Victoria & Abdul (5 Stars)

Like "The Shape of Water", this is another film from the lower half of my top 200 film list. No insult is intended. These 100 films are all outstanding, in my opinion, and they all deserve to be in the top half. The only problem is that there are even better films. Sometimes I push a film from the bottom half into the top 100 list, usually into the 90's, but I don't do it often. Sometimes I want to add new films to the list, but I don't want to remove any films from the existing list. Like "The Shape of Water", I picked it as an excellent film to "clean my head".

"Victoria & Abdul" is a true story that seems in places so ridiculous that it's impossible to believe. How could the 68-year-old Queen Victoria have feelings of tenderness for a 24-year-old Indian? After watching it in the cinema in 2017 I immediately checked online sources, and the story was verified. Maybe it was dramatized in places, but no lies were told. It's a story that Victoria's son Bertie (Edward VII) tried to hide after he became king in 1901. He evicted Abdul from the house Victoria had given him, and he destroyed all traces of Abdul in the palace. The story was only unearthed in 2010 when Queen Victoria's journals were found, written in Urdu. Shortly afterwards, letters written by Queen Victoria were found in India. It's all a story too strange to be true.

A lot of my friends in England are anti-monarchists. Please don't let that put you off watching the film. It'll make you smile, it'll make you laugh. It shines light on the personal life of one of Britain's longest reigning monarchs.

Success Rate:  + 1.1

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The Shape of Water (5 Stars)

I'm always doing my best to advertise my blog, with mixed success. I have a visiting card with my blog's logo and URL that I hand out to people. I don't give it at random to complete strangers. That would be rude, little more than spam. I give it to people that I talk to. For instance, yesterday I visited the doctor and I was talking to an elderly man in the waiting room, so I handed him my card. I'm not sure how old he was, maybe 80, and he didn't understand the concept of blogging. He asked me if I write film reviews professionally for a newspaper or magazine. That's a question I'm often asked, even by younger people. People who like my reviews say they're good enough to be published, and I could earn money for them. I have to disagree.

If I were on the staff of a newspaper, I'd be sent to the cinema every day to watch the newest releases. I'd have to be objective in what I write. Even if I don't like a film, I'd have to restrain myself from writing things that would prevent people visiting the cinema. That's not my intention. I strongly support cinemas, but if I think a film is trash I'll say so. You can search for my one star reviews in my alphabetical list of posts.

You may have noticed that my ratings tend to be at the upper end of the one to five scale. Three is average, but I don't rate many films with one or two stars. That's no coincidence. I don't watch just anything, which I'd have to do as a professional reporter. I only watch films that I think I'll like. Sometimes I'm wrong, and there will be a low rating, but most of the films I watch are rated four or five stars.

My reviews are also erratic. I can write ten paragraphs without saying anything about a film. What I often say is that my blog isn't about films in themselves, it's about the effect films have on me. If you read my blog regularly, as many people do, you'll get to know me. For instance, the title picture of this post is a screenshot of Octavia Spencer, who's not the main actress. In the importance of the characters in the film, she's probably fifth. I've put her photo in this post because I like her. It's as simple as that. She's one of my favourite actresses, so I'll emphasise her, however small her role is. Don't expect me to be objective.

Here she is with Sally Hawkins, the film's leading actress.

One other thing about me is that I need to enjoy films. If I've spent a whole week watching films with a three star or lower rating, I feel like my head's unclean. I need to watch one or two five star films to get myself back to normal. I might pick a film at random from my top 100 film list. I actually have a top 200 list, but I haven't published it because I don't put the bottom 100 films in order, I just keep them in alphabetical order, ready to watch whenever I want to clear my head of bad films.

"The Shape of Water" is one of those films. It's in the bottom half of my top film list. That still makes it a brilliant film. I greatly enjoyed watching it today.

And if you want to know more about the film itself, all I'll say is that it won the Best Film Oscar at the 2018 Academy Awards, so it's not just me who likes it.

Success Rate:  + 7.8

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Survivor (4 Stars)

Three films in one day? I think I still have momentum after the film festival.

"Survivor" is another film that I discovered on the ZDF Mediathek today, so I watched it dubbed into German. I knew nothing about it in advance. I was attracted by the actors Pierce Brosnan and Robert Forster. It's an American film that feeds on the 9/11 paranoia. Kate Abbott (Milla Jovovich) is a diplomat at the American Embassy in London who examines visa applications to spot potential terrorists. She blocks the visa of Emil Balan, a Romanian scientist, because she finds it suspicious that he's visiting a medical congress. He protests, and her decision is overruled. But we see that he's involved in a plot to detonate a bomb at the New Year's celebrations in Times Square.

An assassin known only as the Watchmaker (Pierce Brosnan) is hired to kill her. By luck, she leaves the restaurant where a bomb has been planted, but several of her embassy colleagues are killed. Kate is blamed for the bomb. There's an exciting chase through London, fleeing from the police while the Watchmaker is still trying to catch her.

"Survivor" is a film with blockbuster potential, but somehow it didn't attract enough viewers to make it a success. I enjoyed the film, but I don't think I'll watch it again.

