#re: plane jane

[blushydrangea]

im here to ask u ur thoughts in the... pj controversy ehhekekfke i wanna say smthn abt but like i feel as if i dont grasp the whole thing yet so i chose to shut up rn

hi love! under the cut so the people who are tired of discussing this topic can avoid it.

it's a long one!

i know everyone here has likely come across the tweets pj made, but as an archiver at heart i feel the need to break everything down. screenshots aren't mine.

on the 18th, pj made a tweet about fellow drag queen and artist chappell roan, questioning the authenticity of her love for drag. most people (me included!) thought she was trolling, which unfortunately didn't happen to be the case. plane appeared to be under the impression that chappell was mean or cold towards drag queens she invited to her shows, something she allegedly heard about in boston and, according to some people on reddit so take this with a grain of salt, was debunked. she followed her tweet with another, ironically saying "i love chappell roan". the first tweet was then deleted.

after several people accused plane jane of trying to gatekeep drag from women & having an unfair opinion deeply rooted in misogyny, pj released a notes app screenshot on the 19th. however, going against the purpose of most notes screenshots, hers wasn't an apology. instead, she chose to call out the hypocrisy of people attacking her because they were calling her a man (it's important to note that pj hasn't directly told us what her ood pronouns are afaik).

she made some more shady tweets after that and argued with stans on social media but i don't feel like including these, so the last update we have was this apology pj made for her fandom.

before i speak my mind on this, i just wanna say that i am willing to discuss this as long as people are polite, any aggressive messages i might receive will be promptly deleted.

to be honest, i didn't like what she said. being a person with a platform and, let's be real, several crazy stan accounts who follow her word like gospel, it was wrong in my opinion to call a growing lesbian artist (one of the very few we have, at that) performative for her love of drag. someone who also engages in the *checks notes* performative art of drag. there isn't much of a "bag" to be secured by pretending you love drag, as it's not that mainstream, and i can't help but wonder if pj would have the same criticism were chappell a gay man instead of a lesbian woman.

misogyny is real and it's present in all of us, we were all raised to see women as less than. pj is white and male-presenting with her makeup off, she isn't incapable of misogyny because she is gay or a drag queen. therefore, it rubbed me in the wrong way to see her voice out the same beliefs i've heard from other gay men before – that women deserve to be questioned whenever they exist in drag spaces. i don't agree with the sentiment that pj meant women shouldn't do drag, as she never said that. though she honestly reminded me of those men who ask me very specific and tricky questions about the tree of gondor or whatever when i tell them i love the lord of the rings. are you a true fan?

her notes app statement was what pissed me off. she was really immature imo, ofc she's only 26 so there's room for growth, but twisting a situation you inserted yourself in to seem like the victim based on... people calling you a cis man? come on. it was a self-centered statement made by someone who seemed to refuse to take any criticism on this subject matter. i was very disappointed she chose the "but you are wrong too!" route instead of apologizing to the people she hurt.

her apology to her fandom was... fine, i guess. it served to show me that she seems to be comfortable living in her bubble.

do i think she's a bad person? no, i don't. but i do think she had a misogynistic take and doubled down on it because she refuses to admit she was wrong. i'm staying away from her for the time being, i'll probably get over it eventually but rn i don't wanna see her face all that much. no judgement whatsoever to people who forgave her and are still posting about her, it's your blog, do what you want <3

[lemoncholy-stars]

absolutely hilarious how when im scared out of my mind and literally shaking that the thing that is bringing me comfort rn is mag 32 - hive

[lasshoe]

sorry to that man (brendan hunt) but i’m still choosing to believe the ending montage was a dream sequence so buckle up bc here’s why:

in the pilot episode ted tells beard that if they see each other in their dreams to goof around a little bit, so right off the bat there is a thinly veiled insinuation of some light magical realism and then of course the line about ted not being able to sleep on planes

so moving to the finale, ted was having serious doubts about leaving but wanted to believe it was the right thing to do, so this sets up the montage as his imagined, best-case scenarios and a kind of martyr-ism that he envisions for everyone he left behind to tell himself they’ll be fine without him

getting into it, we seen him go through each character with whom he had a real connection with in richmond:

rebecca: he could have heard about the dutch man from her or keeley so he imagines a rebecca getting sleepless in seattle type meet cute after he just mentioned a classic romcom "leave-cute" to her in the airport paired with the previous episode mentioning that SiS is his favorite ephron film, so it makes sense to want the "best" for rebecca’s life after him. (also worth noting that hannah even says in this interview to her that it feels like more of a possibility and a hint that she’s letting new love into her life but not a definitive ending. which also lol)

beard: he literally leaves the plane because he loves jane so ted concocts the weirdest, most surreal wedding between them in stonehenge that beard had mentioned them going to in the christmas episode, and because it feels so bizarre and almost incomprehensible but ted does wants to imagine him living his best beard-appropriate life

roy: he clearly respects him so much, enough to imagine him as the new coach of AFC Richmond, but understands roy’s inability to open up and how that could hinder his success professionally and personally, exactly as it did for him, and so then imagines bringing doctor sharon back to help him work through it and even imagines an army man to protect him because he never got a chance to give roy one himself. (sharon is also wearing green in this dream which is associated with safety re: the toy soldiers.) this one is also interesting bc roy opened up about his last season at chelsea saying that he wish he’d stuck around and just have fun rather than quit and leave but ted ends up doing exactly that—quitting and leaving

jamie: he imagines jamie reconciling with his father, clearly projecting that he never got a chance to do it with his own. we’ve always seen how jamie and his relationship with his father has brought out ted's own complicated feelings of fatherhood so it makes sense in ted’s dream scenario for him to gloss over the fact and create an happy, to him, vision of reconciliation

nate: nate being integrated back into the coaching staff and having a rich full life is all ted ever wished for him. we never really saw him arrive at the choice to truly forgive him but we understand through the scene with beard that he obviously did, and again in nate's return and his apology

sam: he truly does believe he’ll make the nigerian team one day, since he mentioned it back in season one after saying he was homesick and after not making it this season. also thought it was interesting we got no resolution with simi at sam’s restaurant which further proves it’s a dream because ted isn’t privy to that relationship, only we the audience are

keeley/rebecca: the women’s league is totally something he (and all of us) could see them doing together and i love that he imagines their personal and professional bond continue in something that is so special for both of them. he would have loved that :')

mae/the pub boys: he has just learned that rebecca sold 49% of the club back to the fans so of course he dreams that mae and the boys get their part of the shares since it’s a place that was a home to people who care deeply for AFC richmond and had warmed up and welcomed him in as well

trent: in another classic ted way, in trying to distance himself from the community in order to make peace with his decision to return to kansas, he imagines that trent took his advice and changed the title of the book from "the lasso way" to "the richmond way" which only makes sense in dream ted’s head because he can’t objectively define the impact he’s had on richmond and instead deflects it back to the community. but trent is a professional and in his objective opinion i truly believe he would stick to his original thesis that these changes and this coaching philosophy is 100% because of ted

roy/keeley/jamie: the last shot of him observing them together mirrors how he saw them after the man city game, and again, he’s not aware of the current dynamics between them so at the higgins' barbecue he imagines them as he last remembered them, happy, but not explicitly together in any specific coupling combination

higgins: of course he wants to imagine his found family still hanging out and actively being a found family outside of the club and he has fond memories of being at the higgins house with the whole gaggle at christmas, so this vignette is almost an amalgamation of all his best wishes come together, really working overtime to sell the idea that they will be happy without him

ADDITIONALLY we’ve also seen a flash forward used as a device in the show before in 212. but there we got specific time cards to let us know when it’s happening. in the finale, it’s much more abstract as a montage (you could even say lynchian, which the official ted lasso twitter account mentioned here) which is another reason to believe it could be a dream

then of course ted waking up after this sequence and just then arriving back to kansas and henry? it was only several hours vs. the weeks? months? years? that seemed to have passed in the dream sequence? the show doesn’t ever sway from its linear storytelling, so it's logical to show all of that while ted is sleeping because it’s not real and doesn’t affect the timeline, but for those who want that closure offers up possibilities of where the characters could end up through the filter of ted’s imagination

[chainofclovers]

Ted Lasso 3x12 Thoughts

I have always loved, and still love, that Ted moved to London and loved it. He acclimated, or more than acclimated. The three years was a story about new places and people and experiences and old ghosts that followed him there. I understand that the one thing in the middle—a kid, not a ghost, who still exists in the place left behind—necessitated him making a painful decision. I am mourning that because Ted had to make the decision to leave London, the magic of arriving in a place and never wanting to leave has been broken. He had to re-outsider himself, and I can imagine many complex (and realistic, damn it) futures for him, including futures that would involve him spending significant time back in that place, but there's a real sadness in just...the leaving. He's doomed to return (or not return) instead of just getting to exist there, after we've gotten used to seeing him in an environment that suited him.

Something I'll love when I'm able to be more mature about all this is that Ted doesn't argue with Rebecca when she tells him she wants him to consider the possibility that Richmond is his home.

Something I love now--as painful as it is--is that Rebecca seems, in a lot of ways, like she's in love with Ted. He's slipping away, and instead of wailing about how much she'll miss the biscuits, she sits herself down in front of some croissants. (And while I don't particularly like that the Dutch man has returned to her life in such a magical, serendipitous way that only timed out because of her tremulous, seemingly to-the-wire decision not to get on that plane or say anything more to Ted, a charitable and practical part of my brain is glad she'll have companionship if she couldn't have what she spent most of this episode seeming to believe she wanted. Even if what she wanted wasn't actually romantic. Or wasn't supposed to read as romantic. Even if it did.)

The immediacy of Ted's emotions in 3x11, when he has the fight with his mom and it's so clear that he's got to go back and face what he's run away from, reminded me of how sharply he can feel. So it was really hard to watch him be almost stoic throughout this episode in the way he pulls away. He leaves everyone well, but everyone else's feelings are so big and he's kinda glazed over, and I didn't expect to feel the wind knocked out of me with the force of Rebecca's longing for him to stay.

(And I'm so glad that Rebecca didn't sell all of the club, instead taking her ownership down to just 51%, but I'm also glad she cares enough about Ted to have genuinely considered it. I'm so glad she and Keeley are going to work together to form a women's team. I'm so glad she promoted Roy to head coach, and that he's actually going to work on himself now that he knows he'll be working to be his best self rather than someone else. I am glad Ted was only dreaming about Beard and Jane marrying at Stonehenge--Ted has never understood how seriously bad that relationship is. I'm glad life is moving on, but it's just. So. Painful.)

I know a lot of people will talk about how this was a disappointment after all--a savior story with a pat, happy ending, rather than a true love story. But my feeling is that it genuinely was something better and sadder than a savior story...a narrative about choice with a tragic end. (And I don't mean "tragic" to imply that he shouldn't have gone to be with Henry, because I think he needed his reconnection with Henry to take place in Kansas, very essentially. It's just that everything else about the ending is tragic.) Maybe Ted spent the last three years at home, and maybe it won't hit him until much later, the magnitude of all that he's left. I like that it wasn't a happy ending, even if there are happy parts. I don't like that people will mistake it for a happy ending, even if a happy ending that angers them. I don't expect people to feel good about this paragraph, but it's the thing that's saving me where this show is concerned.

This is my favorite show. I've never obsessed over or connected to a piece of media quite like I have with this. I don't particularly care about the better things out there, and I'm not particularly curious what my next obsession will be because I'm still in this one. The finale didn't ruin the show for me, but I feel like I'm being stabbed by the last ten minutes, by the pain of the end really being about that impossible choice feeling impossible for as long as our eyes were trained on his face.

[1braincell4rent]

Welcome, my dear humans to this... rambling?

Yes, I think that´s probably it. I´m just going to analise the Good Omens Season 2 Opening, talk about a few things that caught my attention, do some innacurate predictions and probably make more questions that are not gonna be solved (not even when the season actually gets released).

That being said, I apologise for tha will I´m about to write. But I had nowhere else to write it, so bear with me, okay?

