The Quite Nerdy Blog

Well, here we are. It's been just about a year now since David Lynch graced the world with the final two hours of his game changing Twin Peaks: The Return and back then, it felt like nothing would ever be the same again. I even wrote as much in a blog about a month later. The funny (and actually very depressing) thing is that that was around a month before the whole #metoo movement and I still think that Twin Peaks has had more of an effect on the entertainment industry than that. I'm showing my cards a little too soon though, this is meant to be a debate and even a year on, it'll be too soon to say for sure. Ideally, my aim with this piece is to discuss how, one year on, the third season of Twin Peaks has affected the shows I've watched, the films I've watched and me and whether the world is in a better place because of it or not. I know this all sounds very grand about a season of a TV show that had been cancelled for 25 years but you only think that because ...

The Meg is probably exactly what you're thinking it is so if you have zero interest in the film, now is probably the time to jump out. For those of you who think this film looks amazing however, you're in the right place as The Meg is probably one of the best cinema experiences I've had in a damn long time. That sounds like a joke and I'll get into why it isn't later but seriously, the film is its own kind of genius. The plot, however, does not quite fall into that category. A submarine goes missing under the Marianas Trench (don't ask) and there's only one man for the job: [Jason Statham's character name here]. Unfortunately by going there, the crew trigger the release of a giant shark or rather: a Megaladon. If that giant shark isn't eliminated before it reaches the shore of some East Asian country, it'll each a bunch of people, which would be far too entertaining. The film has a couple of twists lined up but if you don't see them comin...

My bi-annual breakdown of my favourite TV shows ever is back and this time, it took a fair bit of work to actually rank them. It was also a pretty interesting process as there's plenty of shows that were great but had patchy seasons so got left off and plenty that have just never gotten any less brilliant, therefore making it higher up than I thought they might.  Still, 'tis done now and the results will largely not surprise you, although I hope some will. To the honourable mentions! Black Mirror The nature of an anthology show means Black Mirror can be hit and miss but when it hits, it hits and getting to hear Charlie Brooker talk about it in the flesh gives it a soft spot in my heart. 30 Rock Tina Fey is one of the greatest comedy writers to have ever lived and the breakneck comedic pace of 30 Rock proves it. By turns, one of the smartest and silliest comedies of all time. Rick and Morty The fanbase makes me like the show less but there is undeniably s...

I know the title sounds a little odd but this is one of those posts where you're going to need to hear me out on it. It's confusing though, right? I mean, who doesn't want to see themselves portrayed on screen? Me apparently and it's a revelation I reached while watching the film Adventureland. The main character of Adventureland is a typically nerdy Jesse Eisenberg who plays a loser who moons after this girl he finds at his job but spends most of his time talking to his equally nerdy work colleague. Now, aside from getting the girl, Eisenberg plays a character who is pretty much me down to a tee and I could not stand the prick at all. Obviously, you usually want to see characters like yourself on screen because you relate to them but I've realised over the last few years that it can be much more interesting to see characters less like me and not even because of diversity or anything like that. Often, by focusing on a character less like me, films can end up tou...

I've been having a rough summer in terms of the cinema. Sure, I've watched some great films at home such as Before Sunrise but in terms of films actually at the cinema, it's been a massive flat line for me. Thank God then, for Tom Cruise and his gang, roaring onto the big screen with Mission Impossible: Fallout, one of the best action films I have seen in years. We'll get to the actual action side in a second but as is custom, I'll break down the plot first. In Fallout, for the first time in the franchise, we carry on from the last film Rogue Nation with many of the big characters being those who've returned from that film. Ethan Hunt is, as ever, pulled into a conspiracy involving three potential nuclear bombs, arms dealers and the CIA looming ever closer over the IMF. In a lot of ways it's your typical Mission Impossible plot with plenty of double crossing, plans that the audience aren't in on and pulling off masks but 22 years after the first film...

Welcome to my review of Skyscraper, a film I really saw and got really drunk during. The problem is that we're a couple of days later and I am currently completely sober (whether my flatmates believe me or not) so any enthusiasm I had is going to have completely faded. Still, I'll do my best to capture the magical process that I experienced as I watched this laughable film. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays an everyman who happens to look superhuman because he's The Rock, a man who is missing a leg and is doing security work on the tallest building in the world. Terrorists turn up which means our everyman hero has to make absurdly improbable jumps, punch people and, most importantly, tell them that "Daddy's gotta go to work". If that plot sounds familiar, it's because it's essentially a clumsy cocktail of Die Hard and every Dwayne Johnson action film. There are many problems that spring from that that I'll get to later but the most rele...

Sicario 2: Soldado (or Sicario 2 or Day of the Soldado or just Soldado or whatever it is in your region) is the sequel to the wonderfully tense Sicario, a film about the Mexican drug cartels and how the US Government tried to control them. It was great, a proper miserable time at the cinema and another film that proved how incredible Denis Villeneuve is. However, with the sequel, he, star Emily Blunt, cinematographer Robert Deakins and composer Johan Johannsen are gone, leaving behind Josh Brolin and Benecio del Toro to make up for their absences. Before getting too into that though, the plot follows our two heroes (if you can call them that) as they... Okay, so I saw this film three days ago (as of when I'm writing this) and I don't entirely remember the plot. There were conspiracy thriller beats, the kidnapping of an important mans daughter and one plot twist that I remember predicting in the first five minutes. All in all, it was perfectly functional but considering I re...