. Once this is done the planet can act as a spacecraft which the Daleks intend to fly off towards Skaro and live on, presumably because their home planet is becoming uninhabitable even for them.

There are plenty of flaws, not least of which is a terrible lack of continuity. Cribbins, spontaneously searches for Louise aboard the Dalek ship despite not having been informed by anyone that she had been part of the party attempting to rescue Cribbins and the Doctor, who had just narrowly avoided being turned into robomen slaves. The Daleks can apparently pinpoint a single truck driving across country and yet are incapable of working out where the human resistance groups might be hiding. Dortmund’s bombs are supposed to be ineffective against the Daleks yet several Daleks are seen to explode once they’ve been attacked with just these devices. 

The Dalek spaceship is good though, even accounting for the scene in which the strings holding the model in the air are embarrassingly visible. The Dalek voices are more intimidating than in the previous film too, the vocoder obviously having been set at the right rate of modulation. It helps that the word ‘exterminate’ is as conspicuous by its overuse as it was by its absence in Dr. Who & the Daleks. Peter Hawkins and David Graham again provide the voices for the metal dustbins (as Dortmund calls them).

The suits worn by the robomen make them look like nothing so much as Dalek gimps. All they need is a ball gag and for the Daleks to make them writhe around on the floor begging to be hurt and the movie could have found itself a cult BDSM following.

The denouement is somewhat rushed. The main protagonists, having been separated into little clusters throughout the film, regroup at the mine where the Daleks are digging down towards the Earth’s core. Amidst reunions Cribbins is instructed to climb into the deep shaft and somehow divert the Dalek’s bomb down into an older shaft. Here, apparently, the bomb will set off a magnetic reaction which will do for them pesky Daleks good and proper. Which begs the question, why wouldn’t the magnetic core of the planet have caused them problems in the first place? This is a flaw which has not been resolved from the TV series so they just carry on regardless. It does allow for some fantastic Dalek deaths, however, with one or two metal pepperpots being sucked into the shaft in a fashion that will be very familiar to those who watched Daleks and Cybermen being pulled into the void at the end of 10^th Doctor story, Doomsday.

As a nice twist and a decent use of the time travel aspect of the Tardis, the film ends with Cushing returning Bernard Cribbins to his own timeline but a few minutes before the robbery in the jeweller’s shop. This lets Special Constable Tom Campbell render the getaway driver unconscious and then knock out the other two robbers when they climb into the car. He drives them off to the station daydreaming about promotions and OBEs.

Had the movie fared better at the box office there were plans to film another Terry Nation Dalek story, The Chase. It was not to be, thankfully. Despite having learnt lessons from the first film, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 AD, is still a substandard B-movie. The effects are slightly improved, the acting better but  Cushing is almost a co-star in his own movie. Some would argue that the Daleks themselves are the stars and they come across better here than the other film. Even so, they still seem less menacing than they do on the small screen. Not even trundling along some familiar landmarks can increase the scare factor. Luckily the adventures of a time traveller in his police box would remain on the television where they belonged and nobody would ever again make the mistake of trying to turn Doctor Who into a film format. Oh damn, except for that McGann movie, of course.

The Magnificent Seven

When I was a kid I truly bought into everything about this movie. I could count to seven and I knew there were indeed seven gunslingers roped in by the occupants of a Mexican town to protect them from nasty shitbag Eli Wallach. 

All seven seemed magnificent to me.

Also it had a really catchy repeating musical motif that makes me want to practise drawing my gun from my holster to this day. When I was a kid this was all I needed to love a film.

I just watched it again because of the remake that is scheduled (the ‘c’ is silent, Americans, sorry, it just is). What I had not realised is that between the last time I saw this movie and now I have watched Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, the epic Japanese tale on which The Magnificent Seven was based. Once you’ve seen Kurosawa's version all imitations are pale and stupid. And either not long enough or too long in places. Like the bit where Yul Brynner is rounding up the Seven which takes almost an hour ffs.

If you like this film and haven’t seen Seven Samurai you won’t know why Kurosawa kills this first Hollywood remake six years before it is even made. Watch Seven Samurai. Then come back to me with an opinion. Otherwise take it from me that Kurosawa made a much better movie.

However, there are still things to enjoy about The Magnificent Seven. The cast shines despite some of the romanticism and Mexicans as ‘other’ implicit in the narrative. Yul Brynner is the best cowboy ever. Apart from maybe Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper or Robert Mitchum. What, no John Wayne? Fuck off, pilgrim.

Brynner as an archetypal American gunslinger is as hilarious as the mythology that gunslingers in the old West could be moralistic, decent people. Not only is his character meant to be Cajun anyway, in which case he’d be New Orleans French or similar, but Brynner himself was Russian born and only came to the States at the age of 19 or 20 with not much English in his vocabulary. Yet he’s so perfect in the saddle, with a gun in his hand, saying pithy and mumbled dialogue, smoking cigars and walking with his thighs slightly apart that it's no wonder he was equally perfect to play the robot gunslinger in Westworld a few years later.

