One million miles an hour: Black Widow #ScarlettJohansson #BlackWidow

When I heard that this movie was coming out, I had to ponder the question ‘What’s it for?’ I mean, was it really gonna offer anything new, anything that hadn’t already been done in Marvel movies? Turns out, I should have had more faith. Where the Captain Marvel movie has similar themes to Black Widow, to be sure, Captain Marvel is quite confused in terms of genre, and the plot sees the lead become ludicrously omnipotent at the end (leaving it nowhere to go after that). By contrast, Black Widow seems much more grounded and authentic. I know, it’s an odd thing for me to say such a thing, especially when the movie’s full of impossible action sequences, and so on, but there’s more integrity and continuity to the emotional trauma and character development in Black Widow that makes the SFX of far less immediate concern. Indeed, there’s nice humour ridiculing the very choreographed, ‘posed’ and voyeuristic (‘male gaze’) style of action sequence that’s typical of Hollywood and traditional Marvel movies.

There can be little argument that Black Widow might/should be described as a feminist movie. It revolves around the central relationship between two sisters, exploring the nature of ‘sisterhood’. They’ve been stolen, emotionally neglected and physically abused by an evil patriarch (General Dreykov, played by Ray Winstone, with a very dodgy Russian accent indeed) who is hellbent on producing an army of obedient female super-soldiers so that he can rule the world. Yes, it’s a very cliched scenario (hence the movie doffing its cap bigtime to the Bond movie Moonraker). And, yes, the way I’m describing its themes risks making it sound like a very dogmatic or preachy affair. BUT fear not! The movie has a light touch (not much clunky exposition or lecturing at all), typical Marvel bantz (Joss Whedon style) even in emotionally fraught moments, and some nicely arranged fight sequences (ironically/knowingly done).

The ‘male’ tradition of superheroes is affectionately mocked – the Red Guardian character is an anachronistic scream. There’s no soppy hetero love story getting in the way. There’s only female drive and a lack of apology. And the story of the wider MCU is actually moved along. This movie pulls off a lot (with style) and represents a valuable contribution to the oeuvre. 8 out of 10 from me! Hurrah!

The convention circuit is born anew! #sciencefiction #fantasy #horror #cosplay #conventions #comicbooks

Well, despite the global pandemic/zombie apocalypse, the convention circuit has risen from its grave, from the ashes, whatever metaphor you’d like. I’ve now fully updated this website’s listings, all the way through to late 2022! Check it our here: UK conventions and festivals: scifi, fantasy, horror and comicbooks | Metaphysical Fantasy (wordpress.com)

Big author interview! Sammy HK Smith, with her new novel Anna @SammyHKSmith

Sammy HK Smith is the author of the new smash-hit novel Anna. I blackmailed her into giving us this exclusive interview. It’s full of insight and secrets on how to become aninternational fantasy author – or your money back. Enjoy!

1. Sammy, your new book is pretty hefty. How much does size matter in fantasy, do you think?

So ANNA comes in around 100k, so not too hefty in size, but certainly hefty on subject matter. I’ve covered sexual abuse, PTSD, coercive behaviour, narcissism, murder, all in a pretty cover with a pretty name! Looks can definitely be deceiving…

With the actual word count of fantasy, no, I don’t think size does matter. If your story is told and it evokes the emotions/response you want – it’s done. I LOVE long over-arching storylines and worlds that go on and on, but equally those standalone novels and short stories are just as satisfying.

2. Of all your books and short stories, do you have a favourite… or do you love all your children equally? 

Hmmm, I think I can comfortably say I love them in different ways! In Search of Gods and Heroes (ISOGAH) was my very first novel and so, as if the way with the eldest, it holds a special place in my heart. ANNA was my second and so vastly different that it’s impossible to say whether I love one more than the other! Technically, I would say ANNA is more focussed as it’s entirely one POV, whereas ISOGAH is told from 8 interweaving viewpoints…

3. Readers always ask authors where they get their ideas or inspiration. Do you have a muse? What’s your secret?

No real muse (God, I’m boring!) but I draw influence from everything around me: real-life work, politics, history, TV, literature, you name it! I love to think ‘what if…’ and mash ideas together.

With In Search of Gods and Heroes I thought ‘What if the goddess of Love was a masochist?’ and started to develop the character that way.

With ANNA, I initially wanted to write a light-hearted dystopia with revenge and romance… but it became something much darker and as I work investigating domestic and sexual abuse I started to realise that I could write something different. I drew on my experiences at work and the story unfolded from there. 

