MSU

Yeah, that was totally weird. Definitely didn't help the laborious start when you're sitting there thinking, well this is wrong.

072 -- Lightyear. I had low expectations for this following Toy Story 4 but after a very ropey start where none of the jokes were landing that well, they introduced a robot cat and everything got better. It's visually stunning but light on emotion, and a little repetitive and I'm not sure I go along with the conceit that this was the movie -- a movie whose central premise features time dilation -- that Andy loved so much, or that Buzz comes across as all that heroic. I laughed out loud several times, mostly at the cat, but I just wish it had done more to have an equivalent of the toys about to go into the incinerator. 7/10 073 -- Swiss Army Man (#36 in the A24 series) According to Mrs MSU, I've seen this already. Well, I guess I was drunk or asleep or both because I don't think this is a movie you can forget you've seen. Paul Dano's character is stranded on a deserted island and about to kill himself when a corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) washes up on the shore. The corpse seems to possess strange abilities, isn't quite fully dead, and might just be Hank's ticket back to civilization. I can totally understand why some people would hate this, but I loved it. I thought it was warm, heart-felt, beautiful once you get over all the farting, with a soundtrack that's absolutely designed to get you in the feels and it was funny. I had a smile on my stupid face all the way through. Even a telegraphed finale wasn't enough to spoil it for me, thanks in part to Mary Elizabeth Winstead. 9/10

Haven't seen the show before and had no intention of ever doing so but watching a bunch of arseholes in a villa is about as addictive as watching a bunch of wankers in a house used to be back in the day, except they're a bit more honest about getting their fingers and tops. I'm glad that we've moved on from the Gemma show as I really don't get some of the fascination about her. She looks like her dad, she talks like her dad, and she's as fucking dull as her dad.

Just got back into playing guitar after years away from it. Started off at the start of the year by picking up an ESP LTD EC256 which was just about expensive enough to make sure I kept playing it. Added a Jackson JS2 bass a month or so later and just last week filled in the last spot in my three guitar rack with a Taylor Academy acoustic which I think has become just about the loveliest thing I own.

068 -- The Adderall Diaries (#33 in the A24 series) I’m not saying that James Franco doesn’t know how to make a good movie. I’m just saying every James Franco movie I’ve ever seen has been terrible. This is a particularly bad example. I feel sorry for the real Stephen Elliott, partly because of all the crappy things that happened to him, but mostly because James Franco plays him in his movie. 2/10 069 -- The Lobster (#34 in the A24 series) The Lobster is one of those comedy movies that does its best to pretend it's not a comedy, so by the time you twig that, yes, it's meant to be funny, you feel like starting it all over again. In an alternate universe, single people are thrown together in a hotel and given a short period of time to find a partner or they will be turned into an animal of their choice and then released into the wild. This outlandish premise is then presented in the most downbeat, blunt manner imaginable, like the actors didn't really read the script or were doing so for the first time. But gradually, the movie's secrets become more obvious. There's no sense of love here, or even companionship, just the barest of a connection. You've got a limp? I've got a limp, too. Let's hook up. What this says about the way society feels about single people is quite stark. If you're single, you need to be fixed, and if you can't be fixed or don't want to be fixed, well, you're going to have to find someplace else to hang out. Colin Farrell is the lead singleton. Ashley Jensen is her usual wonderful self as the weird biscuit lady. You're really going to need to be in the mood for this one because a lot of it is going to be pretty annoying if you're not. 7/10 070 -- De Palma (#35 in the A24 series) If you like Brian De Palma, you're going to love this. Body Double was one of my guilty pleasures as a kid (for obvious reasons). In this conversation with the director, he goes through his filmography in chronological order, talking about inspiration, and technique, and sprinkles in a few anecdotes about things like Sean Penn being a dick to Michael J Fox on the set of Casualties of War, and although Alfred Hitchcock does get mentioned a lot, it's not nearly as often as you'd imagine. 6/10 071 -- Crimes of the Future. Kristen Stewart's acting and Viggo Mortensen's skeletal breakfast high-chair are the unintentionally hilarious highlights of David Cronenberg's first feature film in 8 years. In an unspecific future, pain and infection are things of the past so it's a natural leap if you're David Cronenberg to deduce that this means that conscious surgeries are commonplace and even pass for performance art. This is where Mortensen's Saul Tenser comes in. Thanks to a genetic quirk, he is in constant pain and has to sleep in a special, almost organic bed that gives him comfort, and eat from the aforementioned high-chair. Also, because David Cronenberg, he's developing new vestigial organs in his body that his partner Caprice, played by Léa Seydoux, extracts and tattoos as part of a theatrical performance. Cronenberg's shtick is no longer shocking or provocative anymore. I found the final act of Men far more unsettling and uncomfortable to watch. It is, however, really boring. 4/10

Given that the tasks aren't shown in chronological order, I've always thought that they are arranged in such a way that each contestant has a decent chance of winning at least one episode, with Greg's opinion and the live task always having the potential to muck that up. Judi will NEVER have a better chance to win an episode than last night.

