Marvel Is Going Strange

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Doctor Strange is arguably the most unbelievable film that Marvel have decided to use in their Cinematic Universe. Not because of all the magic and crazy shit in it of course. Who can be surprised by that in a world featuring The Avengers?! Even more insanely, it actually seems to take place in an America in which literally nobody ever seems to have to pay their hospital bills! I mean, what the fuck?! At one point an injured Doctor Strange zaps straight into the hospital, calls the name of a nurse he knows, finds an empty operating room and gets seen to straight away. The other day my mate fell strangely onto his ankle because he's a total fucking idiot and I thought we were both going to die in that hospital the wait was so long. It was the same as that time I slipped in the bathroom when balancing on the side of the bath and cracked my bollocks on the sink. Who cares about magic when the film has hospitals that treat people as well as this?! This might be a universe in which aliens are being shat out of the sky, and various ancient Gods are taking a huge glittery dumps onto humanity, however clearly it's not all bad!

Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek Into Darkness - what the fuck is it about?

The film begins with Benedict Cumberbatch's John Harrison causing some shit that makes Kirk want to track him down and capture him. However perhaps there's more to this John Harrison than initially meets the eye? Perhaps he's not who we think he is? Perhaps he's somebody a little more iconic that that?! Well, I guess I Khan't tell you either way. Or maybe I can?! Meh, fuck it, he's playing Khan. Obviously. So the first half of the movie has a Godfather 3 style massacre- a villain who does one of those ridiculous 'get captured and then somehow predict everybody's movements' plans, and then it concludes with a spot of Wrath Of Khan karaoke. Oh, and all throughout, the guy who plays Robocop is trying to start a war between the Federation and the Klingons because, you know.. this is an action film and it's nice to see spaceships go 'boom'.

So was it shit or not then? (Spoilers.. obv)

Reviews were initially kind to this movie, however as the years have gone by its reputation has gone down faster than than a cheap whore that'll suck you off for less than a packet of fruit pastels. I think the initial love for it was simply because of how fast it moves and how fun it is and so people weren't given chance to turn against it. But as time has passed and everything it has to offer has sunk in, people have gotten an “it's ripping off the Wrath Of Khan” hump. Which is sort of justified of course, seeing as Kirk's cancery/radiation death is literally identical to Spock's in that earlier movie, but with one small difference. Wrath Of Khan's was between two men that had been friends for over thirty years and so was significantly more emotional. As such, many people feel the scene hadn't earned justification for itself due to this Kirk and Spock being about as moody with each other as a teenager that's been forced to stop tossing off and do some house chores. 

Except in Into Darkness's defence, I don't think its death scene is about Kirk and Spock's friendship, but simply how everything Spock touches turns to shite. His planet his destroyed, his Mum dies, all of his Federation leaders get wiped out, and then after all of that, his new mate dies too. If the Enterprise really was like a ship exploring the vast mysteries of the sea-like universe then I'd have Spock thrown overboard for being a fucking Jonah*. So I don't think we were meant to accept that Pine and Quinto's characters were as close as Shatner and Nemoy's, but rather Spock has finally fucking snapped. Hence him then going after Khan with all the anger and confusion of a man who's just sat down really hard on his own testicles. However if I do have a criticism of that scene being in this movie, it's that the Spock who died in Wrath Of Khan is in this fucking movie too. They even ask Nemoy's Spock about Khan. You'd think might mention “oh yeah.. that Khan's a right prick. By the way.. You know that reactor core thing? Maybe keep a fucking radiation suit by it, yeah?”. I mean that's just basic safety regulation, surely!

I suppose it's also a bit of a problem that Kirk is killed and then resurrected within the space of about ten minutes, which was also after his equally brief demotion and re-promotion had lasted about as long it'd take to have a piss. So I'm not saying that the script couldn't have done with being passed through the common sense machine at least one more time. Plus considering Khan's blood essentially brought Kirk back from the dead, and the film ends with Khan in a freezer, you've essentially removed any sense of threat from the rest of the franchise... whilst also doing the ship's doctor Bones out of a fucking job. And nor, as we discover as the film goes on, am I really sure why Khan thought it was a good idea to hide all of his friends in a load of missiles. Maybe it explained it and I missed it, but as stupid moves go, that is basically the equivalent of hiding your ice-cream in an oven and then wondering why it's melted. Short story.. because you were a dickhead.

