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 Seemingly set in some future America where society has collapsed and been replaced by feudal Barons, these communities jealously protect the resources they have saved.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...

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2

#StokerScore 10/10

I hope that you'll humour me and not think I've gone completely barking mad if I start this review with a recipe for vanilla ice cream?

First, stir sugar, cream, and milk into a saucepan over low heat until sugar has dissolved. Heat just until mix is hot and a small ring of foam appears around the edge. Next, transfer cream mixture to a pourable container such as a large measuring cup. Stir in vanilla extract and chill mix thoroughly, at least 2 hours. (Overnight is best.) Then, pour cold ice cream mix into an ice cream maker, turn on the machine, and churn according to manufacturer's directions, 20 to 25 minutes. Finally, when ice cream is softly frozen, serve immediately or place a piece of plastic wrap directly on the ice cream and place in freezer to ripen, 2 to 3 hours.

Thank you to Chef John at Food Wishes for the really great recipe....which might not be everyone's idea of how to make vanilla ice cream...or the exact ingredients either.

The second problem is that not everyone likes vanilla ice cream, as unlikely as that may sound to some of us. Some people even actually hate it on a personal level that, assuming they are not allergic, seems unfair to the point that if they would only just try it, they might like it. But no, stubbornness ensures this doesn't happen.

Going further, even those that like vanilla ice cream have specific favourites, be that the brand, the flavour, or even how it's served. 

For the rest of us, we're usually pretty happy to go with the flow and see which vanilla ice cream turns up after we've ordered it and make our decisions afterwards.

This extremely heavy-handed analogy is my way of explaining my reaction to GotG2 and my disbelief at some other reviews I've read.

Is GotG2 better than the first? In my opinion this isn't a fair question. Much better would be to ask if it's an enjoyable movie in its own right. This is because the difference in tone of the movie, the fact that the characters are no longer new to us, that the threat is more immediately galactic than the one posed by Ronan the Accuser, make the movie neither better or worse, just different. It's just the flavour the director chose to make this time.

I loved the first movie, I love this one equally. I found myself laughing more, I found myself considering some of the movie's themes more too. I think that where Groot and Rocket stole the first, no matter how arguably cute Baby Groot is, the star of this show is Drax and Dave Bautista was just born to play this part.

The movie has all of the Marvel points we've come to expect with the exception of any obvious tie-in to how they're going to meet up with the Avengers for Infinity War. We still have Thor Ragnarok and Black Panther's movie to come, but I just thought there may have been a nod to something. I need to watch it again to see if I missed it, hell, I want to see it again!

 I loved meeting new characters, I loved the music, I loved the whole damn thing from start to finish and I think most people who are able to put their expectations aside and just revel in revisiting these characters will do too. 

So remember, there are different flavours of ice cream. Enjoy them for their differences, try not to complain about why they're not exactly the same as the last one you ate.

The Discovery

#StokerScore 7/10

They say that one of the most alluring aspects of vampire movies is the immortality of the creatures, how they walk the earth for eternity in a party-loving way (The Lost Boys), in a tortured way (Interview with the Vampire), or a mix of the two (Byzantium). The same can also be said for time travel or searches for the Fountain of Youth movies as well as any number of adverts for anti-wrinkle skin cream that appear before the movie. Death both fascinates us and terrifies us, partly I suppose because of its inevitability and the screenwriters and directors know it too.

There are lots of films about death. Not Death as a character in movies like The Seventh Seal, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure or Meet Joe Black. I'm not even talking about the religious movies that show the linear or circular points of view that each religion follows. no, I mean death as a concept and what potentially follows. Movies like What Dreams May Come (1998), Flatliners (1990), or one of my favourites, 1946's A Matter of Life and Death starring David Niven. Some are well handled where others become lost in trying to explain the finality (or not) of our removal from this world.

Netflix, whose movies I have found to be a bit hit-and-miss, made The Discovery available yesterday and I have been looking forward to watching it. A great cast seem well placed in their respective roles, especially the age-less Robert Redford here playing a scientist who has found empirical proof of an afterlife. Rooney Mara is as enigmatic as ever, and even Jason Segel dials it down to play Redford's skeptical son. 

I generally found the movie to be quite slow in the first two thirds, only really coming alive, so to speak, in the final section. But with reflection I find myself thinking a lot about the movie, so that can't be a bad thing and it doesn't focus on religion, an area in which it could have become bogged down. Sure, it has its faults such as how some characters don't behave realistically and the science parts can seem a bit contentious, but as a thought-provoking movie that leaves you to make your own mind up about its philosophy, I enjoyed it.

#StokerScore Rewound: The Sword and The Sorcerer (1982)

#StokerScore 7.5/10

Two films came out in 1982. Obviously that's not true, there were many, many more than two, so let me try to be clearer. There were two significant sword and sandal movies released in 1982. The one that most people would have been aware of, even if they didn't like the genre, was Conan the Barbarian with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sandahl Bergman making the Robert E. Howard 

characters come to life in a fun and thrilling movie. Conan is a huge favourite of mine and I still wish they would make a King Conan movie at some point, even the sequel that we did get wasn't that bad it just wasn't as good as the original..



