Hitting Brock Bottom

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In the comic books, Venom is an alien symbiote that first attaches itself to Spider-Man before he manages to simply shake it off like it's a bit of bird shit. Like a jilted lover, the symbiote then makes its way over to Eddie Brock, one of Peter Parker's less friendly colleagues, so that the two can get all up in each other and make his life as miserable as they can. Sadly, this Venom movie has a different origin story for the black goo that disappointingly doesn't involve an alien life form and an embittered journalist deciding to hate-fuck each other to upset a super-hero. The symbiote does still crash onto our planet but this time he couldn't find Spider-Man or even dare utter his fucking name because of a rights issue that literally nobody in the world seems to understand. Is this film part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe because Spider-Man now seems to be and isn't Venom one of his most famous enemies? Sony seems to think it is, with producer Amy Pascal essentially implying as much in an interview with Marvel honcho Kevin Feige. Except to confuse the issue slightly is the fact that as she said this, Feige just happened to be demonstrating the universal facial expression for “I don't fucking think so”.

Stuck And Running From The Bullets

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Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk begins with a soldier frantically trying to find a spot on the beach in which he can take a dump. Or maybe, he was just ticking off things he could do from his bucket list and having a literal shit on France was one of them. And who even knew this movie would be set in France at all? You'd think there would be a clue in the title but a few years ago a friend of mine let slip that he thought Dunkirk was actually a place in Scotland. After initially making fun of him for this lapse in his general knowledge, it quickly became annoyingly apparent that Dunkirk may actually be the most Scottish sounding word I've ever heard in my entire fucking life. When the English soldiers were stuck and desperate on the beach at the start of this film I genuinely had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't going to end with Mel Gibson riding over the hill, face painted blue and screaming for fucking 'Freedom!!!”

Star Trek 10: Nemesis

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Star Trek 10: Nemesis - what the fuck is it about?

So the Enterprise is sent to the Romulan council in order to negotiate a peace treaty, for some reason. Not that it matters I suppose considering that they're all instantly killed by a young Tom Hardy. Hardy plays an evil clone of Picard which we as an audience can tell because they're both disgustingly bald. Honestly there were scenes in which the two of them had their naked heads close together in which I couldn't help but think of that moment with Barbara Windsor in Carry On Camping. We're told that this clone exists because the Romulans “somehow” managed to get some of Picard's DNA. We're never told how they managed this, although considering Picard has flirted with at least one alien per new planet, I kind of don't want to know. Even when Picard is looking at Hardy, you can tell he's trying to work out whether banging a clone would count as incest. Anyway, long story short, Hardy needs Picard's blood to live and has decided that he also wants to destroy Earth... because you know.. fuck it, why wouldn't you!?

So was it shit or not then?

It was nice that in this film Hardy didn't just do his usual thing of mumbling, although sadly I still couldn't understand a word that he was fucking saying. I mean, this is a genuine sentence uttered in the movie: “The Son'a, the Borg, the Romulans, the evil Soran, and that pesky Nexus. You seem to get all the easy assignments!”. Sorry, what the fuck did you just say? It got so bad in this movie in regards to all that space gibberish that I actually invented a drinking game whilst watching it. Simply take a shot every time you hear something that you don't understand and then see if you can get to the first half hour without being fucking dead. In terms of Hardy's performance however, although I don't know what the fuck he was saying, I did enjoy him in general. Although he was skinny as hell. I guess this was filmed during that point in which he was enjoying life as a crack-head, which is fair enough. As the film goes on, his character begins to get sicker and sicker.. I'm not sure if this was intentional or if the filming was just dragging on and he was being forced to go cold turkey.

Whereas most franchises are content with just the explosions, Star Trek likes to ask the bigger questions. You know.. the really important things in life such as what would we do without the environment? And what does a God really need with a spaceship? In the case of Nemesis, it seemed to me that the movie was basically just asking 'have you ever considered that your problems could be solved with suicide?' Picard is trying to kill his clone; Data quite literally deactivates a replica of himself, and then the film concludes when a main character Wrath Of Khan's it by sacrificing themselves to save their friends. In every case, it seems that topping yourself isn't the worst idea ever. Even in terms of the franchise this is true. I read that this movie was stupidly released at the same time as one of the Lord Of The Rings films and as such made piss all money. What was the result of this? The franchise basically died before being brought back with the much more accessible and noticeably more profitable reboot. Problem solved!

I did like this film though. It was the first of the Next Generation movies to feel actually cinematic, the action was pretty good, and I did feel some emotion with the concluding sacrifice. I mean the emotion was pretty much just “oh.. never mind” but that's more than I felt at my own granddad's funeral. Who can be truly sad when you know you have a free buffet coming up?! With it's pro top-yourself message however, I just worry now that if I'm ever feeling particularly low and find myself looking at my veins whilst holding a knife, I can't be sure that I won't suddenly hear Patrick Stewart's voice demanding me to “make it so!”.

 

Glamourising Scum?

