Hi everyone

Yep. Welcome to the London Graphic Novel Network Film Club’s 2025 in Review.

(Whoops and cheering).

Ah thanks. That’s lovely. 

For those of you who haven’t played before – Here are the rules:

1. Yes. You can talk about any film you like
It doesn’t need to have come out this year. It doesn’t even have to be something that you liked. If there was a film that you really hated then you can talk about that. Or maybe you felt massively lukewarm about it. The only real requirement is that it’s something that you’ve seen in this past year and there’s something you want to say about it. 

2. Name the film in bold at the start of what you write
That way if someone wants to see it and they don’t wanna get spoiled then they can just skip over it with no harm done. (Also if you can find some images from the film and include them – then that would be cool too).

3. Please don’t just recount the plot instead: tell us what you think
Instead of just writing a synopsis (yawn) try this – Talk about what you liked (or didn’t like) about it. But grabbed you / what left you cold. What it did well / what it could have done better. How it made you feel. What kind of things it made you think about. All that good stuff.

4. If someone else has already mentioned a film then don’t worry – that’s ok
This isn’t a first come / first served thing. If someone else has mentioned a film then it’s not off the table – you can still write about it all you want. Ideally we don’t just want lots of solipsistic thoughts floating separately from each other so yeah – if someone mentions a film and you have a differing view please feel free to share (just you know obviously – try to play nice).

5. If you want to talk about a film that the LGNN Film Club has already done then that’s cool too
So if we talked about a particular film at some point in the past and you felt like there was stuff you wanted to say about it that you didn’t get a chance to say – then now’s the time… Go crazy.

If you’re still a little unsure how it works please feel free to look at how we’ve done it in the past: 

2018 in Review / 2019 in Review / 2020 in Review / 2021 in Review / 2022 in Review / 2023 in Review / 2024 in Review

So. I think that’s it. Hopefully should be fun and interesting and a cool time for everyone (that’s the idea anyway).

Nice one. 

x

 

Predator Badlands (2025)

In a speech in 2004 Ursula Le Guin spoke about the “Battle Between Good and Evil” trope in movies. She says “In them, you can tell the good guys from the evil guys by their white hats, or their white teeth, but not by what they do. They all behave exactly alike, with mindless and incessant violence, until the Problem of Evil is solved in a final orgy of savagery and a win for the good team.”

Sometimes Hollywood blurs the line by having a bad guy become a good guy: There’s the Joker movie, The Terminator becomes a nice guy: and of course Paddington in Peru does its best to atone for the titular bear’s many brutal crimes. But the sides are usually clear and it proves Le Guin’s proposition that, when it comes down to it, the only difference between good and bad is who resorts to ultra-violence first. 

Predator Badlands doesn’t break this rule but it bends it in some fun ways. Firstly violence is baked into the character. He’s an actual Predator, his only interest is murder, and at no point does he suggest an interest in anything else. This creates an interesting tension because ordinarily good guys are usually defined by being nice, and therefore it’s only a matter of time for them to team up with other nice good guys, so Badlands has to do a lot of work to make an inherently hostile creature be friendly with anything else, and therein lies its charm. 

There is a famous review of the Wizard of Oz which summarises the plot: “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.” And this is exactly the plot of Badlands but just unironic, because this is not a predator movie so much as a movie with a Predator in. In fact where it works best is as a two hander with annoyingly but entertainingly chatty robot/synth Thia who is responsible for the lion’s share of the dialogue, and somehow has the best fight scene in the movie. Their “relationship” has no right to work, but both characters inherent durability ensures that it persists beyond the ordinary limits of what anyone would normally be expected to put up with. 

The antagonists are also interesting because they are (largely) not cackling sadists, in fact they are basically slaves, working for a dispassionate disembodied AI that makes increasingly impossible demands. While having evil corporation Weyland Yutani is hardly a new concept but it’s made clear this is not Predator Vs Evil Corporation so much as Predator Vs Late Capitalism. 

Unofficial Predator prequel In the Name of the Father, a film about the Guildford Four which sits highly in the Must Watch category, has a scene where a member of the IRA explains how he will  murder a prominent gangster’s entire family if he has to. The “54 Halsey Road” scene is memorable because it is a rare depiction of the mindset of the IRA, usually portrayed as heartless psychopaths inexplicably resisting the benign influence of the British Empire, rather than the liberation army they see themselves as. His status as a foot soldier and prisoner of war means he is able to stare down a terrifying murderer and bend prison guards to his will with the conviction that he “doesn’t need to make threats he just follows orders.” In the scene itself you have numerous “villains” but the main malevolent force is the violent logic of callous imperialism and the cold indifference of the carceral state.  The real horror is not represented by vindictive evil but just the dead hand of the system hastening us towards the threshing machine to turn us into hamburger along with everything else. 

