Frankie S

Scotland going for a record of most consecutive coin tosses lost: after losing the vital toss against the Netherlands in the deciding ODI qualifier in Zimbabwe, we’ve lost three tosses in a row in this competition. Scotland to bat first.

Not entirely sure what the weather protocols are tbh. It would seem slightly unfair if we get to play later in the afternoon by virtue of the fact that there’s no second match at our grounds on Tues and Thurs, if, say, Germany v Ireland is washed out in the early session at Goldenacre on Thurs, with Italy v Austria playable later in the afternoon. Our game v Denmark at the Grange is on Thursday btw, and Thursday’s forecast is looking particularly grim atm (60-70% chance of rain all day until 5.00pm according to BBC Weather app).

Just checked: Stewart has an Italian mother. Berg applied for an Italian passport to get himself into the UK apparently. Madsen has an Italian grandmother it seems, though he declared an interest in playing for England for years. Comfortable 25 run win for Italy in the end. They made it look like significantly easier against Jersey than we did. I’d back Scotland to win tomorrow, but Italy are dangerous (I can see them wiping the floor with everyone else, weather permitting) and with the weather forecast not looking great for our games against minnows Denmark and Austria, it’s a vital match. Don’t want to end up in the position of having to beat Ireland on Friday to qualify. Even if Ireland beat Jersey tomorrow (by no means a certainty) and have already qualified, they won’t take it easy against us that’s for sure.

I streamed the Elgin game yesterday, and have to confess, I wasn’t as impressed by the performance as some seem to have been. Elgin are a poor side, and although Queens passed the ball around nicely at times, and looked reasonably comfortable at the back, we completely lacked a cutting edge up front. Our goal was very well taken, but we should have added to it. Our team is absolutely diminutive, so playing out from the back is certainly the way to go, but on occasion the lack of players showing for a pass from midfield meant we sometimes went long anyway, after a couple of passes along the backline, due to lack of options. We had a lot of corners, but aimlessly floating crosses into the box, for the most part, produced very little due to our lack of aerial presence, and I was wondering why we weren’t going short more often just as Paul McKay arrived at the back post unmarked to power in a header for the second, so shows what I know. Would have been a great goal from Lee Connelly, shame his effort came back off the crossbar. I thought Harry Cochrane looked really good once again in a more advanced midfield role, just a shame he picked up a needless booking, for what looked like dissent. Mimnaugh looked decent. The challenge for the sending off was completely unnecessary as we had a covering defender, but it wouldn’t be Queens without us making life needlessly difficult for ourselves. Elgin should have equalised soon after, somehow contriving to miss a sitter from within the six yard box, but I thought, apart from that, we looked fairly comfortable with 10. I just didn’t think we played particularly well with 11. As Bartley has stated, 4 or 5 more needed, with a decent striker (and some height in the team) a clear priority.

Derbyshire’s South African batsman Wayne Madsen just made his debut for Italy, scoring 52 from 29 with a flurry of fours and sixes, before being caught on the boundary. Madsen will certainly be a danger tomorrow. Italy have a few big hitters and a few ringers (including Madsen, Northampton’s South African Gareth Berg, and Kent’s Aussie Grant Stewart) in their ranks, so Scotland can expect a very tough game tomorrow.. Italy finish on 183-8, with Marcus Campopiano hitting three consecutive sixes from the last over. On balance, I’m hoping Jersey can chase this down, as Italy look a real threat in this tournament, despite their narrow loss to Ireland in their opening match.

Italy looking good here - 54-0 after 6 against Jersey at Goldenacre. Justin Mosca, having just plundered 20 from the sixth over, is 45 from 29. Scotland could have a tough match on our hands tomorrow. Edit: Benjamin Ward has just picked up two wickets in his first over, including Mosca, so Jersey coming back into this. Italy 73-2 after 9.

Yes, of course, forgot Berrington was captain. I like Berrington, but I’d have Watt as captain myself. He’s been absolutely outstanding with bat and ball recently and he exudes confidence. Like you, I just don’t get it with Cross opening the batting in ODIs, or coming in at 3 in T20. I agree he’s very good behind the stumps. We definitely miss Coetzer and MacLeod. Not entirely convinced McBride is the answer (as an ODI opener) either. We had to rely on the lower middle order digging us out of a hole a few times in the recent qualifiers in Zimbabwe. Hairs and Munsey looked like a great pairing as openers against Germany in this format, but it’s the first time Hairs has made a score for Scotland, and he’s 32 now. Munsey hasn’t quite looked himself since he came back from injury or illness (whichever it was) in the ODI WC qualifiers, but he’s got bags of natural talent, and can win a T20 match on his own. He’s had good starts in the first two matches, but I’m hoping he racks up a big score in at least one of the remaining games.

I was at Goldenacre yesterday for the Germany game, and The Grange this afternoon for the Jersey match. Contrasting performances, to say the least. We were imperious with the bat against Germany on Thursday, with Oli Hairs regularly dispatching the German bowling over the boundary ropes and down towards Warriston. I’m told 8 balls were lost on Thursday, and they were rapidly running out of replacements. I thought it was going to be the same again today, when we were 23-0 after two, with Munsey stroking a succession of sweetly-timed fours. However, Hairs got out cheaply, and we proceeded to lose a succession of wickets, with Cross and (more surprisingly) McMullen continuing to struggle to make an impact in the tournament so far. When Leask went, shortly after Berrington, leaving us at 88/6, Jersey looked favourites. Watt and Greaves did a decent salvage job, to get us up to 149, and give the bowlers something to work with, but it felt like a sub par score, and 150 seemed very gettable. We started well, taking three quick wickets, but I was surprised Watt took himself off after opening the bowling with a wicket maiden. Brad Currie and Sharif bowled quite well, but McMullen and particularly Main (his last over was a shocker) were expensive, but we persevered with the medium pacers when taking pace off the ball seemed like a better option. I was surprised how long Watt waited before bringing himself back into the attack, and when he eventually came back, he had an immediate impact, not just taking wickets, but in exerting control and pushing the run rate up. Tbh, while Scotland were control for most of Jersey’s innings (a disconcerting spell in the middle overs apart), the final margin was closer than it should have been (Main going for 20 in the last over took the gloss off a bit), but I thought Scotland were a bit slack in all departments today. The batting didn’t really fire, the bowling wasn’t great, and the fielding was uncharacteristically sloppy at times. We’ll have to play much better against Italy and Ireland if we’re going to qualify. Jersey were quite impressive. They’re a very young side, and in a few years time they could be a genuine threat to some of the more established associates. Their fielding was excellent, all their catches stuck (unlike Scotland), and a few of their bowlers and batsmen showed real promise. Scotland made hard work of it today, but we got away with it, and (weather permitting) I expect to see a much improved performance against Italy.

Munsey has looked uncharacteristically out of touch since he’s come back from illness. The alternative options don’t look particularly great though.