Success Rate:  - 5.1

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Mandy (5 Stars)

I've mentioned a few times that I was disappointed with this year's Fantasy Film Festival. It wasn't always like this. "Mandy" was the opening film in the 2018 Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival. It's an incredible film on so many different levels. The cinematography is brilliant, and so is the music. I strongly recommend turning the volume up as loud as you can. Headphones are okay, but it's better to play it over loudspeakers so that the music envelops the room.

Recently a friend (who doesn't live in Germany) told me that "Mandy" only looks good on an OLED television. I wish I knew someone with a television like that locally so that I can make a comparison. I've been reluctant to buy an OLED television because they're too big for my room. I sit only 185 cm (73 inches) away from my screen. I measured it. According to the "experts", the ideal distance for sitting from the television is 1.6 times the size of the screen. i.e. if you have a 43" screen, you should be sitting 69 inches (175 cm) from the screen. The smallest OLED screens used to be 55", which would be 88 inches (223 cm), but I've read that there are now 48" screens (77 inches, 195 cm viewing distance). That would be almost right for me. I need to check them out in the stores. I usually watch television by myself, directly in front of the screen, but OLED is supposedly better for watching at an angle when I'm watching with my son or my grandchildren.

Or maybe I should get myself a bigger room.

Success Rate:  - 5.5

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No Escape (4 Stars)

I discovered this film in the ZDF Mediathek and was curious enough to watch it, even though it was dubbed into German. (All the German Mediathek films are dubbed into German). I thought I'd never seen it before, but the opening scenes were familiar. I'd seen it in the cinema on 6th September 2015, probably in a meetup with the Birmingham Film Group. My post is dated a day later, because I didn't know how to backdate posts at the time. It's common for me to write my review the next day, especially if I get home late. Now I backdate each post to the approximate time when the film finished.

"No Escape" is a good contrast to the films I've been watching in the film festival this week. They're all serious films in their respective genres, whereas "No Escape" is a typical blockbuster. But I have to say that I enjoyed it more than most of the festival films. A lot of serious film fans use the word blockbuster as an insult. Why? If a film is successful in attracting millions of people into the cinemas, there must be something good about it.

"No Escape" is an exciting action thriller. It's a film people can relate to. A family visits an East Asian country (unnamed, but presumably Laos) and gets caught up in a local uprising. How do you escape? The answer is obvious: seek refuge at the American Embassy, or the embassy of whatever country you come from. But what if the Embassy has been overrun by rebels? Where do you go then?

Owen Wilson puts on an excellent performance as a normal, everyday man. He could be you or me. We need more blockbusters like this.

Success Rate:  + 8.9

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Vermin (5 Stars)

This is the 32nd film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

I needed to think a long time before rating "Vermin". It's definitely the best film of this year's festival, but does it really deserve five stars? It's not a perfect film. Maybe I just feel the need to give at least one film a five star rating.

Spiders have been bred in an Arab desert. The exact country isn't obvious. One of them finds its way into a small shop in France. It's sold for 100 Euros to Kaleb, a young man who likes to collect exotic animals. He puts it in a shoe box, but it eats its way out, and it soon multiplies. Each generation is bigger than the last. Giant spiders terrorise the building where Kaleb lives.

My main problem with the film is the pacing. When it's a battle with the spiders the film is brilliant, but it keeps slowing down to deal with subplots that I find irrelevant. So Kaleb hasn't spoken to his brother for years? So what? Let's not waste time while he explains it, let's get back to fighting the spiders.

Maybe "Vermin" will be better when it goes on general release. We were told that it wasn't complete in time for the festival, so a provisional version was sent. They still have time to put things right.

This is the final film of the festival. I was disappointed this year. Usually there's a mixture of brilliant, average and awful films. This year there have been some good films, but nothing that I considered brilliant. There's only one film that I've given five stars, "Vermin", and I'm not sure if that's a mistake. Putting it another way, there isn't a single film in this year's festival that I want to buy on disc. Let's hope next year's festival is better.

Birth / Rebirth (2 Stars)

This is the 31st film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

There are certain things I don't like in films. One thing I can't stand is hospital operations, especially if they look realistic. That's exactly the problem that I have: the realism. I don't mind seeing heads chopped off or limbs severed in horror films. I know it's fake. But when I see hospital operations, they look like they could be really happening. I don't have the stomach for it.

Dr. Rose Casper is a hospital pathologist who wants to find a cure for death. She steals dead bodies from work so she can experiment with them at home. One of the dead bodies is the daughter of Celie, a maternity nurse in the same hospital. Officially, the body has been transferred from the hospital to an organisation for organ donations, but Celie knows enough about the way the hospital works to confront Dr. Casper at home. She finds her daughter alive, though in a weak state. She needs regular supplies of foetal tissue to get well. The two women work together to get what they want.

But there are repeated operations in hospital. The director says that she's based the film on the story of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein novel, but it's only very loosely based on the novel's premise, and there's no similarity with the film versions. "Birth/Rebirth" is an ugly film with lots of blood.

