Jason Haynes

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It grows on you like Ted, a modern day Mary Poppins. If you can overlook some of the major issues; The glaring product placements, including Man City (who had a documentary on Apple) being referenced as a club that would 'fill out the stadium' lol. At times it seems they're the only club that exists. The double standards (the female boss casually walking through a men's changing room and nothing being said). Then again, it seems anyone can go in them, there doesn't seem to be any security, or indeed workers beyond the core cast. The charicature Londoners, and fans. The fact Richmond would never have cockney wide boy fans, and that this was written by people who know even less about football than Lasso. But it's enjoyable, and the humour grows after season 2 (where it also seems to run out of stories. See Beard After Hours for example). You just have to look past the football aspects. It's really about interrelationships. And Apple products.

It's like another dystopian fantasy drama, only played out as a reality 'dating' show. We know the producers script and influence parts of it, and we know that the contestants are there for fame, and we know that any relationship is certain to end soon after the camera turns off. And we can accept this for entertainment. But, what is unacceptable is the contradictory, Victorian moralising tones bestowed upon not just the contestants, but us as viewers who have to watch this. The faux-hippy mindfulness, 'creative' intervention workshops are nothing short of soft cult approaches, whilst the punishments (which are not enforced for long anyway) act as gas lighting techniques. Who is to say that one cannot form a deep and meaningful relationship that begins with attraction and libido desires anyway? Is this not natural? What research and sources back up the claims and assumptions made here? What's worse, however is that they are expected (and punished if they don't) to give their emotional, mental, and cognitive selves to someone that really is in a competition for money. And expect punishment from the all-seeing technocratic powers above if you don't! This is love in the 21st Century.

The movie cleverly borrows elements of Western and Thriller genres to intersplice with a little comedy too. It takes on the theme of 'outback' where the protagonist find themself stuck in an uninhabitable place, trying to get out of it, only to encounter more trouble and characters along the way. What striked me most about the movie however, was the portrayal of the characters. These people are self serving, immoral, liars, and murderers. Nothing special about this premise, but when you realise that it is set in Xinjiang, you begin to feel a greater sense of cold horror creeping. Indeed, our protagonist, a successful lawyer (who himself is far from perfect, but does find redemption) even calls one 'an animal' 'we are not the same' he declares. No man's land is a land where men and women live, but are not 'civilised' like the rest of China. This is the soft propoganda being pushed here. But then, when we consider American movies like Deliverance, U Turn, Straw Dogs etc. where the 'other' is evil and bad, we realise that this movie is only borrowing these generic essences too. The first half is quite enjoyable once you suspend disbelief and ignore the predictive qualities. But the second half becomes farcical, and suspending belief becomes a task. A frustrating one. This is a movie that began with offering a fresh perspective on a tired western genre, only to fall off its horse mid way through dragging us along for the ride.

Dead pan humour, as overtly dry as the desert in the background; in such a way that only American humour can be, to the point of being in your face. As much as the Normal Rockwell-esque aesthetics are hammered into every scene. Such an approach is usual of a Wes Anderson flick, only, when it works it does so because there is some substance and depth to the characters beneath their shallow surface. Here there is none; just a big cast and a lot of attention to details. But no movie. Self indulgent. I miss the days of Rushmore and Royal. And Bill.

The trope of dinner party disaster is a common one in film, especially concerning social norms and hidden agendas. This one offers a more unintended farcical approach in which the characters are varyingly irksome and in which the ending is very obvious, despite what other reviewers have said. The premise: During a solar eclipse - in which we are told that under superstition time is contained - a group of friends and their lovers begrudgingly play a party game where they must share any incoming communication on their mobile phones (the horror!). As suspicions become facts an inevitable moral to the story is revealed among the melodrama; 'you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't'. We learn that some lies are better left unsaid, albeit leaving an inner torment unrectified for those in the know. Whilst other lies are best out in the open, albeit, leaving a wake of destruction in its path. There were other twists and turns to suprise aside from the ending, but their suprises were not all entirely necessary. If nothing else though, it offered a kind of menu of performances to be served up by some established actors. Just a shame most of the immature characters were as distateful and sloppy as the food served in the movie.