The aliens are not coming, just so you know.

The X-Files

11.1: My Struggle III

(SPOILERS) Good grief. Have things become so terminal for Chris Carter that he has to retcon his own crap from the previous season, rather than the (what he perceived as) crap written by others? Carter, of course, infamously pretended the apocalyptic ending of Millennium Season Two never happened, upset by the path Glen Morgan and James Wong, left to their own devices, took with his baby. Their episode was one of the greats of that often-ho-hum series, so the comedown was all the unkinder as a result. In My Struggle III, at least, Carter’s rewriting something that wasn’t very good in the first place. Only, he replaces it with something that is even worse in the second.

So Scully wakes up in hospital, and everything we saw in My Struggle II was a foretelling at best. Or just a dream, like that season of Dallas, only she isn’t in the shower and now not enough people are watching to give a shit. And Mulder, as is inevitable with these unimaginative Carter envisionings, must turn sceptic when Scully turns prophetic (we had the same thing when they introduced disbelieving Doggett).

Scully has very little to do but lie in bed, and God knows she’s done enough of that during the series, while Mulder eventually races off to find CSM, accompanied by a ridiculously apathetic – even by Carter’s standards – voice over (“I was running only on adrenaline and Scully’s premonitions”). Mind you, he isn’t any worse off than Dana, who is experiencing some pretty Garth Merenghi’s Dark Place-standard medical care (“Neurologically speaking, her brain’s on fire”), and is somehow able to transmit a message in Morse Code while comatose.

Carter’s always been all over the place as a director, but here he’s as borderline incoherent as his teleplay. Nothing hangs together, and his instinct to rake over the coals of long dead embers of X-lore and characters elicits no sparks whatsoever. The best I can say is that Chris Owens (Spender) has aged more interestingly than Duchovny, who between finishing up Californication and taking on this new run has become a cross between Walter Matthau and Bob Mortimer, such that he seems to be uncomfortably squeezed into his traditional FBI suit. I suppose you could regard his graphically slitting the throat of Scully’s would-be assassin as something different, but by this point in the episode, no tonal aberration on Carter’s part really surprised me.

Besides Spender, who was never very interesting in the first place and for some reason seems to have been entrusted by our intrepid duo, we have William, their son, one of the least productive elements of the ailing later stage arcs of the original run, who rather than being Fox’s son is revealed as the product of Scully being artificially impregnated by his dirty old dad (during En Ami, it seems). What’s the betting we find this wasn’t so at all by the end of the season? Or at the start of the next. Is there a less called for returnee than CSM? I felt he was past his expiry date around the point he had an episode devoted to his memories (and that was only Season 4), and Carter’s really flogging a dead horse here, making him the Big Bad again and in so doing shrinking the size and potential of the X-universe irreparably. Do something new, for goodness sake. His mere invocation is a surrender to the absence of the creative impulse.

Poor old Skinner, meanwhile, would actually be a welcome presence if they gave him something to do, other than be on the receiving end of the umpteenth unnecessary string of accusations from Mulder (“Whose side are you on?!”)

Is there anything good to be said about My Struggle III? The one great coup of is the faked Moon landing pullback one-shot in a TV studio. There’s also more from the Georgia Guidestones by inference (although none of that happened now, or yet), and mention of a secret space programme, one of the more buzzed about assertions of conspiracy lore these days. Oh, and CSM clears up that the aliens aren’t coming anymore, because it’s all a bit of a lost cause down here. Why, precisely? I think it must be Trump – everything suddenly is, after all – if Carter’s hilarious incontinent opening montage is anything to go by. Who knew the X-world had only suddenly turned to shit, when in fact its covert shitness had been the series’ theme all along? But Carter’s always been at his worst when trying to be political/topical. We’re told at one point that Mulder doesn’t want to believe. With an episode this pitiful, who can blame him?

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

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(SPOILERS) Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to its telling – as Empire magazine put it, “you soon… fuggadaboutit” – but you don’t. There was no point during The Irishman that I was other than entirely, regrettably conscious that a 75-year-old man was playing the title character. Except when he was playing a 75-year-old man.

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Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

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For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

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Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Ex-coke dealer Tim Allen’s underwhelming box office career is, like Vince Vaughn’s, regularly in need of a boost from an indiscriminate public willing to see any old turkey posing as a prize Christmas comedy. He made three Santa Clauses, and here is joined by Jamie Lee Curtis as a couple planning to forgo the usual neighbourhood festivities for a cruise.

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(SPOILERS) With the space of thirty-five years, Bill Forsyth’s gentle eco-parable feels more seductive than ever. Whimsical is a word often applied to Local Hero, but one shouldn’t mistake that description for its being soft in the head, excessively sentimental or nostalgic. Tonally, in terms of painting a Scottish idyll where the locals are no slouches in the face of more cultured foreigners, the film hearkens to both Powell and Pressburger (I Know Where I’m Going!) and Ealing (Whisky Galore!), but it is very much its own beast.

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(SPOILERS) “If Agatha Christie were writing today, she’d have a character who’s an Internet troll.” There’s a slew of ifs and buts in that assertion, but it tells you a lot about where Rian Johnson is coming from with Knives Out. As in, Christie might – I mean, who can really say? – but it’s fair to suggest she wouldn’t be angling her material the way Johnson does, who for all his pronouncement that “This isn’t a message movie” is very clearly making one. He probably warrants a hesitant pass on that statement, though, to the extent that Knives Out’s commentary doesn’t ultimately overpower the whodunnit side of the plot. On the other hand, when Daniel Craig’s eccentrically accented sleuth Benoit Blanc is asked “You’re not much of a detective, are you?” the only fair response is vigorous agreement.

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Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
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Marriage Story (2019)
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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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