The ICC decreed in their infinite wisdom that DRS would only be introduced for the Super Sixes stage, even though matches between super six qualifiers in the group stages count towards the SS standings.

Scotland lose the toss, which is a blow, given the difficulties teams batting first have encountered in the tournament so far. Our one weakness during these qualifiers, in which the middle order and the tail have batted really well, and we’ve fielded and bowled superbly, is the lack of runs from the openers. Cross out cheaply again today. Not sure McBride is up to it tbh. It’s all about whether we can keep wickets intact during the first hour, and keep the scoreboard ticking over (McBride is slow). This is going to be nerve-wracking, to say the least.

The ICC can always be relied upon to ensure that international cricket is a closed shop. They always pander to the elite - a 10 team World Cup is a absoute nonsense. The governing bodies of every other sport (to my knowledge) try to increase their sport’s global appeal, spread and inclusivity. The ICC does the opposite. It restricts access to its most prestigious and lucrative competitions to a small number of elite nations. However, we’re not even remotely in the same bracket as Ireland, who by virtue of their permanent ODI status (Scotland only has temporary ODI status) and Test status, are guaranteed a stacked fixture list and huge amounts of money. Scotland have to be content with the crumbs off the table. Outwith qualifiers such as these (which we have to pre-qualify for), we have to content ourselves with occasional home warm up matches against visiting full members, who are invariably coming in to the UK to play England, to supplement our regular-ish diet of matches against other cash-starved associate nations. By virtue of their permanent ODI status, Ireland have a further 45 ODI matches guaranteed against full members until 2027. I attend the majority of Scotland’s home matches, and I honestly couldn’t tell you the next ODI (apart from these current qualifiers) that Scotland have lined up against a full member. There’s nothing on the Cricket Scotland website or Cricinfo. (We do have the 20/20 qualifiers to look forward to in July, with matches against Jersey, Denmark, Italy, Austria, Germany and Ireland). In 2022 we played one full member - New Zealand - at the Grange in Edinburgh. In 2021 and 2020 we played no full members (although our two matches against fellow associate the Netherlands in 2021 were afforded ODI status). In 2019, we played two ODIs against full members - one each against Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, both at the Grange. You have to go back to the last World Cup qualifiers (also in Zimbabwe), in 2018, to find the last time we played a full member in an ODI outside of Scotland. (Note: We also played England at the Grange in 2018, and beat them). The Scottish cricket team is so cash-strapped that they couldn’t even afford to take the team’s performance analyst to these qualifiers in Zimbabwe, and have to rely on Zoom calls for team briefings. The fact that we’ve competed so well is a miracle, and no thanks are attributable to the ICC, or the full members of the cartel that they oversee. International cricket has always been a closed shop, and Scotland have always been on the outside looking in. In fact the ICC’s proposed new revenue distribution model (for the 2024-27 cycle) will see the 12 full members divvy up 88.81% of its distributed revenues (with 38.5% going to India alone), with the remainder (11.19%) being divided between the 94 associates, an even more imbalanced model than we’ve seen to date, entrenching the hegemony of the elite, starving the associates of much-needed revenue, and further stalling what is laughably referred to in cricket circles as ‘the growth of the game’. Proposed ICC revenue model 2024-27

Still drying out after last night’s deluge, but it’s a great to be a Scotland fan these days. I know there have been false dawns and glimmers of hope in the past, but this emerging Scotland team really are different. Robertson, Hickey, Tierney, McGregor, Gilmour, McTominay and McGinn et al are just so technically accomplished, and are now playing with a swagger and confidence I’ve not seen from a Scotland team since the 1970s. That midfield quartet of McGregor, Gilmour, McGinn and McTominay really clicked last night, and utterly dominated a decent (and clearly rattled) Georgian side, playing great football despite the adverse conditions. Georgia have caused us problems in the past, but this Scotland team disposed of them as if they were makeweights - that was 2-0 going on five or six last night, albeit the tempo dropped after a flurry of late substitutions. The common denominator after recent games is just how unceremoniously rattled the opposition have been by Scotland (Rodri after the Spain game, Ødegaard after the Norway match, the entire Georgian team last night). Fair to say, it’s taking the rest of the world some time to catch up with how good this Scotland team now are. That’s 10 straight victories for Scotland in qualifiers now (excluding play offs), including great wins against Denmark, Spain and away in Norway, an almost unimaginable state of affairs, and a real testament to Steve Clarke (who, thankfully, has now realised that McTominay is an exceptional box to box midfielder rather than a defender) and the squad. Qualification for Germany 2024 seems inevitable now, but there’s no reason why we can’t win the group and secure a good seeding for the finals. This group of players are all at a good age, and are only going to get better. We screwed up our last appearance at a major finals (and many before that tbh), but we were a work in progress then, often setting up (and playing) over cautiously, showing the opposition far too much respect. I hesitate to say it, but this Scotland team can compete at the top level for years to come. Watching Scotland play football these days is an absolute pleasure.

