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tony-sullivan99
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Underworld (1997)
Wonderful characters, A1 portrayals by the cast
The excellence of the series lies in the characters, their clashes, and their truly first class portrayals by the cast. The weak and insipid William (James Fleet), a middle aged teacher, is married to flighty young Gilda. Gilda is barely able to read her own tattoos according to William's strong, bitter and brittle sister Susan (Susan Wooldridge - amid A1 performances she manages to stand out), whose own husband left her for another woman. Their lives become entangled with two sets of gangsters. Boss Teddy Middlemass (Alun Armstrong) is tough but trying hard to raise himself to a higher moral and cultural level, an effort despised by his father (Vicar of Dibley's Trevor Peacock). Rival boss Mr Jezzard is a rolled-gold psychopath, whose sadism is lightened only by his love of the theatrical. The second tier of characters are also well drawn and brilliantly brought to life.
Like other reviewers I am immensely frustrated at how this series has been buried. If any old TV series should be re-run it's Underworld.
The Menu (2022)
Ralph Fiennes stands out as the intense, tyrannical chef
A black comedy satirizing the obsessive and pretentious cuisine tailored to the rich at exclusive restaurants. It looks more generally at the antagonism between service industry workers and customers, with the usual sub-theme of male bastardry and female revenge. A number of rich and famous people and their hangers-on are taken to an island cut off from contact with the wider world, expecting deluxe servile treatment, at the hands of a famous chef and his staff. In a strong cast, Ralph Fiennes stands out as the intense, tyrannical chef. A faded actor, corrupt young executives, philandering boomer businessmen, and food critics have a quite surprising night.
Dýrið (2021)
Extraordinarily sensitive
Maria and Ingvar are a youngish, childless couple, intense but subdued, running a sheep property below Iceland's gloomy peaks. All seems routine, with only one or two subtle hints of anything amiss. Later they are visited by Ingvar's ne'er-do-well brother. When fairytale-like events unfold, all three are deeply affected, but without the stupefied disbelief you might expect - it's as though they know things we don't about their country.
The film abounds in atmosphere and extraordinarily sensitive portrayals of animals' feelings (CGI-enhanced I think). It is like a fairy or folk tale, though I don't believe it is actually based on one. People have tried to work out what the ending "means", but while the core events are clear, I think their meanings are negotiated afresh with each viewer.
Spoiler alert
What happens is this. A tall male creature with human body and ram's head stalks the hills, breaks into Maria and Ingvar's sheep pen, and sires a babe on one of the sheep - a female replica of himself, sheep's head and all. Maria delivers the newborn hybrid and adopts it as her own child, naming it Ada. When Ada's sheep-mother tries to get to her, Maria drives it off and ultimately shoots it.
The fantasy is interwoven with a realist story. Before the film opens Maria and Ingvar have lost two children (one named Ada). In one of the early scenes Maria voices a wish to be able to go back in time, which suggests that the children's deaths were preventable. At one time the growing hybrid-Ada wanders into the fields, because Ingvar left a door open, suggesting he may have also been negligent regarding his own children, especially since there are several other references to doors in the film.
At the end the "ram man" exacts revenge for the killing of the sheep-mother by shooting Ingvar with his own gun, then taking Ada with him back into the hills, leaving Maria bereft.
In one particularly heart-rending scene Ada stares at a picture of sheep, as though trying to sort things out in her young mind. For me, one of the key meanings of the film is the lamb-like innocence and vulnerability of young children, especially those like Ada who slowly become aware of being radically different, and socially unacceptable.