Back in the 1960's the Kray Twins ruled London's underworld like a living, breathing, 'Spot The Difference Competition' between a couple of violent bell-ends. Reggie was meant to be the 'nicer' of the two brothers, with Ronnie having had his brain replaced with a lump of pig shit and a hand-grenade. However let's face it, neither were exactly anything less than a couple of over-achieving pricks that bullied their way to the top before dying the sad and premature deaths that they had coming. However as well as being gangsters, the two were obsessed with celebrity culture and were regularly seen rubbing shoulders with actors, politicians, and whatever kind of shrill-voiced, cockney Womble Barbara Windsor is. As a result the two men went onto to become one of the iconic faces of the swinging sixties. Probably thanks to their working class background, the nutters have spent the last few decades brewing in the British subconscious to the point were they've basically become anti-heroes. Sure, they might have just been a couple of local lads that upset the establishment by doing things their own way... It's just that their own way involved shooting people in the head and knifing them in the belly, with the Kray's moral code being as deformed and twisted as their battered, bull-dog faces.

A Fuel-Injected Suicide Machine

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My car tyre burst when I was in a scummy area called Birkenhead and I quickly found myself truly fucked. Due to my stinginess I didn't have a spare one and so had to call some nearby shop to send somebody to help me. As it turns out they sent a full-on fucking psychopath who picked me up and drove me down small suburban roads at about 60mph whilst detailing his plans for a new civil war. Genuinely. He’d been out of prison for seven days and already he was planning a revolution in which 'the whites fight all the blacks'. He believed that foreigners were coming over and stealing all of our jobs to the point were he told me 'I don't blame my kids for being fucking drug dealers'. I had never been so terrified in my entire life. He asked me if I knew any shortcuts between where I'd been stranded and where we were going which I sadly didn’t- “How da fuck do you expect to get away from da police if you don't know your short cuts?!” was his response. The Mad Max franchise might consist of adrenaline fuelled action films in which nutters drive through desolate areas at high-speeds, but it hasn't got shit on being helped by an ex-convict from a working class town in the North of England. I literally shat myself.

Better The Devil You Know

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Kicking Against The Pricks

Prohibition was introduced to America in 1919 and is probably one of the most famous examples of a large-scale fuck-up in recent history. I fucked up once a few years ago when I accidentally crafted myself a homemade bomb. My granddad had just died and left me a gold ring which someone suggested I should wash. Their reason was that he may have had it on whilst having a wank... all very plausible, I suppose.

Cleaning newly-deceased granddad spunk off from jewellery is not something I'm an expert at so I decided to get creative. I popped the ring into a flask, filled with boiling hot water and introduced a little washing liquid. I then put on the lid and shook it to mix the bubbles. The bubbles quickly expanded, the pressure increased and the flask exploded into tiny pieces like a watery fucking pipe-bomb. I then had to quickly clean everything up before my Mum came home- nobody wants to have to tell a parent that they, “made a bomb whilst trying to clean up dead-granddad's jizz” so I sprang into action. I couldn't vacuum flask shards because the carpet was too wet so I started to dry it with a towel. Annoyingly though this just made the washing liquid froth up like I was at a fucking foam party. Just when I thought I might get away with it, my hand began to burn. When the flask exploded I'd scolded myself and within a few minutes the skin from my knuckles had completely peeled away.

I'm not suggesting that my adventure into the world of home-made explosives was as stupid as prohibition but both are clearly moronic situations. I'm not sure why America decided to ban the selling of alcohol but I bet it's got something to do with outspoken religious people. As a result of this, the consumption of booze in certain major cities actually increased and organised crime became a much larger, powerful threat to the nation. Like with my bomb incident, somebody decided to fix a non-existent problem and ended up creating an even stupider situation. I had to go to the doctors in the end and tell him that I'd tried to make a cup of tea and instead poured boiling hot water over my hand. I'm sure it took a lot of professionalism for him to simply not diagnose me as an 'incurable stupid, fucking retard'.

There have been many films over the years that deal with the organised crime that thrived as a result of prohibition. One of the most famous is of course The Untouchables in which Sean Connery played an Irishman from Scotland and Kevin Costner played a man with all the charisma of a cardboard dildo. The most recent to be released however is Lawless which was directed by John Hillcoat and written by Nick Cave. Apparently the script was based on a book if anybody remembers those. They're basically what people were forced to use instead of televisions before the invention of any technology whatsoever.

Set during The Depression, this film tells the true story of three brothers who earned a living through bootlegging. They were basically the weed dealers of the 1930's by selling a relatively harmless product to a public of responsible adults. With Shia LaBeouf as the youngest brother in their gang, the story is mostly framed by his desire to be taken seriously and given proper respect. Ironically that is presumably also why the actor is now appearing in films like this and featuring naked in pretentiously awful music videos. Although, if I'd been in Transformers: Dark of the Moon I'd probably walk around with my cock out crying to Sigur Rós too.