Okay, we begin with a sequence pretty similar to the opening for the first season. Where´s this? I wonder.

But there´s two things that inmediately caught my attention, as Crowley and Aziraphale begin their particular procession across the fields.

The first one, there´s a person walking with a box on their hands. That same box has a couple of arrows signaling upwards and I can tell it´s also the same symbol we saw on at least one of the promotional posters of GO S2. So it´s probably the thing Gabriel had to deliver, if we go with theories plus what was said in the sneak peeks.

The second thing here... Why are here so many goats? Is this a hell reference?

So now we set the goats on fire because why not, and there´s a building on the top right that gives me ancient roman vibes (nevermind me guys, the clear thing here is that we´re soon all going to hell and more people will join the charade).

We keep going to a cementery now with people following the angel and demon and there´s a few tombstones with eyecatching things written on them.

"Jane Austen", says in one and I wonder why.

"Here lies the former shell of Beelzebub", in another (which clearly makes reference to the fact they changed the actress for that part).

"Everyday", in reference to the song.

And also "Here lies Adam"...

Wait, Adam? What the actual f-

Anyway, so now they finally descend to hell and I can just tell by the chair and computer set in there what whoever has that administrative job is not getting paid enough for this shit.

Back up in the Earth I´m finally able to spot Muriel (sorry guys, I´m real shit to spot characters in these things) and we´re clearly in the middle of World War II, as you can see by the Winston Churchill signs and all the destructive ambience very fit for that historical period.

Now, what I wanted to talk about was the movie that´s being announced, "Stairway to Heaven". I´m going to leave down here the summary because I think it might be interesting:

"Returning to England from a bombing run in May 1945, pilot Peter Carter's plane is damaged and his parachute ripped to shreds. He has his crew bail out safely, but figures it is curtains for himself. He gets on the radio, and talks to June, a young American woman working for the U.S. Army Air Forces, and they are quite moved by each other's voices. Then he jumps, preferring this to burning up with his plane. He wakes up in the surf. It was his time to die, but there was a mix-up in heaven. They couldn't find him in all that fog. By the time his "Conductor" catches up with him twenty hours later, Peter and June have met and fallen in love. This changes everything, and since it happened through no fault of his own, Peter figures that heaven owes him a second chance. Heaven agrees to a trial to decide his fate."

So we got a miracle, a romance and heaven and hell involved in conflict... Does it sound familiar to you?

As we keep walking rabbits start to fall from the sky and I feel as we approach the theater the time has come for Aziraphale to do his so much awaited magic show.

So, there´s a few things to point out here as well.

For starters, the posters of The Ladies of Camelot (that I´m guessing are the showgirls), those same ladies joining the procession and... have you noticed this is the first time in these openings where Aziraphale is not walking with Crowley but joining him later at the stage, dressed as magician?

And so here goes one of my crazy theories: what if the scene in the trailer where we see Aziraphale surprised at the theatre is because he´s surprised Crowley arrived? Surely we also see a whadow before him and it could also be something completely different and scary... But then again, if what Aziraphale is seeing at that second is real bad stuff, why are the showgirls in the background looking amused?

The theater curtain opens and we get this scene when, again for the first time, Crowley and Aziraphale fly together. Like, literally together, not one after the other as until now.

Wasn´t Crowley proposing to run away to another galaxy together last season? (ah, of course they´re not going to do that now, they got things to do on Earth).

But I´m hopeful we can see where these people were before the beginning of times, before the Eden, when Crowley was still an angel and helped creating galaxies. I read somewhere a theorie that he might be Raphael or (and I thing this is more plausible) someone close to Raphael. So yes, we´ll see where this goes...

Back on Earth we can see Crowley and Aziraphale sitting together on the bookshop roof and, have I mentioned since the space thingy now are raining hearts? What is this? And who was the genius who thought putting "Give me coffee or give me death" to a coffee shop was a good idea? (ah, we all know this and we love Neil for it, just saying).

Anyway, I´m so glad to see the Bentley again. And all those discs... Will it be so important the constant repetition of the song Everyday? Why? And had it something to do with the fact Crowley´s car has a similar problem and no matter what CD he puts it always plays a Queen song?

People´s announcing the "Second Coming" which could very well be a reference of Season 2 and we don´t need to panic yet.

But there´s a lot of elevators here, with angels inside, so we can fairly guess it´s time to go to heaven (and it´ll probably be the last stop).

But before that, and notice that no one in this procession uses an elevator, they get to this cinema where "The Arrival" is screening.

Could it be a reference of the movie of the same title or just a hint because the first episode of this season is titled like that? I´m gonna go for this last theorie, because it makes more sense to me.

The same symbol (arrows pointing upwards) that were in Gabriel´s box are now here in the screen...

Finally, all these people get to heaven not by the usual system (the elevators) but by some stairs and under it there´s a lot of stuff piled that I´m not going to analise because I basically blind at this point (my fault, don´t cancel me).

Can I guess here there´ll be more conspiracies with heaven involved?

[abundantchewtoys]

Beyond Canon re: p666.5

Oh boy, I didn't expect this!

Seems like while Vriska was busy getting traumatized, Davepeta had a private conversation.

In a meta sense, it makes sense that they (Davepeta & Jasprose) are able to talk across the barrier of the Black Hole. For one, sprite magic. For another, both are currently in planes with a more 'flexible' set of physical rules.

So, time is indeed still passing outside the chamber. Meaning Vriska might end up being popped out at the most narratively satisfying moment! I mean, it could be Jane's invasion's in full swing by the time she gets out.

Because let's face it, Davepeta totally jinxed it and they're going to be stuck in there for another four years.

Didn't consider it before, but Candy Jane going through a parallel sort of development as Vriska is cause for circumstantial simultaneity! Although, in fact, Jane's in there with a lot more people. Even NPCs like Swifer Eggmop and her moirail! I wonder if the Midnight Crew/Problem Sleuth characters are going to hitch a ride back into canon? ... Is there a Felt in this version of Midnight City? Beyond Snowman, I mean?

And while it's "only" been one night... Yeah, in reality it's going to be at least 3 years, huh? Or however long the trip to Deltritus is going to take everyone else.

Man, but I wonder if Jane's crew, Vriska, and the Deltritus-bound crews are even all still going to be the same temporal ages? Aside from Aradia & potentially Terezi, I mean. Not that it matters a lot beyond for Calliope, Kanaya, Karkat and Terezi.

Blaperile had a good point, this was the first Dave/Rose conversation in Beyond Canon so far. And even they are not physically near one another.

I got to say, Jasprose seems to have calmed down from before, like GCATavrosprite she seems to have found a new equilibrium. Let's see where it goes! If she's more lucid, that would be nice. She with Roxy is currently the only person alive to remember the pre-retcon timeline. Well, it depends on how much Terezi saw with her powers, but you know what I mean.

Or wait no, Davepeta would remember it as well, being part pre-retcon Davesprite.

But a lucid Jasprosesprite^2 interacting with either current iteration of Rose seems like it would be gold. She, like Nannasprite, might not be the 'real' version anymore, but she certainly feels like the more 'true' one at this point. Which is kind of hilarious given what she was like, initially after fusing with Jaspersprite.

Love the fact that both sprites^2 are in separate types of planes though. Makes sense the Plot Point is a hyperconcentration of one of the three parts of a good alpha timeline. But Midnight City's deniability is funny as well, I guess it's due to its partial overlap between carapace post-apocalypse society and human detective fantasy novel. :p

And good for Jasprose, continually kicking the habit and staying sober! I misunderstood it at first, that she actually drank martinis, but no, she tries to order milk in martini bars, aggravating the bartenders, good on her! (I mean, "matronal ambrosia" could have referred to martinis, right? It was what Mom lugged around all the time, after all.)

I do wonder if Meat Jake is going to be able to speedrun the epiphanies he had in the Candy timeline, perhaps assisted by Brain Ghost Dirk. Not necessarily to reveal himself as a hero, as Jasprose seems to, ahum, hope.

"JR" as a nickname for Jasprose, I like that.

Nice of them to give a shortcut back to the prologue on the main screen.

Now if only I got the page working on the main page again, without entering private mode. Guess I should try that cache clearing at one point.

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

ItaliJackets episode 8 thoughts:

This is a more general observation and not dub-specific, but I love how the pool scene is obviously full of sexual innuendo but in a completely insane Laura Lee context where her takeaway from the hot guy saving her is "become more religious". Obviously Laura Lee comes across as a lesbian, but unlike with Some characters that genuinely wasn't intentional on anyone's part except possibly Courtney Eaton's, so the intent there is just...Laura Lee's reaction to attraction to someone is "make it about Jesus". Hilarious stuff.

SANTO CIELO,MAMMA. Callie <3

Shauna: terrible at lying, especially for someone who does it so much, in every language.

"Il re del ballo del liceo" makes Jeff sound even more washed-up and Uncle Ricoish than he does in English, which is an achievement if ever there was one.

Nat is so earnest with Ben, which of course is going to make other things later on hurt even more. She is pretty earnest in English too, but there's a constant low-level jaded irony in Sophie Thatcher's season 1 performance in general (it's mostly gone in season 2) that's absent here.

Adult Misty's finest hour is just as good in Italian. <3 Sniffare la coca. Te li invio con Venmo. Per te! Love wins!

Anyone who has seen this episode in English knows that in YJ-land the C in Christian is for castratrix. Some standout lines in the dub of Laura Lee's "girl boss moment" (Jane Widdop, sic): "BUONGIORNO, HEY. SCUSI"; "l'aeroplano del morto" for "the dead guy's plane"; "E come pensa di fermarmi, Coach?"; "Ma questa la missione" (more vaguely Catholic-sounding language compared to the English!); "UN PO' COME RITORNO AL FUTURO".

Final Laura Lee vulgarity repertoire: troia; cazzo.

The Vaffanculo Count stands at 10 as Nat in this episode suggests receiving anal sex to 1. life in general and 2. Jackie.

[themculibrary]

Fics Based On Deleted Scenes Masterlist

A Liability (ao3) - missybennet G, 1k

Summary: “The director feels your connection to Captain Rogers is a liability.”

The deleted scene from CA:TWS revisited

A reversal of roles (ao3) - Kodawari N/R, 3k

Summary: Tony mounts a rescue for a Wizard who keeps finding himself in ridiculous situations. Only it doesn't turn out quite like he planned.

Based off the concept art showing Tony and Stephen swapping powers, also the Disney+ footage of them in a deleted scene. You know, the one where they hold hands.

Close Enough to Injure (ao3) - Kodawari N/R, 1k

Summary: He snapped his fingers and he thought that was the end of it. Right after, Tony finds himself in a place that by all logic should not exist. That isn't his main issue, though. His main issue is the person he finds there waiting for him and the accompanying feeling that he somehow failed.

Spoilers!

(Based off a confirmed deleted Endgame scene).

i don't want you like a best friend (ao3) - cryoshia bruno/kamala G, 1k

Summary: an alternate version of ms marvel deleted scene #3: just friends.

I have a plan (ao3) - elu_xx loki/sylvie G, 835

Summary: Loki's thoughts during the deleted scene on Lamentis

it's so painfully obvious (ao3) - slothturtle bruno/kamala G, 1k

Summary: When Bruno turns the corner and walks into the alleyway beside the Circle Q what he isn't expecting to see is Kamala Khan, all decked out in her DIY Captain Marvel getup.

…But, it is a relief, and one he really needed, too.

(or: a canon-divergent fic inspired by cut content from ep2 of Ms. Marvel)

Karma Cafe (ao3) - AnonEhouse pre steve/tony G, 1k

Summary: Based on a deleted scene from the Avengers- Steve sits at a cafe across from Stark Tower to sketch buildings, a waitress flirts with him, and after she walks away, Stan Lee calls him a moron for not getting her number.

Well, months later, Steve is back at the cafe, and Stan continues the conversation.

Tell me one thing, are you alright (ao3) - azaliz G, 824

Summary: Based of a scene in Captain America: Civil War. Steve waits by Bucky’s side and he sings. It’s angsty.

