2024 Cinema trips - all the 'quels

It was a case of all the "quels" in 2024. I saw sequels, a prequel and an interquel. In fact, five of the seven films I saw in the cinema were "quels", and the other two were adaptations of books. Here's what I watched on the big screen:

Dune Part 2 - sequel (although they split the source material in two for the movies so this was a continuation sequel rather than a second story in a franchise). Full review here. 

Inside Out 2 - sequel. I really liked the first Inside Out film, which took a complex concept and explored it in a very accessible way. The sequel continued the story of Riley and her emotions, which have multiplied as Riley grows up. This is probably one of the best depictions and explanations of how anxiety is a protection mechanism that can go into overdrive and become harmful. 

Besides Anxiety, the other new emotions include, Embarrassment, Envy, Ennui and, my favourite, Nostalgia, who pops in and is promptly dismissed for being too soon. Although I think I felt nostalgia as a teenager - certainly I found myself looking back to things I had done a few years previously and having a new appreciation for them. Nowadays I agree strongly with Douglas Coupland's comment that "nostalgia is a weapon" and I know it gets weaponised against me. That's why I end up with things like an A Team van made by Playmobil...

The film has a happy ending for Riley and her friends as they navigate the emotions around changing schools, establishing new friendship groups and playing ice hockey. I like the mix of joy and anger that fuels Riley's in-game activity. There's a good explanation about how our beliefs about the world and about ourselves shape our lives - another deep topic that I felt the film-makers summarised well. 

Harold and the Purple Crayon - the film version of a popular kid's book. So, not totally original but technically not a 'quel. Full review here. 

Alien Romulus - an 'interquel' that was apparently set between Alien and Aliens, the first two films in the franchise. Not the greatest movie in the Alien franchise but I enjoyed it. Full review here. 

Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! - a "legacy sequel" released decades after the first film. Full review here. 

Transformers One - a prequel of sorts. I'm not sure where in the Transformers franchise this animated film fits, but it was expanding on the in-universe lore and would act as a prequel to just about any other Transformers movie. 

It's the origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron, and why they became bitter enemies. I thought it was very well done despite leaning hard on some over-used tropes - the people in charge don't have our best interests at heart; best friends become implacable enemies; there is a quest for a lost artifact that can save civilisation. 

However, within those well known story arcs, the script was lean, the film was fast-paced with several action sequences that all served the purposes of the plot, and there was plenty of humour in the dialogue and situations but it never got silly. It felt like a grown up kid-friendly cartoon. It also added some depth to other long-established characters, even those with limited screentime like Starscream, who in this was more than just a whining minion of Megatron. 

The Wild Robot - another film based on a book. I watched this with Cathy on her birthday in a cinema that was experiencing temperature issues. It was freezing. At one point in the story an ice storm hits - at that point it felt like we were in a 4D film experience. 

The basic plot was of a robot booting up on a remote island and looking for tasks to carry out. Being a robot it works out how to communicate with animals and gradually develops its self-awareness to become the protector of the wild creatures. This includes teaching an orphaned gosling to fly - which I found was a surprisingly moving storyline. 

The third act of the movie dragged a bit. The most intriguing part was seeing the wider world, with humans living in large hi-tech habitats, with hydroponic farms, hovering over the drowned ruins of cities (San Francisco to be precise). It's a world after the climate apocalypse and the survivors seem to be doing OK with an army of robot servants undertaking menial tasks. Somehow, that felt like the most unrealistic part of the film compared to a robot learning how to talk to a gosling and teach it to fly before its fellow geese migrated and left it behind. 

Looking ahead to 2025, I'm sure there are more 'quels to come. I have set myself a challenge to try and watch more original films next year. 

Dune Part 2 - finishing telling the tale of Muad'Dib (for now)

In 2021 I saw Dune Part 1 with Bryan. Here's what I wrote about it then:

Broadly speaking, I thought Dune was an excellent capture of the essence of the book. I realise if someone hadn't read the book then it might be hard to follow. But, you know what, the book was published over 50 years ago so people have had plenty of time to read it. For once it was nice to watch an adaptation that didn't dumb it down for the non-reading masses. My only criticism was that it had a score by Hans Zimmer, whose one trick is big, blaring atonal noises to signify vastness. It could have done with more subtlety, because everything is vast in the Duneiverse so there were lots of atonal blarts throughout the film.

Now, after several delays and changes in release date, Bryan and I have finally seen part 2 of Dune. I have a few thoughts about it. Spoilers follow below the image...

