The Salsa Shark's Rundown of 2012

Hoo boy, has it really been that long? Was the last film I reviewed really We Bought A Zoo? If anyone should stumble upon this and wonder at the twelve month gap in my updates this is the only explanation I can give; the year of our Lord 2012 was not a good year for me. The second out of university I spent a good portion of unemployed with little prospect of any unpaid work experience which might further my career and paid work being pretty damn erratic. Needless to say I wasn’t in the ideal mood to make more videos or share my opinions with the world.

This though was a shame because in contrast the film releases of the year went from strength to strength. Big budget summer blockbusters like The Avengers proved that brainless, action films were more entertaining when you had a developed plot, strongly characterised protagonists and moments of levity in-between the CGI. Worthy low budget sci-fi and horror films found their audiences and in a year when Pixar failed to bring its A-game the animation industry showed up in force. For a welcome change the contenders in the various Best Animated Feature nominations feel truly deserving as opposed to the obligatory Pixar nod plus whatever else came out for kids.

Because of this I wanted to really celebrate the year in films as a way of making up for lost time and to flush a bad period in my life down the toilet like an unwanted bag of cocaine. Bear in mind this is entirely my perspective based on the handful of films released that I was actually able to see so brain-draining fare like Battleship or the dramatic impact of The Dark Knight Rises are regrettably absent. All in all my view is a little rose-tinted as I was smart enough to avoid most of the clunkers. So 2012 in film, a year which truly began with:

Chronicle

Chronicle kicked off the trend of 2012’s overhyped’s with critics applauding it so hard their arms fell off. That plus my love of low budget science fiction like Another Earth and Moon meant expectations were high and with the benefit of hindsight Chronicle was almost guaranteed to disappoint. By no means bad, the film is easily one of 2012 better movies, but it was handicapped by the found footage technique which I’m finding quite jarring. The constant need to contrive reasons for the films events to be filmed coupled with some of the more intimate moments lacking in…well intimacy put Chronicle on the fast track to breaking my immersion. And try as he might Dane Dehaan just doesn’t intimidate in the same way some of his peers have done this year. I mean fancypants Englishman Tom Hiddleston spends most of The Avengers getting knocked on his arse and he still manages to be a frightening presence. One thing to the films credit is the vertigo-inducing sequence in which two characters are filming from inside a car as it’s tossed around Seattle like a damp sock. 

The Cabin in the Woods

Oh…this is gonna get me in trouble. Make no mistake The Cabin in the Woods is a truly great film. Original story, likeable characters, good humour and some truly original creature design in the third act. I genuinely hope it is the much-needed turning point in modern horror but because of what it is The Cabin in the Woods is only one half of an awesome film. Because of the early revelation that, Spoiler Warning, the generic horror scenario is being orchestrated, and specifically orchestrated to be generic, sucks all tension out of those scenes despite the life or death consequences. This of course isn’t the case with the finale but it means much of the time leading up to it has zero engagement, no matter how entertaining Whedon’s dialogue is. It’s what I like to call the ‘Sucker Punch Problem’ in that it can’t surpass the thing it’s attempting to analyse. Regardless I think people should see the film if only for those last thirty minutes, perhaps the single most balls-to-the-walls insane thing I saw all year.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

TBEMH is what I like to classify as a ‘Mum Film’ a film no sane self-respecting individual would see unless they were escorting someone’s mum and I was, yours to be exact. It’s all so quaint seeing five elderly English citizens, some strapped for cash, some longing for something else, travelling to India for the kind of transformative spiritual awakening that NEVER happens in real life. That being said the script should be considered the template for a good mess. To clarify how that’s even possible, I’ve always considered a film a mess when it has too much going on and it doesn’t know what to do with it. Well TBEMH does indeed have too much going on but it knows exactly what to do with it. It knows who it can build deep, emotionally impacting storylines around and who only needs short, comic interludes. As a result almost everyone in the seasoned cast has the chance to shine in their respective roles, the only exception being Celia Imrie who serves only as a supporting player and in a minor comic story at that. Seeing her in an expanded role should be top priority for the sequel because apparently there is more mileage to get out of the ‘old people eat curry’ concept.