The 80's was a good decade for fantasy. Dungeons and Dragons was always popular, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson began to release the Fighting Fantasy novels, and Conan wasn't the only (anti?)hero to be found in the

cinema. I say cinema but the 80's was also the decade of videotape which meant that even if the movie didn't get a cinematic release you could always find it on Betamax, VHS or even Phillips V2000 system. Most corner shops had small video libraries where you could peruse the gaudy, enticing cassette box covers, rent a movie overnight and watch it as often as you wished in the time you had it for. As a kid who used to scan the pre-satellite multi channels tv listings hoping for a decent movie to be on at an equally decent time, this made things much easier.

The choice of rent-able movies wasn't endless, instead it was limited to recent movie releases that were given the conversion treatment and B movies through to Z movies where the producers were just looking to turn a quick buck with low budget, low quality fayre. This certainly encouraged the further growth of cult movies in niche genres because some weren't necessarily that bad and perhaps some ideas thrown out by the major studios were made on shoestring budgets meaning the story at least saw the light of day.

Because of this system the world was treated to a movie, that in my humble opinion, matches Conan for fun and action and actually surpasses in terms of dialogue. The Sword and The Sorcerer had a similar Conan-type hero, sinister bad guy, beautiful damsel and the kind of corny lines that at the time sounded great to a fifteen year old. The difference was in budget and where Conan had one in the region of 20 million dollars The Sword and The Sorcerer (TSATS) was closer to $4 million. This was fairly obvious in terms of the special effects but then again Conan had rubber snakes. What made TSATS great was that it was just a bit darker, a bit more irreverent. Plus the hero, Prince Talon, had a special three-bladed sword that could fire the blades as projectiles.

There are so many similarities between Conan and TSATS that one gets the feeling that if they'd got Arnold to play Prince Talon and change his name to Conan it could have been another story from Conan's catalogue. But does it hold up to viewing thirty five years later? Well, story-wise yes. I'd forgotten some of what happened so that came as a surprise. The effects and the picture quality aren't great, sure, but apart from that it was a real treat to watch again and i'll certainly re-watch it again in the not-too-distant future. If you liked the original Conan and think the 2011 remake was poor, try to find this one (it's available on youtube if you can't find a dvd copy)and give it a go...

#StokerScore Rewound: Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

#StokerScore 9/10

I have loved watching movies for as long as I can remember. I think the first movie I was ever taken to see at the cinema was Disney's Snow White (which probably answers many more questions that friends have about me) and I should point out that I'm 49 years old as I write this. 

which one's Marlon Brando?

I was a kid who was inspired as much by the movie posters and trailers for the films that I saw in the auditorius, so much so that on a trip to see The Spy Who Loved me at the Darlington ABC cinema, I begged and pleaded to see the 1977 version of The Island of Dr Moreau, even though it was an AA certificate and I would never have been allowed in. Ten years later and just out of my teens I remember watching this John Hughes-produced movie and loving the hell out of it. So based on that and the delay in other cool movies arriving at the cineplex I thought I'd do a few retro reviews to see how the movies I used to watch stack up after a few years and try to avoid my rose-coloured spectacles potential for disappointment.

In the case of Some Kind of Wonderful the story really workssurprisingly well. I'm sure I can hear you asking how I know that when as a self-confessed lover of the movie I surely can't be impartial and I agree with you to the point that I decided to ask some of my High School Seniors to review it for me and give me their thoughts. Generally the results came back quite favourable considering it's a romantic teen melodrama. Having had my own thoughts put to rest I feel I can explain why the movie still works for me too, even in these more technologically enlightened times.

It's the classic story of poor boy loves girl, girl is in a relationship with another rich boy, girl finds current rich boyfriend is cheating on her, girl agrees to a date with poor boy who's in love with her to spite rich boyfriend, poor boy has confrontation with rich ex-boyfriend, poor boy ends up with drummer/tomboy best friend instead of girl he was originally in love with (It was the 80's, what can I say?)

The performances from Eric Stoltz (poor boy) and Mary Stuart Masterson (tomboy best friend), two sides of the triangle, are spot on to the point that I don't believe either of these actors has been better in anything else they've been in, and I'm a huge fan of Stoltz in The Prophecy. Lea Thompson does enough to make her character of girl-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-hanging-with-the-rich-crowd and at the same time removes the stains left over from the woeful George Lucas mess of  Howard the Duck. Thompson even bagged herself a husband by way of marrying Wonderful's director, Howard Deutch.

This American movie, from the iconic and prolific John Hughes writing and producing stable, covers all of the important points of the generational era; teen angst, teen indecision, teens trying to fit in, teen relationships with family and peers, along with the hard fought but requisite happy ending. Apart from the excellently drawn characters, writing, and main actors and supporting cast, what makes the

movie stand above other movies of a similar theme for me is the music. The main characters names are all references to The Rolling Stones so we get to hear The Stones singing Miss Amanda Brown along with a cover version by The March Violets amongst some truly great tracks that make the soundtrack worth seeking out in its own right. My own personal favourite is Furniture's Brilliant Mind.

Throw in Eddie Murphy's straight-laced partner from Beverly Hills Cop as Soltz's dad and Elias Koteas's credited comic turn as 'Skinhead' (his name is actually Duncan in the movie) and you are left with a feelgood movie that people of my age will watch and no doubt reminisce to, but that current teenagers may well see as a 'holy crap, mum and dad were like THAT?' kind of moment.

In the same way that unrequited love and coming to terms with our own mortality are themes that engage teenagers, Some Kind of Wonderful leaves you with a reminder that it's worth looking at what you have, not what you think you should have.