I think the other thing people don't like about this movie is that it puts more of a focus on the Federation's militarisation than it does on the crew simply going off for an intergalactic jolly 'oliday. However it does kind of make sense when you consider that this timeline follows on from a film in which the planet Vulcan was destroyed. In which case, as a one off story to tell of the paranoid aftermath of those events, I was pretty happy with what I got. Although considering Vulcan was destroyed by a laser that was dangling from an easily breakable chain, I'm not so sure that they needed an army as much as they simply should have pulled their fucking thumb out and shot it down. Into Darkness might be a bit stupid but it is quite a lot of fun, and in a franchise in which Kirk asks “what does a God need with a Spaceship”, 'stupid but fun' isn't necessarily a step-down.

* Just in case you aren't an 18th century sailer or  haven't seen Master And Commander a 'Jonah' is basically a sailers version of a jinx.

 

There And Back Again

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Is it just me or is the saying “It's always in the last place you look” the most annoying phrase ever. Obviously it's in the last place I'll fucking look! I'm hardly going to continue the search for something once it's already turned up am I? At this point in the Hobbit franchise, the Dwarves have made it to the mountain having woken the resident dragon up and told him to move his scaly arse. Their leader Thorin also appears to be going mad which could be due to the magical power of his gold or simply because he can't find a great big shiny stone. If I can't find my keys then I start smashing the shit out of the house in search of them, and so I think stomping around a mountain and threatening to banish all of your closest friends from your kingdom is more than reasonable behaviour. Anyway, because the dragon has buggered off, a bunch of freaks have decided that they also want to claim some of the gold it was guarding. As a result of this, five separate armies square-off at the foot of the mountain like a particularly well organised gang of looters. Oh and for the record, I wouldn't bother seeing this movie if you haven't seen the other two as it's basically just the last third of one massive story. Without the context of the previous movies I think you could easily confuse these battles between beautiful male elves and beefy skinhead Orcs as being like a riot in the Gay Capital of Brighton. It's not.

Two Hours of Guilt

Horror movies don't horrify me for the most part because they're bland and shit and I tend to find myself relating to the killer. I think these days the studios generally care more about cheap shocks than actual scares and so spend less time creating relatable characters and more time deciding how many ways there are to stab a person in the tits. Instead of ‘characters’ we now have these airheaded mongtards that say and do things so stupid that you want them to get their face ripped off just to shut them the fuck up. To change the subject slightly there are also period films which I have issues with because they can also be a bit po-faced and worthy. I'll honestly watch any film with an open mind but if it involves a Queen who died over a hundred years ago then the odds are it's going to be a proper bitch to get through. Just three hours of people staring out of a window whilst contemplating their duty and whinging like the boring twats that they are. However I'm pleased to announce that in an effort to address both these issues, a character driven horror/period film has just been released which is set during the ever so cheerful period of the slave trade. If you're white and fancy feeling guilty as fuck for a couple of hours then I can't recommend 12 Years a Slave strongly enough.

Okay, so to summarise.. the film is set in America before their civil war and so at a time when owning people was a perfectly acceptable past-time. Solomon Northup is a free black chap just living his life and indulging in his basic human rights as though he thinks we're all allowed to be equal. Well as nice a thought as this is, he quickly ends up with egg on his face as he wakes up one morning to find himself chained to a floor after an evening out on the piss with two shady gents. Don't you just hate it when you treat yourself to one night of getting rat arsed with strangers and then before you know it you've been stripped and sold into slavery just because you had the God damn nerve to be black... It's happened to the best of us I guess! Anyway, from this point on Solomon finds himself being thrown from pillar to whipping post by his various masters who bat him back and forth like a dark ping-pong ball during a bigots game of wiff-waff. With his owners varying in unkindness on 'The Great Twat-ometer Of Evil' and over the course of twelve years Solomon patiently waits for an opportunity to escape as though all the horrendous abuse isn't quite his idea of a good time. I won't ruin what happens by saying whether or not he does manage to get away in the end and so to find out, you'll either have to watch the film or read the book that it's based on which was written by the man himself several years later... Or you could just work it out from that I suppose.

I can whip you or we can watch Jonah Hex.. you choose!

Anywho, so obviously this movie probably wouldn't technically be labelled as a horror film but after enduring it for two hours it really fucking should be. Like I said, it takes a lot to horrify me but the graphic depiction of how we crackers used to treat black people really was nothing short of demented. It's one thing to know that people used to get whipped but it's another to see it happen to a young woman whose only crime was being owned by a wealthy-but-mental knobend. Seeing pieces of her back flick off was absolutely horrendous as she screamed for death in an unforgiving sequence that was so much more powerful than any mere history book could possibly ever get across to me... and not just because I don't read history books. If this film has a purpose beyond simply re-telling the story of Solomon Northup it's also to remind our species of just how cruel we can be and have been to anybody we outnumber. In fact, the movie was so miserable in its depiction of our inhumanity that it reminded me of one of those dystopian sci-fi films in which society has gone to shit and we're all rounded up and tortured by either broken, naked robots or damned dirty apes. Except instead of being completely fictitious, this is a true story, has already happened and the evil cunts were us.

