Bull Durham (1988)

I'm not a sports fan or even that fond of sports movies (The Wrestler and Real Steel are about as far as I go), so it was perhaps inevitable that I wouldn't enjoy Bull Durham very much. I found it very boring, and lazy in its assumption that the game is the most important thing in the world. Aside from that, it's fuelled by a sour, aggressive, homophobic male energy, none of the characters have believable connection and the only two female characters are groupies with no motivations or life beyond that.
Rating: Awful

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

I didn't come out infuriated like I did with TLJ, rather a weird mix of overwhelmed and bored. The film makes some of the big mistakes the other ST movies did - far too complicated story-wise (too many moving parts, too many characters); too much telling-not-showing; I don't really care about most of the characters in it; the same old destroy-the-planet-killer-climax.
Yet again, I found myself wishing they'd focused on Ben and Rey primarily, with a handful of other characters tied into them (so, Palpatine and Leia would be the big hitters in this movie, you could really get rid of all the others and not lose anything). The whole thing with Richard E Grant is utterly pointless, Poe's love interest and Finn's new ex-Stormtrooper friend are so crammed in it feels like they're backdoor piloting new tv shows.


There was a lot of stuff that would have been much cooler if it had time to breathe (and, for some of them, if they had been planned for/introduced in the previous two). Two examples:
- the 'light-jump-skip' sequence. This is a really cool idea but it came right in the middle of an incredibly rushed montage of a million different set-ups. Would have been great if this had some more time to have them jump into a quiet bit of space, for the TIE fighters to need a few seconds to calculate the trajectory and follow them, maybe even being a little more cautious about where they pop out so you get the beats of the Falcon arriving at a new location, reacting, then the TIEs arriving and making their way back to the Falcon etc. Done better, this could have been the climactic action scene - better that than another (surprisingly badly directed) space battle between the same old ships.
- Palpatine. His return is revealed in the opening crawl, we never get to hear his message, in that same bewildering opening montage Ren tracks him down, he's revealed, his previous plans are explained, his new plan is set-up. It's all so fast and there's no craft to it, no drama. Then he doesn't do much through the movie, then Rey gets to him and he does more explaining then his plan changes and he explains his NEW new new plan. If your character is having to describe things happening as they happen, you've fucked up.


Overall, I wish Kathleen Kennedy had a) planned some stuff through a bit more, and sunglasses) had the mantra "simplify, slow down, show don't tell" drilled into everyone's heads. I think in ten years time, out of the PT OT and ST, the ST is going to be the trilogy I least want to re-watch. It's kind of embarrassing that the PT avoided some of the big mistakes that the ST made over and over.
Rating: Bad

Chuck and Buck (2000)

Some great performances and an effectively unnerving balance between comedy and stalky tension. Only issue is that it feels a bit aimless - after some initial escalation it really plateaus until the last fifteen minutes - but that does at least add to the lo-fi naturalism of the film.
Rating: Good

The Big Easy (1986)

A tonally mismatched film that seems to mainly want be a sweaty police corruption crime drama, but also wants to be a Howard Hawks comedy and a sappy romcom. This flip-flopping works against all the charm the cast desperately try to bolster the film with, and results in unlikable leads in a weightless story.
Rating: Bad

Robin Hood (2018)

Skimmed through the last half hour of this. It's a charmless collection of tropes that don't make sense in this movie: the training montage (where he learns to be good with a bow despite having fought with one for years); all the rich people dressed like people from Panem in The Hunger Games (despite this being set in the 12th century); the hero not telling the love interest about his plan to steal from the rich to give to the poor (despite her having been doing that before he ever was). The Will Scarlett character doesn't make sense for most of the movie until you realise that in what is now standard overly-optimistic franchise-seeding, he's being set up as Sheriff Of Nottingham Mk II. Most bizarre of all though is that it not only lifts the idea of an Arabic sidekick from Prince Of Thieves, it also casts an African-American in the role!
Rating: Bad

Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

A bland script full of zero-dimensional characters that makes the original look like Shakespeare and makes some major bone-headed mistakes, like being a mechs vs kaiju movie with almost no kaiju in it, and pissing away its one cool idea, which actually makes the dreadful over-used scientist characters from the first movie interesting, by *under-using* them.
Rating: Bad

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Fucking terrible. No craft, no physical weight to any of it, terrible dialogue, nothing new or exciting. It feels more like a shitty X-Men movie than a Terminator movie. The only good bit in the entire film is when they play a clip from Terminator 2.

