Remarkably un-male-gazey – Captain Marvel review #BrieLarson #CaptainMarvel #GooseTheCat

Guest review supplied by Nadine West @andiekarenina…

I don’t remember the 1990s being this cool. Truthfully, if you actually lived through the 1990s you will probably have a split thought process as you watch Captain Marvel: firstly, that Garbage, Hole, top-gun shades and flannel shirts were all much more awesome than pop culture history has given them credit for; secondly, that this pop culture has been pretty strenuously cherry-picked…and anyway, it’s Brie Larson who makes it all cool.

There is something remarkably un-male-gazey about this latest instalment in the MCU, something that felt fresh and different in a way that DC’s Wonderwoman from 2017 failed to fully deliver. Maybe it’s partly the 1990s clothes after all: it’s hard to let your camera crawl all over your female protagonist’s curves if said curves are hidden under Gen-X layering and baggy jeans, but it’s a long cold drink of fresh water, as a woman in the cinema, watching a comics franchise, to see a female hero framed, shot and lit like a character, not a pneumatic ass-robot. Partly, though, it’s the writing. Hat tip to Ryan Fleck, the only chap in the writing and story-creation process, but this is a film that wears its women-positive credentials all the way down to the bone. Anna Boden (writer/director) and Geneva Robertson-Dworet (writer) offer us a script that is refreshingly free from heteronormative tropes and forced love-interests from top to bottom: Jude Law’s Yon-Rogg could have been the sexy mentor with an erotic hold over his beautiful protégé, but he isn’t. Young Nick Fury – an eerily de-aged Samuel L. Jackson – could have been lechily fascinated by young Carol, or paternalistically amazed by her talents, but he isn’t. It’s almost as though the writers were interested in getting a hero story told, and didn’t need a digression into “yes, but boobs” getting in the way.

Brie Larson, as Vers/Carol/Captain M, has been criticised for being too bland, too baffled, but I found her compelling throughout. She has humour, not in “wisecracking banter” – and yes, Iron Man et al, I’m rolling my eyes at you – but as in wryness, a sense of the absurd and an understated intelligence that informs her performance. A story that spends a good half of its running time with an amnesiac protagonist is always going to result in a confused central character, which makes it all the more moving when Danvers finds herself reunited with her best friend and co-pilot Maria Rambeau, and pieces together the legacy of love and found family that the Kree have stolen from her. Lashana Lynch is brilliant here: Maria’s character is wounded by loss, protective of herself and her daughter, loves Carol fiercely and, just when the viewer might begin to feel a bit queasy about the POC-as-sidekick trope, is given lots of agency and action that’s all her own.

The plot is largely cleverly handled: it has divided critics, and the sympathy-switcheroo halfway might have been ultimately unsurprising, but the narrative risk to begin in the Kree world with minimal exposition pays off, just as the second half with its refugee/oppressed group allegory works well as far as it goes – these are broad strokes administered without subtlety, absolutely, but they are not without resonance to a 2019 audience. The other caveat I have about the plot is towards the end, and this one I can’t quite get past: once Carol is freed from the control of the Kree, she essentially becomes unstoppable, firing lasers from her hands, knocking missiles out of the sky, flying around, doing energy booms to scare bad guys, GLOWING FROM WITHIN…and, well, meh. Superpowers ain’t no fun if they’re limitless, as we’ve all learned, and the finale of Captain Marvel leaves us with a rousing butt-kicking that has no damn jeopardy left in it.  Of course she’s going to win. Of course she’s going to hang in the sky glowing yellowly like we’ve learned nothing from the misery of watching Iron Fist.

That said, there’s plenty to leave an audience happy. Goose the cat is everything everyone has said he is, and more. Nick Fury is just wonderful in every way, as is sarky Australian Skrull-fella Talos. The meta-Marvel stuff is as fun as ever, with even a final-reel gag about how you pronounce “Marvel” to cheer up the fan-boys and girls. The locations and set-dressings are brilliant, and anyone over the age of 35 will be insufferable as they shout “Ooooh, PJ Harvey poster! OOOOOH, Jumping Jack Flash with Whoopi Goldberg VHS case! OOOOOH I had that Sony Sports Walkman!”

Young people, let them have this one. It’s not very often that you get to have a fun superhero movie with incredible women at its heart that ALSO allows you to believe, for two hours, that the 1990s were brilliant.

