Giddy Man

If I could somehow forget how familiar I am with the novel, and convince myself that I hadn’t enjoyed the Minghella film at least a dozen times over the past 25 years, I might think this was an ok, over stylised take, with a cast who were more morose than magnificent. As I can’t, I’m left with the impression that this is a rather vapid interpretation of an otherwise excellent narrative, that favours blandness and emptiness over complexity and subtlety. One of the issues is Dickie, who is supposed to be charisma personified. In this version he isn’t. In fact, he’s boring, and walks around the place exemplifying that fact. He isn’t magnetic, or full of verve, or appearing to love life or be larger than it. All the things that in the book and the film impress upon young Ripley. I say young, but in this he’s not. Despite the black and white and no-doubt cut-throat razor shave he had to have everyday, all efforts to make him look younger failed, in my opinion. He still looks like he’s approaching 50, when he should be roughly half that. Is it a major issue? I guess not. The narrative can work with older people, but it just isn’t as convincing. All the actions and decisions made by these characters reflect their young age as originally written, all their impetuosity and nonchalance. As older people, they kind of just seem silly. Marge is rude and rather aloof, just staring at people as if she can’t quite work out what a human being is. I found her depiction quite unpleasant, at one moment someone calls her Madam, being polite, but for some reason that annoys her so she demands he not call her that! I wonder what he she have called her? Andrew Scott is a good actor, I have no doubt he played this the way he was directed to play it. It’s just unfortunate it came off as colourless as its presentation. And the less said about Freddie’s characterisation the better. I’m not sure the black and white works, personally. Maybe it would have been ok if employed as a temporary device, say when Tom was being Dickie, or vice-versa, or something like, but its blanket use just made me miss the vibrancy of the beautiful places it depicted. It isn’t really a detective noir, and the time period can’t excuse its use, so it’s an odd choice, and the conceit just feels a tad pastiche. Minghella’s Ripley was a romanticised version of Highsmiths novel, who was far colder and more calculating. This Ripley isn’t either, really, but I guess he leans more toward the cold and calculating, but that could just be the moribund feel of the whole thing. Comparable scenes lack tension, making it feel about as exciting as watching paint dry, although at least paint can be colourful. The conversations are boring, overly long and mostly in Italian, so if you don’t speak that language there’s a lot of reading. Plus a lot of long stares and long stairs, too many shots of people gazing moronically at things or one another and too many shots of them walking up stairs! It skirts dangerously close to pretension. And finally, despite its seven and half hour run time, it failed wholly to convey or to include what Minghella’s film did in two and a quarter. So if you want to save yourself a lot of time, I’d watch the film.

Alan Wake 2, the disinheritance of another original protagonist, should serve as a lesson in how not to do a sequel, or indeed any game at all, as it flouts what previously worked and ignores the importance of nostalgia. When you have to hire a third party company to woke-check your intellectual property, it’s never a good advertisement for your product. Although, to be honest, I’m not sure this game’s inherent wokeness is its biggest failing. It commits the cardinal sin of any media: it’s boring! I did not expect to be staring at a wall - sorry a case board - trying to determine where the picture of a nursery rhyme doll is supposed to go, or sit staring at my TV listening to endless monologuing - or profiling - about rather dull and uninteresting characters. Is it groundbreaking? Does it dare to challenge? Well it does open with you controlling an overweight naked man, so I guess that’s daring. I also guess the rules on male exploitation work differently to the female ones… Countless times whilst playing it I just could not believe it was made by the studio who did the original, or its follow up Quantum Break. Or the amazing Control, which I have played an almost obsessive amount of times. It progresses as slowly as the favoured and acceptable lead character runs, which is set to the pace of an octogenarian’s jog, and whose insights - which she holds as revelatory - can be seen, surmised and summoned way before the light bulb turns on for her. I’m not sure for whom this game was made. It certainly ticks the boxes that now need to be ticked for anything to be taken seriously - or to win an award, but I think Remedy just made it for themselves. It’s incredibly pompous, fustian, and in love with its own “cleverness”. Remedy has written digital code for pretension. The two stars I give it are for Old Gods of Asgard, or Poets of the Fall. Their music is as brilliant as ever, and lends the game its only sense of nostalgia.