What Remains (1 Star)

This is the 30th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"What Remains" is an international mash-up. It's a true story about Mads Lake (aka Sture Bergwall), a man who lived in Sweden in the 1990's. The director is Chinese, and he decided to make the film after reading about Mads. The film crew is Chinese. The actors are a mixture of Swedish and English. The film's dialogue is in English. The locations are claimed to be in Sweden, but it was actually filmed in Finland.

The film begins with Mads in a psychiatric hospital. It's not stated why. Two months before his release he began to talk about a boy who had disappeared seven years previously. He claimed to have met the boy on the day of his disappearance, but he couldn't remember what happened. There was a police investigation. The police officer was convinced that Mads was a serial killer and questioned him about other boys who had disappeared at the same time. Mads confessed to 33 murders, but his psychiatrist said that Mads was innocent. Mads was found guilty of eight murders, but 20 years later the verdict was overturned. The incident became a scandal in Sweden about how a mentally ill person could be convinced that he was a killer.

I find the story fascinating, but the film is badly made. It rambles on for 126 minutes, mostly conversations between the various characters. The film is much too long and much too dull.

The Harbinger (3 Stars)

This is the 29th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"The Harbinger" is a film set in the era of the Corona pandemic. We see a family so paranoid that they wear masks at home and don't even sit next to one another in the living room. This isn't just coincidental, it's important to the plot. There's a demon that's been unleashed by people's fears. It's a demon that attacks people in their dreams. People who meet the demon can can wake up in completely different places. I don't mean sleepwalking, the new place might be in another city miles away. But the curse of the Harbinger is that he wipes out a person's existence. A person doesn't just disappear, nobody remembers him.

It's a complex film. When we stood discussing it we couldn't agree on what everything meant. It's a film that I suspect I might give a higher rating when I see it again.

Raging Grace (3 Stars)

This is the 27th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

Joy is an illegal immigrant from the Philippines who lives in London. She's a trained nurse, but without a visa the best job she can get is as a cleaner. She has a young daughter called Grace, who's intelligent but mischievous. She's offered a visa for £15,000. It's almost certainly illegal, but it will look realistic enough to fool the authorities. The trouble is that she only has £10,000 and she has to get the visa within a month.

Joy considers theft, but when she enters a stately home she's offered a job as a maid for £1,000 per week. It's better than she could have hoped for. She thinks she won't get the job if she says that she has a daughter, so she hides Grace in her room. But there are sinister things happening in the house. She's told that the owner is about to die, but her training as a nurse tells her that he's being given medication to make him ill.

The film begins very slowly. For the first 45 minutes it's so slow that I had to ask myself what the point of the film is. After that it speeds up and develops into a gripping horror story.

Tiger Stripes (3 Stars)

This is the 26th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"Tiger Stripes" is the first Malaysian film I've ever watched. It's been highly praised by critics, but it's been banned in Malaysia itself.

The film is about three young Moslem girls who visit a girls school. They're wilder than most of their classmates. They like to post videos of themselves dancing on Tik Tok.

When Zaffan has her first period, she's rejected by her friends. They say she smells bad. She doesn't get much support from her parents. She begins to act strangely, and a local exorcist claims she's possessed. He tries to cast out the demon, but there's no demon. She's turning into a tiger.

The director says that the film is a parable about the suppression of women in Malaysia. I can see that. But not all young girls can establish themselves as strong women by turning into tigers.

New Gods: Yang Jian (4½ Stars)

This is the 25th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

It's the third day in the festival that has begun with an animated film. "New Gods: Yang Jian" is by far the best of the three films. It's overwhelming, from beginning to end. It's based on a 16th Century Chinese novel, which itself is based on old Chinese myths. It would be interesting to sit with someone from China to discuss the myths. I assume I would have been better able to understand the film if I'd known the background.

Yang Jian is a God who's lost most of his powers and now works as a bounty hunter. He's hired to retrieve a magic lamp from a thief called Chenxiang. He soon finds the thief, but others are also searching for the lamp. The events escalate, and Yang Jian discovers that he has a connection with Chenxiang.

"New Gods" (shortening the title) is the best film in the festival so far. I almost gave it a five star rating, but I deducted half a star for the simple reason that I didn't understand it all. There are too many characters who are barely introduced. Their names aren't enough to explain their motivation, and I was confused when some of them changed sides, fighting first on Yang Jian's side, then against him.

The film is two hours long, but I found it was overly compressed. An additional half hour would have helped to explain the story to western novices like me. Added to this, there's a mid-credits scene that confused me even more, because it featured characters who didn't appear in the film itself. I can imagine that Chinese audiences would have watched it and said, "Ah ha! That's who we'll see in the next film".

Sympathy for the Devil (4½ Stars)

This is the 23rd film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

The yearly Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival is never complete without a film starring Nicolas Cage. In the film shown today David Chamberlain is a man who lives in Las Vegas. He drives to a hospital where his wife is about to have a baby. He parks his car, but before he can get out an unnamed man played by Nicolas Cage climbs into the car and threatens him with a gun. The credits list Nicolas Cage's identity as "The Passenger". This year it's common for many of the film characters to be unnamed.