The narrative flexibility this situation provides is that our protagonists, faced with intransigence are freed from large parts of conventional morality, and can thus indulge in increasingly elaborate acts of brutal violence. Thus the Predator remains a vicious killing machine but the Overton Window of good vs evil has shifted so that in comparison he appears like a heroic freedom fighter. He may rip your spine out to display as a trophy, but like Sting in the song Every Breath you Take he is persecuting you because he sees you as having some value as an individual.

Our predator can decapitate a humanoid robot, our Godfather can wipe out the 5 families, and our Lord of the Rings can send his undead horseman to execute the Tory-voting ring stealing NIMBY hobbits, but it feels like it has some sort of justice. Needless to say when the film moves to Le Guins’s orgy of savagery to dispatch this righteous retribution all I could do was cackle with glee. 

One Battle After Another
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

What’s the point of Paul Thomas Anderson? Because I don’t think I get it. 

I know that lots of people really dig his stuff. He’s one of if not the best modern director around. Every film he makes is a masterpiece. He’s a genius. The GOAT. We have no choice but to stan. 

But every time I watch one of his films I’m always left with the feeling of – what was the point?

For a long time Boogie Nights was my favourite PTA film. But I rewatched it this year for The All Out of Bubblegum Film Club and my biggest take away was… confusion. What the hell did I see in this film? Like yeah it all seems very grown up and serious and it’s Goodfellas in the porn industry only none of the things it did it seemed to do very well. It wasn’t that funny. It wasn’t that deep. It wasn’t that inventive. It wasn’t that emotional. The whole thing just felt like a series of feints towards particular ideas without ever actually doing anything with them. Like there’s that big amazing thrilling scene when they go to Alfred Molina’s house and it’s supposed to be this masterclass of tension and suspense right? Except – it’s not. It’s all just kinda boring and confusing and lots of things happening but no real sense of payoff. No real sense of anything actually happening apart from – oh that kid keeps letting off firecrackers. Crazy. 

I feel like that’s actually PTA in a nutshell actually. This kid walking around letting off firecrackers and everyone thinks they’ve seen a fireworks show. Except no. Come on. We can do better than this. 

Which brings me to One Battle After Another which is yet another PTA film that has left me feeling confused and amazed and insulted by all the plaudits and compliments draped across it. I mean I don’t want to be the turd in the punchbowl or anything here – but am I the only one that can see that this film just isn’t very good?

I mean maybe this is just me making a category error – but it seems like this movie is setting itself up as an action. There’s foot pursuits and SWAT teams and shoot outs and a big climatic car chase except it seems that PTA doesn’t really have any interest in staging these things in an exciting way. Like the dude can’t direct action. That is – bodies in motion, doing things that have causes and effects. The thing that cinema was basically made for. 

Except of course yes that’s because PTA isn’t really an action kind of guy. No. That’s not really his thing. In fact if I was going to sum up his whole problem it would be this – he’s a novelist trapped in a film makers body. That is all the things he really seems to be interested in aren’t really cinematic things at all. Mostly that means character. I saw a quote from somewhere where he said that the thing in the car chase that he’s mostly interested in are the characters and the look on their faces. Something about how he doesn’t really want to see the cars he wants to see the people. To which I can only reply – erm. Maybe in that case don’t put a car chase in your film? I don’t know. 

And like ok if you like characters then go crazy. You do your character thing. And yes he makes big characters and lots of people love them. I drink your milkshake etc. 

Except the thing that’s lost here, the thing that PTA doesn’t really seem to appreciate is stories and how stories work which brings me to my big actual problem with One Battle After Another which is Bob Ferguson played by Leonardo DiCaprio. 

So. Watching One Battle After Another I couldn’t help but think of Oscar Issac in The Last Jedi playing Resistance X-wing pilot Poe Dameron.

The big thing about Resistance X-wing pilot Poe Dameron in The Last Jedi is of course his big learning is that he has to learn to accept that he doesn’t get to be the hero. He has to learn to follow orders and shut up and do what he’s told. Which erm is a slightly strange lesson to be teaching in a Star Wars film which up until that point had kinda been about feeling the force and believing in yourself and knowing that you too can blow up The Death Star (you don’t even need a targeting computer) etc  

Same thing kinda happens to Bob Ferguson in One Battle After Another. Like – he’s supposed to be the star of the show. He’s played by Leonardo DiCaprio. His name comes first in the credits. He’s the biggest thing on all the posters. 

Except erm. He never actually manages to achieve anything during the whole 2 hours and 42 minute run time?

He’s just running around, fucking up, being ineffectual. Falling down trees. Jumping out of cars. All this stuff. But never actually getting any successes. Never managing to actually do anything to help his daughter. He seems the whole film one step behind. 

And yeah ok – it’s kinda funny. And yeah maybe that’s the point. Fathers are useless and can never do anything right and at the end of the day all they can really offer is moral support. Yeah. I get it. That’s part of the point of the movie. 

But also yeah fuck that. 