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Some proper Airyfairyiam – review of Star Trek Discovery episode 9 #StarTrekDiscovery #ProjectDaedalus

Good episode, this one. We learn that Airiam was a normal Starfleet officer who was in a horrible shuttle crash: her husband died and she could only survive as a cyborg; and every night she has to decide which memories to delete because of her limited capacity. There is a moral dilemma here, as in many ways she doesn’t wanna hang on to the painful memories, even though they define her. It makes her an intriguing and compelling character from the get-go. She is lonely and only has emotional input from playing various parlour games with others – without a human body, her social options are entirely limited. It makes her a tragic figure really, and this is the main interest of the episode.

It starts poorly. The female admiral (Cornwell) arrives on the Disco to give us all the exposition and scenario we need for this episode. Sigh. Bad writing. And SPOILERS straight from the beginning. Very bad writing. We are told we have to get to the HQ of Section 31, known as ‘Control’, which is the superbrain of Starfleet. The thinking is Control has lost control to ‘logic extremists’ (Vulcan terrorists). Meanwhile, Airiam’s eyes go red every now and then, due to the alien infection she got several episodes back.

We get to Control, Burnham and Spock having an argument about the pros and cons of logic along the way (vaguely relevant, but also fairly contrived). Airiam continues to act suspiciously – she doesn’t even trust herself – and nor does Commander Nhan – not that either of them bother to flag it up to anyone in a position to stop her.

The away-team (containing Burnham, Airiam and Nhan, OF COURSE) arrives in Control. It’s a mess. There’s a showdown… and it actually works. It’s emotional and tragic. And we pretty much save the universe from ‘the extinction of all sentient life’. Phew, that’s alright then.

But this episode works overall. There are decent themes about the nature of being, artificial intelligence and sentience. Worth a look.

The disorder of ‘The Order’ on Netflix #theorder #netflixreview

So, in quite orderly fashion, a college kid joins a secret magical order (called ‘The Order’). All ordinary so far. But then he’s extraordinarily kidnapped and turned into a werewolf, meaning he’s now a disorderly inside man in the werewolf fight against the Order. We never really find out why the werewolves are fighting the Order, but werewolves aren’t great thinkers, so never mind.

A love interest is chucked in. There are buff boys and bints aplenty. There’s a range of random murders (the police never get involved though, for some unfathomable reason), meaning there really can’t be many students left alive at this college. But no one seems too upset by that, since pretty much all the students are so annoying. There are enchanted blades and stabbings, but magic goo to heal the wounds, except when the series forgets about the magic goo and wants to create jeopardy. There are betrayals (sort of). There’s a kinda cool ‘necrophone’ that lets people speak to the dead, but it gets pretty promptly destroyed (shame). There’s a magical gauntlet that tortures people till they tell the truth (use it on Trump!). Oh, and there’s a deep-voiced mad supermagus with a big old grimoire that might destroy the world… or save it… we’re not sure which and it doesn’t matter really.

This series is utter junk in terms of character and continuity. It shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t be compelling watching. But somehow it is. It’s fairly baffling how it manages to pull it off. True, it avoids clumsy exposition and there are some funny lines… but is that all we need these days? Maybe. Don’t we need logic and credible plotting? Apparently not. Expedience seems to be the name of the game. High tempo and fun rushing around is all we want these days, cos that’s all we have time for in our stressful and hectic lives. I can’t believe I’m saying this: I enjoyed the series and would recommend it to a degree. Says a lot about me, probably.

Hugh dumps Stamets! Star Trek Discovery episode 8 #StarTrekDiscovery #IfMemoryServes

Well, it’s been coming for a while. ‘New Hugh’ isn’t comfortable in his own skin… because it’s not his own skin really… cos he has a new body due to his resurrection by the Mycelium Network. Stamets prepares New Hugh’s favourite meal (date night)… except it’s not New Hugh’s favourite anymore. He has a memory that it’s his favourite, but his body doesn’t respond to it as his favourite. And his body doesn’t respond in the old way to the increasingly clingy and needy Stamets either. Stamets keeps possessively holding on to the New Hugh, which only drives New Hugh away. It’s quite moving really.

New Hugh then sees Ash Tyler in the corridor. Ash murdered Hugh, remember. It’s a surreal moment. New Hugh then attacks Ash in the canteen… and none of the crew try to stop the fight. Indeed, not even Pike can blame New Hugh. It’s a fascinating scene.

