Tag: film

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Not Another Film Review Communication?

I have decided to start a new film review service but don’t worry I’m not going to be adding these to this website. I’ve found that I often start watching the same film on Netflix or Amazon Prime but I only notice about fifteen minutes into the film. I get quite a few recommendations and neither service particularly remembers which films you have seen before and I don’t really go in for rating those films on those services.

Prime Recommendations
Prime Recommendations
Netflix Recommendations
Netflix Recommendations

Now, I like space films which are clever or just space films which are well written. I’m not that fussed on how well made they are. I’ve even recently watched a spate of second world war films but not because I’m fascinated with the war but more because of the stories they hold and things I didn’t know about. Most war movies are utterly depressing and full to the brim of the definition of survivor bias.

Anyway, I’ve seen a lot of terrible films on both of these main streaming services so I have created a spreadsheet to start avoiding watching them again. I’ve only just started this so it’ll be interesting to see how long it takes before I’m referring to it before I watch something. I will also add to the list as I discover films I’ve already seen and try to write down what I think. I will not be adding the reviews of these films to this site. I’ve got plenty to write about here once I start heading back to the cinema and once things start happening again.

This is communication number 2005 and so here are some things that I note took place in that year:

  • The Airbus A380 makes its first flight.
  • The Provisional IRA downs all arms.
  • Hurricane Katrina
  • Drawings of Muhammad are printed in a Danish magazine.
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Spider-Man: No Way Home

Yesterday I went to see this film. Given the omicron variant is being a bitch I had to balance out all the variables. I booked the largest screen/auditorium and made the the seats were definitely spaced from other vectors, facemasks were worn. A group of young men were there not wearing facemasks and I don’t think they were all exempt but there’s no folly like the stupid invincibility of the young. Wearing a facemask actually show that you care about others, you are reducing your airborne vectors, you are being considerate. These young men, quite clearly, aren’t aware of that or just don’t care. It’s easy, I think, to want to think about others and do your best for them. I really should remind myself that the tories have one a majority the last few general elections when the alternative was a society trying to help people.

It was dark, cold and foggy on the drive to the cinema and with roads closed near the village the journey was a bit longer than hoped for. The tide looked low on entry to the cinema. I could see all the mud flats and they were covered in seabirds having a rest from attempting to fly with almost zero visibility. After watching the film I rated it on IMDB and there is a communication that covers all the rules for the ratings here. I then tweet my result and because I have re-installed twitter onto my phone I could do that straight after the rating rather than having to use the PC to send it.

I didn’t hate this film. But I didn’t really enjoy it. But I was happy to see how the story was resolved and how they would figure certain aspects out. I don’t like superhero films and stories because it always ends up – who has the bigger fists wins – and that’s a lazy trope. It’s toxic masculinity class 101. Anyway, this film was mostly dull. I don’t like Dr Strange as a character and I didn’t really like most of the plot. It felt as though they had run out of ideas and just needed to bring back all the baddies because being creative is too hard.

From here on there be spoilers.

This is a film about selfishness. Utter selfishness. Peter Parker could have fixed it right at the beginning by not changing the spell every few seconds. Dr Strange could have stopped the spell and then re-started it but apparently the rules in this universe don’t allow for that. Peter Parker was selfish at the beginning and then ruined many people’s lives and cost millions of dollars of damage. He could have fixed this at any point by hitting the button on the McGuffin. The problems created in this film are so easily stopped. Press the fucking button.

The reason he doesn’t press the button is this universe Peter Parker believes that people should be given a second chance, that they have the chance at redemption. What christian wank this is. Just accept christ on your deathbed and say you are sorry to the imaginary man in the sky and you are redeemed and accepted into heaven. Parker wanted to fix these terrible people without their consent. I’m not sure what was meant to happen after that? Were they going to live in his universe? If you had the amazing power of being a bad superhero do you think you could go back to living in the suburbs? I’m not sure that would end well. The reason these people become bad is that they are egotistical cunts.

What was the end game? It seems Parker came up with a plan but with no idea how to resolve then ensuing issues. This is another classic modern trope taken from the real world examples of Iraq and Afghanistan. If you look back at the end of WW2 there were plans put in place to rebuild Europe and Japan. There was never a plan for Iraq and Afghan. Right, ok. This has gone political. I probably need to stop. Look, the thing is, Peter could have hit the button at anytime and fixed it all. He didn’t. He’s a selfish prick.

I was hoping we could see some Miles Morales, but it didn’t happen. I feel that the script could have been loads better with the other spidermen. I felt stale and slow. It didn’t really work. Perhaps the writers need to watch some buddy movies, or some where they get the team together.

So, this is communication 1998 and I’ve been writing a few things that happened in each year as I get through the publishing of communications. The last few have been interesting as nothing of note has stuck out at me on the wikipedia page and I so there’s this blank area when I wasn’t really into news as such. I just didn’t take that stuff in. Anyway, here are some things that happened in 1998:

  • Andrew Wakefield’s lying study into MMR vaccines and the lies told by the media of the day launch the anti-vaccination movement.
  • The second Congo war starts, it will leave 5.4 million dead.
  • Google Inc is formed.
  • An oil pipeline in Nigeria explodes killing 1,082 people.
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Dune Demolishing

So, this week I’ve watched Demolition Man along with the 1984 version of Dune. There are other things going on but none particularly interesting enough for this site, except maybe the caves and cliffs update to Minecraft. Why did I choose to watch Demolition Man? It’s even worse than that I paid for the privilege of watching it on a streaming service rather than “download” it which I would have done in the past. So, I didn’t download it as I only do that on an old laptop, the new PC hasn’t been tainted with any torrent type software or files and I refuse to let it become untouchable. A podcast I listen to reviews films, specifically terrible christian movies although they sometimes do jewish and muslim films too.

These guys chose to review Demolition Man this week and I remembered really liking it when I saw it at the cinema and the “three seashells” thing is something that I think about now and then. It’s sometimes nice to watch the film before it gets reviewed, most of the time I’m not bothered but this time I thought it was worth it. It’s very interesting seeing how far film technology has come in my life time. This was a high quality film and the effects are some of the best of its time. I mean, they look terrible compared to nowadays but they were still pretty good and didn’t mess with my enjoyment of watching this film. It’s a great film.

