Review: Timestalker

TIMESTALKER
Cert: 15 / 90 mins / Dir. Alice Lowe / Trailer

Nigh-on impossible to track down on the multiplex circuit comes Alice Lowe's Timestalker, a surreal anti-romcom where the central character of Agnes (Lowe)*¹ is a hapless romantic who falls head over heels for precisely the wrong man (Alex, Aneurin Barnard), while being unhappily married to definitely the wrong man (Nick Frost), to the exasperated support of her best friend Meg (Tanya Reynolds). The problem is that she does this in the Scottish highlands in the 1680s, the English home counties in the 1790s and New York in the 1980s (plus more, besides). The pair are destined to never be together, and reincarnation it seems is just a chance to make the same mistakes, only better.

A British, independent film about memory, fatalism and crushing ennui is either the last thing we need in 2024, or the only thing. And since Alice Lowe’s lightness of touch means that Timestalker never wallows - even in its most introspective moments - I’ll go for the latter...

CHARMING

Laugh-out-loud funny, charming and never less than completely watchable, it’s a shame then that the final product feels so uneven. Mainstream sensibility would dictate that each of the film’s timeframes be given roughly equal, episodic, screen time, and from there the rhythm of Agnes’ inbuilt neuroses and repeated follies would be methodically built-up, like a meeting point somewhere between Blackadder and Groundhog Day if you will. Timestalker is far from mainstream, however, and takes no small amount of pleasure foxing audience expectations in having some era-segments play for over half an hour, while others last for less than five minutes. In fairness, this is narratively due to the fact that in some lives Agnes fixates over Alex for months/years, while in others she sees him mere moments before her own death, but the arrhythmic presentation can feel off-putting when all the viewer wants to do is root for our heroine.

It also gives way to the repeated suspicion that outside of the 90-minute runtime there’s about another hour which was filmed and never made the edit, and that there’s at least another two hours which were written but never filmed. On a structural level, the story seems more suited to six half-hour sitcom episodes, each fully presenting their own era with flashbacks (/forwards) to the others. Because ultimately, Agnes’ story is certainly something I want to see more of.

AND THE NEW POWER GENERATION

The scripted gags and cast interplay are superb and Lowe doesn't under-write any of the parts, but the slightly ponderous nature of the film’s pacing means these are more like interludes than the driving force of the plot. That said, Ryan Eddleston’s cinematography means the piece works perfectly as visual storytelling anyway, supported as he is by a wonderfully expressive cast. Especially notable is the 1980s ephemera which envelops the longest segment of Timestalker and almost acts as a companion piece to Lowe’s short story Carnival. This is certainly the timeframe which feels the most fully realised here, and bodes well for future projects from the creator.

But ultimately the film ends up feeling faintly unsatisfying, although I readily admit this is more down to my own hopes, expectations and presumptuous baggage than anything lacking in what was (beautifully) presented.

Not as compact as Lowe’s Sightseers, not as intense as her Prevenge, but also not as freewheelingly silly as her classmates’ Mindhorn, there’s much to be said for Timestalker, even if the final product never quite achieves its potential. But when everything else at the cinema is a sequel, remake or franchise entry, this is still a perfect example of actually getting something new onto the screen. Which is also a never-ending quest which can seem to take lifetimes…

*¹ A quick note here to say that under normal circumstances, the same person writing, directing and starring in a movie would raise more red flags than a parade in Tiananmen Square (proof, if it were needed). As a genre, comedy seems more open to this however, and Alice Lowe has previously shown her credentials to be utterly sound. While I'll go on to list some of the issues I had with Timestalker, none of them feel like the result of one person hogging control of a project; if anything, the film feels impacted by the compromise that directors have to deal with on a daily basis. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Slaughterhouse Rulez

Slaughterhouse Rulez
Cert: 15 / 104 mins / Dir. Crispian Mills / Trailer



Well, fourth-quarter is the graveyard shift in the cinematic calendar, and the dumping ground for many an oddity that film distributors have no other slot for. And they don't come much odder or more dumped than director and co-writer Crispian Mills sophomore creature-com, Slaughterhouse Rulez.