The Grace of Jane (ao3) - fostorsonslover G, 1k

Summary: Aresia and Gilrn are two Asgardian children who happen to stumble upon the crown prince, Thor, and his mortal love, Jane, during her visit. She leaves quite an impression on young Aresia.

Based off of the deleted scene where Jane is determined to analyze the contents of an Asgardian ball.

The past only continues to haunt me (ao3) - heizl steve/bucky G, 1k

Summary: Wanda has her way of getting inside people's heads, in the literal sense. She makes everyone see a part of their past that they can no longer have, a cut deep enough that it can not heal. Steve is shown a life where he'd successfully landed the plane and made it back to Brooklyn. Finding himself back in Bucky's arms.

A what if scenario based off of a scene that was originally discussed to be in AOU. Instead of the vision Steve has about Peggy, it's him and Bucky getting an apartment together.

The Scene That Should Have Been (ao3) - goldenrazzmatazz T, 1k

Summary: At SDCC 2019, The Russo Brothers explained that they had originally planned for Thanos to kill 2014 Captain America, and use his severed head to taunt the remaining Avengers during the final battle in 2023.

Written in a way that it still canonically fits within the film, this is my imagining of that scene. Spoilers for the final battle of Avengers: Endgame.

the way station (ao3) - spacedoutwrites G, 1k

Summary: Tony sees Morgan at the way station after he snaps to save the world (a re-write of that deleted scene from Endgame)

What's For Dessert (ao3) - flyingorfalling pepper/tony M, 2k

Summary: This is a continuation of the deleted goji berries scene, and one of my many headcanons about what could've happened had the stupid Avengers not shown up at Tony's house. You know I like giving them the happiness they deserved.

You know that (ao3) - missingcrowdsof100s bruno/kamala T, 2k

Summary: A peek into Kamala’s mind when Bruno’s about to get taken away in an ambulance after Aamir and Tyesha’s wedding (deleted scene from Episode 3).

[justbringtherain]

Ted Lasso finale, my very late and random and long thoughts

I saw the episode and then it took me like 5 years to write this post but I'd like to post it anyway. Some stuff problably won't be accurate bc I've not re-watched it.

Also I'm ignoring the reddit thingy for Brendan Hunt. It's my brain and I'll cover my ears and tra-la-la around if I want to.

Also, a lot of thought abt Roy and Jaime and Keely as an ot3, as Roy/Keeley, as Roy&Jaime and as the characters in general.

I don't know how to put stuff under read more, I'm so so sorry.

So I've decided that the part from when Beard leaves to when Ted opens his eyes on the plane is a dream of a possible, probable future for everybody.

I'm ok with most of the stuff shown but even some of those are too rushed and/or too optimistic and/or too over-simplyfied. Like many ppl have already said the season suffered from too many plots who obvs did not get developed properly due to not having the time.

The one thing I fully refuse is the Jane/Beard wedding. I won't speak of the Jaime-and-James stuff bc for many different and personal reasons I just can't. The other thing I'm not really ok with is Rebecca/Dutch Guy bc I thought we established that Rebecca had finally found her family and it wasn't what she expected but it was right for her and then the dude appears and it kind of cheapens that. I loved the Dutch Guy in the Amsterdam ep. but I think that plot should have ended there.

Everything else I can see happening the same or very similar. It's just a matter of when it happens related to Ted's departure.

Re: Jaime/Keeley/Roy stuff.

I was a ride or die Keeley/Roy shipper untill I saw 3x11. Then I was hooked by the ot3 and now I will die on this hill. But talking abt Roy/Keeley: already in 3x10 after K/R hooked up it seemed very clear that Keeley had doubts abt getting back together with Roy and the next ep proved they didn't which I was fine with. They needed at least to have a much bigger convo abt what lead Roy to break up with her and the fact that he asked who the sex tape was for needed to be addressed imo bc he had absolutely no right to do it. Also Keeley can definetly use some time on her own and focus on KJPR/KBPR (we can keep the name change).

Jaime&Roy. ooooh boy do I want to write a way longer post abt these 2 starting from s2 and maybe one day I will. But to keep it short their fight was bullshit. It especially sucked the way Roy asked Jaime out like for a night between buddies and started the convo talking abt how proud he was of Jaime and then he just told him to back off from Keeley so that he could get back together with her. Yeah Roy no need to talk to Keeley -who said she wanted them to be just friends- abt that. Honestly I'm glad Jaime pushed back bc one thing is to learn to be a team player, another is to be a push over. Jaime hadn't addressed still having feelings for Keeley since 2x07 and for all we know he could have just been waiting for the right time to ask her to give it another try. Back to Roy: the way he acted kinda cheapened the moment between him and Jaime and like I said it sucks. Jaime seemed so touched and then Roy fucked it. Woah I'm being harsh on Roy.... They were both idiots (thank God they aknowledged right away) both to fight physically and then to think they had this genius idea to let Keeley choose. Like... bitches??? It was always going to be her choice!!!! At least they understand right away (kinda) that what they did was bullshit and finish the night off going for a bite togther. I understand that this was their "closure" as it was the finale, I'll leave the conversation they should have had to the fanfics.

Roy. I've been such a bitch to him but in the end he does the right thing and asks for help. And his admission to the Diamond Dogs was fucking heartbreaking bc he was so disappointed in himself. He really thought he had changed for the best and then he makes the same mistakes all over again. Which is of course perfectly normal but also not the easiest thing to understand. Both getting better and bettering ourselves are not linear and we're going to fuck up. Which is actually what also happened between Roy and Jaime bc they fell back to getting aggressive and violent with each other even though they were at a point where they could have talked it out. They regressed but it happens. And now this paragraph sort of negates what I've written above but not really. Their fight was bullshit bc they could have been able to avoid it but it can also make sense that they didn't bc they are humans. Emotions were running high and Keely is a bit of a sore topic for them. Back to Roy, but really to Brett. Kudos to the man bc Roy might be aggressive but he never made me unconfortable until the sex tape episode. When he asks Keely who was it for and then repeats the question when she goes "What?" his whole demeanor was fucking scary to me. Cold, calm but u can see it's a farcade. And it's the same demeanor we see when he tells Jaime to leave Keeley alone. And I'm probably wrong but it felt like a conscious choice, as if to say "ur feeling uncomfortable bc u're supposed to be". Who knows.

Final Roy/Keely/Jaime scene. Like I've said, I'm taking most of that scene as a "this might happen". Regarding these 3, I'm fine with it. We don't know who's with who and that I'm cool with that. But we know they're in a good place with each others and that's all that matters.

Other stuff:

Colin/Michael: no need to say anything except fuck yeah it happened! Colin just wanted to kiss his fella and he did!!! I wonder if it means he's out or if no photographer caught it so it's just something Colin finally managed/felt ready to do. And both scenarios are fine! They kissed! I screamed! I had already teared up for everything else and it got worst!

Wait if Sam actually (hopefully!) goes to play for Nigeria it's only for national games right??? The rest of the year he's still with Richmond right??? I don't want any of them to leave!!! Richmond 'till they die!!!

Last thoughts: I know I might have been kinda negative here, but I honestly liked how it ended. I smiled, I laughed, I screamed, I teared up and downright cried. Mostly, I feel like the season needed a couple more episode to expand on some stuff, but you cannot have perfection. I'm satisfied. I understand how Ted's choice can feel so disappointing and I do wish he could have stayed and maybe have Henry move to England but I also understand why the writers decided to have him move back to the US. I don't think it cancel all of his development. He needed Richmond to become a better dad and he went back feeling ready to be it.

[bluberimufim]

"What is your OC's pain tolerance like?" And "What is the worst thing you have put your OC through story-wise?"

You didn't specify an OC so I'm just gonna spin the character wheel since I've been doing that a lot lately

What is your OC's pain tolerance like?

Oooh, this one's kinda fun!

In short? Inhuman. Jane probably has the most ridiculous pain tolerance known to man.

Apart from the "half-human-half-god except the god part is a whole lot stronger", she was also raised by the Goddess of Time, who tried to make her into a perfect warrior for almost 20 years. She's done almost nothing but train her entire life (she never ate or slept before coming to the Mortal Plane because that's just not a Thing in the Garden). She is, in short, the most perfect soldier ever created.

(Highly specific reference, but you know how in Once Upon A Time (In Space), King Cole specifically built the Rose Reds to feel pain and fear so that they could become better soldiers by overcoming them? Yeah, like that.)

Jane is built to be Theo But Better. She is literally made from a copy or echo of her soul. And towards the end of her life, Theo was in constant pain due to excessive healing and she still kept fighting and acting mostly normally. (I'll post a snippet about that when I write it, I haven't gotten there yet.)

The Goddess of Time also fucked around when she made the souls the Theo clones (Jane is the only one who was stable enough to survive because she basically malfunctioned) by giving them self-regenerating souls. This means that Jane's soul self-replenishes instead of withering away like her sisters', which can cause her to overload when she doesn't use magic for a while. Basically: it's like a closed container to which you constantly add air, with no holes for it to escape through. At some point, the container is gonna explode under all the air pressure. And that's what her body is like.

The only moments she gets overwhelmed by pain are when her soul gets too full, and it causes her to get extremely aggressive, more as a reflex because the only way she learned to use magic was through violence and magic can decrease the "volume" of your soul.

Wow, that was longer than expected...

What is the worst thing you have put your OC through story-wise?

Ooooh boy. The wheel has served me well.

For this one, you need context on Reiner and Allana, the two people who make up the whole that is Flick. They got soul-fused and it's weird.

Allana is a daughter of the Goddess of Love born during the 20-year cease-fire. And during this cease-fire, Edward Fallin, Master of the Order (Theo's brother? remember him?), is sending his men to kill any demigoddess he can find so the war doesn't re-start.

Well, the first one he manages to kill, two decades into the cease-fire, is Allana (the demigoddesses are slippery, ok?). The Goddess of Love is kinda bummed out about this. She's not mourning like the Goddess of Time mourned for Theo, but she thinks it would be funny if she did. So, for pure entertainment, she decides to get revenge on her sister's pet human (Edward) by cursing one of his children. Because it is a known fact to anyone with eyes that Ed loves his kids more than anything in the world and he's preventing the war mostly because he wants them to live in a time of peace.

Stay with me.

His youngest son is named Reiner (hey look, he finally showed up!) and she decides to fuse the remains of Allana's soul with his, binding them together with a curse. This results in some identity issues, body dysphoria, and general confusion. But that's not all!

The curse binding their souls together is a love curse, meaning that anyone, if exposed to Reiner for too long, will fall in love with him (we're going with the name Reiner for now because they only pick "Flick" a while later). Sometimes this love is platonic and sometimes romantic, but it's extremely intense and always borders on obsession.

"But, Muffin," you ask. "What does this curse have to do with Edward? Wasn't this a revenge against him?"

Yes, and I think you can probably see where this is going.

This curse extends to Reiner's father, Edward. He's the main target actually. There's a whole lengthy analysis about this situation, but basically: the effect of the curse is the most horrible, disgusting twist of a parent's love for their child.

And Reiner knows his father is affected by it, despite him never actually doing anything. He can recognize the look in his eyes and the emotion in his voice because he's seen and heard it so many times before. The curse can't be turned off, it's divine magic. And knowing that even his father, whom he loves dearly and who has taken care of him his whole life, is also a victim of the curse's influence is what makes him run away and try to rip his own soul apart, in the hopes that the curse will be ripped from him as well. And that's where we meet him at the start of book 2.

So, uh... that one felt a bit dark...

Actually, this has plot relevance, so I'm using the tag list: @little-mouse-gardens @wildswrites

[indelibleevidence]

Apparently I didn't do this the first time round (what was wrong with me?), so here are my 4x02 thoughts:

Really cool puzzles in this episode - both the magnetite map and the ATM have such great solutions. I wonder who came up with the creepy facial recognition gas-ATM.

