Goose

The Night Comes For Us (2018) After sparing a girl's life during a massacre, an elite triad assassin is targeted by an onslaught of murderous gangster. Timo Tjahjanto directs Iko Uwais and Joe Taslim in quite possibly the most brutal and bloody martial arts film ever made. After a tragic opening, the film briskly moves from one set piece to the next, with the plot just about stringing things together. Taslim plays the assassin who has a change of heart and decides to save an innocent life. This angers almost everyone and wave after wave of killers are sent after him, the girl and his friends. Along the way, Iko Uwais, an old gang member of Taslim's, is dispatched to get the job finished when others fails, neither realising that there is much more at stake. The level of violence in this picture is off the scale. I have never seen so many wounds, breakages, stabbings, shootings and beatings in the space of two hours. No one gets stabbed just once, throats get slashed, fingers cut off, faces smashed into the ground, two or three get their mouths widened and in an incredible scene, someone gets a bottle rammed into his face and his face slammed into a table. More than once I audibly gasped at what was taking place. The stunt work and fight choreography was excellent across the board and I was left wondering how they worked out and filmed almost every sequence. Every fight is a full on bloody slog. There's one about twenty minutes in that goes on for a good ten or twelve minutes and features a large number of people fighting in an apartment. There's a superb five man fight in the back of a police van and an equally well done battle in a living room between three vicious female assassins. And that's all before a fifteen minute wince inducing scrap which ends with an homage to Robocop. So much violence. The performances are generally of a high standard for what little normal acting the cast are called to do. It moves at a crackerjack pace and I think once the initial setup is done, there's barely five minutes between fights. The overall plot doesn't make a great deal of sense but I can't imagine anyone coming to this movie for the story. Bloody, brilliant action but not for the feint-hearted. Given this is only Tjahjanto's 2nd film, I'm interested to see where he goes from here.

The latter - it’s referenced once but ignored otherwise.

Demons 2 is excellent trashy fun.

No, not seen Spy actually. One of those films I keep meaning to watch but never getting round to.

The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) After she discovers her ex-boyfriend is a spy, Audrey Stockton, along with best friend Morgan Freeman, is tasked with taking an item to Europe. Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon play the two leads, life long friends who end up on a madcap spy chase in Europe. Justin Theroux plays the ex-boyfriend while Sam Heughan is a fellow spy who ends up getting involved in the escapades. Straight off the bat I'll say that if you don't get on with McKinnon's wackiness, you really won't like this film. She's loud, hyperactive and random, seeming out of control at times. Kunis is funny but essentially plays the straight woman of the duo. However, they make a really good team and have a genuine chemistry together. There's actually not that much in the way of other cast members. Gillian Anderson is the no-nonsense head of MI6, who needed a lot more screen time, while Jane Curtin and Paul Resier play McKinnon's parents (they are both excellent). There's also a bizarre eastern European assassin played by Ivanna Sakhno. I was impressed with this but it is not without its issues. The opening sequence is very well staged and there are some well shot, well choreographed action sequences through out the film. Much like The Hitman's Bodyguard (a picture which shares much with this one) I wasn't expecting the action to be so well staged. A shootout in a restaurant and a rescue sequence were among the highlights (though please, give up the CGI blood, Hollywood). It wastes no time getting going, and tells the backstory in random flashbacks, which are generally done away with as we enter the second hour. McKinnon has a lot of funny, random moments, and while many are good, there's definitely a feel that some could have been edited down or removed altogether. I think there in lies the film's biggest flaw - it is far too long. At the point when it should be wrapping up, it still had a good twenty five minutes to go. This is a very solid 90 minute movie stretched to 117 minutes, and it shows, particularly in the final third. It felt like test audiences had loved McKinnon's performance so they went back and added more. But there is much to like, it's funny, has a couple of quieter moments, the leads are likeable and while the plot (and double crosses) are a bit overdone, it all generally works. Good action sequences, with the film not shying away from quite a high level of violence. I also liked that it didn't feel the need to stick a wedge between the leads to create some fake drama. Enjoyable, a bit silly, but generally fun.

The Trust (2016) Two cops who work in the evidence division discover an unguarded safe and set about making plans to rob it. Nicolas Cage and Elijah Wood play two Las Vegas cops. The former is by the book were as the latter is all over the place. As the film opens we see him having sex with a prostitute, doing drugs and sneaking into work late. Cage discovers something odd amongst some evidence and convinces Wood to help him investigate. This results in one of them tailing a suspect while the other moonlights at a Las Vegas hotel. Before long they discover a building in which things go in but don't come out, and thanks to a bit of bribery, obtain floor plans that show the place recently had a huge safe installed. This was quite a good picture, with two interesting central performances. Apart from a very small cameo from Jerry Lewis (his last ever on screen role) playing Nic Cage's passive aggressive dad, the focus and runtime is set firmly on the two leads. Initially it seems to be playing it for laughs and there are a number of plot points introduced that end up going nowhere. It's hard to work out whether Cage is manipulating Wood into helping him, setting him up to take the fall, or just genuinely needs him. They plot and scheme and seem pretty rubbish at it, but then about 45 minutes in the film switches things up. There's hints of the characters swapping traits as one becomes more manic and dangerous, while the other is racked with anxiety and regret. The duo have good chemistry and Wood in particular played well against type. Cage becomes more unstable as the run time goes on but only has one or two moments of being over the top. I found it hard to get a handle on things and the film does its best to be ambiguous. The tonal shift, while not that extreme in the context of the picture, makes it feel like two different movies at certain points. The laughs go, the goofy nature of the characters vanish and it becomes more about getting whatever is in the safe even as things fall apart. It's not a bad picture and certainly better than most Cage movies (Mandy apart, obviously). I don't quite get the reason for all the plot strands that go nowhere though - is Wood married - the film focuses on his wedding ring a number of times but does nothing at all with it. Why is Cage trying to get a new computerised evidence system funded? Who does the safe belong to? There's even a bizarre phone conversation one of the characters has with a guy in Germany who makes diamond drill bits that's plain silly. A mish mash of plot and character type, and while not all of it works, I found this to be quite entertaining.