#45 Caveat (Damian McCarthy, 2020) Shudder via Amazon Prime 8 A dark, claustrophobic and disturbing low budget Irish horror film, set in a remote house on an island, that starts with a memorably chilling prelude, then slowly ratchets things up from there. If you accept the contrived premise, and disregard the illogical plot twists, then this is an entertaining if slightly clunky ride, a bit like a rickety old ghost train that’s no longer safe for use. All things considered, ‘Caveat’ is a highly promising directorial debut for Damian McCarthy. #46 The Tenant (Roman Polanski, 1976) Amazon Prime 8 The third in Polanski’s ‘Apartment Trilogy’, this isn’t in the same league as ‘Repulsion’ or ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, but it held my attention nonetheless. Director Polanski plays the protagonist, Trelkovsky, who moves into a new apartment in Paris, shortly after the previous occupant’s suicide. Trelkovsky’s descent into madness is too sudden to be thoroughly convincing, and the English language version available on Amazon Prime features some bad dubbing of the largely French cast, but despite these issues, it’s an enjoyable mix of psychological horror and black comedy. #47 The Shout (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1978) Criterion Channel 8 Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski has been lauded for his recent film ‘EO’, so I thought I’d check out his back catalogue. ‘The Shout’’s plot is utterly implausible, but it’s an entertainingly eccentric collision of folk horror and psychological thriller. Alan Bates’ character Crossley, a mysterious traveller who claims to have learned magical spells from aboriginal shamen in the Australian outback, infiltrates a genteel English village community, and the home of church organist / experimental music composer Anthony Fielding (John Hurt) and his wife Rachel (Susannah York), with predictably dire consequences for all concerned. #48 Guardians of the Galaxy Pt 3 (James Gunn, 2023) Everyman Cinema, St James Quarter 4 The original ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ is a guilty pleasure of mine: a refreshingly witty, sharply-scripted, fun antidote to the often absurdly po-faced superhero films churned out by both Marvel and DC to that point, and the killer soundtrack clinched the deal. Even if GoTG 2 didn’t quite reproduce the original’s magic, it had just enough charm to get a pass. GoTG 3 is even worse than I feared it might be. Everything that made the original so great is absent here: the lightness of touch, the quicksilver wit, the playful irreverence, and the choice collection of great tunes. By contrast, Volume 3 is bombastic, crude and charmless…. and the soundtrack sucks too. We’re ‘treated’ to the strident rock of Rainbow, Heart, Alice Cooper and Bruce Springsteen rather than yacht rock gems from the likes of Rupert Holmes and Blue Swede and soulful cuts from The Five Stairsteps and Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell. (Vol. 2’s mix is more uneven, but still includes a few highlights - Looking Glass, Parliament, Sam Cooke etc.). One of the original film’s stand-out tunes, Redbone’s ‘Come and Get Your Love’, makes a reappearance at the end of Vol. 3, reinforcing just how dismally unimaginative this instalment’s musical selection is. In short, Vol 1’s mixtape sounds like it was lovingly assembled by someone that actually likes music, whereas Vol.3’s sounds like it was hastily cobbled together by an accountant, which is more or less the film’s problems in microcosm. Vol.3 has been assembled with one eye on the bottom line, but it’s a Frankenstein of a film manufactured from ill-fitting parts, including a lengthy anti-vivisection section (Rocket’s backstory), which while rather effectively done, sits uneasily alongside the fluff surrounding it, which I’ll (charitably) summarise as a witless procession of inane wisecracks and pointless explosions masquerading as a movie. I had hoped that GoTG 3 might revive my flagging interest in the MCU, after slogging my way through the utterly dismal Phase IV, but the first two instalments of Phase V (this and the worst Ant-Man film to date - ‘Quantumania’) merely confirm the franchise’s continuing decline. #49 Performance (Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg, 1970) 9 I’m not sure why I hadn’t seen this before, and I’m conscious that I’m decades late to the party here. Nicolas Roeg is one of my favourite directors (‘Don’t Look Now’ and ‘Eureka’ are amongst my favourite films), and Edinburgh-born painter, screenwriter and director Donald Cammell is (IMO) one of the most fascinating filmmakers that Scotland has ever produced. I really enjoyed Cammell’s ‘White of the Eye’ and ‘Wild Style’, even though they’re both flawed and uneven films, but ‘Performance’ is something else entirely. It’s fair to say that Cammell was a maverick (a bohemian portrait painter, whose father had written a biography of Aleister Crowley), but he possessed more innate filmmaking talent than many more lauded directors. It’s not difficult to see why ‘Performance’ caused such a stir upon its release in 1970. Part gangster film (Edward Fox has never been better, playing against type, as Cockney criminal Chas), and part requiem for an era, as the swinging sixties morphed into something more sinister. The result is pleasingly sui generis - a trippy Brit noir rock horror film. The editing, sound, and particularly the radical cut-up style, presumably influenced by William S. Burroughs, still seem experimental today. ‘Performance’ is a remarkable collision of styles, moods, sounds and images, transgressive and at times almost demonic, with the Rolling Stones song ‘Memo from Turner’ interrupting proceedings like a proto rock video made more than a decade before MTV was born. It’s impossible to estimate just how innovative this film was, or to calibrate the relative contributions of the co-directors (though the idea and the script were both Cammell’s, and cameraman Roeg was brought in by the studio to help first-time director Cammell deliver the film), but the aftershocks of ‘Performance’ still resonate in Roeg’s later career (‘Don’t Look Now’ in particular), and filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino (and lesser talents such as Guy Ritchie) were clearly influenced by this film. If pressed to find fault, the first half is stronger than the second, and the momentum flags when Chas holes up in Turner(Mick Jagger)’s Notting Hill townhouse, but ‘Performance’ is one of the best and most influential British films of the 1970s. #50 Daughters of Darkness (Harry Kamel, 1971) Criterion Channel 8 Something of an anomaly, this film’s Hammer Horror meets European art cinema atmosphere is surprisingly entrancing, and the presence of ‘Last Year at Marienbad’’s Delphine Seyrig as mysterious Hungarian aristocrat Countess Elizabeth Bathory adds another alluring layer of glamour to the proceedings. Set in a deserted hotel in Ostend during the off season, ‘Daughters of Darkness’ not only resonates with distant echoes of (the admittedly vastly superior) ‘Marienbad’, but it also foreshadows ‘The Shining’, released almost a decade later. It’s no masterpiece, but I found ‘Daughters of Darkness’ to be a thoroughly enjoyable exercise in highly-stylised (and tolerably camp) horror. #51 Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014) Netflix 9 Having seen this at the time of release, this was a rewatch. Although clearly owing a huge debt to Scorsese’s (admittedly superior) studies of psychopathic loners, ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘The King of Comedy’, Dan Gilroy’s ‘Nightcrawler’ stands the test of time as one of the great Hollywood neo-noirs of the 21st century so far. Jake Gyllenhaal is outstanding as creepy, amoral ambulance-chasing photojournalist Lou Bloom, a misfit whose disconcerting speaking-in-tongues conversational style - a patchwork of inane ‘How to Succeed in Business’ homilies and tactlessly reductive transactionalism - lend him the air of a demented capitalist evangelist, a preacher from the sleazy flip side of the American Dream. As a coruscating satire of capitalism, ‘Nightcrawler’ is much darker and harder-hitting than ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, and Gyllenhaal’s Bloom is a more repellently dysfunctional poster boy for the American Nightmare than even DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort. Apparently director Gilroy originally intended the film to be a study of street photojournalist Weegee (whose austere black and white studies of crime scenes on the streets of New York in the ‘30s and ‘40s made him the most noirish of photographers), before it morphed into ‘Nightcrawler’, but Weegee’s influence is clear, and the film’s scenes of Los Angeles at night are luminously rendered by cinematographer Robert Elswit - a transfixing tableau of death and destruction illuminated by street lights, car headlights, and Bloom’s camera’s merciless spotlight. 52# Huesera: The Bone Woman (Michelle Garza Cervera, 2022) Shudder via Amazon Prime 8 A highly promising debut from young Mexican writer-director Michelle Garza Cervera, one of many talented young women filmmakers making a mark in the horror genre at the moment. I look forward to seeing what she does next.

I was the only person in the cinema when I went to see ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ when it was first released back in the early ‘90s. I absolutely loved it, and couldn’t understand why no-one else showed up - Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon and (perhaps surprisingly, but particularly) Alec Baldwin are all brilliant in it. There are so many quotable lines in this film, courtesy of David Mamet’s razor sharp script. I often mention it to people when the subject of favourite films comes up, and almost no-one else has seen it, so it must have really bombed at the box office. Though the discerning few that have seen it also tend to rave about it. I’m a big David Mamet fan, and I also love ‘The Spanish Prisoner’, ‘House of Games’ and ‘Homicide’ (all of which no-one else seems to have seen either) though ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ is definitely Mamet’s finest hour (as a screenwriter at least).

