zydonk Reviews

Moonfall (2022)

Many people know what they like

[10/10 · 2 April 2022]

Would never watch Batman, Star Wars or the like. Yet having read many of the reviews here I was drawn to watch it. Yes, full of absurd nonsense: hollow moon, billion year old human civilization, whacked-out spacecraft, whacked-out crew, one over-weight, mother-loving hero, usually family problems, buckets and buckets of earth destruction and space-cgi, and a HAPPY ENDING (actually, the ending is quite sublime).

Guess what? It works. Does exactly what the millions who will love this film want to watch. They'll feel that warm comforting contentment on their way home, at peace for now with the absurd world they actually inhabit.

Easy to be snide here - those who watch what they regard as rubbish so they'll have the idle satisfaction of calling it rubbish - but consider what it's like to be able to command billions of dollars and the best efforts of many many talented people just to give you an evening's entertainment for a few dollars or their equivalent. Mighty power there, yes?

Can I suggest a plot for the next big one? Say some nonentity from the back-end of nowhere gets it into his head to use alchemy to turn lead into gold. Wouldn't that be two hours of fun?

Stars are for everything and everybody: excellent teamwork.

Succession (2018–2023)

Real characters or just plot?

[5/10 · 19 February 2022]

Production is impressive, no expense spared. Actors stay in character, though that must have been difficult at times. Not because of subtlety of characterisation or dialogue, but because of the excessive detail. How many times do you find that key confrontations are little more than plot devices, so that you cannot read the drama in terms of the characters but must wait for the plot to run itself out?

This is the basic problem with the series. Is it a standard soap plot, with standard characters, or is it about characters with all the idiosyncrasies that can be expected in such a drama? Yes, the characters have fairly clear characteristics, witty, druggy, sexual, etc, but there is no development of these traits.

Granted, the kind of characterisation you might expect in a good movie is not possible in what is in effect an open-ended series. Likewise with the drama: each season ending must have a gotcha that will bring the viewers back in several months' time.

Why raise these issues? They seem to be little more than nitpicking. Well, put it this way. Succession is so good as a TV-style series that it betrays the limitations of such a medium of expression. Simple: the plot rules. It has to, there is no other way to carry a soap opera, which is what Succession ultimately is.

A very good soap-opera, if you like soap. I don't. Stars are for the obvious hard work involved.

High Fidelity (2020)

cantus populi tristes

[8/10 · 11 September 2021]

Might tell you what planet I'm on, but I watched the 2020 series before taking the trouble to watch the 2000 film. The fact that I abandoned the latter half way through speaks for itself. So on to the series.

In the film, nobody listens to the music - it's strictly for the marks. In the series we have the dreary stuff shoved into our ears almost without respite. My solution: kill the sound, turn on subs, play Sleeping Bag tracks - real NY music of the period.

Otherwise, a show of some genius(!). 1. steal Marie de Salle and make her the focus - even silenced that works in spades. 2. Invent Clyde. 3. Have Clyde accompany Cherice to check out the record collection on sale. This is episode 5: in my limited experience, by far one of the best 45 minutes I have watched in many years. The Upper West Side folk are mocked, but the bitter truth here is that they are self-realised people (whatever you might think of them), and serve to show (deliberately?) what a bunch of losers the rest of the cast is.

Otherwise, the local milieu is brilliantly created - perhaps sanitised - but serves well to carry the series over the otherwise tiresome listings and morose agonising. Except for episode 6, which seems to be part of another series that got caught up here. Skip it, if you haven't watched yet - it throws the last episodes off balance.

Stars deducted because of the dreary pop music: would have been (much) more except that the good parts are so good.

Pennyworth (2019–2022)

Brave New World?

[7/10 · 15 April 2021]

The Germans gave us the Ring Cycle, then the Brits gave us Lord of the Rings. Next the Germans gave us Babylon Berlin, and now we get Pennyworth, wrapped up in the usual Chitty Chitty Bang Bang world.

