Dame Diana Rigg Tribute: The Avengers Retrospective (Television, 1961-69)

[This article is being republished in honour of the late Dame Diana Rigg, Avengers star and a personal hero of mine, who died yesterday. If you'd like to read my tribute to her co-star Patrick Macnee, you can do so here.]

The name 'Avengers' tends to be associated with comic book superheroes these days, though for  British TV fans of a certain distinction, it instead recalls an iconic and much loved '60s show which beat the comics to the title on these shores by two years. The series was Sydney Newman's first major hit, with his second being the altogether more widely recognised Doctor Who. Starting out as a gritty spy thriller, the British Avengers came to define the swinging sixties through its playful embrace of abstract imagery, empowered women in risqué clothing, and intrinsically English sense of humour.

In its most popular incarnation, the series paired gentleman spy John Steed with a trendsetting, judo-throwing female partner. The most famous of these was Emma Peel, played by Mrs. Bond-to-be Diana Rigg. The series crossed over extensively with the Bond franchise, as Steed's previous partner, the high-kicking Cathy Gale, was played by Honor Blackman, aka Pussy Galore, while Steed himself (aka Patrick Macnee) had a supporting role in A View To A Kill. Bond and Who may have lasted longer, but few creations have been as influential to national culture as The Avengers was to sixties Britain.

 

The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 20th Anniversary Retrospective

When The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask was released twenty years ago last week, it was with less than a year before the N64 was to be replaced by the GameCube. Although technically a quickie sequel, created in a single year using the same (albeit upgraded) graphical engine as Ocarina Of Time, Majora responded to the question of how to follow one of the most important games in the medium's history by taking its predecessor's epic scope and making it smaller and more intimate.

Producing a masterpiece on your first attempt can be as dangerous in many ways as a failure: not only do you have to deal with massively disproportionate expectations of brilliance for your next work, but are also bound by how much of the original can be changed or replaced without attracting ire.

Romanticism vs Enlightenment In 2001: A Space Odyssey and Interstellar (Archive)

[These articles were originally written around 2014-15 for a separate outlet whose redesign has resulted in several of my pieces being lost. I'm republishing a number of my favourites on this blog for posterity.]

2014 has been a great year for sci-fi. Guardians Of The Galaxy proved one of Marvel’s biggest hits to date despite starring little-known characters and lacking a star name among the cast; Luc Besson’s affably bonkers Lucy and Jonathan Glazer’s chillingly impenetrable Under The Skin saw Scarlett Johansson build up a fine run of form in the genre after voicing a sentient, amorous operating system in 2013’s Her; X-Men: Days Of Future Past made time travel an integral part of the X-movie universe; Tom Cruise suffered his own Groundhog Day in the middle of an alien war in Edge Of Tomorrow, and the Ethan Hawke-starring Predestination received plaudits for its integration of gender politics into an otherwise fairly rote time travel narrative.

Perhaps the biggest and most interesting event of the 2014 sci-fi revival was Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, standing out not only for being a rare original blockbuster in a galaxy of comic book franchises, but also its unashamed exploration of ‘hard’ sci-fi concepts such as time dilation, relativity and interstellar travel. If anything, the movie is at its least interesting when making concessions to the mainstream audience’s supposed expectation of action: Matt Damon’s cameo feels out of place and unnecessary, existing only to interject big set-pieces into a movie which had previously succeeded admirably without them. Just as The Matrix and Nolan’s earlier Inception disproved the notion that audiences are turned off by big ideas in their popcorn entertainment, Interstellar‘s success (currently sitting at a $622m return on its $165m production budget) is a triumph for all of us crossing our fingers that the recent sci-fi revival will be allowed to explore the genre’s more intellectual side alongside such pulpy delights as Guardians and Star Wars.

What The CIA Torture Report Says About Humanity (Archive)

[These articles were originally written around 2014-15 for a separate outlet whose redesign has resulted in several of my pieces being lost. I'm republishing a number of my favourites on this blog for posterity.]

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report into the CIA’s use of torture is finally being published, albeit in heavily redacted form. To begin, let’s focus on what little positivity can be gleaned from a situation in which even our most forgiving hopes of living in a moral, compassionate society are surely set to be torn apart, piece by piece. Whatever this report may reveal and no matter how little of it is actually made public – supposedly no more than 600 pages out of 6,000 – some credit is due to the American government for the report existing at all.