I mean it’s definitely very modern I’ll give him that. But not in a good way. And there’s just something that I find very numbing and harrowing and actually deeply disturbing about a movie starring a character who is presented as the protagonist who never actually gets to do any protagonist things. Who never actually manages to make a difference to his own life. It’s like watching Die Hard where you’re following New York Cop John McClane only it turns out that the police and the FBI have everything all under control and he was only just getting in the way.  

Can’t we even have some good old fashioned escapism anymore? Or has that also been sealed off? Even in our dreams we’re powerless. 

Also yeah the car chase is boring. The whole film collapses into liberal platitudes. And by the end again I was just left asking – what the point?

Sean Penn was good tho. 

Still. We can do better than this. 

 

L.A. Confidential 

I pronounce: L.A. Confidential has become my favourite crime thriller. Though it spends a considerable portion of its opening merely showing police solving cases, matters take a turn for the interesting at a certain point. Through protagonist Ed’s transformation, the film illustrates two distinct forms of justice: procedural justice and outcome justice. While the story is somewhat formulaic, the “Rollo Tomasi” setup left a profound impression upon me. The actor’s fine performances are fully showcased in the two scenes involving Rollo Tomasi. Moreover, the villains in this film come across as less verbose and rather clever. I shall elaborate further.

Full Spoiler Plot Summary

Good cop Ed, with the help of good cop Jack and good cop Bud, defeated the evil sheriff.

The Inner Transformation of Good Cop Ed

1. Procedural Justice Ed

Ed’s betrayal of fellow officers to senior police command, resulting in his isolation by colleagues, shaped him into a strictly professional and exceptionally upright individual. Initially, Ed wore glasses, perfectly aligning with the characterisation outlined earlier.

2. Justice-driven Ed

During the investigation into the restaurant murder case, Ed directed suspicion towards ethnic minorities, as his physically just actions motivated by righteousness were rewarded. His true nature may have already been revealed when making this choice: he sought to apprehend the genuine perpetrator at any cost, despite being misled by witnesses at the time.

3. Ed quietly delivering justice

Just before Ed pushed the female witness’ wheelchair into the journalist’s view for photographs, she confessed that those individuals of colour were not the actual murderers. This left Ed looking grim, for he had acted contrary to the principles he had previously stated. Honour and reward now seemed ironic in light of the truth.

4. Ed hopes procedural justice will be restored through outcome justice

The restaurant murder case has been closed, but the wrong man was arrested. This has placed Ed under immense pressure, forcing him to choose between upholding his reputation and continuing to investigate the case. During his inquiries, he must find ways to enlist the help of colleagues with whom he has strained relationships. Ed recounts the fictional tale of Rollo Tomasi (a criminal still at large) to demonstrate their shared objective: none of them want the real killer to evade justice.

5. Complete outcome Justice Ed

After Jack was silenced by the corrupt sheriff, his final words—‘Rollo Tomasi’—made
Ed realise the sheriff was corrupt. The final confrontation between Bud, Ed, and the
corrupt sheriff completed Ed’s transformation: he was becoming like his former
colleagues, taking justice into his own hands rather than waiting for the system to
deliver judgement. Ed removed his glasses.

What did the evil sheriff do right?

• Driving a wedge between the clever ones and Ed
• Killing Jack immediately, without spouting arrogant nonsense beforehand
• Using Bud’s betrayal-fuelled rage to turn him against Ed

Spotlight on Acting: Rollo Tomasi Signature Shots

Sudden Death

After Jack was suddenly shot by the sheriff in his own home: Jack slowly transitioned from utter surprise to calmness, then had a sudden flash of insight as he uttered ‘Rollo Tomasi’, before finally ceasing all movement and dying. That final death scene in particular was absolutely brilliantly acted.

Sensing Something Amiss

After the Sheriff killed Jack and spoke with Ed about the fictional character Rollo Tomasi, Ed’s eyes widened ever so slightly. The subtle facial shift as he drew a wary breath was utterly masterful. Just imagining performing that is daunting – it felt entirely like a genuine reaction to shock.

Some implausible point

Upon discovering he’d been cheated on, Bud proceeded to give Ed a proper thrashing in the office. Yet the moment Ed mentioned the sheriff being a villain and told him to “think”, Bud immediately stopped to ponder. This seems rather unconvincing – his rage dissipated a tad too swiftly. It might have been more plausible for Bud to continue punching while “thinking”, gradually slowing his blows.

 

One Battle After Another (2025)

Won’t dispute Joel’s points on this given I agree with him that this is PT Anderson making an action film for the dads. For me the set-pieces worked in their own understated way – the raid on Del Toro’s hideout and the final hilly car chase in particular. I confess by the time I got to the latter I did rather need a wee, but I was hooked enough to not leave the screening to relieve myself, which is one test for good cinema I guess.

Joel is also correct that the politics of the film feel like window-dressing – a lot of signifiers gesturing vaguely to contemporary troubles without saying very much. Oscar-bait, in other words. The universal hype the film has received probably stands in the way of appreciating it on its own terms. I see it as about as deep as a mid-tier Vertigo comic. It certainly can’t support the expectations placed on it to say something meaningful about the times we live in. That the film invites such expectations may be its biggest flaw.