Part 2 picks up where Part 1 left off. Paul Atreides and his mother, Jessica, are fugitives in the desert, seeking asylum with the oppressed indigenous Fremen after the massacre of their people. This is quite an early point in the book so there was a lot more of the story to pack in to the second 'half' including Paul's growth into Muad'Dib, the messianic guerrilla leader foretold in Fremen prophecy. 

In among all this is galactic-level intrigue and power politics. Dune Part 2 manages this quite nicely by actually turning the Princess Irulan into an actual character with something to do. In this case, exposition. But sometimes a bit of exposition works, and this is one of those times. 

In contrast, the character of Feyd Rautha is rather diminished. In fairness, Feyd is played in this film with a level of intensity that would almost be impossible to sustain for long without it slipping into parody. Maybe the director could have made him more subtle, and his true malevolence be less immediately obvious. It's a bit heavy-handed giving him a cannibal harem. 

I read one comment about the film saying there seemed to be no suspense. When Paul sets out to ride a sandworm, we all know he is going to succeed. There wasn't any jeopardy. But I think that's the perspective of someone who hadn't read the novel. As a reader of the book, I already knew he would ride the worm and I knew why that was important in the development of the story. 

I guess that's one thing about going in knowing the story - I was more interested in how they told it. Did they show the mechanics of worm-riding? (Yes, they did.) How much exposition would that need? (Turns out, none.) Is the director's vision of what Fremen riding giant sandworms would look like match my idea of what that would look like. (Yep, it was close.)

Of course, knowing the story has its drawbacks. One major divergence from the book is the time-frame. The desert war goes on for years in the book. Paul's sister, Alia is born and is sort of a superhuman because her mother, Jessica, drank the Water of Life while pregnant. Paul has a son with Chani. The reunion with Gurney Halleck is after some years apart, not a couple of months. And so on...

I was left feeling a bit nonplussed by the ending which felt like it was setting up a third movie. That has apparently been mooted and presumably will be based on Dune Messiah. Fingers crossed it will get made. The first two have been massive box office hits, so it seems likely to get greenlit. 

I'd also repeat the point I made about the score for the first one. Hans Zimmer only seems to have one trick - very loud atonal blasts. For everything. Shai-halud breaks the surface. ZIMMERBLAST! A spice harvester explodes and crashes. ZIMMERBLAST! An atomic bomb goes off. ZIMMERBLAST! Sometimes less is more, Hans.

But overall, it was very good. It's brave to take on a novel that's often been described as unfilmable, and when previous attempts have had a mixed reception. Again, I have no complaints about the opacity of the story. It feels like it was done for people who know it already and its nice, for once, not to have something diluted for people who don't care about it. 

Reflecting on 2021 - films and TV

I saw three films in the cinema this year. They were, in order, In the Heights (which was fantastic - I blogged about it shortly after we saw it), Scoob! and Dune. I was going to write an extended review of the latter, but didn't get round to it in the recent busy weeks. 

Broadly speaking, I thought Dune was an excellent capture of the essence of the book. I realise if someone hadn't read the book then it might be hard to follow. But, you know what, the book was published over 50 years ago so people have had plenty of time to read it. For once it was nice to watch an adaptation that didn't dumb it down for the non-reading masses. My only criticism was that it had a score by Hans Zimmer, whose one trick is big, blaring atonal noises to signify vastness. It could have done with more subtlety, because everything is vast in the Duneiverse so there were lots of atonal blarts throughout the film.

Similarly, Scoob! played to the fans. I especially liked the cameo appearance by Captain Caveman. The little kids who were with us watching the film seemed to like it too. So, all in all, that was a decent film as well. 

We have also seen some new films via the streaming services as well. We watched the new Disney animations Raya and the Last Dragon, Luca, and, on Christmas Eve, Encanto. All of them felt like tick the box Disney stories. None really had anything particularly that stood out. I did laugh at Luca's creepy uncle who lived in the ocean deep and therefore was see-through. 

I think the best new release I saw on a streaming service was Free Guy. There was one scene in particular that really moved me. I blogged about it back in October. 

We also watched the two new Marvel releases, Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. They were OK. I don't feel they added much to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), and in the case of Shang-Chi, I was mainly left wondering how many other mythologies being real and hidden worlds within worlds there can be in the Marvel canon.