When a place becomes unexpectedly available at a prestigious boarding school, working class northern teenager Don (Finn Cole*¹) is encouraged to apply by his socially-aspirant mum. Struggling to adapt to the norms of private education, Finn gradually forms a guarded friendship with fellow sixth-formers Clemsie (Hermione Corfield*²) and Willoughby (Asa Butterfield*³). But things take a sinister turn when it's revealed that the mysterious headmaster (Michael Sheen) is in cahoots with a fracking company, and their drilling at the edge of the school's grounds has awoken something - or things. With teacher Meredith Houseman*⁴ (Simon Pegg) and environmental protestor Woody (Nick Frost) thrown into the mix, traditional allegiances have to be discarded as a weekend of off-term debauchery turns into a comic fight for survival...

HAMMERING

Yeah, it's not great. Not great at all. The main problem is that the setup itself feels laboured, so no script coming off the back of that is ever going to sparkle, and so neither are the performances. The film spends the first twenty minutes not quite getting over its own joke that a school would be named Slaughterhouse*⁵, hammering home the archaic eccentricities of British private education like no-one else had noticed.

Cole, Corfield and Butterworth are basically fine, but none of them really have the acting chops at this point to lead the movie's young cast, even as an ensemble. At the other end of the scale, Pegg, Frost and Sheen are left to mug and autopilot through their (largely completely separate) scenes. All of the above need firmer direction, as does the screenplay itself. Instead we get a loose collection of weak sketches from the man who brought us A Fantastic Fear of Everything (34%).

ESCHERING

The more creative the film tries to be with its monster scenes (of which there are surprisingly few, for a monster movie), the cheaper it all feels. Predator-lite heat vision and shadow-play can't disguise the obvious budgetary constraints, and the creature shots we do get strike an uneven balance between admittedly strong props with severely limited movement and fluid-but-murky-as-hell CGI.

More a clunky homage to teen horror than actually being one itself, there's little in the way of thrills and even less in shocks. A few smirks are to be had in the script, but no actual laughs. It's hard to know exactly what Slaughterhouse Rulez is trying to be, and as a result it's often hard to know exactly how badly it's failing.

DONALDING

Monsters or otherwise, the movie as a whole feels uninspired. Even with its heavy-handed fracking plot, you'd swear this had been sitting on a shelf since 2006, when Pegg and Frost were still enough of a thing to draw audiences with their presence alone.

The fact that Mills continually lifts beats from Edgar Wright's Cornetto trilogy while under-using those films' leading stars tells the audience how thin on the ground the ideas are. Slaughterhouse Rulez wants to be Harry Potter for fans of The World's End, but comes out more like Percy Jackson in the vein of Lesbian Vampire Killers.

DUCKING

Stories with a young leading cast aim to transport the audience back to imagined ideals of their youth, with camaraderie and adventure. Horror-tinged movies of this ilk either want the viewer to think that they'd love to be in that situation with the heroes, or just be relieved they're in the cinema watching at a safe distance. But for all the two-hour runtime and backstory bombardment, there's no immersion here.

The story isn't engaging enough to be a spectator-led affair, instead feeling like none of this matters. It's faintly ironic that the film is set in a public school since the it feels like it's been written by a drama student 6th Former with no outside social contacts.

Slaughterhouse Rulez is never flat-out awful, but its waste of a decent cast is an affront to the acting profession. There's the suggestion that this probably felt a lot more coherent and meaningful on-set, when everything was being experienced in a non-linear order and the final product was still a hazy dream. But hazy dreams produce hazy results, and this film should be included in the Media Studies module teaching that very lesson…

Lesbian Vampire Killers, The Festival. Yeah.



No.



The impact will be lessened even more in your living room, but it's the natural home of this.



Hahahaha, hell no.



That's entirely possible, yes.



Not that I heard. And in a flick like this, it would likely be front-and-centre if it were there.



Level 1: Well aside from some of the most cack-handed Star Wars references you've ever seen committed to film, Unkar Plutt is in this. So is Tallie. It's no consolation.