I get why Patterson was so pissed at Boston to begin with this time around (the whole 'I coded a backdoor into Wizardville so I could snoop on people's phones' thing was a massive betrayal of trust, even if he then apologised and helped the team arrest his terrorist boyfriend), but why was Boston so mean to Kurt? 'You got one, Limpy!' I'd love to see you survive a gut shot, Boston (and let's be realistic, if they hadn't stopped the show at season 4.5, he probably would have gotten one, because gut shots are Blindspot's favourite injury - Mayfair, Jane, Roman, Patterson, Kurt, Keaton, Weitz...).

I've said it before and I'll say it again - as much as I love both Rich and Boston, the comedy gay couple/sassy gay friend trope makes me facepalm. I just don't get the sense in this episode that these men are attracted to each other, despite Rich's cooing. They have sibling chemistry, not ex-lovers who are still pining for each other, and they remind me of children squabbling over who gets the first cookie. 🙄 At least 4x08 goes a little way towards fixing that (until Rich ruins it by being a total asshole).

Remi's face when Sokolov describes the FBI as hamstrung by bureaucracy and ego is just awesome. She's like, 'Yep, this guy gets it.'

And again, the FBI's 'shoot first, ask questions later' policy comes back to bite them, because if Sokolov had lived, no 4x08... 🤷‍♀️ But also, I have no idea how they would have written it into the show, so...

The Remi and Roman scenes just made me so sad, because Remi is completely alone, talking to her brother who isn't there, trying to justify herself and her convictions (which we see at the start of 4x03, she isn't that sure of. 'Of course I can kill my husband...but not right now, that wouldn't be the right time.'

They really could have used the 'Zapata was on the plane, but not really' plot thread to make everyone cry, but they didn't bother. I wonder if they filmed a scene or two that were cut for length. I'll forever be sad that we never got any deleted scenes for seasons 4 or 5. 😭

Sometimes Blindspot is as subtle as a brick to the face with its cases and subplot parallels, but they did a great job with this episode. Sokolov being able to convince agents from multiple agencies to hand over documents, because there's no inter-agency cooperation, goes nicely with Keaton's complete lack of inter-agency cooperation re: Zapata (and why does it need to be kept so super secret that even a team working to take HCI Global down can't be read in, Keaton?). And Madeline's gleeful confession that she killed her husband pairs really well with Remi mixing up a little gift for Kurt at the end of the episode.

Audrey did so well with her 'I hate this undercover assignment' scene. Poor Tasha. Even though I don't see why Reade couldn't know, I do feel awful for her.

Madeline has such potential to be a great villain, but they just didn't bother to go anywhere meaningful with her. Helios was pretty masterful as a plan, but her underlying motives with her father are tissue-paper thin. :/ It makes all of the Helios arc feel kind of pointless, in retrospect. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio does a great job, but after Shepherd and Roman, Madeline is just meh. Plus Remi just steals the show with her plotting and scheming.

Remi turning an argument around on Kurt again is so much fun to watch, and especially the way she course-corrects with the giant eyes and 'I just want to help people, just like you' stuff. Makes me think of the Jane-as-Goth!Remi episode, where she's just overly bitchy. 😁

Brb, squeeing over every moment of Remi now! Especially her knowing that he'll be first through the door to save her, even though she doesn't remember anything about being in the field with him from being Jane.

[blushydrangea]

While the controversy with PJ is kind of dying down, I still do think she needs to post/release a formal apology so that a lot of us can move on from it and hopefully for her to grow. Some of us may have forgiven her but some still don't. BUTTTTTT I do think most of these people who constantly harass her do not even care about the situation and are just finding ways to talk shit because they didn't like her from the start—it's kinda getting out of hand in some cases.

This does not make her a bad person at all, it's just a terrible terrible take on a person who she clearly had no knowledge of. I know that it probably wasn't meant to be harmful in any way but, it would be great if she'd addressed it properly.

agreed. harassment is never the answer and i'm sure plenty of people were waiting for her to misspeak somehow so they could finally attack her without coming off as "morally incorrect". yet plane still hurt people who care about her with her words and i think we all deserve a proper retraction. show us you learned something, girl, don't prove your haters right!

i don't believe pj is the type to be intentionally cruel (whoa, shocker, i know), she does seem a bit socially awkward and i get the vibe she tends to forget about how big her platform has become. people mess up, the important part is what they do afterwards, and for now that part is what's left me disappointed.

[gazzhowie]

My Top 25 Movies of 2023.

Sitting in cinema screens in 2023 has continued to re-enforce that it is a weird time for the industry, with huge three hundred million dollar (!) blockbusters attracting only ten or twenty people per screen on opening weekend and highly acclaimed independent movies being given no home except for a dumped VOD release. This year felt ‘tough’ being a fan of both great films and the big screen experience. 

Anyway, scaremongering over... it is time for me to dust off the cobwebs from my Tumblr account and post my Top 25 movies of this year, 2023.

[Years 2008 through to present are available in the archive.] 

As always, films listed are based on their UK release date whether that’s in the cinema or on DVD, VOD etc. Which was a tough rule to stick to this year because I thoroughly enjoyed the lean and effective b-movie action horror antics of Last Voyage of the Detmer, which could’ve earned a slot on my list had its UK release not been pulled 2 weeks prior to its date due to its European distributor going bankrupt. 

Frequent visitors know that I’ll throw out a few special mentions to all the films that I wish I could’ve included but couldn’t make fit yet believe they deserve a shout-out regardless and then I get stuck into what I think are the 25 best films of the year. Anyway, without further ado, here are the ‘also-rans’ and ‘near-misses’ separated per genre that very nearly made the final list:

Action movies that I have enjoyed this year include The Covenant which holds the distinction of being an actually enjoyable and tolerable Guy Ritchie movie, John Wick: Chapter 4 who’s bludgeoning and unnecessary excess gives way to a final hour that is part ode to Walter Hill’s The Warriors and part ‘modern action classic’ effort, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 which was uneven but still the best Marvel effort in quite some time (though that is a low compliment), the first part of the French two-parter Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan which brings John Wick-ian action to the oft-told tale, the Gerard Butler ‘Prime Exclusive’ double-bill that was Kandahar and Plane, Denzel Washington’s (“final”) entry in his Equalizer series and Thomas Jane’s cheapo Brannigan / Coogan’s Bluff b-movie tribute, One Ranger. 

Not many comedies impressed me this year but going off the ones that made me laugh and surprised me some what were the kind of delightful Woody Harrelson sporting underdog remake Champions, the vastly better than we all thought it was going to be / surprise sleeper success of the year No Hard Feelings and the ‘animals saying uncouth things’ silliness that was Strays. 

I liked a lot of horrors this year; the legitimately great (no seriously!) Influencer, the gimmick-heavy but incredibly effective No One Will Save You, the immensely fun Kids Vs Aliens, the Covid-19 slasher that you didn’t realise you secretly sort of wanted that was Sick, the semi-disappointing yet still enjoyable recalibration that was Evil Dead Rise, the Godzilla-homaging creature feature The Lake and the frankly insane / insanely nasty Project Wolf Hunting. 

Not a huge amount of animation blew me away this year but Leo was a stand-out for not just being shockingly good but for the sheer amount of repeated viewings it has gone through in my house with my boys without it losing too much. I have to also give props to Spiderman: Across The Spiderverse which was gorgeous to look at and immensely entertaining but excessive and unwieldly to its own detriment.

It was a good year for documentaries with both Milli Vanilli and The Pigeon Tunnel impressing me immensely. The former being surprising in its depth and emotion. But within the documentary form it was a banner year for the ‘biography’ approach with genuinely excellent and thorough studies of fascinating people. I loved Mr Dress Up, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Judy Blume Forever, Hatton and Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.

Dramas I’ve liked a lot in 2023 have been Till which moved me immensely, the justifiably acclaimed May December, The Burial which was far more captivating than it had any cause to be, the Netflix survivalist preposterousness that was Nowhere, Ben Affleck’s fabulously entertaining Air which was another entry in the ‘business origins’ subgenre that continues to somehow flourish, Michael B. Jordan’s overdirected but strong Creed 3, the ode to old-fashioned 1990s studio potboiler thrillers that was To Catch a Killer, the Sky Original Dead Shot and the smart phone / techno warning Unlocked.

And in a little section all of its own marked ‘better than they had any right to be’ I’ve got to give a shout-out to Elizabeth Banks’ incompetently directed but decidedly fun Cocaine Bear, the Jackie Chan / John Cena greenscreen-heavy team-up Hidden Strike, the wonky but fun Scream 6, the exhaustive Extraction 2, the low-bar hurdling Blue Beetle and the absolutely insane (and mildly better than the last two excretable efforts) Fast X.

And now… my Top 25 favourite movies of 2023… but for those who know me to be an enormous John Woo aficionado I will make clear from the outset that at the time of compiling this I still have not seen Silent Night. Sorry. 

25. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial

We must mention William Friedkin’s last film before his death - a reminder that the man was a master filmmaker across the board but specifically a master at letting the material and the performance(s) lead. Never has that felt more reinforced than with his interpretation of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial where, like what he did with his excellent made-for-tv redo of 12 Angry Men, he lets the power of one single setting, a very good cast and exceptional material (in this case a soft update of Herman Wouk's 1953 play of the same name) lead and he gets out of the way and stays there. A more fragile or less confident director at the age Friedkin was, at that point in his career / so close to the end, would've likely been tempted to go big or get flashy to show they've still "got it". There was nothing fragile or unconfident about Friedkin right up to the end. This is an impressively engrossing watch with a great kick at the end that Jason Clarke absolutely sells the shit out of.

24. Talk to Me

I genuinely thought the 'hype' machine was going to have seriously done a number on this, a la BARBIE, but thankfully that turned out not to be the case.

Directors Danny and Michael Philippou have taken a weathered and well-worn concept - that grief and trauma can be open gateways for otherworldly malevolence to exploit - and they've injected it with a fresh voice / energy, whilst respecting 'old standards' like practical effects work.

The concept is decidedly hokey and the lead character isn't particularly likable to say the least (though Sophie Wilde is excellent playing her), but the Philippou Brothers are so thoroughly committed here and the practical effects work is so impressive that it's infectious.

You're almost pulled 'in' despite yourself because the scares are so well-executed and the feeling of dread is so effectively threaded. You know you're being 'played' and you try to fight against it, but it's a mark of its quality that it gets you anyway.

23. Beau Is Afraid 

If Taika Waititi parlayed the goodwill and acclaim from a series of beloved low-budget Kiwi comedies into a mainstream career making multimillion dollar Marvel movies and becoming one of the most sought after studio hires of the last decade, then Ari Aster has used the instantly accepted and highly regarded successes of HEREDITARY and MIDSOMMER to... *checks notes* ... work through some complicated shit involving his relationship with his mother (and his father - who may or may not be an actual 'penis monster') and have arthouse kingmakers A24 pay $35 million for it.

This made less than a third of its $35 million budget back (because, come on now, how on earth do you effectively market this thing?) so it's tiring but true that the label "cult classic" has •already• been applied to it.

Look, I'm offering zero defence to accusations against the film that it is overlong, incredibly self-indulgent, ill-disciplined, carrying nowhere near the depth it claims to, tiresome and exhausting. It IS all those things. By the final stretch it is floundering haaard and there's a serious feeling of being trolled starting to set in.

But, first of all, it shouldn't be discounted how excellent and effective Joaquin Phoenix is here and Aster's wildly uneven material is greatly assisted by his casting. Secondly, it has to be acknowledged that there's moments - long stretches, in fact - where there's absolute brilliance at play here.

There's masterfully crafted moments of genuine hilarity (dark hilarity, for sure) alongside flashes of abject discomforting horror. I'd go so far as to say some of the most interesting, inventive, unique and intriguing moments in cinema this year are tucked away inside this behemoth of a clusterfuck.

People pushed hard for the extended cut of MIDSOMMER to be released. I'm pushing for the reduced cut of this.

22. There’s Something in the Barn 

 I thoroughly enjoyed and had a great time with this. It's not at all embarrassed to lean into its influences, evoking affectionate RARE EXPORTS / GREMLINS vibes without coming across like its heavily plagiarising from them.