Prometheus

For me the first real clunker of the year, one part lofty examination of our origins and one part schlocky Aliens clone. Individually neither is bad but when mashed together so clumsily you can’t help but leave dissatisfied. The characters act incompetently and at times out of touch with their field. At one point the leader of the expedition falls into a drunken depression over the fact that they discovered their theory of alien architects was completely correct…but now the architects are dead. Wow way to keep that drive for discovery alive mate. As for the horror sequences they’re so contrived and add so little to the overarching story that they’re practically non-sequitur. And yeah Michael Fassbender is awesome as the android but that only contrasts with the lack of thematic consistency. All through the film we see him studying humanity and learning to be more like him, all the while the human characters just shoot him down over the fact that he’s not human. He may not be human but I like him a lot better than you meatbags! Oh and Guy Pearce? Guy fucking Pearce? They could get any actually old person to play old man Weyland but instead they’ve gotta put Guy fucking Pearce in Benjamin Button make-up.

The Avengers

This is the big one, the most anticipated movie of the year and for fanboys the most anticipated movie of their lives and damn if they didn’t pull it off. The Avengers is a wild, epic romp, without a doubt the most fun had in a film all year. The story is simple but able to incorporate characters from five different movies all with vastly different aesthetics. In fact one of the things I loved most is how the first half works to establish the four different genres, Iron Man being the high tech thriller, Captain America being the 1940’s pulp, Thor is an epic fantasy and while Bruce Banner’s section can’t pull off monster mash his scenes in India do give the impression of a loners tragedy the way the TV series used to. Then it marries all of these respective elements in one unbelievable superhero team-up. The final act may just be one brainless, citywide battle a’la Transformers but it surpasses expectations because it’s taken the time to build its cast of characters and throw them into the brawl with their own unique style. It’s almost a year on and people are still talking about how awesome ‘I’m always angry’ was. You can’t say that about any moment from Transformers.

The Amazing Spider-Man

Well this sucked. To bring back Transformers it’s funny that Shia Lebouf’s douchebag Peter Parker performance in those vapid affairs seems to have rubbed off onto Andrew Garfield’s actual Peter Parker. Leaving audiences with a protagonist deliberately written to be less likable, less interesting and just plain less. Comic book Peter may be an anachronism in the modern world but there’s meat to the concept of an empowered young man who abuses his abilities and takes up vigilantism to soothe his survivor’s guilt. Here though, with the weight of Uncle Ben’s death wrenched from his shoulders simply so a studio can differentiate new from old, all we’re left with is a stuttering snarky teenager. Plus re-treading Spider-Man’s origin, as opposed to say acknowledging that everyone going to see a Spider-Man movie already knows the origin, kills the pacing dead. Add to that an inconsistent villain, a love interest way too smart to blindly follow such insanity and a go nowhere plot thread about Peter’s parents and you truly have a film where no one involved gave a shit. The worst thing about The Amazing Spider-Man is just how transparent it is in its desire to fulfil its contractual obligations and nothing more.