*¹ Finn Cole is 23 years old. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Hermione Corfield is 24 years old. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Asa Butterfield is 21. These are your teen-leads. It's like Grease never happened. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ These really are the characters' names, by the way, I'm not making this up. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁵ The title is (from what I can tell) effectively a portmanteau pun on Tom Sharpe's Cambridge-satire Porterhouse Blue and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, with the mis-spelling of 'Rules' lending the same air of intellectual confidence instilled by a hairdressing business with "Kutz" in its name. ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: The Festival

The Festival
Cert: 15 / 98 mins / Dir. Iain Morris / Trailer



Everything one would expect from a comedy with the same 'A-level results are in so the kids will want to go out and celebrate and/or commiserate quick let's make a cheap thing from off of the telly' release-window as The Inbetweeners…



…and which wants to let you know it's from the producers of The Inbetweeners…



…and which stars one of The Inbetweeners.


(Albeit the one who didn't move on to misguided BBC sitcoms, dreadful ITV sitcoms or excruciating adverts for the Post Office. Did I mention that I'm a massive comedy-snob?)

For the record, I enjoyed The Inbetweeners. When it was in its natural habitat of television. The Festival is essentially an hour and a half of exaggerated embarrassment and one-note dick jokes, some of which *do* work but only due to a combination of volume, frequency and the law of averages. The best part of this is probably Noel Fielding and the whole DJ Hammerhead sequence at the end, but even by the 80 minute mark the film hasn't earned it.

By no means the best comedy I've seen this year, but frankly not the worst either…

Well, have a guess.



It's like being trapped in a lift with the commissioning editor for comedy programmes on BBC3 while they recount all the ideas they didn't let through…



Wait until it's on telly.



It's not.



That's possible.



There isn't.



Level 2: Nick Frost and Tony Way are in this, both of whom were in Spaced with Simon 'Plutt' Pegg.







DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider (3D)
Cert: 12A / 118 mins / Dir. Roar Uthaug / Trailer



Full disclosure: I haven't seen the previous movies or played any of the games, so I was watching the new Tomb Raider purely as an action/adventure flick. Adjust your response to my responses accordingly.

So, it's mid-March and this is the first 3D movie I've seen in 2018, not that I've been avoiding them, which perhaps illustrates how the stereoscopic format has fallen in the eyes of schedulers and distributors. The last two MCU movies have opened in 2D before being joined in the listings by 3D screenings the following week. It's always been an 'event movie' gimmick, but it seems to be one which is fading in demand, rightly or wrongly. Speaking of event-movies…

Tomb Raider is the latest adaptation to make the perilous journey to our screens from gaming consoles*¹, never an easy transition at the best of times. As a starring vehicle for Alicia Vikander, it's helmed by Norweigan director Roar Uthaug, and written by Evan Daugherty, Alastair Siddons and Geneva Robertson-Dworet. It is, as one would expect, the first film in a potential cinematic franchise.

We open with Ms. Croft (Vikander) scraping an existence in London as an experienced archer, average boxer and exasperated cycle courier. She's flat broke, you see, that's why she's living out of a loft-arpartment in Shoreditch. In order to make ends meet, Lara has to get involved in her mysteriously-vanished father, Lord Croft's (Dominic West), business interests, by talking in-person to Derek Jacobi and Kristen Scott-Thomas while they phone in their performances from the same room.

Anyway, upon receiving an ancient, mystical Chinese puzzle box from her dad's solicitor, Lara cleverly unlocks its contents by just twisting at it for fifteen seconds, finding a key to a secret workshop on the Croft estate, where a camcorder which has lain untouched for six years still has charge left in its battery. Then it's off to Hong Kong for some Indiana Jones shit with barely-interested sidekick Lu Ren (Daniel Wu). Walton Goggins appears as Matthias Vogel, the film's obviously-creepy baddie, and nuances his performance by continuing to act that way, relentlessly.

Oh, also the world is at stake. Something about bio-weapons. The script doesn't spend too much time on that, since the characters who really want it wouldn't conceivably know about it until the film's third act, yet there they are.

So. The exterior action setpieces are choreographed, shot and directed well (which is at least partially the point here, admittedly), but as far as praise or 'finding the good' goes, that's really about it. Tomb Raider is spectacularly ordinary at best, and it's quite often not even that.