For my own records more than anything else, some specific things I didn't like:

The new future AI baddy. This is a total Starkiller move, a lesser version of an iconic thing. It's also just frustrating because it feels like the heroes will never be allowed to win because the franchise demands it.
The way all the characters, human and cyborg are either Flubbering all over the place or doing cool 'superhero landings'. In the first two movies, the Terminators tumbled around like the big bags full of metal that they are, they had weight and physicality to them. Here, even Sarah Connor is getting flung about like a CG ragdoll and not even getting bruised.
Another comedy/tragic self-sacrificing model 101. Ugh.
The painfully obvious '*Danni* is the future leader' twist.
Saying 'fuck' a lot is not cool.
Why bother with this 'enhanced human' bullshit? Just make her a terminator, there's no functional difference. She's got her neck ripped open, it's all just wires, she doesn't notice. In fact, why is she there at all? Just have it be Sarah and Carl (or preferably a different model for once).
If you're going to ignore T3 onwards and bring Sarah and a 101 back, why kill John off and get rid of Skynet? Get Furlong back in!
Rating: Awful

Happy Death Day (2017)

Good fun, even if it's fairly predictable (though to be fair it caught me a couple of times with some nice fake-outs) and occasionally warrants yelling obvious advice at the screen. Will deffo watch the sequel at some point.
Rating: Good

The Lost City of Z (2016)

Looks gorgeous, strong performances. The pacing is a double-edged sword - it's deliberate and conveys the passage of time well, but it can also be a little frustrating to watch this guy go out to the Amazon and return over and over without ever achieving anything (until the ambiguous ending, perhaps).
Rating: Good

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

A masterfully gripping portrayal of a ten year operation. Although in its efforts to keep the story moving, it does get a little "24" at times (the lone agent pushing against her superiors in her quest for revenge, the extended enclosure sequence at the end which gets close to fetishising the military precision) and also muddies the waters in its stance on torture, overall it manages to maintain a realistic and critical eye (Chastain's character slowly becoming accustomed to and implicit in torture, the soldiers who kill Bin Laden portrayed as man-children holding model helicopters like toys).
Rating: Good

You Were Never Really Here (2017)

Very slick atmospheric thriller which is basically a grimy remake of the first Sin City story. That's no bad thing, it's a visceral tale, but aside from a bit more thematic depth (lots of American flags, red blood on blue and white outfits, and flashbacks to traumatic moments either in service of the country or dealt out by those who are) it's also just as lightweight.
Rating: Good

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

A rich, soulful, yet (intentionally) frustrating film. Looks gorgeous and full of great performances.
The only reason I've not rated this higher is because it's (a very well-told version of) stuff I've seen a lot before - strong African-American community in 70s Brooklyn, get fucked over by the white man.
Rating: Good

Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Some pretty cool pulpy visuals and sound design, but rather stilted. Basically watched this for the influences on Alien; outside of 'big alien skeletons' any other similarities are fairly generic, and I suspect there must be earlier examples of that in genre fiction...
Rating: Bad

Not Another Teen Movie (2001)

Perhaps a little less atrocious than Epic Movie etc, but not that far off. Probably about as good as Scary Movie 1. Certainly not as good as, say, Hot Shots, because it never creates its own material. It's purely repeating individual film moments and occasionally genre tropes, slightly heightened or with a glaringly obvious twist or just straight up described by a character. What's more, every joke is repeated and explained to death.
Rating: Bad

The Babadook (2014)

Great acting, monster design and effects (including the appearance in a convincing Melies style movie playing on the tv) and direction. The allegory sometimes takes over at expense of the rules, but generally a very cool Nightmare On Elm Street vibe.
Rating: Good

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)

A touching, low-key Cuckoo's Nest. Deftly balances joy and hope in human connection with anger and despair at society, though this gives it a slightly directionless feel.