The politics of the film are silly – but then again, so are the jokes. DiCaprio falling off a building is a great gag. Sean Penn’s homophobia is ridiculous. The driver of the plot, when it is finally revealed, is extraordinarily stupid. That mix of awesomely powerful conspiracies and bizarre human incompetence doesn’t account for the fact that the banal reality of how political power is enforced or resisted is found between those two extremes. But that’s banal, and won’t make for three entertaining hours at the pictures.

The Addiction (1995)

Having watched a clutch of Ferrara films this year, the dude does give the impression of landing on profundity almost by accident. He was doing a lot of hard drugs in the 90s, and 1992’s Bad Lieutenant is a pretty straightforward portrayal of the spiral that creates, and is therefore a straightforwardly unpleasant watch. The Addiction takes that energy but abstracts into a metaphor involving vampires in graduate school, thereby creating one of the weirdest horror films ever made.

It took me a little while to realise that the annoying academese in the script is supposed to be horseshit. In that, The Addiction resembles an Antonioni film – where the point is less to understand what the people are saying as to gradually appreciate how all these words are so much noise displacing primal human urges. With Antonioni that’s mostly sex. For Ferrara it’s kinda sex and violence, but that’s also ultimately a proxy for drugs.

And while Antonioni’s decadence is a product of the decline of religious belief in the 60s, Ferrara gives the God of the Catholic Church a comeback, except that before saving you he’s liable to kill you first. That’s the only hope you can grasp for in the wormhole of nihilism. None of this theming is especially original, but the enigmatic way it is presented here, where every vignette turns in strange and unexpected ways, is a triumph of vibes-based cinema.

The Long Goodbye (1973)

What if a Raymond Chandler story was turned into a hangout movie? What then? Elliot Gould shambles through this mostly doing two things: striking matches on every surface you can think of to light his cigarettes, and mumbling “it’s ok with me” when confronted with each strange situation Los Angeles presents to him. The film spends a monstrous amount of time at the beginning following Marlowe buying food for his picky cat – not the most promising of openers, but it serves to ease you into the ramshackle pace of the piece. It also establishes Marlowe as someone who cares, in his own ineffectual way, even if no one else cares for him.

That decency is undercut a bit at the end, which is one of the few significant deviations from the book. Marlowe goes on another, longer quest – not to the nearest store but to Mexico – to wrap-up a loose end no one else cares about. That finale is sudden, unexpected, and more dramatically powerful than anything else in the film’s long running-time. It’s a great way to underline how this character who we’ve followed for so long maybe cares a bit too much.

Rye Lane (2023)

This is transparently Before Sunrise set in South London, and the only thing you need to know beyond that is it delivers on every expectation that description creates. Actually, I take that back a bit. The film is more controlled and pacy than the conversational sprawl found in Linklater’s scripts. That’s another way of saying there’s a bit more plot, with each bit of situational comedy carefully setting up the next. The film is also visually more affected – with gauche fish eye lenses and studied camera moves. But that awkwardness only adds to the charm. Basically everything about this film is charming – the leads, the minor characters, the setting and the music. It’s 82 minutes and on iPlayer and you should watch it.

Avatar: Fire and Ash
Directed by James Cameron

I wanted to believe in you James Cameron. Really I did. 

As gorgeous as it looks, Avatar 1 is kinda boring in places. But that’s ok. You were setting the scene. Orientating us in this new world. It takes some time to bed people in. The long slow build up before you get to the top of the rollercoaster. 

Avatar 2 was a lot better. The training wheels were off and the whole thing was a gung ho adventure tempered with kitchen sink domestic dramas of a lughead marine trying to make uprooting his family and moving to a tropical locale work. You’ve gotta love it when the best parts of the movie are the massive actions scenes where people get their arms snapped off and the subtle eye rolls taking place between people from different cultures. That’s good eating.

But still – as good as it was it felt like Avatar 2 was still preamble. There was still this sense that we hadn’t got to the good stuff yet. Yeah yeah the ship sinking was cool. But it still felt like Cameron was only getting started. And that the best was yet to come. Bring on Avatar 3. 

It feels me with a great and terrible sadness to announce that Avatar 3 is a dud. Yeah yeah it’s making a billion dollars at the box office. But that doesn’t mean it’s actually good. It doesn’t mean it actually works. There was so much of me that was hoping that Big Jim Cameron was going to show us the way. Was going to show the world what cinema could do. How stories could work. How wide our eyes could go. But Avatar 3 is not good. 

It’s not the one. 