Enjoyed your comments on this overall, but I totally agree with you on that tunnel scene. That shot where you just have the blackness of the tunnel and the light against Harper's back managed to be incredibly claustrophobic, terrifying, and oddly beautiful as you watched it slowly construct itself as the camera pulled in. It's also, I think, pretty much the only scene where she's truly happy. And she's not happy for long.

Aye, you'll have seen plenty. I think I began to take notice when something like three or four of the trailers I saw one time all had the A24 logo. More recently, they tend to be movies I enjoy although through doing this I've sat through a fair few honking efforts.

Oh, it's the series of movies that are made and distributed by the A24. I decided to go through their catalogue for reasons I can no longer remember.

066 -- Green Room (#32 in A24 series) A DC punk band are signed to play a gig in a remote venue in the Pacific Northwest. The audience and headline act are nazi punks so our heroes high-tail it out of there but on their way they stumble upon a murder in the venue's green room and end up barricaded in while the white supremacists, led by none other than Patrick Stewart, try to destroy them and the evidence. It's a gloriously gory affair with a surprisingly strong script, although it maybe runs out of energy a bit in the final act. 8/10 067 -- Men. Or Not All Men, as I'm sure some will end up calling it. Alex Garland's latest effort is packed full of metaphor and imagery. Jessie Buckley plays Harper, who announced to her husband that she wanted a divorce, he reacts very badly and threatens to kill himself. Sometime later, she retreats to a country cottage to recharge where she meets Jeffrey the landlord, Rory Kinnear, and some of the locals, all of whom have a familiar look to them and seem to represent various motifs or misogyny. One of the first things Harper does when she arrives at the cottage is to take and eat an apple from a tree in its garden. We get further use from the metaphorical tree later on when all the apples fall from the tree at once and none of them roll too far away. Anyway, the performances are great, especially Kinnear, the sound is incredible, and there are many very unsettling moments but it felt like Garland was cramming in as many metaphors as possible and not all of them felt as though they joined up with the narrative. I did catch myself wondering why Harper didn't just leave, and then I spent some time wondering why she should have to, and then if she didn't leave does that make her to blame for what happens later? The last twenty minutes is mental. 7/10

