Funky_Gibbon

Black Crab (Netflix) - 7/10 Swedish film set in a Sweden that has been torn apart in a brutal civil war and the general collapse of civilisation. Noomi Rapace is one of six soldiers selected for a desperate mission by the side that is losing to cross 100 miles of frozen archipelago sea ice to avoid the enemy and deliver a package behind their lines. Ticks about every cliche for movies about people crossing ice or on a mission that you can think of and the final third just isn't as good as what comes before but the story and performances are reasonably good, the visuals and action are also good and the almost John Carpenter-esqe soundtrack fits it perfectly.

Three Days of the Condor - 7/10 Classic 70s conspiracy movie with Robert Redford as a CIA researcher who returns from a lunch break to find everyone who he works with murdered. There something about all those 1970s paranoia conspiracy movies that came out during or just after Nixon's time in power and the evidence of criminal conspiracies within the US Government that I love.

Station Eleven (based on the novel by Emily St. John Mandel) A series about a number of people whose lives are all linked in some way to a failing actor who died on stage during a rendition of King Lear, on the same night that the world realised that a deadly flu virus was spreading, and an unpublished philosophical science fiction graphic novel created by an ex-wife of the actor that has a profound influence on future events for those same characters. The narrative switches between the lives of the characters in the early days and years of the pandemic, as civilisation collapses and the few survivors try to stay alive, and 20 years after it where life has settle down in this new world and a troupe of musicians and actors constantly travel between survivor communities to provide entertainment, performing Shakespeare and try to keep the embers of culture alive. I read the book some years ago and thought it was ok but it didn't really grip me. The series is just as slow paced and thoughtful but I think it worked a lot better, possibly helped by some great actors.

I binged this after the first episode came out but didn't want to talk about it in case others were watching it weekly. I didn't have a problem with Joe Cole (after a period of adjustment after watching the first ep) as his quips and attitude was classic Michael Caine 'Harry Palmer'. My main problem with the series, which I did enjoy overall, was that it felt simultaneously cheap and expensive. They'd clearly spent a bit of money on the series but it felt like a rose-tinted nostagic version of the 1960s, too clean and all primary colours. More Austin Powers than Harry Palmer. I did like that they'd kept the weird camera angles of the film version though. I recently watched another Len Deighton Cold War spy TV series, the Ian Holm's starring 1988 adaptation of Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match 'Game, Set and Match' on Youtube. That was more to my tastes. Less Bond-y, more le Carré.

Hudson Hawk - 2/10 as a film, 8/10 as an LSD trip.

Escape from Mogadishu - 6.5/10 South Korean film based on the true story of how the staff of the North and South Korean embassies had to put aside the suspicion and hostility between the two countries and work to together in order to get to safety as the Somalia civil war erupts around them. It's not going to win any awards for subtlety but the action is good and there are a few good laughs.

6/10 for me too. Largely agree with this apart from it being boring. It never bored me but the protagonist is just too unlikeable (deliberately, great performance by Bradley Cooper) to make it a film that I can say I really enjoyed. Could definitely have done with being 20 minutes shorter.

The Courier - 7/10 Benedict Cumberbatch plays Greville Wynne, the businessman recruited by the CIA and MI6 to travel to Moscow and become a courier for Oleg Penkovsky, the KGB Colonel who decided to betray the Soviet Union and pass information to the West in the hope of preventing nuclear war in the years prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Raging Fire - 5.5/10 Hong Kong action crime film starring Donnie Yen which steals a lot of the plot and specific scenes from 'Heat', plus some music from 'The Untouchables' that took me right out of the movie every time it showed up. Basically it's a a bunch of cops trying to take down a highly skilled crew of criminals.

Arcane season 1 (Netflix) Apparently based on the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game called League of Legends (with a huge dollop of the Dishonoured games style-wise IMO), this 9-part animated steampunk action adventure might possibly be the best (and loosest) game tie-in I've ever seen. The basic premise is that there's a city, split into the above ground utopian city going through a renaissance of technological wonders and science and the undercity, a crumbling, polluted hellhole that is home to the unwanted and dominated by criminal gangs and full of simmering anger at being oppressed and neglected by the rule of city above. The series follows two sisters from the undercity and the paths their lives take as a result of them breaking into an apartment in the city above and stealing whatever they could find. Stylish and beautifully animated with a good storyline that is quite dark and gritty in places. Doesn't require any knowledge of the game it's supposedly based on. I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy this but saw enough recommendations about it to give it a good and glad I did.