It’s most egregious crime is how much it just rehashes the two movies that came before. I mean I know that James Cameron is big into environmentalism and saving the planet but I think the ethos is going too far when the thing he’s recycling is his own movies. Even more so because the first 40 minutes or so are actually pretty neat and literally explore new territory both literally and figuratively. The balloon people are cool! The evil kamikaze Na’vi are even cooler! And oooh splitting up the groups and having them trying to find each other in the jungle? All good stuff. And then. Fuck. I don’t know. Everything just starts getting more stale the further it goes along. All of these old dynamics start playing out again like a rushed copy and paste job. You remember Payakan? The Tulkun from Avatar 2 who got exiled? Well we’re doing that again. You remember Quaritch and Spider having awkward meetings in space prison? Well we’re doing that again. You remember the evil space whalers going out and hunting the space whales? Well we’re doing that again. You remember the Tulkun jumping out of the water and on to the ship? Well we’re doing that again. You remember Quaritch and JakeSully having that big epic fight to the death? Well we’re doing that again. You remember that big aerial battle from Avatar 1 and that big sea battle from Avatar 2? Well you’re not going to believe this…

Yawn yawn yawn 

My biggest take away feeling from Avatar 3 is the sense of squandered promise. Jimmy Cameron could have done anything he wanted and what we get feels like reheated leftovers on different plates. I mean – that’s not even the worst of it. The biggest crime Avatar 3 commits is that all of the choices it makes ends up feeling so inconsequential. It feels very momentous and cool when the bad guys finally capture JakeSully and march him off to space prison like he’s a big blue Luigi Mangione. “Oooh. Looks like actions are having consequences.” you say to yourself. And then they break him out and it’s like it never even happened at all. To which I can only say WTF? and it does kinda mean that all of the grandstanding that comes afterwards feels empty and meaningless. “We’re taking you in” doesn’t really have any weight if you’ve already seen them take him in and then see him escape. This is basic drama stuff my dude. 

And on top of that there’s the whole gung ho violence thing that comes across in a way that left me completely cold. 

I mean yeah it’s an action film. And we’ve gotta inflict some violence on the bad guys. I’m down with that. That can be fun. Show me the awful bombastic bloodshed and I’ll sit there with my popcorn stuffing my fat face. But again – this shit has to be earned man. I’m down to cheer on the destruction of the human race but can we actually get some scenes of all the humans being completely evil and morally reprehensible first? Let me see some Na’vis being slaughtered and then I’ll be happy to betray my species. I’m from Buenos Aires and I say kill ’em all etc 

But Avatar 3 never makes me hate humanity enough. It doesn’t even make me hate Quaritch (scene with him and Fire Girl in the tent taking drugs and sharing their kinks is very obviously the best scene in the film). And yeah I mean when you’re making the peaceful space whales disavow their pacifism and having the awkward Jesus child whose moment of triumph in the last film was based upon using pretty living lights to guide people to safety (the power of cinema!) in what seemed like a very pointed refusal against violence and towards a more harmonious and holistic understanding of our interconnected natures and how its only by tuning ourselves to a higher frequency that we can truly finally gain a universal consciousness – when you have that character see the literal face of god and turn and face the audience and cry out “KILL THEM ALL” I don’t know man – it feels like something might have gone wrong somewhere? 

But maybe that’s just me?

Do better next time Jim.  

 

Avatar: Fire & Ash (2025)

“Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war.”

To build on Joel’s point. In the very first few minutes of the first Avatar movie there is a long shot inside a spaceship as Jake travels to Pandora. The delivery of the 3D effects was (and remains) the peak of that brief trend, but the implication of that shot was that there was a wider universe of strange new worlds that humanity was seeking to ruthlessly subjugate and exploit for profit. Sure in the first movie you don’t want to planet hop too much and in the second movie it’s good to show there is a wider planet and it not just Super Mario style forest world, ice world, lava world etc. However having established (twice) that the planet was capable of doing some crazy stuff just to save a couple of blue cats, and that there was the potential for sentient super whales showing up as was necessary to keep the special effects team occupied, I guess I was hoping for some escalation in the hostilities. I wanted to see someone attacking ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion and some C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. Alas we just got poor old Mick Scoresby taking one for the team.

It’s not like we lacked for set up. So let’s say Earth is concerned that its main supply of [checks notes] petroleum/Spice/Unobtainium/Amrita might be in jeopardy then  presumably they have the wherewithall to send in the colonial marines to restore order, not sure some grunts on a bug hunt, but a fleet ready to nuke the site from orbit just to be sure, and that feels like new territory for the franchise (albeit not for contemporary geo-politics). And what would Pandora’s response be? Are there some giant spores that can be shot into space? Can Pandora turn into a naturally occurring Death Star? Are there some Kaiju on the other side of the planet we haven’t met yet? Maybe some giant worms in the desert? Can’t we have some Star Wars or a galactic Intafada?