 It’s got a terrific dry wit to it thanks to writer Aleksander Kirkwood Brown's script and which the cast, especially Martin Starr (essentially doing his SPIDER-MAN shtick here) and a very winsome Amrita Acharia, sell well. And director Magnus Martens doesn't skimp on the dark stuff and sense of foreboding either.

 There's no snobbishness to put up against this thing - it's a horror comedy that made me laugh multiple times and jump occasionally. That's a very solid success to me and I highly recommend it if the likes of RARE EXPORTS, KRAMPUS, CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS and SINT are favourites of yours.

21. Pearl

I'm a big fan of Ti West and I really enjoyed X, which was one of my Top 25 of 2022 and which in my review I defended by saying:

"... It's very easy to dismiss what West is doing here as just an exacting homage to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE but it's more than that. Obviously there's overt nods to it but you could also suggest West is doffing his cap affectionately to Paul Thomas Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS, Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO and, yes, both Lewis Teague's ALLIGATOR and Tobe Hooper's EATEN ALIVE as well..."

This is an interesting companion piece to that movie (with a third entry, MAXXXINE, imminent) made more fascinating due to how it came into existence:

 Whilst in their Covid 'bubble' prior to production beginning out in New Zealand for X, director Ti West and star Mia Goth became so enamoured with the backstory they were creating for the character of Pearl that they wrote an entire prequel, pitched it to A24 and built filming into the back end of the original production. A high value 'two-ffer' if ever there was one.

The end result is something less blatantly and broadly enjoyable than the first (second) story but it's definitely the more curious and interesting one; if X really was Ti West's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE / BOOGIE NIGHTS / PSYCHO / EATEN ALIVE bastardisation, this is his Douglas Sirk melodrama injected with Technicolor and falsely set loose as a 'follow your dreams' fable gone really, really wrong.

It obviously lives and dies by the lead performance and, by crikey, Mia Goth is so good here. That much-memed final credits thing is lauded but it's that late stage monologue that drops your jaw a little. If horror wasn't so easily dismissed her performance would've won awards.

For years we've always considered horror prequels to be the nadir of the genre. After all, who cares if Leatherface only became Leatherface because he was made redundant? Or Jason Vorhees killing nubile teens because he got his pot farm trampled on? Or... or... how no one taking Michael Myers trick or treating turned him into a psychopath? Here though, PEARL indicates that doesn't always have to be the case.

20. Reality 

For those worrying as to whether Sydney Sweeney's tsunami of scantily-clad content across advertising and social media platforms has left her precariously overexposed (in more ways than one), along comes this fascinating and considered film to remind you that behind the bikinis, the false nails and the airbrushing is an extremely talented actress capable of incredibly powerful work.

Devoid of make-up, carrying the film nearly 70% of the time in close-up shots she can't fake her way free from and regimentally parroting the actual recorded FBI transcripts down to every sigh, stumble and gulp Sweeney is frankly astonishing in how she carries this thing.

Director Tina Satter keeps things tight in terms of both location, framing and running time (it plays as an almost real-time exercise) and as a result the film becomes a riveting, claustrophobic and maddening display (how did Reality Winner's actual charges and ridiculous sentence stand when all of this occurred without correct due process and legal entitlements being followed from the outset?) from a first-time film director showing exceptional command of her cast and her visual space.

19. Fair Play 

Chloe Domont's corporate morality play / torchlight on gender politics by way of a recalibration of the 1990s style erotic thriller is all the more astounding because of how assured and masterfully controlled it is for someone's feature directorial debut.

 Driven by two excellent performances from Phoebe Dynevor (who I'd not seen before in anything and was astonished by her) and Alden Ehrenreich (who I think is terrific and deserves treated way better by the industry), and supported by atypically great turns from Eddie Marsan and Rich Sommer, this thing has no right to be as engulfing and nail-biting as it is for what it is.

 Domont refuses to make compromises or concessions in the way she presents latent sexism, money, toxic alpha cultures, wounded pride and corporate backstabbing infecting her characters. It's a brutal, relentless ride she takes us on.

 One where the brash bloodied cunnilingus opener keeps returning to your conscience like it was heavy foreboding for what feels inevitable - these two can't keep tearing away at each other like this, surely? Not without someone dying at the other's hands.

 You keep trying to shake that feeling off, telling yourself that it's not ~that~ kind of film. But as this thing starts to barrel towards its third act it is testament to Domont, and how Dynevor / Ehrenreich are executing her material, that you come to realise all bets are off.

18. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One 

There's action movie franchises and then there's •this• action movie franchise; hitting its stride at the fourth entry, delivering back-to-back masterpieces with its fifth and sixth and now this - a seventh entry so frickin good it rides out evident flaws (and Mark Gatiss' horrendous "accent") that would absolutely fatally decimate other films!

Because it feels sacrilegious to even say this but the latest entry manages to straddle both being very good, decidedly high end, etc etc and... *whispers it* ... kinda 'samey' to what we've had since Christopher McQuarrie became 'grand master':

Still no one trusts the inherent righteous genius of Ethan Hunt, forcing him to go against one and all. Blah blah. There's excessive shots of Tom Cruise running. Yes, yes. There's elaborate stunts seamed together by a 'not as clever as it thinks' plot. Of course. And too many characters. Far too many. Confoundingly, it feels somehow a little stale and yet brilliant.

The film's 'grand' action sequence this time round has been so overexposed, so heavily spoilt (a making of dissection for it ran before the film itself at my screening for Christ's sake) that you naturally assume it'd deflate a little by the time you see it 'in context'. That's not so. Mainly because it is actually just the entrée to the main course which is the train finale.

The climax is an utter masterwork of technical execution, mixing real stuntwork with very well done greenscreen and (yes, shocking as it is to say for a Tom Cruise movie) CGI facial replacement alongside terrifically accomplished narrative construction.

 If like me you continue to be aggrieved by the presence of Simon Pegg's Benji and how he's ostensibly exactly the same character as Luther with exactly the same skillset, routinely forcibly sidelining a vastly superior Ving Rhames, then that's more evident here than ever before. So much so that they literally 'Poochie' Luther out of the film in the third act. Which is obviously racist bullshit. Also, I know I stand alone in my apathy towards Rebecca Ferguson (I really don't get the adoration for her / her character at all) and my hatred for Vanessa Kirby and all the stupid gurning that comes with her, but both are drowned out by a crackin' turn by Pom Klementieff and a performance from Hayley Atwell that you really need to believe the hype on; she lights up the screen and is a tremendous comedy player amongst all the weighty waffle.

And that's the film's biggest flaw that ROGUE NATION and FALLOUT both managed to masterfully swerve - the minute the action stops the film starts to sink under the weight of really heavy exposition. Mounds and mounds of the stuff, in fact.  I know McQuarrie and Cruise have been open about how they conceive a script around action set-pieces but this is the first time where the stitchwork is so headache-inducing having to listen to it that you start to see a wobble in the method for the first time... even more so now McQ and Cruise have started injecting all this whiffery about "the choice" and portentous context about how IMF agents work, are recruited, etc. Like, what are you doing trying to 'John LeCarre' my fucking MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies, goddamnit?

 Still, it's the most minor of hardships considering you're never more than 10 minutes off from getting out the other side of all that exposition and getting to another sublime action sequence or a close up of Atwell's wonderous smile.

17. Sisu 

"Sisu is a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness, and is held by Finns themselves to express their national character. It is generally considered not to have a literal equivalent in English (tenacity, grit, resilience and hardiness are much the same things, but do not necessarily imply stoicism or bravery)."- Wikipedia

The RAMBO sequels should look to this, kneel before it and weep just for being in its presence.

And we better start doing the same with Jalmari Helander, who in just three movies has done Finnish 'interpretations' of John Carpenter horrors, 80s Amblin movies and now 'lone warrior' action films to magnificent effect.

This is a gloriously ridiculous live action cartoon of violent excess and bonkers propulsion; land, water and air set-pieces of utter insanity stitched together with inventive, nasty gore.

It is outlandish in its speed, its fat-free story construction and its refusal to ever stop or give way to wimpy, silly things like character development.

16. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

I totally get Hollywood's whoreish mentality for seeing something succeed and then bastardising it to the point that what we once loved is something we become bored by - it's why we suffered through a noughties onslaught of what felt like nothing but zombie movies because 28 DAYS LATER landed well or why everyone's trying to do "shared universes" now because of Marvel.

Or why after the massive success and instant affection for INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE every animated movie of late has been plagiarising the hell out of it.

You saw the trailer for this - a heavily belated sequel to a spin-off from a SHREK sequel - pulling that very shit and it just felt a bit like your old dad after your mum's left him, spraying on the 'hair filler' and squeezing into skinny jeans to "get back out there" and prove he's "still got it"...

... and then it just casually reveals itself to be a film of massively inventive design (both visually and narratively), that's surprisingly deep and very funny - and as a result superior to both its predecessor and the entire franchise from which it was born.

You don't •think• you NEED time spent in the company of Olivia Colman and Ray Winstone as Mama Bear and Papa Bear or Florence Pugh as Goldilocks and John Mulaney as Jack Horner... or best of all ELITE SQUAD's Wagner Moura as Death... but you absolutely do! Don't make the mistake of thinking you're 'above' this sort of thing, cos I can guarantee you you're not.

It's a delight!

15. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny 

It feels like I've got to be apologetic in my opinion of this if 'Film Twitter' / the critical majority is to be believed, in which case I'm sorry but I enjoyed this. I just don't think you should ever underestimate the positive impact factor(s) that can be drawn from this particular actor turning up on screen as this particular character, scored to John Williams' music. And I'm saying this as someone who's seen KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL.

 I can see why people would have issue with this latest / last outing; it's overlong to the point of bagginess (there's a staleness that starts to set in from the repetition of Jones and Co landing at a location, having the baddies immediately show up, outwit them and make off with the macguffin only for Jones to steal it back) and the character of Helena Shaw is a fairly odious and unlikeable one who exists to cause more shit for Indiana Jones than is tolerable (and I was no fan for the most part of how Phoebe Waller-Bridge played her).

And then there's the 'look' of it too. Did it HAVE to have such a shitty, plastic sheen to it? It cannot be overstated that one of the most tremendous qualities of those first three INDIANA JONES movies was in how Spielberg went out to REAL locations and had Vic Armstrong and Harrison Ford REALLY ride REAL horses and jumped on top of REAL tanks or fall under REAL trucks. Here, it's pixels and screens. Again. With nothing learnt from the issues KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL generated.

James Mangold has done a commendable job of 'apeing' Steven Spielberg and there's a lot - and I mean a lot - of great action here. But the vast majority of it has the shine taken off by continually cutting into terrifically adrenalinised action sequences to insert very obvious greenscreened shots of Ford and Waller-Bridge bickering and shouting like they were really honestly / definitely / maybe there involved with the sequence when it was getting filmed.

It's infuriating because this thing is stacked to the gills with thoroughly enjoyable, legitimately well-designed action sequences - the escape from the castle in the French Alps, the Apollo 11 parade and New York City Subway chase, the Tangier sequence, the Aegean Sea set-piece, the Ear of Dionysius cavern stuff and the airfield chase - but in every single one there's moments of really quite shoddy CGI that draws you right out of the moment to remind you 80% of this was done on computers. There's not ever a moment to make you gasp in awe at how the stunt-man survived like in the original trilogy. But there's a LOT of moments that has you thinking "This thing cost $350 million?"

But all that said, Mangold making a 'fan' version of a Steven Spielberg INDIANA JONES movie is better than Steven Spielberg phoning in one. And I'm not going to lie, this thing had me from the minute the font come up in the opening titles and we got a straight-up legitimate 1940s set INDIANA JONES mini-movie (which seemed to sit as an eery bedfellow to MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7, weirdly enough) with the best... though still not flawless... de-ageing techniques I've seen.