Dune, 1984 Lynch version, also happened to pop up in my interest this week as I had discussed the 2021 film version with a friend and as much as I knew I’d seen the original I couldn’t really remember much about it. So, I watched this too this week. What did I think? Well, it’s more gross and despicable than the 2021 film, and I think it’s probably a better film. Again, there are issues with the technology being so much more improved these days that it’s hard to make a film look terrible because of the effects [especially so when there’s so much money involved]. Everyone raves about the sense of scale and vista that Villeneuve creates but the Lynch version has the same sense of wonder and mechanical amazement. I’m not sure people who reviewed the recent version had watched the Lynch version within memory.

I think I have a bigger issue with the overall plot of films like this one which I consider to be absolutely fucking lazy. This isn’t really the fault of the movies but more a fault of the writer of the story. My problem is: it’s just a fucking jesus story! Stop being so fucking lazy and making your lead character the last chance of a prophecy. So many books and films have prophecy and saviour figures that it reinforces upon society the religious views prevalent at the time. Even Harry Potter is the result of a prophecy. This child was born to do the things he did. Every time a book or film with this lazy-ass plot device makes it big it reinforces two things in the population:

  • The concept of religion and the prophecies from the past allowing us to redeem ourselves if we believe in the correct god.
  • The concept that people are born into a particular standing in life and that you need to learn your place.

Both of these concepts annoy the fuck out of me. Both of these concepts continue to encourage and force the disparity we see in society, they discourage altruistic behaviour and they encourage fucking idiots to become leaders of countries because that’s their fucking birth right. You know that t-shirt that says if you aren’t angry then you aren’t paying attention? I’m a walking human version of that. I have to constantly pull away from the news to pay less attention because everywhere I look I see entitled pricks trying to do a job they have no idea to do because they think they should be doing it. These assholes genuinely think this is their purpose in life. To be in charge. To make decisions that will affect populations. But, the problem is, they aren’t qualified to do it. They are slimy cunts who have the right parents and attended the right schools. They don’t give a shit about everyone else, they just care enough to try and maintain their position of power.

I read an headline in The Guardian recently where someone was saying that will all the recent shenanigans they are thinking of changing their vote. Fucking What? How stuck in your ways and forgiving do you need to be if you are only now thinking of changing your vote? How much shit and bollocks do the tories need to create for you to just around now start thinking of changing your vote? What a selfish prick. If you can’t see that the current bunch in charge are utterly incompetent then maybe you shouldn’t be voting in the first place. I suspect it’s more about getting to the balance point where you can accept your hatred of voting Labour rather than the selfish view of continuously voting for the tories because you always have.

Well, that went sideways as a communication but I think it’s all on message for the general themes of this website. In other news I bought an album by Mono Inc because I’ve had “Children Of The Dark” going through my head for weeks now.

This is communication number 1996. So, let’s see what things happened that year that made a mark on my life:

  • Fokker goes bankrupt.
  • Australia bans automatic and semiautomatic weapons following a mass killing.
  • IRA Manchester bomb.
  • N64 is released.

I don’t think I was paying much attention to the news in this year as looking through the lists of happenings, not much actually reminded me. I was news-blind. I wish I was such now.

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Ghostbusters: Afterlife

There wasn’t much choice at the cinema when I looked to book a ticket. Eternals was on along with some films I had already seen but I am not going to bother with Eternals. I don’t like superhero films and if I want to watch them I’ll do it on a streaming service. Ghostbusters: Afterlife was all that was left, but that doesn’t mean it was a poor choice, I wanted to see this. It was dark and stormy so I couldn’t see where the river water was for a tide report, but there were some reflections of lights high up the mud bank and, more telling, there were sea birds just resting all over the place, floating around, and I think they were taking shelter from the storm.

After seeing this film I rated it on the IMBD website and there is a guide to the rating system within this communication. I flip-flopped between a six and an eight because as much as I enjoyed this film and it gave me the “feels” I wasn’t sure I was going to see it again. But, let’s face it, for a film to make me happy and smile thirty five years since I watched the first version, it deserves a decent score. I then tweeted my score.

I really enjoyed this film. It felt like it was paced quite slow to start with but I think that’s because modern films are paced too fast in case the audience decide they hate the film. Making people wait for the “action” is perfectly good. There doesn’t have to be loads and loads of action all the way through the film. We don’t need films to keep racing to the lowest denominator of the public. There should be room for improving society and not just destroying it all the time.

I smiled at many points in this film and laughed [inwardly – I’m not a freak] in the right places and sometimes in this wrong places. The person three seats along my row seemed to laugh too loud and too much, but you know what? Each to their own. It’s better than the narcolepsy person I was near for one of the Matrix fims. I’m going to try and give little away about the film but that also means I can’t really talk about the ending. I will say that I loved the effects of the big-baddie, I thought they looked really good. The voice was interesting and in the credits it mentioned that Shohreh Aghdashloo had been the voice and that didn’t surprise me. She has such a unique voice and accent it really works in this situation.

The touches of music that plinked away in the background were perfect and hinted at the original film enough that I’m considering getting the soundtrack in digital form. The Ghostbusters OST was the first album I ever bought with my own money. I can remember my mum asking me to make sure I wanted it as it was quite a bit of money. Clearly I wanted it. If I want something then I always want it. I think.

I enjoyed this film a lot. It is nostalgic. It is lovely. It is worth seeing.

Comms#1992 and we get closer to the millennium each week. I wonder what number 2000 will contain? I’m not going to plan this, I’m just going to let it happen. Now, I’m one of those who can count correctly and so in terms of years I recognise 2001 as the start of the third millennium because that is very clearly when it starts. Here are some things from the year 1992 C.E.

