Better Than Shakespeare?

Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Podcasts

The trailer to Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw played at the cinema the other day and I heard a couple of teenaged boys exclaim that “these films have gotten too stupid now”. “Err.. no. Actually, you've gotten too stupid now, you fucking little dweebs” is what I screamed back at them with the power of my mind. This franchise started as a flat-out rip-off of Point Break but in which Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze had been replaced by a couple of bargain-basement understudies. It wasn't until the fifth instalment in which The Rock arrived to kick the doors off the franchise that it finally evolved from something tediously dull and into something enjoyably so. The stupider the films became and the more stubbornly oblivious Vin Diesel remained to the fact that he was now in a comedy, the better they seemed to get. In the way that a shark can smell a drop of blood in a mile of ocean however, it was only a matter of time until the scent of this dumb action comedy would attract the attention of Jason Statham. He entered the series by murdering one of the key members of the lead gang before being locked up in a maximum-security prison for attempting to kill the rest of them. But it's all good because they're all cool now.

Subscribe to the podcast!

The Greatest Thing That Our Species Has Ever Created

Join us on Facebook!

Cinema can probably stop now because John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum is the greatest fucking achievement that our shit show of a species has ever fucking accomplished. You can take your Great Pyramids, and your penicillin, and your pointless fucking trips to the moon, and shove them up your arse because the perfection of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, flat out shits all over them. Oh, did we figure out a way of splitting open an atom? Who gives a fuck?! John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum features a scene in which dogs in bulletproof fucking jackets kill about fifty people in five fucking minutes. Yeah, did you hear that? Dogs in bulletproof fucking jackets kill fifty people in five fucking minutes. I mean, what?? Did Einstein write the script for this movie? Was it Stephen Hawking? Is that what he was doing before he died? Just blinking this movie out in morse code as his last act of genius? Because unless aliens came down and beamed this film into our heads then clearly John Wick: Chapter 3- Parabellum is the greatest fucking advance that our society has made since we first crawled out of the swamp as a fucking fish.

This Franchise Is Bad For My Health

Join us on Facebook!

Near the time when the first Deadpool movie came out I got ill to the point that I thought I was going to die. It was only a cold, but I get ill so infrequently that when some twatty bug is strong enough to get past my immune system, I can only conclude that it's probably cancer and my brain is going to start leaking out of my nose. Obviously I got better, and furthermore I remained in perfect health until the first trailer for Deadpool 2 came out ..when suddenly I found myself enduring a bad case of the shits.. or as I assumed at the time.. arsehole cancer. I started to notice the pattern and worry that perhaps I was allergic to Deadpool movies. The first film has really grown on me over the years and so I'd be disappointed if I was unable to enjoy its sequel simply because its existence might cause bits of my body to drop off. I hadn't been ill since the trailer but sure as shit the week that the film hit the cinema my throat began to hurt and I've developed white spots at the back of my mouth. Google says it's probably just a viral infection and that I shouldn't worry, but I know in my heart of heart that it's probably the throat AIDs. By the time I got to the cinema to watch the movie I was hoping to be able to enjoy it, but you can imagine my worry. If the build up to Deadpool 2 was enough to do this to me then what the fuck would happen during the actual screening? I don't want to seem like a hypochondriac.. but I was fully prepared to either catch the plague or somehow find one of those weird amazon-fish things living up my dick.

Kick My Brains Around The Floor

Join us on Facebook!

Atomic Blonde's stench is so thick with the intoxicating funk of the 1980's that it feels like you've fallen asleep on a post-rave David Hasselhoff and then suffocated to death on the fumes of his hair spray. From one half of the directing duo behind the unquestionably brilliant John Wick, you might assume that this film will equally be a Charlize Theron-shaped kick to the bollocks. And you'd be right. However Atomic Blonde is also a German-set espionage adventure that takes place as the Berlin wall looks as likely to fall as a piss-head on a pogo-stick before he slurs the condemning phrase of, “wanna see something cool?” As such the story here isn't quite as streamlined as John Wick's “get the fuck away from my dog” simplicity with this sister film including a hint of John le Carré to go with its kick-ass John Woo-iness. Theron plays Broughton, an MI6 agent tasked with retrieving a stolen list containing the names of every single undercover agent that's currently on active duty. Or as the script, in our post-Mission: Impossible, Post-Skyfall world should probably have said, “insert cliched MacGuffin here”.

A Kung Fu James Bond Movie

Join us on Facebook!

Enter The Dragon is widely hailed as one of the best kung-fu movies ever because it includes Bruce motherfucking Lee and essentially stole the basic feel of a Bond movie. The Roger Moore Bond movies are interesting because half of them pretty much just stole from whatever was popular at the time. In the case of the mid-70's that included kung-fu movies, which is why you have all of that tacked-on martial arts stuff mid-way through The Man With The Golden Gun. In case you don't remember, it's the scene in which Bond defeats a school of fighters that have been training their entire life by surprise kicking one in the head and then promptly jumping out the fucking window. The interesting thing about both Enter The Dragon and The Man With The Golden Gun is that not only are they chasing each other like a circular human-centipede consisting of two limber gymnasts, but they both basically have the same ending too. In both cases the films end with the hero fighting the main villain in a fun-house type arena which consists predominately of mirrors. I guess that kind of set provides an interesting challenge for the camera-team and keeps the actors morale up as they get to spend the day looking at themselves and mentally masturbating.

Bullet Time

Like a lot of people, my parents were stupid enough to get married and as a result are obviously now divorced. After twenty something years of marriage, they returned from a holiday with the news that I was now from a broken home. At least one of them didn't have to unpack their suitcase, I suppose. In the time since then, they've both found new partners and we've all been happier since. My Step-Mum punched me in the throat, my Mum's partner phoned my up in a rage to randomly tell me that I was a “piece of shit”. My Dad told me not to bother with my dream of one day trying stand-up comedy because I'm just “not funny” and then when I was going through a bad patch, my Mum said it was my own fault because I'm simply “incapable of being happy”... I wonder fucking why! I think it's only thanks to a laid back temperament and an aggressive addiction to hardcore pornography that's prevented me from going on a kill-crazed, murder rampage. It's nice that people feel I'm calm enough that they can talk so bluntly at me however sometimes a bit of humanity might be appreciated. Is it just me or do most people find that after about five minutes of talking to their parents they'd be delighted for the chance to just walk out into oncoming traffic?