Alex Garlandâs Annihilation is nominally a horror film.1
Team of scientists goes into an evil forest, gets picked off one by one with cool body horror
effects, blonde final girl makes it out and is irreversibly traumatised, movie ends, many such
cases.2
But iâve never seen it that way.
Might i just be a contrarian? Certainly, the biosphere our characters enter is cruel, but i think
itâs a useful exercise to consider the situation from its perspective. The government is on their
Gods-know-how-manyth expedition into the Shimmer at this point, and up until now, itâs all been
military men. Cripes, if i were a sentient self-regulating ecosystem and all these feds started
probing around my internals because they want to kill me, iâd develop an immune response too.
The world beyond the Shimmer is beautiful beyond description. It is a place where the sky glistens
in iridescent3
waves, where every sort of plant grows from every sort of bush and beast, and where death is just
one step in a beautiful cycle of life and rebirth.4
It blurs the line between not just the species but kingdoms of life â flora, fauna, and funga all
mingling and merging together equally under one roof. Barring the terrifying humanâbear hybrids,
thatâs a world iâd like to live in.
Plus, it seems willing to learn. In the ending âfightâ
(cue the noise), allegorical for the obvious as the
visuals may be, the alien throws not a single punch. Itâs learning by doing, mimicking every move
Lena makes, enough to turn into a rudimentary facsimile of her â and even after its destruction, the
ending glimmer in her and her husbandâs eyes makes clear a part of the Shimmerâs essence is here to
say. I say thatâs for the better.
P.S. Hereâs some stuff iâve been listening to recently (sorted from
âbleep bloopâ to âstrum strumâ):
I reviewed this one in full back in August, so go check that out
if you want more detail. A stylish sequel (sevenquel?) that makes the world of Alien more
believable than ever and introduces some great new talent. (7/10)
Seeing Christopher Lloyd in this was like seeing Jeff Goldblum in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Like, hey, youâre not meant to be famous yet!
Itâs one of those films thatâs been talked about so much that i have very little new to add, but i
will say that i wasnât expecting this to be as funny as it was.1(7/10)
Ugh. Once the plot gets moving two thirds of the way through itâs pretty good, but that
first hour is ĂŚsthetically revolting in the most perplexing way. The Spanish countryside has never
looked so grimy and clammy. I hate all of these people. (3½/10)
I didnât know Steven Spielberg had the capacity to be so⌠cryptic? I love how the film builds up the
mystery of whatâs going on, with an ending that leaves you wondering in both senses of the word.
Contactâs better, yeah, but Contact wouldnât exist without Close Encounters as
a base to work off. (9/10)
Douglas Trumbull, 2001âs special-effects man, gets into directing with this sickeningly
seventies environmentalist sci-fi fable. Thereâs a lot to like here, but i canât help the feeling
that this would have worked a lot better if youâd cut it up into five twenty-minute
TV episodes and had Tom Baker show up midway through. (5/10)
Went to the cinema for this, for⌠some reason? Tim Burton is back, baby, having finally freed
himself from Disneyâs offputting computer-generated tendrils, and while
Beetlejuice²: Beetlejuice Harder is ultimately inessential, itâs a fun legasequel thatâs
better than anyone was reasonably expecting, keeping up the same manic energy as the original.
Michael Keaton, Catherine OâHara, and Winona Ryder havenât missed a step since 1988. Willem Dafoe is
great too, though like most of the new cast, his character doesnât have much to do in the story,
which struggles to commit to any of its three plot threads.
Also, the lead girl falls in love with a socially awkward zoomer who listens to Sigur RĂłs, which
means thereâs still a chance for me. So thatâs⌠thatâs good. Thatâs reassuring. (6/10)
Come on. Itâs Casablanca. What do you want me to say? Every five minutes thereâs a line that
made me point at the screen like Leonardo DiCaprio. âWeâll always have Paris.â(10/10)
Unnerving to see Dev Patel before his ongoing âsexiest man aliveâ era, but you can never go wrong
with Danny Boyle, whose kinetic, saturated style elevates a simple feel-good rags-to-riches story.
(6/10)
I cannot fucking believe i roped my mum into coming to the cinema with me.2
Greatest decision of my life. Her fucking face!
The Substance is the goopiest [sic] movie iâve ever seen, and thatâs ignoring all the
body horror. Demi Moore digs through wet rubbish to pick up a sticky
USB drive and splatters eggs everywhere. Dennis Quaid eats a bowl of
shrimp that makes the worldâs most viscerally disgusting noise. Margaret Qualleyâs teeth fall out.3
My one complaint is i wish it had gone further. Everyone on the internet thinks it went too far. No.
They are fools. That blood-sprayed audience should have started melting into The Thing, and we all
know that deep inside our hearts. (9½/10)
Long live the new flesh! A film starring a Betamaxussy and a man who exists exclusively
through semi-sentient VHS tapes. So many ideas, so little time (the
Cronenberg special). Watching this is like trying to remember a nightmare you just woke up from.
Iâm filing this in the same folder as Rear Window, a film with a surprising amount to say
about an internet that it couldnât have reasonably foreseen. What are we if not, like Brian
OâBlivion4, ghosts of all our past transmissions? Is the online avatar not the new flesh?
Existenz tackles the internet more head-on, but suffers from the fact that David Cronenberg
doesnât know what a video game is. Videodrome is unburdened by the future facts, and so can
say whatever it wants. (10/10)
Francis Ford Coppolaâs final fart is why Hollywood canât have nice things, an incomprehensible
schmaltzy mess about how Adam Driver is a Very Special Boy who is always right. I donât know where
the money went â everything looks like Spy Kids. What an embarrassing way to go out.
(2/10)
Francis Ford Coppola shoots for the moon and misses with Megalopolis, his long-gestating
passion project that shows why studio interference isnât always the worst thing. Sometimes you need
someone in the room to say ânoâ. Every creative decision made here is baffling: Adam Driverâs
character can stop time, and this never comes up. Our main character can
stop time, and this does not play a role in the filmâs story! His political rival
leaks a video of him having sex with an underage pop star, and within about five minutes, it turns
out it was fake and she was 23 anyway, so that plotlineâs resolved and never comes back up. Every
conflict is like this. I donât know whatâs going on. (4/10)
Francis Ford Coppolaâs Megalopolis: A Fable defies your puny human notions of âgoodâ or âbadâ
in an ambitious sci-fi drama thatâs like if Hillary Clinton wrote a Neil Breen film.5
You can neatly split the cast into âknew what kind of movie they were inâ and âdidnâtâ. Shia LeBeouf
knew â he chews the scenery with every line as if the sets were made of cotton candy. Aubrey Plaza
knew, because thereâs no way not to know what kind of movie youâre in when your character
is called âWow Platinumâ and makes Mr LeBeouf give her head. Adam Driver probably knew? He can get
pretty hammy, but heâs kind of trying to keep a straight face. Nathalie Emmanuel didnât know â sheâs
the female lead, but her performance is so wooden i was genuinely shocked to find out she wasnât a
nepotism hire. Giancarlo Esposito is insulated enough from the properly weird stuff that i donât
think he knew. (6/10)
Francis Ford Coppolaâs Francis Ford Coppolaâs Megalopolis: A Fable is so sincere i canât help
but love it. Itâs a man who built his fame on films about the criminal underworld and the hell of
war going: âI refuse to let this be my legacyâ. Megalopolis is about a man with a vision for
a better future and the power to make it happen. (His vision for a better future mostly involves
those moving walkways they have at airports. I never said it was perfect.) And, yeah, itâs a little
undercooked. Yeah, itâs as subtle as a brick.6
But itâs the film the man wanted to make, and itâs a film that proudly stands against the cynical
doom and gloom that has infested popular culture since the nineties. I canât help but respect that.
(8/10)
âWhaddaya think of this boner i got?â âJon Voight, 2024 (10/10)
Super props to the trailer people, honestly â if it wasnât for seeing that chilling first
trailer in cinemas, iâd never have even considered watching the seventh film in a
franchise i didnât particularly care for.
I watched Fede Ălvarezâs turn at the Alien franchiseâs helm with, i sense, the ideal amount
of knowledge. Online reviews are split â and the more Alien films the reviewerâs seen, the
less they like it. Me? Iâd sat down for the first and second, once, a while ago, and that was it. No
slogging through assembly cuts or failed comebacks or stealth prequels or anything of the sort.
Where they saw the gasping regurgitations of a dying and overexerted setting, i saw a darn good
film.
The opening credits start rolling and weâre immediately in the future. Yesterdayâs future.