The Passenger orders David to drive him to Boulder City. When David asks how long the journey will take, the Passenger replies, "Why do you think you're ever going home"? The film turns into a terrifying road trip with the Passenger killing several people on the way. Nicolas Cage's performance is what we've grown to expect from him: over-the-top insanity. He's an actor that people either love or hate. I've witnessed this in the online discussions about "Renfield". Half of the people say that Nicolas was awful as Dracula, and the other half say he was brilliant. Today's cinema audience was biased. After the film everyone was gushing with praise. Including me.

The films in this year's festival have been weaker than usual, but this was the best film so far. I'm hoping for better films in the last two days.

Mad Fate (3½ Stars)

This is the 22nd film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"Mad Fate" is a film which has a lot of good ideas, but the pacing is uneven. When the film begins it looks like a comedy. There was laughter throughout the theatre. As the film progresses it's obvious that it's a serious psychological thriller.

The leading character, who isn't named, is a psychic. He knows, for instance, when people will die, but he attempts to change their fate by tricking God. I need to give an explanation by describing the comical opening scene. He's foreseen that a prostitute will die. To stop this happening he buries her in a large plastic bag that contains enough air to breathe, and he performs burial rites over her fake grave. This fails, because the woman is scared and frees herself, hitting him on the head with a shovel and driving away.

But the psychic visits the woman the next day and arrives just after she's been killed in her apartment by a serial killer. A pizza delivery boy arrives, and the psychic immediately knows that he's destined to commit a murder. The rest of the film is about the psychic trying to stop the man becoming a killer. Some of his methods border on insanity.

It's a strange film. Most of the people I spoke with highly praised it. I'm more critical, but it's a film that I'm willing to see again.

Girl Unknown (4 Stars)

This is the 21st film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

At the beginning of the film there's a text screen in which the director requests that the audience doesn't tell anyone about the content of the film, because there are many items in the film's later scenes that could be considered spoilers. I'll follow his wish, by only describing the first two minutes.

A young girl meets a man online and arranges to see him in a local park. Online he'd said he was 16, but he's obviously much older.

I greatly enjoyed the film's slow development and the build-up of tension. Surprisingly, I was one of the few people in the cinema who liked it. The people sitting on both sides of me found the film disappointing. It was a mixture of the film's unpleasant subject matter and the slow pacing. I liked it, and I can recommend it. Make up your own minds.

The Seeding (3½ Stars)

This is the 19th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

A man has gone into the Utah desert to photograph a solar eclipse. He's not named in the film itself, but in the credits he's listed as Wyndham Stone. If I understood correctly, he's a high school teacher. On the way back to his car he gets lost. He sees a small house in a crater. The only way he can reach it is by climbing down a ladder. The woman who lives in the house (also unnamed, but listed as Alina) doesn't give him directions, because she claims that she never leaves the crater. She gives Wyndham a meal and lets him stay the night, but the next morning the ladder is gone. The crater walls are too steep to climb out. Alina makes it clear that she wants Wyndham to stay with her.

There's a gang of six boys that stands at the top of the crater shouting abuse. They taunt Wyndham, pulling him up on a rope, but then dropping him back into the crater.

Months pass. Wyndham can't escape, and nobody comes looking for him.

It's a horror film with similarities to classic films like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "The Hills have Eyes", but the violence is subdued. It's more of an atmosphere of claustrophobia. I have difficulty rating the film. It clashed with the extreme violence of the previous two films. Unfortunately, I had to leave quickly after the film finished. I need to discuss it with others.

Vincent must die (3½ Stars)

This is the 18th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

Vincent Borel is a middle-aged graphics designer in Lyon. He leads a dull life, creating dull computer animations of walk-throughs through houses. One day an intern in his company makes an unprovoked attack on him, hitting him over the head with a laptop. The intern is fired. The next day one of Vincent's colleagues attacks him, stabbing him with a pen. Over the next few days Vincent is repeatedly attacked without reason, even by small children. Everyone wants to kill him.

The trigger seems to be eye contact. As soon as someone looks into Vincent's eyes, he wants to kill him. The only thing Vincent can do is avoid people altogether. He makes a girlfriend in a diner. At first they get on well, but then she wants to kill him as well.

I shan't go into more details, except to say that it's a confusing film. There's no explanation for the attacks. I couldn't even understand the logic of the developments in the last half hour. Other reviewers have said that the film is a satire. If it is, I don't get it. It's a film I'd like to watch again. It deserves a second chance.

Farang (4 Stars)

This is the 17th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

Samir has lived a life of crime. He's been carrying drugs for a French gang. When he's sentenced to five years in prison, he decides to make a new start. He's a model prisoner, and he wants to live a clean life when he's released. It's not that easy. His former gang members want him to work for them again. When he refuses, they attempt to beat him up, but he fights off the attackers, accidentally killing the gang boss's brother.

Samir decides to run away. He moves to Thailand, where he marries a woman and adopts her daughters. But it's a small world. The gangsters in Thailand have contacts with the French gang. He has to fight for his life.

The fight scenes are brutal. "Farang" has been compared with "The Raid", but I don't see much similarity. The fight scenes in "Farang" are more realistic. I prefer the fight choreography in "The Raid". The realism in "Farang" makes the fights too horrific for me.

