Goose

The Trust (2016) Two cops who work in the evidence division discover an unguarded safe and set about making plans to rob it. Nicolas Cage and Elijah Wood play two Las Vegas cops. The former is by the book were as the latter is all over the place. As the film opens we see him having sex with a prostitute, doing drugs and sneaking into work late. Cage discovers something odd amongst some evidence and convinces Wood to help him investigate. This results in one of them tailing a suspect while the other moonlights at a Las Vegas hotel. Before long they discover a building in which things go in but don't come out, and thanks to a bit of bribery, obtain floor plans that show the place recently had a huge safe installed. This was quite a good picture, with two interesting central performances. Apart from a very small cameo from Jerry Lewis (his last ever on screen role) playing Nic Cage's passive aggressive dad, the focus and runtime is set firmly on the two leads. Initially it seems to be playing it for laughs and there are a number of plot points introduced that end up going nowhere. It's hard to work out whether Cage is manipulating Wood into helping him, setting him up to take the fall, or just genuinely needs him. They plot and scheme and seem pretty rubbish at it, but then about 45 minutes in the film switches things up. There's hints of the characters swapping traits as one becomes more manic and dangerous, while the other is racked with anxiety and regret. The duo have good chemistry and Wood in particular played well against type. Cage becomes more unstable as the run time goes on but only has one or two moments of being over the top. I found it hard to get a handle on things and the film does its best to be ambiguous. The tonal shift, while not that extreme in the context of the picture, makes it feel like two different movies at certain points. The laughs go, the goofy nature of the characters vanish and it becomes more about getting whatever is in the safe even as things fall apart. It's not a bad picture and certainly better than most Cage movies (Mandy apart, obviously). I don't quite get the reason for all the plot strands that go nowhere though - is Wood married - the film focuses on his wedding ring a number of times but does nothing at all with it. Why is Cage trying to get a new computerised evidence system funded? Who does the safe belong to? There's even a bizarre phone conversation one of the characters has with a guy in Germany who makes diamond drill bits that's plain silly. A mish mash of plot and character type, and while not all of it works, I found this to be quite entertaining.

Yes, but that would have been good. Upcoming - hopefully this week The Crazies (1973) Suspiria and I’m trying to track down a copy of Deal of the Century, a Chevy Chase movie.

I wished I'd have chosen a better movie than Passengers to be the 300th I've seen this year.

Passengers (2008) After a plane crash, trauma therapist Claire Summers is called in to work with the survivors. When they start to go missing, she begins to suspect a cover up. The lovely Anne Hathaway plays Claire, a psychotherapist who doesn't like taking risks. She's asked to help treat a group of survivors, which includes Clea DuVall and Patrick Wilson, who are both displaying different reactions to surviving the crash. Wilson is upbeat and happy to be given another lease of life, where as DuVall is struggling to come to terms with things. When the group loses members, and a shady David Morse keeps showing up, Claire begins to suspect the airline is killing people to stop them talking about what really happened. This was all over the place, having no idea how it wanted to play things. A romantic drama, a mystery and perhaps a ghost flick. Hathaway is constantly battling herself and her reluctance to step outside the box. Wilson comes along and helps her be who she really is, instead of her helping him. Characters come and go, David Morse gets to act threatening, and before long Hathaway isn't even sure of herself. You'll likely figure it out long before any of the cast do. This had some interesting moments and the leads make a decent couple, but it was cliched and felt largely directionless. By the time everyone had worked out what was happening, I wasn't really all that bothered anymore. It's essentially a mixture of four or five films and wasted a lot of the talent it had. It never felt life affirming and there wasn't enough of one thing to give the film something to hang on to.