  • The Maastricht Treaty is signed.
  • 263 die in a coal mine disaster in Turkey.
  • The LA riots following white cops being acquitted of beating a black man when a video clearly showed them doing so.
  • The Balkans are going to shit.
  • The first text message was sent.
  • The Fulham Five first lived together.
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Last Night In Soho

So, I used my last night of freedom in this mini-break we have from work to go to the cinema to watch Last Night In Soho. It was directed by Edgar Wright who also directed Baby Driver which I reviewed here. Driving along the south run towards the cinema I noticed that the tide was very low, I couldn’t see the mudbanks because it was dark but I could see the white of the seagulls standing on top of the mud all the way to the centre channel of the Medway. I don’t recall checking what was going on with the river levels when I left I was puzzling out what I thought about this film.

After watching the film I rated it on IMDB, there’s a whole thing about the rating system and that’s covered in this communication. Then, eventually, I tweet the result to my fans but not from my phone as I’ve had Twitter removed from my phone for a long time now. The only “scoial media” type app I have installed is Reddit and that’s only for times when I need distraction from the happenings around me because I’ll get too annoyed if I actually pay attention to anything.

I’ll try not to give too much away about this film but for the first 75% of the film it was heading for an EIGHT out of ten. I really enjoyed it and thought I might watch it again to see all the subtleties between each decade of happenings. Essentially a girl moves to London and experiences visions from the 1960s. I thought this premise worked really well and I liked the whole [first 75%] of the film. The music was great, the look and feel of London in the 60s was fantastic and the experiences of a Cornish girl heading to London were reasonably accurate but I’m not sure the “big city” is that much of a “thing to worry about”. Maybe I’m wrong because I grew up near London and regularly went there in my teens, I guess I also have to factor in that I am a male and places feel different to us depending on what sex we look like.

When people talk about the swinging sixties I tend to remember what my mum once said and that was “it was still a bit shit everywhere”. While there might have been an amazing scene in some cities most of the world was still a bit shit. The image of Carnaby Street and the Kings Road garnered feelings of freedom and liberation and I suppose while that’s true the men in charge were still assholes. I did like the fact that many of the male characters in this film were creepy as fuck. I guess that is what the world is like even now and the experiences of women were shown to be generally quite awful.

My problem with this film started in the last 25% of the run time. I had positively enjoyed the film until then, wondering whether the main character was crazy or experiencing some weird time displacement. I was hoping this would turn out to be a film where the mental health of the main character grew to be known and helped to be minimised with care and compassion. But, no. This turned into a plain horror film. I don’t care for horror films because they are clearly bullshit and the tricks they play on you are trope-like and mostly boring. Every now and then a film will come along that will be surprisingly different but then that spawns a load of shit.

Terence Stamp and Diana Rigg were fantastic in this film. The two lead characters managed to keep their eyes open in terror suitably long enough. This was a well made film but the crappy ending dropped the scoring down from an easy 8 to just a six and so this film gets lumped in with all the other sixes and there’s a lot of them.

I’d be curious to know just how good an Redruth accent the lead female had, @cornishpom?

This is comms#1984. Here are some things that happened in that year of our lord:

  • The USA and the Vatican restore full diplomatic relations.
  • The start of the Satanic Panic.
  • An explosion at a waterworks in Lancashire kills 16.
  • Liechtenstein finally grants women the right to vote.
  • Threads airs on BBC two and gives me nightmares.
  • Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to cross the Atlantic, solo, in a hot air balloon.
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Dune

I went to the cinema to see a film, a good one this time. It was dark as I approached the cinema along the wharf road but I could see lights flickering off the wavelet tops all the way close to the sea wall so I know the tide was in. How far I couldn’t quite tell but whenever I looked I saw streetlight reflections. This was Rochester cinema, which isn’t in Rochester, and my second trip this week although I suspect not my final trip this week.

After watching a film I rate it on IMDB and then tweet the result just so this communication looks quite good with an embedded tweet. I mean, you could head over to Twitter to see what I thought but now you are here, why would you?

This film was gorgeous. I already knew the story pretty well as I’ve watched the previous films and read a couple of the books. I’m sure that my friend, JH in Cornwall, gave me a copy of most of the books although I can’t remember how far through them I’ve read. I’m tempted to start again but I have too many unread books on my Kindle device thingy.

I wasn’t sure at first whether to rate this film as an 8 or 10. My reasons are that I don’t think I will pay to see this film again but I suspect that I will probably watch it again before the next film comes out. So, it gets a ten out of ten which is frankly what it deserves.

The whole look of this film is just absolutely gorgeous and the scale and vision is impressive. I guess it could be argued that given CGI and the skill of animators it is possible to make anything in a film these days but just to have the ideas of creating such things is still impressive to me. I really enjoyed this film and will one day make my kids sit through it all [ha ha]. I’m not sure they’ll be happy with the ending but I was very satisfied with it all.

When I entered the cinema I had to check which screen I was in as there were two teenage girls in the row behind me and I wondered what they were doing there. Dune isn’t really a teenage girl film I thought at first but then I told myself off and reminded my brain not to be too judgey about other people upon appearance. However, at the end of the film the two girls were not in the theatre so maybe they hated it, maybe they had to leave, maybe they just didn’t realise the film was over two hours long. I don’t know.

This is comms#1983 and so let’s see what things happened in the year I started secondary school:

  • ARPANET moves to the TCP/IP protocol.
  • Seatbelts become mandatory in UK for front row seats only.
  • Air Canada Flight 143 glides in to land in Gimli, Manitoba.
  • GPS is declassified for public use.
  • Kill ‘Em All is released.
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The Addams Family 2

I went to watch the film Addams Family 2. I can tell you the tide was low on the approach to the cinema, all of the mud bank was showing. What I don’t understand is that as we left the entertainment park the tide was pretty high so maybe there was some sort of time bulge or something while I was inside. The film didn’t feel too much of an eternity. I rated the film on IMDB and tweeted the result. This communication deals with the rating system.

Whilst I didn’t hate this film I also didn’t care for any of it. I don’t think I’ve seen Addams Family the first animated one and I very much doubt that I will try now. Maybe I’ll go back and watch Addams Family Values from 1993, I’m not sure, but it would be interesting to see my kids’ reactions to this one. For me the best part of this film was the trailers and adverts as I read some of my book about the development of the U2 and I was on the chapter about converting the plane to be carrier based. It was far more interesting than the rest of the film. Maybe my problem is that I’ve seen many films and seen many plots and nowadays there’s nothing new. idk.