Everythingâs clicks and clacks and yellowing walls, just as James Cameron left it when he turned off
the lights. What theyâve done is turn what could be an embarrassing anachronism â haha, look at what
those quaint twentieth-century fools thought today would look like â into a believable path that,
with a nudge and a push, technology might have otherwise taken. Certainly, the bulky
CRTs and Vectrex video games arenât better than the technology
of even ten years ago IRL⌠but theyâre cheaper, exactly the
sort of thing a fledgling colony would use to save money, and one gets the sense that the
predilection for tactile tools and fuzzy screens is the result of ĂŚsthetics cycling back to where
they were a hundred years ago, not everyone collectively forgetting how to make a liquid-crystal
display.
Two sci-fi pet peeves of mine are nicely resolved, too. In the role of the astronomer-aggravating
âââasteroid fieldâââ we
instead have the ring of an icy planet; the shipâs artificial gravity system is no mere cost-saving
cop-out, but a structual Jenga block in the filmâs action scenes, which mine the flip between 0 and
1 g for all itâs worth. Objectively speaking, Alien: Romulus just wouldnât work on a
hard sci-fi rotating spaceship, which is a rare thing!
Seven films into a franchise, it would be easy to bog oneself down in continuity and lock out any
viewers who havenât melted into their couch for a twelve-hour marathon. (This is the predicament
which Marvel films have found themselves in as of late.) Equally, it would be easy to go too far in
the quest to âbreathe new lifeâ⢠into the world and leave us wondering why they put the
Alien name on it at all. Romulus finds a sensible middle path. Its connection with the
Alien brand is chiefly a matter of economy. We know, for example, that xenomorphs are bad,
that they have acid blood, and that they get you boypreggers. We know Weyland-Yutani is an
unscrupulous corporation in the business of space colonisation that wants to use xenomorph
DNA for its own gain. We know that androids are made of milk for some
reason. And so Mr Ălvarez neednât waste any time explaining that to us. Equally, nobody ever says
the name âEllen Ripleyâ. Thereâs no mention of the ancient progenitors of mankind or whatever those
prequel films were about. Our story is set in the world of Alien, not the wiki.* (Please
ignore that Asterisk of Doom. Iâm sure itâs fine.)
*The Asterisk of Doom, or, the dead CG elephant in the room
This was an exceedingly minor thing to my overall enjoyment and i didnât want to give it more
space than it deserved, so iâm shunting it down here where noĂśne will see it. So. That, uh⌠that
Ian Holm deepfake, huh?
There has always been spirited debate over the ethical quandaries of reviving old actors with
effects, even before the current wave of machine learning â Crispin Glover sued Universal for
flipping his character upside down in Back to the Future: Part II, remember! I actually
donât mind it, particularly when the character themself, like Ian Holmâs Ash/Rook, is meant to
be artificial. (And as before, the same way we already know xenomorphs are bad news, we already
know Mr Holmâs face wonât belong to someone with our crewâs best interests at heart.)
My annoyance is strictly technical. To understand the problem, letâs flash back fourteen years
to Tron: Legacy, the first blockbuster to bring back an old face with the power of the
computer:
Š Disney, 2010. Iâm using this clip for the purpose of criticism, as is my right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Bastids.
Here Joseph Kosinskiâs legasequel flashes back to the original filmâs time period, so faces the
task of bringing back Jeff Bridges as he looked in 1982. It starts with just his voice. Perfect:
faces and bodies change drastically in oneâs life, but at worst, a voice will get a little
huskier.
Then, as we pan into his sonâs room, we see him first from the back, then a side profile, in the
dark. Again, perfect. Hiding shoddy CGI in the dark has been a go-to
in the filmmakerâs bag of tricks since Spielberg did it in Jurassic Park. This is going
great. We have a believable fake Jeff Bridges. Weâre hitting our audience right in the nostalgia
zone, which, as we all know, is the most profitable zone of the body. And then⌠oh. Ohhh no.
Ohhh no no no.
Mr Bridgesâs doppelganger turns around directly into the bright light and opens his mouth. Every
weakness in early-tens computer graphics comes out at once. The plastic skin. The dead eyes. The
mouth that never moves the same way as the rest of the face. This is not Jeff Bridges. This is a
changeling who has stolen his name and skydived into the uncanny valley. The illusion is
shattered, because the filmmakers couldnât help themselves from giving the game away.
I bring this example up because Alien: Romulus has the exact opposite problem. The crew,
exploring a dank, dark ship, finds Rook face down on the messy ground, having barely survived a
close encounter of the third kind. They plug him in, and⌠a heretofore unknown bright light
turns to shine directly onto his face, on which not a jot of blood or waste is to be found.
(Itâs harder to deepfake someone if thereâs muck in the facial area, you understand.) This is
everything youâre not meant to do, and though technology has advanced tremendously in the
fourteen years since Rubbery Bridges Syndrome, a cluster of neurons in the back of your head
knows that something is deeply wrong. There is no light in his eyes. I kept looking at his
eyebrows, wondering if the problem was there, but no. Every bit of his face looks perfect â but
all put together in motion⌠one shudders at the sight.
But the further the film goes on, the smarter it gets. After our scavengers leave the lab where
they found him, they interact with him chiefly through fuzzy
CRT screens, smoothing out the imperfections. Unable to move,
assorted gunk and alien goo piles up on his increasingly ravaged face, and when we do properly
cut back to him, heâs shot in a side profile with chiaroscuro alarm lights. I kept thinking:
why the fuck are you only doing this nowâ˝ You donât put the bad effects first, for Godsâ
sakes!
Anyway, the rubbery robot face didnât actually bother me that much â weâve come to the point
where weâre closer to the top of the uncanny valley than the bottom. I just needed some time to
explain.
Particularly iâd like to single out the cast, none of whom i had heard of before barring a passing
recollection of the name Cailee Spaeny, but all of whom do great jobs. Mr Ălvarez has aged down the
cast from the seriesâ usual monster fodder, not burnt-out truckers but wide-eyed twentysomething
pirates looking to steal some cryo pods to blast off after a better life. (Outside the lead two
theyâre pretty thin, but hey, itâs a monster movie.) Our lead is the orphaned Rain Carradine, a
serviceable Sigourneyalike played by Ms Spaeny, who reluctantly goes with the scavengers after she
finds out sheâs been assigned another six years on a black-skied mining colony⌠and because they
require the services of her android guardian Andy (heh), the only one who can interface with the
systems on the derelict space station they have their eyes on. David Jonsson, who plays Andy, would
deserve an âand introducingâ had he not been in Rye Lane just last year, but this alone
already proves heâs going on to do even greater things. Heâs given the task, without spoilers, of
playing what amounts to two different (but similar!) characters in the same body, and shows off his
naturalistic chops in every little micro-movement.
A certain scene with his character early on will be etched in my brain forever. Itâs the big reveal
of the Alienâ˘, facehuggers jumping out from every corner in a room flooded by molten ice and red
lights⌠and he stands there, rebooting, the same pose he was two minutes ago, his arms wide, as if
nothing happens. Two seconds later, he takes total command of the situation, going from timid to
Terminator in five seconds flat. If anything from this film is passed into the annals of pop culture
(other than the Asterisk) itâll either be that scene or the insane body-horror third act that i
darenât even mention for fear of ruining the experience. (Annihilation would be proud.)
Iâll be straight with you: itâs not as good as Alien. Itâs not as good as Aliens. But
nothing ever will be. Donât go in with sky-high expectations â go in for a rollicking
sci-fi-action-horror, xenomorph or no xenomorph, and youâll have a great time.
First up is Enemy (2013), a movie somebody peed on. Summarising the plot it sounds
a bit thin â Jake Gyllenhaal meets his evil twin Jake Evyllenhaal and not much else happens â
but Denis Villeneuve does a fantastic job of building up tension and dread around a slow-burning
premise which, in itself, isnât necessarily the scariest thing. 6/10.
Took a trip to the cinema to see Longlegs (2024), starring the greatest living
actor himself, Nic Cage. I say âstarringâ; heâs not in it so much, as itâs more about
the internal tensions of our mildly psychic, mildly autistic Clarice Starling stand-in, played
wonderfully by Maika Monroe. Again, the plotâs a bit thin, falling apart with a whimper in the
third act, but the style and execution more than makes up for it. There are so many looming
shots of doors and windows just at the edge of frame, snippets of interspersed terror, ominous
rumbling soundscapes⌠pretty good! 7/10.
Green Room (2015) is a solid little low-budget thriller where a punk band get
trapped in a nazi bar. Not much to say other than 6/10.
Watched Schindlerâs List (1993) for the first time. Cue several hours of inelegant
blubbering from me. (âI could have got moreâŚâ) I would like to apologise for calling John
Williams a hack. I was not familiar with your game, sir. 10/10, but it feels wrong to give it a
numbered score in the first place.