Steve McQueen! I always forget McQueen is in this movie even though he is the second man recruited by Brynner. God I love Steve McQueen. If I were a man-fancier I’d assume I want to have sex with him, the ruggedly good looking bastard. But I don’t. I want to shag Paul Newman but he’s not in this movie so forget I said that. JUST FORGET IT, OKAY?

McQueen is as sublimely laconic as Brynner. In fact being laconic is the defacto setting for most of these guys. James Coburn, the knife guy, barely says a word yet dominates the screen in almost every shot he’s in. Charles Bronson rarely bettered his appearance here – with the exception of his career stand-out role in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West (coincidentally starring Henry Fonda in a rare outing as a villain, and what a villain with those piercing eyes and lockjaw features).

Horst Buchholz is, like Brynner, a wondrous anomaly. A German actor (considered the German James Dean as evidenced by the more method style of some of his scenes) playing a Mexican or dual heritage character, Chico. Chico gets longer and more impactive speeches than the others in the Seven and thus carries the load in terms of exposition. And carries it well, such as the plot is. Unlike James Dean, Buchholz didn’t stack his car and kill himself before having a chance to get older and make even more films. He drove at perfectly controllable speeds although quite possibly also in a Porsche, already one of Germany’s finest car manufacturers.

Brad Dexter is the least well known of the Seven in terms of international fame. His character seems ill-considered by the writers, too. Seven is in the title so they clearly threw in a seventh guy without knowing quite what they wanted him to be. And it shows, sorry Brad.

Last of the Seven to consider (not the last recruited) is Robert Vaughn. Now I like Vaughn a lot. Man From U.N.C.L.E, yes please. Hustle, yes please. The Magnificent Seven, not so much. His character is fleshed out well-enough in terms of distinction from the others – a gunman worried he’s losing his nerve and speed – but it’s far from Vaughn’s finest hour in terms of the acting. Sorry Bob, I tells it like it is, even if you have recently become one of the billions of talents that 2016 insists on killing off.

I’ve already mentioned Wallach as the bad guy. He’s Wallach as the bad guy: always charismatic but here less a character than a cypher. He’s much better and far funnier in The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.

So, Mexicans hire seven gunslingers. Gunslingers teach Mexicans to shoot guns to stop Wallach and his men raiding their village all the time. Mexicans would rather be farmers and wear all white – like Daz white, not big-box powder white – clothing which never gets dirty no matter how much farming they do or how many times they get shot. Mexican kids speak perfect English. Mexican women are mostly excised from the plot apart from a feisty, hot little thing who wants to do it and do it and do it with Chico but can’t because it’s 1960 and there’s hardly any blood shown, let alone fucking.

And the bad guys lose. And the good guys win. Except four of them are dead so they don’t win that well. So the farmers win. Yeah, go farmers. Not farmer Giles. Stay away cockney rhyming slang for arse-ouchness. Go Mexican farmer guys. 

Don’t watch the sequel. Or the 2016 remake. Watch Kurosawa. Seriously. Watch it or I’ll never talk to you again. 

Cube

Back in 1997 nobody had made a film about some people appearing for no reason in a cubic prison made up, for no reason, of interconnecting rooms which were either safe to enter or booby trapped and could kill you for no reason. Really, for no reason. No explanations are proven to be correct: each character’s take on the why and the how of the weird, freaky, torturous chamber of weird, freaky tortuous chambers they find themselves in is as likely to be utterly false as it is liable to be a cunningly hidden narrative resolution.

Who cares why? There are deaths and clever people and a doctor and a cop and a convict and an idiot savant who proves not to be so idiotic after all as his mathematical genius is the only reason why anyone has a chance of figuring the Cube out and escaping. Oh, and he’s the only one who does escape. Maybe he isn’t autistic after all. Maybe he’s the guy who put the other people in the Cube and then went all Keyser Soze to fuck with their heads some more? Don’t ask me, I didn’t write it. Canadians did. Clever Canadians.

The first time I watched the movie I spent half the screen time trying to work out where in the hell I’d seen the woman playing Leaven before. Eventually I realised she’d been in episodes of The Kids In The Hall as a real female when any one of five men dressing up as women in various Pythonesque sketches wasn’t deemed enough. Altogether now, “I’m squashing your head…”

Then I realised she was far more important than a sketch show extra, she was Ezri Dax in Deep Space Nine for fucking fuckety’s fucking sake! So, basically, I spent some of 1998 and 99 staring romantically at her henna-scribbled features on my television screen. Which is after Cube was made so forget I mentioned it until a year, a year and a half after you read this review, ok? Thanks.

Um, yeah, the other actors are all actors. I haven’t Googled them. You can if you like. I’m not paid by Google to mention Google quite often in my reviews. I’m not paid by Tom Baker to mention Tom Baker in most of my Sunday Nerdy Sunday columns. But if they want to send me chocolates, flowers and gold then I won’t complain. What was I saying?