Speaking of which, because all the effort has been made with the set up it doesn’t just have to be about increasingly large explosions. At the end of the third movie (and indeed the first and second movies) we see Jake turn into Paul Atreides and inspire the Navi to a war footing. There is room here to look at the compromises a now mobilised society looks like as they abandon their pastoral connection with nature to militarise. “But Jonathan” you may exclaim “there was a whole discussion about whether to use a regular bow and arrow or an arrow with a grenade attached! Surely this clunky exposition was enough to show the difficult choices faced by Navi society.” Well, I know they say “tell, don’t show” is the first rule of cinema and we all learned and important historical lesson from the battle of Endor, but it’s ignoring an important theme which is Pandorans are not fighting for their way of life any more, they are fighting extinction, yet we have not seen this have much impact on them, they are mainly just continuing to hang out and wait for the movie to happen to them. In fact the only person who has changed is Quaritch, and as a result he is the only interesting character, who also happens to have the ability to turn into a Pandoran Trotsky or Napoleon. The Quaritch Haderach if you will. 

Alternatively we could head to Earth except that would presumably lead to some sort of strike by the special effects unit: What do you mean you want to film actual rocks and water? Since when?!. This will not stand. Escalation for James Cameron is not “how crazy can shit get” but “what level of verisimilitude can I achieve” which is perhaps why he keeps returning to the same scenes to show you really know how much better the textures and light scattering is this time. Ironically returning to a poisoned ravaged Earth would help underscore the lush beauty of Pandora which when jeopardised by an imperium’s worth of attack ships would seem like a precious oasis in a cold indifferent universe. 

I was wondering briefly when they captured Spider if he was being set up to start connecting humanity to the hive mind thing, but I think that has only occurred to me because I’ve been watching Pluribus. Alternatively we could have explored the rest of the solar system to find alliances against the hated humans, I don’t mind so much but I think it seems like a shame when there are no barriers when to it comes to portraying full on galactic civil war/gentrification and instead we just keep treading water. 

Blink Twice
Directed by Zoë Kravitz

What the fuck is this movie man?

The set-up is cool and intriguing. Two poor girls (Naomi Ackie and Alia Shawkat) luck out with meeting this massively wealthy famous business guy Channing Tatum and get flown out to his beautiful exotic private island and are treated to yummy foods and delicious cocktails while they lay beside the swimming pool in their sexy bikinis. So far so Epstein.

But something isn’t right. Something is off. Something makes it feel like they’re not having a great time but actually they’re trapped in a horror movie. 

Well again – so far so Epstein.

Of course what happens is their suspicions are confirmed. Turns out that Channing Tatum and his friends are actually only pretending to be nice and friendly. But actually they’re drugging the girls and messing with their memories so that they’re during the daytime they’ll acting like their friends and treating them nice but then when it gets dark they’re sexually assaulting them in all sorts of terrible ways only for them to forget it in the morning and then they’re back sitting next to the swimming pool drinking cocktails again. 

To which I can only say – what the fuck?

From the point of view of the girls this does make sense yeah. There’s all of these men treating them nice, being civil, wining and dining them, having pleasant conversations with them and slowly (it seems) falling in love. And then the nighttime falls and it’s all horrific sexual assault. I mean yeah it’s obviously not nice but it makes sense as a horrible and horrific thing. 

Where the film loses me is in terms of how this makes sense from the point of view of the perpetrators. Channing Tatum and his friends. Like I understand them wanting to be civil and nice and hospitable. And I understand (but obviously don’t endorse) people wanting to do sadism and cruelty and evil. But what I don’t get (and what the movie doesn’t really seem to tell me) is why they would want to do both? And why oscillate between the two? Like this isn’t just a few days. This goes on for several weeks. 

To which I can only say – what the fuck?

This isn’t really a human motivation that I can make sense of. Like if Channing Tatum and his friends were doing all of this to increase the cruelty and the evil then I would kind of get it. But that’s not what’s really happening in the movie. Instead there’s just this massive void in the place where what they were doing would – you know – actually make sense. 

But of course that’s not the point right? 

No. Of course not. 

Every film is an expression of desire. A way of seeing and understanding the world. That doesn’t have to be an intellectual understanding – sometimes (most of the time) it can just be an emotional one. 

Die Hard is a good example of this. Like on one hand Die Hard is a film about the worst thing that’s ever happened. John McClane tries to reconcile with his wife over Christmas and god damn it nightmare scenario a bunch of terrorists rock up and take everyone hostage. Now John has to take matters into his own hands and do everything he can to make sure everyone is ok and save the day. It’s one thing that we didn’t want to happen etc. Except but whoops it’s also the exact opposite and the whole thing is a dream come true. John McClane tries to reconcile with his wife over Christmas and god damn it fuck yeah a bunch of terrorists rock up and take everyone hostage. Now John gets to take matters into his own hands and do everything he can to make sure everyone is ok and save the day. 

The bad thing is actually a good thing because it means that John gets to show everyone what he’s made of. He gets to step up and be a man and everyone else stands back and gets to be impressed by what a bad ass action hero he is. 

Please forgive me for speaking out of turn and saying something terrible and ghastly but I think something very similar is happening with Blink Twice. Yes disclaimer it’s depicting something awful and nightmarish and terrible. Rich people bringing poor women to an island so that they commit horrible acts against them against their will. Yes this is all obviously horrendous and fucked up and bad. 