Rating: Good

Marie Antoinette (2006)

Factually lightweight, but emotionally powerful. A cleverly contemporary and human look at an historical figure. Looks and sounds great, loads of strong performances and full of empathy.
Rating: Very Good

The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

Low stakes, tropey but extremely charming coming-of-age film.
Rating: Good

Adult World (2013)

Incredibly tame drama about a 21 year old who acts like a 14 year old.
I don't know who this is for, because it's far too soft and unrealistic for adults, yet it has some bizarre messaging for any 14 year old viewer - Amy runs away from home for little to no reason, apparently never contacts her parents to let them know she's safe, puts her physical safety in the hands of near-strangers repeatedly, falls into a job at a the least seedy, most overstaffed, conscientiously-managed porn shop ever, finds the most desirable, affordable run-down bedsit ever, and meets a parade of men who are not willing to take advantage of a naive, attractive young woman begging them to take her virginity.
I had to stop watching an hour in when she attempted to seduce an older man by acting like a parody of a femme fatale from a 30s movie, got sick from three shots of whiskey and then had a hangover the next day. It's like a self-serious, worthy Pee-Wee Herman movie.
Rating: Bad

The Bling Ring (2013)

Effectively portrays the vapid shallow livestyle of the kids who did this, but doesn't have anything to say beyond "vapid shallow kids with no parental presence are going to do some shallow, stupid stuff" and is pretty much just that for 90 minutes. It even has one of the kids spell all this out to an interviewer at the end to make sure we got it. Well made but dull.
Rating: Bad

Mr. Brooks (2007)

Surprisingly pulpy, good fun, well-acted - Costner, Hurt and even Dane Cook all pitch it just right. It is very reminiscent of Dexter, and the ending fizzles out a little (apparently they were hoping to make a trilogy!) though.
Rating: Good

The Nines (2007)

An inventive, cool movie. Plays lots of narrative tricks and is confident enough not to end in ambiguity. Ryan Reynolds gives an accomplished performance, at the time surprisingly so, and Melissa McCarthy and Hope Davis are also great.
Rating: Very Good

The Voices (2014)

Ryan Reynolds is great, and the movie balances its tone really well. It runs out of ideas in the last half hour or so, though - suspicious co-workers take a lot longer than they should to act (and even then they're pretty stupid) then Jerry just gives up.
Rating: Good

Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019)

Things I liked - the Mysterio 'hallucination' sequence; bringing back the BAG OF SCRAPS scientist from Iron Man 1; the end action scene (for once, I could tell what was going on and where everyone was, and it had some character beats. Spidey still didn't get to do much past his basic move-set, though).
Things I didn't like - pretty much everything else. All of the comedy was dreadful, the script is flabby and aimless and doesn't gather any energy for the first hour or so, the action is mostly dull and muddled, the exposition is clumsy, and SLJ obviously didn't have much time booked because there's some really sloppy editing papering over cracks in his scenes.
Rating: Fine

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)

Looks great, lots of charismatic performances and involving sequences. But a really flabby structure and doesn't really have anything to say beyond 'old Hollywood was cool'.
Rating: Good

Maniac (2012)

Gave up on this tacky movie halfway through, despite it being under 90 minutes.
The first-person conceit is inconsistent (apparently this is a killer who spends a lot of time making establishing shots, not looking where he's driving, posing in reflections with his knife held just right, as well as having a narrow yet adjustable field of vision and some sort of lens flare disorder, and the ability to teleport), the victims and kills are all cheesy stupid b-movie bullshit, and the whole thing is washed over with lazy post-Drive 80s neon/synth.
None if it is particularly original or subtle either - extended killer POV shots have been a staple for decades (granted the 1980 original partook in this), doing the whole thing in first-person had already happened with found-footage movies, the killer is driven by mommy issues, and at one point they play Goodbye Horses.
There are some cool moments with hallucinations, and if the film had leant more in this direction I probably would have enjoyed it a whole lot. But instead it's mostly the kind of movie Scream took the piss out of 15 years earlier.
Rating: Bad

Paper Girls back-and-front covers

Here's a compilation of all the covers from the Paper Girls comic series.

First, the front-and-back landscape versions:

https://i.imgur.com/Q8gUdig.jpg

And the standard front cover portrait versions:

https://i.imgur.com/XeJhppX.jpg

Paper Girls translations

In commemoration of the release of Issue 30 of the wonderful comic book series Paper Girls, here are the translations of all the instances of future speak.
I'm working from digital versions, so my page numbers may occasionally be off.
Please let me know in the comments if you spot any errors or omissions.

Issue 1
Page 34
Panel 2
GODDAMMIT.
Panel 3
SPLIT UP. WE’LL MEET AT THE SECOND FOLDING.
Panel 4
STAY AWAY FROM ME!
Page 35
STOP!
Page 36
PLEASE!
Page 37
YOURE GOING TO GET YOURSELVES KILLED!
Page 38
Panel 3
YOU PEOPLE ARE OUT OF YOUR
Panel 4
NO

Issue 2
Epigraph
NOSTALGIA IS DEATH
Page 3
SHIT.
Page 4
SHIT!