The interesting feature here is that the CCBB dross has been brought forward to the 1960's. Is this the new Brexit vision of Britain?

Stars for the acting, script, plotting. Yes, it is entertaining - of course it is.

Tenet (2020)

Just another caper?

[7/10 · 6 December 2020]

The thing about capers is not the detail, it's men watching other men doing some interesting work. There will be busy-man philosophy and even some romance, enough to plug the upper and lower gaps - as it were - while the work is done, just as in real life.

We usually get updates on the life and interests of the very rich while we have our plebian representatives get the caper-job done. But why bother with more detail, when no-one is interested? Especially complicated detail.

In our modern machine-age it is not unusual to find talented technicians who want to be more than just technicians, probably because that is the nature of the machine: they are designed to serve some greater end, a combustion engine with wheels for instance.

Nolan is such a technician: a superbly articulate film director who wants to say more than simple moving images can say. But what does Nolan want to say? It's about life, that's for sure. Look at how he pulls life apart and then tries to put it back together again. Here in TENET he uses time, where elsewhere he uses robotics, for instance. And what does he discover here? Yes, the obvious and banal answer he has always discovered about human life: no one wants to die. And his solution? Generation, of course: what other solution do we have?

I watch these films just to pass idle moments, but even so I would suggest for the future that Nolan gives up this fruitless search. What he should do instead is examine a subject better suited to his skill, that has been examined fruitfully by many like him: he should study love, not life. One thing he will learn: he will no longer need capers, busy-man philosophy or teenage romance - love goes by itself, answers for itself most fulsomely.

The points are for the said skill, that and the skill of those who helped him here.

The Comey Rule (2020)

President Ego

[7/10 · 8 October 2020]

I am not a citizen of the US and my understanding of that nation is abstract and relative. Its most characteristic feature is that it has no history, seen at least from my own perspective: some of my ancestors already many thousand years on this island, others here for only a thousand years. From this perspective, I would say that what most saves people from themselves is customary inertia, doing today what we did yesterday, while all the time wanting to do something else. And what maintains social coherence is the fact that most people do what their forebearers did, and that includes the ruling class - however you characterise this group, aristocratic, bourgeois, bureaucratic.

There is a degree of customary inertia in the US, but it has been imported from elsewhere - Europe and Asia - and so abstract in relation to the social whole. Because of this, its ruling class must operate through abstract values, centred on the idea of the integrity of the legal system, and organised intrinsically as a bureaucracy. Such a system is very fragile: at its core it is dependent upon language, not habit. It is an untrustworthy foundation, open to lies and misrepresentation.

The Comey Rule shows very clearly this fragility. The bureaucratic structure of US government is very apparent, there are rules for everything, and seniority within this system is based on knowledge of these rules. And what happens when someone is in a position to bend/ignore these rules?

Donald Trump is a businessman, and business can be seen as a form of legalised theft: profit means that you never get what you pay for. Donald Trump might be President, but he is still a businessman: so profit is still his motive-power. The novelty of this situation for Donald Trump is that for the first time in his life he is dealing for something other than more money. If he was a philosopher he would tell us - in his best-selling memoir of his presidency - that what he most learned from the exercise of pure power is that the Ego is absolute, with no limit to its appetite for enlargement.

Of course, there is a second lesson here, but whether Donald Trump could learn it, or if he did, could he admit to it, is not clear. It is this: Donald Trump's Ego is not merely Donald Trump. If Donald Trump comes to seem to be an empty windbag, then that will be a sign that his Ego has broken free.

Another four years of Donald Trump could well be a very interesting spectacle.

Points for the integrity of the acting and production, and most of all for the insight of the writers. Less points because portrayal of Donald Trump verged on the hammy.

The Social Dilemma (2020)

Open a window?

[6/10 · 12 September 2020]

Expected the usual YouTube documentary, surprised by the admission that the narrator didn't know what actually made him so uneasy about the social media phenomenon. The moment of silence may have been staged, but it was - for me, at least - remarkably effective. Yes, why do the social media make us so uneasy?