Moonrise Kingdom

This is the one, my personal favourite film of 2012. It’s not just that it’s a great, fanciful childhood tale of love, told with great affection by a cast of tragically comic characters against an endearing handicraft backdrop of sets, props and costumes. I mean that’s true of all Wes Anderson films and if I had to hazard a guess at the purpose to it all I’d say that the self-conscious fakery is intended as a reflection of the films middle-class fallacy. In Royal Tenenbaums it was the dysfunctional family, Darjeeling Limited I believe I’ve already mentioned the bullshit that belies a spiritual journey, and now with Moonrise Kingdom we have troubled children. Make no mistake children are troubled, they are children after all and we’re expecting them to just accept a world of death, pain, poverty and reality tv. But in recent years the rise of pop psychology and Ritalin use, even among kids without attention disorders, has led us to detach, over-analyse and stick a nice safe label on what troubles our kids have leaving us to grow up into the sad, impotent creatures that make up Moonrise Kingdom’s adult cast. As someone who’s been around troubled children in addition to having been a troubled child, Wes Anderson’s film is a revelation. A delightful, coming-of-age adventure designed to give hope to anyone who doesn’t believe it gets better.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Speaking of coming-of-age there’s this piece of shit. I actually have a habit of despising the label coming-of-age in the same way I despise the spiritual journey. Adolescence is not everyone’s make-or-break, decide who you are, first love period. Not everyone is a closeted Keruoac wannabe keeping a journal of torments next to their battered copy of Catcher in the Rye. So when I see a film that presents this falsehood, especially as poorly as Perks does, it rubs me up the wrong way. Anaemic really is the word for this film, giving us a teenager loner we’ve seen a thousand times before and putting him through a series of disconnected and inconsequential teen trials, most of which are fairly rose-tinted. The central character gets taken to parties, takes drugs, meets girls, pretty much what every teenager dreams of. The only troubles he encounters are either self-inflicted or too little too late. And with eye-rollingly quirky dialogue like, ‘welcome to the island of misfit toys’ and ‘let’s go be psychos together’ you turn a bland film into a painful experience. The only thing I can say in its favour is that it seriously made me reconsider leading man Logan Lerman who I wrote off after 2011’s The Three Musketeers. The final act shows off the vulnerability and range that was seriously lacking in that pathetic steam-punk adventure.

Dredd

So Dredd is pretty much every bit as good as people say it is though I don’t think it’s as much of a throwback to the ostentatiously violent films of Paul Verhoven. Most of its handicaps are by design namely the fact that it presents itself as just another day in Dredd’s life rather than the most important event as a movie should be. Some could argue this is because it’s more Anderson rather than Dredd that’s the central protagonist. It makes sense as she’s the one that undergoes the most character development but then it’s kinda disingenuous to call the movie Dredd. If the writers decide to pull such crap in the sequel I implore them to sell it as an Anderson movie rather than a Dredd movie. Believe me, I will pay to see an Anderson movie as much as I will pay to see a Dredd movie. The second big problem is the villain, while Lena Hedley gives an incredible performance as drug lord Ma Ma it’s just that the character is a little too deep for her own good. Her backstory paints her a shade of victimhood and she never bounces back from by showing us how she puts such fear into her lackeys. Yeah she’s ruthless but put her next to a perma-scowling Karl Urban and ask yourself who’s the bigger threat? As much as I don’t think the two should be compared at least in The Raid you really wanted to see the villain get his ass well and truly kicked. With Dredd I just wanted to put her out of her misery.

End of Watch

And thus begins the Bath Film Festival series. Volunteering for the festival is quickly becoming the highlight of my year. Meet new people, have some writing on the films published and get to see a wide array of independent, foreign and documentary films that might otherwise pass me by. Making it all the more regrettable that the first I saw wasn’t very good. The found footage style is completely juxtaposed by a one-note drug cartel story. The disconnected series of crime scenes visited are either bafflingly innocuous or cartoonishly graphic. And the film seems to think its two leads are big cinematic characters with hidden evils and heroic valour when it makes more sense, and is more in keeping with the style to play them as regular schmo’s. The performances by Gyllenhall and Pena are the films saving grace, examination unbelievable warmth and providing great humour. Despite the cinema verite technique trying to evoke a sense of realism so much of the film feels hollow and staged but thanks to End of Watch’s leads it could almost be real. If End of Watch was really truly committed to being a realistic, life on the beat, cop drama chances are it would’ve been 90% watching these two guys doing paperwork and it would still be a much better movie than this.

Berberian Sound Studio

I’m going to stick my neck out and say that Berberian Sound Studio is on par with something like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Tree of Life for being one of those films you don’t watch, but experience.  The film is built entirely around the old school technique for sound effects as foley artist Gilderoy, played by an exasperated Toby Young, proceeds to smash, splatter, boil and behead all manner of fruits and vegetables to simulate the gore of an Italian Giallo film (Giallo being a genre of film and literature incorporating horror and eroticism). The films style is best described at schizophrenic; replaying old scenes with Italian dubbing, pausing for non-sequitur segments from Gilderoy’s earlier work and moments deliberately over-stylised to resemble the film being made. All of which works to make you as confused and frustrated as Gilderoy himself, eventually descending into the kind of dismissive callousness that characterises the suave Italian pricks he works with. For the majority of the film Jones’s performance is of a pitiable man but never someone who we are forced to feel sorry for. He hides much of his weakness under typical English politeness, keeping it from dominating his character, allowing you to follow him in this weird and frightening experience every step of the way.