14. The Fabelmans

It's more than a little disingenuous for all involved, specifically Steven Spielberg himself, to describe this as "semi-autobiographical" and "loosely based" on his adolescence and first years as a filmmaker when anyone who's read any number of books on the man or watched director Susan Lacy's 2017 biographical documentary can see the beats are all there, wholesale. If THIS is "loosely" then the biopic version would be the greatest invasion of privacy ever committed. This ~isn't~ a "fable", man!

I can also see with it why some have braced against it and the instant critical adoration that was applied to it, because the longer it sticks around the more muddled it becomes about what its point of view is and whether it has anything left to say. By the end it slides to a stop after 2½ hours with an admittedly wonderful (and wonderfully bizarro) comedic bon mot having scattered barely etched vignettes / sketches in its final stretch. And tonally, there's questions as to really what was trying to be said with that late 'Ditch Day' subplot and whether co-writer Tony Kushner was working through his OWN stuff within Spielberg's memory bank.

That being said, I loved it in all honesty. For the first two thirds of its running time, I thought it was •really• something special - and anyone pushing out the notion that this is Spielberg on autopilot ain't watching this properly. That cold pan cutting his [screen] father from the frame in a moment of parental happiness but leaving in his [screen] mother and her lover? That's some brutal, subtle craftsmanship there. And layered on top of choices like that is more precision cinematography from Janusz Kamiński and scoring (for the final time?) by John Williams.

The performances across the board from Gabriel LaBelle (as 'Sammy' / Spielberg), Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, [CENSORED] and Seth Rogen are extremely good. Though as atypically great as Williams is here, I'm not certain this ends up being the 'ode' to Spielberg's mum, Leah Adler, that some think it to be.

I totally understand the perspective of those that see this cynically as a 'pre-designed awards hoover' - you can't help but come away from Judd Hirsch's cameo feeling like the entire thing was written as a Best Supporting Actor Oscar clip reel - but for me it just hit me right in the chest... exactly as it will for anyone who spent some of their best summers with their dearest friends, being creative, making films, watching films, dreaming of a future that involved cinema, fending off unsupportive family and trying to hold close those that did try to help your talent flourish.

13. Babylon

As much as Film Twitter has taken against BABYLON's final moment, it must be said that for a "love letter" to cinema and the movie industry overall, Chazelle can 'sign it off' how he likes (and "SINGIN' IN THE RAIN to AVATAR" is certainly •a• take!) with no obligation to be subtle. However, considering there's NOTHING subtle about this film whatsoever preceding it, why you'd think it's conclusion would be any different is silly.

I'm a Damien Chazelle fan. I liked WHIPLASH and LA LA LAND enormously and I genuinely consider FIRST MAN one of the finest films of the last decade. No matter its flaws (of which there are several), I drew a great deal of enjoyment from this, his latest effort. Repeat viewings have put it as one of my favourite films of 2023.

It's a very, very messy film. Chazelle seems to believe the debauchery and excess of the era his narrative lands within - Hollywood's transition from silent to sound films in the late 1920s - gives him unrestrained reign with an overindulgent running time and a cavalcade of graphic content. Added to all the blood, vomit, excrement, etc etc the opening Kinoscope Studios Exec's bacchanalian mansion party is the "opening sequence of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN" of debauched, drug-fuelled, orgy sequences in cinema.

There's no real consistent throughline to any of this which makes it all the more difficult to embrace across 190 minutes and because it plays like a plethora of sketches it has massive peaks and troughs Chazelle doesn't always seem to have total control of - the vignette involving Margot Robbie's Nellie LaRoy first experience of recording a 'sound' take starts solid, gets funny, outstays its welcome and then beats you into submission.

There's a lot of excellence here though. Whether that's in Brad Pitt's surprisingly layered, moving and deft turn or through the sojourns onto the desert location shoots of multiple oscillating productions, topped off with the very 'on' appearance of Spike Jonze's 'Not Otto Preminger' Otto Von Strassberger.

I'm thinking that opening on elephant defecation and sordid acts of urolagnia is something that in retrospect director Damien Chazelle may well be regretting now critics have been "pissy" about his latest film and it's now considered the big box office "turd" of the year.

12. The Killer 

I've seen a few people talk about this as if it's "beneath" David Fincher, inarguably one of our greatest working filmmakers today. Like a tight hitman-out-for-revenge yarn based on Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon's comic book series is not "worthy" of him or something. Clearly these people are forgetting this is the same guy who spent 6 years in development hell on a WORLD WAR Z sequel, gave us the glorious (if flawed) bit of pulp that was THE GAME, the immensely effective b-movie in an a-picture gown in PANIC ROOM and remade an adaptation of a popular airport potboiler with THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO in amongst whatever is regarded as his "prestige" flicks.

It's absolutely a David Fincher movie; that's apparent in the droll humour, the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross soundtrack and the clever visual flourishes - like the entire Amazon 'bit' in the final stretch.

It's a caper. A yarn, if you will. A bit of pulp, just with high end flourishes - such as Fincher's meticulous choices, Erik Messerschmidt's cinematography and the casting itself (Fassbender, Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell and Tilda Swinton).

There's this brilliant layering here between the clinical, detailed voiceover Michael Fassbender provides (that leads us to believe this is an assassin at the peak of his 'game') and the actions we physically see from him on screen (missed shots, beat downs suffered, etc) that indicate there's a little bit more than what's on the surface.

I had an absolute blast with this - a tight / immensely refreshing sub two hour, jet black comedic (the aliases!!) thriller that sits as Fincher's hat tip to Jean-Pierre Melville's classic, LE SAMOURAÏ.

... Though I do want to deduct a star off my final rating for the bit where Tilda Swinton co-opted my favourite 'go to' pub joke that I've relied on for 20 years. Now whenever I tell it people are going to say I've just ripped it off this, goddamnit!

11. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

What an absolute gem of a film!

You knew you were in steady hands because Judy Blume's 1970 source novel is just that good, Kelly Fremon Craig's EDGE OF SEVENTEEN is an instant classic and there's a dependable excellence that comes with casting the likes of Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates.

But there was always the risk that this COULD'VE got fucked up. Some idiot at the studio might have tried to modernise it. Or believe that it needed more 'incident'. Or cast someone too precocious in the lead role. But James L. Brooks clearly bodyguarded this thing correctly.

The final result is a sweet, funny and very lovely little film with an absolute sweetheart of a turn from Abby Ryder Fortson as the title character.

I genuinely loved spending time watching this.

10. 20 Days in Mariupol 

There's a moment in this - Mstyslav Chernov's truly harrowing frontline documentary of the twenty days he and his colleagues spent besieged in Mariupol after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine - involving an emergency cesarean and an unresponsive newborn that is more upsetting, more thrilling and more uplifting than the combination of every horror and every feelgood drama released in the last five years.

This is the most important and vital film you'll see this year and then never ever want to see again.

More so because as humans in this modern age we rather callously only seem to have the heart / stomach / attention-span for one 'war' at a time, and we appear to have abandoned the Ukrainian conflict to refocus our outrage on what's going on in Gaza instead.

For large parts of it we feel like Mstyslav Chernov's been given exclusive access to the pits of hell and he's taking us on a tour. This is intense and riveting, shockingly so considering the unrepentant footage of dead or dying children.

9. The Night of the 12th 

I've worked in the field of investigation for over 20 years and I can tell you this much - this movie fuckin gets 'it', man.

In opening with the title card that it does it offsets any eventual disappointment you may feel when the ending arrives. You don't feel short-changed because you've been brought in from the start to share the frustration with the characters.

There's nothing easy here. Nothing pat. Just real investigatory pathways followed with dead ends jumping out in front when everything in your gut says this lead, that lead or the next was going to be 'the one'.

It painstakingly shows that the work is in the hours. And the work can become an obsession. An obsession that gives nothing back equitable to what it takes from you.

It starts with a suitably harrowing and upsetting sequence and it ends on character uplift in lieu of narrative resolution. It also sits as one of the best movies about the art and reality of investigation in modern cinema.

8. The Creator 

If there's anyone out there still 'over crediting' Tony Gilroy for the success of ROGUE ONE - one of the best (and the last great) STAR WARS films - this is the "fuck you" exhibit.

Gareth Edwards' sci-fi action epic doesn't entirely land its thematic intentions and hampers itself somewhat by placing dramatic reliance on the anti-acting vessel that is Gemma Chan, but by crikey is it an enthralling and gorgeous-looking ride. (John David Washington remains a magnetic watch, though I do wonder because he sounds so much like his dad whether we're all just hooked on the idea that they've 'prequelised' Denzel?)

You're gifted something here that feels like 1982 Ridley Scott and 1993 James Cameron have got together to play with action figures and do a sci-fi Vietnam movie... it's glorious stuff!

Full of some of the best effects and well realised set-pieces of the year, it's the old 'protect the child' trope given a beautiful lick of paint thick to feel make it feel just about unique enough and a) stand out in an ocean of comic book movies and sequels, and b) probably make Neil Blomkamp go "Ahhh. That's how you do this? Riii-ght!"

So of course no fucker showed up to watch it!

7. Close 

I don't really have friends. I don't have the sort of 'personality' that lends itself to people being able to find me tolerable at the most basic level - at least for more than a couple of hours at a time anyway. 

I've come to accept and acknowledge this fact the older I've got in life. I've always tried to make friends / keep friends etc but the type of person I am seemingly lends itself to being easily used and/or quickly put down.

It wasn't always like this though. When I was a child there was a boy who saw something in me that others did not and could not. He was in my class and lived close by my grandparents, where I spent most of my time. We were bonded by our loneliness amidst a sea of heads at school as much as our shared sense of humour. Even at a young age I came to appreciate this friend for simply •liking• me and we quickly became inseparable.

On the last day of school, with a vast and limitless summer ahead of us before separate high schools would provide an inevitable divide, we had an argument. A silly, stupid, ~nothing~ argument - significant enough in postscript that I can still recall it now 31 years on - that degenerated into shoving and me accidentally banging his head off a bathroom wall during lunchbreak.

We left school that day with our friendship impacted and the first week of the summer holiday's heavily damaged by him not being by my side in it. And on the very night that I finally decided I didn't want this to continue any longer... that the very next morning I would pick up the phone and ask him if he wanted to go ride bikes in the dene... he died.

An asthma attack. A fuckin asthma attack.

He died not believing that I was his friend and that devastated me. It still does. 31 years later, I think about Neil at least once a week. I see clips of talent show magicians and KNOW that'd have been him. I've tried all my life to replicate a friendship like it and I've never succeeded. But can we ever generate that closeness in adulthood towards someone like we could as children, when we were free of responsibility and bonded by limitless possibility?

I've frequently wondered what my life would've been like if Neil had still been in it, telling myself over and over that this would've been one of the rare pre-teen childhood friendships that lasted.

I miss him and would give anything to be able to deliver the apology to him that he deserved then and is still owed now.

So... all THAT said... it goes without saying that this deeply human, carefully etched and very naturally drawn drama hit me like a train travelling at 150mph.

This is one of the most effective and important films about grief, trauma-processing, adolescence and friendship that there's been in some time.

It really is a brilliant piece of cinema that should be shown in schools to every kid from twelve upwards.

6. The Eight Mountains 

Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch's adaption of Paolo Cognetti's novel is a (both visually and emotionally) astonishingly beautiful effort with two fascinating and textured performances from Alessandro Borghi as the adult Bruno and Luca Marinelli as the adult Pietro.

It's an intimate epic; a careful, patient and quietly profound treaty on friendship, life, love, ambition, Buddhist concepts, ancient Indian cosmology, growth, nature and the weight of legacy.

Come for the stunning footage of the gorgeous Italian Alps, but stay to be deeply moved by something really rather special, wholehearted and sincere that steps right over whatever BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN esque expectations or assumptions you may well carry into this.

5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 

I've never understood anyone - especially the aged fanboys frequently responsible for ruining the STAR WARS and MARVEL 'discourse' - who's shown territoriality over the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES as a "franchise".

