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Damage (1992)
Abandon Hope. All Ye
One of the most unpleasantly realistic but also brilliant films ever made, and the most poisoned spike is the possibility of equal damage being visited on families from every background, exactly as happened to the affluent Flemings.
Their position can't help them, indeed it helps destroy them; arguably the feckless and damaged are attracted towards their bright lights, and Stephen Fleming's government rising star's lifestyle must surely make him believe, like many successful men, that anything is possible.
Including indeed, pairing off with their son's girlfriend. It comes to no good and if you think the film is bad, try Josephine Hart's book!!
The acting by all the main players is outstanding, but special special mention for Juliette Binoche, who sets the bar for butter-would-never-melt prospective friends/lovers/bringers-of-havoc. Nice understated use also of central London's mews terraces and stucco frontages as a rich man's playground, and painfully well-observed marks of true all-enveloping obsession in love.
A treat. Horrific in subject matter, but an amazing piece of work.
Tickets for the Titanic: Everyone a Winner (1988)
Super Stuff, From When Channel 4 Was Magic
I'm reviewing this 100% from memory of having seen it once 26 years ago so if I mess up please someone tell me!! Any video/DVD/master copy of it really seems to have gone, not to return...
Which is tragic, because EAW is almost my favourite hour of TV from the eighties. It depicts a Thatcherism gone into its 5th/6th term not merely imaginatively and brutally (video funerals, thudding propaganda leaflets deluging onto housing estates, the cheeky chappie neighbour inviting the leading couple over and charging them for drinks at his home fitted bar...) but also so cheerfully. This show has a big hearty grin; it is not 1984, it is not even Brave New World. It is dystopia with... the bunting all present and correct.
It's darned funny dark comedy, the children intoning 'time is money is profit' and to the devil with all else, and the teachers concretely agreeing. They had a lot of fun making this, and inspiring also to see Jonathan Pryce in something so niftily pulled off and yet (given its lack of any, it would seem, cultural imprint) so clearly small scale.
Find it, Channel 4!! Or if anyone else has a copy, share it, do.
Doctor Who: Inferno: Episode 7 (1970)
Caroline John's Final Full Appearance in Doctor Who
Noteworthy not outstanding, Inferno's final episode brings the story to a formal end. Caroline John makes her final appearance as Liz Shaw, which is probably the most significant event in this 24 minutes of TV.
Inferno should remain one of the best rated classic Who stories, but that has to be for the drama of the first six parts, the mad careerist scientist demolishing all in his path (including if/as he sees fit his own planet!) executed with serious panache, plus the huge treat of the alternate world where the actors can run riot...
In this conclusion the usual world is a tame place after the alternate one, and the drilling is stopped pitifully easily. Caroline John has no farewell scene; she just plays Liz masterfully for the fourth story in a row. TV is a tough sector!!
Doctor Who: The Deadly Assassin: Part Three (1976)
Doctor Who in Excelsis
A candidate for the best Doctor Who episode ever; yes, it is partly famous because Mary Whitehouse complained about its cliffhanger throttling simulation, but it has so much more in the 20+ minute dream-sequence (literally, the Doctor's mind has slipped away to a wilderness of cliffs and inescapable foot-trapping steam trains) that the episode mainly is.
Having elsewhere written that Tom Baker not needing to act to play his Doctor Who, I must say that here he pulls out every stop (he sweats, indeed!),and anyone who might tut tut as he indolently gambols through later seasons should always remember that he made The Deadly Assassin.
The plot is almost irrelevant (similar to many editions a decade prior of The Prisoner, and here Doctor Who - often too tongue in cheek for real drama - competes on level terms), but the usual human tragedies of ambition and weakness are here, and the sanguine perfection of the Time Lords continues to be robustly unpicked.
