All the royals wanted was a brood mare crossed with a clothes horse.

Unlawful Killing

(2011)

This Mohamed Al Fayed-financed documentary, fronted by the one and only – mercifully – Keith Allen, boasts the honour of being unshown in the UK owing to 87 changes, requested for legal reasons, that the producers refused to make. It’s readily viewable on YouTube, however, where it can be considered for what it does or doesn’t add to the conspiracy conversation surrounding Princess Diana’s death. While it presents examining the inquest as its remit (“It is the inquest of the inquest” as Allen puts it) its net is cast wider than that, and it’s in that capacity that it ultimately ends up undermining itself.

Written by Victor Lewis-Smith and Paul Sparks (of TV Offal, and Gay Daleks fame), presumably with some input from the man holding the purse strings, Keith gets his point across in his patented rough-around-the-edges manner, although any deficiencies on his part are thrown into sharp relief when Piers Morgan is invited to ooze across the screen (“As she used to say to me” he comments of Princess Di at one point). Allen and co are strong on the inquest being pretty hopeless and the evidentiary blackholes of cleaning the crime scene, lack of operating surveillance cameras, the embalming of the body, the error-ridden medical reports, the disparities between repeated police searches, no royals being called to give evidence (despite Di’s note concerning the manner in which she suspected she’d be bumped off by them) and the amount of time it took for the world’s slowest ambulance to reach a nearby hospital (37 minutes to get her into the ambulance, 81 minutes to set off to the hospital, 1 hr 43 minutes before it arrived at the hospital). Most of all, on the commonly held error that the jury put the blame on the paparazzi, which was certainly the way most of the media reported it: in fact, they declared her death an unlawful killing (so murder or manslaughter) by vehicles following (being the white Fiat Uno and motorcycles seen by eye witnesses, which it seems there was no subsequent urgency to trace).

I’m less convinced of the need to obsess about Nicholas Witchall falling asleep in the press room, in order to underline that the BBC, and the press generally, had decided how they were going to report the case before it started. Not because it may not have been true, but because it’s judicious to pick your targets. Likewise Princess Philip and his Nazi connections; yeah, I know Al-Fayed views them as a “bloody racist royal family” and the Duke of Edinburgh self-admittedly is, but if you’re going to make a case for their offing her and Dodi on race grounds you probably ought to go the whole hog and get deep into the bloodline purity angle David Icke is so fond of; as presented here, it feels a little desperate, as does the landmines argument (which is the Di equivalent of JFK wanting to pull out of Nam, but it’s debatable if it’s actually equally so).

At the end of the YouTube documentary, the poster included an excerpt from an Icke talk, clearly as a counterpoint, in which David puts forward his theory that Mohamed Al-Fayed was also in on her murder (it was clearly the old double bluff to bring the court case), based on his allegedly attending satanic rituals with the Queen at the Chateau des Amerois (Castle of Darkness) in Belgium and persuading Dodi to call off the security detail on the day of the killings (Al-Fayed claims to have issued no such instruction, not in response to Icke, I should stress, although it’s notable that this aspect isn’t broached at all by Allen). Now, sure, it’s feasible Al-Fayed was involved, thought his son would come out unscathed and sought vengeance through the courts when he didn’t, but it requires an additionally elaborate and tenuous set of arguments, irrespective of the royals being lizards or the driver being mind-controlled to hit the thirteenth pillar (once David starts connecting those dots, he just can’t stop). I note he makes no mention of Al-Fayed’s alleged involvement in his summaries of her death in his most recent couple of books. For brevity’s sake?

An interesting doc, then, but not the curtain lifter its legal status might suggest.

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

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

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.

People still talk about Pandapocalypse 2002.