Where I live, in the UK, the idea of our intelligence services being subject to any sort of accountability, or their actions challenged in any meaningful way, feels like a pipe dream at best. All we get are excuses, usually that such activities were legal – as though there has ever been an atrocity committed by a government and its agencies in history which wasn’t – or ‘necessary’, though providing any sort of justification for that claim would supposedly endanger us all. If you thought that line about spies ending every sentence with “…but then I’d have to kill you” was nothing but a ridiculous joke, try listening to a British politician discussing defence for more than five minutes.

Go Set A Watchman book review (Archive)

[These articles were originally written around 2014-15 for a separate outlet whose redesign has resulted in several of my pieces being lost. I'm republishing a number of my favourites on this blog for posterity.]

The circumstances surrounding the publication of Go Set A Watchman have been sufficiently well documented and debated that there seems little need to retread that ground here. Whether or not you choose to buy the book as a result of its questionable journey into print is one best left to your own conscience rather than a thousand words of a reviewer wrestling with his. The core matter to be dealt with is simply whether or not it is a worthwhile book. My answer would be an emphatic yes.

It must be noted that it is a tremendously challenging book, a long way from the moral simplicity of To Kill A Mockingbird, the novel it was later redrafted into but to which it now serves as a pseudo-sequel. Much has already been written about Atticus Finch being revealed as holding pro-segregationist views – with, as might have been expected, plenty of people popping out of the internet woodwork to let everyone know it was obvious to them all along, even if they didn’t say anything at the time – and Scout, here known by her birth name of Jean Louise, struggling to deal with the idea of her father not being the paragon of virtue she had long looked up to.

The Morality Of Big Game Hunting (Archive)

[These articles were originally written around 2014-15 for a separate outlet whose redesign has resulted in several of my pieces being lost. I'm republishing a number of my favourites on this blog for posterity. With the controversy surrounding Love Island contestant Ollie Williams' involvement with trophy hunting, this article seemed particularly timely.]

Anyone with an internet connection can hardly have missed the outpouring of grief which accompanied Walter Palmer’s murder of Cecil the lion outside Hwange wildlife sanctuary in Zimbabwe last month. The nature of Cecil’s death was particularly nasty, having been lured from the sanctuary with meat, only to be severely wounded with a crossbow bolt and finished off, almost two days later, with a bullet. He was then decapitated, skinned and his corpse left to rot in the sun. That those responsible allegedly tried and failed to then destroy Cecil’s tracking collar only adds to the sordid nature of the killing. Hunt guide Theo Bronkhorst and landowner Honest Ndlovu have both been charged with poaching by the Zimbabwean authorities. Walter Palmer returned to the US, but is now being sought for extradition.

The sordid business has reignited the debate surrounding the morality of trophy hunting, an industry, reportedly worth $190m in Africa, which revolves around people paying thousands of dollars to kill a wild animal under conditions guaranteed to ensure the hunter an easy, safe kill. That the hunters are almost invariably rich, white and Western adds an undercurrent of colonialist entitlement to the situation. For all the consensus on the nastiness of the act of hunting itself, reaction to Cecil’s death has peripherally raised other questions about the hypocrisy of selective outrage and the wider, often ignored problems of humanity’s role in selecting which species are permitted to live and which are not.

Victoria's Secret Swim Special 2015 review (Archive)

[These articles were originally written around 2014-15 for a separate outlet whose redesign has resulted in several of my pieces being lost. I'm republishing a number of my favourites on this blog for posterity. This particular review was chosen in honour of the never-ending pleasure of being rude about Maroon 5. Definitely not just so I had an excuse to go searching for images of Lily Aldridge and Behati Prinsloo.]

It’s a hard life being a television critic. Sometimes you just have to sit down, steel yourself, and watch a full hour of the world’s hottest models prance about in miniscule bikinis on gorgeous tropical beaches for review, because, well, it’s your job. No, don’t feel the need to send letters of thanks. These are the sacrifices we make; extensive rewinding, pausing and all.