The problem, as usual, is that the collection of well-worn setpieces will work perfectly well in a game where there's interaction to the proceedings (let's not forget that Lara Croft was essentially a gender-flipped Indiana Jones to begin with). But once that's reverse-translated back onto the silver screen, all that's left is an almighty rip-off of the cinematic properties which inspired it. There's no intrigue or story driving Uthaug's movie, just the hope that Alicia Vikander sweating through a sports-vest will be enough to distract the audience from the aching void at the heart of the screenplay. Spoiler: It's not.

From the petulant, reluctant hero, to the slave-labour archaeology camp run by an evil anthropologist, to the white water rapids with a climactic waterfall, to the prising open of a cursed casket, Tomb Raider is little more than a tedious procession of adventure tropes you've seen done elsewhere, and better. The 3D is implemented well enough from a technical level, but it's pointless in a movie with this much skaky-cam and action scenes which take place in dark environments.

Then, the level of exposition here is horrendous. We get three bursts of backstory before Lara has even left London, and the third of those basically recaps the first. If the script was any more clunky it'd be written out in Lego. Although Lara is indeed presented as resourceful and tenacious, she doesn't have to try too hard to figure out the way to the Ark of the Covenant Himiko's sarcophagus, since Lord Croft has handily left a series of clue-dropping audio-diaries from previous adventures, like a cross between Rick O'Connell and Mr Kipling…

"…I found a speck on an old map that no-one else has". Three people were involved in writing this. That's actual dialogue delivered by Dominic 'The Wire' West. I was initially amazed the man could keep a straight face for his lines, but then I remembered that he recently did a pasta sauce advert for TV. That said, his mullet here is nothing short of awards-worthy, and I hope the notoriously short-memoried Academy panel keeps this in mind for next year's gongs.

For Vikander's sake, I hope the fee she negotiated is enough to compensate for the hit to her credibility as An Actual Actress. Easy money does not necessarily mean an easy life.

The movie plays out like a two-hour cutscene from a game you won't be bothered about finishing, and feels like it should be the fourth entry in a series, not the first. Just before it's re-cast for straight-to-DVD continuations and a kid-friendly animated spinoff.

Tomb Raider brings little interesting and nothing new to action-cinema, nor (I imagine) does it shed any new light upon the game series which spawned it. It's faintly ironic that the film has been rated 12A since it's natural target audience is ten years old and too wired on Haribo and Tango Ice-Blasts to analyse anything they see...*²

This film belongs firmly on the same shelf as Assassin's Creed and The Great Wall...



Hahahahahahahaha.



If you're a Tomb Raider completist, go for it.



It isn't.







There isn't.



Level 1: Jerus Jannick is in this.



I was going to give this an 'unsatisfying' 3/7, but reading back everything I've said about it, that hardly seems right...


*¹ Content-generators: Please stop penning speculative articles asking "Will this be the first good video-game movie?" every time one of these things comes along. We can safely assume it won't be, until we're miraculously proven wrong, upon which you can fill your clickbait boots retrospectively. Thanks. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² And even your kids will have seen all this before. ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: The Huntsman - Winter's War

The Huntsman: Winter's War (3D)
Cert: 12A / 117 mins / Dir. Cedric Nicolas-Troyan / Trailer



Why, it was only a week ago that I pondered the increasing phenomenon of the 'Monday Movie Release', positing that it could be a way of further boosting a film's opening-weekend takings. Naturally I'd assumed the same of The Huntsman: Winter's War until I sat down in the cinema after work this evening and quickly realised that last friday was of course April Fools' Day, and would have too telling a move, even for Universal Pictures...

Two worrying things occurred before we even got to the BBFC Title Card. First up was a pre-trailer advert for the upcoming N*ckelb*ck UK tour. Oh, this movie is intended for N*ckelb*ck fans. Or vice-versa, I'm not sure which is worse. Secondly, the final trailer to run before The Huntsman: Winter's War was for... The Huntsman: Winter's War. Yes, this film had a trailer for itself before it. Not only is this a) utterly pointless and b) utterly narcissistic, it's also the trailer which actually gives away the closest thing the movie has to a third-act plot-reveal. So if anyone present had been avoiding spoilers in anticipation, the film's own distributor has made sure they've wasted their time.