4. Who’s your favourite fantasy author now deceased? Why them? 

I think I’ll bypass some of the more famous authors and go for Sara Douglass. The Axis Trilogy was released during my teen years, and I think it was around 2000 I picked up the series and fell back in love with fantasy. It’s ‘old school’ in plot and pace, but it’s nostalgic and I love it.

5. Who’s your favourite living fantasy author and why (apart from Tom Lloyd or A J Dalton)?

Hmm, tough one. I have two favourites. Jacqueline Carey and Ian Irvine.

Jacqueline’s use of language is just beautiful and poetic, and her world-building is second to none, whereas I love how Ian can merge science fiction and fantasy seamlessly. They’re both ‘epic’ fantasy writers, though.

6. What’s the best thing about being an author?

Creating new worlds and characters that feel alive. It gives me a mini god complex! Oh the power!!! *evil laugh*

7. And the worst? 

The crippling self-doubt, the knock-backs and rejections. It’s tough out there, especially for newish authors like me. I’ve been exceptionally lucky so far in that Rebellion publishing took my novel direct from me as I’m unagented.

8. What are you currently working on that you can tell us about without then having to kill us?

I’ve had loads of projects in various stages of development for years. Having kids stalled all of them! However I’m slowly flexing my writing muscles again and working on a standalone novel in the same world as ANNA but this time we focus on someone who is outwardly strong but inside they’re falling apart. We have drugs, slavery, murder, bit of romance, disabilities and a world of grief.

9. If people want to find out more about you, what sites do you maintain and what’s your handle on Twitter? 

So I’m a technological luddite, so my sister has created a cool site for me at www.sammyhksmith.com but I’m on all the usual social media platforms for the @Sammyhksmith handle.

10. What question have I not asked you that I should have done? And what’s the answer?

Why should we read ANNA?

ANNA is unique. I don’t say that out of ego. It really is. I couldn’t find a book to compare it to that covers PTSD and sexual abuse so closely in the fantasy arena. There are some outstanding novels that cover childhood sexual abuse in a fantasy setting, but not many that delve into domestic abuse and the trauma that Anna goes through.

It’s hard-hitting. It’s not an easy read. I make no apologies for that. Rape isn’t easy for a survivor and I want people to think about how Anna behaves and the path she takes. It really is proving to be a Marmite love/hate novel and I find it interesting how it sparks of such strong feelings one way or another.

If you’re looking for something revenge-driven, Rambo style shootings and loud displays of vengeance, then this probably isn’t for you.

If you want something that makes you think, and draws out emotions, then give it a try.

Live and let live in ‘Army of the Dead’ #ArmyofthedeadNetflix

Oddly, I ended up caring more about the Zombie King more than the two-dimensional human characters in the new Army of the Dead movie on Netflix. It opens with a US military convoy carrying a ‘dangerous cargo’ out from the Area 51 base in the Nevada desert. There’s an accident and our Zombie King breaks free! He promptly begins to infect and recruit an army to overrun Las Vegas (cue the comedy-horror to a modern soundtrack).

The US government fails to quell the zombie outbreak (yes, it’s all fairly covid-y) and, instead, seals off the city. The government is tempted to nuke the entire place, but there are humanitarian activists who create a fuss and everything gets a touch delayed.

A mercenary group of humans then decides (for various individual backstory reasons) to break into the city in order to retrieve a load of cash from under one of the mega casinos. It basically becomes a bit of a heist movie at this point.

It’s the politics of this movie that set it apart from the norm. We come to realise that the zombies aren’t just mindless invaders who should be destroyed – as they seem to have a social hierarchy and a language. Indeed, they just seem to want a place to live – it’s apparent that they could break out of Las Vegas if they wanted, but they’re content simply to have a home. See the politics? Indeed, given how poorly the human refugees of the city are treated by their own government in a holding camp, we understand that the true monsters in this movie aren’t the zombies. The zombies actually make the humans look bad. And we come to appreciate just how poorly the Zombie King has been treated (experimented on in Area 51, humans terrorising his city and ‘family’, etc)!

Is it full of silly gore? Yes. Is the tone of the movie entirely haphazard? Yes. Is it one helluva lot of fun? Abso-zombie-lutely! And the cast isn’t too bad. If you’re a fan of the genre, this movie has something a tad different to offer. Worth a look. 7 out of 10 from me!