The Animal Kingdom (3 Stars)

This is the 15th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

In the near future there's an illness that makes people turn into animals. Some turn into fish, some into birds, some into bears, some into frogs; any sort of animal. It's a gradual process. At first the person retains his intelligence, but as the disease progresses he degenerates more and more into animal qualities. These people are tolerated, as long as they don't hurt anyone. There are care homes to look after the critters, as they're called.

Emile lives with his parents. His mother is slowly becoming a bear. At first she's kept at home, but then they decide to send her to a care home. On the way there's a road accident, and the bus carrying the critters crashes into a swamp. About 40 critters escape. The police want to deal with them carefully, but the army is sent in with instructions to shoot to kill.

While Emile is trying to find his mother, he realises that he's turning into a wolf. He tries to disguise it, because he wants to fit in at his new school.

It's a strange story. I could understand if everyone were turning into the same type of animal, but it's weird that people are turning into different animals.

The Moon (3 Stars)

This is the 14th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

South Korea has sent three astronauts on a mission to the dark side of the Moon, hoping to become the second country to succeed in landing men on the Moon. Their spacecraft sustains minor damage from solar wind. While they're repairing the craft there are renewed blasts of solar wind, and two of the astronauts die.

The remaining astronaut, Hwang Sun-woo, is ordered to return home, but he's so close to the Moon that he insists on completing the mission by himself. However, while he's exploring his lunar vehicle is wrecked by a meteor shower.

There's a lot of action and several subplots on Earth, but the film didn't excite me. Obviously I was in the minority, because there was loud applause when the film ended. There's no official release date in America or any European countries, but if you manage to see it, please leave a comment telling me what you think.

Pandemonium (3 Stars)

This is the 13th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

There's a road accident on a mountain road. Nathan and Daniel think they've survived, but they haven't. They're both dead, and they find their bodies lying on the road. They think they're destined to live as ghosts, but then doorways to Heaven and Hell open. Daniel accepts that Hell is his destiny, but Nathan insists that he's worthy of Heaven, until a large monster forces him towards the doorway to Hell.

"Pandemonium" is another film that starts well but drifts off course. As long as we see Nathan and Daniel talking about their lives, the film is interesting. But after Daniel enters Hell we don't see him any more. We see Nathan's arrival in Hell, but when he examines the bodies on the ground he sees flashbacks of their lives and what they've done to deserve Hell. I found this irrelevant. The story should have concentrated on Nathan and Daniel.

The screenwriter/director obviously had some interesting ideas, but they weren't enough to fill the film, so he padded it with ideas of lesser quality.

Robot Dreams (3½ Stars)

This is the 12th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

Today is another day that started with an animated film. Once more I felt tempted to stay at home and wait for the next film. This time I'm glad that I didn't stay at home. "Robot Dreams" is a much better film than "Mars Express".

The film takes place in New York in the 1980's. The director, Pablo Berger, calls the film a love letter to New York. He says that he lived in New York for ten years, and the film portrays New York as he remembers it.

Almost. In "Robot Dreams" the city is inhabited by animals. There isn't a human in sight. Dog, as the main character is called, lives alone in an apartment near First Avenue subway station. He's lonely, so he buys a robot to keep him company. The robot becomes Dog's best friend. They're inseparable.

The problems start when Dog and Robot visit Ocean Beach. Robot breaks down and can't walk, maybe because he's spent too much time swimming. Dog goes home to get a repair kit, but when he comes back the beach is closed. It's the end of the season, and the beach won't be open again until 1st June the following year.

Robot is sad that he's been left alone. He dreams about being reunited with Dog. That's the reason for the film's name. Dog misses Robot at first, but he gets a girlfriend and forgets about Robot.

I like the film because of its vibrant colours and the amusing settings. If the  film had continued as it started in the first half I would have given it a five star rating. The second half is strange. Robot repeatedly stands up and goes home to Dog, but every time he wakes up and finds it was only a dream. It's not pleasant to the viewer to see Dog forgetting his best friend.

God is a Bullet (3 Stars)

This is the tenth film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

It's supposedly based on a true story, but I haven't been able to find out which true events form the basis for the story.

Bob Highwater is a God fearing police detective in a small American town not far from the American border. His daughter is snatched while waiting for her mother outside a store. After weeks of investigation there are still no clues. Then Case Hardin offers her assistance. She says that she knows who's taken Bob's daughter, because it happened to her as well. There's a Satanic cult which kidnaps young girls, then gets them hooked on heroin so they can be used as child prostitutes. Case used to be a cult member, but she was allowed to leave. No reason is named. Maybe she was too old. The cult is always on the move, but Case can contact them through her old contacts.

The film has a lot of action, and it's an interesting story, but it's an ugly story that's often disturbing. It's also too long. It runs for 156 minutes, and it should have been an hour shorter. Particularly annoying is that after Bob's daughter is found the story doesn't end quickly, it rambles on from one wrap-up to the next. There are too many little endings.

It's not a film that I want to watch again.

The Survival of Kindness (1 Star)

This is the ninth film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

The festival catalogue describes this film as abstract. When I hear the word abstract I understand it as experimental. The director obviously has some interesting ideas that he wants to put across without words. Most of the film has no dialogue, and when the characters finally speak it's in foreign languages, and they're unable to understand one another.