The reason this ramshackle 1984 indie comic by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird has blown up into five television series, seven films, multiple video games and a range of toys / merchandise for four decades is mostly down to the way it sorta reinvents itself every five or so years. Which means there's some form of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 'content' now for all of us in one way or another.

And one of the most impressive - but not THE most impressive - things about this film is how it incorporates something from everything that's gone before without becoming a complete mess. The spirit of the comic book source material is front and centre alongside the legitimate effort of the 1990 movie adaptation. The "that'll do" crappy clart of its sequels is avoided whilst the huge scale of the maligned Bay-ified 2014 - 2016 movies is represented. It definitely captures everything about the first Saturday morning cartoon that enamoured the property to us way back when.

It's a glorious effort. It truly is. I watched it with my son and his friends and the huge grins on their faces was infectious. I struggled to think of another entertainment entity that has moved so effortlessly through the generations like this has.

It's a visually resplendent film. It takes the reconfiguration of the animated form a la the SPIDER-VERSE movies and delivers a surprisingly more focused and tighter effort than the latest SPIDER-VERSE sequel. It is dripping with an energy and confidence that will surprise you, as well as a whole heap of heart and humour that will delight.

Yeah, there's moments here and there where the energetic visual styling becomes a little too cluttered in its action sequences but it is a minor grumble against what is a surprising instant masterpiece of its type:

A sweet and funny teen movie walking in the shoes of an animated giant sized comic book blockbuster wearing the coat of a New York conspiracy film, drenched in classic East Coast hip-hop and a score by by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and performed by one of the most impressively eclectic voice casts of recent.

(Within a roster of Hannibal Buress, Rose Byrne, John Cena, Ice Cube, Natasia Demetriou, Ayo Edebiri, Giancarlo Esposito, Post Malone, Rogen, Paul Rudd, Maya Rudolph, Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr, Nicolas Cantu and Brady Noon, it is Jackie Chan that absolutely steals this thing by a considerable distance!)

4. Asteroid City 

If you aren't a Wes Anderson fan this is not the film that is going to convert you. An immaculately stylised and composed metatextual 'Russian Nesting Doll' celebration of the construction of art and the art of storytelling? No way. No how.

There was elements of it that didn't work for me but what •did• work I was head over heels in love with. The [CENSORED]*constructs felt almost like afterthoughts and didn't particularly resonate. A lot of reviews hit Anderson for being unfocused and overindulgent, and I kinda can see where they're coming from. But only with regards to that particular element.

[* censored by me and hopefully by everyone else because they've done a wonderful job of hiding the story construct from the marketing]

The rest of the film is primo Wes Anderson in his most astonishingly stylised form with his attention to detail never more sharp.

A complaint that must be noted though is in the casting, where the usual 'Anderson Players' appear to have ran a 'pyramid scheme'; bringing in actors who's casting has attracted other actors to the point of it being too cluttered an ensemble in too lean a film to let everyone truly shine. Despite all the plaudits, I think Scarlett Johansson is well out of her depth here. And I just think if you're going to hire the likes of Steve Carell (replacing a Covid-addled Bill Murray at the last minute), Margot Robbie (who should've played Johansson's part, and vice versa) and the sublime Sophia Lillis but barely use them properly it's almost a crime!

When it's funny it is hilarious. When it is delightful it sits as a heavenly confection. And when it wobbles it still isn't as ponderous and disappointing as some of the lesser elements of THE FRENCH DISPATCH.

3. Oppenheimer 

I found every plaudit for this to be true and what a reward it was to receive as cinema lies stale in its current state, crusted with the stale decay of innumerable shitty-sheened superhero movies and sequels to things no one was asking for.

Here's a mature, complex, expertly constructed character study of great depth and intelligence; a film primarily made up of scientists and mathematicians thinking and squabbling amongst themselves whilst a non-linear deep betrayal born of immense pettiness plays out almost as an appendices to the traditional biopic... yet, thanks to the music of Ludwig Göransson and editing by Jennifer Lame, it moves like this insanely kinetic action thriller instead.

The ending stretch feels almost ~too~ trite and neat though, it must be said. Although maybe I'm tarnished by a feeling that no movie should depend on the cripplingly irritating overacting of Rami Malek to play last-minute 'saviour'.

Cillian Murphy is frankly outstanding here and whilst most critics have the Best Supporting Actor Oscar locked for Robert Downey Jr (who's brilliant and who's Lewis Strauss receives a 'kiss off' by Nolan here that almost feels like a Marvel Cinematic Universe esque tease for a sequel about Strauss arranging the JFK assassination!) it would be good to see Matt Damon get some recognition here as his General Groves very nearly steals the whole movie with very little.

The casting is so sumptous overall that every scene induces a "Hey! That's..." as the likes of Kenneth Branagh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, David Krumholtz, Matthew Modine, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, Michael Angarano, Jack Quaid, Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Macon Blair, Tom Conti, James D'Arcy, David Dastmalchian, Dane DeHaan, Alden Ehrenreich, Tony Goldwyn, Alex Wolff, James Remar, James Urbaniak and (is it a spoiler to say?) Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman roll out to 'play' for one or two minutes.

It's the sort of movie so stacked and packed even at 3 hours that it puts Emily Blunt (as Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer) in such an undercooked and underdeveloped role you wonder why they cast a 'star' in it... until that clearance hearing scene near the end where she goes and delivers the impact of a... well... an atomic bomb and you think to yourself "Oh. That's why they cast Emily Blunt!"

It's a gorgeous-looking - Hoyte van Hoytema's cinematography is luscious - cinematic achievement by Christopher Nolan, where his visual ambition and clinical cinematic technique have really come together once again to remind you the term "modern great" as a filmmaker is well earned.

2. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves 

A "great time" - seeing as the film itself had my beloved GAME NIGHT's Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley at the helm - perhaps. But a resoundingly delightful time that left me instantly eager for more of these movies and DEFINITELY future revisits of this one? I'm shocked at just how brilliant this was.

I can't believe that one of my favourite films of the year is a 'fantasy heist action comedy adventure' based on the infamous tabletop role-playing game.

Especially considering I've never played nor have any frame of reference / interest towards the tabletop game (my sole DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 'knowledge' stems from the 1980s cartoon series - which gets a pretty terrific nod here!) and one-third of the cast is made up of actors (Michelle Rodriguez and Regé-Jean Page) I can't normally stand.

I've been a big Chris Pine fan for a long time now and his performance in this only increases the fandom. And I've flat-out crushed on Sophia Lillis since IT and she's pretty tremendous (if a little underserved) here. The whole cast - yeah, including Rodriguez - are pretty wonderful with Hugh Grant clearly having a grand ol' time, a "big star" mid-movie cameo that'll only land depending on your opinion of this diversive 'talent' and Justice Smith very nearly stealing the movie out from under Pine.

This thing is built within the framework of a marriage between THE PRINCESS BRIDE and the aforementioned GAME NIGHT. It's ostensibly LORDS OF THE RINGS meets OCEAN'S 11; a series of ever escalating challenges and heists that are thrillingly executed within a film that's very, very, VERY funny. The opening prologue is a complete statement of intent ("Where's Jonathan?") that tells you exactly the movie you're going to get.

Killers of the Flower Moon / Godzilla: Minus One 

Simply astonishing to indulge in - there's such a deft, surprising delicacy to elements of Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon that's all the more astounding considering the abhorrent subject matter.

That comes mainly from the performance Lily Gladstone provides this film with. In a sea of tremendous work - and by God it's both magnificent to see Robert DeNiro be great again and for Leonardo DiCaprio to finally do something in my eyes that lives up to his [overstated] reputation - she is working on some other stratospheric level.

Comments about the length by some don't resonate with me. I certainly didn't feel it, necessarily. It's probably the length it needs to be to do justice to the masterful source material its adapted, deliver a legitimate love story (of which, don't be fooled by its toxicity, this is), a film of weighted historical and cultural context AND a true life / true crime procedural.

It's surprisingly less gratuitous than you'd probably expect too. Especially considering we're in the hands of our greatest living filmmaker, someone who's never shied away from presenting us with absolute violence of an uncompromised nature.

There's also these splashes of jet black comedy occasionally popping up too - like the horribly bleak but darkly funny scene in which one henchman asks a lawyer about whether adopting then killing his Osage wife's kids would make him a benefactor of their riches. When the lawyer rightly points out it sounds like he's confessing to planning child murders he replies not unless the lawyer's answer would be affirmative.

This is a film that consumes you. It pulls you in and drags you down - you're in the presence of pure evil and weak character, and Scorsese expertly holds you there so escape feels as impossible as justice must have to the Osage.

It's very easy to 'throw around' the term "masterpiece" when it comes to Martin Scorsese. Mainly because the fucker keeps effortlessly making 'em. But by crikey this really is one.

Equally majestic as a piece of cinema, but in an entirely different form and genre is Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla: Minus One.

By concentrating on making an interesting drama with genuinely well-etched characters (that just so happens to have a giant radioactive monster passing through intermittently) equal to a barnstorming blockbuster creature feature (that allows itself to be infected with enthralling drama and character development), this steps up in the year of the Godzilla franchise’s 70th year to take the position as its best entry [by a considerable distance] in its illustrious history.

Buzzing with some of the best set-pieces of the year soundtracked to a thumping and all-consuming score by Naoki Sato, there’s genius in recalibrating a Godzilla movie – of all things – in order to develop an incredibly touching human drama and social commentary about what makes a family, what is the true definition of patriotism and courage, what real service to one’s country presents as and how to find air to breathe / the will to go on in a post-war Japan where unrelenting despair hangs in the atmosphere wherever your head turns and ‘fear’ manifests itself as a skyscraper-sized lizard-of-sorts.

We know we’re being played with the cute kid and the manipulative makeshift family relations, but that doesn’t stop it being wonderful. The marriage of sincere impacts caused by war and loss with sci-fi fantasy (but no less tense) fantasy action shouldn’t work, but they very much do. This thing is firing on multiple levels and it succeeds across the board to stand as the best blockbuster of the year.   

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's a Letterboxd link for this whole thing if you're that way inclined.

Tell your mum I said hello.

See you next year...

[jayne-fian]

Hello! Uh, I'm going to start a journal here about me and my friends. I guess I should explain! See, I'm the main character of a very important project to my creator.... I don't know why I'm so important, really I think my friend Gavi should be the main character! Or may Zack, buuuut He's kind of a flirty idiot so maybe not... Right, sorry I'm bad at speeches. I'll be posting some information about my friends, my world, and just stuff I think is interesting! I'll start by introducing myself. My name is Jayne Fian Wihtriell, Pronounced like the name "jane" and Fee-on Wit-re-all! It's ok if you mispronounce it, royalty names are kinda dumb anyway. I just turned 21, and I'm supposed to be king of Florena soon, but I really don't think I'm ready... Florena is in such a bad state and it's all my fault for not being good enough to fix it. I go on adventures with my 2 best friends, Zack and Gavi. Zack has been my best friend since I was a kid, and I even convinced my dad to let him be my personal gaurd. He's really strong and cool, but also kind of a flirt.... and Gavi, He's like the group dad, anytime Zack drags us all on some crazy adventure it's always Gavi who makes sure nothing bad happens. He's also a really good mechanic, and has his own little plane he built! That's all for now, but stay tuned for uh, stuff! lots of stuff! Maybe I can get Zack to help me with these speeches... He's way better at talking then I am.

[mr-tony-stark]

"I always hate being in casts. I don't think I've ever managed to keep one on for the required time. I just want to get back in my suit right away," he said, as they sat in the car parked in the private hanger. The ground crew had already gotten his armor and the wheelchair from the trunk. "I think Jane stopped wanting to treat me the amount of times I've just blatantly ignored her advice."

When Clint gave the go ahead, Tony got out and went around to help Clint out of the car. He handed over the keys to the ground crew, and wheeled Clint to the stairs that led into the plane. There he helped Clint up and the two slowly and carefully climbed the stairs into the jet.