In Bruges (2008)! The online hype for this is ravenous and iâm not quite sure it
lives up, but i was suitably entertained. Colin Farrell has very kind eyes. 6½/10.
The Olympics were as uplifting as always. A Discord friend of mine put it best: âThe
Olympics makes me feel patriotic for the human raceâ. For a few glorious weeks, it doesnât
matter that the IOC is the third most corrupt organisation on the
planet behind Fifa and the Mafia. It doesnât matter that there are wars raging across the old
world. All that matters is that the most fit people on the planet have come to show what the
human body can really do when pushed to its limits.
After years of putting it off, i finally got around to
The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), all 3½ hours of it. Itâs hard to review just
the first part of the trilogy, but if the rest is as good as this, itâs on track for an easy 9.
Iâve been getting into the Eighth Doctor audio dramas recently and
âThe Chimes of Midnightâ might be among the best things to come out of Doctor Who.
Very dark. Very weird. It builds up this offputting atmosphere perfectly, Paul McGann and India
Fisher making you wish theyâd gotten a proper series, with the traditional timey-wimey twist.
9/10.
Hyped up to me as one of the best horror films in history, iâm convinced itâs actually an incredible
comedy. There is so much Gremlins energy oozing out of this whole film; every scene, you can
just imagine George Romero sitting back and going ââŚcan i, like, put that in a movie?â and then
putting that in a movie. A zombie gets pied in the face. 8/10.
Mad Max: Fury Road is not the greatest film ever made, but it feels like the
greatest film ever made while youâre watching it. Iâve never seen a film edited like this: a
two-hour-long sugar rush where every shot is overcranked till it breaks and nothing ever stops
moving. 9/10, with one point added solely because of the guy in the post-apocalyptic convoy whose
job it is to play the guitar.
Stepdadâs pick, in honour of Donald Sutherlandâs death. Great stuff, with a fascinating eerie
soundscape, creepily good practical effects, and, hang on, is that Jeff Goldblum? 7/10.
Well, that sure was a Russell T. Davies Doctor Who finale, wasnât it? Part oneâs always
great, and then, as always, he canât write an ending for the life of him.
Now the seasonâs over, itâs clear that it needed more room to breathe. Eight episodes of forty
minutes just isnât enough for a show to do both monster-of-the-week and a longer arc; with two
episodes taken up by the finale, two Doctor-lite episodes, and one where sheâs unconscious for half
of it, weâve barely gotten to know the relationship between Ruby and the Doctor, which is a shame,
because what we do get is brilliant! They play off each other so well, and i wish we could
have seen more of them together.
Seen on a whim. A nice little drama about a motorbike club, starring Elvis and Jodie Comer, whoâs
doing a⌠fascinating⌠Midwestern-type accent. 6/10.
âItâs like Rear Window, but on a lorry.â This scrappy Australian flick delivers just what it
says on the tin, with an early turn by Jamie Lee Curtis as a hitchhiker who gets picked up in the
second half. 6/10.
Iâm out of touch with music these days, but listening to Charli XCXâs
pulse-pounding new hyperpop record, i canât help but think this is what pop music must sound like in
the next universe over. I was sleep-deprived after staying up for election night and that definitely
helped the vibe⌠8/10.
Tombstone (1993). I have this pathological aversion to westerns, so i wasnât
expecting much â but once i turned off the part of me that was waiting for Richard Pryor to
show up i realised that this the ââemâ in âthey just donât make âem like they used taâ: just
a solid, well-made flick, regardless of my thoughts on the genre! I cried manly man tears at
the end. 7/10.
The Thirteenth Floor, everyoneâs fourth favourite film about a simulated world from 1999. I found it
surprisingly interesting whenever it didnât remind me too much of The Matrix, and a
bit pathetic whenever it did. (Donât try to do action, simulated world movie from 1999.
Youâll never measure up.) 6/10.
As a bonus, since nobody cares about this movie, you can just
watch it on Youtube if you
want.
Little Shop of Horors (1986). My pick for family movie night. Utterly charming
from leaf to toe â the best example since Gremlins 2 of a film where you can see the
craft that went into making every frame. Incredible effects, wonderful music, magnetic
comedic performances from the whole cast⌠10/10!
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), the impromptu double feature to the
above. My brain has been completely frazzled by watching this. I went from loving it to
hating it to complete bafflement to examining it like a scientist would a new species of
frog. This film may very well have invented homosexuality. Defies numerical rating/10.
Late Night with the Devil (2023). Always nice to see David Dastmalchian, even
if itâs nothing that hasnât been done before â 6/10.
The Fall Guy (2024). Ryan Goslingâs a brilliant comedic actor, but him and
some great setpieces struggle to save this film from a shoddy script and baffling editing
choices. The jokes arenât funny, the dialogue scenes linger for far too long, half the stuff
from the trailer is gone from the movie⌠the whole thing desperately needs a trimming down
to a tight ninety minutes. 4/10.
Eurovision 2024. Bullet-pointed, as per tradition:
I went in totally blind this year, having missed the semi-finals while building a new
PC. Oops!
Sweden appear to have trapped the Backstreet Boys in the Matrix.
There is no country named the Netherlands and never has been. Doesnât exist. Not real.
We begin bombing in five minutes.
Big fan of Spainâs bizarre campy cougar energy, even if the audience and juries werenât!
Estonia are frankly embarrassing.
Completely maxed out my scorecard for Ireland, who have sent in Xanthe-bait of the
highest order.
Yes⌠hahaha⌠yes!!!
Greeceâs song is the most annoying thing since Crazy Frog and it baffles me how highly
it scored.
I think the UK is just cursed at this point. We send a legitimate star with the worldâs
gayest performance (admittedly more in the âgetting sucked off in a dingy bathroomâ way
than the âcampy drag queenâ way) and not a single point from the audience?
God bless Finland. I usually hate it when acts try deliberately to be funny but i died
laughing at a pantsless man in a censored Windows 95 T-shirt
emerging from an egg while pyrotechnics go off.
Switzerland have taken Sam Ryderâs mantle as this yearâs designated golden retriever⌠a
great performance from someone whoâs clearly happy beyond words to be there. A deserving
winner if there ever was one.
Croatiaâs catchy pirate dance is great but i cannot forgive that abominable stage name.
I donât care how many records you sell; there is no excuse to call yourself Baby
Lasagna. Go back to the drawing board. Now.
T2 Trainspotting (2017). Mamaâs pick for family movie night. I wasnât so hot
on the idea going in⌠and then it was, to my surprise, pretty great! It uses the idea of the
legacy sequel to its advantage â itâs a film about nostalgia, the good and bad of
it all. It really does feel like youâre catching up with these characters twenty years
later, all wondering where their lives have gone. Some beautiful shots, too â a film from
2017 that bothered hiring a gaffer?? What a concept! 8/10.
127 Hours (2010), continuing the Danny Boyle theme. Probably the best film a
film about a guy whose hand is stuck next to a rock could ever be, it convinced me of the
occasional merit of a good biopic over a documentary â this would not and could not work if
you only had access to the original crummy camera footage and talking-head interviews. Also
perhaps the only movie in history to contain an inflatable Scooby-Doo jumpscare. I was going
to give it an 8, but then they played Sigur RĂłs in the triumphant ending scene, so sod it,
itâs a 9/10.
Chris Chibnall is dead and Doctor Who is alive! I thought Ncuti Gatwa was
playing the role too young at first, but the season proper has me totally convinced. His
Doctor, the first Doctor to Fuckâ˘, has this infectious energy and zest for life thatâs
totally new to the character, and a great rapoport with his companion â even when the new
series is bad, itâs unhinged in a fun way, rather than the forgettable doldrums of the
Chibnall era.
Aniara (2018). I actually watched this one back in February, but forgot to
mention it at the time â a Swedish hard(ish) sci-fi tragedy, where a colony ship on its way
to Mars gets knocked off course with no fuel left to turn
back. This is unrelentingly bleak, sometimes to the point where my brain would shut off and
stopped caring, but thereâs a lot to like.
I love the idea of the Mima as a character/narrative device/whatever: a living
AI that uses peopleâs memories to bring them back visions of
Earth as it was, then gets depressed because too many people
are using it and flooding it with memories of the apocalypse. Giving the holodeck a soul?
Genius.
Unfortunately it doesnât so much end as it just fizzles out â i guess you could make a case
that thatâs on purpose, since thatâs how these situations go in the real world, but i found
the whole dĂŠnouement deeply unsatisfying excepting the veeeery final shots (if you know, you
know). 6/10.