#37 Watcher (Chloe Okuno, 2022) Amazon Prime 9 ‘Watcher’ is a taut psychological horror film, and represents a highly promising directorial and screenwriting debut from Chloe Okuno. Unlike many recent horror films, ‘Watcher’ doesn’t attempt to be too clever - it’s a solid Hitchcockian thriller that isn’t trying to deconstruct or reinvent the genre, and, thankfully, it eschews cheap jump scares. Maika Monroe is excellent as Julia, an American who has just relocated to Bucharest with her Romanian boyfriend, and who feels increasingly isolated as a serial killer stalks the city. This refreshingly well-crafted film is a bit of a throwback, and while its restraint is deeply unfashionable, it’s hugely welcome. #38 Loving Highsmith (Eva Vitija, 2022) Criterion Channel 7 ‘Loving Highsmith’ is an interesting, though hardly definitive, documentary about that most cinematic of authors - Patricia Highsmith. The ‘Ripley’ novels have been a particularly productive source for film adaptions, with René Clément’s ‘Plein Soleil’, Wim Wenders’ ‘The American Friend’, and Liliana Cavani’s ‘Ripley’s Game’ all figuring prominently on my list of favourite films, though Anthony Minghella’s ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ was rather less successful IMO. Other excellent adaptions include Alfred Hitchcock’s magnificent ‘Strangers on a Train’, and The Price of Salt’, which was adapted by Todd Haynes as ‘Carol’ in 2015. I’d like to have seen more emphasis on her literary career, and the films that translated her work to the big screen. Sadly, most of the film clips come from ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’, an exceedingly dull film that resembles a glossy travelogue more than a psychological thriller, with a boyish Matt Damon singularly unsuited to the title role, which Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper and John Malkovich had all occupied so memorably in previous adaptions. ‘Loving Highsmith’ focuses on her personal relationships, both with her cold and distant mother Mary, and a selection of her former paramours. Relatively few insights are imparted about Highsmith’s literary style - other than the suggestion that her magnificently icy prose may have sprung from the unrequited love she possessed for her mother - and it sheds very little insight into the creative inspirations behind one of literature’s most iconic anti-heroes, Tom Ripley. Nonetheless, it’s still a fascinating profile of the writer’s struggles as a gay woman from conservative Texas who emerged from a stiflingly patriarchal society to forge a singular literary career for herself. #39 She Dies Tomorrow (Amy Seimetz, 2020) Shudder via Amazon Prime 3 This 2020 horror film has had excellent reviews, so I was looking forward to it. One review suggested that it was ‘Lynchian’, and that ‘Twin Peaks’ was an influence. I’ve lamented the trend in modern cinema towards 3 hour epics, so it was refreshing to discover that ‘She Dies Tomorrow’ clocks in at a lean 85 mins. Everything about this sounded right up my street. Then the film started.. 85 minutes in the dentist’s chair would have passed quicker than this. I watched it in three (increasingly reluctant) instalments, as I could barely endure the characters or the dialogue. One scene, featuring an extended conversation between a group of irritating young professionals focusing on the mating habits of dolphins, practically compelled me to switch the TV off and go for a walk. Perhaps it’s intended to be satirical, as the hipsters’ fixation with the sex lives of cetaceans continues unabated, despite the token ‘oldie’ in the cast interrupting to state that she’s ‘going to die tomorrow’. Then again, it might be a sincere attempt to reflect what passes for conversation in the homes of upwardly mobile millennials these days. Either way, the script would have benefited from a judicious edit, preferably involving a litre of petrol and a match. The aforementioned oldie is played by Jane Adams, who wanders through the entire movie in her pyjamas looking bemused, lest we be in any doubt that’s she’s a mad old boomer, which is about as deep as the characterisation gets in this film. As for the rest of the cast: when not exchanging vapid inanities, listening to Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ on repeat seems to be their primary role, just to underscore the prevailing atmosphere of existential dread, as they moodily contemplate their impending demises (which I wish had been greatly expedited), as irrational fear of imminent death seems to be as contagious as the excruciating dialogue. ‘She Dies Tomorrow’ is essentially an art house ‘Final Destination’, minus anything resembling action, a script or a plot. After dragging on for a seemingly never-ending 85 minutes (Zack Snyder’s 4-hour director’s cut of ‘Justice League’ fairly zipped along by comparison), the film ends so abruptly that it’s more charitable to believe that they just ran out of film stock than to dignify the sudden termination as intentional. It’s worth noting that this is a postmodern ‘horror’ film, and as such is completely bereft of anything quite so mundane as horror, so if you’re a fan of the genre, there’s likely to be nothing much here for you. It was released in 2020, and contemporary reviews suggest it was greeted as a timely parable of the pandemic. Watching it in 2023, it just seems pointless, plotless and pretentious. That’s not to say that it’s a film completely without qualities - the director’s visual sensibility is exquisite: there are some nicely composed shots, and a bunch of lovely dissolves into psychedelic imagery that mark Seimitz out as a talented filmmaker, and it’s clear that she’s capable of much better than this. #40 The Fall (Scott Mann, 2022) Amazon Prime 7 An efficient, unpretentious and enjoyable little B-Movie about two free climbers who get stranded at the top of an enormous TV tower. #41 Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) Kino Babylon, Berlin 9 For some reason I’d never seen ‘Metropolis’ before, but it was a hugely enjoyable experience seeing it for the first time in Berlin’s beautiful Art Deco Kino Babylon (which opened in 1929, two years after the film was released), with a live orchestral accompaniment. #42 The Super Mario Bros Movie (Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, 2023) Zoo Palast, Berlin 5 The Super Mario Bros movie is fun, especially if you’re a fan of the Nintendo platform games (as I am). It has none of the wit or panache of ‘The Lego Movie’, for instance, but it was an enjoyable enough way to pass ninety minutes with the kids during a rainy afternoon in Berlin. #43 Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat (Sara Driver, 2017) Mubi 9 Excellent documentary profiling the meteoric rise of the prodigiously-talented Jean-Michel Basquait, which conveys a real sense of the dynamically creative New York art, film and music worlds of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, with fascinating contributions from luminaries such as Fab 5 Freddy, Jim Jarmusch, Glenn O’Brien, ex-James Chance and the Contortions’ guitarist turned successful artist James Nares, legendary graffiti artist Lee Quiñones et al. It makes a great companion piece to Edo Bertoglio’s ‘Downtown ‘81’, another vital snapshot of the New York scene of the time. #44 Dead Reckoning (John Cromwell, 1947) Indicator blu-ray 8.5 Underrated and uncompromisingly bleak film noir starring Humphrey Bogart as ex-serviceman Captain ‘Rip’ Murdock, who goes in search of a missing army colleague in the fictional Gulf City, and 40’s film noir regular Lizabeth Scott (apparently a late replacement for Rita Hayworth) as glamorous nightclub singer Coral ‘Dusty’ Chandler. Scott is enjoyably duplicitous as the husky-voiced femme fatale, and Bogey is Bogey. John Cromwell’s background was in theatre, and his filmmaking career was workmanlike, but this is a very solid noir. Another theatre veteran, Morris Carnovsky is excellent as the villainous nightclub owner Martinelli, and it’s a great shame that his cinema career was curtailed by the blacklist.