When they were in their seats Tony buckled up and tapped his fingers in a random pattern on the arm of the chair. "The jet's one of my trigger things," he admits, wanting to give Clint chances to see what living with this shit was like without just pressuring him. It's hard. It's hard admitting these things to anyone. It's one thing to just tell people I KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE AND YOU"RE SETTING YOURSELF UP FOR FAILURE IF YOU DON'T DO AS I SAY. It's a whole other to actually tell them the exact way he knows. "I don't tend to use it much when I'm sober. I just use my suits. I mean - I've also used the suits drunk too, but that's the rarity. Here though - here I was always drunk. Getting trapped in a tube for hours on the way to do something for the company I wasn't really into. Or flying to Vegas or Amsterdam or whatever. I couldn't do it sober. Even if I was trying to impress other CEO's, it'd be with alcohol. And now I just get on and my hand feels empty."

He huffs and waves his hand back and forth. "Anyway - I'm gonna do you a favor. We've got about five hours to kill and I'm going to let you decide how to fill that. We can talk or not talk or whatever you want to do that doesn't involve drinking alcohol."

HE COULD BE FINE WITH THAT. He wasn't going to be airtight about who saw him like this or not; he wouldn't be uptight of who knew. While it was his information to share, Clint would have to be fine with it going around as long as he told the important people first. THAT'S A MISTAKE HE HAD BEFORE, which was why he was being precious and warned Tony not to say anything the entire time.

As long as a certain handful of people found out by his own mouth; this would be fine.

❝ I DON'T THINK SO? I think I've maybe seen her around, so in theory, I know she's real. ❞ He just hasn't had a conversation, the super community was big. Clint KNEW a lot of people on paper, but whether he actually knew them and met them was another question entirely.

THERE'S A PEACE THAT CAST BETWEEN THEM WHILE THEY EAT. How he definitely missed food, and if he were to be honest? He missed cooking as well, it's something that he hadn't seriously done in a long time. Making good food, eating it; that was the second way that Clint could find any peace that came after SHOOTING HIS BOW UNTIL HE WAS NUMB.

❝ SEE THIS IS THE BEST. FAR SUPERIOR. ❞ He comments as he is finishing up his fries with wistful sighing.

Once they had reached the air port, Clint predicts that Tony is thinking something over before he even speaks. THERE'S IS SLIGHT PINCH TO HIS EYEBROWS. Eyes ever so slightly squinting, gaze getting a faraway look and Clint literally imagines metal wheels and clogs turning in his head.

❝ You can; but you know you got me in the first time MOSTLY FINE. ❞ Clint hadn't the cast yet and he was so far wasted that he had numb out the excruciating pain that his knee had been in. SO IT WOULDN'T BE THE SAME AS LAST TIME.

❝ Only like two, probably. I THINK. ❞ HE MAY HAVE GOTTEN TOO SNAPPY when the staff tried to suggest that they could take him to the hospital for a check on the whole cast situation, which is why he should maybe check in now and maybe hope that he won't have to wait out the remainder of the six weeks it typically took for these kind of injuries to heal.

He takes breath as Tony gets him standing. INHALE AND HE JUST HOLDS IT THERE. get on the plane and go back. it continues, the toughest thing that he's ever been through. it starts, the climb. HE'S TERRIFIED.

Clint doesn't necessarily exhale, ❝ OK. Let's go. ❞ INHALE AGAIN.

[wqbytop100]

WQBY

TOP 150 for the week ending March 17, 2024 22 New this week. 22 off No Re-entries

You're Hired --NEIKED, Ayra Starr -9

Outlaw Love --Brooke Eden (Dave Aude remix) -7

Slide Out --Life On Planets -10

Houdini --Dua Lipa --12

She's On My Mind --Romy -6

I Don't Wanna Worry --NEEDTOBREATHE -2

Monster --A7S, ALOK -20

Weak ---Vintage Culture, Maverick Sabre, Tom Breu -1

When I Wake Up --Lucas & Steve, Skinny Days -133

Weight Of the World --Bonnie X Clyde -5

Jet Plane --R3HAB, VIZE, JP Cooper -3

Reckless Child ---Milky Chance -4

Dirty Desire--- Vicetone -8

Heart Still Beating --Nathan Dawe, Bebe Rexha -14

Never Be Friends --Jost, Minogue -16

Make Me Your Mrs. --Mae Stephens --114

Give Me --Will Clark, BURNS -13

The Afterhours --Kyle Watson -11

Before You Go --Seeb -21

Low Again --Bakermat -146

Anyone--Morgan Page -27

Lonely Dancers --Conan Gray -15

Waterslides --Tiesto, Rudimental, Absolutely -24

Texas Hold 'Em --Beyonce -17

Ride --Grant Brett -75

Graveyard --A R I Z O N A (Shoffy remix) -18

Kissing Strangers --USHER -61

Mr. Useless --Shygirl, SG Lewis -25

Close Your Eyes --Lucas Estrada, Tribbs, Stephen Puth -28

Kill Anyone --Two Feet, Ari Abdul -23

It's Love (If We Get It Right) --Anthony Russo -19

One On One ---Sofi Tukker -22

Both --Tiesto, 21 Savage, BIA -36

All Fok'd Up --Kapuzen -34

Feels Like Us --GT_OFICE, ALWZ SNNY, Robbie Rosen -33

You --Svidden, Seeb -35

Bad Blood --Theresa Rex -37

Spicy Margarita --Jason Derulo, Michael Bublé -30

Yes, And? --Ariana Grande -52

Next Years Light --Elliot Moss -39

U Miss Me --Vicetone -31

Dark Skies -- A R I Z O N A -32

Flex --Tony Dark Eyes -38

Lift Off --Dombresky -43

Diamond Therapy --Diplo, Walker & Royce, Channel Tres -46

Do You Feel It --VAMERO, Cyril M. Mougleta -51

More Baby --Chris Lake, Aluna -44

Good In Goodbye --Frank Walker, Trivecta -40

Cutting Loose ---Disco Lines, J. Worra, Anabel Englund -47

Rhythm Machine --Westend, Max Styler -49

Dizzy --Sick Individuals, LOUI LANE -50

Other Boys --Marshmello, Dove Cameron -41

Forever (Stay Like This) --Armin Van Buuren, Goodboys -129

ADHD --Mae Stephens -86

No Reason --The Chemical Brothers (Chris Lake remix) -56

Lullaby --Britti -137

Triumph --Bishop Briggs -128

How Do I Say Goodbye --Adventure Club, Delaney Jane -42

I Got Time --Brittney Spencer -139

Lie To Me --Jubel/KIDDO -52

Underwater --Dubvision, Afrojack -70

You Know It --Gorgon City -85

***Without You --Disco Fries, Lavish Life -(new)

Venemo --Sofi Tukker, &Friends, Mari Merenda -76

Home --CamelPhat, RHODE (Vintage Culture Remix -90

Fire ---Alan Walker, YUQI, JVKE, (G)I-DLE -26

Take A Moment --ATB, David Frank -29

Easy ---3LAU, XIRA -45

Spend the Night --BJ the Chicago Kid, Coco Jones -48

I'll Be There ---Robin Schulz, Rita Ora, Tiago PZK -54

Sorry Ain't Enough ---Michael Gerow -55

Hangin' On -- A R I Z O N A -57

Mirrors --Caravan Palace -58

Dreamteam ---Galantis, Neon trees -59

Body Moving --Eliza Rose, Calvin Harris -60

Powerful Women --Pitbull, Dolly Parton -62

Purple Irises --Gwen Stefani, Blake Shelton -63

Young & Foolish --Loud Luxury f/Charlieonafriday -64

Wanna --Paul Dally -65

Stress You --Lucas Estrada, SUPER Hi -66

Sorry Now --A R I Z O N A -67

Strangers --Kenya Grace -68

Say it Right --Dubdogs, Farfetch'd -69

Space --Shane Codd -82

Raccoons --Carvan Palace -94

Lil Tune --Gus Dapperton, Electric Guest -81

In Your Arms --Jess Bays, Jem Cooke -111

Progressive Heart --Pat Premier (Dave Aude Remix) -84

Beautiful Things ---Benson Boone -73

Some Kind of Static --Neil Francis, Alan Braxe -87

Me Before You --Bleachers -88

Dreams --Ali Farben, Maurice Lessing, Emma Wells -96

Might Just --Walker & Royce, James Patterson -112

She --Karin Ann (Benny Benassi Remix) -109

DFHMPU --Ari Abdul -95

***Come With Me ---Claptone -(new)

***Soultrain --Tripolism, Nandu, Radeckt -(new)

***Feel This Way ---Victoria Nadine, R3HAB -(new)

***My Body ---Illusionize, Y&M -(new)

***Life Goes On --HU -(new)

***Best Of Your Love --Ownboss, LAWRENT, Ekko - (new)

Public --Mike. -71

A Day in the Life --Apollo LTD -72

Good For You --Dimitri Vegas, Chapter & Verse, Goodboys -78

Run Free (Countdown) --Tiesto, R3HAB -79

High and I Like It --It's Murph, Evalyn -80

Spirit of Thunder --Yung Lean, DVRST, Riff Raff, Bladee -83

Lucky --Dermont Kennedy -89

Somethings Gunna Workout --Jai Piccone, 1tbsp -91

Murder on the Dancefloor --Sophie Ellis-Bextor -92

Fantasy --Cosmo's Midnight feat/Frank Moody -93

Ohh LALA --Idris Elba, Sasha GiGi -98

What Do You Do for A Living? I Do My Best --Iamnotshane, EMME -99

Lead Me On --FLETCHER -100

***Sleep Tonight (This Is The Life) --Switch Disco, R3HAB, Sam Feldt -(new)

***Everything You Do --Afroki, Afrojack, Steve Aoki, Aviella -(new)

***Love Me --INNA -(new)

***Need Your Love --Llkay Sencan, KALUMA, Adam Woods -(new)

***Kettle's Up --Mahmut Orhan, Axelax, Botan -(new)

***Cutting Through the Country --Medium Build -(new)

***Premeditated --FETISH -(new)

***What If We Met --Ali Gatie -(new)

***Regret The Morning --SILK, Mali-Koa -(new)

***Gravity --Matt Hansen -(new)

***I Still Believe -- Lecrae, for King & Country -(new)

***Kiss Me Better --Julie Bergan -(new)

***Anthem --Diplo, Sharam, Pony -(new)

***Without Your Love --Deorro, TELYKAST, Catello -(new)

***Out Loud --Cage the Elephant _(new)

Alive --K-391 -102

Follow You --Return of the Jaded, MELLY OHH -103

Everybody Knows I'm High --SHAED -104

Never Be Lonely --Jax Jones, Zoe Wees -105

The Tower --Future Islands -106

Loneliness --Pet Shop Boys (radio edit) -107

Pictures Of You --Anyma -108

Hustla --Francis Mercier, Emmanual Jai -110

Beautiful Drug --Zac Brown Band (Avicii Remix) -113

Lonely Nights --Papa Beats -121

Taking It Back --DJ Minx -122

I Don't Remember --Walker & Royce, VNSSA -130 >>>

Dance Is the Answer --Dubdogs, RUBACK, Ticon, Raja ram -131

Burnin' --Rinzen, Shallou -134 >>>

Missing You --Frank Walker, Nate Smith -138

No Man's Land ---Marshmello, Venbee -140

Mas Que Nada --Oliver Heldens, Ian Asher, Sergio Mendez -143 >>>

Mirrors --Caravan Palace -144

Run --ATB, Nu Aspect, Orem -145

Pull You Closer --Sistek, Sadie Rose Van -147 >>>

Checking In -- for Kind & Country, Lee Brice -148

22 New on the Chart this week #63 Without You #96 Come With Me #97 Soultrain #98 Feel This Way #99 My Body #100 Life Goes On #101 Best of your Love #115 Sleep Tonight #116 Everything You Do #117 Love Me #118 Need Your Love #119 Kettle's Up #120 Cutting Through the Country #121 Premeditated #122 What If We Met #123 Regret the Morning #124 Gravity #125 I Still Believe #126 Kiss Me Better #127 Anthem #128 Without Your Love #129 Out Loud