Great stunts, very physical, great settings, great camera work, visually breathtaking... the entire production team should be well proud. To an extent Mary Whitehouse spoiled the party; she may have been well-meaning but the publicity she gained has meant that The Deadly Assassin is too often known for the wrong things. This is a very finely made, seriously wonderful 24 min piece of TV, and it fully deserves its place in broadcasting legend.
Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks: Part Six (1975)
Bloodridden, Epic, Brilliant, but Not for Faint-Hearts
I've probably seen this dozens of times, but before rushing to give it a 10 (which I would on all recent viewings) I have to say that watching it on TV for the first time as a child in 1975 I felt betrayed by Doctor Who, which had never before seemed so bloodthirsty.
I think what marked the Tom Baker period was not just the extraordinary character that Baker brought (in itself truly an extension of Baker himself, he improvises as on so many TV interviews...watch them then watch him as the Doctor... he doesn't actually... ACT..) but also the shift in the the writing and direction to far bleaker and horrific story lines.
The spoiler alert is never more necessary than here; what stunned my child self was that in Doctor Who quite so many (like dozens, many characters we've seen painstakingly developed) hapless souls could be gunned down in such cold blood. The final part of GOTD is classic death-knell of liberalism; Gharman (earlier present as Davros's closest confidante as the first Dalek is unveiled) wants a bloodless revolution in which much is decided by vote..
Davros swiftly sees this and plays it to the max, delays things as he needs and once the necessary force of Daleks is assembled, dispatches his over-idealistic foes.
The extra twist is of course that Davros himself is then also exterminated (and he is, watch it, listen to the screams, he really is, and later claims by DW writers that he survived are not plausible) and he is thus, himself, also discarded as a tool by the real forces of evil.
A lot for a young lad to take!! Genesis of the Daleks is no picnic; my older self gives it a 10 for true brilliance, realism, quality of writing and drama, and by later standards it's relatively tame, but for a youngster used to earlier more subtle Doctor Who it was brutal stuff.
The Simpsons: Last Exit to Springfield (1993)
Best by light years of Simpsons at its peak
Early Simpsons set a cracking pace, but this one is a freak of nature compared to even the other great episodes...
If you haven't seen it, best to stop reading now and just start watching it.
Not a dud in it or even average work in it... you could watch normal programs for thousands of hours without being treated so well by the TV industry.
I thought 21 years ago the team had for some reason just decided they'd aim for ultimate comedy highs with every 10 seconds of the 22 minutes and I still think that is true!
Ultimate Mr Burns ep. Most laughs per ep.
No Comic Book Guy, but Best Ep(isode) EVER!
Doctor Who: Inferno: Episode 6 (1970)
Amazing
Beautiful, beautiful episode of Classic Doctor Who, and if you're a younger fan wanting to sample just one, then (and please allow for limited special effects!) this is a prime candidate.
The alternate world is about to disappear into a sea of molten lava, and in the tension the underlying character traits of each of parallel characters emerge. Almost needless to say, Security Officer Liz Shaw emerges heroically while Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart degenerates with full fanfare from bully to floundering coward.
The actors will have enjoyed this as much as the fans, and an actual end of the earth (ie a cliffhanger in which the world really goes over the cliff) is a treat.
With the subsequent episode, Ep 7, the actual finale of Inferno and something of a damp squib, it's arguable that this end of the world for the parallel world is the genuine crescendo for Inferno as a whole.
Classic Who had an almost quaint tradition of magnificent penultimate episodes never equalled by the story wrap-ups, so for old hands the plummet between this Episode and the next is... almost acceptable.
Citizen Kane (1941)
More Personal Onslaught on Randolph Hearst than Great Movie
I've seen this now 3 times, once in a full-size cinema, and while really wanting to admire it I think it's only possible to do that if you can judge it in 1940s context.
The camera-work is - I'm informed, I have no expertise - ground-breaking but almost all of the plot is mundane (esp the parts on his electoral hopes and second marriage) and overall it drags. The official nub may be intended to be, what did Kane mean by Rosebud, but overriding that is the Emperor's Clothes question: why on earth should we care? And the answer is no we shouldn't!
