Get a grip, this is BOOJUM! and we don't do NSFW, so you can put your drooling tongue back in. Make sure to clean up that slaver from the floor, someone might slip.
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| No, Art! Wrong kind of "Bottom" also |
No! I am not referring to being able to place your feet on the floor of the swimming pool. Given that your humble scribe is over six feet tall, he is able to touch the floor of the swimming pool at all times, so the distressing absence of ceramic tile underfoot is a novelty to him.
| Deep or shallow? Only you can tell! |
No, what I refer to is the nadir of any particular situation, the worst not the first, trawling the ocean floor of objectivity. The very bottom.
"Ah yes," I hear you respond. "A Conrad explanation. That clears up nothing."
Maybe so, but I haven't finished yet. Can I continue? Thank you. Thank you so much!
Cat-Scaring The Mark Kermode Way!
Typically we completely avoid MK's other income-generating stream and hie right on in to his other, rather less lucrative career as a film critic.
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| We can only show this photo, the rest are copyright |
As I have mentioned in passing, Conrad takes a certain delight in not only going off at a tangent, but in ensuring said tangents are diametrically opposed to the general consensus. Perversity as a moral foundation, you might say. Oak Leaf Wine the touchstone for this: not yet attempted thanks to Sober For January - but to be borne in mind post 31st January 2017.
"What has this to do with anything, oh thou most mendacious or muses?" I hear you call.
Mark Kermode's Bottom 10 Films Of 2016, that's what. Here's the list from joint Number 10: Batman vs. Superman/Suicide Squad; 9 - Ben Hur; 8 - Criminal; 7 - Inferno; 6 - 50 Shades of Black; 5 - London Has Fallen; 4 - Gods of Egypt; 3 - 31; 2 - Bad Santa;1 - Dirty Grandpa.
Now, in the Top 10 there were no less than one film I'd care to see. I realise this isn't grammatically correct; I was aiming for suspense not accuracy. Under The Shadow, in case you were curious.
However, of the Bottom 10 ... I'd like to see "Batman Vs Superman", partly for the explosions and massive property damage, and in order to appreciate what has been called the "Zack Snyder Murderverse" - all grim, humourless, relentless, sadistic nihilism. One needs the occasional wallow in mire to better understand cleanliness.
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| One suspects the word "Subtle" is not in the screenplay |
As for "Suicide Squad", I would need to compare and contrast this with the far superior animated feature "Assault on Arkham", made on a fraction of the prior's budget yet with many times the wit and verve.
Then there's 5. "London Has Fallen". Conrad would be quite happy to see London getting a good pasting, as it might put a bit of a dent in the worldview of those inhabitants of some who view Britain as London with a few bits tacked on for local colour.
| Yeah, baby, yeah! |
Here an aside. I haven't seen "Inferno" and honestly have no intention of so doing, yet I understand it features an anti-matter bomb?
Where did the villains - for so I presume them to be - acquire an amount of anti-matter sufficient to construct an AM bomb? How was the AM created? Stored? Weaponised? Transported? This level of technology is decades beyond the most advanced science on the planet, so the sub-text here is either aliens or The Master. You know, the one from when that dramamentary "Doctor Who" was really scary, back in the Seventies.
Then there's Number 4, "Gods of Egypt". MK has been incredibly scathing about this film, so much so that - Oak Leaf Wine moment - Conrad wonders if it's as bad as all that, you know, in the interests of empirical skepticism.
The sacrifices I make ...
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| A vulture |
The Vulture
An unlovely and unloved bird, the vulture. I mention it because it, in turn, was mentioned by Alex Proyas, director of "Gods of Egypt". Alex was (to put it mildly) less than enthused by the critic's dismissal of his opus. His response was to call them "a pack of diseased vultures", which raises concerns about his knowledge of environmental ecology and film critics.
The vulture, you see, is a scavenger that dines of the carcasses of the dead. Not zombies, they have better taste than to resort to them. In effect the vulture is part of Mother Nature's refuse-disposal team, dealing with the larger portions of a corpse before allowing smaller scavengers, then insects and then micro-organisms to go to work. Essential recyclers, Alex, I'll have you know.
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| "What - I'm not good enough?" |
Film critics, on the other hand, will usually savage and kill their prey (GoE in this case) and then move on to their next celluloid victim.
Unless provoked ...
Which Alex unwisely did. In this case they will make a point of returning to the carcass to give it a repeated flaying, kick it around a bit to ensure it's really dead, urinate on it to prove that it was they who did the deed, and then post the results on social media.
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| Mark Kermode |
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