Sorry to Bother You (2018) A disillusioned guy takes a job as a telemarketer, and realises he's very good at it, but at what cost to himself? Lakeith Stanfield stars as Cassius Cash Green, a guy down on his luck who needs money to pay the rent at his uncle's house. He takes up the job of a telemarketer and fails miserably until an older colleague (played by Danny Glover) tells him he needs to use a 'white voice'. With this instruction he quickly becomes the number one salesperson and is elevated to the next floor, the mystical Power Caller section. His artist girlfriend, played by Tessa Thompson isn't so sure of it all and as Cash starts to become distant to his life and friends, he doesn't stop often enough to consider what his success is doing. As well as this, there's a subplot involving Cash's lower floor co-workers, as well as talk of the WorryFree company. Set in an alternative America, there's very little difference between it and the real thing. This is an incredible debut feature from director Boots Riley and works on so many levels that I imagine there's at least one sub-layer I wasn't even aware of. The look of the picture is amazing, and the composition of some of the shots makes you feel you're watching a seasoned professional at work. It's full of colour and noise, and so many great characters. Lakeith Stanfield is a superb lead, a likeable guy who embraces his new life, while quietly trying to ignore the voice in his head. The use of the dubbed 'white voice' was very clever and the whole set up of the building itself made an interesting dynamic, more so as the protest kicks off. There's so much going on here that even minor moments are full of something - be it comedy, drama, satire or something else. The film also manages to pull the rug from under you a couple of times. When you think it's going to be a romantic drama, it switches. There are laughs and funny sequences, but there's also plenty of moments when I questioned if I should be laughing at something. Even before the switch toward the end, the film has already covered and discarded a number of plot points that some movies would balance an entire film on. There's wackiness, oddness and a general feeling of seeing a world that leans just enough to the side to make you realise it isn't actually our world. The WorryFree company (headed by a brilliantly bizarre Armie Hammer) could be its own movie in itself. There's an insane commercial that's also well worth seeing. Then the film really switches things up in those last thirty minutes. It really shouldn't work but in the context of the picture, it makes some kind of ridiculous sense. I don't want to oversell it because I can imagine some people will be lost by it. I wasn't sure it worked, and I'm still not sure, but it's never less than utterly fascinating. It does have elements of Get Out, with the oddness of Society (but not the gore or body horror as such). There were points when it even reminded me of The Running Man. There's simply so much going on. An audacious debut and a film that is sure to gain a reaction from anyone who sees it - whether its love or dislike, I don't know, but it's a film well worth seeing.

I don't know actually, whichever the default one is. I've not changed any graphic settings or anything, other than to have it show all games instead of just favourites.

I downloaded it but imagine it'll turn up in most places soon. It's nothing like Society in terms of that film's ending, but it's definitely got a very odd vibe about.

Not sure - the build I have is windows based, but I did read more options would be coming. Must admit I loved that it was auto configured to work with both sticks for Smash TV. How big is 2.5 Gold? I grabbed 2.0 packed and it was 46gb!

Yes, the .bat files are genius. I have Gold and Packed but trying to move the c64 from one to the other is tedious. Are there art/video packs available? Just trying to get the art for Uridium from x to y was frustrating. I can’t figure out how to add games to existing systems - I assume without the art it would just show a name. Really needs a good user guide. I messed around with RetroFE documents but they seem complicated for their own good. I got it to set up the folder structure but pointing it at the emulator by editing conf files is a pain.

Just watched Sorry to Bother You. I’m going to need a little time to comprehend it. Visually stunning, like a music video but with story and performances to match. A really impressive 90 minutes. And then.....I agree with Silent Runner - it’s Get Out spliced with Society and goodness knows what else.

Bloody hell, it's frustrating trying to add other systems. So far I've managed to do an auto file structure, and have Coinops show 'C64' on its menu!

Is there any way just to grab the updated front end? I somehow grabbed a 46gb version last night that oddly removed the C64 but then added the Amiga, megadrive etc. Still trying to figure out how to add other stuff or find data packs. There's almost no specific user guides, though a few people say just to follow the same instructions you would with RetroFE.

This coinops front end works ridiculously well! Set up an old PC on the TV -

The Crazies (2010) A small town is rocked by a series of bizarre murders committed by normal folks who have turned bloodthirsty This is a remake of the George Romero picture and stars Timothy Olyphant as a small town sheriff and Radha Mitchell as his doctor wife. We open on a destroyed town and then cut to two days earlier, watching the people go about its business. After a man randomly walks onto a baseball field during a game brandishing a shotgun, Olyphant has to kill him in self defence. A series of events then unfold and the town is quickly quarantined with deadly force. In amongst the chaos Olyphant and his wife are separated, forcing him to go back into the quarantine zone and face not only the crazies but the military themselves. This was a decent, if workmanlike horror thriller that never really lived up to its title. The leads were fine and while there wasn't much in the way of support, everyone played their part. It got going fairly quickly and remained a cat and mouse game almost to the end, rarely stopping for more than a couple of minutes. There were a few tense moments, and a scene in a makeshift quarantine tent was well done. However, there really wasn't much else to it. The group move from one car or farmhouse to the next, encountering either soldiers or crazies, and move on. The villains themselves are ok but there's rarely more then a couple in one place and at times the human threat far exceeds it. There's also no clear cut human villain other than gas-masked soldiers who have zero personality. There was a bit of potential here that was never fully realised and while it was completely functional, it was rarely bloody or scary. It played out pretty much how I expected, right down to the final cover up. Not good or bad, just average.

They do have Roma coming soon.