This is communication number 1981 and recent tradition requires me to now write a list of a few things that happened in that year. I’m quite excited as we are in the region of time where I have consciousness and so these things will become more relevant to me.

  • The Indonesian passenger ship Tamponas 2 catches fire and capsizes in the Java Sea, killing 580 people.
  • The Brixton race riots.
  • AIDS first recognised.
  • Liverpool race riots.
  • Slavery is abolished in Mauritania.
  • The Church Of England votes to allow women to holy orders.
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The Last Duel – An Update

I went for a run earlier today and I ended up thinking about a number of things about this film, mostly to do with how annoying it was. I keep wondering if it was genius or shit to have the story told three times from different points of view. I think I have settled on “shit”. I know the film was trying to be clever but as I get older I am convinced it is the job of media to push for equalities of rights and to make the world a better place. All the undertones of modern film should be progressive. Just maintaining the status quo doesn’t do enough. We live in a world where people are treated differently because of who they are and that’s wrong. We also, very obviously, live in a world where there is a pandemic of violence and mistreatment of women. Rachel Parris said it well in the recent episode of The Mash Report.

So, the concept of telling this story in three parts, two of which are from a male point of view and one of which wasn’t even involved in the rape is bollocks. By focussing two thirds on the film with a male point of view demeans the actuality of what happened to the woman. The fact that we see the rapists point of view as part of this film is shocking and sad. It tries to justify the rape with the emotional intelligence of a fucktard. The c(o)unt doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

The fact that the court trial focussed on the woman’s sex life and things she had said to her friends speaks volumes as we STILL DO THIS TODAY. Women are blamed for the violence that happens to them. Men are excused from being violent sexist pigs because the whole world and rules for everything are designed for men by men.

This film missed the chance to do so much. It could have sent a message around the world, it could have been a commentary on the modern world [same rules as 700 years ago]. It even had it’s own #metoo moment but it got lost in bullshit men fighting it out for their honour. I bloody hate this sort of film and probably shouldn’t have seen it. I thought it would be a good use of some spare time. Live and learn eh?

This is comms#1976

  • 23000 die in Guatemala after an earthquake.
  • An explosion at an ammunitions factory in Finland kills 40.
  • Viking 1 lands on Mars.
  • First known outbreak of Ebola in Zaire.
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No Time To Die

Well, I did it, I went to see what is hoped to be a massive film at the cinema. I booked a midday viewing because that way I still get the rest of my day to do what I want – if that makes sense. I don’t really like getting home from the cinema too late and then going straight to bed, I like having a couple of hours before I have to end the day. I guess there’s a certain routine built in there.

The weather wasn’t that great as I drove to the cinema. It had been raining for an hour or so and it continued to do this for most of the day. I didn’t really mind, rain is a good thing, you just need to be dressed in the right gear. The tide was somewhere around two thirds, a little of the mud bank was visible at the higher parts but nothing else.

After the film I rated it on IMDB and then tweeted the result because I like embedding the tweets on this site. The history of tweets is one reason I haven’t deleted my twitter account. Anyway, there’s a communication written years ago about the rating system. This film trouble me a little because I didn’t think it was worth a six out of ten but I also didn’t think about leaving, I was just bored with some of the scenes.

Well, what did I think of this film? Did I enjoy it? Did it do what I want a Bond film to do? All these are very good questions, but I’m not sure if I’m going to answer them in here. So, shall we start at the beginning? Britannia crumbling to dust in the opening credits made me chuckle a little I suppose, I wonder if that’s what the world thinks of the UK, I mean they aren’t wrong. So, I guess I should do some general bits before I go into spoilers.

I think I liked the film. I don’t want to see it again and there are plenty of problematic aspects to it. I have found Bond films hard to follow for the last six years and I think that’s because I try to think too much about the plot and the what/where/whys of characters and vehicles. There is a lot in this film that I genuinely think doesn’t make sense once you get more than one layer down.

I don’t know why all the baddies have to have facial scarring of some kind. It has always been so. The chap with the scar is the killer. It’s bullshit. I also didn’t understand any of the motivations in the film, why was the bad chap doing what he does? It was really weird. Oh, and the ultimate plot being to kill most of the world with a plague amused me massively.

I wonder if I’m old and decrepit because at times I couldn’t understand what was being said. I would have liked some subtitles I think. It was the odd sentence here and there and while they ultimately don’t matter I wonder if the audio mix was a little off at times?

There be SPOILERS from now on.

How many concussions can you get before you are no good. I quite liked the fact that we saw Bond get hurt but the recovery was short as ever and there were no lasting effects. The film borrowed sound detailing from games when a grenade explodes we get the muffled ringing sounds as though we are hearing things from Bond’s point of view.

God damn they killed Felix. I liked Felix.

I really liked the glider/submarine that drops from the C17. Mind you, Q only puts on his oxygen mask after the doors are open and I think that’s a little late, he would have passed out. Oh, it takes more than a few hours to get a C17 around the world to near Japan.

I hated this film for making me feels when they played “All The Time In The World”, but that’s not a Bond thing, it’s the fact that the chosen music is fucking excellent.

I liked the ending.

I did not like that “James Bond Will Return”.

“M” would be arrested and put on trial for treason. MI6 only do as they are told by the politicians. It’s why the whole thing is fucked as the forces and spy agencies do what they are told to do. Hate the decision makers and not the doers.

I think Bond should have punched, shot, killed M.

I was bothered about the size of the ammunition holders in the DB5. I think they would unbalance the car a shit-load.

Spectre had a bomb waiting for all time at Vesper’s grave?? What?

This film seemed slightly too long, but I think that’s what the fans want. I am not a fan. I think I agree with Jase when he says he likes the really shitty Bond movies of the late 70s and early 80s when it was all so silly.