Just found out why this one was so similar to The Killing. It's literally written by the same guy who wrote the screenplay... that explains a lot.

Motherless Brooklyn - 8/10 1950s set film noir about a private detective with Tourette's syndrome who obsessively starts to investigate a murder and finds a web of deceit and corruption (don't they all). Slow paced, Chinatown-esqe movie that is raised uo a notch by having such an interesting protagonist, played well by Edward Norton.

The Chestnut Man Danish TV crime show (via Netflix) ala The Killing in which a serial killer targets mothers and leaves little human stick figures made out of chestnuts at the scene of the crime. A pair of detectives with personal issues (they always have personal issues) investigate and clash with their superiors as the investigation leads to a prominent politician. Pretty standard stuff but enjoyable nonetheless. The whole story about creepy looking chestnut men figures initially felt weird to me until I read that it's a Danish tradition and I realised that from the outside things like Bonfire Night must (accurately) look much more sinister than we think they are. The Silent Sea Korean sci-fi mystery thriller (Netflix again) set in some future period where water has become a scarce resource and everywhere is slowing being turned into a desert. A team of scientists and military types are sent to an research station on the Moon, abandoned years before after all 150 people working there suddenly died, to recover some kind of experiment. Wasn't bowled over by this one. Didn't help that the main characters weren't particularly sympathetic. The ending will leave you going "Eh?"

Unhinged - 6/10 Workmanlike action thriller about a woman being terrorised by Russell Crowe after a road rage incident. One part Duel, one part Falling Down.

Don't Look Up - 7/10 Surprising funny satire that takes aim at US politics, media, social media, obsession with celebrity trivia, politicisation of science and of all aspects of our lives, in the face of something that shouldn't be political (in the case of the film it's a extinction-level comet headed for Earth but really it's Covid) and weird tech billionaires. It's so on the nose about just how stupid we've all become it's almost depressing.

The Last Duel - 8/10 While I'm generally not a big fan of Rashomon-style 'multiple subjective viewpoints of the same story' movies, this medieval France story of a woman trying to get justice and the high-stakes fight to the death that results between her husband and the accused was well done (apart from Ben Affleck's blonde hair and Matt Damon's ridiculous beard).

Mr Jones - 8/10 Historical drama about how Welsh journalist Gareth Jones travelled to Moscow and then, losing his Soviet minders, sneaked into Ukraine to become the first person to report on the truth behind Stalin's 'economic miracle'; the deliberate starvation of millions of Ukrainian people in a man-made famine created by the Soviet regime.

The Matrix: Resurrections - 3/10 What was the point of this? My expectations were low going in and it still failed to reach that low bar. They actually joke in the movie about how nobody wanted them to make part 4 and they were forced to by the studio... I think it may have been a cry for help from the writers more than anything else.

Just spotted this place for rent in Ecclesfield that would seem to meet many of your requirements, although it is unfurnished so maybe not? Used to be a church when I was young but I guess it isn't anymore. https://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/details/60341236/

My Name 8 part Korean Netflix TV series. Teenage girl witnesses the murder of her gangster father. The crime boss who was his friend takes her under his wing and, desiring revenge, she becomes his mole within the police force as she hunts for the one responsible. Pretty decent mash-up of Infernal Affairs/The Departed and John Wick.

Technically yes but it's not really a 'star' kind of movie, much more understated than his usual stuff.

Each to their own...😁 I still reckon you should try watching Hummingbird though.

Hummingbird - 8/10 A homeless alcoholic former soldier with PTSD forms an unlikely friendship with the nun who runs a local soup kitchen and is torn between wanting to be the good man she thinks he can be and his need to take revenge against a man who murdered a friend of his. Jason Statham's most underrated film. The synopsis sounds like a classic Statham punchy punchy kicky kicky movie but this is much more a drama than it is an action film and is surprisingly restrained.

I enjoyed the first season but never watched the second season because I saw that they'd cancelled the show and I didn't want to spend any more time on something that I knew wouldn't have a proper ending. The premise is very good though, very similar to The City & The City by China Mieville but with that Cold War vibe.

The only thing that really needs explaining is why the anti-vaxxers online went into a frenzy of delight as they declared it proof of whatever their latest wild fantasy about vaccines is, and then continued to do so even after the news emerged that the stoppage was caused by some numpties deciding to punch each other. Other than that and the fairly obvious trolling of this thread there's not really much that anyone needs to say.