Kept me awake for hours. The moment of silence was effective, as said, but more intriguing is the fact that no answer to this question was offered. In other words, if you want an answer, hey, go and find it for yourself.

Fine. Start with the other moment of emphasis, when the narrator offers a contrast between a tool, which we are free to use, and social media, which is a tool that uses us.

Tool. Are we merely free to use a tool? Consider a basic tool, say a hammer. To use a hammer would require some nails, some wood, a design or plan to follow, and a placement for the result of our use of the tool. In other words, to use even the simplest tool would require a significant degree of social organisation, a ste-up that we would be obliged to conform to in order to be free to use our tool.

Now take a more central tool, say a steam engine. An extraordinarily useful tool in its time, that transform whole societies in a generation or so. For instance, consider railways: the level of speculation and investment, labour expended, whole nations transformed. And behind all this was the rise of the coal barons and the huge industrial complexes that made the track and the trains. Then we had the combustion engine, motor cars, trucks, huge ships, and the rise of the oil monopolies - which still exert enormous soicla, financial and political influence.

You can see that our freedom to use tools can be quite fundamentally determined by forces utterly beyond our control.

Now consider a tool closer in character to social media: television. We have licensed televison services in this part of the world, where possessors of television pay an annual sum towards the operation of a television service that was understood to serve the interests of its viewers. Elsewhere there is commercial television, which is provided free to its viewers while funded by an income from advertisement. A very successful arrangement: free to view if you didn't mind the occasional interuption to the entertainment. But who noticed that the provided entertainment never outshone the sparkle of the ads? Whoever noticed that they came to buy branded products rather than basic materials like washing powder or coffee? See? If you are not buying your entertainment, you are the product.

So, nothing new in social media on this score: ads on the tele, ads on the phone, what's new here?

The reason it is so hard to isolate what is new and unnerving about social media is because it is so obvious. Here's the core. In the documentary, a youth undertakes not to use his phone for a week. We see him lying on his bed staring at the ceiling, then staring at a window. OK, he's bored. It's as though the ceiling and the window are screens that are not providing him with information. See? The youth, for instance, does not know that you can look through a window, and that you can then decide what is to be learned in that way.

Education: trains you to accept second- third-hand information as sufficient knowledge, that fills you up with this information, textbook after textbook, and trains you to use this information, projects and exams. No matter at what level, education is information, and nothing else. See now that social media is merely an extension of this system, just more recycled information. And you can see why the narrator was so uneasy: he sensed he was already part of the social media universe, trained up long before he knew where it would take him. And his unease: I suspect it arises because he senses the strangeness, the otherness of the world outside that closed info sphere.

See now that the youth could not think for himself. Why? Consider the last time human beings thought for themselves, back in sixteenth century Europe, and the hundred years of religious wars that followed, that devastated large parts of the continent.

And the burden of the documentary - the reason I give it 6 stars - is the uncomfortable fact that each of us must decide for ourselves just what social media is and what our relationship to it should be. Maybe that will be the beginning of our control of that media...

Ruby Sparks (2012)

A girlfriend's world?

[8/10 · 19 July 2020]

The least interesting thing about this film is the ordinariness of it. Any screenwriter/playwright can create a living character. So nothing new there. And in most cases we can assume that these characters are projections of the desires and fears of their authors.

The most interesting thing about this film is the fact that the screenwriter is a woman, one who creates a woman who serves as the creation of a man. So, Ruby is not the creation of a man, but the creation of a woman. So what does this tell us about women? Well, observe the other three female characters in the film, the hero's mother, his ex, and his sister-in-law. What have they in common? They are all passive. His mother wants to be a hippy girlfriend, his ex wants to be a resentful girlfriend (love to know what her book is about), and his sister-in-law might want to go back to being someone's girlfriend. And Ruby, of course, is the hero's girlfriend, period.