The treatment of the slaves is shown in all its mad bastard grimness with the owners and traders beating down on their hostages with more force and fury than a teenaged boy at a regional wank-a-thon. When I first got my dog she used to shit in the house and so to stop her doing it I was told to shove her nose into the mess. However because I'm not a psychopath I couldn't do that and so instead next time she took a kitchen dump I pointed it out to her and then flicked her on the nose. That was seven years ago and I still feel guilty about it now even though all she did was look at me with mild curiosity and briefly wondered why I'd just been such a bell-end to her. My point is that I really regret something my dog would have forgotten about a minute later and so how in God's name could those owners treat the slaves with such violence and so little empathy? Maybe this is one aspect that 12 Years A Slave doesn't really delve into as it seems more concerned with what happened than why it happened. Of his various owners, Solomon finds himself belonging to Benedict Cumberbatch who is depicted as being fairly sane however even he at his kindest still owns people and so is complicit to the cruelty being inflicted throughout the system. The basic equation to work it out is simply One person + People owned = One ignorant fucknugget. Although no reason for how we can be so horrible is suggested beyond a mass mental illness of the collective honky mind, though religion seems to be a common defence for it. Cumberbatch and Solomon's next owner Fassbender both quote the Bible as a way of justifying their own dickishness because if God says it's right then it damn well must be. To be honest, it'd be easy to blame God for allowing the slave trade to happen considering he's omnipotent but as he's also a fictional character that's been spunked into the world by our paranoid minds, I guess we're still at least a little responsible.

What do you mean Brad Pitt is in this film?!

These reasons above are why I think 12 Years a Slave is a pretty mental horror film and obviously also a great period piece. Somebody else could have made this as a bland, watered down slab of Oscar bait rather than the traumatic slice of shitty life that it is and so let’s all be grateful that Lee Daniel's and Oprah Winfrey were busy. Although that's not to say that it won't necessarily win any Oscars by the way, just that if it does it'll be by being true to itself and not because it was already lubed up and gaping for the voters pleasure. It's directed by Steve 'not that one' McQueen, who has brought the same kind of unflinching tone over from his previous films however this time adding the odd flash of influence from Terrence Malick. In case you've not seen a Malick film, this basically means that every time something interesting happens then you cut to a shot of some grass for ten minutes to highlight how important everything is. His previous film Shame very nearly put me off ever jizzing again and so if you've ever dreamed of legally being somebodies bitch then maybe give this one a bit of a miss. Everything about his direction here is pretty spot-on from the framing to the pacing to the performances with a hanging scene being a particularly great way of demonstrating the nonchalant horror of the time. In fact despite the hanging scene lasting a good few minutes, the film affected me so strongly that I'm not even going to make a David Carradine wanking joke about it... which is a shame because I have a good one too. However as well as direction, the other thing that makes this film so powerful is of course the cast who are all pretty much perfect. Chiwetel Ejiofor is brilliant, Fassbender is excellent, Cumberbatch is great and Brad Pitt... well he definitely turned up... so fuck it- lets stick Pitt’s face on the poster!

Anyway to wrap all this up I suppose I can't stress enough how important this film is and how much you should see it. I had a snack to eat during it and I have honestly never felt more awful in my life for chowing down on a chocolate flake as some starving black guy got branded by an evil land baron. I'd been waiting for the one moment I could have it but in the end I had to just eat before my treat melted. The whole situation was a real tragedy. Once a year we hold a minute’s silence for those who have died during all the wars however after seeing 12 Years a Slave I think we should start having one days silence a month to repent for our bastard ancestors actions during this unforgivable shit stain on history. Although having said that, I suppose it does seem to be coming kind of common place at the minute to make films about slavery. I won't bother comparing 12 Years a Slave to Django Unchained though because so many other people already have, this blog is already way to long and I'm dying for a piss right now. To summarise- they're completely different to each other. There was also Lincoln which came out recently but although I haven't seen it, I think I might have to if only to try and restore any faith in our horrible, horrible species. I used to worry about the inevitable expansion of the Sun one day destroying everything humanity has worked towards however now I worry that by the time it happens we nasty cunts might have worked out a way of surviving. See this film and feel the guilt!

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