061 -- Mojave (#28 in A24 series) Apparently, this movie made $8,000 at the box office and it's quite shocking that it made as much as that. Tom (Garrett Hedlund) is an unlikeable Hollywood director who goes into the desert to find/kill himself and runs into psychotic and unlikeable drifter, Jack (Oscar Isaac), who says "brother" quite a lot. Tom, suspecting that Jack is going to kill him, turns the tables and escapes but in the process manages to kill a cop, which gives Jack an opportunity for a payday. It's poor enough as it is but then Walton Goggins and Mark Wahlberg show up as Hollywood types and it doesn't make it any better. Just a really poor effort by everyone involved. There's probably a mediocre movie in here somewhere, but that's a level Mojave can only dream to attain. 3/10 062 -- The WItch (#29 in A24 series) Robert Eggers' debut feature is a horror movie that is genuinely scary without resorting to jump scares and its attention to detail suggests a far more seasoned director in charge, and it gives something of a hint of things to come from him. Set in 1630 New England, the movie opens with William and his family being banished from their Puritan colony after he has been at the center of some unspecific religious disagreement. They set up home in a clearing on the edge of a wood where they have a new baby son, Samuel. While their eldest daughter, Thomasin, plays peek-a-boo with the infant, Sam disappears and we soon discover that he has been taken by a witch to use his blood in a flying ointment. This marks a pretty clear downward spiral for the family as time and again William proves to be incapable of providing for his family, and his wife, Katherine, becomes suspicious of Thomasin's involvement in their bad luck, wondering if the witch has already infiltrated their family. Subtitled as a New England Folkstory, it's one of those rare horror movies that managed to keep me unsettled throughout, clever enough to make the unsettling aspects difficult to pinpoint while being entirely under the skin. 8/10 063 -- Remember (#30 in A24 series) What an odd little movie. It starts off looking like an intimate portrait of age, love, and dementia quickly becomes...well, something not that. Something not that at all. Christopher Plummer is great in the lead role of Zev, a nursing home resident who keeps forgetting his wife has recently passed away. Thankfully, his buddy in the home, Max, has written him a letter explaining who he is, what has recently happened, and what he always planned to do when his wife died, which was to track down the Nazi blockfuhrer responsible for the deaths of his family in Auschwitz. So armed with his letter he leaves the nursing home on a roadtrip to make good on his promise. Sadly for Zev, there's more than one Rudy Kurlander in the country. There's more than a hint of exploitation cinema in this, especially with it circumventing expectation as deftly as it does, but it's exciting and tense and it may be the only movie in existence that will ever make me think of Apt Pupil and Beavis and Butt-Head Do America simultaneously. Extra half a point for that. 8/10 064 -- Krisha (#31 in A24 series) In her 60s and addicted to drugs and booze, Krisha manages to convince her sister that she's clean and sober and manages to talk her way into the Thanksgiving meal where she will be responsible for cooking the turkey. In the early parts of the movie, we sense a very strained relationship between Krisha and her family, particularly her son, Trey, who can't look his mother in the eye. As the day continues and the dinner begins to slip away from her, Krisha's temptations begin to rear their heads again. Director and writer Trey Edward Shults is Trey. In real life, Krisha is his aunt and Krisha's sister, Robyn, is his mother. Most other actors are friends and family, and while this is fiction, it's clear that there is some basis of a truth somewhere in the Shults family archives. It's a difficult watch because it's such a hopeless situation, but it's pretty powerful, unflinching stuff. 7/10 065 -- Krisha. The 15 minute version of the 80 minute version above. Loses a bit from being rushed but interesting to see how it was developed into the longer piece, not least that between the short and the feature, Krisha seems to have lost the tip of her index finger for reals. Yikes. 6/10

060 -- Top Gun: Maverick. Top Gun wasn't really an important movie for me when I was growing up so I didn't particularly care that they were making a sequel. After seeing it, I still don't particularly care. Maverick is called away from test piloting a hypersonic jet to teach new Top Gun recruits ahead of a suicidal mission to blow up a uranium plant in a country that definitely isn't Iran. All the characters are the same, every line is written and delivered with the trailer in mind, the movie hits every narrative beat you expect it to with laser-guided precision. The aerial dog-fight sequences are incredible and thrilling enough but failed to make up for the dislikable characters, the by the numbers plot, the jingoism, or Tom Cruise running. Judging by the reaction of the audience (some of whom applauded at the end, FFS) I'm in a minority. 6/10

I'm exactly the same. Thought this was a bit of a return to form following The Glass Hotel, which I only kinda liked. Just an amazing storyteller.

056 -- Dark Places (#25 in A24 series) This adaptation of a Gillian Flynn novel lives up to its source material insofar as it's pretty mediocre and not as good as Gone Girl. Charlize Theron plays Libby Day, who as a child survived a murder spree at her home that killed her mother and sisters and for which, thanks to her testimony, her brother went to jail. Down on her luck and struggling for money, Libby gets involved in a group of amateur sleuths who believe her brother is innocent. Once you remember that Flynn doesn't really write sympathetic characters it's a reasonable thriller despite not being very thrilling. Unremarkable. 6/10 057 -- Petite Maman. A fantastic in every sense of the word French movie about a little girl whose maternal grandmother dies, and she and her mum go to empty her house which is in the middle of an autumnal wood. The mother describes her childhood there and how she built a fort in the woods. Later, after the mother goes awol, the wee girl goes for a walk in the woods and finds another wee lassie building a fort. Just a wonderful story, beautifully acted, that deals with its theme of grief and generational trauma in a profoundly subtle and sublime way. My favourite movie of the year so far. 10/10 058 -- Mississippi Grind (#26 in A24 series) Ben Mendelsohn and Ryan Reynolds star in this (for all intents and purposes) two-hander about a downtrodden gambler (Mendelsohn) who believes he meets his lucky charm (Reynolds) and the two head to New Orleans for a big poker tournament or something, bumping along from wins and losses towards a payday. The performances are more than decent but the story is dull, the characters flat, and there's very little to recommend or suggest that any aspect of it will linger long in the mind. 5/10 059 -- Room (#27 in A24 series) In keeping with Dark Places, this is another one where the movie lives up to the book, except in this case, I loved the book. Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay are both outstanding as a young woman and her son, the latter of whom at five has only ever known the inside of a 10x10 room. Not a movie I'm often in the mood to watch but when I do it gets me in the feels every time. 10/10

Fucking hell.