Issue 3
Epigraph
DEATH IS FOREVER
Page 12
Panel 4
NO.
Panel 5
NOT JUDE.
Page 13
Panel 1
MY LOVE.
Panel 2
GOODBYE.
Panel 3
- WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS, HECK?
- I GOT NO CLUE.
Panel 4
BUT SHIT JUST GOT MESSY.
Page 20
BUT I DID.
Page 21
Panel 1
EVERYBODY BE COOL. WERE THE GOOD GUYS.
Panel 3
LIKE HELL.
Panel 6
YEAH.

Issue 4
Epigraph
FOREVER IS NOW
Page 7
Panel 2
SHIT WAS THAT AN EDITRIX?
Panel 6
THAT.
Page 9
HECK!
Page 16
ITS OVER NALDO.
Page 17
WE CANT STAY HERE.
Page 19
Panel 1
THIS WAY.
Panel 5
FINALLY.
Page 20
Panel 1
ILL START HER UP.
Panel 3
NO.
Panel 4
BUT IT WILL TAKE HER SOMEPLACE THAT CAN.
Page 21
Panel 4
STAY RIGHT HERE.
Panel 5
WELL BE BACK SOON.

Issue 5
Epigraph
NOW IS GONE
Page 1
IM ON IT.
Page 15
Panel 2
WARNING VERTEX HAS BEEN BREACHED.
Panel 3
EVACUATE THE TUPLEQUAD IMMEDIATELY.

Issue 6
Page 15
Panel 1
STAY AWAY!
Panel 4
DAMMIT. IM HERE...
Page 16
...AND I ALREADY HATE IT.

Issue 7
Page 1
HEY!
Page 2
Panel 1
DONT DO THAT!
Panel 2
HOLD ON WOULD YOU KEEP SAYING STUFF PLEASE?

Issue 8
Cryptography Corner
HELLO
HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS
YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO THIS LANGUAGE
DO NOT TRUST THE ANDG
PETEY IS NOT YOUR FRIEND
RITA IS NOT YOUR FRIEND
IF YOU ARE READING THIS MESSAGE WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE
IF YOU ARE READING THIS MESSAGE WE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE
IF YOU ARE READING THIS MESSAGE WE KNOW WHEN YOU ARE
THIS IS NOT YOUR TIME
DO NOT ENTER THIS CONTEST
DO NOT ENTER THIS CONTEST
THE APPLE HAS FALLEN FAR FROM THE TREE
LUNCHBOX

Issue 10
Page 6
Panel 3
CUNT!
Panel 5
YOU FUCKING INGRATES. UNCLE HECK GAVE HIS LIFE FOR YOU.
Page 7
Panel 3
WHA
Panel 4
NO! WHAT HAVE YOU
Art contest entry
COOL! (note: the entrant forgot to flip their second "O"!)

Issue 11
Page 4
PERIOD

Issue 17
Page 2
Panel 1
SHIT!
Panel 2
- AN OLD COP CAR JUST RAN RIGHT INTO US!
- STAY CALM HECK. CONCENTRATE ON THE ENEMY.
Panel 3
WE CANT BEAT THEM JUDE!
WE DONT HAVE TO LOVE.
Panel 4
JUST TRY TO BUY US A LITTLE TIME.

Issue 19
Page 5
KEEP MOVING!
Page 6
Panel 1
THEYRE RIGHT BEHIND US!
Panel 3
- AN OLD TIMER!
- HECK DONT!
Page 7
SHES JUST A LOCAL. COME ON.

Issue 20
Page 10
Panel 2
ANIMALS.
Panel 3
- FORGET THEM HECK.
- YEAH NALDO SAYS THE COUNCIL STASHED A LIFEBOAT DOWN HERE.
Panel 4
LETS GO.
Page 11
Panel 1
YOU REALLY WANT TO RISK TRAVELLING ALL THE WAY HOME IN ONE OF THOSE THINGS?
Panel 2
SCREW THE FUTURE HECK.
Panel 3
I SAY WE PRESS DEEPER INTO THE PAST.

Issue 25
Charlotte's letter in the letters page
YOUR DREAMS ARE CODED MESSAGES FROM ANOTHER TIME. PLEASE, YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER. THE WAR IS ALMOST OVER. IF YOU....

