owen-watts Reviews

Michael Palin in Nigeria (2024)

Bronzed

[7/10 · 23 May 2024]

Palin's latest series, each one feels like a baffling gift, sees him newly widowed and arriving discombobulated into the sprawling waterlogged slums of Lagos. It's an ominous start but he regains his energy fast and is back in step after that. Nigeria is a fascinating country to focus on and his relentless humanity is on show as always here, despite his increasingly large entourage of minders, guards and fixers. Again it's more of a whistle-stop tour than his epic journeys of old and you get the feeling he's only really scratching the surface of such a vast and complex country, but there are enough fascinating encounters and strange asides to keep it interesting. Where next? Slough?! Hopefully just Slough.

Pinkadilly Circus (1968)

Pink Stanther

[7/10 · 23 May 2024]

Pink Panther Odyssey Part XXXVIII

You know what, I'm beginning to have serious respect for the few Pink Panther shorts that have titles that are so bafflingly divorced from the content of the cartoon. As someone who comes up with review titles for loads of IMDb reviews that no one is ever going to read: it's a craft. A deeply underrated craft. Now I'm not going to do something extraordinarily crafty like go on to make this review nothing to do with the actual content of the cartoon itself. That would take a far smarter person than I am. I'm just someone who writes loads of superfluous reviews on IMDb for no reason.

Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe (2023)

"The Big Ugly Sausage"

[6/10 · 23 May 2024]

It's hard to know where to start with this... much like Deep Impact and Armageddon of old we had two projects release at once about the same thing. I plumped with Prime and you get three fairly aimless episodes of Alice Hines making a bit of a "quest" out of exposing these two awful frauds. What they preside over and their general personalities are enough for interesting telly but as we drifted towards a conclusion I did start to wonder how manipulative this sort of trashy little PrimeDoc itself was. There's a lot of reconstruction stuff which always feels leading, the way it made out like the central figure was dead the whole time and bits of it which focussed on the family & friends of Super Jesus and make-up lady were quite uncomfortable for all the wrong reasons. I mean the consequences of what they do are genuinely very serious and it feels like this wasn't... really helping.

Mae Martin: SAP (2023 TV Special)

"Grabbed in the Dunge"

[7/10 · 23 May 2024]

Mae arrives on Netflix with a characteristically understated live special, with only a sort of semi-meta bit of bumpering with the great Phil Burgers (also in Feel Good) as adornment. I think the direction was similarly bare bones but the material was solid and Mae is so effortlessly charismatic, with their slightly-overwhelmed-to-even-be-speaking-in-public vibe. The comedy is a niche sort of vibe tonally and strikes a strange place between introspective tangents of tremendous earnestness and stabs of surreal bluntitude. Whether they nail "the big message" or not is neither here nor there, this is them fairly unvarnished and I can dig it.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Grootloose

[8/10 · 19 May 2024]

Having spent years avoiding these gigantic MCU milestones it's fascinating for me that it's this "set-up" film that is far superior to the actual finale. Infinity War is just this hugely extended actual ... living comic. Full of melodrama, big punch-ups, this big devastating finale and great character moments. It's almost terrifyingly overstuffed and the Wakanda climax feels a little tacked-on and clumsy but I was dizzy with glee throughout. Also even though I'm well-past knowing the full ins-and-outs of the finale it still had this absurdly harrowing quality and I cannot imagine the impact it had at the time. The best Avengers film, I shouldn't have waited!

The Terminator (1984)

"Who gets the burly beef?"

[7/10 · 19 May 2024]

The strangest feeling overcame me when I saw The Terminator again and that is between seeing it last (perhaps in the 2000s) and now it's gone from being an "old" film to being a "period" film. In fact, like a lot of time travel films, it acts as a perfect time capsule. It feels so thoroughly intoxicatingly 1984 that it's actually quite overwhelming. The cheapy budget gives it this sickly late-night wash which works in it's favour but the thin synth soundtrack hasn't fared so well. It's goes at a great relentlessly linear pace and Linda Hamilton's evergreen Sarah Connor is seriously well-rounded for the time. Apart from... that scene which feels out of another film all together. Still - it's a convincing core of one of the most evocative "old" or "period" sci-fi franchises of the last few decades.