I admit I really enjoyed this film. Even if a pixie, Ruby is a good experience, sheer delight (thanks Zoe Kazan). I suspect this reflects a truth, that perhaps all we want to be are boyfriends and girlfriends.

Actually, that is probably all that we are. Even if obliged to be more, like adult and responsible.

Killing Eve (2018–2022)

Is this a self-judgement of sorts?

[7/10 · 13 July 2020]

Here's a curious - and telling - fact about Killing Eve. Some years ago I watched season one, an episode a week for 8 weeks. This was the time of British fem series that had everyone talking (watched some of the others, too, but no comment here). Then a few weeks ago, I came across season three and watched it, one show a week for eight weeks. Only yesterday did I realise that I had never watched season two!

Think of it: could go from season one to season three and not notice this fact. Is there any other show where this would be possible? Sure, it might say as much about my indifference as about the sheer lack of any content in the show, but nonetheless it is a telling fact.

So, what is Killing Eve about? Fem love, of course. Is it about lesbians? Or is it about that kind of obsessive identification with another that can lead to murder: a mainstay of a particular kind of male romance? Or is it a clever trick, a female form of what used to be called prick-teasing, designed to keep a certain kind of woman glued to a screen for ever?

I suspect the latter, and if it is then the implications are quite intriguing. For instance, are women really that hollow? Again, could women really survive without men?

Anyway, most of the points are for the clothes, the rest for the woman who flaunts them for us: the only reason for watching seasons four etc.

The Young Pope (2016)

Eurotrash

[4/10 · 9 May 2020]

At what stage did the producers of this series (Young & New Popes) realise that nobody subscribing to video streaming gave a damn about Popes and their flashy res? Certainly by the fourth episode of the first season, which drops us squarely into the world of Eurotrash, full of tit and tat. Always thought that Eurotrash was TV as it really should be: just a way of switching out for the duration.

The few stars are for the quality of the tit in the first season. Would give zilch to the second season for reducing the wonderful Ludivine Sagnier & Cecile de France to scrubber-status, which only served to underline the wretchedness of the series.

Strange Days (1995)

Unusual rom-com

[5/10 · 17 February 2020]

Wasn't sure at first how to take this film. I mean, is it a "serious" rom-com or some kind of satire? The initial holdup sequence seemed off-key, at least until the "oops!" moment at the end. But it was only when the Tick character went over the top that I got it. Could see then how the whole film would run as a kind of counterpoint to the "romantic" lead, with his naive sincerity offset by the baddies from central casting. The apparent love interest - superbly played by Juliette Lewis, revealing herself here as a fine comic actor - ably supported by Michael Wincott as the presiding evil genius, manage to hold the centre of the drama for almost the full two hours. This facilitates a very complete exploration of the lead, though having him described as "romantic" within the story almost killed the focus of my attention. After all, the point of the rom-com genre is irony: it is the unsaid, in effect the unadmissable in our benighted materialist world, that provides the drive that keeps us enthralled.

The appearance of Angela Bassett as his loyal friend certainly had the effect creating a second focus, that effectively - in its constraint - counterbalances the growing nihilism (that could have drained the story of value) by highlighting the fact of the lead's capacity to love long before Ralph Fiennes himself realises that he is capable of true love, rather than mere pity or compassion.

Of course, the last scene is fully what one expects, but it had also the strange effect of rendering much of the film's grungy "superstructure" nugatory. Only at the end do we see that the film is freighted with a lot of unnecessary effects. I can only assume that contemporary fashion or the producers required it in order to help sell the film. Pity, the story would have been more effective told set in a more traditional environment, say among aristocrats - who more plausibly have the time and means to enjoy true love - or even in the Middle Ages.

5 points only because of the net effect of the superficialities.

The Golden Compass (2007)

Running on empty.

[6/10 · 7 January 2020]

Came to The Golden Compass after ten minutes of the BBC/HBO His Dark Materials series. Read a lot of background as well. But haven't read the trilogy.

