Unconscious Hallucinations Wrenched From Temporary Night Death - 22rd March 2015

Chapter 1 - James "Groundhog Day" Bond Will Return In...finitely.

The journey begins rather stereotypically in some male power fantasy fashion finding myself possessing the body and skills of a James Bond type figure. It becomes quickly apparent this is the old fashioned style Bond however as there's no real fear, seriousness or dark undertones to anything only blockbuster hollywood approved safe doses of mild unrealistic tension. I begin infiltrating a supervillain's lair or possibly just their dinner venue as it seems to be a fancy medium sized, two-storey cafe and restaurant based in Venice or possibly Paris.

I sneak around a bit, shoot and beat up a few henchmen, retrieve a non-specific macguffin of value, exchange a momentary battle of smirks with the supervillain himself and escape exhiliratingly by the skin of my teeth but with no marks or consequence to my flawless appearence.
Really i'm amazed the alarm bells of dreamland didn't start thundering away at this uncharacteristic detail alone.

I can't remember the aftermath of the escape, there is no chase scene, no debriefing and before i can blink an eye (which i may not have done anyway being unconcsious and such) i'm back infiltrating the restaurant again. This happens multiple times, over and over again with only minor changes each time. I think in one scenario the macguffin of value was just my coat that i'd left there and another time two particularly goofy looking henchmen (who are resurrected seemingly with every new incarnation of the heist) began to give chase in a pedallo. They were out of luck in case you were wondering since it was situated on dry land and the unwieldy giant plastic duck shell merely grinded ineffectually on the pavement outside the cafe.

The unending time loop of suave action-comedy is only brought to a halt when Eva Green as Vesper Lynd struts across a nearby bridge towards the cafe. It's a strange metaphor for the modernisation of Bond films as she looks incredibly out of place here but remains aloof and sultry regarding us all with silent disapproval or pity. Particularly myself who sits slack-jawed half way changed into a racist caricature disguise of a Mexican musician. Why i thought this disguise would benefit me in Venice or Paris i have no idea but like i say, there was very little threat involved in any of this.

Chapter 2 - And The Winning Ticket Is...Nothing But A Conceptual Fabrication...

I find myself in a bustling food court, struggling to make my way past people and to the selection of food i desire. So far, absolutely nothing extraordinary or surprising happening here. An arrogant, mocking prick buzzes around in front of me, impeding my progress more effectively and infuraiatingly than anyone else. There are simply too many irritating people in my brain for me to pinpoint who he may have resembled exactly but he prances around, flicking and throwing food at me with a constant tirade of juvenile namecalling reverberating through my skull in surround sound. He's of a weedy, ratty build but yet has that jocular smug expression where the chin appears to be to be scaling the face of his face.

I push him aside and scowl onwards making a conscious effort not to actually become violent or abusive towards him (for some reason, my morals are important to me in this particular fantasyland). I take a tray of food from the far end of the food court and to avoid the bell-end on the return journey i step onto an outside balcony through some glass doors. It's snowing heavily with a blustery chilling wind but it's of no concern for the five seconds i'll be out in it and i quickly re-enter the court, spying the pestering bollock looking around for me to no avail.

Again i notice my coat and the need to retrieve it, along with my tattered old string bag. Two policemen are inspecting them nearby and seem about to confiscate it when i dart forward to recover the items. They merely comment that i need a new wallet and i agree, stating my current one's tendancy to explode when over capacity on loose change. This seems to satisfy their suspicions that the loose bundle of coins in my bag was not in fact an incredibly unfruitful bank robbery looting or something.

I finally find a seat and sit down in the uncomfortable, muggy overcrowded food court as a raffle lottery event begins on a previously unseen stage at the front of the hall. I spiral my neck around once to see the overenthusiastic fancy dress game show host and tilt up slightly to see a huge board of numbers in front of me currently at zero. The contest is of no real interest to me until i'm handed a letter saying i've received three votes, thus increasing my chances of winning...Because this is a lottery raffle thing that is both random and has a public voting system apparently.

One of the votes is from a guy at work who i barely know but says some amusingly psychopathic things on ocassion. Another is from a girl who i either have no more information on or can't remember said details and the third person is a complete mystery.
"Oh well that's cool i guess. I feel a bit better that people would vote for me in something like that, that's nice." I think and return to my food, still largely indifferent to the proceedings.

The huge board of numbers reveals itself to be a slot machine window and the numbers begin spinning rapidly. The results are as follows: 50 5 50 10 1, making the winning prize fund fifty million, five hundred and fifty thousand, one hundred and one pounds...i think, i'm terrible at maths. It was a lot anyway. The room erupts into applause despite me not hearing a winner announced. I look around and some but not all people are looking my way. "It must be someone else" I sit awkwardly for a long time, assuming the winner will appear on stage and it isn't until a large dinner-lady type woman hands me a wax trophy that i realise i have in fact won this random, not-random food-court slot machine lottery raffle thing.