Anatomy of a Fall (2023). Caught this one at the
Tyneside, where it happened to be the next film
on at the time i got in. This spoke to me not just because of the powerhouse performances
from Sandra HĂźller, a dog named Messi (how did they get him to do that?), and the
fifteen-year-old(!!!) Milo Machado-Graner, who i wish nothing but the best in his future,
but because it matches up with events in my life to a frankly concerning autobiographical
extent. This would never, ever be in my wheelhouse were it not for random chance, but i
teared up thrice over. 10/10, and iâm annoyed i couldnât make it my best of last year.
Ten seconds after watching⌠Wait, people online think she killed the husband? Are
they fucking stupid? What? Itâs obviously an accident. Did we watch the same film? Did the
cut they saw not have all those carefully-inserted moments where people almost fall off of
ledges or get hit by cars to hammer home that accidents can, in fact, just happen? What?? I
â am i just projecting my own experiences here and not wanting to believe that my mum would
kill someone? And then if they donât think she killed the husband, theyâre like,
oh, well the husband deserved it, he was so awful in that argument, and like, no!!! The mum
in the film near enough turns to the camera and says âthe worst moments in someoneâs life
are unfairly cherry-picked as evidence for a trail and do not represent them as a wholeâ;
again, did we watch the same bloody film? Are people stupid? Am i stupid? Is Justine Triet
stupid? Am i dying?
Reservoir Dogs (1992). Mamaâs pick for family movie night. Every time i watch
a Tarantino film i really get the sense that heâs jacking off to how clever he is writing
the script and this is that tendency at its worst. I get why it caught on, i really do, but
this is absolutely insufferable from start to finish any time someone whoâs not a cop is on
screen. I do not care about your thoughts on Madonnaâs âLike a Virginâ, Quentin!
3ž/10.
Monkey Man (2024). I have been hyped as shit for this ever since the first
trailer came out. You can tell this is Sexiest Man Alive Dev Patelâs first time in the
directorâs chair (looooots of shaky-cam close-ups), but itâs damn stylish, and he shows a
lot of promise. I can also see why Netflix did not want to touch this with a barge pole
given that the plot is essentially âDev Patel kills the BJPâ.
(It has some, ah, terroristic overtones that would be a little concerning if it
were even 10% less shlocky.)
That aside, i really enjoyed the film, and thought it got better as it went along â early
on, i wasnât super clear on the character motivations at play, but then the most me-bait
thing since The Northman happens: Mr Patelâs character has a near-death-experience
flashback and wakes up having been rescued by a hijra priest at a secret temple to
Ardhanarishvara, a half-male, half-female incarnation of Shiva. Into! my!
fucking! veins! 6½/10.
De dolende god (2018),
as seen previously on The Garden. This is pretty much designed to appeal to me specifically, and yeah, itâs really good.
Itâs sweet, heartfelt, absolutely gorgeous, and of course, extremely European. Itâs the odd
one out in this list, being a comic book rather than a film â a medium i donât have much
experience with, so itâs hard to give it a numerical rating in the absence of comparisonsâŚ
but letâs say 8/10.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, season three. How did i let myself not get around to this earlierâ˝ This is soft
sci-fi running at peak performance â a crew of hyper-competent and endearing1
people on a starship, sometimes just going on wacky space adventures, other times using science
fiction as a lens through which to view our own world. 10/10. My three favourite episodes so
far:
âTin Manâ. Our character actor of the week, Harry Groener, plays a member of a
mildly telepathic species who has a small problem: he has Space Autism, thus canât turn
said telepathy off. Man, does this episode get it. Every little thing about him
is painfully relatable, the ending reduced me to tears, and i would like seven seasons
of a buddy cop spinoff show starring him and Data right now, please and thank you.
âThe Survivorsâ. The third episode in the season, this is the one that made me
sit up and go: God damn, thatâs good television. Our character of the week, John
Anderson, is the man of the house for an elderly couple who are the only ones left after
the decimation of their planet. I canât reveal anything more than that, but he sells it
like noĂśne else could.
âDeja Qâ. This oneâs just funny.
The Revenant (2015). Stepdadâs pick for family movie night. When the credits
rolled, i thought it one of the best films iâd ever seen⌠but a few weeks on, iâm not so sure.
The cinematography is epic, and Tom Hardyâs brilliant, no doubt, but i really feel more could
have been mined from the premise. Leonardo DiCaprioâs half-Pawnee son in particular is the heart
of the film, and the key role through which to interpret the conflict between the three warring
groups, but he gets unceremoniously killed off halfway through, for no other reason than to
bolster Mr Hardyâs villain cred and, i am left to infer, because the writers had no idea what to
do with his character for the rest of the story. Mr DiCaprio himself goes completely overboard
and could really take Lawrence Olivierâs advice to heart: âMy dear boy, have you tried just
acting?â 6½/10.
True Stories (1986). My pick for family movie night. This sweet and mild-mannered
musical comedy is David Byrneâs only director credit, and thatâs a damned shame. Most places
call it a satire, and i canât help but think theyâre projecting. This is a genuine ode to
small-town American life, whatever its pros and whatever its cons, and next time iâm sick, i
know exactly what iâll be putting on. 8/10.2
The Wicker Man (1973). Figured iâd watch a whimsical musical from the seventies in
preparation for the next one on the list. Great vibes, great music, great ending, great showing
from the legendary Christopher Lee3, but good heavens, is our main character ever an unsympathetic, bigoted prick. Heâs stumbled
on a conspiracy to murder, and he just wonât let go of the fact that he saw some
NEKKID WIMMEN prancing around a henge! 7/10.
Wonka (2024). Mamaâs pick for family movie night. This is a bad idea for a movie
and they should not have made it. Thatâs fine, though: lots of good films make poor ideas on
paper. This isnât one of them. TimothĂŠe Chalamet is terrible! You never once buy him as
anything other than TimothĂŠe Chalamet in a hat. Heâs far too much of a goody two-shoes â not a
droplet of the sinister nature of Gene Wilder and Johnny Deppâs4
WonkĂŚ is anywhere to be found. 3/10.
An American Werewolf in London (1981). Stepdadâs pick for family movie night. A
bit of a throwaway, but thereâs some good stuff in here, especially the titular American
Werewolf (Who Went Hiking In The North But For Some Reason Is Taken To A Hospital) In Londonâs
zombified friend. 6/10.
Iâm Thinking of Ending Things (2020). Shades of Tenet and
Asteroid City here: itâs not Charlie Kaufman at his best, but it is Charlie Kaufman at
his most, and he may have finally metatexted too close to the sun. Some really
interesting stuff spread out over a turgidly paced first and second acts and a completely
nonsensical third. I presume Jesse Plemonsâs directions were just âpretend to be Philip Seymour
Hoffmanâ. 5/10.
Dune Reloaded / Dune 2: Dune Harder / D2NE (2024).
Seen in Imax. A titanic achievement that improves upon the often unfeeling first in every way. I
take back everything i said about Wonka â Mr Chalamet is magnetic in a way that cements
him as the zoomer generationâs first true movie star. Every gushing ten-star review youâve heard
is true. See it now on the biggest screen you can, with bass that shakes the leather in your
seat, because youâll never forgive yourself if you donât. 9/10, with that final point
conditional on the inevitable third part hitting the mark.
Some Like It Hot (1959). My pick for family movie night. Iâve been accused of
being a bit of a âmiserabilistâ (iâm sorry, but Synecdoche, New York bangs, and i have no
regrets on making them watch it), so i thought iâd kick the year off with something a bit funny,
a bit light-hearted, and a bit gay, and cor, was this an absolute classic! A comedy from the
fifties about two men cross-dressing to infiltrate a womenâs jazz band should be positively
radioactive, but this misses all the potential pipelines of âwell, you know, back in the dayâŚâ
sewage and instead hits a gold-mine of timeless commentary on gender relations. Iâm on Team
Daphne â heâs so much more confident in being a woman than Josephine and does not deserve that
terrible toad man. (And, having seen both this and Rear Window, i can finally weigh in:
Grace Kelly is a thousand times prettier than Marilyn Monroe. Sorry.) An instant 10/10.
âNoĂśne knows who created skull trumpet (until now)â. Had to click this as soon as it appeared on my feed. Thereâs really something beautiful about
the amateurism of the early web, how a woman with no formal training in graphic design or
anything of the sort could make all these wonderful, whimsical images, and have one of them
persist into the present day. Rest in peace, Cathy Jarboe, you beautiful diamond, you. 6½/10.
The Master (2012). Mamaâs pick for family movie night. Philip Seymour Hoffman is
incredible in this as an L. Ron Hubbardâstyle cult leader, to the extent that you often
find yourself agreeing with him â i totally get why people join these sort of things now.