Oh yeah, basically I hadn’t heard of the others. Oh and the second time I watched Cube I spent half the screen time trying to work out where in the hell I’d seen the woman playing Leaven before. Early onset Alzheimer’s perhaps? Short attention sp…

Look at the leaves in the gutter. Nice. Ooh cars make funny noises.

Shit, concentrate, man. You can finish this review. 

Oh was I reviewing? 

Allegedly.. 

It seems more like random notions vaguely linked to the topic I wrote as a title.

Well when you find a style, run with it.

I want more life, fucker.

Now that’s got nothing to do with anything.

Bladerunner.

Nothing to do with anything to do with Cube.

Oh right. Sorry.

Continue at all?

Sure. So everyone dies except the one who doesn’t die. It’s psychological terror in confined spaces and everyone dies except the one who doesn’t die. No cubes were harmed in the making of the movie. Nor any actors. Because they were acting. It isn’t real, people. What are you like? Yes I’m all for suspending disbelief but an entertainment is still an entertainment. Even when it’s not very entertaining. Which this is. It IS entertaining. Would I have watched it more than once if it wasn’t? No. So there. Bye.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

In a bid to never fully develop an adult brain it is my mission to watch kids movies with just as much vigour and enthusiasm as I watch those adult ones with all the killing and the blowing up and the dog humping a guineafowl from the rear. Hmm, that last may be on my list of darknet films to never mention. Say nothing. I know where you live. All of you.

I've watched this before but a good buddy of mine liked a recent review of another kids movie and begged me to meatball it up. Not add meatballs into that previous review. I'm attempting to pithily say that they said I should write about this movie. Which is almost like a challenge. And we all know what I'm like when I'm given a challenge. Yes that's right, I stick my fingers up at people and say "Do it yourself you dictatorial fucker!"

Except on this occasion I didn't do that. Because this is a great film. It's a film that tenderly takes the piss out of disastery movies with lines that even the kids will get rather than that side of the humour being an add-on to stop parents gouging out their own eyeballs with coke spoons when forced to watch a kids film for the ninetieth time. For those of you without kids yet, that's what they do: they deliberately pick a single favourite movie and they watch it until YOU know every single line. When it happens to you pray your kids love something like 'The Lion King' or 'Toy Story' instead of 'Beauty and the Beast' or the newly re-digitised 'Steamboat Anti-Semite' from Disney's 'classic' era.

Flint is a guy, he's an inventor kid guy who grows up after the opening scenes to become an inventor young man guy whose mum died a few years after the first scenes of her encouraging his inventoriness meaning he's left with James Caan for a father and James Caan can only speak in fishing metaphors because he's emotionally subnormal. Or a typical small town American dad in other words.

Fishing? Yeah. They live on an island and sardines are their thing but no one wants them any more and one day Flint invents a machine that can transform water droplets into any kind of food people want. Yay Flint - people on the island are sick of eating all those sardines no other bastard off the island wants.

Except boo because things go wrong with the machine which becomes improbably lodged up in the sky inside a giant meatball. And boo because the mayor becomes the very analogy of fast food America by gorging on increasingly vast portions of food from the sky until he is the size of a very fat bastard mayor indeed. And because there was a hot chick weather reporter who came to the island to provide a love interest for Flint...I mean, to report on this amazing food from the sky malarkey but she's not so keen on him now his machine is endangering the entire world.

But she is keen on him really because Flint isn't an utter doofus and eventually saves the world from plagues of food weather. Because he's a clever inventor guy. Duh. I haven't seen the sequel but I bet he reinvents the machine with all the kinks ironed out only all the kinks aren't ironed out or the mayor comes back and messes with the un-kinked machine to make it kinky but not in a grrr, behave, ooh stop it I've got a wife and five kids back home, please put that cucumber back in the fridge sort of way.

She's Anna Faris, by the way. She's called Sam in the movie but I'm not fooled. I know she's Anna Faris. I'm an Anna fan. I'm a fAnna, you might say. Only don't say that cos now I've written it down it looks lame. Even her voice is nice. I like seeing her in the movies where she isn't a disembodied voice superimposed into the animated mouth of an animated character but when even her voice is nice it's still just as satisfying to listen to her being a cartoon person and not quite the real Anna Faris as such.

Flint is someone too. In fact all of the characters are people-voices thrust into 3D animation moving figures. Clever, huh? Some of the people-voices belong to actors and actresses we've all heard of but I don't want to ruin your ability to suspend disbelief by telling you any more than the fact that one of them is Anna Faris and one is James Caan. If you really need to know, IMDB will tell you. Then it will remove pieces of your blackened heart via the medium of malware. Probably.

This probably isn't the review my buddy was hoping for but hey, have you read the reviews where I basically say I hated a film so much that I wanted to go on a killing spree? Well this isn't one of those reviews at all. Quite the opposite. This is a review in which I sort of say I love this film so much I want to go on a hugging spree. And eat a lot of lunch. So it's kind of a lugging spree. Or a hunching spree? No, neither of those. Consign them to the 'portmanteau words that really don't convey anything sensible' bin along with fAnna.

Please remember that if you eat more than one movie at a time you may become dyspeptic.