So, the Swim Special. In a gripping narrative, the Angels turn up in Puerto Rico to shoot photos for the Victoria Secret swimsuit catalogue, with the dramatic stakes terrifyingly high as each model competes to claim the much sought-after cover. Lily Aldridge, owner of a body so celestial you’d expect planets to revolve around it, is up first, proving herself a master of understatement by describing the shoot as ‘epic’ and ‘legendary’. Truly, hers is a task Heracles would wilt to face, having to overcome crippling vertigo by climbing a small ladder onto a moderately sized boulder.

Top Ten Movies Of The Decade: Number One

With the 2010s' candle burning out, I thought it worth looking back on my favourite movies of the past ten years. It may have been a relatively uninspiring decade for mainstream cinema, but even the weakest year had a few standout releases worth celebrating. This post covers the top placed movie.

#1: SPRING BREAKERS (Dir: Harmony Korine, 2012)

How's this for an opening line: had F. Scott Fitzgerald been alive in 2012, he'd have made Spring Breakers instead of The Great Gatsby. Gatsby is a satire of the flamboyance, narcissism and excess of its time and the hollow fantasy of high society. It has entered into the pantheon of great literary masterpieces as an encapsulation of a distinctly American tragedy.

Ninety years later, Kris Jenner, matriarch of the Kardashian dynasty, holds a Great Gatsby birthday party, an all-night celebration of the flamboyance, costumes and excess depicted in the novel. Welcome to the future. People change, hairstyles change, interest rates fluctuate. Irony remains the universal human constant.

Top Ten Movies Of The Decade: Number Two

With the 2010s' candle burning out, I thought it worth looking back on my favourite movies of the past ten years. It may have been a relatively uninspiring decade for mainstream cinema, but even the weakest year had a few standout releases worth celebrating. This post covers the second placed movie.

#2: LEAVE NO TRACE (Dir: Debra Granik, 2018)

Debra Granik's follow-up to Winter's Bone is a similarly stripped down, emotionally raw tale of a young woman living on the wild edges of civilisation, in intensely masculine environments, fighting for the survival of herself and her loved ones. Despite the similarities in their setting, Winter's Bone and Leave No Trace are diametrically opposed in the details.

Winter's Bone is a story about community, where a girl, Dee, is forced into adulthood to protect her small, destitute family following the disappearance of her meth-addicted father. Dee's battle for survival is based on her ability to fight through not only the bonds of poverty, but the institutions and criminal gangs which have evolved to take advantage of that poverty. In Leave No Trace, daughter Tom's life is defined not by the disappearance of her veteran father, Will, but his omnipresence. They are each other's entire worlds, living off the grid in national parks as a consequence of his trauma-induced fear of civilisation. Dee's story is about her protecting her family from the cruelty of society around her; Tom's is about her discovering the care and safety that society can offer.

Top Ten Movies Of The Decade: Number Three

With the 2010s' candle burning out, I thought it worth looking back on my favourite movies of the past ten years. It may have been a relatively uninspiring decade for mainstream cinema, but even the weakest year had a few standout releases worth celebrating. This post covers the third placed movie.

#3: THE NEON DEMON (Dir: Nicolas Winding-Refn, 2016)

What happens if a film is less interesting on the terms set out by its creator than for themes and ideas it might have inadvertently stumbled into? In an interview with the Independent, Director Nicolas Winding-Refn stated that his film is about beauty as a class system and how female beauty has enormous power over men while also being exploited by them. While Neon Demon is visually striking and viscerally evocative no matter what its creator's thematic intentions, I find it a less interesting and cohesive film on the basis of what Refn claims he meant to say than more complex and original themes he might have elicited by accident.

As a look at the power of female beauty and its exploitation by men, Neon Demon works well enough, but is more memorable visually than thematically. Refn may present his criticism of the beauty industry in a way which potently contrasts the awe-inspiring aesthetics of the high fashion photoshoot with predatory ugliness on the human level, but such criticisms cover well-trodden ground and are not strong enough to justify necrophilia and cannibalism for much beyond shock value, despite the symbolism technically holding.

Top Ten Movies Of The Decade: Numbers 5 - 4

With the 2010s' candle burning out, I thought it worth looking back on my favourite movies of the past ten years. It may have been a relatively uninspiring decade for mainstream cinema, but even the weakest year had a few standout releases worth celebrating. This post covers entries five and four.