This is comms#1969 and so here are some things that happened in that year:

  • First flight of 747.
  • Concorde first flies.
  • The Harrier enters service with the RAF.
  • Humans land on the moon for the first time.
  • Probes are sent to Venus.
  • My Lai massacre.
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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Well, I went to the cinema. It had been a while and I was starting to miss it. More importantly I was panicking because I thought I might miss Dune and the local cinema is showing it once a day, but it turns out they are only showing the David Lynch version so I haven’t missed the extravaganza. I went to see Ten Rings. On the way I noted that the tide was pretty low and discussed this with one of the children. I think they get mildly embarrassed or something when I explain what I’m doing noticing silly stuff.

After the film I tweeted my rating of the film, giving away what I thought of it. Although actually I think my position on the film is a little more nuanced.

I couldn’t leave the cinema as my children were with me, and if they weren’t I would probably have stuck it out. But, it wasn’t a good film. It was another Marvel film and mostly dull. We were the only people in the theatre and so spent our time checking out the view from different seats and generally having fun in the boring bits.

I will say this: this film is the biggest waste of Ben Fucking Kingsley I’ve ever seen. I hope he either fan-boy his way into the film or got fucktons of money.

Comms#1965, here’s what happened in that year:

  • The Gambia becomes independent from the UK.
  • 400+ killed in Chile after an earthquake causes dam failures.
  • What the fuck -the US launch a test nuclear reactor into low earth orbit.
  • 274 killed in a mining accident in India.
  • A 70mph speed limit is imposed on British roads.
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Reminiscence

Another day to fill and so I booked another trip to the cinema. What’s quite nice is that I book films without knowing a single thing about them. The previous film, The Night House, has been playing on my mind and I’m concerned for the main character. At the end of the film it was clearly implied that she was safe from the demon just because she didn’t kill herself, but if, as the film wants us to believe, a demon is after her then how can it be defeated? Oh, maybe it can’t affect her directly which was why it was using her husband to attempt to kill her? Nope, the film clearly shows the demon affecting her directly so it can’t be that. Maybe it’s because she didn’t kill herself and so the demon is giving up? Nope, can’t be that because that fucker had chased her from the shadows since her NDE following a car crash. This is the problem with supernatural horror films with demons and shit. You can’t make them internally consistent because it’s all bollocks. I’d still go for the mental breakdown version of this film, but then it has the neighbour seeing the “shadow” at the end of the film, so who knows what the intention was. Maybe a I care too much about this film? Maybe it deserves a higher rating? Nope, I’m not going to watch it again.

So, I drove to the cinema on this Sunday and actually got there before the showtime. This allowed me to take a photograph of the river. As you can see from the green plant layers on the nearest pillar that the tide is reasonably low [it was even lower when I Ieft the cinema]. Don’t look too closely at the nearest bridge otherwise you’ll see all the strengthening bolts and rods and start to get concerned about the integrity of the structure. A lot of bridges have this down this way and I think it’s because of the gradual increase in maximum limits of truck mass. I’ve written about the bridges before.

Three Bridges - River Medway
Three Bridges – River Medway

Sometimes after watching a film I have to think about the rating and what I consider to be “fair”, although this is cancelled out by the rating system that I created and you can read about here. This particular film soon dove down to a lowly rating while watching it. I’ll explain shortly. Here’s my rating, but Twitter based.

Oh, my god. This film was utter shit. I even think I might have been generous with a 4/10 rating. I hated it after about ten minutes and that hate did not dissipate as time went on. Even now, the day after, I feel angry at how bad this film was and I don’t have any connections to it.

Let me start off with a good thing. I quite liked the world that was drowned and how they played with Miami being under the sea. This was quite good. I don’t like the dams they created because they looked at though they were designed by a five year old and they wouldn’t work. I’m not sure the production designers had any concept of the depth pressure relationship and how much water actually weighs. I did wonder if I was meant to recognise the city from the skyline and before I knew it was Miami I had settled on Chicago but I was wrong in a big way. Oh, Miami and most of Florida is absolutely fucked when it comes to sea rises. As is New Orleans, another city featured in the film.

Another thing I quite liked about this film was that during a fight scene the camera stayed at a distance and actually followed the fight rather than get all “in the action” and blurry. The underwater scenes actually looked pretty too, but they suffered like all underwater scenes in movies that people can’t hold their breath for that long and the “action” is super slow.

Now it’s time for all the bad in this shit movie which I’m going to write as a stream of consciousness so watch out. None of the voice over was necessary. Why is he set up in a bank? How does the electricity still work? How did he get into the mansion at the end? Why is this such a tart with a heart film – it could have been better? How many times do I need to see the same scene? What the fuck was this film actually about? Who the fuck wrote this utter shit? How did it get 68 million dollars to be made? Why is more than 30 volts terrible? Why was the bad man facially scarred? Scarring is one of those things that is only on bad people in films, it’s terrible. Why is this film?

I absolutely hated this film, it was shit and I only stayed to see how they decided to resolve the film, which, much like the rest of it, was poor. Fuck this film, it’s a heap of shit.

This is communication number 1937 and so here, in keeping with recent tradition, is a list of some things that happened that year.

  • GM recognises a workers’ union.
  • Over 295 students and teachers are killed in an explosion in New London, Texas.
  • Police kill ten unarmed demonstrators in Chicago.
  • 724,000 people are killed in a Soviet “purge”.
  • The last Bali tiger dies.
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The Night House

Yesterday I went to the cinema because I like going to the cinema and there wasn’t really a lot else to watch. The film was being shown in screen 8 and that’s my favourite of them apart from the shitty right speaker which I might have to email the cinema about, but still, a film being shown in screen 8 is a bonus. The traffic was bad heading to the cinema so I missed all the adverts which can only be considered a good thing but I’m experienced enough to know that the film normally starts 15-20 minutes after the advertised time. While checking the state of the tide I decided to take a photograph to illustrate the view I have.

The View I Check Every Cinema Visit
The View I Check Every Cinema Visit

In the picture above you can see the Medway bridges, I wrote about them here, the North Downs and a little bit of Borstal along with boats and things.

Medway Tides - Annotated
Medway Tides – Annotated

I look for the following as I drive along the esplanade.

  • A – the edge of the mud bank.
  • B – the little water channel.
  • C – the “dip”.
  • D – how high are the boats that are anchored over this side of the river.