Visually, it’s stunning, ignoring the very visible load-in and a few glitches in the terrain, it’s a really impressive looking addition to the game. Admittedly that’s a shallow take for a review, but the ascetic is the only thing that kept me playing to the end. The quests are ok, but sometimes fail to make any sense. For example, just after reacquiring your flying mount there’s a mission where you have to work out a way to climb a cliff… I just got on my flying mount and flew up there, but no amount of shouting at the TV convinced my companion to join me, so we had to clamber and climb our way up there. Seemed a bit silly. The battles are alright, but there’s little that’s new to be found here. The spectre gauntlet weapon is kind of fun, but grows old pretty quickly. However, I found it really useful for the final battle. The narrative is incredibly “sinner man, saint woman”, which is a shame because it’s one-sided narrative gets in the way of its own identity, leaving it as just another outlet to exemplify the zeitgeist. The characters are, again, ok, but I do champion the inclusion of a same-sex relationship, although again it seems a little one sided. There seems to be such trepidation in portraying male couples as opposed to female couples. Lan and Otosu, two male “friends”, are obviously more, but the game seems terrified to openly declare it, whereas there’s no such hesitancy around Aloy and Seyka. Aloy also comes across as a tad annoying (I really hope she finds a sense of humour for the next game), and inconsistent with her “judgements”. For example, she calls out a bloke on not telling her the entire truth about a situation in which he sought her help, telling him his heart was in the right place but that it was manipulative. Then, I watched a scene between Aloy and her soon-to-be-girlfriend Seyka, where she discovers she’s lied to her in pretty much the same way as the bloke did, but apparently Aloy understands perfectly why she did so. Why paint such an obvious double standard? What is this supposed to tell us about Aloy, this saviour of All-Kind? It’s impactful because, sadly, the context cannot redeem her actions and it just comes off as disingenuous. Before the end, which does include a pretty impressive boss fight, I found myself wanting to leave in the ship with the bad guy, but alas I was stuck with Aloy, oohing and ahhing at the scenery. Thank goodness it looked nice.

Saw this on Disney+ and thought it was a treat! It has all the the tricks you’d expect from a Pixar film, superb animation, witty jokes and a crazy plot, with a few emotional moments thrown in for good measure. We couldn’t understand in our family what all the bother about the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it same sex kiss was about, and to be fair we were worried more about of how the couple got pregnant, as that fact raises a tirade of questions more awkward than a peck on the lips between women. What did irk me slightly was the fact that Lightyear - the protagonist - wasn’t given a single heroic moment in the spotlight by himself. There’s always his side-kick stealing some of the limelight, or outright owning it herself. And when he is doing something heroic, he realises he just can’t do it alone, and needs her help. Now all that’s well and good, but this is the film Andy (from Toy Story) saw back in the terrible racist 90’s, when he fell in love with the character of Buzz Lightyear, but after seeing Buzz share the spotlight for almost two hours, I can’t help thinking Andy would have liked less to be Buzz and more to be a strong black female character. I know it’s no longer fashionable for young boys to have a role-model, but it does feel that all the attempts to pander to the narcissists who are unwilling to enjoy a film unless it represents everyone above men, Lightyear doesn’t quite feel like the film it could - or perhaps should - have been. Still, I wowed at the animation, laughed at the jokes, ahh’d at the sad bits, and almost but not quite cheered at the heroic bits. Plus, felt Chris Evans did a stellar job voicing Buzz. So I feel confident in recommending it as an entertaining movie, more so if you ignore its subtle but sadly persistent “wokeness.’