Took in the game as a neutral today. Lowland League champions v Highland League champions vying for a place in League 2, really good crowd with lots of visiting fans crammed into Ainslie Park. This is what Scottish football is all about, or should be about. Ditch the Conference nonsense and the B teams, open up promotion and relegation places between tiers 5 and 4 (and tiers 6 and 5 for that matter) to allow ambitious clubs to progress and whittle away the dead wood and we might be onto something. I was quite impressed with Spartans (which is something I couldn’t say about their former tenants FC Edinburgh the times I’ve seen them this term). Despite being reduced to 10 men for most of the match, they more than matched Brechin throughout and I thought they thoroughly deserved the win. Spartans have some good footballers and played some nice stuff. Brechin were well organised but lacked cutting edge going forward, though it might have just been an off day for them. It’ll be tough, but don’t see why Spartans can’t complete the job next week, and if they progress I’d give them a decent chance against team 42.

This thread isn’t really the place for the lengthy eulogy that I’ve posted on other social media, but Mark was not only a inspiration - The Pop Group’s ‘She is Beyond Good and Evil’, which I bought when I was still at school, still stands up as not only one of the best late ‘70s post punk singles, but as one of the best of any period or genre IMO - but he was a good friend for over 35 years. I promoted gigs with Mark Stewart & The Maffia many times, including just last year in Edinburgh and Glasgow at the O-U Sound 40th birthday bashes, and put on The Pop Group at The Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh in 2014, and Mark stayed at my place on several occasions. Not only a brilliant songwriter and front man, he was hugely entertaining, funny, fiercely intelligent, full of mischief and great company. Rest in Peace, Mark.

This. That utterly woeful performance today confirmed that Bartley has been making the best of what he’s got, but it’s still a sow’s ear of a squad than can occasionally impersonate a silk purse. Today was as bad as I’ve seen Queens all season, certainly rivalling the embarrassing capitulation at home to Clyde on opening day, and the 3-0 rout at Kelty in February. A clear out is needed. I’d keep Dabrowski, Bryson, Gibson, Paton (though I expect he’s on his way), and Cochrane, and maybe McKechnie, Wilson and Todd, and that’s about it. Wouldn’t be remotely bothered to see anyone else go, including Connelly who I wrongly assumed was going to be a key player before the season started.

Utterly abysmal performance from Queens so far. Dunfermline all over us. We can barely string two passes together in the attacking half, just giving the ball away constantly. This could end up 3 or 4 unless we change things very quickly. No idea why Irving is playing, he looks utterly out of his depth. Having said all that, we’ve just been denied what looked like a clear cut penalty for a push in the box, with the linesman having a perfect view of it. Edit: just gone 2 down. This could be any score Dunfermline want.

Hertha Berlin 0 RB Leipzig 1 Decided to spend Easter in Berlin, and took my son to Hertha Berlin v RB Leipzig today, at the magnificent Olympiastadion. What an awe-inspiring stadium. The game was nothing to write home about, Leipzig edged it 1-0 with a hotly debated goal following a corner towards the end of the first half, which looked like it was going to be disallowed by the video assistant for a foul on the keeper, but it stood, surprisingly. Hertha were poor in the first half, but largely dominated the second period, and might have snatched a deserved draw, although they had very little cutting edge in attack. The Hertha fans outclassed their team tbh, and sang incredibly loudly all through the game, even when behind, creating an amazing atmosphere. Amazed that we could come out of a game with a 50k crowd, stroll down to the U-Bahn and straight onto a waiting train, without ever encountering anything resembling a queue. Within 35 minutes of exiting the stadium we were back in our hotel room in Lützowplatz, almost 5km away.