Each of those four things and how much I can see or not tell me about the state of the tide. I suspect I probably have spent too long of my life wondering about and looking at this view – who cares anyway?

After watching the film I rated it on IMDB and there’re communications that deal with the rating system but the most important one is this one. At some point after I’ve rated it I tweet the result.

There are going to be spoilers ahead so you should consider yourself warned that I will give away a lot of the film plot points in the next few paragraphs. Overall I actually nearly enjoyed this film. About halfway through I remember trying to work out whether I cared about the main character or whether I was just staying in the theatre to see how it ends and it turned out I actually wanted to know how the person coped. Now, let me point out something I think film makers need to know:

You don’t need fucking pop-scares to make a film scary.

I Parish

It was a touch annoying, for me, that this film could have been a decent psychological thriller and an investigation into a woman’s grief for her husband and yet, for me again, it was spoilt very slightly by the supernatural aspects of it. The big problem for these films and their relationship to me is that I don’t believe in any of that shit and so I just write it off as childish. Let’s get into this in a little more detail:

One way of interpreting this film is that, following a near death experience, a malevolent spirit keeps trying to claim the “soul” he is owed by whispering to the woman’s husband that he must kill her. To avoid killing the wife he loves the husband kidnaps and murders women who looked like his wife to trick the spirit into thinking he had killed his wife. Eventually the husband kills himself to save his wife from being murdered by the spirit through him. The woman knows nothing of this until she discovers some photographs on her husbands phone and computer of women who look like her. She considers killing herself to escape the torture of the spirit who has finally decided to take her on himself rather than act through a proxy. The woman’s best friend saves her and the neighbour sees a dark shadow on a boat.

The upshot of this interpretation of the film is that spirits want what they are owed and are willing to act through someone else to get them even though they can interact with the main person themselves. They are lazy? Or just like contrived plots? I don’t know. The film seemed to want us to believe this interpretation because of the shadow at the end of the film. If the film was written with this in mind then it really opens up many many questions about an awful lot of the film and kind of removes all the mystery.

For me, a better interpretation is that, following her husbands suicide a woman descends into psychological and emotional hell. She discovers some photographs on his phone and twists her reality around to make sense of them. Slowly, she goes mad, including hitting herself onto the mirror and making up stories about finding bodies. She suffers many hallucinations, including some of extreme sexual torture. The alcohol keeps pushing her towards suicide and eventually after deciding that she needs to die to stop her emotional pain she rows out on the lake only to be found by her friend who “saves” her. Now, the film stops at this point but it would have been far more scary and mysterious if this was the acknowledged reality.

I wrote the words “extreme sexual torture” in the previous paragraph mostly because this was mentioned at the beginning of the film and close to the end of the film I found myself wondering where the sexual torture was. I didn’t really see any. There was a statuette thing that the main character found but there wasn’t really any sex stuff. The movie had teased me but failed to deliver. Not that I wanted to see that type of thing. Sexual violence [unless consensual in which case I suppose you could argue it’s not violent] is a horrible thing.

To think the best of this film is to remove all the supernatural and just read the meaning as the complete psychological breakdown of a grieving widow. Humans are complicated enough without adding all that god-shit to everything.

This is number 1933 and so here are some things that happened that year:

  • The bodyline Ashes tour.
  • Dachau is opened.
  • The birth of radio astronomy.
  • FM radio is patented.
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The Last Letter From Your Lover

After finally recycling all the crap from my garden at the Cuxton dump I went to the cinema at Rochester [not in Rochester, actually in Strood] to see The Last Letter From Your Lover. I noted the state of the tide as I drove to the car park and it was middling, I didn’t know whether it was going in or out but after the film it was definitely close to high tide, so now we know. After seeing the film I rated it on IMDB and then tweeted the result, there’s a whole system to all of that explained in this communication.

I almost didn’t go and see this film. I parked the car and pondered whether I actually wanted to see a romance film and I nearly went home to “waste” a few hours in the current Minecraft world that I have. But, I was here and I won’t have a chance to get to the cinema for a while so I decided it was going to be a positive experience. Upon entering the theatre I scanned the crowd [about 30 people] and I think I was the only man in the room – oh well. I’ve seen other films like that, when there’s been people not like me and me and I coped.

I enjoyed this film. It was a perfectly good piece of artwork and was a pleasant watch. While driving back home I was reminded of my maternal grandmother who went to the cinema quite a bit and she would have enjoyed this film. I remember chatting to her about a film she had seen once and she said it was a good film but there wasn’t the need for all the bad language. She wasn’t that much into swearing which was probably a generational thing? I swear a lot.

This film was focussed on the relationship between two couples spread over time and it was a kind of “love triumphs over all” message. I’m not sure I would have had that as my overall message, I’m not sure that’s a particularly healthy thing for people to think. I don’t think people should dwell too much on lost loves and I don’t believe in “true love”. I tend to think it’s just chemicals and we aren’t “destined” to be with someone, and we aren’t “soul mates” with anyone. I do understand emotional attachment though.

So, here’s my thing: for me the issue with this film was the inequality in relationships that has existed in societal expectations and the Law over the years. We see the 1960s couple at dinner and the MAN tells the wife basically to shut up with her intelligent ideas because she can’t know these things, she’s just a pretty woman. We see this couple argue over divorce and the law and society was so anti-female in those days that really I would make more of this in the film. I have massive issues with inequality that has existed over time and still does exist in our current society. I guess we kind of hope we are the best that we can be but just look around at how people are treated and you’ll see that it’s all a work in progress and sometimes that progress is negative.

Anyway, it’s a nice film. As this is communication number 1921 here’s what happened then:

  • The Jaffa riots kill about 100 people.
  • The province of Northern Ireland is created.
  • Between 100 and 300 people are killed in the Tulsa Race Riots.
  • Russian famine begins. 5,000,000 die.
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The Suicide Squad

My first real day after completing the sleeping system and so I must go to the cinema. There wasn’t a lot on really and so I almost flipped a coin between The Suicide Squad and The Last Letter From Your Lover, which I still might go and see. Driving along Chariot Way I could see that the tide was very much high, small waves lapping at the edges of the mudbanks and leaves poking through the surface of the river.