As it is, The Golden Compass is quite an entertaining film, full of character and incident, yet empty, ultimately a lot of fuss about nothing. Restoring the author's ideology would add nothing meaningful to the film. This ideology is obviously a transposition of 17th century Puritan paranoia, as indicated by the title of the trilogy. Ironies abound in this ideology: Oxford is a bastion of free thought here, in 17th century England is was a royalist bastion, supporting in effect royal absolutism and implicitly Roman hegemony. It's atheism can tolerate souls capable of receiving a kind of grace, a psychism projected rather accurately as the demons that accompany humans.

Compared with the TV series, The Golden Compass handles the demon aspect very well indeed, in fact constituting one of the satisfying aspects of the film. The dialogue, also, is far superior. The BBC tends to dramatise as much as possible - presumably because viewers watch with remote in hand - so that dialogues tend to a local dramatic closure, which has the effect of breaking the narrative flow. Characterisation is richer and more satisfying. Perhaps cinema permits a larger range of expression, but again the BBC tends to seek to limit its audience responses, perhaps reflecting a domestic environment where anxieties and a counterbalance of vague hope predominate.

Whatever ultimately determined the final version of The Golden Compass, it is surprising that the Roman church took it so seriously. This suggests that the church authorities involved are as vacuous theologically as Pullman is secularly. That the trilogy is treated as serious literature indicates a more pervasive vacuity in contemporary western culture. I've deducted points above to reflect this emptiness.

His Dark Materials (2019–2022)

Morse again?

[5/10 · 4 January 2020]

Not sure if this constitutes a valid review of the series - I watched only a few minutes of the first episode. Actually, I spent more time reading many of the reviews here.

May I start by asking why anyone would want to see a book turned into a film/series? In my experience, books and films are two different things, so that for a successful translation, the book-mode (as it were) must be converted to film-mode. Examples are The Bourne Identity and a fair number of adaptations of Phil Dick's stories. But if a book merely needs illustrating, then surely it has failed as a book?

Two apects of the series stood out for me: 1. Oxford's dreaming spires and I saw Inspector Morse, and I realised that we were back in this peculiar English never-never land where harmless fantasies serve only to sustain an already out-moded culture.

2. Children running through college, their animal-demons (real?) prominent, loads of workers and academics about and not a single animal-demon among them. It was then I realised that this adaptation would not work. If they were not going to give all characters animal-demons, then they should have found another way of representing that aspect of the story, perhaps tattoos (very popular) or even dinky badges.

Pity, really. The title has always intrigued me and I looked forward to having that - somewhat cursory - curiosity satisfied.

The points are for the quality of the production, which I'm sure will be maintained to beeb standards.

Star Knight (1985)

What is irony, anyway?

[7/10 · 29 December 2019]

For what it is worth, if I made a film it would be like Star Knight. It is played with a straight face, when the cast should have been laughing at themselves for being straight-faced. The director must have been very patient, trying to keep everyone from laughing at the wonderful idiocy of it all. The Count plays it straight, the would-be knight is earnest, only the monk nearly spoils it - the camp must have been finally irresistible - and the princess? Is she shallow, or is she wise, or is she the sort of girl who likes being liked? Only the alchemist rings true, no doubt expressing the guiding philosophy here: it's all magic anyway.

So, what is irony? Is it like a bridge that fails to connect? Or is it like that spaceship, that can connect a man from heaven with a girl from earth?

Is irony a kind of magic? It is here.

Ad Astra (2019)

More male self-pity

[3/10 · 10 December 2019]

Summed up in the last scene: little boy quietly waiting in the creche for his Mama to come and take him home, after a long day playing with his toys.

Points are for the plausible Lunar flight sequence, before Ad Astra was taken over by just another Hollywood compensatory fantasy for those unfortunate men who cannot grow up.

The Proposition (1998)

Start in the middle

[8/10 · 14 September 2019]

Spent an evening listening to German 1980's punk/new wave/synth dance - like breaking down a wall called the Future. Then went into another room and watched this film.