[Update #1: 05 April] It appears that the trailer-incident was unique to the cinema I was in. I don't know the exact details, but it sounds like it wasn't planned, anyway. This is fair enough, really; a mis-selected trailer reel makes far more sense than a misplaced marketing decision.
Besides, worse things have happened.

But you didn't come all the way over here to read me banging on about gripes outside the run-time of TH:WW, did you? Oh, no! Right, deep breath…

Using 2012's Snow White and the Huntsman as its central anchor, this film is part prequel, part sequel. This time, rather than just banging the coconuts of Twilight and Lord of the Rings together, someone at Universal Studios has realised that there's now a shit-ton of Game of Thrones and Frozen to rip off, too! So in the pot they go, stir until dissolved and serve with a side-garnish of the rope-bridge from Indiana Jones and the net-trap from Return of the Jedi.

But before all that, this excruciating pantomime of slapdash plotting and digitally-simulated sentiment kicks off with a lead-weight narration to explain the things that visual storytelling can't, and enough lensflare and soft-focus to cover any other cracks which may be left showing. Charlize Theron (The Bad Queen™) starts as she means to go on, putting on two and a half stones in weight due to the amount of scenery she chews throughout production, flanked by her screen-sibling Emily Blunt (The Ice Queen™) whose eyes seem to plead a desperate apology every time she looks at the camera (alarmingly frequently), delivering her clunky, stilted lines. "Where are the days when I could be relied upon to pick challenging, meaningful or just engaging roles?" she asks. The audience briefly remembers that she also appeared in Into The Woods and bellows "BEHIND YOU!".

So, the pre-amble is set, the story (…) moves to a certain point, then the events of Snow White are glossed over with a "seven years later" caption-card and it's time for the next act...

[Oh, Snow White's alive during all this by the way. She's mentioned several times, just not shown other than in brief archival footage from the first film. Yeah, imagine what state your screenplay must be in when you can't even get Kristen Stewart to poke her head around the door and lend a little continuity. With Theron only surfacing in the first and third acts, it's a good job McThor was willing to reprise his role…]

Ah, the pièce de résistance! Headlining the film are Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Chastain. The former has retained his inexplicable Scottish accent from the first installment (his home-region in the highlands being somewhere between Cardiff and Gateshead apparently), and as Chastain plays his childhood sweetheart, clan-mate and love-interest, she also has a Scotch-Twang to match (although hers seems to be based around Dublin and Mumbai). I'd be lying if I said I didn't snort out loud with Hemsworth's first utterance (cue a sharp nudge from Mrs Blackout), and I'd be lying if I said I genuinely wanted subtitles for their dialogue, as I lost so much of it due to the vocal stumbling. Interestingly enough, watching Australian Hemsworth struggling with a Scottish accent isn't completely dissimilar to Scotsman Gerard Butler doing battle with an American one. They should definitely make a movie together.

[Clarification: And I know, obviously, that the story isn't set in the real world, so I wouldn't necessarily expect the accents to have geographical authenticity. But we, the audience, are in the real world, and we, the audience need to be able to understand what they, the characters are talking about at any given moment. So, y'know…]

Meanwhile, the actual (ie intended) comic-relief comes in the form of Nick Frost as the only dwarf to return from the first film, accompanied by his screen-cousin Rob Brydon sporting a Welsh accent (because he's actually Welsh; casting-directors, take note) and their respective counterparts Sheridan Smith and Alexandra Roach. The laughs are a little broad, but there's no denying that the sections of the film starring the dimunitive foursome move with a sureness that's sorely lacking from the rest of it.

And speaking of which, the main thread of the movie is Jock McHuntsman's quest to retrieve The Mirror (y'know, the Snow White Mirror-Mirror, mirror) from a goblin fly-tipping site, discovering in the process that the reflective golden dish has gone from being the Russell's Grant Horoscope Column we all know and love, and is now something closer to Necronomicon Ex Mortis, apparently. Even the characters' motivation for this task is clouded, since apparently it's sending Snow White a bit mad/evil and she wants it back, but the Ice Queen wants it as well because she wasn't evil enough to begin with. They're basically screwed whoever they give it to; a premise which makes up the film's final, borderline-animated, act. The rest is shrieking, grunting and a poly-count that illustrates where the budget really went...

