The Defenders defending the indefensible

So, Daredevil, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage all come together in Marvel’s The Defenders to combat the evil shadow organisation known as The Hand (run by a steely-faced Sigourney Weaver). The first three episodes are tightly plotted and scripted. Even if you haven’t seen the standalone series of each character, you get a decent enough characterisation of each hero to be able to follow what’s going on. And there are jokes and banter along the way (with some decent action sequences).

But then we hit episode four and everything comes to a shuddering halt. Slabs of exposition rain down on us. Every character has to go through some navel-gazing and self-doubt. The tempo of the narrative entirely disappears. Plot progression is hardly discernible. You consider switching the series off.

The already erratic character of Iron Fist then decides to show us just how much of a spoilt brat he really is – petulant, entirely lacking in wit, irrational/illogical and simply a pain in the ass. His ‘weapon’ of a glowing yellow fist looks like radioactive cheese and is well past its sell-by date. We desperately want to see him die so that we can be put out of our viewing misery. And then there’s the biggest problem of all: his plot and power are all based on mysticism and dragons (yes, dragons). The most commonly used phrase (and it’s used several times in every episode) is ‘Now, I know this sounds crazy, but…’

And it is all crazy. Senseless. Meaningless. The Hand are digging a massive hole under New York and it really is the massive hole in this series. A hole into which everything we care about disappears. Shame. The first three episodes were great. But ultimately it all leaves us feeling, like the dragon of this series, dead. The dragon’s fiery heart was ripped out by Iron Fist’s cheesy fist. If you really wanna torture yourself, find it on Netflix. For me, it only scores a 6 out of 10. Ooops. (That being said, die-hard fans of Jessica Jones, Daredevil and Luke Cage might be able to see past Iron Fist’s nonsense and be inclined to rate it as 7 or 8 out of 10.)

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Atomic Blonde is actually Atomic Bland

Charlize Theron plays an MI6 spy sent to Berlin at the end of the 1980s. She has to do something or other while remaining pretty and stylish throughout. She also has to beat up or shoot umpteen men – while still looking pretty and stylish – and choreographing herself to a retro soundtrack. And fitting in some lesbian action too.

Sounds great, right? It ain’t. We simply don’t care about her character – there’s no moral dilemma to engage us emotionally, there’s no actual peril (cos the action is all in flashback, so we know she survives) and there’s no mystery (cos the baddie/double-agent is revealed very early on). In fact, there’s not much of anything going on in this movie.

The characterisation of Charlize in the first five minutes of the movie basically consists of – look, she’s pretty, and she’s been injured in a fight, so you feel sorry for her, and, see, you get a flash of her naked breasts too. Despite all the hype, this is definitely not a feminist movie. It’s basically soft-porn for a male audience (the direction of the scenes is all about ‘the male gaze’). The lesbian sex scene is simply embarrassing. Movies like Bound (made all the way back in 1997) put Atomic Blonde to absolute shame. Atomic shame.

The plot is predictable and largely irrelevant. The supporting cast (James McAvoy does his best, but there’s only so much he can achieve) of characters is as uninteresting as Charlize’s own character. Charlize’s ‘British’ accent is as bad as just about everything else in this film. Alright, there’s one decent fight scene on a staircase, but it’s nowhere near enough to redeem this movie. At the end of the day, if you like the genre of thriller-killer movies, you’ll be far better off watching John Wick (again, if you’ve already seen it).

Overall, I can’t really give it more than 6 out of 10. That’s probably a tad generous too.

Zombies on the Train to Busan

The Train to Busan is a superior zombie movie. Just as in Shaun of the Dead, the zombies are a metaphor for how city-dwellers are all too often desensitized by the selfish, uncaring and ravenous demands of modern life. Unlike in Shaun of the Dead, however, everything in The Train to Busan is played out with an horrific, all-too-serious realism. The story follows a fund manager who has to rediscover his humanity and learn to care about (not to mention work with) others if he is to survive… and if he is to save his young daughter. The zombies are mindless but inexorable – they keep coming until our group of protagonists is whittled down to only those who are prepared to look out for each other. Then they have to start sacrificing themselves if any are to survive. Is it worth saving the old? Not really. Is it worth saving the high school lovers? What about the working class guy (he really does have no manners, even if he is useful in a fight)? What about the little girl? Surely she’s simply holding them all back. Or is she humanity’s hope for the future? In the end, when the survival of the species is at stake, is any single person really worth saving over another? Well worth a look. 8 out of 10 from me. Currently free to view if you’re an Amazon Prime member.

Superior near-future horror – Get Out

Get Out is a cracking movie. A black guy’s white girlfriend takes him to see her parents. She’s neglected to tell them that Chris is black. Oops. Still, the parents seem like well-meaning white liberals (even if they are implicitly racist in trying to talk to Chris about the things they assume would typically interest a black guy). And the parents also have a couple of black staff working for them in their big house. And those staff are acting veeeery weirdly, as if they’re brutalised prisoners or something.