Joaquin Phoenix, on the other hand⌠man, i hate to say it, but i might be falling off the
Phoenix train? Heâs always doing that same snivelling Joker thing, even when itâs totally
inappropriate like in Napoleon, and itâs getting kind of old. Joaquin Phoenix Play A
Character With Social Skills Challenge (Impossible). Paul Thomas Anderson directs the shit out
of this. 6/10.
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994). Rewatched with mama.1
Loved it even more than the first time, especially Jennifer Jason Leighâs character. Just a
terribly good-natured film that only sits in obscurity because of its obsequious title. Itâs a
shame Tim Robbins disappeared after this â i looked up his filmography and he seems to have been
in bomb after bomb (Green Lantern, Mission to MarsâŚ). 9/10.
Poor Things (2023, but didnât come out until 2024 here). Watched at the
Tyneside. Iâd been eagerly awaiting this since i saw
the bonkers trailer back in September, and it didnât disappoint. There was a moment 15% of the
way through where i thought i might walk out, but good lord, did it ever win me back over! Bella
Scissorhands goes on a steampunk adventure across Europe filled with childlike whimsy, discovers
herself, has lots of sex, and winds up Mark Ruffalo. Everyone is absolutely brilliant in this â
special commendation to Willem Dafoe as a Scottish mad scientist. Already the strong
front-runner for my favourite of the year. 9/10.
I would like to kick off the second annual Satyrsâ Forest Horny Awards⢠with an epigraph from
myself, at the end of 2021, predicting what lay ahead. I wrote, and i quote:
It came out in December and i watched it in January of 2023 â iâm counting it.
Look. Look. Iâm not happy about this either. But he got me. That fucking James Cameron boomed me.
Iâve never even seen the first one!
Everything about Avatar: The Way of Water puts our decade-long glut of superhero movies to
shame. The visuals, thirteen years in the making, are indistinguishable from reality. (You will
believe the sexy blue cat people are real, and you will rewatch it three times in Imax and still
never figure out how they composited the scrawny human kid in.) Every tiny anthropological detail
envelops you in the world of Pandora, meticulously constructed by the new god-king of worldbuilding.
But most of all, itâs sincere. There are no tiresome quips of âwell, that just
happenedâ. The characters never make fun of how silly this all is. It just lets itself be itself.
Some might shunt the filmâs story and characters to the back seat, and in many ways, thatâs fair:
nobody goes to see an Avatar movie to find out if Jake and Neytiri get a divorce. But thatâs
just the James Cameron style, man! He paints with a broad brush, and because of that, his stories
connect with everyone from Chicago to Chittagong. NoĂśne ever complained about Titanic just
being Romeo and Juliet on a boat, after all.
So, much as it might bug the poser in me to heap praise upon the fourth-biggest film in history,
congratulations to the best film of the year: the one with the smurfs.
I have too many thoughts about Synecdoche, New York and iâve never been able to organise them
all into anything coherent, so iâve set a timer for fifteen minutes and iâll just stop when i stop.
This is going to be a mess.
So, first of all, this film is only two hours long. I say âonlyâ because it feels like four
when youâre watching it. This takes place over, god, what, thirty or forty years? And you feel time
slipping away just as Caden does.
Oh, uh, Caden Cotard is our main character, a hypochondriac playwright with ambitions of dizzying
scale, played masterfully by the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman. Iâm not sure heâs meant to be a
real person; rather, just as his fictional play (the size of the actual city of New York) balloons
to its own world with its own Caden and its own play, he is just the creation of the unseen Ellen1, one world up, somewhere in between him and Charlie Kaufman.
Thereâs a moment halfway through that might be the best single second in a movie ever. Caden goes to
Berlin to find his long-lost daughter Olive working as a prostitute â and as he enters the brothel,
the door creaks behind him⌠sounding just like a babyâs cry.
That shot, when Caden finds out his dad died, and Sammyâs shadow looms behind the curtains like the
Grim Reaper? Brilliant.
The one piece of the puzzle i still canât figure out is whatâs up with Maria. Sheâs this corrupting
influence on everyone Caden loves, but bears the name of the Virgin Mary â which makes it difficult
to slot her in, as i tried, as the Devil to Ellenâs God. Hm.
Itâs funny how Caden never really gets any sicker, but the world around him does. (Thereâs some
gender identity stuff in there too, but honestly it all seems like the type of thing that could be
attributed to other stuff to me. I donât think Cadenâs literally trans, he just happens to be the
self-insert of a woman.)
Thatâs my fifteen minutes up. Synecdoche, New York! Greatest movie ever made.
Again, not a 2023 film, but i actually quite liked every 2023 film i watched, and i was annoyed
enough by this one to put it on here instead.
It all started so innocently. It was a family movie night, and me and my mam were in the mood for
something uplifting. Iâd asked on Reddit for movies with the same manic exuberance as
The Fifth Element or Elvis, where some strange new colourful thing is thrown at the
screen a mile a minute and the viewer is ripped along for the ride.
Mad Max: Fury Road? Seen it. Mandy? Not in the mood for horror. But
The Congress? Now that sounded interesting. The reviews were coy, but all praised the
psychedelic, mind-bending world crafted by director Ari Folman.
Count us in, i suppose. And so began my journey into hell.
To get the âcovetedâ Pebbledash Dildo, you donât just have to be bad. It is, after all, an award for
disappointment. You must have a kernel of a great idea within you, one that is so simple to make
something good out of, and fuck it all up anyway. That kernel can be found in a single brilliant
scene, a diamond within this pile of filmic zirconia.
The premise of The Congress is more relevant now than ever, in this age of digital doubles,
deepfakes, and AI actors. Robin Wright plays herself, who reluctantly
decides to scan herself into digital form, so the studio can use her likeness forevermore without
her having to break a sweat. As she stands among the blaring lights of the scanner, her agent
recounts to her the story of how they first met, bringing tears to her eyes. Itâs a genuinely
touching moment, and a springboard off of which so many ideas could dive, a trunk from which so many
stories might branch.
Then it all goes to pot, and thirty years later, everyone is permanently on drugs, and so the film
switches to oh god what the fuck is that get it off get it off get it
off my fucking screen
So Robin Wright, now in a world of terrifying Newgrounds Betty Boop clones, attends the titular
congress, where the CEO of the subtly named Miramount does a Hitler
rally for his new drug. Then she meets generic Prince Charming man, the very person who scanned her
in to the system â an interesting idea that they do absolutely nothing with â and they have ugly
cartoon sex, she gets locked in a freezer for 300 years, and she goes in a balloon to find her
terminally ill son⌠or⌠something?
I have never seen a film fumble the ball this badly, and be such an assault on the senses to boot.
You won, Ari. Enjoy the money; i hope it makes you happy. Dear lord, what a sad little life, Ari.
Youâve ruined my night completely.
The Golden Lyre Award for Excellence in New Music: Edinburgh-based Young
Fathersâ euphoric senior album
Heavy Heavy stole the show this
year.
The Broken Link Award for Best Use of Hypertext: The best âmiscellaneous thingâ
i saw online was Atlas Altera, an absolutely ludicrous worldbuilding project dedicated to the surgical maximalisation of
global diversity.
The Fred Figglehorn Memorial Award for Online Video: Spanning the end of 2022
to the start of 2023, Geowizardâs
âHow not to travel Americaâ
series brightened up my day every time a new one appeared on my feed. People are just nice!
The Hubert J. Farnsworth Award for Good News, Everyone!: This one may be a wee
bit controversial, but i have to go with
the rollout of a new generation of obesity drugs
(most famously semaglutide) â which not only finally work to combat obesity, but seem to dull
all sorts of other harmful impulses too. One step closer to true freedom of form?
Gremlins 2 is the hardest iâve laughed at a film in some time â a movie written and directed
by cocaine.
I think i broke something when the smart gremlin started talking in a New Zealand accent.
The internet was lit ablaze last year with the rediscovery of Martin Scorceseâs obscure masterpiece
Goncharov, and itâs easy to see why. Accessible yet complex, of its time and yet
progressive, it was ripe for a critical reĂŤvaluation.
What people donât often hear about is its sequel â one that Marvelâs biggest fanboy didnât even know
existed. The rights having fallen into the lap of the bloated corpse of Cannon Entertainment, they
dumped it straight to video in 1989, leaving it to be forgotten.⌠until now!!!