Kane is another ambitious tragic soul and with respect to Orson Welles (who must surely have known this) that subject has been more covered in art than almost everything else. Yes, the fictional Charles Kane is very likely modelled on Randolph Hearst, which may be the real point of making the movie, but if so, its interest lies in it being a personal onslaught, not a great production.
Most of the 6/10 rating is for the visual ingenuity... in the end here is just another old man who sacrificed too much of his humanity on the path to material fortune. Citizen Kane is I'd imagine best viewed if you don't expect anything special - although the final 15 minutes, showing the ageing beast in his sad finery, are probably worth a look.
Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (1966)
Magnificent
An all-time classic about to turn 50; watched it again this week, still love it.
It's raw, uncomfortable in the best sense, in a way totally without the quite amply sitcom feel of (sadly, and I love original Star Trek) many TOS episodes.
It's also magnificent - Kirk against Mitchell and the final battle unwinnable without Kirk's words finally alerting Elizabeth Dehner that her God-powered beau is despite appearances really a Frankenstein's monster. No Sci-Fi fan on any planet or asteroid should go through life without seeing this.
There are plot holes; firstly if Mitchell's powers are doubling daily he'd soon be off Delta Vega and storm back (bit like Marvel's Galactus) across the galaxy to create more havoc, and secondly it is a BIT LUCKY that Mitchell is in Kirk's freshly dug grave and happens not to see the boulder descending...
They might have done better than that, perhaps by showing that Mitchell can be tricked, like a mythical Greek tragic figure (or Bond villain), into a demo of powers / convoluted power-trip that destroys him.
Lastly - superlative plotting, scripting, music, concept, acting and choice of guest stars, but whisper it, the pre-mutated Mitchell, jolly fellow meant to be - isn't that great a guy... He seems more the alpha character uncomfortable as helmsman, too big for his job and loathing it, and one must wonder if Kirk was being supremely diplomatic in cultivating him as a titular long term friend.
If Elizabeth had mutated first, she might well have had a liberal phase of doing good with her powers, before (yes, she'd end up the same) plunging into madness and destructive acts. With Mitchell, the moment his antics began you'd say - no surprise there.
Star Trek: Mirror, Mirror (1967)
Terror Must Be Maintained
Many starships of fans have said it but I'll join them; Mirror Mirror is arguably the best Star Trek ep ever made, and I'd say it's also one of the ten best single television broadcasts I've ever seen.
Amazing work, seemingly born of the team taking an amazing TV show they had 100% confidence in and, can only guess but... on a specific edition (consciously intended or did it just happen?) deciding to push to make something about 100x better than even the excellent standard show they were already transmitting each week...?
The Simpsons achieved similar with Last Exit to Springfield in 1993; a single episode from a (then) blisteringly outstanding stable that is outlandishly better than the pipingly strong pack around it, with observation, complexity and inspired touches almost every ten seconds or so;a Star Trek TOS episode is 50 min not 22, yet Mirror Mirror's pace, with the exception of perhaps and only the first sick bay scene, is almost as intense.
Other reviewers have covered Mirror Mirror's plot and most points have been made, esp on the swift adaptation by all (except by perhaps McCoy) to realities in the Galactic Empire, but special mention has to go to both BarBara Luna and the writers for her character, Marlena Moreau.
Marlena is likely the very best of Star Trek characters/guest leads ever. Probably only on screen for 10, max 15, of the full 50 mins, she adds an irreplaceable dimension of human ambition, frustration, amorality and yearning for a better life that none of the regulars, breath-taking though they are, ever match.
It may be that all great shows, and all great writing and production teams, and indeed almost everyone who has passion for their work or any venture, find a time in his/her/its life when all's done, nothing hindered nothing feared and everything achieved; for original Star Trek this was it.