The Courier

This iteration of The Courier is the latest in the long line of films called The Courier. Leaving out articles or add-ons (so no The Courier from Lisbon from 1921 Germany and Courier from the USSR in 1986), we're still left with a handful of exact titles. There's an Irish film from 1988 with Gabriel Byrne, a B-movie from 2007, a Jeffrey Dean Morgan vehicle from 2012 and a film from 2019 which appears to star Gary Oldman's eye patch and Olga Kurylenko's leather-clad arse. I guess films have been pitched on less. Without seeing any of these other Courier films, it appears they're set in the crime genre, whereas this most recent one, directed by Dominic Cooke, leads us through the murky world of cold war espionage in the early 1960's. 

The characters are based on real people, the leads being Greville Wynne, played by Benefit Lumberjacks....Benadryl Cumberbash....ummm Benedict Cumberbatch, and Oleg Penkovsky, played remarkably by a real Georgian, Merab Ninidze. Both these fellas are top-drawer - I've not seen Cumberbatch in better form of late and I've only seen Ninidze once before (Nowhere in Africa, which I bought on DVD in China for about 20 cents, about 20 years ago), but he's an imposing presence.

The story sees Penkovsky, a Soviet GRU colonel, making overtures to the West due to his mistrust of Khrushchev, leading the Brits to enlist a businessman, Wynne, to act as contact and titular courier of information back to London. Initial surprise, then reluctance on the part of Wynne eventually give way to montages of things going swimmingly. Events come to a head during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which Penkovsky helps to defuse, though actual events may differ from what's presented. Here's where the tension starts to build nicely and the ensuing scenes are pretty well handled by the cast, with Jessie Buckley, as Wynne's wife, Sheila, adding some wrinkles of mistrust from back in Blighty. If you're not too familiar with the real story, the film may give you moments of pause, suffice to say, Cumberbatch is put through it - he's not gone full Bale in The Machinist, but it's still a shock.

The Courier doesn't waste time, it balances the themes of trust and loyalty with the necessity of ripping out a solid yarn, and it boasts some engaging performances. A functional, tense spy story, that may just tickle the facts a little, and there's nowt wrong with that.

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A similar dynamic in the inferior film Bridge of Spies (2015), directed by Steven Spielberg, and Errol Morris's The Fog of War (2003) is an excellent documentary about key player in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert McNamara.

Nomadland

There's been a lot of interest (I was going to say 'buzz', but that doesn't really scan) around this film, directed by Chloe Zhao - one of the pod contributors even gave it top spot in his best of 2020. I have to say though, I was fairly unimpressed by it. Clearly it has found an audience, it's hoovering up during this awards season as I write, and winning rave reviews along the way (94% on Rotten Tomatoes, 93% on Metacritic). And I have to say, I can see what the fuss is all about. It's just that it didn't hit any sweet spots for me, nothing came off the middle of the bat, if you like. This might be complete bollocks but the aim for near total authenticity actually made me feel I was watching something simulated, and my acceptance of the film suffered accordingly. Also, the plight of these people, rough as it was (and likely still is), didn't resonate with me; it was either too far removed or I'm just a heartless prick.

The story, such as it can be called a 'story', follows Fern (Frances McDormand) through the US in her beloved campervan, scratching a living from seasonal work. The Global Financial Crisis caused the gypsum mine in her town to close down and, after the death of her husband, she decides to go on the road. She meets up with various itinerant 'nomads', many of whom are non-actors, actual travellers, with a sprinkling of 'traditional' actors like David Strathairn, who plays a potential romantic interest called Dave. The pace is very meandering, filled with lovely pink and orange sunrises and sunsets and vast American landscapes. 

The guts of Nomadland is Fern's reluctance to conform, to settle into a 'normal' lifestyle, and to be fair, we don't see the kind of sub-culture she embraces in US films too often. The scenes with her sister are amongst the best, probably because there's a touch of confrontation and awkwardness to them. The chance to stay with another family is offered as well, but Fern is drawn to the road. There's a semi-resolution near the end (good place for it) where she has a conversation with the 'oracle' of the nomad life, Bob Wells (real-life vandweller and founder of Rubber Tramp Rendezvous). He suggests that she could try saving her memories until her after-life and concentrate on living in the present (or something like that). And like I said before, I can see the worth of this message and the film in general. I just found myself drifting, much like Fern herself in her van. Maybe that's the trick of the film, I was immersed in the malaise.

One more thing - and possibly Americans can help here - what the fuck is Wall Drug?! Is this a company, a restaurant, even a town? And in any case, where did this name come from? Odd.

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John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and Walter Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) contain obvious similarities to the film above.

Godzilla vs. Kong

Now, I wasn't too amped for this fillum. I'd seen the previous entries in the so-called MonsterVerse from Legendary Pictures - Godzilla (2014), Kong: Skull Island (2017) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) - and they were pretty much bobbins. I'd have to say though, this is the pick of them. Director Adam Wingard trims most of the fat and simply allows us to enjoy massive beasts thumping seven shades of shit out of each other. If that's your thing, fill your boots here.

Admirably, it didn't waste much time setting things up (they either assume we know the back story or don't care about it), whipping through the motivations for getting Kong away from Skull Island and therefore onto the radar of Zilla. It would seem casting agents are on a hiding to nothing in finding human actors that can compete for the spotlight with the monsters in films of this kind. They've conceded defeat here with Professor Bland (sorry, Lind), Alexander Skarsgård taking the nominal lead credit. He's woefully dull, but others come off better. Rebecca Hall plays it straight; Julian Dennnison and Brian Tyree Henry, for the giggles; Demián Bichir and Eiza González bring the panto menace. 

But the standouts are, of course, the ape and the gorilla/whale. Kong in particular looks great, the rendering has advanced incredibly, even in the few years since Skull Island. And the world building of Hollow Earth, the suspected home of the pesky Titans, was the best part of the film. The entry from Antarctica, the discovery of aggressive fauna, the gravity sweet spot, Kong's palace, the power source MacGuffin, all these elements looked fantastic and were on screen for the optimum amount of time. A top diversion, but fill the whole film with this place and you're back to Skull Island again (via Journey to the Centre of the Earth).

Another feasible wrinkle was that the motives of the 'evil' company Apex and its CEO, Walter Simmons (Bichir), were actually understandable, even commendable. A little like Tony Stark's ambitious plot to create a 'suit of armour for the earth' in Avengers: Age of Ultron (though we know what happened there). Alternatively, this could be seen as another example of humanity attempting to rule over nature, and the culmination of the plan, accidental as it may have been, removes much of the potential nuance from the table.

While some aspects of Godzilla vs. Kong work, there are almost as many missteps. The music volume was expectedly bombastic but way too much for these ears from the middle ages. The Millie Bobby Brown/Dennison/Henry subplot, while necessary, didn't really hold much interest. Once we get to the reveal of what Apex are planning, the outcome of the film becomes luminously predictable. And hasn't Hong Kong been through enough lately? Give a city a break!

There are a few more head scratchers within but these are best shrugged away. It's probably advisable to put logic aside and revel in the whacking and the roaring.

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Two failed films that have character cross-overs (and were slightly better than history suggests) are The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), directed by Stephen Norrington, and Van Helsing (2004), directed by Stephen Sommers. 

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