Now obviously I was predisposed to being cynical toward this film, but The Huntsman: Winter's War really is an almighty mess. The melee-fight with the Goblin king was pretty great and Charlize Theron's clearly having a whale of a time, but everyone else just seems embarrassed to be there, as well they should. The first film was a rights-dodging retool of a classic tale; the sequel is Universal shouting too loud, and with nothing to say…

[Update #2: 05 April] Contains spoilers: highlight-to-read. Okay, usually when I hit Publish on a review, I've got any ranting out of my system and I can just move on. But TH:WW has continued to annoy me throughout the following day and I don't feel I've made my disdain for the film clear enough. My main issue with its predecessor was that it adapted a classic fairy-tale, but in a very loose manner which managed to twist any moral framework (that framework being precisely what fairy-tales are built on, the biblical-parables of their historical generation), and instead actually send out a counter-intuitive message.

The sequel however, calls itself a fairy-tale (at several points within the film, via the narrator) yet has no discernible moral message. The story, on a purely surface level you understand, keeps repeating the idea that The Ice Queen has "banned" love in her kingdom, and that the burgeoning relationship between Mr and Mrs Huntsman is the catalyst which can't be surprised and will be the weapon with which justice and peace are restored.

In any literary version of the story, Mr and Mrs Huntsman's love would save the day at a crucial point, where any other potential hero/heroine was left floundering, having learned the lesson that brute force won't win all battles and that sometimes understanding and forgiveness are more powerful. How is the happy ending achieved here? While The Bad Queen is stabbing McThor with her sharp tentacles of hate (don't ask), Mrs Huntsman - incapacitated on the floor as The Girl One must always be - yells to him "Hey, try twatting the mirror with that axe you've been carrying around for the whole movie!". So he twats the mirror with the axe, it shatters, so does The Bad Queen and then The Ice Queen (also stabbed, also incapacitated) manages to slay alive long enough to say "Oh, I might have been wrong about that 'banning-love' thing." while McThor and Mrs Huntsman just sort of nod quietly. Love didn't save the day, here. Twatting a giant mirror with an axe to stop a shrieking zombie psychopath queen is what saved the day.
That's not an inspiring morality-play, it's a fucking Vin Diesel movie.

The Huntsman: Winter's War isn't a fairy-tale; it's half an idea for a cash-in sequel, poorly told in an array of non-accents. Universal Studios' contempt for their own customers grows more vivid with each release.

And this film is for fans of N*ckelb*ck…

Being beaten around the head with a tin tray for two hours while someone tries to remember the plot of Frozen at the top of their voice.



Only for the shiny CGI.



Nope.



Nope.



I just might.



Nope.



Level 1: Jessica Chastain in A Most Violent Year with Poe Dameron? Chris Hemsworth in those Avengers movies with Mace Windu? Well how about Emily Blunt starring with Obi-Wan or Nick Frost being in loads of things with Unkar Plutt?

No.

This film shares uncredited extra Nick Donald with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Sure, there are loads of level-2s that are fish in a barrel, but I think it's important to remember that there was at least one person on set who should have known better and could have stopped the production in its tracks by pointing to the script and screaming "Yeah, but WHY?".
Maybe next time, Nick...





*¹ I don't even have any footnotes. I poured all my bile, scorn and sarcasm into the main body of text, up there. You're reading this bit for naught, I'm afraid. Mind you, while you're down here I'll just mention that I was quite amused at the film using the term 'wanker'. Sure, it's probably more than you'd expect from a 12A, but bear in mind that you can usually get an in-context fuck-word into the script at that level. What amused me more is that US screenwriters really don't seem to have cottoned on to how that word is used in the UK, bless them. It's mentioned on the BBFC site, and I wouldn't expect the rating to change for it, but I think there'll be more than a few terse comments about its inclusion.


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.