Sightseers

Sightseers may well be the funniest thing I’ve seen all year. A quaint, romantic, road trip offset by the fact that the couples inclination towards murder. Written by and starring Alice Lowe (of Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace fame) and Steve Oram (of things I haven’t seen) the humour is fresh and very British even before the nonchalant approach to homicide. Mostly focused on the unnatural fascination with the protagonists niche hobbies (caravanning and knitting) and their attempts to incorporate them into modern life (such as making lingerie out of them…the knitting not the caravans). After that the conflict between the conflicts between the two begin to emerge and despite the tragedy of it all the jokes continue in ample doses. It’s a testament to the characterisation that you still feel sympathy for Tina and Chris, who follows a Ben Wheatley trait of being an utter monster and yet still somehow remind me of my Dad.

This concludes the meatier films I saw at the BFF, other notable mentions include The Moon Inside You, Ghosts with Shit Jobs and of course Manborg…for science!

Skyfall

When Casino Royal came out I truly thought Bond was back. Yeah it had none of the campy fun of an old school Bond film but I truly believed that was as much of an anachronism as nerdy Peter Parker. Skyfall threw all that to the wind from the get go, presenting high octane action with a fantastic sense of fun. One-liners, elaborate action scenes, overt sexuality (more on that in a bit) and all the iconography of a slick, old-school spy flick. Not to mention the fact that it was just a great film overall, with a tangible cyber-threat to MI6 and M in particular while Bond struggles with returning to duty despite physical setbacks and the knowledge that he can no longer trust his surrogate mother. And then there’s Silva. If 21^st century Bond was ever lacking in one thing it was a decent villain and Javier Bardiem puts predecessors like Le Chiffre to shame. An unsettlingly permed, unsettlingly toothed (even before the reveal) all round unsettling figure. His first scene with Bond is a thousand times more uncomfortable than Le Chiffre’s testicle twattings and due in no small part to the fact that you feel yourself being seduced by the truth in everything he says. In fact between Silva, Adele’s memorable opening number, the original action scenes and powerful story the whole of Skyfall is a seduction in process.

Life of Pi

Life of Pi is a film that had a lot of potential, both a compelling survival story and visual meditation on the conflicts with the self. The film attempts to do so through series of stunning sequences of moving images. Waves of flying fish, bioluminescent wales and mysterious islands of meerkats and on terms of such visuals the film is a success. From the tiger known as Robert Parker to the boat crash all the effects have a distinct sense of mass and physical presence strongly reinforced by the 3D. Where the film falls short is in its thematic consistency, MAJOR SPOILER WARNING. The film is essentially an anti-secularist piece as the writer is told the Pi’s story will make him believe in God. Now for the record I didn’t mind this particular bit of preaching, its inclusion amounts to little more than lip service, adult Pi doesn’t exactly seem convinced of the notion and in reality the story is equating religious belief to belief in the fantastical. Its argument for this belief is that people only believe Pi’s tale of surviving so long with a Bengal tiger until after he tells the darker, real account. The animals we see in the fanciful were in fact representations of people and the tiger was a representation of Pi. Except it doesn’t make sense because Pi’s conflicts with Robert Parker imply a sense of self-loathing and violence that doesn’t characterise Pi. In fact there’s very little at all that does characterise Pi, he’s more collection of quirks than a human being and something has gone seriously wrong when he’s the least interesting thing in a film called Life of Pi. 