#5: THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (Dir: Martin McDonagh, 2017)

Three Billboards is a film which came along at the right time for everyone to completely miss the truth in what it had to say. It's a film of our times both in what it depicts and the critical reaction to it. In the film, a grieving mother, Mildred, erects three billboards attacking the local police chief for failing to make arrests following the rape and murder of her daughter. The reaction to these billboards exposes and deepens existing prejudices in Mildred's small town, with misplaced good intentions and vengeful self-righteousness ultimately turning one tragedy into a series of violent and bloody encounters.

The film plants itself in the middle of the battleground between the Trump right and the MeToo left, holistically observing their shared fondness for dehumanising others and reducing complex ethical and social dynamics to easy answers as fuel for sanctimonious anger. Mildred is driven by profound grief, but uses her billboard campaign more as an excuse for revenge and pushing her guilt onto others than to do right by her daughter. The town and its local police force are parochial and racist, choosing to see the billboards as an affront to their self-image rather than reflecting on the horror of a terrible crime going unsolved and their own shortcomings as individuals and a community.

Top Ten Movies Of The Decade: Numbers 7 - 6

With the 2010s' candle burning out, I thought it worth looking back on my favourite movies of the past ten years. It may have been a relatively uninspiring decade for mainstream cinema, but even the weakest year had a few standout releases worth celebrating. This post covers entries seven and six.

7. ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (Dir: Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

The divergent relationship between cinema and reality has been a defining characteristic of Quentin Tarantino's filmography, from his use of non-linear storytelling and multiple perspectives in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, to full historical revisionism later on. If Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is to be the final entry in his directorial oeuvre - grains of salt, though - it is an appropriate swansong not only in knitting together the director's most prominent themes and motifs (the dirtiness of Margaret Qualley's prominent feet is a very funny cap on a long-running and much beloved joke) but as both a tribute and lament to the end of an era of Hollywood filmmaking which above all others inspired Tarantino.
 

I could talk about how Once Upon A Time's cathartic rewriting of the Manson murders doubles as a deconstruction of the modern masochist obsession with the True Crime genre, or how Tarantino's melding of the real and unreal reflects how fact and fiction have become intertwined in the way we remember historical events and people. Worthy talking points all, but the real pleasure of Once Upon A Time is simpler: the oft-neglected joy of enjoying a beautifully made movie simply for the sake of it. From the sun-dappled cinematography to the lovingly detailed set design, it is a luxuriant snowglobe in which two-and-a-half hours passes in a snap.

Top Ten Movies Of The Decade: Numbers 10 - 8

With the 2010s' candle burning out, I thought it worth looking back on my favourite movies of the past ten years. It may have been a relatively uninspiring decade for mainstream cinema, but even the weakest year had a few standout releases worth celebrating. This post covers entries ten through eight.

10. EX MACHINA (Dir: Alex Garland, 2015)

John Wick misses out by a whisker to Alex Garland's sci-fi thriller, whose central concerns of objectification and the difficulties distinguishing between human and digital interaction and deception have grown more potent in the decade's sunset years. Despite their very different aims, Wick and Ex Machina have much in common: both strip down often their often bloated genres (action and science fiction respectively) to the essentials, making the most out of a small number of ingredients rather than vaingloriously throwing everything in the pot and hoping for the best.

For most of its running time, Ex Machina limits itself to four characters, one of whom is mute, allowing us to spend the time with each to get a clear understanding of their characters, dynamics and their role in the drama and its subtext. Though not a subtle film in conveying its intentions, it mercifully refrains from didacticism, preferring to pose questions rather than tell its audience what to think. For those whose primary motivation is entertainment rather than intellect, it is as finely tuned and tense as any thriller released in recent years. By contrast, Garland's next movie, Annihilation, used its bigger budget to lean more heavily into opaque visual surrealism, ending up muddying its messages and lacking the focus to satisfy as a genre piece. Insofar as the old expression about limitations being a boon to creativity rings true, Ex Machina embodies it to an uncanny degree.

Countdown To 007: Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace

This Countdown comes to an end with Daniel Craig's two Bond movies under the microscope ahead of his third outing, Skyfall, released tomorrow in the UK and on November 9th in the US. The actor's powerhouse performance in Casino Royale was undermined by a big stumble in the under-developed, poorly shot Quantum Of Solace, and it will certainly be interesting to see whether the right lessons have been learnt. For all the untidness of the movie as a whole, there's real potential in some of Quantum's individual ideas and while Skyfall won't be taking them up, fingers crossed that future Bonds make the most of them.