But here’s the thought I can’t escape – maybe the point of this film is to enjoy the terrible thought. To imagine the very worst thing on purpose. There’s an old Kurt Cobain lyric that I’ve never been able to forget: I miss the comfort in being sad. And maybe that’s what Blink Twice is. A place where people can come to imagine the very worst thing that could happen to them and enjoy all the various vindications associated with that. Because after all – if people have done the very worst thing to do then that means you get to do the very worst things to them in return – right? 

But yeah sad to say this movie just doesn’t do it for me. Maybe it’s because I’m not in the target audience? Or maybe it’s because the fantasy is so threadbare that I can’t buy into it enough to enjoy the catharsis. If you want bad guys being bad then I need to feel like they’re actually bad in a way that makes sense. Otherwise it all feels like too much in a way that doesn’t really feel deserved. Kinda similar to how Avatar: Fire and Ash has all the aliens killing the humans in a righteous fury. It’s not that I’m against it but you need to rile me up enough to make sure that I’m feeling it. 

Otherwises the righteous revenge just feels… vindictive. Nasty. Unjustified. 

Otherwises it feels like you’ve watching something made by someone who wants to twist the whole world into creating a scenario where they’re victim. No matter if it makes sense or depicts other human beings as behaving in any way similar to how actual human beings behave. Rather than just flimsy props in your own narrative of affirmation self-gratification. 

How does the film end? Oh obviously the protagonist ascends to the heights of fame and fortune, power and luxury. Toasting the audience as she basks in her economic success. #girlboss. #liberal feminism. #winning

Blink once for yes and twice for no. 

…

Toy Story 4
Directed by Josh Cooley

What can I say about Toy Story? 

It’s a stone cold absolute masterpiece. It’s one of the single greatest movies of all time. Cinematic excellence. This isn’t an opinion. This is an empirical fact. To doubt this is to doubt that the Sun is hot or that water is wet. I mean when was the last time you saw it? There’s not a single ounce of fat on the entire thing. Every shot is purposeful. Every line of dialogue is funny and insightful and forever quotable. Reach for the Sky. You are a Toy! I don’t believe that man’s ever been to medical school! You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity. The clawwwwwwwww! Look, I’m Woody! Howdy, howdy, howdy! So play nice! The word I’m searching for – I can’t say, because there’s preschool toys present. I mean I could go but you already know exactly what I mean. The whole thing is fucking perfect. To infinity and beyond. 

When they said they were making a sequel everyone said they were crazy. Everyone said that it was a bad idea. Everyone said they shouldn’t do it. 

Everyone was wrong. 

What can I say about Toy Story 2? 

It’s somehow even better than the first one. Somehow it’s even funnier. Even more exciting. Even more inventive. Even more emotional. I mean it’s probably one of the best sequels of all time. A masterpiece built on top of a masterpiece. Every aspect is immaculate. Every move it makes pure brilliance. You couldn’t have dreamed of a better movie. The whole thing is a wonder. Jessie’s song cuts like a knife made up purely of feelings. That last sequence at the airport is one of the most exciting action scenes of all time. And that shot of the thousand Buzz Lightyears is one of the best depictions of 21st Century Life I know. What more could anyone possibly want? Ride like the wind, Bullseye!

When they said they were making a sequel everyone said they were crazy. Everyone said that it was a bad idea. Everyone said they shouldn’t do it. 

But once again – everyone was wrong. 

What can I say about Toy Story 3? 

I mean. I don’t know if I even have the words to describe how fucking good this movie is. If you wanted to say that it’s the best of the bunch I wouldn’t disagree. I mean the whole thing is just phenomenal. The way it grapples with this giant existential questions like childhood, aging and actual fucking death in a way that’s thrilling and profound is next to miraclous. I mean this is a film about talking toys and yet it stands proudly as one of the greatest achievements in filmmaking of all time. Seeing these icons from your childhood all silently holding hands as they bravely accept their fiery annihilation made me feel emotions that I didn’t even know that I had. Plus there’s an evil monkey character. Like there are very few film trilogies that manage to sustain a level of quality and excellence throughout all three films and I don’t think there are any that actually manage to significantly expand and deepen everything that happened before. Toy Story is the best cinematic trilogy of all time and anyone who disagrees doesn’t know what they’re talking about. End of story. 

So. When they said they were making a sequel everyone said they were crazy. Everyone said that it was a bad idea. Everyone said they shouldn’t do it. 

Aaaaaaaaaand everyone was right. 

What can I say about Toy Story 4? 

Well to start with – it’s a mistake. Like I’ve already said – The Toy Story Trilogy is an immaculate work of art that will exist in pure perfection forever. It didn’t need a part 4. That explains why I’ve resisted watching this movie for so long. There’s no need to add to perfection. 