Dreaded reading the reviews here afterwards to find out what kind of sentimental idiot I am. Yep, a sad case.

And yet: pick a spot in the film to start with. How about Madeleine Stowe saying something to the effect that she thought she had it all only to find that she had nothing at all? Not what she says: but how she says it. Did she find it easy to open her face like that? And what about her lying dead and men trying to save the children? How did she manage to look so dead - when she obviously wasn't dead-looking?

The thing about plots is not are they realistic/logical, but do they work. The trick is to find out what the plot is really about. The plot of The Proposition centres on Madeleine Stowe's question: How does she have such power over men?

I'm sure you know the answer now, if you have actually watched this film.

Comet (2014)

Is this legal?

[2/10 · 21 July 2019]

Assume this movie is set in other universes because Woody Allen has the patent for this kind of stuff in this universe.

Assuming also that all involved were adequately paid for their trouble, I am giving myself two points for actually watching this (almost) all the way through - in the hope that a flash of talent or the like might save it. Being different is not the same as being original: surely that is inscribed over the entrance to every movie school in all universes.

Mr. Robot (2015–2019)

Crossing the Rubicon?

[3/10 · 15 July 2019]

Would have thought that Rubicon had said it all, but obviously someone thought a long version was needed for those who still need convincing. Note a word about repetitive strain. Pity, a little realism would have helped relieve the tedium.

Points are for the unfortunates who had to search out all the nooks and crannies needed to create the dreary atmosphere. Sinatra must be spinning in his grave.

Westworld (2016–2022)

TOY LAND

[6/10 · 20 March 2019]

About a hundred years ago, the composer Maurice Ravel and the writer Colette created a lyrical fantasy called L'Enfant et les sortilèges, about a little boy who vents his frustrations with the ordinary demands of his life by abusing his toys, pets and the furnishings of his room. In reaction, all his toys, pets and even the furniture come alive and abuse him in turn, much to his very great surprise. No doubt such a cautionary tale is universal, so we cannot accuse the creators of Westworld of plagiarism. Granted that the intended audiences of these works are very different, both in culture and time, it is nonetheless remarkable how similar they are. L'Enfant doesn't sport geishas or a shogun, instead we are entertained by a singing (and, in a later development, dancing) china tea pot and cup and saucer. Again, there are no Red Indians, rather there is a shepherd and shepherdess, together with their flock of sheep, who again sing and dance for us. And there is even a Fairy Princess - beloved of the little boy - who entertains us before she flees away into the night with her Fairy Prince, much to the chagrin of the boy. And not forgetting the techie side, in place of the resourceful and stony IT folk in Westworld, we have a very agitated teacher trying vainly to instil the basics of arithmetic into the indifferent child.

But of course there are differences. Westworld lasts much longer than L'Enfant, so it is to be expected that there is much more - much much more - detail to fill up the time. We have a lot of TV sex and violence, elaborated for us in painstaking detail which exemplifies most of the developments in this area, both in terms of apparent realism and graphic simulation. And to illustrate the truism that sentimentality is the remorse of the callous, the elaborate examples of man's inhumanity to man are balanced by equally elaborate enactments of great and abiding love of man for woman. One unfortunate effect of this is to point up the fact that while the varieties of man's inhumanity are possibly infinite, there seems no variety in the expression of man's love for woman, which entails mostly heavy silence and facial expressions of futility, which leaves us with the bad taste of an unavoidable dramatic deficit: the remorse never works.

And then there are the toys. Allowing that there never will be 'human' robots/synths/androids, we must treat this aspect of Westworld as either fantasy or some kind of metaphor. To the extent that the toys want to be free, then we must assume that metaphor is intended (if fantasy, then fairy folk or pretty outer-space aliens would be preferable, yes?). At this level, at least, some kind of insight does emerge: the sad truth that whatever about the value of freedom, it is not innocent. And perhaps a deeper truth: that in being human - or digitally human, as the case here - means being condemned to be free.