My review of Bond's twenty-third outing will be going up tomorrow. Don't miss it.

  

Countdown To 007: The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day

The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day represent Bond as endurance rather than entertainment: the former has some merits but is undermined by messy pacing and tiresome action sequences, while the latter drags the series to its lowest point to date. A shame, because despite the underwhelming quality of both movies, Pierce Brosnan does some of his best work.

These write-ups have been republished from Flixist's ongoing Across The Bond feature, where fellow Bond nerd Matthew Razak and I go through the series one by one. The feature ends tomorrow with a look at Daniel Craig's two movies, before finding out on Friday whether his third time will be a charm for him as it was for Sean Connery and Roger Moore.

  

Countdown To 007: Licence To Kill, Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies

My Countdown To 007 introduces another new Bond today after Timothy Dalton departs in one of the series' most contentious entries. Licence To Kill is a personal favourite of mine, drawing more inspiration from Fleming than many detractors give it credit for and featuring an outstanding performance from the lead man. When Pierce Brosnan took over six years later, his run in the role was a mixed bag but his opening movie, Goldeneye, was a perfect reintroduction to the character after the series was put on hiatus by legal troubles at parent studio MGM.

These write-ups have been republished from Flixist's ongoing Across The Bond feature, where fellow Bond nerd Matthew Razak (defiantly anti-Dalton) and I go through the series one by one. The feature will look at Brosnan's two remaining movies tomorrow, then Craig's two on Thursday before the Skyfall review on Friday.

  

Countdown To 007: Octopussy, A View To A Kill, The Living Daylights

Today's Countdown To 007 sees the Roger Moore era go to an all-time high, before bowing out on an all-time low and leaving it to newcomer Timothy Dalton to salvage the series' dignity by taking the character back to his literary roots. Dalton is my second favourite Bond - behind Connery, natch - but is controversial for many fans, who believe his two movies abandoned much of the levity which attracted them to the character in the first place. Leave your thoughts in the comments.

These write-ups have been republished from Flixist's ongoing Across The Bond feature, where fellow Bond nerd Matthew Razak (defiantly anti-Dalton) and I go through the series one by one. The feature is leading up to my Skyfall review on Friday.

Countdown To 007: The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only

We're deep into the Moore subtropics now, where eyebrows twitch in the undergrowth, safari suits frolic across grassy plains and the treetops echo with the sound of inexplicable puns. These three movies represent different extremes of the Moore era: Spy Who Loved Me as a generally entertaining extravaganza, Moonraker taking that formula way over the top in every respect, then For Your Eyes Only taking Bond back down to earth in something approximating the shape of an authentic thriller.

These write-ups have been republished from Flixist's ongoing Across The Bond feature, where fellow Bond nerd Matthew Razak and I go through the series one by one. The feature will continue on Monday with three movies including Timothy Dalton's debut, then culminate on Thursday with Daniel Craig's two previous movies ahead of my Skyfall review on Friday.

 

Countdown To 007: Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die, The Man With The Golden Gun

Enter the Roger Moore era. Well, one Connery movie is covered here, but its broad humour and lazy plotting marks the beginning of the series taking on traits more commonly associated with the man with the twitchy eyebrows. If you were expecting me to lavish nothing but praise on the Bond movies based on the two previous articles, think again: classic Connery is long gone, and two out of the three movies covered today have a legitimate claim to being among the series' worst.

These write-ups have been republished from Flixist's ongoing Across The Bond feature, where fellow Bond nerd Matthew Razak and I go through the series one by one. Later today, I'll be providing a link to my 007 Legends game review on Hit-Reset, so keep an eye out for that.

  

Countdown To 007: Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service

In the second round of revisiting the classic Bonds for this Countdown To 007 feature, I take a look at three fairly contentious movies in the series: I like all of them, but many find Thunderball boring, You Only Live Twice excessive, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service too... Lazenby. In my opinion, Lazenby gave a fine performance in his sole outing as 007 and his movie is one of the series' most touching. Let me know what you think in the comments.

These write-ups have been republished from Flixist's ongoing Across The Bond feature, where fellow Bond nerd Matthew Razak and I go through the series one by one. There'll be more Bond celebration to come on this blog. We have all the time in the world, after all...