Now, if you recall, this series likes to ‘double if not triple’ its themes, so we then move to Spock, who also doesn’t fit in his own skin… or own mind to be more precise. Michael Burnham and Spock head for Talos IV so that Spock’s mind can be cured: he’s been understanding time as ‘fluid’ instead of ‘linear’, and that’s threatening to destroy all his logic, you see. And apparently Spock’s bonce is gonna be important to save the universe from being destroyed by some unknown evil alien. Actually, the Talos IV stuff is great fun cos it allows the show to have a retro title sequence that shows footage from the ‘old series’ episode set on Talos IV.

And then we move to Airiam (cyborg crew member, not as much fun as Data), who also doesn’t fit in her normal body… cos she’s been possessed by the evil alien who makes her eyes go red! No one notices how weirdly she’s been behaving (or that her eyes go red). But loads of data has been transmitted off the good ship Disco, so everyone’s on the alert. They all think Ash Tyler is responsible (sending stuff to Section 31), so Pike removes Tyler’s badge! Arggh. He needed that badge to complete his collection. It’s so unfair!

All in all, I really enjoyed the ‘If Memory Serves’ episode. You see, I’ve stopped demanding that this series should have proper stories for its episodes. I’ve given up on that. I’m now just along for the ride.

Green Book is two different movies forced to cohabit #GreenBook #MahershalaAli #ViggoMortensen

This year’s Oscar for best film went to Green Book. There was a backlash, led in part by Spike Lee. Having now watched the movie, I can see his gripe. Where Green Book starts out edgy, with some pointed role reversal… it then descends into homilies, cliched scenes, white-splaining (so much white-splaining), white saviour tropes, white police showing that they’re not so bad after all (no BlackLivesMatter issues here!) and then a flipping family xmas Love Thy Neighbour whitewash. Yikes.

Where did it all go wrong? Well, it really started coming off the rails when white corporate America decided to get in on the movie. I kid you not: Viggo Mortensen pulls the car over at the first Kentucky Fried Chicken in America and then all but force-shames Mahershala into eating fried chicken. Mahershala, gagging, is forced to concede that it is indeed fried chicken and he has some sort of racial affinity with fried chicken. WTF? How on earth did the makers think this was an okay scene? It is quickly followed by Viggo railing at Mahershala that ‘I’m more black than you, cos you don’t know what it is to struggle to feed a family’. Ultimately, Viggo liberates Mahershala, helps him connect with his true self, saves him from bad types and makes sure everyone lives happily ever after.

Such a shame. There are superb, moving and insightful scenes early on. The acting is suitably brilliant. The relationship between the male leads develops interestingly (although a lot of Mahershala’s subplot points are never resolved, meaning he’s half the character Viggo is). And, cinematically, the Pan-American road-trip is a true Odyssey. But the money men behind the film hijack the narrative completely.

It’s far from being a progressive film. It scores 7.5 out of 10 from me.

Hugh gets his top off: Star Trek Discovery, season 2, episode 6 #StarTrekDiscovery #TheSoundsofThunder

So, Hugh has been reconstituted by the Mycelium Network, and he’s come back ‘pristine’, in a new body, without scars, fresh as a daisy and all overly muscled (he must have been killing time in the gym while waiting to be back on the show). He tells us many times that he ‘doesn’t feel like’ his old self. Typical for this series, we get the same theme repeated in the story arc of multiple other characters… Saru is acting all different now he’s lost his ganglia (willy parts that came out of his neck).

The repetition of themes in the stories of umpteen characters is a really wearing device now, and robs episodes of screen time, time which would be better devoted to constructing ONE decent storyline for each episode. It’s like the characters are fighting each other to get screen time – and maybe that’s down to the contracts the various actors have? Shame, cos it ruins plot development in the shows. And this episode is no exception, sadly.

Things open promisingly enough, with the new Saru all but challenging Captain Pike to a fight on the command deck of the Disco. It’s a good moment. The new Saru then accompanies Burnham down to Saru’s home world cos they reckon the Red Angel has recently appeared there. Saru promptly blows off the Prime Directive and declares to his sister that there’s a whole galaxy out there and that the Kelpians are being lied to and murdered by their overlords (the Ba’ul, very much like the Gao’uld in Stargate SG1, or like the creepy long-haired girl in The Ring, the Japanese horror movie). The Ba’ul realise everything’s a bust and decide to commit genocide against the Kelpians…

Things are looking tense. But then the Red Angel turns up, displays omnipotent power, disables the Ba’ul and saves the Kelpians. The End.