The Hobbit

And what a way to round off the year. I loved The Hobbit, truly, truly loved it. It brought me back to a far more charming version of Middle-Earth but one with no less depth. It wasn’t a film about epic conflicts of good versus evil spread across various factions who had to unite and set aside petty squabbles. It was an intimate character based adventure about a life-long shut in offered a chance to see the world, who now had to prove he could be just as much an adventurer as the band of Dwarvish nomads. In fact if there was one small criticism I have it was that we never saw Bilbo feel temptation at the prospect of reclaiming Erebor. The film spends a lot of time establishing Bag End as a comfortable, homely place and why Bilbo wouldn’t want to leave it, but it never shows the flipside, the longing for adventure which so well characterised Frodo. Speaking of which FUCK OFF FRODO, you’re wasting time which the film already takes liberties with. I enjoyed the hour long dinner party, I enjoyed the montages of journeying, I enjoyed the extraneous padding out with Radaghast and Saruman. What I don’t enjoy is Peter Jackson feeling the need to hold my hand and explain to me ‘yes the other ones happened after, this one happens before’.

We Bought a Zoo and now we're going to mostly ignore the animals

                Holy Crap Cameron Crowe made a film and forgot to tell me! Since the effortlessly enjoyable Almost Famous the man has made so little of note that I almost thought he had dropped off the planet. Now though he’s back and doing what he does best, thoughtlessly mangling a supposedly true story. But unlike Crowe’s autobiographical feature, which was assembled from a series of booze-addled recollections of his rock journalism career, We Bought a Zoo is a very different tale and altered for very different reasons.

                The story of DIY columnist Benjamin Mee’s (here played by Matt Damon) decision to buy a zoo in Dartmoor is one of those real-life stories that sounds nice on paper but likely is not all that interesting in reality. To rectify this the story is relocated to Anywhereville, USA and Mee is rewritten as a bereaved father of two looking to make a fresh start. And you’ll be pleased to learn that the end result is a story that sounds nice on paper but not all that interesting.

                Part of the problem is really a lack of conflict. Aside from the underrated John Michael Higgins as an entertainingly odd zoo inspector there’s never any sense that Mee’s insane gamble won’t pay off and that he won’t be reborn spiritually because of it. There’s are plenty of scenes which drive home the financial struggles of getting the zoo operational again but it’s always offset by the uplifting low-angle shots with shafts of sunlight shooting through every frame . That plus the powerful music and rising choir make everything feel designed to inspire.

                It’s a testament to Crowe’s considerable talent then despite the transparency it works as a feel-good film. His touch as director and co-writer guarantees competent camerawork, excellent scoring and the obligatory references to Bob Dylan. All of which serve to elevate an otherwise flat premise. The real selling point of the film though is the animals.

                Not to disparage We Bought a Zoo’s bipedal cast-members but everytime you feel yourself getting bored with the trite family squabbles or the dull shots of Damon pouring over vet bills BLAM a bear escapes or the lock breaks on the lion enclosure. Only about three of the animals in the entire zoo are allowed to make an impression but each time they serve to drive home the reality of running a zoo in ways that are funny, genuinely heartfelt and pretty damn uplifting.

                It’s possible that the lack of focus on the animals is because all the nuances have gone into the humans. Scarlett Johansen shines as lead zookeeper Kelly and mouthpiece of the zoo; worn-out, frustrated and pretty cynical about the idea of someone coming to save them.  Angus MacFayden has a hilarious turn as a boarderline alcoholic carpenter and oh hey Crowe decided to throw the kid from Almost Famous a paycheck! That was nice of him.

                The core cast of Damon and the two kids pretty much serve their purpose. The little girl is adorable and the teenage boy’s an obnoxious brat so your tolerance for either will likely be wearing thin around the third act. The film is far too married to its positive tone to explore the loss of Mee’s wife with any real depth or intensity and its presence makes Damon’s already stilted chemistry with Johansen feel outright artificial.

                At the end of the day We Bought a Zoo does everything it sets out to do, to tell a fairly simple story with precious little heart but heart all the same. It’s the style rather than the substance that takes a paper-thin idea, bogs it down with a mixed bag of characters and still manages to elevate itself into something genuinely powerful.