Titanic (1997)

Drownton Abbey

[7/10 · 10 May 2024]

The big iron daddy of the semi-modern era of giganto-blockbusters. Titanic was a cultural phenomenon that I was alive to witness and absorbed a fair clutter of it just through breathing. What really shocked me about watching it in 2024 was how solid it actually is as a film and how much it still stands up technically. The entire sinkening is brutally paced and the scale of the sets is extraordinary but what the whole thing hangs on, the lost love of an old woman, genuinely is deftly done and makes it quite compelling despite the runtime. Fair play to it for that and it's certainly a great deal more compelling as a story than anything in Cameron's latter blue-bloato-megabusters. That being said, the music is extremely dated, our two leads say eachother's names more than any other thing and the whole endeavour is all a bit Julian Fellowes. Despite all this, it sincerely doesn't feel like the big iron daddy without reason.

Rabbit (I) (2005)

Fun With Ink and Pen

[7/10 · 10 May 2024]

This dark little British short by the late lamented Run Wrake is a fascinating little bit of twisted morality surrealness entirely composed of 1950s educational stickers. It bagged Wrake a bafta but is still relatively obscure as a project. The use of a chillout score and the nature of computer animation do date it somewhat and it has a distinct "you'd stumble on this at two am on channel 4" vibe. That being said, Rabbit is extremely smart with the core design quirk and months after watching it I still recall it's nasty little twists and turns. Worth hunting down and capturing for yourself, regardless of the consequences.

Sky Blue Pink (1968)

The Pink Baron

[7/10 · 10 May 2024]

Pink Panther Odyssey Part XXXVII

There's no throughline here. Our guy is flying his kites, then the whole thing becomes totally sidetracked by the little man and his business. Vengeance being the principle nature of that business. I dig these panther shorts, I really do, but would it have killed them to practice a bit of circuitous storytelling? That being said, the biplane end tangent is rather inspired.

A bi-plane fact to get us up to the required character length:

The concept of "stacking wings" on an aircraft was suggested by a Sir George Cayley way back in the 1840s who correctly identified the core four forces which dictate flight. He died decades before powered flight was ever achieved.

Follyfoot (1971–1973)

Lighting Steeeeve

[8/10 · 3 May 2024]

When my partner first proposed we watch Follyfoot years ago I was convinced it was a bit of flimsy 70s second-hand nostalgia from our parent's generation. A children's TV show? About ponies??? No thanks. What I wasn't expecting at all was almost Kes-like contemporary social commentary built around some seriously complex and very well-observed character work. Follyfoot is genuinely something of a revelation. It was enormous in its day but seems now only the preserve of "it-was-better-in-them-dayers" on Facebook. Truthfully it can be rather dated and the combination of cheap 1950's film stock music and chaste preteen yearnings can get a bit much but the tough bits feel dark and this little old telly relic can occasionally be genuinely shocking. From the literary lineage of Dickens and with names like Stephen Frears and Michael Apted in the mix, it's wild that this has become so obscure. Don't be the fool that I was all those eons ago, give this a go.

The Lorax (1972 TV Movie)

Thneeded less songs

[6/10 · 3 May 2024]

The legendary Lorax short, from the distant past of '72, is a strange little artefact. My partner and I yearly absorb "The Cat in the Hat" around Christmas time so that was solidly lodged in my brain - the two compare poorly I think, the songs in this feel egregiously tacked-on and the central theme is worthy but now rather unintentionally melancholic given all that was to happen (or rather, not at all happen) in the decades between then and now. Not it's fault, but it does rather taint the vibe. Still, the fussy animation is one of the most strikingly clear conversions of original cartoon style to motion there is, and that's something.

The Regime (2024)

A little wobble.

[6/10 · 2 May 2024]

A sort of flabbily misjudged Armando approximation that does everything Death of Stalin did but less well. Winslet is both a magnetic central presence and the reason the whole thing doesn't really work. There needed to be more of a focus on the "lower deckers" like Andrea Riseborough's Agnes or the David Bamber's fantastically greasy Victor Schiff. Instead as the plot rolls along everyone but the central duo as discarded. I'm a fan of these political satirical allegories generally but the Regime lacked tonal cohesion overall despite a genuinely fantastic cast. Also Alexandre Desplat's theme was far too silly.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Chekov's Hammer

[7/10 · 2 May 2024]

After nearly ten years away from consuming the MCU (a mixture of self-denial and not knowing where to start) my partner and I plunged back in with the sequel to 2012's Avengers. It's still got Whedon's giddy setpieces, the core ensemble hold together remarkably well with the exception of the undercooked romance between Widow and Hulk. They never knew what to do with ScarJo, and that this ends up being her biggest slab of screentime until the solo film is a shame. That being said, the central narrative thread is fairly strong and there are some really great moments here (Ultron's first ghoulish appearance, Hulkbuster battle). The foreshadowing holds up well and Ultron ends up looking like a solid road map for all that was to come.

