Lindsay and I watched a series of wonderful trash fires this week, as is tradition after recording the podcast. I think we started with something else and turned it off, but Slipstream is the first one I logged, it’s got Mark Hamill and Bill Paxton and it is the dimmest burning of the trash fires. Not much happens, there is a lot of ‘this android is jesus’ stuff, a lot of plane stuff (it is indeed plain) and every so often a British character actor turns up with an unexpected accent. The whole time Lindsay was reading facts off the IMDb page about how the director did this to prove George Lucas wrong, he was incredibly not successful at this.

Solar Crisis was next, it’s got incredible effects, Charlton Heston and is about a polycule going on a suicide mission to the sun (to restart the sun). I’m always amazed when we find another one of these 90’s movies with all practical model space ships done to a super high standard, it’s a well that keeps on giving. The movies are near universally terrible, which is also a gift, in this one Heston has to rescue his grandson from cybertonic trucks on earth while his son leads the sun suicide mission… He kinda fumbles around while the crew talk about how if they’re feeling frustrated they will fuck each other, we really thought there was going transcend the trash-fire genre and turn into softcore porn multiple times. In a previous Lindsay and robyn adventure we watched softcore porn for the podcast, so we have established protocols. This movie was really exactly what we needed it to be, it’s IMDb facts revolved around a Japanese steel company announcing they were going to make a theme park based on it during production, alas this did not happen.

Last and least was Ultraviolet, Resident Evil lady Milla Jovovich cart wheels around killing people because she is a vampire and the plot is convoluted. The Ultraviolet IMDb trivia page is the real star here, it would appear the Director has posted A LOT of facts, factoids and ‘interesting’ details. For example “Kurt Wimmer, a comic book fan, decided to do the opening credits as a montage of “Ultraviolet” comic books, since he had always wanted to make a comic book movie. Ultraviolet itself is not a comic-book property.” I will refrain from just listing them, I’d suggest you go take look, don’t worry about spoilers the movie is awful and incoherent.

Moving on.

My recommendation this week is The Menu, my girlfriend summarised it as “a powerfully angry movie about class, alienation, the commercialisation of art” and while I have stuff add, I think her words are really perfect. The set up is simple, there is an ultra exclusive restaurant on an island, the diners make their way over on a boat and are introduced gently to the service and kitchen staff that have built, or been built into a cult by the head chef. The movie then spends a very long time constructing a large amount of tension, it gets to the point it’s thick in the air, I was so exited and nervous watching it. Then events begin to occur and it’s incredibly good. It’s also funny and invested in you having a fun time, in having things to say about the service industry, on capitalism and on movie reviewers (who are dogs obviously). I loved the scale of it too, there’s something special about movies that have enough constraints that you could put them on as a play, it feels so understandable in scale, you know where everyone is and how much time has passed in such an instinctive way. I enjoy watching anything that wants to be engaged with and The Menu brings a lot to the table.