The Lady lacks a little Iron

                As a progressive it’s never going to be easy for me to present an objective view of a Margaret Thatcher biopic, especially one selling itself to female audience as Sex in the City with politics. Mercifully that’s not the case as the insipid scenes, prominent in trailers, of The Iron Lady at a hair salon or defiantly defending her peals are kept to a minimum. Instead the film is more of a tragic retrospect of Thatcher’s tenure from the perspective of her as a dithering old woman. Filthy, stinking liberals like myself will struggle to engender sympathy for and increasingly demented woman struggling to come to terms with the modern world with only the comfort of a posh house, armed guards and nicest man on the planet Jim Broadbent. However as a framing device for the telling of Thatcher’s life it’s tired, slow and almost jarring in contrast. The Iron Lady feels like two separate movies, a melancholy human drama about a ghoulish old woman desperately clinging on to her public persona and an empowering rose-tinted look at the first female Prime Minister.

                In fairness to the film though the rose tint never goes as far as to paint Thatcher in a purely positive light, Lord knows it lacks the conviction for that. Instead the film blurs both sides of the argument showing Thatcher passionately arguing against self-interested unions as they strike for reasons that are never made clear and harassed by protestors without ever explaining their motives. Likewise Thatcher’s fall from grace is condensed down to a single instance of scolding an underling for failing to put together a proper timetable. Yes, I don’t approve of the way some employers treat their staff but I also think that my government should be capable of producing a fucking document without typos.

                Really though I shouldn’t be surprised at mollycoddling from this kind of self-important Oscar Bait. Last year I sat through The Help a film which condensed the defiance, passion and outrage at the social injustices against African Americans into the story of a pretty white girl trying to get a fancy newspaper job. But as with The Help the subject matter of The Iron Lady deserves serious analysis or at least better analysis than this film dares to offer. If Maggie Thatcher was right to close the coal mines then show us why, it actually isn’t that hard. In 1984 the National Coal Board was costing the UK taxpayer £1 Billion in tax subsidiaries, nowadays liberals are outraged that banks and oil industries are offered these kinds of tax breaks. While most of us like to paint Maggie as the villain it is possible to look at the facts and frame her in a positive light.

                Or better yet show both sides of the story, the reasons why Thatcher made the decisions she made and why the opposition fought so hard against them. Show us the lives lost in the Falklands War, soldiers British and Argentinian bloodied and demoralized. Do not show us a montage of Meryl Streep sat at her desk writing condolences. Show us the people and communities impoverished by the closures of mines, the sad march of union workers back to their financially woeful families.  A woman who makes random decisions resulting in a vague amount of backlash is not interesting. A woman who agonises over difficult choices regarding the lives and well-beings of millions and then enduring the consequences is moving, powerful stuff.

                But alas, this is all to miss the point, The Iron Lady is the story of a person not a politician and we the audience can go fuck ourselves if we want otherwise. As such a story it’s certainly well made, the flashbacks draw you into a believable version of Britain through the Eighties, Seventies and even the Forties and Fifties. While an Oscar-winning performance is par for the course for Streep the real revelation is Alexandra Roach as the younger Margaret. Margaret Roberts has all the strength and conviction required for movie politics but also the vulnerability of a young woman. Roach shifts seamlessly from a dutiful daughter to a proud Tory and finally a devoted mother but as she grows the traits of all three incarnations still appear. Crucially though it isn’t until she steps into Parliament that she becomes becomes Thatcher the woman, and while Streep is as powerful as ever the performance carries nothing from Roach’s commendable start. It has to be said also that Thatcher the invalid is far more hit and miss, at times quaint, funny and very tragic but otherwise downright agonizing, an elderly relative you can’t wait to get away from.

Black Mirror: The Entire History of You feels exactly that long.

Imagine all the interesting and horrifying uses of memory grain implant, a kind of infinite external hard drive that allowed you to record and rewatch memories at will. Detectives would be able to analyse interrogations LA Noire style, stalkers could rewatch chance glimpses of their victims and your memories could be hacked by strangers to be used for their own pleasure. And all of these uses, these perversions of our own private treasured memories, would be a far better way to open The Entire History of You than the dull, generic office 'appraisal' Jessie Armstrong decides to go with. It's a bog-standard personal development-style interview utterly devoid of emotion, intrigue or humour. Everything's worded so vaguely it's difficult to even tell what line of work the protagonist is in and never provides the context of his personal investment in the job to allow us to empathise with him. The scene only serves to establish the various everyday use of the memory grain and doesn't even have the decency to simply show this then pull back to reveal Liam watching it in the back of the cab. That sums it up really, it's a scene which wastes both our time.