Goncharov 2: The Quest for Gonch (sold in the USSR as
The Quest For God) is the biggest piece of shit since the fat one i laid in the McDonaldâs
deep fryer last weekend.1 The Gonch himself is no longer played by Robert
DeNiro â clearly too good for this shit â but an up and coming Danny DeVito, wearing an unconvincing
latex mask which sits somewhere in between
Tom Cruise in Vanilla Skyand
that one I Think You Could Leave skit.
Yes, this was the Farrelly Brotherâs first picture. They tried taking a more serious film for their
first work, but it falls flat on its face in many places. I found the scene where the Gonch huffs
thirteen cans of glue to be quite amusing for all the wrong reasons. Devito put his heartâ
I neither know nor care who you are but please stop defending The Quest for Gonchâ˘. The Goncharov
Cinematic Universe does not need this sort of slander, and neither does this blog!
Listen, there is TONS of potential for the Goncharov Cinematic Universe to expand from this film.
Itâs not the best film, sure itâs⌠wellâŚ
âŚ..
âŚwell, it is definetly2a film.
Well if youâre going to get technical, itâs not a film! Itâs a video! Iâd say it was shot on a
potato, but thatâs an insult to potatoes â when you compare it to the beautiful composition of Gonch
1â˘âs ending clock shot, this was shot on a yam.
Ok, sure, the picture quality wasnât the best, but Iâd blame that on the filmâs rushed development.
It was first approved by Scorceses in the late 1980s as a fallback in case he was killed by a
conservative lynch mob during the production of The Last Temptation of Christ as a
fallback.
You have no understanding of the complex lore behind /The Quest for Go(nch|d)/, you
absolute fucking nitwit. You fool. You Fucking Nimrod.
The Last Temptation of Christ was released in 1988, and Concharov
II was released in 1989â
Martin Scorcese had no involvement in this. This was that fucker Matteo Bunchofnumbersâ idea. You
know how i know that? Because if Martin Scorsese knew about the existence of Goncharov 2: The Quest
for Gonch, heâd have not only killed himself, but figured out how to kill himself twice.
Youâre half-right; he had no involvement in the film, but he did approve its creation solely to
profit off of any VHS sales. I know this because a friendâs cousinâs
nephewâs sister-in-lawâs bossâ sonâs great uncle knew a guy who worked for the Cleveland Plain
Dealer and did an interview with Scorsese not long before the filmâs release.
I guess killing yourself twice just results in you coming back to life. Look â regardless of Marty
McFly or whatever his name isâ affiliation with it, can we focus on the end product? I mean, that
scene where Kremlinova trips over her high heels in that blue dress, and then when it cuts to the
next shot, itâs orange! Orange! Donât you try and fucking pretend itâs some deep symbolism
that predicted the rise of every movie poster in the 2000s, itâs just the director having a fucking
washing sponge6 for a brain!
Actually, I thought it was one of the more insightful scenes of the film. The dress colors symbolize
the slow and gradual fall of Russian society from great pride in an idealistic world to the growing
realization that said utopian dreams will never fruition, and the subsequent moral collapse
127.192.34.27 therein.
They couldâve used a better dress for the scene, though.
73 West Boulevard, Ocala, Florida8
So then Goncharov gets aids. You know â given how tenderly G1 /
Gonch Wick Chapter 1 handled its gay love scenes, thereâs a real opportunity there! But
since this is being directed by Thomas Ouiseau (no relation? I think?), he âcatches aids from a
government cactusâ, starts coughing up blood, and immediately says âi have the aidsâ and dies.
Yes! Iâm writing over you! Fuck you!
My least favorite part of the film would be the scene where Goncharov punches an Albanian
consort woman. It was not necessary to the plot at all, and just felt like a dated excuse to
throw in a bar fight scene. Oh my god, are you seriously writing over me? Wha- how is
this even possible?
Fine, you know what, here.
Youâve heard of Marsyas and Applo before, right?
Youâre in Comic Sans now.
hhhNOOOOO
You know what, hang on, this is my blog. I donât have to put up with this crap. I can just tell you
to leave. Or whatever.
That feels rude, actually, now i think of it.
I was never invited, so telling me to leave simply doesnât work in the first place. Algorian logic.
Pretty deep stuff interdimensional. Donât think a normie like you would understand.
Look, can we just agree on a rating out of 10 and then go? The people need to know if G2ÂŽ is worth
the purchase!
âŚ
0.85/10.
I think youâre being too nice with that 0.85. I mean, what is this? IGN?
Thrembo/10. Too many overly long sex scenes.
Thatâs not even a real number. Not since the incident.
Anyway â i give Goncharov 2: The Quest for God (God never shows up, incidentally, unless you count
the Kandinsky painting in the beach scene) an (eiĎ+1)/10.
I revise my earlier rating. Rational numbers are better for ratings.
I give the film a
-bÂąâ(b²-4ac)2a/10. Has the potential for greatly expanding the Goncharov universe, but its attempts at being both
a psychological thriller and a slapstick humor film wrapped into a mafia film are simply too
confusing for most viewers.
Thankfully, the first Goncharov11 film on
VHS was also the last. And itâs stayed that way ever since. (We donât
talk about the Blockbuster trilogy.12) Good night.
Director: âCameron Croweâ (possibly Tom Cruise in a latex mask)
Plot: Rich prick gets in a car accident, has some nasty dreams, and then Mr
Exposition shows up in the great glass elevator from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in
the last 10 minutes to explain everything
Directorâs taste in music: Same as mine; you can tell because this film has like
fifteen pointless needle dropsa
Does it contain a Tom Cruise Triathlon�b No, although he
does do a Tom Cruise Run⢠at least once
Does it at least have good ideas? It has the germs of things that might be called
ideas, but none that havenât been done better before
When i was eleven, my dad told me to come downstairs. (I was on holiday at the time, you see, on my
semiannual Divorce Custody TripÂŽ back to the fatherland, where i could gorge myself on as many
sweets and spit out as many cuss words as i wanted.) He had something to show me on his home cinema
setup.
Normally it would be some documentary about watchmaking or nuclear waste storage or any number of
things that took his fleeting fancy. Neither of us were much for fiction, and my young self
especially wasnât much of a cinephile. I donât think my taste in movies had updated much since i
watched Finding Nemo on a loop at age three.
Two and a half hours later, there i was, on his lily-white fake-leather sofa, my jaw agape, needing
a lie down to take it all in. That was the day i met my first favourite film: Interstellar.
Christopher Nolan has a reputation for mind-bending bombast, but his directing is actually quite
plain when you get down to it. His palette of colours would be more at home in a hardware store than
an art department.a He has little time for the fancy camera trickery so
beloved by his fellow mass-market auteurs like Spielberg and Zemeckis. He shoots his pictures as
they are, not as a painter might like them to be.
It works to his detriment as often as in his favour. The Dark Knight trilogyâs dedication
to surgically removing every ounce of colour and whimsy from its inherently campy source sucks it
dry of life and fun. (Whenever Heath Ledger isnât on screen, all the other characters should be asking, âwhereâs the
Joker?â) But in the intervening years, it seems that Mr Nolan figured out how to use his un-style to his
advantage.
On Earth, he shoots everything like, well, a Christopher Nolan film â a look that perfectly suits
such a drab, dying world of omnipresent dust storms and weltering crops. When the plot shoots past
the stratosphere and into the stars, he anchors his fantastic alien worlds and black holes of
tantalising beauty against that same pedestrian style; devoid of his peersâ tricks and flourishes,
you get the sense that if his gargantuan star-eaters and tome-tiled tesseracts were real,
this is exactly what they would look like.
Much has been made of Interstellarâs Achillesâ heel: lurve. I'd like to offer a
lukewarm defence. Many take Anne Hathawayâs speech about love as a force âtranscending dimensions of
time and spaceâ as exposition, seeing her character, Amelia Brand, as a simple mouthpiece for the
Messrs Nolanâs hamfisted platitudes. I would call this a severely mistaken interpretation.
Dr Brandâs lines come at the lowest point in her life. She has spent years â decades, from Earthâs
view â floating alone in space; now, the crew have to decide how to use their one remaining shot to
save all mankind. She isnât making any profound statements or logical arguments. She is desperately
trying to explain to the two men beside her why she thinks, right or wrong, that they should take
the risk and visit her former loverâs last known location rather than the closer world the other two
prefer. Itâs clunky and melodramatic, but thatâs the point: sheâs grasping at straws, willing to do
anything to see her love again. Her speech gives balance against her comradesâ assumption that cold,
hard logic is all that matters, throwing gut feeling and emotion out the airlock.