Yes, but that would have been good. Upcoming - hopefully this week The Crazies (1973) Suspiria and I’m trying to track down a copy of Deal of the Century, a Chevy Chase movie.

I wished I'd have chosen a better movie than Passengers to be the 300th I've seen this year.

Passengers (2008) After a plane crash, trauma therapist Claire Summers is called in to work with the survivors. When they start to go missing, she begins to suspect a cover up. The lovely Anne Hathaway plays Claire, a psychotherapist who doesn't like taking risks. She's asked to help treat a group of survivors, which includes Clea DuVall and Patrick Wilson, who are both displaying different reactions to surviving the crash. Wilson is upbeat and happy to be given another lease of life, where as DuVall is struggling to come to terms with things. When the group loses members, and a shady David Morse keeps showing up, Claire begins to suspect the airline is killing people to stop them talking about what really happened. This was all over the place, having no idea how it wanted to play things. A romantic drama, a mystery and perhaps a ghost flick. Hathaway is constantly battling herself and her reluctance to step outside the box. Wilson comes along and helps her be who she really is, instead of her helping him. Characters come and go, David Morse gets to act threatening, and before long Hathaway isn't even sure of herself. You'll likely figure it out long before any of the cast do. This had some interesting moments and the leads make a decent couple, but it was cliched and felt largely directionless. By the time everyone had worked out what was happening, I wasn't really all that bothered anymore. It's essentially a mixture of four or five films and wasted a lot of the talent it had. It never felt life affirming and there wasn't enough of one thing to give the film something to hang on to.

Sorry to Bother You (2018) A disillusioned guy takes a job as a telemarketer, and realises he's very good at it, but at what cost to himself? Lakeith Stanfield stars as Cassius Cash Green, a guy down on his luck who needs money to pay the rent at his uncle's house. He takes up the job of a telemarketer and fails miserably until an older colleague (played by Danny Glover) tells him he needs to use a 'white voice'. With this instruction he quickly becomes the number one salesperson and is elevated to the next floor, the mystical Power Caller section. His artist girlfriend, played by Tessa Thompson isn't so sure of it all and as Cash starts to become distant to his life and friends, he doesn't stop often enough to consider what his success is doing. As well as this, there's a subplot involving Cash's lower floor co-workers, as well as talk of the WorryFree company. Set in an alternative America, there's very little difference between it and the real thing. This is an incredible debut feature from director Boots Riley and works on so many levels that I imagine there's at least one sub-layer I wasn't even aware of. The look of the picture is amazing, and the composition of some of the shots makes you feel you're watching a seasoned professional at work. It's full of colour and noise, and so many great characters. Lakeith Stanfield is a superb lead, a likeable guy who embraces his new life, while quietly trying to ignore the voice in his head. The use of the dubbed 'white voice' was very clever and the whole set up of the building itself made an interesting dynamic, more so as the protest kicks off. There's so much going on here that even minor moments are full of something - be it comedy, drama, satire or something else. The film also manages to pull the rug from under you a couple of times. When you think it's going to be a romantic drama, it switches. There are laughs and funny sequences, but there's also plenty of moments when I questioned if I should be laughing at something. Even before the switch toward the end, the film has already covered and discarded a number of plot points that some movies would balance an entire film on. There's wackiness, oddness and a general feeling of seeing a world that leans just enough to the side to make you realise it isn't actually our world. The WorryFree company (headed by a brilliantly bizarre Armie Hammer) could be its own movie in itself. There's an insane commercial that's also well worth seeing. Then the film really switches things up in those last thirty minutes. It really shouldn't work but in the context of the picture, it makes some kind of ridiculous sense. I don't want to oversell it because I can imagine some people will be lost by it. I wasn't sure it worked, and I'm still not sure, but it's never less than utterly fascinating. It does have elements of Get Out, with the oddness of Society (but not the gore or body horror as such). There were points when it even reminded me of The Running Man. There's simply so much going on. An audacious debut and a film that is sure to gain a reaction from anyone who sees it - whether its love or dislike, I don't know, but it's a film well worth seeing.

I don't know actually, whichever the default one is. I've not changed any graphic settings or anything, other than to have it show all games instead of just favourites.

I downloaded it but imagine it'll turn up in most places soon. It's nothing like Society in terms of that film's ending, but it's definitely got a very odd vibe about.

Not sure - the build I have is windows based, but I did read more options would be coming. Must admit I loved that it was auto configured to work with both sticks for Smash TV. How big is 2.5 Gold? I grabbed 2.0 packed and it was 46gb!

Yes, the .bat files are genius. I have Gold and Packed but trying to move the c64 from one to the other is tedious. Are there art/video packs available? Just trying to get the art for Uridium from x to y was frustrating. I can’t figure out how to add games to existing systems - I assume without the art it would just show a name. Really needs a good user guide. I messed around with RetroFE documents but they seem complicated for their own good. I got it to set up the folder structure but pointing it at the emulator by editing conf files is a pain.

Just watched Sorry to Bother You. I’m going to need a little time to comprehend it. Visually stunning, like a music video but with story and performances to match. A really impressive 90 minutes. And then.....I agree with Silent Runner - it’s Get Out spliced with Society and goodness knows what else.