What have you watched recently: Electric Boogaloo

Blackhat
Feels like a generic action script that had been knocking around for a bit before Michael Mann picked it up and tried to add his style to it. It was obvious that he had not written it himself. The plot bent credibility quite a lot, as in most action films.

The digital photography was good. It creates a lot of energy in the action sequences, especially in one place where some people are running through a narrow alley and the camera is ahead of them looking back. Probably impossible to do this with a film camera.

The Homesman
Tommy lee Jones western. First thing is that it looks incredible. Great widescreen composition to the images and the outdoor settings are beautiful (if stark, they're not John Ford epic backdrops!).

The story is quite bleak, dealing with the harshness of life in the American west where people are carving out their claims and trying to make a life. Some early scenes of the women at the centre of the story are jarringly edited in during the first third, but otherwise it flows beautifully.

James Spader turns up with an awful Irish accent. Don't know what he was aiming for with that!

Ant-Man- It's funny how you become accustomed to new features of reality as time goes on; no matter how strange they would have seemed to you at some point in the not so-distant past . A few years ago I didn't care a damn for anything related to what we now all now knowingly refer to as The Marvel-verse: I didn't even know such a guy such as Ant-Man even existed.

Yet here I am in 2015, just after watching the latest Marvel thing. I can't remember the last one I've missed. Maybe the first Captain America? Which was eons ago at this stage : pure phase one stuff don't you know. I feel like I've spent the last few years getting acquainted with this initally foreign-to-me land of super-powers and spandex. It's shocking how now, thanks to countless movies, I can hold a casual conversation about the merits of Thor's hammer versus Captain America's shield. This proves to me the immovability of Marvel in culture at large: it feels fairly secure for now. And yet, I genuinely never feel any love for the Marvel movies. I've never seen one I thought was undeniably good. I go to see them out of a sense of obligation: they're big event movies and part of my brain always stirs at the thought that you might see something in each brand new edition... Something different.

So Ant-Man held more promise than most. The central premise is so daft that they'd surely have to treat it with a bit of levity – dear God, save me from the Saving The World final act please. The cast promised good things. I was genuinely astounded that Edgar Wright was at some point attached to direct this; someone with his kind of Maverick qualities was never going to mesh with the money-making side of all of this. But, I still hoped that his fingerprints would remain on the final product in some way. So then Ant-Man: let's be having you....

And yeah... it does have it's moments. The first half-hour/forty minutes is largely great: the comedy is strong; the tone is dry, but yet loveable. The cast is well-matched to the material, helping to bring out the Wrightian inspired pieces of imaginative visual storytelling. I have no complaints about the first act – it's legitimately enjoyable, without qualification. I also unexpectedly enjoyed the final showdown and the build up towards it. Usually this is where my soul dies during a Marvel movie. It's the custom, to see everything good about what has come before being pulped before your eyes; into a relentless CGI borefest which goes on forever - crushing your spirit and liquifying your brain. As silly and all as the final battle really was, at least it tried to depart from the apocalyptic norm – Amongst the by-now expected top-notch production values- Giant train sets or what-have you- there was an attempt to inject a tangible emotional core to the stakes for the climatic show-down. That, to be fair, is a refreshing difference.

That's what it's all about right now: Trying to spot the difference. Marvel films make me feel bad. They leave me feeling cheap and violated. I pay money in hope and, in the end, I'm always left bereft. No other blockbuster "brand" is as blatant in it's cynicism and downright laziness. Their slavish adherence to formula - not to mention their ever-willingness to plug anything related to the never-ending chain of forthcoming attractions, even at the expense of the actual movie this plugging is taking place in - really gets to me. They have pure gold in source materials and endless resources to make truly amazing movies; if they so wished. That doesn't seem to be what they want. They want the conveyor belt to move on. Whatever film you're watching now is only a mere footnote to whatever other huge film they have on the horizon. Ant-Man isn't the absolute worst in this regard but, it is, at it's core, fairly heartless and functional. The cast does it's best, but the moments of genuine life and vitality exist on either side of an excruciating exposition marathon – which seems to go on forever, inside the confines of a single building. The films vitality is straight jacketed inside the schematics, which are painfully clear here at times. Whatever good there is about Ant-Man is what's surprising, frivolous and witty. In short: what isn't Marvel. These elements are only the cherry on top. Unfortunately the cake has long gone stale. That's why Ant-Man is a true disappointment. It has moments when it shines very bright, but when necessary, all this moves aside, to give way to tiredness and just about good enough all over. And is that what you want? To praise a film that could have been great.... for being simply better than what we've come to expect? What a bummer. I think maybe the time has come to acknowledge that Marvel film is approaching creative bankruptcy, but the money keeps rolling in – thanks in part to ejits like me – so things aren't likely to change any time soon. So that's it: from now on the money stays in my pocket.

Sounds like a good weekend in. Big Carpenter fan myself and there's always something in his pictures that make them worth watching, but it's a pity he hasn't managed to capture that umph that made his previous work great.

I'll have to check out 'The Guest'. 'Cold in July' and 'It Follows' were very good though.

RIP Roddy Piper.

The Guest
Plenty has been said about this already. I thought it was great fun. The last scene ended the film perfectly. Hit just the right note!

The White Ribbon
Opposite end of the scale from The Guest! Some heavy ideas put forward here around fundamentalism and innocence, and how our ideals are just that. But it's rivetting from start to finish (I didn't realise that there's no score until the end credits). The actors playing the children are just sinister enough without overtly doing anything . The B&W photography is beautiful too.

Sans Laisser de Traces ("Traceless" or "Immacualte")
A good French thriller about a straight-laced company man with a skeleton in the closet. When he confides in an old school friend after a chance encounter he struggles to keep his life together. It's not particularly original, but it's well paced and the performances are good. It's only 90 minutes too, so doesn't waste any time. Does everything right!

Air force one - Hadn't watched this film since it's release so couldn't recall the plot.

The dialogue is so ham fisted, how the heck were certain prestigious actors able to keep a straight face. It's like a píss take of Team America on steroids.

I'd love to punch Harrison Ford square in the mouth.