Hello Johnny, how are you today?

Twin Peaks

3.10: Laura is the one.

(SPOILERS) I’ve a theory that all it takes to tip a solid episode of Twin Peaks (in any season) into a great one are three or four slices of sublime strangeness. The rest can hum along amiably, in contrast to that electricity the Log Lady has something to say about, but it’s those scenes that define the overall shape and energy. Laura is the one has a good three or four, and maybe the funniest sustained Lynchian visual gag so far.

That comes in the form of the Mitchum brothers, or to be more precise Robert Knepper’s Rodney. He’s aided and abetted by Candie (Amy Shiels), part airhead, part fruit bat, attempting to swat a fly while Rodney examines casino surveillance logs. And like most of the director’s comic gold, this goes on and on and on, and you absolutely know it will end with Rodney getting clobbered. I wasn’t expecting it to be with the TV remote, though.

I’m not certain Candie’s mental state, sustained though it is, is going to be about anything other than her being in Lynch world, but the Mitchum boys gradually getting more and more frustrated with her while trying not lose it (“If you fire her, she’s got no place to go” asserts Bradley of one of his trio of, ahem, employees, as she spends five minutes on the casino floor talking about nothing to Anthony Sinclair instead of bringing him to see them).

Bradley Mitchum: That’s our Mr Jackpot, Rodney. Turns out our Mr Jones is actually Mr Jones.

I like that we’re getting to see their thick-as-thieves thinking too; “Brad, remind me to call off that hit on Ike” suggests Rodney as they watch news of the Spike’s apprehension. On first sight, this duo were simply intimidating, but now, with the Candie-inspired weirdness percolating their milieu, I want more of their surprisingly warped world. Their place in the scheme of things, meanwhile, is taking perfectly logical shape, as they’re (seemingly – Bradley does comment of Anthony “I could throw a car farther than I trust that rat fuck”) duped into believing Dougie ensured they didn’t get a $30m insurance pay out and has a vendetta against them, when really it’s Anthony in cahoots with rival casino guy Warrick (in turn in with Evil Coop).

Other weirdness, of a decidedly more psychotic kind, revolves around the Horne family. Richard, now established as most definitely Audrey’s daughter, is on a vituperative roll, bashing poor Miriam’s head in during an off camera one-shot on her trailer (last we saw, she was still breathing, though), and breaking into granny’s house and stealing her money.

It’s another of those queasily hilarious scenes, because of what’s going on at the edges. Johnny, tied to a chair with oven gloves on his hands and sporting a hard hat, so he can’t hurt himself any more, while a headless teddy on the table repeatedly queries “Hello Johnny, how are you today?” It’s a mesmerising scene. That said, at about the point where Richard’s screaming “Cunt!” at his gran, I was admittedly given pause to wonder if the restrictions of mainstream TV don’t promote a creativity all their own, and Lynch’s licence to do anything may not always be the best of all possible worlds. Which may just be the Mary Whitehouse in me.

Completing the Horne-swoggling this episode, we discover Ben is no longer with Sylvia and one good phone call (or bad phone call) persuades him an affair with Beverly may actually be a good idea. And Jerry’s still in the woods, still bereft of a phone signal.

Richard is definitely stacking up a whole world of pain for himself, as is snot-nosed spousal abuser Steven Burnett, but the character closest to being meted any kind of justice is nominally on the other side of the law. We knew Chad was a bad ’un, and now we know he’s an even worse ‘un, in cahoots with Richard Horne and believing he can hoodwink Lucy on the basis that she’s a bubble brain. So it’s pleasing to see she has duly noted Chad lifting Miriam’s grassing letter (the postie’s no slouch, either).

Nor can you can’t pull the wool over Albert and Gordon Cole’s eyes, since they have Diane’s number even if they don’t know who has hers (as for a photo of Evil Coop at the scene of the penthouse murders just happening to show up now – I still think it’s a bit too neat if he’s calling the shots there too, as I was hoping for some other individual or element to be involved). And isn’t it lovely to see romance blossoming between Albert and Constance?

Janey-E: Dougie, do you find me attractive?

Which is also the case, in a significantly more one-sided sense, with Janey-E and Dougie-Coop. Carnality abounds at any rate, with Janey-E turning Coop into the rumpo kid. It’s another funny scene as, having marvelled over her husband’s newly taut body, and been completely ignored in favour of chocolate cake, she rides Coop, his arms flailing like a puppet on a string and looking duly cheery afterwards. Can you see Coop suddenly getting his marbles back at this point? Me neither. As for Janey-E becoming smitten with a mentally-challenged, non-responsive husband. Well, maybe she’s starting on the crazy pills. Or just very, very shallow.

Dr Jacobi: They’re too busy fucking! Fucking us at the grocery store! Fucking us at the bank! At the gas pump!

Other vignettes: another marvellously splenetic rant from Jacobi, this time about big pharma (as Nadine looks on from the premises of cutely-named Run Silent, Run Drapes), Harry Dean Stanton playing the guitar, Gordon’s vision of a giant Laura at the door, reminding me of nothing so much as The Goodies’ Kitten Kong (and his drawing of a, well, a reindeer anteater – a reineater? – being attacked by an elastic arm), and one of the Log Lady’s ever-cryptic calls to Hawk, warning of the glow that is dying and how the Truman brothers are among the good ones, and how he should “Watch and listen to the dream of time and space. It all comes out now, flowing like a river. Hawk, Laura is the one”. I was struck that Gordon is effectively filling in for the kind of experience absent-in-mind Coop ought to be having; is this the first example of the season improvising to cover for that state of affairs?