Been laid up with the COVID for the last week so it's been a slog through some movies in the hours I've been awake. 053 -- Slow West (#22 in A24 series) Minus credits, this Western tale of one boy's ill-judged attempt to exit the friend zone clocks in at under 80 minutes. Michael Fassbender plays Silas, an Irish bounty hunter who forces his services on to Jay, Kodi Smit-McPhee, a young Scottish gentleman who has travelled to the New World to track down, Rose, the love of his life, who fled the motherland with her father after an "unfortunate incident". It's a quirky wee tale that's simultaneously ludicrous and comedic and somehow feels like an accurate representation of life in the infancy of a country. Directed and written with an incredible atmosphere by John Maclean who built on this success by doing absolutely nothing. An unexpected hit. 9/10 054 -- Amy (#23 in A24 series) Documentary on the life and death of Amy Winehouse. She never stood a chance. 10/10 055 -- The End of the Tour (#24 in the A24 series) Rolling Stone journalist David Lipsky, Jesse Eisenberg, follows around and interviews Jason Segel's David Foster Wallace on the final days of his Infinite Jest book tour. Not a whole lot happens over 100 minutes or so as the journalist tries to build up a picture of the author and the author tries to conceal his demons from the journalist. There seems to be quite a bit of jealousy from Lipsky, a fellow writer, who holds Foster Wallace as a genius, while Foster Wallace does his best to reject those assertions along with his fame and success. I like Segel and Eisenberg so this two-hander was right up my street, but it still wasn't nearly enough to make me want to crack open Infinite Jest. 8/10

Looks like Chris Ramsey is treating this as an interview to become Horne's apprentice.

Adam Buxton on the Off Menu podcast this week.

Good stuff but probably my least favourite of the S6 episodes so far. Gus's recent paranoia doesn't carry enough risk given we know how his story ends, even if we don't know exactly how it gets there. The Howard stuff is more interesting by what it potentially sets up (as hidden somewhere above) than what it delivered this episode. Still better than anything else that's on TV right now.

052 -- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. aka That Nic Cage thing. Nic Cage plays a (maybe) exaggerated version of himself, estranged from his wife and daughter, struggling to remain relevant, being passed over for roles, when he's offered a million bucks to attend a birthday party in Mallorca for Cage superfan Javi, Pedro Pascal, who has been working on a script. Throw into the mix a CIA plot that reveals Javi is a nasty gun-runner and they enlist Nic Cage to infiltrate the organization. Or something. It works best when it's just Pascal and Cage, hanging out, talking movies, planning the third act of the script, dropping acid, watching Paddington 2, or when the former Mrs Cage, Sharon Horgan, gets involved. The CIA subplot is a bit of a mess, quite annoying, and pretty unnecessary. Missed a trick for me by not having other people play versions of himself. There's no reason to have Neil Patrick Harris play Cage's agent rather than having him play Neil Patrick Harris. It was okay, laughed out loud a few times, and it did make me wonder what a version of myself from 1990 would have to say to me. Wouldn't be pretty. 6/10

Shocked to discover that I found Judi a bit more bearable this week, or maybe just less annoying. Ardal's constant sniping at everyone else's effort is still glorious.

lol @ Thogden. I stumbled on him and his old man and their mission to annoy football fans in every ground in the country with their commentary a few years ago on youtube. Are they still going/dicing with a doing?

051 -- Barely Lethal (#21 in the A24 series) From the brilliance of Ex Machina to something of a cross between Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk and Mean Girls as Hailee Steinfeld, who went from an Oscar nom for her role in True Grit to playing The Legacy in Pitch Perfect 2, tries her hand as an orphan raised as a secret agent assassin who fakes her own disappearance so she can experience a normal childhood in the US as a Canadian foreign exchange student because plot. [trailer voice]But she's about to find out that being an assassin isn't as dangerous as being a kid in an American High School.[/trailer voice]. Starts off dreadfully but somehow manages to drag itself up to average as it wastes the talents of Steinfeld, Jessica Alba, Sam Jackson, and Sophie Turner. 5/10

Threw $10 on 2-0 to make the unthinkable bearable. Stand to pick up $170 if it stays like this. I'm so confused.

What did your kids think of it?