What we sell are hidden truths. Our territory is the mind. Our merchandise is fear.

The Avengers

5.1: The Fear Merchants

The colour era doesn't get off to such a great start with The Fear Merchants, an Avengers episode content to provide unstinting averageness. About the most notable opinion you’re likely to come away with is that Patrick Cargill rocks some magnificent shades.

I do, however, love the new opening titles, my favourites of the show, Sergio Leone stopping off in Kensington with a few days to kill. The show's boosted production values may not extend to disguising the Macnee and Rigg body doubles/stunt people (although there seems to be a sight gag in a hospital at one point you might think was drawing attention to this very thing) but there's definitely added flash involved, as Gordon Flemyng (the two Dalek movies) visits Wembley stadium for the first shot; the budget's all up there on screen.

Pemberton: What we sell are hidden truths. Our territory is the mind. Our merchandise is fear. The inner fabric of us all, Mrs Peel.

Less so in Philip Levene's teleplay, which feels very familiar, even if it hasn't quite been done before. Cargill's Pemberton and his Business Efficiency Bureau are bumping off the competition of Brian "Foggy" Wilde’s ceramics manufacturer Raven – who seems a fairly low-grade client for such a ruthless business – via a method of frightening them with their worst fears to the point of death or incapacitation: open spaces, mice – Bernard Horsfall comes a cropper there – speed, birds, spiders.

As one would expect, Steed employs their services to kill Mrs Peel. Unfortunately, he rather messes up by fibbing in response to every question they ask him (there's a a lie detector in his chair). A fight in a quarry ensues – a popular location this season, but at least the leads' doubles are getting out in the fresh air, I guess – with an implied death by toppling bulldozer.

Pemberton: You're extremely well adjusted, Mrs Peel.

Mrs Peel: And just look where it's got me.

There's an amusing subsequent interrogation of Mrs Peel. Well, about as mirthsome as this episode gets, as she irritates Pemberton with her mockery ("I know, it goes around and around, and it all comes out here" she observes of their method) and proves resistant to analysis (the fear index admits she is "beyond capacity").

Raven: Ah, a lesser-billed white-chested nighthawk.

Steed: Charming, quite charming.

Raven: Not quite charming enough, Mr Steed.

Wilde's also good value in his scenes with Macnee, Steed presenting himself as a representative of the Monopolies Commission and completely failing to grasp Raven's idiosyncratic grasp of ceramic quality ("Mr Steed – that’s perfection!" he intervenes, as Steed is about to follow Raven's example and smash a piece).

Mrs Peel: Somebody tipped a display cabinet on me. Half a ton of china came raining down. Quite unnerving.

Steed: (avoiding Emma's chips of plaster) I can imagine how he felt.

The regulars have, of course, honed their interplay to an effortless art, with business including Steed avoiding Emma's sculpting chips and a new introductory strategy: a box of chocolates reveals a "Mrs Peel – we're needed" card, a motif that will run throughout the season. As such, the final gags are (mostly) less OTT than in Season Four, here restricted to some interplay about what to do with chocolates but no champagne ("Now, that really frightened you, didn’t it?")

The Fear Merchants' guest cast includes Annette Carell (B in The Prisoner: A. B. and C.), and Edward Burnham (Professor Kettlewell in Robot), but even Cargill and Wilder can't prevent it from being a decidedly run-of-the-mill affair.

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

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You guys sure like watermelon.

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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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Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

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Knives Out (2019)
(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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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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Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

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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Last Action Hero (1993)
(SPOILERS) Make no mistake, Last Action Hero is a mess. But even as a mess, it might be more interesting than any other movie Arnie made during that decade, perhaps even in his entire career. Hellzapoppin’ (after the 1941 picture, itself based on a Broadway revue) has virtually become an adjective to describe films that comment upon their own artifice, break the fourth wall, and generally disrespect the convention of suspending disbelief in the fictions we see parading across the screen. It was fairly audacious, some would say foolish, of Arnie to attempt something of that nature at this point in his career, which was at its peak, rather than playing it safe. That he stumbled profoundly, emphatically so since he went up against the behemoth that is Jurassic Park (slotted in after the fact to open first), should not blind one to the considerable merits of his ultimate, and final, really, attempt to experiment with the limits of his screen persona.

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Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
(SPOILERS) When I wrote my 23 to see in 2019, I speculated that James Cameron might be purposefully giving his hand-me-downs to lesser talents because he hubristically didn’t want anyone making a movie that was within a spit of the proficiency we’ve come to expect from him. Certainly, Robert Rodriguez and Tim Miller are leagues beneath Kathryn Bigelow, Jimbo’s former spouse and director of his Strange Days screenplay. Miller’s no slouch when it comes to action – which is what these movies are all about, let’s face it – but neither is he a craftsman, so all those reviews attesting that Terminator: Dark Fate is the best in the franchise since Terminator 2: Judgment Day may be right, but there’s a considerable gulf between the first sequel (which I’m not that big a fan of) and this retcon sequel to that sequel.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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