Apologies in advance for the lengthy post. I had meant to upload this in stages, but never quite found the time. These are all the films I saw in March.#24 Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (John D. Hancock, 1971) Amazon Prime 8When horror aficionado Kim Newman (uniquely) listed this as one of his 10 Greatest Films of All Time in the 2022 Sight and Sound Critics’s poll, I was intrigued. The title is distinctly unpromising - sounding like just another teen slasher film - but the film itself is admittedly rather good. It’s a creepy ghost story set in the last days of the hippy era, as the idealistic ‘60s morph into the discontented ‘70s. While ‘Let’s Scare Jessica to Death’ is unlikely to challenge for the top 10 films I’ve watched this year, let alone make my ‘greatest ever’ list, I’m glad that Mr. Newman brought it to my attention, as it’s certainly one of least celebrated and more interesting horror films of the era.#25 Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck, 1973) Shudder via Amazon Prime 7.5This low budget horror film from the early ‘70s is such a haphazard collection of amateurish elements, any one of which would normally be sufficient to scuttle a project (terrible acting, a dreadful script, and the complete absence of anything resembling a coherent plot), that it’s remarkable that these defective ingredients blend into an intermittently effective, and occasionally inspired, whole. Rather like two of my favourite low budget horror films, Herk Harvey’s ‘Carnival of Souls’ and Curtis Harrington’s ‘Night Tide’, ‘Messiah of Evil’ makes a virtue of its limitations, with the duel voiceovers of the female protagonist (Arletty) and her artist father delivered so flatly, eviscerated of emotion and unencumbered by anything approaching vitality, that they provide a suitably spectral accompaniment to the action (such that there is). The film spends a lot of time building up to not very much, but somehow creates the irrational feeling that whatever is going on in the margins, and just off screen, is irredeemably strange. Particularly effective in this respect is Arletty’s father’s beach house, which is stuffed to the brim with ominous artworks, often featuring mysterious figures, who seem to be lurking in the shadows, eavesdropping on conversations, and watching the house’s inhabitants. In this respect, at least, the film is a triumph, and art director Jack Fisk would go on to work with David Lynch and Terrence Malick. Most of the cast are barely competent, though Michael Greer’s suave Romanian playboy is suitably seedy, and Elisha Cook Jr. is great in a cameo role. There’s no doubt that some of the later scenes were heavily influenced by George A. Romero’s ‘Night of the Living Dead’, and the ending is, perhaps predictably, anti-climactic, but for much of its duration, this ramshackle mess of a film somehow transcends its limitations, and occasionally, perhaps accidentally, glimpses greatness.#26 Creed III (Michael B. Jordan, 2023), Everyman Cinema, Edinburgh 5This is the first film in the ‘Rocky’ franchise that I’ve seen, and likely to be the last. My expectations were fairly low, and they certainly weren’t exceeded. The perfunctory plot could have been scribbled on the back of a beer-mat with room to spare, and the film’s denouement is utterly predictable, yet still manages to disappoint. Michael B. Jordan is a passable actor, and he directs with similarly undistinguished professionalism. The film is resolutely untainted by anything resembling imagination or inspiration. Its commitment towards mediocrity is reassuringly consistent. It would hardly be giving the game away to mention that Jordan’s Adonis Creed is lured back into the ring to take on Jonathan Majors’ ‘Diamond Dame’ Anderson, an old friend whose path had taken a less fortunate turn, and the news that Jordan is hugely outmatched, in the acting department at least, by rising star Majors is even less surprising. That’s two distinctly average films I’ve seen Majors star in over the last couple of months - ‘Ant-Man Quantumania’ and this - and he has absolutely dominated both films, pulverising all comers: the quietly spoken ‘Diamond Dame’ exudes an understated street menace that is reminiscent of a young Mike Tyson. Majors will surely go on to much greater things, but it’s time he left franchise fodder behind. #27 A Wounded Fawn (Travis Stevens, 2022) Shudder via Amazon Prime 6This serial killer tale starts off rather well, with an excellent performance from Sarah Lind as the imperilled but powerful female protagonist, but it devolves in the second half into incomprehensible mythological mumbo jumbo. It reminded me of Lars von Trier’s ‘The House that Jack Built’, though that film’s allegorical intent was clear from the start. ‘A Wounded Fawn’’s first half is superior to von Trier’s film, building up the tension and the unsettling atmosphere nicely, but like a lot of modern horror films, the tonal shift halfway through is so sudden as to be jarring, as the film veers from effectively creepy horror into heavy-handed message movie, with derivative surrealist flourishes.#28 Chameleon Street (Wendell B. Harris Jr.) Criterion Channel 9 There can’t have been too many instances of outstanding debut films that turned out to be the only features their directors ever completed. Charles Laughton’s ‘Night of the Hunter’ is perhaps the most celebrated work of the ‘one and done’ directorial school, but Wendell B.Harris Jr.’s remarkable Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winner (1989) ‘Chameleon Street’ remains one of the more obscure examples. Director Harris Jr. plays the lead role, a confident and articulate con-man, whose intelligence and charm enable him to infiltrate (inter alia) the legal and medical worlds, passing himself off as a skilled practitioner of these professions. As implausible as it might seem, the film is based on a true story, the life of William Douglas Street, Jr., nicknamed ‘the Chameleon’, who allegedly performed a number of operations at a Chicago hospital while masquerading as a surgeon. Harris, Jr. is not only a talented director, but as an actor is perfect for the role, exuding confidence, savoir faire and intelligence. His elegantly cultured demeanour rarely cracks, even when under pressure (his eloquent takedown of a racist redneck who harasses his wife in a restaurant is particularly memorable), and it’s entirely believable that his colleagues were fooled by his confident professional manner. The film is expertly edited, the script (penned by Harris) is sharp and witty, and it’s a hugely enjoyable film. ‘Chameleon Street’ definitely deserves to join the pantheon of great, under-appreciated works by African-American filmmakers of the period, such as Charles Burnett’s ‘To Sleep With Anger’ and Kasi Lemmons’ ‘Eve’s Bayou’. It’s an indictment of the American film industry, and the lack of opportunities afforded to black filmmakers, that such a vibrant creative force as Wendell Harris Jr. never made another film.#29 My Architect: A Son’s Journey (Nathaniel Kahn, 2003) Criterion Channel 9This fascinating documentary profile of unconventional architect Louis Kahn is stuffed with colourful stories and memorable characters, such as Philadelphia urban planner Edmund Bacon, (father of the actor Kevin Bacon) who butted heads with Kahn repeatedly in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s over plans for redevelopment of the city, and who plays up to his reputation as Kahn’s nemesis in a surprisingly outspoken interview, saying that it would have been ‘an incredible tragedy if they (the city) had built one single thing that Lou had proposed for downtown Philadelphia’. Despite designing a number of world class buildings, it seems Kahn barely scraped a living as an architect, and he apparently died penniless, collapsing from a heart attack in Penn Station, New York, with his body going unclaimed for days. He seems to have been an enigma, even to his ‘closest’ friends and family, and it’s both disorientating and sad to hear family members and acquaintances lambast the world-renowned architect of the Salk Institute, Kimbell Art Museum and Bangladesh’s iconic national parliament building, the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban, for never amounting to very much. Kahn certainly led an unconventional life - a fairly unprepossessing (though presumably charming) fellow who juggled relationships with three women, all of whom bore him a child. The director of the documentary, Nathaniel Kahn, is one of the architect’s offspring, and he obviously embarked upon the project in an attempt to get to know the man who ghosted in and out of his childhood. I’m not sure he learned very much, as few of the interviewees could cast very much light on a man they hardly knew, let alone understood, but it’s a fascinating journey nonetheless. The most effusive tributes, by far, come from Bangladesh, where Kahn is clearly revered, even if he was a prophet without much honour at home.