And Moby, at the Bang Bang Club, supporting Rebekah Del Rio in a song that sounds like it would have fitted right in 25 years ago, appropriate as the Mobe-ster lifted the Laura Palmer’s Theme for his first big hit (Go). Of the two pop artists getting billing in fantasy shows this week (the other being Ed Sheerhan dressed as a soldier), this is by far the more elegant and unassuming one. From the man who used to play nob-touch, no less.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Your honor, with all due respect: if you're going to try my case for me, I wish you wouldn't lose it.

The Verdict (1982)
(SPOILERS) Sidney Lumet’s return to the legal arena, with results every bit as compelling as 12 Angry Men a quarter of a century earlier. This time the focus is on the lawyer, in the form of Paul Newman’s washed-up ambulance chaser Frank Galvin, given a case that finally matters to him. In less capable hands, The Verdict could easily have resorted to a punch-the-air piece of Hollywood cheese, but, thanks to Lumet’s earthy instincts and a sharp, unsentimental screenplay from David Mamet, this redemption tale is one of the genre’s very best.

And it could easily have been otherwise. The Verdict went through several line-ups of writer, director and lead, before reverting to Mamet’s original screenplay. There was Arthur Hiller, who didn’t like the script. Robert Redford, who didn’t like the subsequent Jay Presson Allen script and brought in James Bridges (Redford didn’t like that either). Finally, the producers got the hump with the luxuriantly golden-haired star for meetin…

He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

Never mind. You may be losing a carriage, but he’ll be gaining a bomb.

The Avengers 5.13: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station
Continuing a strong mid-season run, Brian Clemens rejigs one of the dissenting (and departing) Roger Marshall's scripts (hence "Brian Sheriff") and follows in the steps of the previous season's The Girl from Auntie by adding a topical-twist title (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum came out a year earlier). If this is one of those stories where you know from the first who's doing what to whom, the actual mechanism for the doing is a strong and engaging one, and it's pepped considerably by a supporting cast including one John Laurie (2.11: Death of a Great Dane, 3.2: Brief for Murder).

The simple fact is, your killer is in your midst. Your killer is one of you.

The Avengers 5.12: The Superlative Seven
I’ve always rather liked this one, basic as it is in premise. If the title consciously evokes The Magnificent Seven, to flippant effect, the content is Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, but played out with titans of their respective crafts – including John Steed, naturally – encountering diminishing returns. It also boasts a cast of soon-to-be-famous types (Charlotte Rampling, Brian Blessed, Donald Sutherland), and the return of one John Hollis (2.16: Warlock, 4.7: The Cybernauts). Kanwitch ROCKS!

Dude, you're embarrassing me in front of the wizards.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
(SPOILERS) The cliffhanger sequel, as a phenomenon, is a relatively recent thing. Sure, we kind of saw it with The Empire Strikes Back – one of those "old" movies Peter Parker is so fond of – a consequence of George Lucas deliberately borrowing from the Republic serials of old, but he had no guarantee of being able to complete his trilogy; it was really Back to the Future that began the trend, and promptly drew a line under it for another decade. In more recent years, really starting with The Matrix – The Lord of the Rings stands apart as, post-Weinstein's involvement, fashioned that way from the ground up – shooting the second and third instalments back-to-back has become a thing, both more cost effective and ensuring audiences don’t have to endure an interminable wait for their anticipation to be sated. The flipside of not taking this path is an Allegiant, where greed gets the better of a studio (split a novel into two movie parts assuming a…

Who are you and why do you know so much about car washes?

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
(SPOILERS) The belated arrival of the Ant-Man sequel on UK shores may have been legitimately down to World Cup programming, but it nevertheless adds to the sense that this is the inessential little sibling of the MCU, not really expected to challenge the grosses of a Doctor Strange, let alone the gargantuan takes of its two predecessors this year. Empire magazine ran with this diminution, expressing disappointment that it was "comparatively minor and light-hitting" and "lacks the scale and ambition of recent Marvel entries". Far from deficits, for my money these should be regard as accolades bestowed upon Ant-Man and the Wasp; it understands exactly the zone its operating in, yielding greater dividends than the three most recent prior Marvel entries the review cites in its efforts at point scoring.

I freely chose my response to this absurd world. If given the opportunity, I would have been more vigorous.

The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
(SPOILERS) I suspect, if I hadn’t been ignorant of the story of Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee selling secrets to the Soviets during the ‘70s, I’d have found The Falcon and the Snowman less engaging than I did. Which is to say that John Schlesinger’s film has all the right ingredients to be riveting, including a particularly camera-hogging performance from Sean Penn (as Lee), but it’s curiously lacking in narrative drive. Only fitfully does it channel the motives of its protagonists and their ensuing paranoia. As such, the movie makes a decent primer on the case, but I ended up wondering if it might not be ideal fodder for retelling as a miniseries.

Everyone creates the thing they dread.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
(SPOILERS) Avengers: Age of Ultron’s problem isn’t one of lack. It benefits from a solid central plot. It features a host of standout scenes and set pieces. It hands (most of) its characters strong defining moments. It doesn’t even suffer now the “wow” factor of seeing the team together for the first time has subsided. Its problem is that it’s too encumbered. Maybe its asking to much of a director to effectively martial the many different elements required by an ensemble superhero movie such as this, yet Joss Whedon’s predecessor feels positively lean in comparison.

Part of this is simply down to the demands of the vaster Marvel franchise machine. Seeds are laid for Captain America: Civil War, Infinity Wars I & II, Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok. It feels like several spinning plates too many. Such activity occasionally became over-intrusive on previous occasions (Iron Man II), but there are points in Age of Ultron where it becomes distractingly so. …

Just make love to that wall, pervert!

Seinfeld 2.10: The Statue
The Premise
Jerry employs a cleaner, the boyfriend of an author whose book Elaine is editing. He leaves the apartment spotless, but Jerry is convinced he has made off with a statue.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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