Thunder Force! Superhero spoof with heart @ThunderForce @Netflix (no spoilers)

The superhero comedy Thunder Force has just arrived on Netflix! It’s a spoof with plenty of laugh out loud moments. My favourite riff was the star-crossed romance between the bad-guy Crab (Jason Bateman is a half-creant (not a half-Korean!) with the arms of a crab) and the Melissa McCarthy character – they go on a date to a fancy restaurant and the waiter recommends the seafood platter before realising his terrible mistake.

Basically, Miscreants are superpowered baddies who are making everyone’s lives a misery. Cosmic rays gave powers to all those with a pathological gene, you see. A ‘normal’ kid (later played by Octavia Spencer) loses her parents because of Miscreants, and swears to become a geneticist one day, so she can create ‘normal’ superheroes to punish the Miscreants. Her best friend at school is a body-positive girl (later played by Melissa) who can more than handle the male bullies.

Cut to the chase: our friends become superheroes and then have to take on the Miscreants! That’s all the plot the film needs, and has really. But that doesn’t mean that it’s lacking in anyway. The gender politics of the film are well handled without ever being too shouty. The flaws of our lead characters ring true. And Melissa turns in one of her best performances to date, tbh. The whole thing is refreshing and life-affirming. WATCH IT. It scores a heartfelt 8 out of 10 from me.

The Terror lacks… well, terror, really #BBC #TheTerror #horror

Well, I watched the first three episodes of The Terror on the BBC. That seems like giving it a fair crack, really. It certainly breaks the ice. LOL. It tells the historical tale of the ill-fated British ships named The Erebus and The Terror which sought to discover the North-west Passage back in the 1840s. This puts us in mind of one of the key sub-plots of the novel Frankenstein, of course. We are expecting some sort of monstrous horror from the off, therefore.

One of the producers is Ridley Scott, so it should have some chops, right? Well, the setting in the icy wastes is convincingly done. The costuming and the claustrophobic life on the ships is beautifully evocative of the era. The dialogue is interesting and engaging, and the internal politics are diverting, and they do build a sense of tension. The cast is top-notch. So what’s not to like?

Sadly, this series provides us with its own spoilers right from the beginning. It states several times over in the opening sequence that everyone ends up dying or disappearing. And the start of the second episode makes sure to hammer it home yet again. Therefore, we’re just sat waiting to see each of the characters die in a fairly anti-climactic manner. The episodes do try to create ‘spooky’ moments that cannot be rationalised, but then we understand that there’s just a big polar bear on the loose and killing everyone. Oh. So what? The polar bear might be controlled by a vengeful Inuit. So what? But the manner of the deaths seems poetic and symbolic of the individual’s own sins punishing them. Yeah. So what? AND WHERE’S THE TERROR IN ANY OF THIS?

Sheesh. What a waste of time and money. The series would have done far better to get writers who understand the plot-beats and mechanics of horror. I really wouldn’t bother with the show if I were you. But that’s just my opinion.

Marmite breakfast biscuits are the way forward! @Marmite #marmite

Check out these bad boys! In the plodding old lockdown of repetition and misery, these cheered me up. There’s a total of 12 biscuits per box, wrapped in pairs inside. Doesn’t sound like much, but each seedy biscuit is substantial – indeed, eating a pair is almost too much. And the best thing: the biscuits aren’t sweet. You could add, say, oooh, butter and cheese on top. Not that I did that. No, no.

What a waste of Daleks! #RevolutionOfTheDaleks #DoctorWho

Back when David Tennant was the Doctor, there was a rather superior episode in which human DNA was spliced with Dalek DNA – giving us an awesome hybrid. The episode was full of fresh ideas, intrigue and potential, and entitled ‘Evolution of the Daleks’. Yesterday (New Year’s Day), the BBC gave us an episode called ‘Revolution of the Daleks’, in which the same ideas were retrodden, but without any of the original freshness, intrigue or potential. It was a veeery tired episode, in truth. There was a lack of complexity in the plot: it was simply a journey from A to B, with zero surprises along the way. The sound mixing was utterly awful, as if the sound people involved had fallen asleep on the job, or got bored and drifted away to do something more interesting. It was nearly impossible to catch anything the Daleks were saying – because there was just crashing, dramatic music drowning everything out. No wonder this was the episode in which Bradley Walsh and the character of Ryan decided to bow out – shrugging and explaining to the Doctor that they had better things to do. And the Doctor herself was at a loss throughout, too. She was having an identity crisis along the lines of ‘Hasn’t all this happened before? And wasn’t it better the first time round? Why have I become so much less than I was? I’m lost. Who am I?’