Nadiya's Fast Flavours (2021)

Colour Supplement Cooking

[7/10 · 2 May 2024]

I'd literally watch Nadiya descale a teapot. I'd happily watch her just mooching about looking at wildebeest. Bake Off's charismatic winner of yore has had a few of these book tie-in glossy limited formats on the Beeb and they never quite suit her. Alone in an Observer Sunday supplement fake kitchen bedecked with whacky utensils and unctuous close-ups of glugging and mixing and so on. She cooks up a random assortment of things and her own endearing touch is to add an unexpected ingredient like... what if rice crispies were put in a roast? But on her own (here, likely for pandemic reasons) she loses a little something and you long to see her interacting with folk. The spots with guest chefs break up the format a little, but not enough really. But still - I'd watch her board a ship. I'd watch her catching butterflies and so on. She's TV gold.

Nighty Night (2004–2005)

"Oh, Jill..."

[7/10 · 2 May 2024]

Upon re-watching Julia Davis's mid-noughties dark comedy I found myself almost totally overwhelmed by how tremendously disturbing it is. It makes Jam look like marmalade. All these years later it is still thoroughly unpleasant. There's also an underlying satirical wackiness present in all Davis projects that's really irresistible, pushing the extremity at times into a kind of self-aware melodrama more like a soap or a telenovela than a sitcom. What really makes both series worth plunging into beyond the hypnotically deluded Jill is a who's-who of British comedy talent. Rebecca Front's career-best performance as the painfully passive Cathy, or Kev Eldon's hapless Terry. The cartoonish caricatures of Ruth Jones, Mark Gatiss and the brilliant Felicity Montagu. Yes it's awful in some rather irredeemable ways, but there's something genuinely glorious about it too.

Secrets of Skin (2019)

Skinny legend

[7/10 · 2 May 2024]

My father recommended to this with dubious praise: "You know those kind of indulgent single-issue documentary series? Well this is one of those but it's genuinely very interesting." That it is. Led by the charming science communicator Dr. Ben Garrod, we have six episodes entirely about skin, divided into categories of function and it's by-and-large utterly fascinating. There's a sort of winningly dated "you're being forced to watch this in science class at school" vibe about the presentation but it rattles along at a great pace and I genuinely learned tonnes that I didn't previously know. Fair play dad, good choice.

The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas (1973 TV Movie)

"This could only happen to a Pisces"

[6/10 · 27 April 2024]

This strange piece of 70s ephemera from a long-lost 70s Christmas is really fascinating. It's a beautifully designed little animation crammed with strange rococo props and fussy backgrounds but it's a shame that narratively it's a tale of two fairly illogical halves that don't seem to match up. You've got this whole... almost proto-Pixar "world of bears" which is fascinatingly high concept and full of bear airports and honey factories and the like. It's all very weird but as it spills over into our reality it loses momentum and becomes a rather atypical Christmas heartstring-tugger that seems at odds with what came before. A big fan of the beautifully dated pink-eyed delivery of the Smothers brother.

Bad Sisters (2022– )

Catch the JP-idgeon

[7/10 · 27 April 2024]

This characterful remake of a Flemish series sees a likeable gang of Irish sisters set about to do a murder. For ages. It didn't help that I ended up watching this over a seriously long period of time but it felt like seventy years. A lot of the surrounding plots that pad this up to 10 long episodes feel extraneous at best and downright deceptive at worst. Crack this down to six or less episodes and with a cast this good you'd easily have one of the finest Irish dramas ever made. A real shame but with some unforgettable moments. What a great mini.... wait, there's going to be even more?? Why? We didn't even need this much!