Issue 27
Page 4
Panel 1
WHAT THE HELL?
Panel 3
FUCK

Issue 28
Page 3
COMPANIONS
Page 13
ZEROTH FOLDING

Atomic Blonde (2017)

A superficial blend of a handful of different films (Tinker Tailor..., Drive, Boogie Nights, Children Of Men, Skyfall) with a bland, meaningless story of spies who all seem to know each other and their secrets and yet trundle on regardless. A veneer of 80s neon and predictable song choices doesn't elevate it. There is one impressively long one-shot action sequence which is fun, although it's stylistically incongruous in its Hardcore Henry-level cartoonishness.
Rating: Bad

Alien: Covenant (2017)

Stupendously bad.
It's like the writers thought, "Right, why didn't people like Prometheus? Because it was too cerebral. So let's make this the dumbest, cheesiest, tackiest version of an Alien movie ever!" It still had all the origin bullshit and people acting like idiots from Prometheus, but then it was like AvP Requiem levels of shitty horror for the rest of it, with people having sexy showers before they get killed and painfully obvious 'oh no he's the real killer!' twists, and big dopey action sequences where everyone's bouncing around like it's a Pirates Of The Caribbean movie.
They had Alien POV shots - a mistake not even the shittiest of the previous films made - where it's revealed that it sees everything exactly the same except with a kind of wriggly snot filter.
And the origin stuff is even more stupid and makes even less sense now.
Embarrassing.
Rating: Awful

Dark Phoenix (2019)

Surprisingly good! Much better than Apocalypse, better than Last Stand, not as good as the others. It had a story that tied in with the X-Men, and with mutants' place in society, some great action scenes, and new places for the characters to go. Downsides were that, like Apocalypse, felt less standalone and more serialised, and though there were lots of differences it was still going over old ground with the Dark Phoenix storyline. It also left a lot of stuff open despite likely being the last X-Men movie in this version, which is a shame when DOFP looped stuff around so nicely.
Rating: Good

Good Omens (2019)

Sheen and Tennant are great, but in general this can be characterised best as irritating.
In general, it's just so meandering and fumbles a lot of scenes by going on too long, and it's really unclear about story rules and character motivations. But it's full of little things like:
The narration has a H2G2 feel to it, but where that show stopped the story for little asides, this one crams the narration in at the edges and also uses it to tell us stuff they're showing us anyway.
Those setting cards really bug me - why are they like that? Little signs that flap up with condensation on the camera?
All the stunt casting is incredibly distracting, and a lot of the general casting is just wrong. It all feels very 'school play'.
There are near-constant cheap jokes revolving around a character saying "oh God" or "I'll be damned" or (in bad weather) "it's hell out there".
IRRITATING.
Rating: Bad

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Not great.

It didn't have the usual 'overstuffed/too much arc plot' issues - it actually felt quite streamlined and propulsive, and the arc plot is the point here so it's fine.

But the action is still terrible, and that's even harder to ignore on one of these big team-up movies. (There's a scene early on where it's hard to tell what's going on with all the shaky-cam, whip-pans and fast edits, and all that's happening is two characters sitting down playing shove ha'penny, it's ridiculous.)

The main problem was the time-travel rules: they pick like three different rule-sets and break all of them. It's hugely confusing and distracting, it really muddies all the stakes, character arcs and narrative up. But also, there are a lot of character arcs fizzling out or repeating themselves, character powers being wildly inconsistent; the kind of thing that a film franchise so praised for creating a huge ongoing, sprawling and interweaving story should really not be dropping the ball on.

Not as good as Ragnarok, or Avengers 1, or Iron Man 1, or a lot of Game Of Thrones, or Back To The Future 2.
Rating: Fine

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

Okay. Solid performances, nicely shot. Just felt very flat - barely anything happens, no character progression, no risk or consequence.
Rating: Good

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Terrible. I didn't know anything about the story going in, and for me it was just two solid hours of clunky exposition. There's no narrative throughline at all. The visuals don't feel fresh (I liked the glimpses of future Mexico, wish Rodriguez had done more with that setting) or awe-inspiring, and look quite cheap in parts. None of the actors get anything to do. The action-scenes are more Transformers than Desperado (the bar fight worked quite well, though). I wish Cameron had directed this, frankly, because whatever Avatar's failings, the direction was never overwhelmed by the VFX.
The film was shot in real 3D and it's noticeable in about 3 shots. 90s Rodriguez would have had a lot more fun with the 3D.
Rating: Bad