When Cooper falls into that black hole and finds himself wall to wall with a myriad versions of his
daughter, it isnât some literal fundamental force of âloveâ that brings him there. It is his
acceptance of Dr Brandâs romanticism over Mannâs enlightenment. Cold calculations have brought him
nought but ruin, forcing him to watch his daughter grow up in front of his eyes and nearly killing
both him and the whole human race; so, he lays down his mask, dives into what science tells him is
certain doom, and lets the man who wept at those 20 years of messages take control.
Iâm not sure that it all comes together in the end. Matthew McConaughey is a fine performer, but the
role of Cooper deserves someone who can give it the gravitas (heh) and sensitivity his trauma
deserves â not just screaming âMurph!!!â over and over. Mr Nolanâs script is utilitarian as ever;
misunderstood as it may be, Dr Brandâs tangent fits into the rest of the film about as well as a cat
fits into a baseball glove.
That slack-jawed night on the sofa would begin a new tradition. Every time i shuttle back and forth
between England and Holland, i queue up Hans Zimmerâs score on my earbuds, and try to time it
juuuuust right, such that the second the jet takes off, âMountainsâ comes to its peak or
âNo Time for Cautionââs organs begin to blare. Thereâs a lot of flicks i like better these days â
Interstellar would probably barely scrape the top ten â but thereâll always be a warm place
in my heart for my first love.
Welcome, one and all, to the 2798th annual Horny Awards! Every year since humans figured
out how to count them, the Satyrsâ Forest has presented hand-made, custom trophies to the best works
of the year that was. Itâs an astoundingly long-lasting tradition, and definitely not something i
made up just now.
2022 was one of the years ever. Things, iâm told, occurred. People were born; people were taxed;
people died. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard released several albums. It will go down in the
history books as âthe year between 2021 and 2023â. On with our show.
Film
The Laurel Wreath Award for Annual Achievement in Film
Our first category marks all the wonderful movies that were made in this past year â which is quite
a lot, so my apologies to all those films who i either didnât mention or didnât have time to see!
There can only be one winner, but iâll start off with a lightning round of honourable mentions. Baz
Luhrmannâs
Elvis
was like being locked inside a room with an insane person for two and a half hours, and i loved
every ridiculous, extravagant, kinetic minute of it. Tom Georgeâs
See How They Run
and Rian Johnsonâs
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
were brilliant and funny throwback mysteries which really needed more time and appreciation in the
cinema. And i dearly hope David Letichâs
Bullet Train
becomes the new Fast and Furious â 2Bullet2Train!
Bullet Train 3: This Time itâs a Plane! Bullet ISS! The possibilities are endless.
An especially honourable mention goes to Luca Guadagninoâs Bones and All, a tender horror romance which almost made it to the main list before i realised that i hadnât
actually all that much to say on it. Itâs a metaphor for something, i tell ya hwatâŚ
It could have done with less of the hot-dog fingers, but anyone who would leave our first âofficialâ
runner-up off of their year-end list is a heartless bastard. On paper,
Everything Everywhere All at Once
is a recipe for everything everywhere to go totally wrong: a riff on The Matrix with a
tenth of the budget, directors whose last work was a movie where Daniel Radcliffe farts a lot, and a
sense of humour firmly dated to Reddit circa 2012. Yet it pulls it off.
This is a movie where people beat each other up with dildos, where a hallway of people literally
explodes into colour and light, and where the equivalent of the Death Star is an everything bagel.
It is also one of the only movies to have made me bawl like a baby in the cinema.
Everything Everywhere is an anti-cynical, anti-nihilistic manifesto for our time. Yes,
nothing matters! and yes, you might not write the next great American novel or paint a masterpiece!
but the world has so much joy and beauty, so many minuscule details that you pass by every day, so
for goodnessâ sake, even if youâre
just doing laundry and taxes, take your
time to enjoy the little things in life.
I need to go hug my mum.
Blockbusters arenât what they used to be, are they? Ever since Endgame, Marvel have been
running on autopilot, releasing a steady stream of snarky CGI sludge
made more out of obligation than passion. They donât even work as escapism anymore â the fantastical
isnât fantastic when every billion-dollar release is set in a world of superheroes and sci-fi.
Like Everything Everywhere, our other runner-up is a prime example of a movie that just
shouldnât work. Itâs a sequel to a 40-year-old film so mediocre i turned it off halfway through,
made as a cynical cash-grab recruitment ad for the navy, with a topic and plot designed to appeal
exclusively to Your Dad.1 Yet, through sheer dumb luck, Paramount hit the
jackpot on
Top Gun: Maverick.
Obviously, Tom Cruise is an absolute charisma magnet and the best part of every movie heâs ever been
in. But that seductive Scientologist smile only goes so far
(just look at The Mummy), and thatâs where
our director comes in. Joseph Kosinski doesnât have a particularly long track record; it would be
easy to mistake him for a typical director-for-hire. His dialogue scenes donât stand out from the
pack, and heâs not particularly creative with the camera, but that doesnât matter. What he excels at
is spectacle.
2010âs Tron: Legacy is a profoundly middling film in terms of its plot and characters, but
it gained a cult following thanks to the delicious combination of Daft Punkâs killer score with Mr
Kosinskiâs brilliant visuals and action. He took that computerised world of bits and bytes and gave
it stakes, weight, and a sense of scale, where a Marvel hack would have told the
VFX guy to just press render and go with whatever comes out.
So you take a director whose most known work is a spectacular
CG effects-fest and a lead actor famous for his insistence on doing all
of his own stunts, and what do you get? The best blockbuster film of the decade, thatâs what. The
original Top Gunâs plane scenes drag and drag with no real purpose; in Maverick,
every flight has something at stake, with non-stop action â but the film still knows when to pull
back and take a breather to give its characters heart. My icy, cynical heart knew that i
was being manipulated every step of the way, knew that every pull of the strings was
planned out in advance, knew that this film was made for money and nothing else⌠but iâll
be damned if i didnât start crying at that Val Kilmer cameo.
Go and see Top Gun: Maverick on the biggest screen you can, whether thatâs a 1080p computer
monitor or an Imax cinema. You wonât regret it.
Our two runners-up were films that i would recommend to anyone, anywhere, of any age, and at any
time. They have something for everyone. First place, on the other handâŚ
If you believe the lame-stream media, our winning film was the result of arthouse horror hero Robert
Eggers being given a blank check by Universal to make a big period action movie. This is false. It
was created by scientists in a lab in Durham to appeal to me and me specifically. (You can tell
because i was the only person who actually went out and watched it.)
Based on the Norse legend behind Shakespeareâs Hamlet,
The Northman is an epic following Large Scandinavian Man as the viking
Amleth, son of a deposed king, on his journey to avenge his father with the power of
Odin and testosterone2 on his side.
When i call Amleth a viking, i do not mean that all-too-common sanitised Hollywood depiction of a
20th-century Christian in pagan clothing. No; his society and its ways are portrayed as they were,
warts and all, regardless of what the audience might feel about it. The vikings of this film keep
slaves, burn down houses, consult witches (memorably played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe, and
BjĂśrk, in decreasing order of screentime), mock Jesus, and pray to Gods as a fact of life. (The film
never particularly demeans them for the latter three, which i found a welcome reprieve from
paganismâs usual relegation to the villains of horror schlock.) The only concession to modern mores
is
the absence of polygamy, because splashing people with period blood and cutting off heads is okay but good heavens a
second wife?????
Mr Eggers and his crew schlepped all the way to Iceland for filming and made good bloody use of it.
Whether its long shots are focused on natureâs rolling fields and bursting volcanoes or humanityâs
flame-lit funerals and grimy oarsmen, the result is consistently one of the most beautiful things of
the year.
Itâs not for everyone. Itâs long, and those just there for the action will find themselves asking
when theyâre going to get to the fireworks factory. Itâs gory. Itâs grim. But itâs definitely for
me.
The Zoetrope Award for Classic Cinema
Hey, did you like the Matrix sequels? Do you want to watch a three-hour-long film where
every character is played by the same six actors? No? Well, too bad, because the best film i watched
in 2022 that wasnât released that year was the Wachowski sistersâ3Cloud Atlas.4
There was a point, about 60% of the way through this three-hour-long movie, where i started to
wonder if it was all worth it. Iâd seen Tom Hanks attempting a Cockney accent, Hugo Weaving in
unconvincing Asian prosthetics, and a lot of people saying âtru-truâ a lot of times. Surely it was
impossible to tie this all together into a satisfying conclusion.
I started having flashbacks to The Matrix Resurrections, an endlessly creative film plagued
by its own self-obsessions and Lana Wachowskiâs inability to not put the first thing that
came into her head into the script. Was this going to be the same? Are the sisters trapped in an
endless cycle of almost-but-not-quite?