After watching this movie I rated it on IMDB. Actually I rated it the day after because there are issues with tweeting something when you have removed Twitter from your phone. I think that possible the scoring isn’t as raw as it should be but I just need to remember to follow the guidance I established in this communication. I guess I also need to point out that this film, The Suicide Squad, is different to one I watched in 2016 called Suicide Squad. Here’s the result:

I actually really enjoyed this film. It’s silly and funny and over the top. I guess it’s a bit like Deadpool but with more characters. The film had a very comic feel to it with flashbacks and floating graphics. It worked well. I’m not sure there’s a whole lot more I can say. This outcome is surprising as I don’t often rate superhero movies and definitely not DC ones. But, hey, it is what it is.

I published this without writing the whole “in this year” thing, so here goes. The year 1916:

  • Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control.
  • The toggle light switch is invented.
  • 4 people die of shark attack along the Jersey Shore.
  • Margaret Sanger opens a birth control clinic.
  • War and shit is happening and that’s pretty fucking depressing.
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Jungle Cruise

I took a small trip to see Jungle Cruise at the cinema. I could have paid to stream it on the television but I really like going to the cinema. I noted that the tide was very low in the river, all the mud banks were exposed. This was a metaphor for my low expectations of this film, even then, the film disappointed me a bit. I rated the film on IMDB, there’s a communication dealing with the scoring system.

I didn’t hate this film but I also didn’t think it was worth watching by the end of it. I know this is a film based on a theme park ride but maybe people should just stop making those. The premise was ok-ish: a plant to cure all diseases exists somewhere in the Amazon jungles and the protagonist has to find it, for reasons. Stuff happened including loads of supernatural bollocks. But, here are the things I found most annoying:

A lot of the action was filmed close up and without a steady camera and so it all blurred and I couldn’t really tell you what was going on during the action scenes. Maybe I’m getting old but there was a lot of CGI and fast moving cameras which took away from the actual action for me. Although I am prepared to say that I am definitely not the market for this film.

Why is the bad guy a German? In a submarine? Why German? Why not some mega-capitalist? Why German? Have we not accepted that perhaps not all bad people have Germanic roots. I kind of get it with Indiana Jones and the Nazis, because that was when the film was set and they were really bad. But this guy just seemed to be some low level German royal who wanted the plant-thing. Maybe I need to re-evaluate my approach to whoever the bad guys are.

NOTHING ELSE MATTERS by Metallica was the music that opened this film and also came along for a bit of easy rock half way through. Fuck this song. It is shit. What is happening in the world?

{SPOILER FOLLOWS} Why did the protagonist, who is motivated by saving the sick of the world give the only flower to a dead man she had fallen in love with? Where was her sacrifice for the better good? What an utterly selfish bullshit thing to do. Fuck this move.

I didn’t really enjoy this film. I was curious to see what the ending was going to be, and, of course, it was completely happy. Except for the German, obviously.

What happened in the year 1910 given that this is communication number 1910?

  • Slavery made illegal in China.
  • The Earth passes through the tail of Halley’s comet.
  • A boxing match causes race riots across USA.
  • 40,000 die in China of a pneumatic plague.
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Old

After a long day of building stuff I had booked to go to the cinema to make sure that I had a definite end in sight. I didn’t want to be working into the evening always trying to do “one more thing”. As it is the progress is good and I got to where I wanted to be. Still plenty to do though. The only film I could be bothered to go and watch was Old by Michael Night Shyamalan. I’ve looked at what’s on later today and can’t see anything other than a Purge film – which I couldn’t care about – although maybe I should check out a different cinema and see what they’ve got. Watch this space to see if I write another review.

The tide was low this time as I approached the car park. I could see the edge of the mud banks so I’m not sure how much lower it can get, it’s been quite a while since I regularly went this way. When I saw F9 plenty of people were wearing masks but this time there were a lot who were not. It’s very clear that the government [BJ] wants to shed the responsibility and pass it on to individuals [a classic right wing manoeuvre] but in the broadest sense people are stupid. We rules and laws in place to ensure that people don’t make their own choices on many things. If we didn’t have speed limits there would be many many more deaths on the roads than we face now. After the film I thought about what rating to give it and they are explained here.

What did I think of the film? I hated some of the acting and I hated some of the cinemaphotography. I guess M K was heading for a style but it is one I didn’t enjoy. Overall the film was kinda OK but really I just hung around as I wanted to know what the resolution was going to be. I’m not going to give that away here as that wouldn’t be fair but I was hoping for an explanation of why the beach existed rather than what use it has been put to. I guess I can’t have everything.

Oh, there were too many codas. I don’t think any were needed. It could have ended at the point where the people are swimming in fish. That would have been enough for me. It would have meant there were loads of questions that were unanswered but I think it would have made a better film overall. Please remember that I am not a film maker and so I know nothing about these things.

This is communication 1901 and so in line with recent practice I mention below some aspects of the year 1901 – and yes, I am aware that for a lot of people this isn’t even the correct calendar to use but it’s the most common.

  • The UK and Germany agree on how to carve up some of Africa.
  • Boer concentration camps run by the UK are reported to be cruel and have a high mortality rate.
  • Alabama requires voters to have passed a literacy test – and yet modern day republicans are outlawing critical race theory.
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Fast & Furious 9

I went to the cinema. I went to the Cineworld cinema in Rochester. I went to the cinema to see Fast & Furious 9 [fucking 9 of them! Can you believe that?]. While driving the approach to the cinema I noticed that the tide was high, the water was lapping around the base of the grasses on the mudbank so it was almost as high as can be. I wrote about why I was seeing this film in this communication. After watching this film I considered how to rate it using my rating system discussed here. Then I tweeted the result because that is what I do.

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I guess I ought to explain my rating of 2/10. The system means that this rating is used when I walk out of a film or gave up watching or just hated it. I’m not sure I hated it and I didn’t walk out but I didn’t want to give this film a massive 4 stars as that would’ve been over-rating it so my excuse for the two stars is that I fell asleep and so this film was so terrible that it couldn’t keep me awake. Not that missing a few minutes in the middle of this film mattered really, there wasn’t any sensible plot as far as I could tell.