The worst part is there's more of this clumsy style of story-telling to come, it shares 15 Million Merits's problem of fumbling in the first act. However last time it was merely a murky stain which left things more difficult to assess here it feels more like a shit streak across a large part of the episode. The dinner party is one of the most pivotal sequences in The Entire History of You and also the most excruciating. The sexual tension between Liam's wife Ffione and former oily lover Jonas is beaten about our heads with exaggerated laughing at unfunny jokes and clammy body language. It’s something Neil Marshall got across much better in the first five minutes of The Decent which leads me to wonder how between a quiet mediation on cyberstalking and a film about girls hacking cave monsters to death the latter is the more subtle.

As far as fleshing out the social and cultural impact of the memory grain Armstrong's writing is hit and miss. To its credit The Entire History of You does a lot with very little time, showing the variety of uses for this new technology from enjoying old memories to picking apart the quality of hotels to being reviewed at airport security. It’s even permeated the language, words like 'redo' and 'gauges' are as commonplace as 'Facebooking'. There's even a mild bit of controversy about going 'grainless' which brings me to the decidedly more miss issue of 'gouging' a weird combination of physical violation and phone hacking. We're never told exactly why someone would want to steal the memories of others but the dinner party guests act so casual and saccharin about the whole thing it's disturbing. Everyone seems to have been taking charm lessons from Piers Morgan and it reaches a cringe-worthy peak when the oily Jonas takes pleasure in stroking the gouge victims scars, the equivalent of rubbing a rape victims tearing’s, and everyone coos like it's a kitten with dwarfism.

Naming the protagonist Liam means an analysis of him will inevitably sound self-flagellating, which is a good word to describe him. The memory grain is primarily utilised to torture himself about past failures and fuel his paranoia. Insecure doesn't begin to cover it. Yet for all his vulnerabilities it takes still takes a while to warm to Liam as he continues to drive a wedge between himself and his wife. It becomes contrived when he makes the leap from impotent beta male to the violent jealous husband after never previously showing any undercurrent of hostility.

Despite this the peak of Liam's paranoia actually propels The Entire History of You straight out of shittytown and into a good show. Both the infidelity drama and the technological aspect go perfectly in sync rather than simply running parallel. As Liam physically forces Jonas to erase all memory of his wife his finds some more recent than others, specifically around the time their daughter was conceived. With more evidence thrown onto his suspicions he transforms into something we can generate sympathy for. The memory grain gives him moral justification but takes everything else, his wife, his child and all semblances of warmth and humanity from his life.

Not being entirely driven by its ideas about technology The Entire History of You finds itself the weaker of the three episodes. It could have benefitted from a better look at how this idea could impact the world rather than affect one family. Yes we can all relate to a domestic drama but there are meatier stories to be found in the memory grain. Perhaps future episodes can take a stab at it because, in spite of the criticisms, I want to see more tales from the Black Mirror and in a world where we're surrounded by screens, I think we need to.

The Black Mirror is turned to talent shows in 15 Million Merits

The second part of Charlie Brooker's anthology series is a much harder beast to assess. While The National Anthem was a tighly constructed 24-esque thriller, 15 Million Merits is a more whimsical exploration of a culture driven society. The story of Bing (Daniel Kaluuya), a frustrated young man living in a world surrounded by screens, his sole distraction from the monotony of daily labour. The world of 15 Million Merits is apparently dominated by a series of exercise bikes powering a fully automated world where even a dab of toothpaste comes from the click of a button.

Booker does an excellent job of showing how this horrifying world breaks down for the average individual, from the CBBC style rooster that serves as Bing's alarm clock to the pause function that activates whenever he tries to sheild his eyes from the endless series of obnoxious adverts. In this world colour is demonised and the obese are the underclass. The only hope of escape is an X Factor style talent shot Hot Shots and its trio of judges held up as god-like figures, the only flesh and blood in a world of internet avatars (or dopplers).