And yes there was a part of me that was hopeful. That thought maybe these crazy geniuses at Pixar could do it again. Could show us all their mastery of storytelling and find some fresh new corner or insight that hadn’t already previously been mined. I remember seeing the adverts announcing the brand new character of Forky and thinking oh well ok that seems interesting. Maybe it’s going to be doing something interesting and cool and insightful. Maybe it’s going to be doing something worthwhile. 

And hey credit where it’s due – a kamikaze fork that insists that it’s trash and not a toy is certainly a bold leap forward and it certainly grabbed my interest. I leaned forward wanting to see what the film was going to do with this. 

Sadly the answer is – not much. Film starts off leaning towards the idea that the whole thing is going to be The Forky Show aka Toy Story Forky and yet – how ironic – it kinda trashes him about halfway through and focuses its attention on to other stuff. 

Namely the plastic interior of everyone’s favourite toy cowboy – Woody Woodson. 

And look yeah I get it. Being an immortal being cursed to be nothing more than a child’s plaything must levy a heavy psychological cost. I’m not doubting that. I’m just not sure there’s quite enough there to build a whole film around. Because that’s the feeling that I got left with by the end – this heavy feeling that the whole film was hollow. Although interestingly it feels like it’s hollow and doesn’t work in a way that feels very modern. 

Like if you like at the first three Toy Story films – they were all about reaching for something wider than just the individual. The first film is literally about Woody learning to see beyond himself and recognise the existence of other people. And that’s Buzz’s arc too. To get himself out of the narrative that he’s built around himself and see the wider world. Hell if you really want to go there that’s Sid’s arc too – for him to realise that his toys aren’t just toys but are actually independent entities with thoughts and feelings of their own (“So play nice!” etc). 

Sidenote: let’s just ignore how fucked up it is that Sid is punished and vilified for thinking that erm toys are just toys. LOL how very dare he etc 

But Toy Story 4 is about the opposite of all that. It’s about Woody learning to centre himself and stop doing things to please other people. Dude needs to taking more Me Time and forget about helping “his kid” Bonnie. Which yeah I don’t know – seems kinda fucked up to me? I mean I think I’d prefer a hero that was learning to act more selflessly rather than more selfishly? Anyone else or is it just me?

And on top of that – I mean the whole film kinda reminds me of Avatar: Fire & Ash. All the moments feel like moments I’ve already seen before. Maybe the life of a toy doesn’t actually need four whole films to explore properly? Like there’s something too on the nose with having these characters spending most of their time running around an Antique Store and not in a good way. More of a sad way. 

Like one of the few bits of interesting design are the ventriloquist dummies who lumber around like zombies. Arms and legs not moving in the way that they’re supposed to – but it also feels like one of those times when a movie inadvertently contains a metaphor for itself. This film isn’t Toy Story. It’s the zombie version. All the parts are animated but the thing that’s animating it is no longer alive. You can not kill what does not live. 

This goes even further with the plot point that involves the bad guy cutting out Woody’s voicebox so that she can use it for her own. I mean I could spend a whole week trying to come up with a metaphor for how big studios steal the work of creative people and use it to make even more fucking money and not come up with anything as pointed as that. It’s like the film is animated by its own commodification. 

It’s also why the film doesn’t really feel like it works. There’s all of these plot points that go nowhere. That make it feel like they took 5 films and then spliced them together haphazardly. The whole Forky thing. Woody’s voicebox. Bonnie. Lost toys. At one time it looks like the movie is going to be about all of these things but then it pivots and decides that actually the whole thing is about Woody deciding to fuck off and do his own thing and how brave and nobel he’s being. But it’s a bit like watching Saving Private Ryan and the final scene is Tom Hanks saying “earn this” and then the camera pans and it turns out he’s speaking into a mirror. 

According to the behind the scene sources the original writers – Rashida Jones and Will McCormack – left the production of the film citing “philosophical differences”. My best guess is that they wanted the film to have a philosophy and got upset when they realised it didn’t. 

One of the producers said “we do not do any sequel because we want to print money” so he must have been really upset when Toy Story 4 grossed  over a billion dollars worldwide becoming the highest-grossing film in the franchise and so yes obviously Toy Story 5 is due to land this year and I’m sure it’ll be just as successful. Hooray. 

And yeah I’ll happily admit that it does feel very fitting that some of the biggest and most successful characters of the 21st Century are plastic creatures who can never die, who will just keep going on forever and ever and ever without end. 

Personally I’m looking forward to all the Toy Story films that we have to come. Toy Story 1 – 100. The extended Toy Story Universe. I’m looking forward to seeing Buzz Lightyear land on the Moon. I’m looking forward to seeing Rex go to Jurassic Park. I’m looking forward to seeing Jessie finally get her revenge on Emily who left her behind. I’m looking forward to seeing the establishment of The 1000 Year Toy Empire. I’m looking forward to seeing the last human being die and Woody writing his name on their boot. 

But at the moment at the end of the final Toy Story film when all the toys join hands and finally accept their fiery annihilation the only emotion I will feel will be joy. 

…

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