The older of the three brothers is played by Tom Hardy who mumbles his way through scenes like a big, pink Hulk. His role here is a matriarchal one, as like a giant Mummy Bear he watches protectively over his family. In fact, most of the film's highlights are when he snaps into action and starts stabbing people in the head and cutting off their bollocks. His character also wanders the movie refusing to die despite receiving potentially lethal injuries on several occasions. It's said in the film that he is an immortal and like Superman or Keith Richards, it certainly looks that way.

The third brother played by Jason Clarke is unfortunately not well known enough for his own story and so simply pops up as a sidekick now and again. If the film has any problem, it's in the characters that it accidentally neglects which, as well as Jason Not-so-Famous, also includes Gary Oldman and Mia Wonderland.

The main antagonist of Lawless is easily Guy Pearce who minces into the story like a pantomime psychopath. His mission to enforce prohibition requires him to stop the bootlegging business of the three brothers which he attempts to do with extreme force. It's hard not to be instantly drawn to a villain that seems to be part Harry Callahan and part Danny LaRue, but Pearce's character represents another of the film's issues. For the most part, the movie is a fairly grounded gangster/western with several gritty performances and a clear eye for period detail. By appearing as a demented member of the Village People, Pearce's performance appears slightly jarring. Having said that he does hint towards what he could have done as The Joker if cast in one of Nolan's Dark Knight movies. As Jeffrey Dahmer and Michael Barrymore have proved, there is nothing more creepy than a sinister gay.

If there was a reason to be excited by Lawless however, it was in the repairing of Nick Cave and John Hillcoat. The two previously collaborated on the Aussie western masterpiece, The Proposition and the end of the world joyfest The Road, for which Cave supplied the soundtrack. Being a generally hate filled person, I am of course a huge fan of Cave's music which includes such romanticised lyrics as, “They found Mary Bellows cuffed to the bed,
with a rag in her mouth and a bullet in her head” and “I'm a bad motherfucker, don't you know. And I'll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get to one fat boys ass hole”.

The music to Lawless is predictably brilliant. Despite being covers of songs from other artists, it's interesting to hear how a couple of them could easily fit onto the Pat Garret and Billy the Kid soundtrack. Since The Proposition, it seems to me that John Hillcoat could be our generation's Sam Peckinpah and now with Lawless, this still seems true. Both men make films about struggling masculinity in a nihilistic world and infuse them with a smothering sense of melancholia. They also deal with characters who have to bend their own morality to survive amongst the violence and brutality. I guess the difference would be that Hillcoat has the taste to allow his rape scenes to take place off screen. It's not that I'm against rape being graphically depicted and I do think Straw Dogs is a masterpiece. But I watched that scene with a couple of mates once and one of them squirmed about in an uncomfortable way that suggested he probably had an erection. Firstly, any film that puts my friends into heat makes me feel awkward, secondly a graphic rape scene shouldn't really result in a sweating chubby.

Unfortunately Lawless doesn't quite reach the brilliant heights of The Road or its brother film The Proposition, however that's not to say it isn't still great. LaBeouf's acting has been turned up a notch and even if he can't quite match the giants of Hardy and Oldman he clearly has a good old try. Apparently he's recently decided to become a method actor which means he's grown a beard and started sporting crappy looking knitwear whilst out in public. For Lawless, being a method actor led him to go out of his way to track down and drink some actual moonshine. I say that as though it's meant to be impressive but lets face it, it's really not. Plenty of people have to get pissed to go to work. I once genuinely found a teacher locked in a classroom, face down on a desk and with a bottle next to her drooling face. The only difference between her and LaBeouf is that he's on a better wage and she was responsible for a class of school children. In hindsight she could probably grow a better beard than him too.

Regarding LaBeouf's character I did actually notice something strange. There were several occasions when he'd had the shit kicked out of him and was left bleeding and broken. Presumably this was either for his character's outlaw ways or simply the actors association with Michael Bay's mechanical movie bollocks. After leaving the scene a blooded mess he would arrive at the next one without a fucking mark on him. Now either this is a rather obvious continuity error or his character has healing abilities as powerful as Jesus H. Christ. If it's the latter, then Lawless is officially the best Wolverine prequel I've ever seen.

Superpowers aside, the film is unfortunately a little cliched, not really adding anything new to the genre. It's still a good ride while it lasts however, and so certainly worth a watch. Highlights include a character getting his throat slit and Gary Oldman twatting somebody in the face with a shovel. With the world currently in an economic shit heap, you could look at the political relevance of a film that depicts depression-era ingenuity and corruption within the system. But really who can be fucked doing that with a movie that features a man getting boiling tar poured over his back. Despite everything mentioned, I thoroughly enjoyed Lawless and that's despite watching it in a cinema surrounded by cunts who wouldn't shut the fuck up. In fact I think being massively pissed off with the people there really helped me to enjoy the on-screen violence. People think that something like The Road is depressing because it shows the end of humanity, however after hearing people talk through Lawless I honestly can't think of anything more satisfying.

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