It’s an extremely tense and unsettling opening and, in and of itself, an interesting comment upon the white liberal elites of the US. Then it turns out that the parents are having a large group of friends over. The friends turn out to be creepily solicitous, as if they want something from Chris. Are they looking to enslave him somehow? Or is there something even more twisted going on?

Get Out keeps you guessing all the way through. In that sense, we’re looking for clues and trying to interpret things, even though there’s no actual dead body or crime scene. It’s disorienting and unnerving to say the least. The most innocuous of actions and phrases ends up becoming symbolic, portentous, distorted and/or corrupted. It makes you scream with sheer dread, even though everything appears so normal… too normal… hyper normal!

Chris goes out on the veranda for a sneaky cigarette during his first evening at the parents’ house. When he comes back in, the mother (who is a therapist) regresses him through a mixture of suggestion and hypnotism without his permission. She takes him back to when he was a child and his mother was murdered. The next morning, he doesn’t quite remember the session, but he feels there is something wrong, very wrong.

You don’t want to watch, but you can’t drag your eyes away as the viewer. It’s like you’ve been mesmerised too. And, in a way, we voyeuristically have been. We are as complicit and exploited as the players of the piece. We feel thrilled and guilty at the same time. The film turns you inside out.

Get Out is American gothic at its best. Its so steeped in Americana that it’s impossible for (even the dullest of viewers) to watch the film in a purely superficial way. It’s like you’re watching or experiencing all of black American history up to the very moment.

And even when we’ve had the big ‘reveal’ moment, the tension doesn’t abate. Perhaps there simply isn’t any escape for a young black guy like Chris? There isn’t anything stupid or gratuitous about Get Out. Indeed, there is surprisingly little gore. The true horror is psychological, philosophical, social and moral, rather. As a result, it’s a film that’ll stay with you for a very long time, if not forever. But you’ll be a better person for having seen it. It score 10 out of 10 from me (a first).

The unfinished symphony that is Baby Driver

A young driver gets himself in debt to a crimelord (Kevin Spacey – very good) and has to be the getaway man on various bank robberies. The driver has tinnitus, so always listens to music to drown out his ear-problem – meaning the audience watches the robberies and chase sequences set to ironically chosen tunes, and the proceedings have poetry and pop culture in equal doses. It’s fun and we get swept away by the artistry of it all – forgetting about all our moral objections to what’s going on. The film is very clever in pulling this off – and has a cracking first half as a consequence.

The driver (‘Baby’) then has to start contending with fairly unstable members of various ‘crews’ (e.g. Jamie Foxx) chosen by the crimelord. Baby’s new girlfriend (who works in the local diner) is unfortunately dragged into this world of double-cross and murder. These are the wages of Baby’s sins and transgressions.

The film’s plot-shape then becomes that cliched and moralistic tale of ‘you can’t escape the law’. If you’ve seen Carlitto’s Way, it’s the same vibe as that: ‘One last big job and I’ll be free of all this.’ Now, that plot-shape is classic to the Hollywood thriller genre, but it doesn’t quite resonate with a British audience in the same way – since we know criminals DO get away with it just as often as they don’t (e.g. The Great Train Robbery). The second half of Baby Driver, then, is all a bit too trite, predictable and lacking in artistry. The final fight scene against the baddy is pretty awful. The baddy comes back too many times. (NOT REALLY A SPOILER, COS THE FOLLOWING SCENE DOESN’T ADD THAT MUCH) Baby is at pains not to kill the baddie (absolutely not credible, cos the innocent girlfriend is about to be killed), so shoots the baddy in the leg, meaning chance and circumstance have to decide the baddy overbalances and falls to his death. It’s just silly, forced, directorially intrusive and out-of-synch with the first half of the film.

It’s a movie of two halves ultimately: one good and one bad. Is it worth seeing? Absolutely, but a tad disappointing (especially if you’ve read all the rave reviews in the press). It scores 7.5 out of 10 from me.

The Book of Angels: Sammy HK Smith’s ‘The Watcher’ is short-listed for British Fantasy Award

Good news! Sammy HK Smith’s story ‘The Watcher’, in The Book of Angels, has been short-listed for the British Fantasy Award in the category of Best Short Fiction. In the same category there is also Nadine West’s story ‘The Women’s Song’ from the Fight Like A Girl collection! Hopefully they can both win – otherwise, I’ll be caught between wanting to see my own book win (The Book of Angels) and supporting the ol’ spicy spouse. Argh!

Gender-identity and sexuality in current fantasy and science fiction

My latest publication is an academic one – an essay in the collection above, init. Not too bad.