I fumble towards the stage thinking i have to make a speech but to my chagrin some bearded guy does it for me. After that i don't remember anything of getting home or informing anyone, i simply wake up in the top bunk of my old bed in my bedroom at my dad's house and begin panicking that it was all in fact a dream. Mum enters the room and tells me to get up. I wearily stir and try to observe for any evidence of my winnings, either through items on my desk or things mum says. I get yelled at when i try asking about the money and why i can't remember anything last night because apparently i somehow locked mum outside when i returned home. It's unclear if she was outside all night or how she got back inside but she is understandably very pissed off with me and i conclude in despair that the magic lottery winnings were in fact all a dream.

Chapter 3 - Mercy Killing In Mitch's Back Garden...

A group of unfriendly military types from my upcoming story have taken two of our friends hostage. The leader being a smug bastard who, to be fair, narratively is perfectly within character to do something like this but i still obviously hate him in this scenario. It's oddly convenient but still unusual that the two hostages aren't referred to by their actual names in this sequence for some reason. Given that this dream was more of a nightmare and gets quite dark i'm going to roll with that and leave them unidentified...Tara and Mel are visible from the far end of Mitch's garden but none of us can get a clear shot on any of the guards and soldiers.

Leigh is equipped with some standard assault rifle and is edging forward up the garden while Nathan has something similar with a baseball bat cellotaped to the bottom. Mitch remains by the door to the house, presumably guarding munitions or being a medic or something i can't recall, and another Mitch is with me and Charlie by the alleyway of the garden. Mitch takes point, surveying the area through a sizeable, complicated modern sniper rifle, Charlie sits behind him doing nothing that stuck in my mind evidently and i behind Charlie, having apparently received the short straw in the artillery handouts wielding only a medieval crossbow...

It becomes a sort of unspoken harsh truth that we may have to kill our friends, the hostages if we can't rescue them safely. I believe the reasoning for this was that they would undergo far worse torture were everything not resolved at this current impasse. Tara and Mel are brought to the middle of the garden and knelt down next to each other.

Someone, somewhere fucks up the stand off and all hell breaks loose with hostilitys and gunfire raining off everywhere. Leigh and Nathan run forward and quickly become floored and wounded. Sniper Mitch aims down the rifle but takes no shots for some reason. I tag a girl in the shoulder with my crossbow but then feel really bad about it and she just sits down at our side of the battlefield and swears at me for a while.

With Tara and Mel caught in the crossfire, the panic skyrockets and we realise the last resort must be resorted to. Tara and Mel even scream at us from across the chaos "DO IT, DO IT, JUST KILL US, KILL US!" which is more than a little creepy to be dreaming about but justifies the in-dream-rationale slightly i guess...Whole thing seems a bit of a drastic overreaction in retrospect but that's dream logic i suppose.

I look over to Leigh, Nathan and Mitch who are unconcsious, crawling further into the battlefield unwilling to do the deed and straight up sitting in the corner scared and refusing respectively. Sniper Mitch is also backing down from the hostage killing despite being the best equipped to do so quickly and painlessly. I glance at a guilty Charlie and i realise i'll have to do it myself. I imaptiently tell Charlie to give me a gun and he fumbles around in his coat pockets producing a pistol the size of a spud gun.

I hold my hands up in surrender whilst still holding the pistol and walk onto the battlefield. I kneel down behind Mel and Tara and say the following "Don't worry i'm not going to attack you...well...obviously i am, but you know what i mean." Mel laughs and replies with "I never thought you'd be the one to do something like this." I think about replying but instead just load the gun and aim it at the back of her head. Thankfully i begin slipping out of this deranged delusion as i pull the trigger, meaning i at least never have to harm Tara but to be honest by this point, things are traumatising enough.

I finally wake up for real and ponder what a fucked up subconcious i seem to have...

Still Alice - Cinema Review

Still Alice is the best horror film i have ever seen. Does it have jump-scares, gore, monsters and suspenseful music? No, it has none of those things. I feel it's best described as horror because of its brutal accuracy. It's horrifyingly eye-opening and unsettling in its relatability. My recommendation for this film is very strange because i can't say you will leave the cinema feeling uplifted, entertained, hopeful or even satisfied and yet i would urge almost anyone to go and see this film, if only to be informed.

Now even as i think about typing the words "spreading awareness" i'm reminded of the constant barrage of charities we have thrown at us everyday, and whilst worthy causes, through sheer frequency and persistence we grow numb and complacent towards them. With that in mind i'm adding a slight anecdote of my experience in the cinema and perhaps the worst thing i've had to witness in a cinema ever (Even worse than Transformers 2).

If you have no intention of seeing, have already seen the film or for some other reason don't care about spoilers click here to see the specific scene described in detail. Otherwise it was a climax of a story thread that was planted early on and had been building up to. Alice's disease causes her to say something about the scene that she definitely would not have were she not afflicted with Alzheimers. The lowpoint of my cinema going experience was not actually from the film itself but rather the fact that the audience i was amongst laughed at this scene...

Not just the few ignorant teenage shitheads you often get who never had interest in the movie to begin with, but a good eighty percent of the crowd, ranging from teens, young adults right up to grey-haired seniors. I hope that the laughter was somehow awkward or perhaps hysterical because otherwise i'm quite frankly disgusted and it would be damning evidence supporting the film's message of an overlooked and underestimated illness.