The film takes place in Australia. It begins with a woman, presumably an Aborigine, in a cage in the desert. She breaks out of the cage. She sees men who are dead or dying. She finds a deserted town. Finally she's captured by men wearing gas masks, who capture her and other Aborigines, making them work as slaves.

It's not obvious what the film means. It seems that there's an illness that kills white people, but Aborigines are immune. Even if I have this understanding, the things that happen in the film aren't clear to me. It's very frustrating for a film to end with a final scene that makes no sense.

The Roundup: No way out (4 Stars)

This is the eighth film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

It's the third film in the Korean Crime City series, starring Don Lee as the hard hitting Detective Ma. He's an ex-boxer who's joined the police force, and his crime-fighting style is to hit first and ask questions later. Most of the fight scenes made me laugh. Don reminds me of Bud Spencer, which I say as a great compliment.

The story is about the appearance of a new drug on the streets of Korea. It was originally imported from Japan, but now it's being manufactured cheaper in Korea, so the Japanese yakuza wants to buy large quantities from the secret Korean factories.

Detective Ma wants to break up the drug production, but he's hindered by a corrupt Korean policeman who's making money from the deals.

The plot goes to and fro, sometimes difficult to follow, although everything is clear at the end. The film is really just an excuse for a series of exaggerated fight scenes. Whenever Ma hits a criminal, he flies across the room. But I love it. I need to buy the first two parts.

Mars Express (2 Stars)

This is the seventh film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

I almost didn't go to see this film. I don't particularly like animated films, so I checked the trailer for "Mars Express", and I wasn't very impressed. But I thought I'd give it a chance. In retrospect I regret it.

The film takes place in the future when Mars has been colonised. The population is made up of humans and robots who live side by side. Some of the robots are guided by artificial intelligence, whereas others are backups, i.e. robots who are steered by a brain that's been copied from a human. A backup is usually made shortly before a person's death, so that the person's thoughts and memories can exist forever.

Two detectives, Aline (human) and her partner Carlos (backup) are searching for a missing student, Jun Chow. Evidently Jun Chow has discovered something important, because mercenaries have been sent to kill her. She's also made a backup of herself, which is illegal unless a person is very old or terminally ill.

I couldn't relate to the film, neither the infeasible story nor the murky graphics. Surprisingly, most of the people I spoke to liked it. I wish I'd stayed at home. 

We are Zombies (4 Stars)

This is the fifth film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

After all the serious films at the festival we need a comedy to lighten things up. The film shows a society in the near future where humans and zombies live side by side. As long as the zombies don't bite anyone they can even even go out to work alongside humans. But sometimes it gets too much. Zombies smell bad, so their family members might want them to be taken away. It's become a big business for large companies to be paid to take zombies into care.

That's where the friends Karl, Freddy and Maggie come in. Maggie intercepts calls for zombies to be picked up, and Karl and Freddy arrive first. impersonating the official businesses. Then they sell the zombies as workers. This makes them enemies with the official zombie collectors.

There's lots of blood and gore, but it's impossible to be scared. The film is too funny to be taken seriously

Lost in the Stars (4 Stars)

This is the fourth film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

He Fei and his wife Muzi are having a holiday on a small island that belongs to Thailand. They're celebrating their first wedding anniversary. Muzi goes missing. He Fei reports it to the police, but they aren't willing to help. Eventually, after she's been gone for 15 days, he meets Zheng, a Chinese policeman who offers to help. The problem is that he can only stay five more days until his visa expires and he has to leave. But then he wakes up in the morning and there's a woman in his bed who claims to be Muzi. But she isn't. Or at least, he thinks she isn't. He checks the photos on his phone, and they all look like the new woman, not the wife he remembers. Is he going crazy? 

He Fei hires a lawyer called Chen Mai to do detective work for him. Together they travel around the island looking for clues.

It's an intriguing mystery, but the last hour spoils the film. There's a plot twist. Ah ha, so things aren't what they seem. Then there's another plot twist. Then a third. I found this annoying. Plot twists aren't necessary to make a good film, and they definitely shouldn't be overdone.

"Lost in the stars" was released in China last year and has been a huge box office success. It hasn't been released in European cinemas, so we can be glad it was shown at the festival.

Nightman (3 Stars)

This is the third film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"Nightman" is a slow-moving psychological drama. Damian and Alex are a young married couple. They move into the remote house of Damian's mother who's recently gone into an old people's home. He needs solitude to finish writing his university thesis.

Soon after moving, Alex discovers that her husband is sleep-walking, although he denies it. At the same time people are being murdered, and Alex suspects her husband is the killer. Is it possible to sleep-murder? Damian also has secrets that he's hiding from his wife.

It's a creepy film, set in beautiful Irish countryside. The atmosphere is better than the story itself.

Dogman (4 Stars)

This is the first film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

Every year the Fantasy Film Festival begins with a special film, and this year it's the new film by Luc Besson. The film is about a young boy called Douglas whose father trains dogs for dog fights. He starves the dogs to make them fight harder. Douglas pities the dogs and feeds them in secret. When his father finds out he locks him in the cage with the dogs.