Turning to TV, though, and there have been four series set in the MCU. I would rank them in order of quality as Loki, WandaVision, Hawkeye, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. All the series are trying to move characters on into the story arc that is taking over from the Avengers story arc of the last 10 years. WandaVision was a tease for the first few episodes, which Cathy found annoying. In a later episode it included a memorable comment about the nature of grief, which prompted me to blog.

Loki was similarly focused and introduced the idea of parallel universes and divergences in timelines. It was quite clever and I enjoyed the other versions of Loki that cropped up. (Aligator Loki being my favourite.) Hawkeye was released in the run up to Christmas and was suitably seasonal. It introduced some new characters, including a villain who may become relevant in the rest of the MCU.

The Falcon series couldn't decide what it wanted to be. Was it a series addressing race issues, or addressing fascist responses to displaced peoples? Were the terrorists the bad guys, or the good guys? Unfortunately I found the terrorist leader to be completely unbelievable as a character and the show itself veered between the peril that the Falcon's family might lose the family fishing boat and shadowy figures manipulating events on a global scale. 

Two series on Netflix that we really liked, Kim's Convenience and Atypical, came to an end this year. Both opted for sweet endings with unresolved storylines left hanging. In Atypical almost all the characters got a happy ending that meant they would be embarking on an adventure somewhere. It was both satisfying but sad that in a way the characters were going off and doing something else and we wouldn't see what would happen to them. That is how life works though, with people moving on and living a life invisible to us. 

We also rewatched a lot of TV. We watched the entire run of Frasier, most of which was still very good, years after it first aired. We watched most of Cheers, which hasn't aged as well. We watched all 8 seasons of Castle, which got a bit wrapped up in its story arcs and then bodged the ending of the final season with a tacked on scene that didn't work. 

Towards the end of the year we started rewatching Futurama. One or two episodes have been uncomfortable to watch, showing how much things have changed in the last 20 years. However, most of the jokes have made me laugh.. for the umpteenth time. And the episode with Fry's dog, well, I knew it was coming, but dammit, I still choked up at the end! 

That's the mark of good telly - that it can still hit you in the feels even though you know it's gonna hit you in the feels. 

I may have jumped the gun on this review as the first episode of The Book of Boba Fett is about to drop on Disney Plus. But I will save that for a future review post.

October 2021 - End of month review

We are now ten months down, past Hallowe'en, the clocks have gone back, and it feels like the end of the year is nigh. October was another busy month. I had some big meetings in work discussing possible changes, which prompted some very passionate discussions. Thankfully I had plenty of football to take my mind off things, including my first ever visit to Frome with its delightfully named stadium.

Other football-watching trips included Flint in North Wales and Merthyr Tydfil. In Flint I think I saw my long-passed paternal grandfather in a photo on the clubhouse wall. I attended seven games in the month - a new record for October. 

There were also some other milestones, including my 50th Barry game (a 3-0 defeat at home to Newtown), my 10th Grange Albion game (a 4-0 defeat at home to Aberdare Town) and my first ever Futbology badge for the first game at a new ground, which was also my 75th football ground that I've visited. (And blogged in detail here.)

In terms of another milestone, I posted my 394th blog post on my blog called Point 394. That felt very meta. I have been working my way through a large consignment of baseball cards and managed to post every day in October. 

Life is starting to get back to normal... ish. I went on my first trip to the tip in a year and a half. This sign amused me so much I took a photo. "Swmpas" is my new favourite Welsh word.

Another bit of normality was a cinema trip. I saw the new Dune movie with my friend Bryan. I am still processing my thoughts on it and will blog about it when I have time. 

I engaged in a bit of retail therapy as well. Playmobil have released their version of the A Team with their iconic van and I went and bought one. It's fab!

I also succumbed to temptation and bought yet another kit that I don't really have time to build - this time of a Treeman player to bulk out one of my Blood Bowl teams.

(Yes I bought him mainly because of the squirrel on his shoulder!) 

Although, really, technically, I should now buy the correct team who would have a Treeman player in their team. But I have several teams who have never actually played a game yet...

One other thing we have started doing is sorting through my late dad's stamp collection with a view to selling it on behalf of my mum. It was very disorganised and needed quite a bit of work just getting a rough idea of what we have in the various boxes. We have managed to reduce the bulk of it down quite a bit - originally we had two full car loads of philatelic material. 

I find it interesting seeing how much stamps have changed over the years. They are little time capsules that reveal a lot more about their cultural milieu than people might expect. For example, I found these stamps that were issued in 1979. This wording would not appear on a stamp today.

I'm going to keep some of the stamps. But not this one!