Much of Westworld is contrived, perhaps as befitting the length of the series, where the plot must rule. Yet there is one area where the contrivance is impressive. All the detail of the manufacture, programming and maintenance of the robots is fake, of course, yet the detail here is extraordinary. If they ever make the folding tablet, I will buy one, regardless of price (hopefully it is already in development somewhere). And the sight of lovely Dolores stripped down - and moving with such grace - is itself a coup de théâtre, and so effective that it is repeated a number of times for our delectation. Most of the points I give Westworld are in acknowledgement of the quality of this aspect of the series.

L'Enfant et les sortilèges ends with the little boy crying for his Mama, who promptly comes and enfolds him in against her aproned bosom. I note also that the British counterpart to Westworld, Humans, will also have its saviour, in this case an all-knowing, all-seeing programme hidden away in the depths of the internet. Will Westworld also have a saviour? It will be interesting to see what is proposed as saviour, what it might tell us about the culture and time that produces it. But then again there might be no saviour. Even so, how the series ends - if not suddenly dumped by HBO - will be equally informative.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Begin with a diagnosis?

[9/10 · 4 January 2019]

I'm surprised that I really like this film. I'm not a movie buff and had just watched a series of films through the Christmas/New Year season as a break from the festivities.

For the first 30 minutes or so I debated whether I would stop watching Silver Linings Playbook. Mental illness is like poverty and sadism: portraying such situations can only replicate the reality of those afflictions. Only when Pat and Tiffany meet did I begin to grasp the actual dynamic driving this quite remarkable film. It's not about mental illness or screwed-up lives - it's about people, just people. True, Pat can run out of control, but look at his father: his generation got banned for violence, while Pat in his generation gets committed - a matter of social conventions, not medicine. Tiffany? Tiffany is real (something Jennifer Lawrence obviously grasped about her character). Her husband is killed in a stupid accident while trying to help her: no wonder she goes bouncing of everyone she meets. How else can she handle the utter stupidity of her husband's fate? The great thing in this film is watching her bounce off Pat, who in turn is so preoccupied with getting back with his wife that he hardly notices what she is doing. The upshot is that this allows her to regain some control of her reality. Then Tiffany, being the kind of woman she is, sets about pulling Pat into that reality: let's dance.

As for the ending: it's a moment of rest, of balance, no more. A sequel to Silver Linings Playbook would be very interesting to watch. No doubt we would see how Pat, given a reasonably solid foundation in his relationship with Tiffany, could develop in a perhaps unforeseen way, no doubt still obsessive. Would Tiffany act to sustain the balance between them? Or would she just fall away, now that she has achieved her long-held ambition to dance in public? Whatever else, they would never become a conventional married couple, like Pat's best friend and Tiffany's sister.

I had never seen or heard of Jennifer Lawrence before watching Silver Linings Playbook, but I am still stunned by the tangibility of the character she created. Probably a naive response on my part, but also a very pleasant one.

Ex Machina (2014)

Geek love

[8/10 · 29 September 2018]

Don't mean to insult here, but who else wants to love a machine. Bear with me: this movie has a deep insight to communicate, whether intended or not is open to question.

The story is a modern telling of Bluebeard's Castle as the correct version of Beauty and the Beast. In other words, it seems to be about impotence. Except that this is geek love, love at an impossible distance, that is eroticism. And the movie itself tells you all you need to know about eros.

The insight. Ex Machina is ostensibly about Turing's Test, the thesis that a machine might be so human as to fool a human being. Does Ava pass this test? Depends on how you perceive the test. Ex Machina actually implies a more relevant Test: could a machine seem so human as to make the human being inteacting with it come to believe that he himself is a machine?

And the insight? It might be that the solution to the AI/human interface may not involve the humanising of robots, but the robotisation of humans.

Only 8/10 because it is not clear that this insight was actually part of the plot. But whether you find eros or AI in this movie, you will have a rewarding journey.