Douglas escapes, but he's confined to a wheelchair because of a gunshot wound. He lives with his dogs in a disused high school. He has a university degree, but because of his disability the only job he can get is as a drag queen. The film is bizarre. I shan't say too much about it, but in one scene he reads Shakespeare to his dogs while they sit attentively.

X (5 Stars)

It all starts as a simple idea. An aspiring film director travels with five friends to make a pornographic film on a farm in a remote Texas village. It's 1979, the early days of home video. The cameraman thinks he can create a work of art. "It's possible to make a good dirty movie". The director just wants to make a film that will sexually excite the viewers. That's not a contradiction. Both of them want to make money.

The problem is that the director doesn't tell the farmer what he's doing. He could hardly tell a God-fearing farmer, "We want to film a porno in your barn". The reaction isn't quite what we would expect. The farmer thinks that the film crew are evil and should be destroyed, but his wife Pearl is jealous of the women's beauty and wants to be in the film with them.

What might not be immediately obvious is that the farmer's wife and the director's girlfriend Maxine are both played by the same actress, Mia Goth. In "X" it seems like a random casting choice, but when we watch the prequel "Pearl" it becomes obvious why. The two women are destined to walk the same path. In "Pearl" the title character speaks the same words that Maxine speaks in "X". They both want to be big stars, they both want their names to be known throughout the world. And yet Maxine yells at Pearl, "I'm nothing like you".

"X" is a terrifying horror film. It made me shiver while I watched it. It's ugly but fascinating at the same time, carried by the performance of Mia Goth. A sequel called "Maxine" should be released later this year. I can hardly wait.

Success Rate:  + 13.1

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Wine: Besigheimer Felsengarten Cabernet Dorsa

Tomorrow I intend to visit the yearly wine festival in Besigheim. I say "yearly", but it's actually the first festival since the Corona pandemic, so it's going to be a special occasion. The people of Besigheim are proud of their wine. Germany makes the best wines in the world. That might come as a surprise to wine lovers in England, because Germany hardly exports any wine. In fact, when it comes to wine Germans look down on England. They say that the English don't understand wine, so Germans drink the best wine themselves and export the rubbish to England.

There are 13 wine growing areas in Germany. The opinions on the relative quality are biased. There are distinct differences in taste, and people in each area say their own wine is the best. Call me biased, but I'm convinced that Württemberg wines are the best. That's what my work colleagues told me when I first moved to Stuttgart, and over time I began to agree with them. One thing I was told is that when you're invited to someone's home you should give them a bottle of wine, but only Württemberg wine. If you give him a bottle of French wine he'll be insulted.

The people of Besigheim say their wine is the best wine in Württemberg, i.e. the best wine in the world. I enjoy the Besigheimer wines, and I've drunk a lot of them, but I have to disagree. I prefer the wine from the Heilbronn area.

Today I've been drinking a Besigheimer wine, the Cabernet Dorsa. It's a new wine to me. It was created in Württemberg in 1971 as a cross of the grapes Lemberger and Dornfelder, but it wasn't recognised as a new variety until 2004. Since then it's been rapidly growing in popularity, planted in vineyards across Germany. Surprisingly, the majority of Cabernet Dorsa grapes are grown in the Pfalz (Palatinate), 78 hectares (193 acres), compared with only 29 hectares (72 acres) in Württemberg. It would be interesting to compare them.

This is a map of the wine-growing areas in Germany. The largest areas are:

    Rheinhessen (26,685 hectares)

    Pfalz (22,885 hectares)

    Baden (15,429 hectares)

    Württemberg (11,140 hectares)

    Mosel (8,594 hectares)

I'll let you convert the hectares into acres yourself. Multiply by 2.5.

I mentioned above that the Cabernet Dorsa is a cross between Lemberger and Dornfelder grapes. I greatly enjoy Lemberger wines for their fruity flavour, but I find Dornfelder wines harsh and unpalatable. However, the mixture of the two grapes has produced an astoundingly powerful taste. If I were a wine expert I would be able to describe it better. All I can say is that it's very fruity, even more so than Lemberger. It lacks the subtlety of Lemberger, so I suspect that Carnet Dorsa is a wine to drink in larger quantities. I haven't tried it yet. I don't like to get drunk, but I could at least drink a few glasses to get an impression.

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Addendum on Monday, 18th September 2023

I've received an email from a friend who strongly disagrees that the Württemberg wines are the best. He insists that the Mosel wines are the best. He claims that the Württemberg wines are too dry.

As you might expect, my friend lives in the Mosel wine area, to be precise in Trier. I wrote in the second paragraph that everyone is biased and calls his own wine the best, so why don't I just brush off his criticism?

I've drunk a few Mosel wines, admittedly not many, but they made a good impression on me. It's true that they're sweet, but not too sweet. The German word is lieblich, which means pleasant. I make no secret of the fact that I prefer dry wines. However, if you're a person who prefers sweeter wines, the Mosel wines are the ones for you. They're not bad wines. They're better than the Rhein-Hessen wines, which are also sweet. I still disagree with my friend, but I'll qualify the statement I made in my main article:

Württemberg wine is the best in Germany, but Mosel wine is the best sweet wine in Germany.