And then there was a point, about 90% of the way through, where i started crying. Theyâd squared the
circle, tied all six stories up into a neat bow; an epic told on the scale of centuries, where
actors cross boundaries of time, nationality, race, and gender; a film that would be their
magnum opus were it not for the long shadow of The Matrix. I donât know how they
did it, but they did â and thus nudged their record of hits against misses slightly to the positive
side.
The Pebbledash Dildo Award for Cinematic Disappointment
2022 was a good year for bad movies. Moonfall was the peak of so-bad-itâs-good Emmerichian
excess. Morbius morbed all across the internet. And the usual Marvel schlock was even
shlockier than usual. But nobody thought those films would be any good anyway â itâs hard to be
disappointed when you donât have any expectations in the first place.
So, by God, was i disappointed in Nope. From Jordan Peele, criticsâ favourite rising star, this sci-fi Hollywood horror brims with so
many creative ideas and metaphors that they all boil over and donât go anywhere. I can only imagine
that a quarter of the script got sucked up into a UFO and they decided
to just keep shooting. There are so many great ideas in this film, and itâs a darned shame they
wound up such an anticlimax.
The Comfy Sofa Award for Peak Television
I donât actually watch much television; iâve always found it hard to get invested for the âlong
haulâ. Ben Stillerâs Severance, made for Appleâs floundering streaming service, is a slow
burner, the sort of thing i despise â but its slowness is methodical, carefully drip-feeding you
bits of information whilst never wasting its time on fluff and filler.
Itâs strange. Itâs puzzling. Itâs brilliant. And the final episode is some of the best
TV iâve ever seen. If i could, iâd sever myself â just to watch it all
over again.
Music
The Golden Lyre Award for Excellence in New Music
Itâs The 1975.
Well, no point in dragging that out. They may not be the best band in the world, but they are my
favourite band in the world; their eclectic pop-rock sensibilities are what got me into
music, and iâll always appreciate them for that.
This isnât just a sentimental pick.
Being Funny in a Foreign Language
sees the band trim away the fat and bloat of their previous works and hold back on the eclectic
experimentation of the Music for Cars era, settling on a distilled, refined version of the
sound that defined their first record. There are no bloated instrumentals, no experimental
noodlings; just, as their international tour proudly suggests, The 1975 At Their Very Best.
No album came close to blowing them out of the water â because iâm a soppish fanboy â but to whet
your appetite, here are some more of my favourite songs of 2022. (In no particular order.)
The Hurdy-Gurdy Award for Enduring Musical Resonance
It was with some trepidation that i typed the word âPaganâ into RateYourMusicâs charts function,
knowing the reputation that explicitly religious music has. The words âChristian rockâ have always
been accented with a sneer, and the most well-known Pagan musician of the modern age is an
unrepentant church-burning neo-nazi.
Right at the top, after iâd filtered out all of the metal (apologies, metalheads; it just isnât my
bag), sat XTCâs
Apple Venus Volume One. You wonât find it on streaming â frontman Andy Partridge has few kind words for the likes of
Spotify â but i made do with a pirate Youtube playlist until i tracked down a physical copy at the
shops.
Apple Venus is the groupâs penultimate album, and even knowing nothing about them, I could
tell. It drips with aching sincerity, the kind that dips into corny pastiche, in that particular way
that only happens when a band who have spent their whole career dripping with snark and cynicism
realise that theyâre getting too old for this shit.
And thatâs all i wrote.
Some other favourite old songs i discovered this year:
The Sad Trombone Award for Most Disappointing Music
Iâve been getting into post-rock recently, and there are a few albums which seem to be near and dear
to fansâ hearts. Sigur RĂłsâ ĂgĂŚtis byrjun, a surprisingly accessible masterclass.
Godspeed You Blank Emperorâs Lift Your Skinny Fists, the best soundtrack for a movie that
never existed. Talk Talkâs Spirit of Eden, a bit too jazzy for my tastes. A few more that
iâve yet to listen to.
Then thereâs The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place.
Explosions in the Skyâs third album is widely beloved. It tops lists with the big guns. It often
shows up on genre âstarter packâ lists. There is a teensy, tiny problem with this: itâs shite.
Well, alright, i thought, two tracks in. Maybe it picks up by the end? Everyone is raving about that
closing track, âYour Hand in Mineâ â and then that was shite too!
This is music for a car commercial. It is
the Imagine Dragons of post-rock. Itâs the sort of music a TV network
might play as inspirational backing for their Paralympic coverage. It is sappy, insipid, and
uninspired dross of the purest and vilest sort, and it boggles the mind to think how it ever got the
reputation it now has. See me after class.
The electronic arts
The Kingâs Dice Award for Interactive Entertainment
Just one game found its home amongst my digital shelves this years, and i have yet to find the
opportunity to complete it. Lucas Popeâs Return of the Obra Dinn wins by acclimation â so
far itâs stylish, intriguing, and fun to solve, but again, iâve not finished it! Weâll see if it
sticks the landing.
The Broken Link Award for Best Use of Hypertext
Homestuck isnât very good. It has an undeniably appealing cast of characters and charmingly
naĂŻve art â you donât get millions of fans without doing something right â that are sadly
weighed down by its authorâs baffling decision, faced with all the sprawling multi-media
possibilities of the web, to tell its story entirely in walls of unreadable monospaced text.
Wired Sound for Wired People isnât my thing. It
has undeniably mastered a medium: its flickering pink pixels and eerie soundscapes build an
unmistakable mix of intrigue and unease, beckoning you to follow it down the rabbit hole. But it
lacks a message to go with it â thereâs no story to speak of, just a collage of strange and trippy
scenes.
So what if someone were to combine the best bits of both, and undo their shortcomings?
Idiosyncratic, eerie audiovisuals, with relatable dramatis personĂŚ, and a
compelling story which uses the power of hypertext to its fullest?
Enter
Corru.observer. Linked to me by someone whose homepage iâd complimented â with no other comment than that it was
a friendâs âpersonal siteâ â Corru puts you in the seat of an archĂŚologist(?) some
decades(?) in the future(?), trying to piece together the memories of an alie⌠iâll let you find out
the rest. Thereâs only an âepisodeâ and a half out right now, and i canât wait to see where it goes.
The Fred Figglehorn Memorial Award for Online Video
But in the age of Tiktok and Vine, it pays to be succinct. Our winner by no means reaches the
six-second nirvana of those two platforms, but at 25 minutes, it would fit comfortably into a
half-hour broadcast slot on telly â not bad on a site increasingly dominated by 7-hour videos about
people watching sitcoms for children.
That winner is Michael Stevensâs video on
the origin of selfies. In it brief
runtime, it answers every question i never knew i had about the selfie, while spinning in a number
of fascinating tangents and eyebrow-raising questions (in the typical Vsauce house style). It even
got me to renovate the gallery just to add that photo by Anastasia. Cheese!
The real world
The Spruce Panflute Award for Outdoor Splendour
I perused many places during my walks out and about this year, but none so consistently provided me
with so many new sights as the Ouseburn, a small but mighty stream which winds its
way in the east of Newcastle from suburbs to leafy woods to industry to hipster vegan cafĂŠs. Every
time i thought iâd seen it all, the Ouseburn revealed a new cranny, some quirky establishment or
warp in the cityâs fabric, something different to explore.
This is what we in the industry refer to as âthe money shotâ.
The Crackling Heath Award for Indoor Wonder
Affleckâs Palace is the beating heart of Mancunian counterculture; a labyrinthine
maze of shops which across their three floors sell everything from rose ice cream to bath bombs to
incense to Hatsune Mikuâthemed fizzy drinks⌠and i canât tell you any more than that, because i
havenât finished my post about it yet!
Really, though â Affleckâs has it all and more, and iâll be sure to stop by next time i go down
south.
The Hubert J. Farnsworth Award for Good News, Everyone!
Day in, day out, we are flooded with the latest news of disasters and terrors from around the globe.
It gets the views, it gets the hits, and it gets the clicks; itâs no wonder journos love to
accentuate the negative.
The Hubert J. Farnsworth Award is an antidote to doom and gloom, honouring the best thing
that happened in 2022. It was a late entry, but it could hardly be anything other thanâŚ
âŚThe National Ignition Facility, the U.S. government lab who reported that, for the
first time,
theyâd gotten more energy out than they put in via fusion power. There are hiccups, of course; the facilityâs magnets guzzled dozens of times more power than the
reactor itself. But every stepping stone has its imperfections, and this is the first great step to
a truly prosperous future â where energy is too cheap to meter, where power is so abundant that
there will be hardly a grain of economic sense in the idea of tapping any more of
GĂŚaâs precious little black gold.
Happy belated new year, everyone. And as always â may it be better than the last!