Turning Red (2022) (SPOILERS) Those wags at Pixar, eh? Yes, the most – actually, the only – impressive thing about Turning Red is the four-tiered wordplay of its title. Thirteen-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang) finds herself turning into a large red panda at emotive moments. She is also, simultaneously, riding the crimson wave for the first time. Further, as a teenager, she characteristically suffers from acute embarrassment (mostly due to the actions of her domineering mother Ming Lee, voiced by Sandra Oh). And finally, of course, Turning Red can be seen diligently spreading communist doctrine left, right and centre. To any political sensibility tuning in to Disney+, basically (so ones with either considerable or zero resistance to woke). Take a guess which of these isn’t getting press in reference to the movie? And by a process of elimination is probably what it it’s really about (you know in the same way most Pixars, as far back as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc . can be given an insi

I can’t be the worst. What about that hotdog one?

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) (SPOILERS) It would have been a merciful release, had the title card “ The End ”, flashing on screen a little before the ninety-minute mark, not been a false dawn. True, I would still have been unable to swab the bloody dildoes fight from my mind, but at least Everything Everywhere All at Once would have been short. Indeed, by the actual end I was put in mind of a line spoken by co-star James Wong in one of his most indelible roles: “ Now this really pisses me off to no end ”. Or to put it another way, Everything Everywhere All at Once rubbed me up the wrong which way quite a lot of most of the time.

We’ve got the best ball and chain in the world. Your ass.

Wedlock (1991) (SPOILERS) The futuristic prison movie seemed possessed of a particular cachet around this time, quite possibly sparked by the grisly possibilities of hi-tech disincentives to escape. On that front, HBO TV movie Wedlock more than delivers its FX money shot. Elsewhere, it’s less sure of itself, rather fumbling when it exchanges prison tropes for fugitives-on-the-run ones.

Well, something’s broke on your daddy’s spaceship.

Apollo 13 (1995) (SPOILERS) The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo Hanks at his all-American popularity peak?

He's not in my pyjamas, is he?

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) (SPOILERS) By rights, Paul Mazursky’s swinging, post-flower-power-gen partner-swap movie ought to have aged terribly. So much of the era’s scene-specific fare has, particularly so when attempting to reflect its reverberations with any degree of serious intent. Perhaps it’s because Mazursky and co-writer Larry Tucker (also of The Monkees , Alex in Wonderland and I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! ) maintain a wry distance from their characters’ endeavours, much more on the wavelength of Elliott Gould’s Ted than Robert Culp’s Bob; we know any pretensions towards uninhibited expression can’t end well, but we also know Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice have to learn the hard way.

We could be mauled to death by an interstellar monster!

Star Trek Beyond (2016) (SPOILERS) The odd/even Star Trek failure/success rule seemed to have been cancelled out with the first reboot movie, and then trodden into ground with Into Darkness (which, yes, I quite enjoyed, for all its scandalous deficiencies). Star Trek Beyond gets us back onto more familiar ground, as it’s very identifiably a “lesser” Trek , irrespective of the big bucks and directorial nous thrown at it. This is a Star Trek movie that can happily stand shoulder to shoulder with The Search for Spock and Insurrection , content in the knowledge they make it look good.

I think World War II was my favourite war.

Small Soldiers (1998) An off-peak Joe Dante movie is still one chock-a-block full of satirical nuggets and comic inspiration, far beyond the facility of most filmmakers. Small Soldiers finds him back after a six-year big screen absence, taking delirious swipes at the veneration of the military, war movies, the toy industry, conglomerates and privatised defence forces. Dante’s take is so gleefully skewed, he even has big business win! The only problem with the picture (aside from an indistinct lead, surprising from a director with a strong track record for casting juveniles) is that this is all very familiar. Dante acknowledged Small Soldiers was basically a riff on Gremlins , and it is. Something innocuous and playful turns mad, bad and dangerous. On one level it has something in common with Gremlins 2: The New Batch , in that the asides carry the picture. But Gremlins 2 was all about the asides, happy to wander off in any direction that suited it oblivious to whet

He’ll regret it to his dying day, if ever he lives that long.

The Quiet Man (1952) (SPOILERS) The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well less Anglophile and Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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