Fear not, for ‘ere this day is done, you shall have a hole in one.

The Avengers

4.16: The Thirteenth Hole

A strange one this, for the first twenty minutes The Thirteenth Hole looks as if it’s going to be the most generic of all oddball Avengers scenarios – super villains up to murderous acts on the golf course, and Steed and Mrs Peel must investigate – but turns things around for a highly entertaining last half as Steed engages in a tournament filled with dirty tricks (many of them courtesy of Mrs Peel, aiding and abetting him).

Steed: Poor Ted. Never had the chance to swing his steel-shafted handle-to-head niblick. He was shot with a rifle at long range.

Mrs Peel: Right down the fairway?

No time is wasted showing who is doing what, namely Reed (Patrick Allen, his most illustrious credit being the announcer of The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer. I’m kidding. Or am I?) and Jackson (Victor Maddern, Hobson in Fury from the Deep), offing agent Ted Murphy (Bill Hibbert) at the thirteenth hole in the opening scene (303 being the “club” of choice). This sets Steed and Emma on the trail, owing to Ted having kept tabs on scientific types. Helpfully, there are a load of score cards in his wardrobe, so soon they are off to the Craigleigh Gold Club, to hang about, get admonished by patrons and generally snoop.

Waversham: I wouldn’t mind giving you a stroke or two. On or off the course.

Various types announce themselves, including the club professional Collins (Francis Matthews), who acts suspiciously but is actually just suspicious (of others, and who ends up killed by a gas-propelled golf ball for his troubles) and Waversham (Donal Hewlett, Hardiman in The Claws of Axos), who’s keen on Emma, in the lascivious old buffer sense.

Also present are Colonel Watson (Hugh Manning) and Dr Adams (Peter Jones, the Book in The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, keeping with the voiceover theme), who is part of Reed’s scheme (it’s eventually revealed that the bunker at the thirteenth contains an actual bunker – geddit? – complete with mastermind Colonel Watson, periscope and communications with a Russian satellite, Vostik 2).

Mrs Peel: Fear not, for ‘ere this day is done, you shall have a hole in one. I am your fairy godmother. I want you to win this game.

Steed: Why, have you got money on me?

By this point, Emma has been taken captive while Steed completes his round with Adams, who has been told to let Steed blow himself up on the twelfth via an explosive in the hole (“I’m afraid it will damage the greens considerably”). But that’s getting ahead of the good stuff. If you can get past the constant alternating studio close ups and location wide shots (and you’ll need to, to enjoy any of the latter seasons of the show), Steed’s various matches are hugely enjoyable.

Helping matters is Allen, not because the part is up to much, but because he gives such incredulous reactions to Steed’s various put-ons (checking the course with various gauges to judge wind, course and correction; he also keeps his ball in his hat), and is such a dirty cheat (dropping his caddy as Steed is about to strike). Whatever Reed gets up to, though, Emma gets up to worse, burying his ball in mud and depositing Steed’s in the hole.

Mrs Peel: It really is the height of pessimism to have a hat lined with chain mail.

Adding to the amusement, Jackson fails to execute Steed with a golf ball (“If it hadn’t been for my trusty hat”), so the latter is raring to go against Adams, whom Jones gives just the right air of out-of-his-depth angst (“Got you worried, ay? The game ahead?”), added to by the fully-apprised Steed needling him (“One up, Still, things may change. Around about the thirteenth”) and procrastinating by cutting the grass with nail scissors. When Steed eventually comes across the landmine, he manages to win the round by potting his ball from the shelter of the bunker with some impressive cueing action.

Even the big fight is entertainingly offbeat, with the Russians on the other end of the TV monitor reacting to the altercation (until Steed smashes the screen), Emma fighting while cuffed to a chair and Steed finally taking out a fleeing Watson with a well-aimed ball.

The handcuffs inspire a gag about Emma’s handicap and there’s another during the subsequent golf cart drive off in regard to Steed’s champers-uncorking wrist action (“I thought you said you could do it in one”). Why the bad guys need the ruse of playing at all is anyone’s guess, but that’s part of the pleasure of this kind of episode. It’s not so much the final logic, but the playing of the game.

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

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) (SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek , but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

You ever heard the saying, “Don’t rob the bank across from the diner that has the best donuts in three counties”?

2 Guns (2013) (SPOILERS) Denzel Washington is such a reliable performer, that it can get a bit boring. You end up knowing every gesture or inflection in advance, whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. And his films are generally at least half decent, so you end up seeing them. Even in Flight (or perhaps especially in Flight ; just watch him chugging down that vodka) where he’s giving it his Oscar-nominatable best, he seems too familiar. I think it may be because he’s an actor who is more effective the less he does. In 2 Guns he’s not doing less, but sometimes it seems like it. That’s because the last person I’d ever expect blows him off the screen; Mark Wahlberg.

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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