RedKnight

Joaquin Phoenix double bill You Were Never Really Here - Small, almost arthouse pic with Phoenix as a suicidal hitman who saves kids from child traffickers. Only 90 minutes long, stylishly shot but I confess I didn't get the reviews of it as a masterpiece of cinema. I found it ponderous at times, too arty for it's own good and it left me cold. I'm sure I could read plenty on why it's so highly rated but it just did nothing for me. One of those films where the form does more for the critics than the audience. 6 out of 10 Joker - AKA Ladybird book of Taxi Driver. Miserable film lacking in the subtlety of the Scorsese films it so liberally borrows from. It straddles a very fine line between seeking empathy and pity for the main character, which is why it possibly gathered some worried press. Didn't do enough of the homework to explain why the 'kill the rich' uprising happened so fast or why Gotham's system was so broken. Very intense, physical performance from Phoenix but there isn't a lot to hang a film on here. Decent but 65% of it is just so miserable that I found it a bit bland; starts to get interesting but then it's over too quick. 6.5 out of 10.

I say that the NFL said "it's correct" should be enough. I've calmed down now but I'm still pissed.

Pretty sure Kamara's stat line was adjusted and that's why I'd won.

Wait, so the score was adjusted after the stats were checked by the NFL but now it's been manually adjusted? So I've won after NFL verified it but you've made it a loss?! What a load of fucking cheating shit. Go with the official stat line, not what you feel like!

2°c when I drove home after the match on Wednesday. Gave in and put it on last night.

I appealed to the NFL and got the win.

Always pictured Terry Crews as Louis.

They're in every sports shop in the UK.

Toy Story 4 - They got away with making another Toy Story and it being good. More a story about the toys themselves rather than about a childhood rite of passage. Props to the brilliantly named Duke Kaboom voiced by Keanu Reeves. 8.5 out of 10 Aladdin - Disney's re-run of their back catalogue continues with another remake that left you shrugging about why it existed. Will Smith gives it a go as the genie but he can't scale the heights of Robin Williams and Guy Ritchie's direction gives some very bland performances but Naomi Scott makes a good Jasmine. 6.5 out of 10 Ralph Breaks the Internet - Sequel to Wreck-It Ralph that inexplicably isn't called Ralph Wrecks the Internet. Decent idea stretched beyond it's limits and once the game references run out so does the film. 5.5 out of 10 Bohemian Rhapsody - Very disappointing film which felt like the Ladybird guide to Queen. Biopics can often feel like a very linear route from A to B and none more so than here. We get very clumsy reasons why songs were named, written or performed, events are shunted around to serve a narrative that implies that Queen saved Live Aid. Terrific central performance from Rami Malek but too many of the details of Mercury's life are sanded down and the film feels too safe. Rocketman was the better biopic for me. 5 out of 10

My team put way too many points this week. Assholes.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado - Disappointing sequel that takes out most of the style of the original and adds in a higher endorsement of the right wing politics that Sicario had such disdain for. Removing the Emily Blunt character, and her POV, makes it more a straightforward tale of cartels and the 'bad-asses' who try to catch them. There's no moral reprimand for Josh Brolin's character as there was in the first movie and no sympathetic character save for the kidnapped daughter of the cartel boss. Much like Gomorrah's transfer from book to movie to TV lost some of the critical points (though there's no glamour of any of the characters in Gomorrah, just sometimes undue sympathy) so does this sequel take a steeper dive. Still well shot and interesting enough, it's just a big step down from the brilliant original. 6 out of 10.

I see us leaving the EU, getting our arses handed to us and having to rejoin the EU, accepting the Euro and having less say in stuff. There was never a better deal than what we already had.

They've overthought that.

We're all about to find out just how Conservative the UK really is, although it's really England I'm talking about.

How fucking depressing. As if Europe was ever the reason for Britain's ills and now we're doubling down on how much of clusterfuck we can make of the country.