Does that make you happy?

Smallville 3.03 - Extinction

Click here to watch the podcast.

I have a complaint about this week's podcast. It was made without Tom Welling. Supposedly there was a family matter at short notice, so he couldn't take part. Things like that can happen, but I think the podcast should have been postponed instead of carrying on without him. Smallville fans would have understood.

Ryan Tellez stepped up and became the anchor-man number two, but it's not the same. The Smallville podcast is all about the two main actors, Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum. Without them, i.e. without both of them, it's just not the same.

But let's get to the episode. It's the first day of the hew year at Smallville High. Clark and his friends are now juniors, which means they're aged 16 to 17 for the rest of this season.

Lovestruck teenager Jake Pollen has heard that Lana Lang has broken up with Clark Kent, so he plucks up the courage to approach her. He says Hi to her, and all he gets back is a disinterested Hi as she drives off. Without actually turning him down, she's made it clear that he stands no chance with her. A normal young man would swallow his pride and look for another girl, someone who isn't out of his league. Not Jake. If he can't have Lana, nobody can.

That evening Lana goes to the school's swimming pool for a swim. Wow! She's way out of my league as well. I had girlfriends when I was 16, but none of them were as beautiful as Kristin Kreuk. But why is she swimming by herself? Does she have special privileges for after-school activities?

What Lana doesn't know is that Jake is sitting on the bottom of the pool, apparently able to breathe under water. He grabs her leg and pulls her down. She might have died, but an unseen figure shoots him. Before Lana has a chance to thank her rescuer, he throws a piece of meteor rock into the pool on which the word "Freak" is written.

Clark speaks to Jake's best friend, Van McNulty, to ask what his motives are, but he doesn't get any clues. Van only speaks about his father, a war hero who was recently murdered.

Lana and Chloe both think that the mystery shooter was a hero, but Clark isn't convinced. He thinks Lana could have been saved without killing Jake. Chloe reveals that she suspected Jake was a meteor freak. She'd been keeping a file on him. The coroner's report confirms it by revealing that he had gills. Talking with Clark, she puts two and two together, although poorly written dialogue hides the reason for their conclusions.

This news report says that Van McNulty was bludgeoned to death, and the suspect is known to the police, but he isn't named. Chloe talks about Van wanting revenge for his father's murder, but it doesn't make sense. What the episode doesn't mention is that we saw Mr. McNulty's death in a previous episode. He was killed by the shapeshifter Tina Greer in the episode "Visage". That makes it all obvious. Van is seeking revenge on meteor freaks in general.

Clark takes Pete Ross to Van's hunting cabin. They find a large armoury, much more than a typical hunter would own, and information that's been stolen from Chloe's computer. There are files on proven and suspected meteor freaks, including Jake Pollen. The next person in the list is Lex Luthor, suspected because he has an abnormal white blood cell count and is seemingly immune to illness. Clark rushes to Metropolis just as Van McNulty is attempting to assassinate Lex. Clark catches the bullet, which is witnessed by Van. Clark catches Van, but in the struggle meteor rocks fall out of his rucksack, making Clark collapse. Van realises that this is Clark's weakness.

That evening Van smelts meteor rocks to make kryptonite bullets. The next day he lies in wait at the Kent Farm to attack Clark. When the bullet is fired, Clark instinctively tries to catch it, but it pierces his hand and buries itself in his shoulder. Van leaves, assuming Clark is dead. Jonathan Kent manages to pull the bullet out with pliers. Clark rapidly heals.

Van goes to the Talon and tells Lana he's the one who saved her life. He tells her that he's also killed Clark for her own good. The only person worse than a meteor freak, he says, is someone who loves a meteor freak. She rings the police to report Clark's death, after which Van takes her prisoner.

Sheriff Nancy Adams visits the farm and finds Clark alive and well. "The rumours of your death have been greatly exaggerated, Mr. Kent".

Clark knows that Van carries a police scanner, so he uses a police radio to tell Van that he's still alive and wants to meet him at the school. Van says he'll use a whole clip of bullets to kill Clark. At the school Van fires bullets at Clark, but they don't harm him because he's wearing a bulletproof vest made out of lead. Van is arrested and taken to a mental asylum.

In a subplot, Chloe Sullivan tells Lionel Luthor that she no longer wants to do research on Clark Kent for him. He tells her that if she stops working for him she'll fire her father. Lionel is the real bad guy in the series, much worse than Lex.

Lana visits Clark at the farm and tells him that even if he were in some way infected by the meteor rocks, she'd still stand by him. Silly, silly Clark. He could have used this to reveal his secret to her. She's someone he can trust completely. But he backs away again. She's the right girl for him.

In the podcast Michael Rosenbaum calls "Extinction" a freak-of-the-week episode. He's wrong. Van McNulty isn't a freak, he's a normal man. If anything, he's a non-freak-of-the-week. I'm sure Tom would have contradicted Michael, if he'd been there.

Let's hope Tom is back next week.

Always hold on to Smallville.

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