StokerScore: Gogglebox - Into The Badlands

#StokerScoreTV : Highly Recommended

Evidently this tv show from AMC is loosely based on the 15th century Chinese novel, Journey to the West but I'm not so sure. I've seen tv shows (Monkey) and movies (Journey to the West) that claim the same thing with more obvious links and although season two of Into the Badlands has a character called Bajie, whose name appears in the story, it would seem that this may be just a looser interpretation. Whichever way it goes, compared to the dull repetition of The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead from the same company, Badlands brings colour, style, charm, wit and drama to your one-hour episodic viewing.

In 2016's Season One we met Sunny, an enforcer/assassin for his boss, Quinn. Seemingly set in some future America where society has collapsed and been replaced by feudal Barons, these communities jealously protect the resources they have saved. They also need to trade them with the other Barons but sometimes this system fails and results in skirmishes for territory or all-out war and the need for trained people to do the fighting. It's not really explained why they prefer swords, knives, shuriken and staves instead of guns, especially when they have machinery and oil but the focus of this universe is hand-to-hand fighting.

The first season's six episodes concerned themselves with exploring this society through the eyes of Sunny and Quinn and amongst others; MK, a mysterious young man with supernatural, possibly demonic abilities; The Widow, another of the Barons; and Sunny's pregnant wife. There is political intrigue, a mystery surrounding a compass, the meaning of loyalty and honour, and some beautifully choreographed martial arts and wire-fu that along with a steampunk set of visuals in the design and colour palette left me desperately hoping it wouldn't be cut after one season.

I'm not sure how the American audience approval ratings work because I've seen amazing shows cancelled and mediocre ones renewed but I thank whoever it was for gifting us a Season Two of this show, which has just finished as I write this and has a third season already ordered. In Season two we start with the characters in their own private hells left over from the end of season one. Giving absolutely nothing away, each character has choices to make and those choices have bigger consequences than in season one. The world this time around seems much bigger than was hinted at previously. I also love the introduction of Nick Frost in the role of Bajie. He is the last person that I thought could have credibly carried off kung fu, yet he's really good to watch and absolutely not just around for comic buffoonery.

"I'm sorry I mentioned The Huntsman: Winter's War"

Season two has a different feel altogether when compared with the first series. Nowhere is this seen more than in the last episode which has the surviving characters seemingly further from their comfort zones. If you have only caught a couple of episodes, I wholeheartedly recommend you to go back to the beginning and stick with it. It's a great show with a spiritual vibe that other shows can only wish that they could have.

Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

#StokerScore 7.5/10

There have now been five POTC movies in the last 14 years and I must admit I thought they would have called it quits after On Stranger Tides but I guess when even the worst movie in the series brings in over a billion dollars at the box office then we may as well continue to run foul of the RSPCA and keep flogging that dead (mans chest) horse. Yes, one billion dollars and a 32% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes really does say something. Maybe people went to see it once and then left generally bad reviews? maybe a lot of people left bad reviews but audience members went to watch it twice? more? Whatever happened, hopes can't have been that high for this one, especially when you look at how much competition it would be up against.

Lest we forget, the concept for these movies didn't come from a book (update: Thanks go to Justin Crane for pointing out that the fourth movie was actually inspired by a 1987 book of the same name!), or a remake of a grittier foreign movie, nor did it come from a computer game, no this is the cinematic equivalent of the Disney theme park ride on which it's based. So how many movies based on computer games do you know that have brought in more than a billion? The theme for these movies is pretty similar for all five. Some mcguffin needs finding/destroying and it's a great excuse to have to enlist drunken Jack Sparrow and to use his charmed compass for said adventure. Along the way, Depp's boozy buccaneer will seemingly change allegiances thus endangering people considered close to him and yet who will finally redeem himself with something or other. Now I pride myself that these reviews are spoiler free but let me tell you that this movie follows the formula. Sure there are different characters (and some familiar ones) there are different settings too, all built on impressive special effects and it is actually much more fun than the last installment, but it follows that formula. 

Yes, I enjoyed the movie. Not as much as I enjoyed GotGVol2, but a lot more than I expected to and

at some points I did actually laugh out loud, too. But I can't help feeling I'd seen most of it before. In my recent Alien: Covenant review I bemoaned the lack of originality and I'd advise Disney to consider whether there is any benefit in trying to find another seafaring story that hasn't already been told. They took the opportunity to clear up some old story lines but at the same time introduced new, younger characters, too so who knows what the plan is.

But then what do I know; Universal are about to give us a new, PG-13 Mummy movie, the last Fast and Furious-er did amazingly good business, There's a new Transformers movie this year that will no doubt increase sales of related toys and possibly ear-drum replacement operations, and even Sony/Marvel are going to try again with Spider-Man. 

I fondly remember watching The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Sinbad and The Eye of The Tiger as a kid and furiously searching for others in the series that I must have missed. It is this that reminds

me that there is an audience for much more of the same and that is why movie companies can't be blamed for trying. As long as the stories have some thought put into them and aren't just poor pastiches then I'm up for another go-round.

Alien: Covenant

#StokerScore 5/10

As far back as I can remember I have loved horror movies. even as a small child I was constantly nagging my parents to let me watch something or other that was extremely gory and decidedly

unsuitable for my age. As a 10 year old primary school student, I encouraged/coerced/dragged students to join a made up version of Dracula during break times. At an even earlier age I found a book of Northern England myths and legends and read about the Lambton Worm and The Croglin Grange Vampire. Most literature and mainstream tv had brushes with the horror genre: Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Sussex Vampire was a great yarn or even Starsky and Hutch fighting 70's crime against John Saxon's vampire. Yes vampires were my thing but in 1979 I was shown a whole new kind of terror. This was terror that lurked unseen, around dark corners, much like the vampire, but this terrror didn't feed on the throats of buxom bar wenches, no this one preferred patience in the limitless void of space, where no-one could hear you scream.

Ridley Scott and H.R Geiger created the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen and it has stayed with me. I like the sequel Aliens but in many ways I prefer the less-loved Alien 3 as I see the gung-ho marines of Cameron's sequel in much the same way as I see Verhoeven's grunts in Starship Troopers. But the menu was always being served to the Alien, the apparently unstoppable creation of......well, now I'm confused.

In the first Alien movie we were happy to believe that the creatures existed on the barren planet that was the source of the space jockey's distress call. I have never wanted to look further than the fact that they were just the nastiest things one was ever likely to meet outside of a Galaxy of Terror movie poster or Geiger's own nightmares. But we needed to see more so we got more. six more, and Covenant now takes us to number eight.

My problems with this movie are that we've seen it all before. We've seen alien settlements, we've seen good androids and bad androids, we've seen different versions of the xenomorph, depending on the host and we have seen people running from and dying at the hands of the alien. For pity's sake we've even seen the "hey look guys, it's a woman saving the day" trope that by now shouldn't be so excessively pushed at us rather than occur from the natural storyline.

Prometheus led us along a path, a path to the creators of humanity and the xenomorph. This movie stops that journey dead in its tracks and even seems to forget about it.

I don't want to say any more less I give away bits about the movie that would spoil it for viewers but I was generally disappointed. It's a well made movie but I wonder about the intentions of the people behind it...