#30 Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan, 2023) Amazon Prime 5I’m continuing to work my way through M. Night Shyamalan’s filmography, more in hope than expectation. I should have given up long ago, as none of his later works have come close to matching his beautifully-constructed debut, ‘The Sixth Sense’. I’ve been enjoying his Disney+ show ‘Servant’, a slow burn series which has the stately assurance of his debut feature, and is (largely) shorn of the director’s trademark contrivances. Unfortunately, ‘Knock at the Cabin’ is nowhere near as good. Unlike most of Shyamalan’s work, there is no rug-pulling magic trick here, where the director throws in an enormous twist that suddenly reconfigures everything we’ve seen to date. ‘Knock at the Cabin’ is Shyamalan working in reverse - it starts off by stretching our credulity, assuming we’ll swallow a barely believable scenario, then just plays it very straight, and humourlessly, all the way towards its dull conclusion. #31 Holy Spider (Ali Abassi, 2023) Mubi 9‘Holy Spider’ is a gritty and deeply unsettling film in which a woman journalist (Arezoo Rahimi, brilliantly played by Zahra Amir Ebrahimi) investigates a series of murders in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad. Like David Fincher’s serial killer procedural ‘Zodiac’, it’s based on a true story, but ‘Holy Spider’ has another dimension: as a woman driving the investigation, Rahimi meets with resistance and misogynistic treatment from local police and religious fundamentalists alike, with Iran’s deeply patriarchal society not only frowning upon ambitious independent women like Rahimi, but seemingly indifferent to the fates of its less fortunate (and even more marginalised) women. The indulgence, and in some cases outright celebration, of the serial killer’s professed motivation to ‘cleanse the holy city of moral corruption’ rings frighteningly true, and the film’s coda (which I won’t spoil) is one of the most disturbing conclusions to a film that I’ve ever seen.#32 Antiviral (Brandon Cronenberg, 2012) Amazon Prime 6Having been hugely impressed by ‘Possessor’ (and with ‘Infinity Pool’ on this month’s viewing list), I thought it was worth catching up with Brandon Cronenberg’s debut film ‘Antiviral’, even if the reviews were less than effusive. On balance, it’s my least favourite of his films to date, and by far the most indebted to his father. It’s highly imitative of the films David Cronenberg made early in his career, fusing the austerity of ‘Stereo’ with the body horror of ‘Rabid’ and ‘Shivers.’ The main issue I had with the film, is that that I just couldn’t buy into the central conceit - If you suspend disbelief sufficiently to accept the ludicrous premise, it’s a competently-made, if rather cold, sci-fi horror film.#33 Coup de Torchon (Bertrand Tavernier, 1981) Criterion Channel 6An adaption of Jim Thompson’s 1964 crime novel ‘Pop. 1280’, with director Bertrand Tavernier relocating the story from the southern states of America to French West Africa. It’s the tale of an ineffectual police chief (played by Philippe Noiret) in a small town who takes revenge against his tormentors. Sadly, ‘Coup de Torchon’ hasn’t dated very well, and the casual racism displayed by the white settlers in their dealings with the indigenous population is shocking to modern sensibilities, though it may well have been an accurate reflection of French colonial attitudes of the era in which the film was set (just before the outbreak of the Second World War). The film’s whimsical tone sits rather uncomfortably with the dark subject matter, but Thompson’s tale was clearly conceived as a noir, rather than a comedy. Noiret and Isabelle Huppert are both rather good in this, but it’s not one of Tavernier’s better films.#34 Beyond Time (Alex Turnbull & Pete Stern, 2012) Vimeo 8Fascinating documentary about Dundee-born modernist sculptor and painter William Turnbull, an artist who has never quite permeated the public consciousness to quite the same extent as his Scottish contemporary, and fellow founder of the Independent Group, Eduardo Paolozzi. Turnbull was inspired by his time in Paris in the late ‘40s, a city to which he’d relocated after serving as an RAF pilot during the Second World War, and his work was certainly influenced by both Alberto Giacometti and Constantin Brâncuși, leading lights of the Parisian post-war artistic community. Turnbull is clearly held in very high regard by his peers, and Anthony Gormley, Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, Tess Jaray, Tim Marlow et al. attest to his talents not only as a modernist, but as an artist whose work exhibits a timeless quality, drawing upon influences from the ancient past, while looking towards the future. Footnote: Turnbull married Singaporean sculptor Kim Lim in 1960, and their two sons, Alex and Johnny, founded one of my favourite bands - the highly influential post-punk / industrial group 23 Skidoo. Alex co-directed the documentary, and the band supplied the soundtrack.#35 Infinity Pool (Brandon Cronenberg, 2023) Vue Cinema, Ocean Terminal 7Having really enjoyed Brandon Cronenberg’s sophomore work ‘Possessor’, I was really looking forward to this. If his debut ‘Antiviral’ was heavily influenced by his illustrious director father, ‘Possessor’ saw him investing Cronenberg Sr.’s body horror and sci-fi tropes with a modern technological sheen, fusing visceral horror and speculative ‘science’ to disorientating effect. ‘Infinity Pool’ certainly reinforces Brandon Cronenberg reputation as the enfant terrible of the horror genre, but, for my money at least, it’s a step backwards. Ultimately, for all its hip Ballardian sheen, it’s yet another in a wearyingly long line of heavy-handed satires of the rich - certainly more transgressive than ‘Triangle of Sadness’ or ‘The Menu’, and almost as crude.Mia Goth’s remarkable temptress Gabi aside, Cronenberg’s wealthy deviant elite is populated by disappointingly one- dimensional caricatures, and the film’s catalogue of grotesqueries is clearly compiled to appeal to the prejudices of the lowest common denominator. This pool isn’t so much infinite as shallow. I’ll give Cronenberg this: never has such a crude metaphor been quite so baroquely rendered, or such a trite message been delivered in such artful packaging. On the credit side, Mia Goth excels as the unhinged libertine Gabi Bauer, comfortably consolidating her position as the preeminent acting talent operating in the contemporary horror genre.At times, ‘Infinity Pool’ reminded me of Harmony Korine’s wonderfully deranged ‘Spring Breakers’, and the film is peppered with scenes of kaleidoscopic psychedelica reminiscent of Panos Cosmatos’ ‘Beyond the Black Rainbow’ and ‘Mandy’, though, for my money, it’s not quite the equal of any of those. Even if ‘Infinity Pool’ is, ultimately, a disappointingly derivative sub-Ballardian satire, Cronenberg’s filmmaking talent seeps out of every scene, and the unsettling boldness of his vision ensures that I look forward to his next project. He should rein in any incipient crowd-pleasing tendencies though, as it felt like he was playing to the gallery here, an accusation that could never have been levelled at the defiantly uncompromising ‘Possessor’. #36 Only the Animals (Dominik Moll, 2019) Mubi 9This is the first film I’ve seen from highly-regarded French director Dominik Moll, and I was impressed. ‘Only the Animals’ is a labyrinthine mystery in which the complex web of coincidences that lead to a seemingly motiveless murder is explored from the viewpoints of six very different individuals, some of whom seem barely connected, and all of whom possess a restricted view of the bigger picture. It’s a pessimistic meditation on the evil that springs from human weakness, and it’s fascinating to watch the film’s assortment of flawed characters try to make sense of a seemingly incomprehensible series of events, as the story is painstakingly reassembled from the perspectives of all six in turn. It’s a wonderful puzzle box of a movie, beautifully constructed in a manner reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Rashomon’ (the ‘Knives Out’ films might be another reference point, but thankfully this beautifully dark and rather sad film has none of that particular franchise’s ‘Hollywood celebs hamming it up on vacation’ vibe) and while the pieces slide into place rather too neatly in the end, and the long arm of coincidence isn’t so much stretched beyond credulity as ripped out of its socket, this brilliantly-directed film will certainly motivate me to check out the rest of Moll’s filmography.