Were there any saving graces at all? Hmm. The narrative about Daleks needing the DNA ‘purity’ of a master-race, even if they’re exterminating some of their own ‘offspring’, and the Trumpian American businessman, not to mention the ‘security’ obsessed British PM, gave us a very hammy flavour of social comment… but nothing too insightful really. And there wasn’t any mention of covid, so it all felt a bit ‘out of date’, ‘past its sell-by date’, ‘lost in time’, etc, when the Doctor is meant to be timeless! At least the Doctor’s assistant Yaz should at last get some decent screen time and character development in future episodes, now she’s not being eclipsed by Bradley. Indeed, the overtones of a possible lesbian relationship between the Doctor and Yaz might at least offer some surprises.

Chris Hemsworth acts up a storm in Extraction… not. #Netflix #Extraction

A drunk Australian mercenary (Chris Hemsworth), grieving for the loss of his son, is paid to go out to Bangladesh to play ‘white saviour’ and recover the kidnapped son of a drug lord. That’s it. That’s the whole plot. The End. Is it a spoiler to tell you what is pretty much the logline?

Okay, there are good reasons to watch this film. A lot of Indian and Bangladeshi talent (direction, actors and stunt-people) have gone into this movie, and it’s refreshing to see a ‘different’ way of making a movie. It’s interesting that you don’t need a massively convoluted plot if you have some decent motifs, thoughtful scenes, and well choreographed sequences. There is something refreshingly innocent or honest – rather than tiredly cynical – about it. Indeed, this movie is honest enough to show us the true poverty, squalor and street-gangs of Dhaka. (Okay, it might be a touch cleaned up/sanitised for western audiences – I don’t actually know.)

It would be easy to complain that I needed sub-titles to watch this movie… cos Hemsworth completely grunts his way thru this movie. I had no trouble understanding the Indian and Bangladeshi actors, by contrast. It would be easy to say that the shooting of hundreds upon hundreds of corrupt soldiers and police got boring after an hour or so. It would be easy to point out that the silly revenge moment at the end of the movie could have happened at the start and spared us having to sit through hours of murder and mayhem. But that would be to distract from the few saving graces that the movie had.

If you’re struggling for something to watch during the lockdown, you might want to watch this movie, although it’s very dissatisfying in many ways. It scores an understanding 6 out of 10 from me.

New Jessica Chastain movie, Ava, reviewed! #Ava #Netflix

Well, not only does it feature Jessica Chastain, but we’re also given John Malkovich, Colin Farrell and (drum-roll) Geena Davis (of legendary Thelma and Louise and The Long Kiss Goodnight fame). It can’t be bad, right? Surely, it can’t be. Can it? Weeell, it’s certainly a stylish (posed) assassin movie. Jessica plays the assassin-with-a-heart… except it never causes her to decide against executing her target (even though she’s never sure what they’ve actually done). So, she doesn’t have any heart at all, in fact, which reeeally gets the movie off on the wrong foot. There’s a fundamental moral paradox from the start. It’s all slightly off-kilter. Oh well, let’s ignore that, cos it’s still pretty to look at. The fight scenes are well choreographed and well filmed. We’re not really sure who we’re rooting for… but good fighting, right? But we don’t really care, actually. Which is a problem, cos we’re not sure whether to keep watching… or whether to go and watch a far superior female assassin movie like La Femme Nikita.

Sigh. It’s all quite soulless and confused. Indeed, Jessica seems confused for quite a lot of it. Oh, can I resist that demon-drink that once turned me into a family-abusing monster? Oh, looks like I can, after all. So why have it in the movie – to show internal turmoil and emotion? – cos Jessica can’t actually get any emotion going with those chiselled cheeks of hers? John M does some decent acting, threatening to upstage the planet, so gets killed by Colin. Then, Geena gives Jessica an acting class, and then mysteriously disappears from the movie, never to be seen again, with nothing explained.

And the end (if you can call it that) is anti-climactic. I think they were going for something downbeat and mundane, to make some sort of point… about not glorifying violence… about there being no winners. That and other things? Or they ran out of budget so just… stopped. It’s pish. It’s better than nothing in our covid world, sure, but only just.