The ending just comes out of nowhere, with no logic at all. It’s a total deus ex machina and is totally anti-climactic. Shame.

Damn. Sigh. And so we search for Spock for yet another episode of poor writing and nonsense.

Much more fun than this Vulcan stoicism? Star Trek Discovery gets a bit mixed up?#SaintsofImperfection #StarTrekDiscovery #episode5

Hmm. Episode 5 is called ‘Saints of Imperfection’ and, indeed, there’s a lot of imperfection going on. Imperfection that involves nothing but contradiction and incoherence. And the characters aren’t ‘saints’ at all, cos they’re part and parcel of all the imperfection going on. The fundamental problem that started in the previous episode is that Burnham’s character is now so inconsistent it’s ridiculous. Burnham was meant to be all ‘Vulcan’, logical and dispassionate (as per the upbringing of her formative years), but suddenly she’s the most empathic person on the damn ship – more human than the humans. She mopes about, looking doleful and pained. She gazes mournfully at Ash Tyler (her true love who is denied to her), she looks tragic about her disfunctional relationship with Spock (who isn’t even there) and, unprompted, she turns up at Tilly’s quarters to engage in a weepy sob. Trust us, Burnham, it’s painful for us too. What are the writers playing at? Well, that’s it: they’re playing about. They tell us so as well, cos Georgiu says: ‘It’s much more fun [like this] than [having] this Vulcan stoicism.’ The writers reckon they can wring more jokes out of proceedings by having everybody emotional and chaotic, like Tilly. It’s very lazy writing. The writers have lost direction and, once again, they verbalise it during Burnham’s narrator reverie and summary at the end of the show: ‘If I have a path, I’m still searching for it. We all are. I envy those who can believe there’s a greater hand writing our story.’ Burnham actually says that! How self-indulgent are these writers getting? They’ve put their hands up and admitted they’ve let it all slip. Oooooops.

Where does it leave us? Back to flaming square one. All the characters that have died up till this episode are back, and they’re all fit and healthy. Georgiu (the annoyingly cryptic and creepy Michelle Yeoh, whom the producers have clearly hired for another season but aren’t really sure what to do with) stalks around wearing black and trying to find a narrative for herself. Then Stamets (whose grief had made him so interesting) has his old love and life restored to him. Ash Tyler is back on board, and for some non-reason he gets to stay, cos Captain Pine supernaturally seems to know this will cause hi-jinks in future episodes. And… whatever. (By the way, we all know Lorca’s gonna reappear too, right?) We needn’t have watched anything at all before this episode then? Because nothing has had any real or actual consequence? What’s the point then? WHAT are you doing, writers? No wonder Saru has nothing to say throughout the entire episode (despite having had such a transformative moment in the previous episode). He’s shocked into a horrified silence, probably glad he’s wearing so much prosthetic make-up so that we don’t see him cringing and wincing.

It’s a shame, cos the first half of the episode, set in the Mycelial Network, presents us with an intriguing scenario of ‘there’s a monster in the woods killing us one by one’. It taps into ancestral memories and fairy tales. It’s powerful. And the Tilly-May relationship is compellingly strange – an incipient interspecies lesbian relationship. But that scenario gets phallocentrically overtaken very quickly (by the Stamets-Hugh relationship) and it’s all put to bed before we have to see any actual physical intimacy (that’s where Hollywood draws the line, of course). AND THEN, the rest of the episode becomes this bizarre talking-heads exposition in which Pine, the Admiral and the head of Section 31 (Star Trek’s black ops division) witter nonsense about the never-ending pursuit of Spock and try to set up a political love-hate triangle amongst themselves, trying to give themselves characters and tense character relationships. ‘Enough of this manlier-than-thou bullsh+t!’ the Admiral castigates the other two… except neither of them have been acting in such a fashion. The Admiral tries to explain their characters to them. It’s like a writer’s meeting. Indeed, that’s what the entire episode is – confused writers talking to themselves about themselves, darlings. It’s so self-indulgent it’s nauseating. They seem to have entirely forgotten the audience is there. And, maybe, the audience won’t be there for very much longer. Buck up your ideas, please!