Enter Abi (Jessica Brown-Findlay), a young woman with an angelic voice who approaches Amanda Seyfried levels on the Naifometer. Bing sees in her talent beauty and authenticity and immediately wants the best for her, offering up his titular merits to buy an audition on Hot Shots. This is where the story fumbles in comparison to its fast paced predecessor. It necessitates introducing Bing, exploring his world and the beginnings of this tentative romance, though a sweet romance it is. For this reason the first half hour never flows as smoothly as The National Anthem, monotony may be the point but that doesn't mean it has to be monotonous to watch.

You might recognise Daniel Kaluuya from BBC Three's supernatural drama The Fades and whatever you might think of that show Kaluuya's easily the best thing in it. Here he shows he can do a lot even when given very little, though it does help matters later when allowed more dialogue. In the first half hour he never sounds off against the constant barrage of screens or his drab work wear, like all dystopian drones he's far too comfortable but the dissatisfaction is in the performance. Knowingly awkward, hoping for better Bing carries the limb first half and downright shines in the climax.

Ah the climax, once things go tits up with Abi, finding herself in a thinly veiled Babestation parody, Bing spirals into depression and eventually righteous anger. Determined to set things right he scrimps and saves to earn a spot on Hot Shots and when he's there, with the millions watching, he sounds off against the injustice of it all. Then what happens...is probably the hardest thing assess, not because it’s not good but because it's been done before. The judges at Hot Shots find a way to package and distribute his anger in a daily broadcast, a carbon copy of the plot to the 1976 film Network. Brooker himself has commented on the film, comparing Peter Finch's descent into madness to roughly anything Glenn Beck says. In this day an age you can't call fault using the ideas of another work but it leaves bitter stain on an otherwise clever turn of fate.

Not as tight, nor as funny as The National Anthem, for all its flashy surroundings 15 Million Merits is one of the bleakest things you are likely to see this year. It's a fully fleshed out dystopian future which brilliantly reflects our modern day screen addiction but in terms of story it unfortunately comes out half-measure even if it's still the most intelligent thing on telly right now.

Black Mirror: Assemble for The National Anthem

If you read this blog then chances are that, like me, you know who Charlie Brooker is i.e. the most biting and blackly funny TV Critic working today. But there are few critics capeable of writing so well in a medium they frequently condemn (Mark Kermode has vowed never to try). It takes work to write good television, truly engrossing stuff, especially something that can tear me away from my smartphone. I watched the first installment, a satire on mass media and the court of public opinion, without pause. Compare to any given episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day, which I would repeatedly pause and you see the importance of being able to grip an audience.

The first edition, entitled The National Anthem, does this within the first few minutes. The setup, like the best, is simple but with complicated consequences and distinctly Brooker in its grim absurdity. Princess Susanna, the nation's sweetheart, has been kidnapped and will be killed unless Prime Minister Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear) has sex with a pig. Sounds like a joke and the PM thinks so too, but outside Whitehall the wheels effortlessly turn to drive this 'joke' into the only option.

Over the course of the show we see the media supressed despite the situation already trending on Twitter. The information age is allowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to give their view regardless of how intimate the issue or foul their opinion. While the public supports the PM in the early stages when the grim reality sets in the tide turns. In one glorious scene Lindsay Duncan as the PM's Press Advisor lays everything clear. If Callow does not sacrifice dignity to save the life of a beloved young woman he will be destroyed. The press will condemn, the public will riot and no one will be able to garuntee his safety or the safety of his family.

While it is interesting to watch how the freedoms of Twitter, Facebook and other social media have lead to this shift in the influence of public opinion over politics The National Anthem still struggles with the plausibility of it all. When massive outrage and rioting cannot influence a descision of tutition fees how can we believe a Prime Minister would sacrifice anything just because the world calls for it. Almost makes Brooker sound naive but the man's genius is not in creating a believable scenario but in crafting a world driven by its absurdity. The story takes on a national scale encompassing politics, the press and members of the public all of whom act exactly the way you'd expect in such an event. Every character stands out as entertaining, pitiable, funny and above all real. They carry The National Anthem from start to finish culminating in a beautiful montage of mutual disgust.

The first installment of Brooker's trilogy definately deserves a watch, more thrilling than 24 and darker than Tramadol Nights, it sets the bar high for next weeks reality satire 15 Million Merits.