This film is what you expect it to be. Plenty of fighting with hands, guns and vehicles. Ridiculous stunts. Over the top sequences and general bollocks. It’s a Fast and Furious film. It’s going to be terrible. I could explain everything that was wrong with this film from the plot to the physics but there are two reasons I don’t want to:

a) there was so much wrong I don’t have the time or inclination to do it.
b) this film doesn’t deserve those words to be written about it.

My experience was one of being too warm, a short period of sleep, feeling cold, losing my facemask, general horror at the physics in the film and laughter at how pathetic some of the scenes were. Does Tbilisi have that much space or canyons close to it?

This is communication number 1899 and so here’s some information about what happened in that time period:

  • Marconi transmits a signal across the Channel.
  • The paperclip is patented.
  • Zeppelin builds the first successful airship.
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I Know It’ll Be Terrible

I’ve booked a ticket to go and see the latest Fast and Furious film. This could be a massive mistake because when I went to the last one I walked out it was shockingly bad. This time I go knowing that it will definitely be utter shit. There are a few reasons I am going to spend a couple of hours in the dark:

  • I like going to the cinema.
  • This film is in screen 8 which is the comfy one.
  • I’m going to listen to God Awful Movies after I’ve watched this.

The point of going to watch this film isn’t the actual film experience it’s the experience of listening to a podcast that rips it to shit afterwards. I have listened to every episode of God Awful Movies and I even send them money using Patreon. I pay the God Awful guys because they entertain me each week and I am happy to reward them for that. Noah, Heath and Eli make me laugh and have helped get me through some iffy times in my life. It’s a couple of hours each week where I can concentrate on something so shitty that these guys have made over 300 episodes where they explain, and take the piss out of, terrible religious films. F9 is a Patreon bonus episode. So, I’m going to see the film. So that I can understand what they are talking about. My time in the cinema will be rewarded when I listen to the podcast after.

I’ve also been watching Boondock Saints II because the GAM guys are reviewing it in a standard episode. I’ve watched Boondock Saints as a lot of the music I like references it and uses quotations from the movie. It is not a good movie.

What follows is something I tried doing before but didn’t follow it through. This is communication 1897 and so here are a few things that happened in 1897, quite likely the ones I find curious rather than the best ones:

  • Some fraternities were founded in the USA – by the way, fuck fraternities, fucking awful things.
  • Dracula first published.
  • The Lattimer massacre.
  • The Korean Empire is founded.
  • The Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee is founded, the first LGBT campaigning organisation.
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The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

I had some time and so I decided to go to the cinema. I almost feel guilty if I don’t go enough as I pay money each month to see as many films as I like and it also gives me something to write here, these are a regular feature of this unvisited site. When looking at the list of films playing there wasn’t a great choice and so I plumped for The Conjuring 3. I haven’t seen any of the other Conjurings but figured it won’t matter a huge amount. I don’t like horror films generally but my reasoning was: why not go?

While driving the approach to the cinema I noticed the state of the tide and it was almost at max height. Whether it was ebbing or flowing was something I would have to wait to find out when I left the cinema – it was flowing. Most of the mud bank was hidden and I couldn’t see any of the channels produced by surface off-run. The weather at the time was low clouds hanging over the top of the Downs with plenty of rain during the day, it had been raining for two complete days, but this was welcome.

After watching this film I rated it on IMDB and there’s a complete guide to my rating system within this communication from a few years ago. I eventually shared the score on Twitter but I need access to my PC for that as I removed Twitter from my phone a long time ago because it doesn’t matter.

I gave this film a 4/10 and I think that was quite generous really. This film does not make it into the good-bad film. It is just a bad-bad film. This film is shit. Makes no logical sense. Has no plot that fits together. Is largely bad publicity for a misguided couple of “paranormal” investigators.

I wonder weather there’s too much in this film. Does the body-breaking look stupid and unrealistic? Do the tunnels seem excessive and un-scary? I wonder if more menace could have been put into this film by cutting out a lot of the “scary” stuff. I used to be terrified by horror films when I was younger. The Omen still makes me shiver – although I haven’t watched it for years and I ponder whether that seems shit now. I have “grown up” in then sense that I understand the reality of the world and don’t believe in god, the devil, demons or supernatural things. It’s funny how most famous ghost cases end up being shown for fraud by the conspirators when they confess but the news rarely gets out. Amityville had the protagonists admit they made it up, that famous Nessie photo was called out by one of the pranksters etc.

I get that people like being scared and I would imagine that if you believed in spirits or ghosts or god or souls or the devil or witches or any of the super-natural then this film would bother you. But the reality is that this film had a poor script, a poor plot and poor logic. A man died in reality and his murderer went to prison. This film is horror glorified wank.

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Demon Slayer : Mugen Train

Yesterday I took a trip to the cinema to watch a film. This should have been a celebratory return after the cinemas all shut down during the last lockdown. The last film I saw was Akira and so it seemed fitting that I had booked a ticket to see a Japanese animation. I was looking forward to it but I did have one large problem.

I am clearly very tired and so when I rest or am still for a while I start to fall asleep. This is a little embarrassing as the other day I was struggling to stay awake while mining in Minecraft. I think the next time I go to the cinema it will have to be during the middle of the day. That might help. I tactically closed my eyes a few times during this film. Here’s what I mostly remember:

Gravestones. People on a train. Fights. Shiny faced demon. Train develops organic pink shit all over it. A terrible song at the end.

It doesn’t seem fair to give this movie a score on IMDB when I didn’t manage to see all of it and it’s not the movie’s fault I couldn’t. My overall impression was that it wasn’t very good anyway but, when I look at the reviews on IMDB, everyone seems to have really enjoyed it. I think my problem is that it looked too TV Series like. I think that type of animation works well in shorter format. I don’t really think it works for the cinema. But then perhaps I’m wrong? Plenty of people seem to enjoy it. I think I’ll be a little more choosy for my next film.

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