So, that slight rant aside, the film is exceptionally good. Julianne Moore is heartbreakingly phenomenal in her performance. The film swiftly and effectively builds up this character of a successful, intelligent and compassionate woman and then we see her slip away piece by piece along with her own realisation and understanding of what's happening to herself and its truly tragic and deeply uncomfortable. The rest of the cast are solid as well with moments of greatness from the likes of Alec Baldwin and Kristen Stewart playing the struggling supportive husband and distant, turbulent but loving daughter respectively.

I haven't read Lisa Genova's novel on which the film is based so i'll commend both her and the writer-directors for the film's plot. The late Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. The directing being important along with the cinematography choices on how to display a primarily internal mental illness. There weren't a multitiude of different methods used for symbolising Alice's mental state which may have been a wise or unwise decision but the blurring, out of focus effect they choose and stick with is utilised to great effect.

Many of the film's most significant revelations happen when you least expect it, during everyday casual activities and i think this is perfect because it's another way Still Alice feels like real life. Not every film needs a setpiece for its "biggest" moments and a film that wields its uncanny realism so prominently makes total sense to have the film's events occur seemingly out of nowhere.

Much like Alzheimers in reality there is no happy ending here and the ending given may seem abrupt but i can't fault the film for that and much prefer it to a tacked-on or forced in unrealistic, magic solution.
The film reaches its climax and then fades away much like its protagonist. The story is very much from Alice's perspective and so it could be argued that a lot is missing or that the later scenes degenerate too quickly but then...maybe that's the point. Maybe we're supposed to feel like something is missing and incomplete. Perhaps that's the best way to encourage us to ruminate on the horrors and loss the film depicts.

Kingsman: The Secret Service - Cinema Review

I almost didn't see this film due to a pretty bland, cliched and tasteless marketing poster. I can thankfully say that is the worst thing about Kingsman and what actually lies beyond the advertising is quite well thought out and enjoyable. It's nothing mindblowing or groundbreaking but it wears its influences on its sleeve and feels like a tongue-in-cheek spy movie/James Bond homage whilst retaining enough style and gravity on its own to not turn into a full blown Austin Powers.

So what sticks out most from the trailers is Colin Firth taking on a working-class "chavvy" protege into his secret spy organisation. This had the potential to be incredibly cringeworthy and stereotypical and while i imagine many will debate its success in different class portrayal, i personally think it manages sufficiently. The two lead characters are well-written and performed with plenty of jibes slung at both the lower and upper class whilst also dipping into some much darker themes often associated with those of these social status. Then again, i'm a middle class, minimum wage, arts graduate so perhaps i don't know enough about either of these groups.

"Shaken or stirred blud?" "Well that's a grenade so i'd advise neither."

 Returning to the film's influences, there is certainly a self-awareness to the proceedings that boosts the comedy and credibility of events and dialogue. It never directly breaks the fourth wall but the characters are aware of their own stereotypes and emerging cliches which helps the audience relax and connect with them without making them seem smug (at least the ones not intended to be smug). This may feed into one of the main issues of the Kingsman however and that is the juggling of tones.

When the film juxtaposes its darker moments with comedy too suddenly it can be a little jarring and uncomfortable. The action scenes in their own right are exciting and intense with a flowing "long-take" style of cinematography that literally follows the action, conveys momentum and suits the film's comic book roots perfectly. It almost falls into the Batman Begins problem of being too close to the action to understand the logistics but just dodges this pitfall depending on your skill at those following shuffling cup games...

"You can stand in front of my umbr, ella, ella, ella, aim, aim, aim"

 The handling of the hyper-violence is quirky, cinematic and clearly meant to entertain rather than shock, something director Matthew Vaughn has become proficient at by this point. Its the other mature drama elements however, that do not sit as well. The most prominent of these personally was a scene near the end of the film where we switch between our protagonist exchanging quips and goofy expressions with a robotic blade-legged villain in a supervillain's underground bunker and a woman stabbing wildly through a door with a knife trying to reach and murder her defenceless child crying in its pram...

Occassionally mishandled tonal shifts aside there is little else to fault the film on. The plot is mostly cliched but admittedly very polished and alleviated by the aforementioned self-awareness. There are parallels to draw between Kingsman and Kickass as the film puts its own twist on tried and tested spy and action movie scenarios. There's some memorable and unique moments, some genuine laughs, engaging brutal action and thanks to a top-class cast, great acting all around with enough heart to remain invested in the core drama tying all the goof together. Nothing to set the world on fire but thoroughly enjoyable in all the right places.

<Rejected captions for the first image>
1. "These ballpoints serve as limitless untraceable credit cards."
"Sounds a bit moneypenny"
2. "If i become a spy do i still get disabled benefits? I've got a bad back y'see?"
"Well...does your doctor know?"
3. "Do you expect me to talk?"
"No, my boy i expect you to try."
4. "What's the most expensive thing here?"
"The watches. They have their own bodyguards."
"Alright but who watches the watchmen?"