Fully deserved win tonight for Scotland against the Spanish formation diving team. Scott McTominay taking up where he left off in his two goal cameo against Cyprus, striding box to box like Michael Ballack in his prime, and nonchalantly chalking up another couple of goals. To think we‘ve wasted him in central defence for most of his Scotland career to date. Porteous has taken to international football luck a duck to water. No failures in the Scottish team tonight though. We’re slowly but surely becoming a force to be reckoned with after far too many years in the international wilderness.

We were very poor in the first half, and could have been 2 or 3 down after half an hour. Edinburgh hit the post and missed a couple of good chances, with the defence looking very shaky, and Dabrowski getting himself in trouble a couple of times with poor distribution or lingering over his clearances. The second half was the complete opposite - we dominated the second 45 from start to finish, and could have scored more than the 3 we got. Cochrane and Murray both did well when they came on, but to a man we were very good all over the park in the second half. Whatever Bartley said in the dressing room at half time certainly worked. It’s a complete mystery how FC Edinburgh are ahead of us in the table - they’re a very average side - and certainly a testament to how much we’ve under-performed against the rest of the league this year. Still think we’ve got an uphill struggle to make the play-offs, but you never know.

#18 Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, 2022) Mubi 9 It’s great to see another talented young Scottish woman emerge on the filmmaking scene, and Edinburgh-born Charlotte Wells’ feature debut ‘Aftersun’ is as vibrant a declaration of intent as Lynne Ramsay’s powerful first film ‘Ratcatcher’ was in 1999. I loved how Wells adopts an elliptical approach towards story-telling, and fuses experimental techniques into her film, yet retains narrative clarity, resulting in a very artful but nonetheless highly accessible film. Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio are both superb in their leading roles, and this lovely, touching and immaculately-crafted film holds great promise for Wells’ future career. #19 Party Girl (Daisy von Scherler Mayer, 1995) Criterion Channel 7 Having greatly enjoyed Parker Posey and Liev Schreiber’s double act in ‘The Daytrippers’ (1996) last month, I thought I’d check out this 1995 film, in which they also team up. The presence of The Tom Tom Club, Dawn Penn, The Brooklyn Funk Essentials et al. on the soundtrack was another attraction. While it lacks the finely-crafted wittily acerbic script of ‘The Daytrippers’, it’s a highly enjoyable film nonetheless, though its depiction of boho New York in the 1990s seems rather more stylised than authentic. #20 Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Payton Reed, 2023) Vue Cinema, Ocean Terminal 4 Back in 2015, the first ‘Ant-Man’ film benefitted from a lovely screenplay by Joe Cornish and Edgar Wright, which gave the film an enjoyably irreverent touch that elevated the source material even as it satirised it. Paul Rudd made for an engaging lead, and he had great support from a cast of talented character actors such as Bobby Cannavale, Michael Peña and David Dastmalchian. However that was back in the halcyon days of MCU Phase Two, when a relatively unpretentious and engaging comedy film masquerading as a superhero movie fitted fairly comfortably under the Marvel umbrella. ‘Quantumania’ is the first film of MCU Phase 6, and after the convoluted multiverse-obsessed nonsense of much of Phase 5, Marvel ‘ups the ante’ further by transporting us to the ‘Quantum Realm’ for this one - a realm, rather similar to Marvel’s non-quantum realm, in which the protagonists predictably spend most of their time running away from hostile forces and avoiding explosions, with the added bonus that, just like the Marvel Multiverse, the Quantum Realm spits out doppelgängers faster than Dunkin’ Donuts can produce sugary dough-based confections. One of the countless curious features of Marvel’s Quantum Realm is that buildings are not only alive, but are equipped with massive machine gun arms, which are immensely helpful when it comes to the obligatory ‘blowing stuff up’ business. As if all that wasn’t enough, we’re also treated to some Quantum Realm / Multiverse entanglement, just for good measure. As strange, mysterious and unpredictable as the quantum realm surely is, I’d imagine Marvel’s take on it would have come as quite a surprise to the pioneers of quantum theory, and, safe to say, I don’t think Kip Thorne (or indeed anyone) was drafted in as scientific consultant for this film. On the upside, Jonathan Majors, who rose to prominence in Joe Talbot’s excellent 2019 debut film ‘The Last Black Man in San Francisco’, is outstanding as Kang the Conqueror, who has the potential to be one of the best super-villains that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has ever produced. Majors delivers a Shakespearean performance as a troubled man banished to the Quantum Realm and, as a first rate actor marooned in the MCU, you can almost feel his pain. #21 Panic in Year Zero! (Ray Milland, 1962) YouTube 7 Before seeing this, I wasn’t aware that Oscar-winning Welsh-born actor Ray Milland enjoyed a (relatively unheralded) parallel career as a film director. This early ‘60s Cold War atomic bomb panic film (starring Milland and Frankie Avalon) was released shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis, and is a fascinating insight into the paranoia of the times. It plays like an extended episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’, and Milland isn’t afraid to veer into fairly dark territory. The film is imaginative enough to compensate for what was clearly a very low budget, making good use of its lean 93-minute running time. #22 Flesh and Fantasy (Julien Duvivier, 1943) VSL blu-ray 8.5 I’ve loved each of the Julien Duvivier films that I’ve seen to date - the brilliant 1937 proto-noir ‘Pépé le Moko’ starring the great Jean Gabin, and ‘Panique’ (1946), Duvivier’s superb adaption of George’s Simenon’s short novel ‘Les Fiançailles de M. Hire’, which was subsequently adapted by Patrice Leconte as Monsieur Hire (1989) - so when I heard that his little-known 1943 horror anthology ‘Flesh and Fantasy’ was to be released on blu-ray, I was intrigued. The wonderful cast (Edward G. Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Boyer) clinched the deal. I’m delighted to confirm that it’s a joy from start to finish, with atmospheric expressionist cinematography provided by ‘Night of the Hunter’s Stanley Cortez. It’s not remotely scary - two of the three segments are essentially romances with added supernatural elements - so it’s unlikely to hit the spot for horror enthusiasts. In fact, ‘Flesh and Fantasy’ strongly reminded me of the work of one of my favourite directors - Duvivier’s contemporary - the masterful Max Ophüls. #23 Cosmos (Andrzej Żuławski, 2015) Mubi 7 I’m looking forward to the box set of Andrzej Żuławski’s early films, due for release by the Eureka ‘Masters of Cinema’ label in May, so I was keen to see ‘Cosmos’ when it arrived on Mubi. Sadly, the last film of the Polish auteur’s career, and the third of his films that I’ve seen, didn’t quite live up to expectations, though the previous two films had set the bar fairly high: ‘Possession’ (1981) is such a defiantly weird film - as unsettling as anything in the filmographies of Cronenberg or Lynch - and 1996’s ‘Szamanka’ is almost as strange, if not quite so disturbing. ‘Cosmos’ plays like a surrealist take on a whodunnit, set in a French provincial country house. The ‘mystery’ plotline isn’t particularly compelling, and the dialogue is a haphazard assemblage of scattershot non-sequiturs, pseudo-philosophical mumbo jumbo and stream-of-consciousness whimsy that presumably lost something in translation. And yet, despite the film’s obvious weaknesses, it’s very watchable - a testament to the excellent cast. Swiss character actor Jean-François Balmer excels in the role of the eccentric but charming host Leon, and Victória Guerra is memorably unhinged as the beautiful but troubled Lena. André Szankowski’s gorgeous cinematography and the lovely score by Polish composer Andrzej Korzyński are both superb, but the often impressive component parts of this curiously inscrutable film never quite coalesce into a coherent whole.