Captain Marvel (2019)

Deus ex cattina

[6/10 · 27 April 2024]

Slogging merrily through a massive MCU backlog, I finally hit Captain Marvel and it's a real drag. A cautiously built and extremely muddled sort of a project that feels weighted down, messy and confused. The structure feels off - and Danvers Terminator-esque excursion to 90's Earth tells me starting it there would have been smarter. It never settles into what Danvers character actually is and the spotlight gets swiftly stolen by a convincingly de-aged Samuel L and even Clark Gregg. Even the baddy. Even a cat. It's irritating as Larsen has chops for days and deserved far better than this strangely 2D whisp of flimsy top-gunny air-force foolishness.

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Game Over Man, Game Over

[8/10 · 27 April 2024]

It didn't know what to expect retroactively clambering into affectionate arcade film Wreck-it Ralph. I knew it had been a bit of a cultural phenomenon a decade or so ago but suspected it would be rammed with Disney animation schmaltz. For me though, it ends up being their strongest non-Pixar effort. There are a lot of smart angles crammed into this dusty games cabinet and you can feel the decades that went into hammering out the characters and the plot. Ralph is an unconventional sort of a thing, and I genuinely was taken by surprise by it. It's only tainted for me at all really by seeing it through the shadow of the misjudged sequel, but more on that later.

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

Monkey With a Thousand Faces

[6/10 · 27 April 2024]

I was really surprised by Kubo - and not necessarily in a good way - Laika's breathtakingly beautiful bit of clay confection essentially amounts to a flimsily allegorical bit of culturally awkward fluff. Aside from the bafflingly intricate construction of a few set pieces within I have a terrible feeling it's not going to lodge in my mind with as much tenacity as previous Laika projects. As the credits rolled I was stunned that this much-hyped film that really had all the makings of my exact cup of tea ended up being the little more than "What if Joseph Campbell, but a weaboo?". A serious shame.

Miriam Margolyes: Australia Unmasked (2022)

Miriam's Fair Go

[8/10 · 22 April 2024]

The utterly brilliant Margolyes sets out across just pre-pandemic Australia to discover what the "fair go" means there and bumps into the great, the good and the real. It's a testament to the structure of the series that it always feels a bit impulsive. Yes, clearly they would have got permissions and done scouting beforehand but Miriam seems to just wander around meeting real people. Her humanity is peerless, her self-awareness unmatched, and watching her just going around taking things in is beautiful. Much like the "planned/unplanned" vibe, where the trip ends is both accidental and somehow completely perfect. She gave it a fair go.

Jaws (1975)

"Let the bodies pile high"

[8/10 · 22 April 2024]

Jaws is the quintessential summer blockbuster and one of those "you know what, fair play this is actually really good" sort of classic films that still functions really well. The core being a really tight narrative focus, some smartly layered symbolism, a host of fantastic characters and some genuinely shocking sequences. It's sad that the now fairly talked-about mayor plot isn't really resolved and it does feel like a film split firmly in two but it bristles with fantastic moments and is an absolute blast to watch. Gradually becoming that rare thing of a historical noteworthy work that also still really communicates something.

Sherwood (II) (2022– )

*Suspicious David Morrissey Noises*

[7/10 · 22 April 2024]

British drama tends to either be either too cartoonish or too grimdark and a precious few manage to straddle that line. I think Sherwood just about manages it with the help of some seriously strong character performances and a few chunky narrative twists. As is usually the case, Adeel Akhtar is about thirty times better than everyone else and his arc is sincerely heart-breaking. The strike-breaking undercover cops stuff which is the wider plot is a bit less convincing and a quick glance at the local view tells you that they missed the mark in terms of authenticity. Still, I found myself drawn in every episode, and ultimately that means something.

It's Bruno! (2019)

Fido of the Conchords

[7/10 · 18 April 2024]

Solvan Naim's breezy little series about a man and his dog is like a breath of fresh air. Propelled by fine tunes, low stakes and portions of perfect pups I was totally taken by it. There's a lovely lowkey vibe running through It's Bruno that feels super underrated. I mean, there is also no denying that it's fairly cheap looking and features a few unjustifiable lurches towards "a bigger plot" toward the end. The core concept, the wide cast of silly characters and call-backs are really solid and there feels like bags more sincerity in this than some other, much more expensive, comedies on the platform and indeed off it.