manipulation | the m0vie blog

409. Alien Covenant – All-ien 2024 (#—)

Posted on February 2, 2025 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Darren Mooney and Jess Dunne, this week with special guest Peter McGann, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.

This week, Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant.

The colony ship Covenant is on its way to a new home world when a freak accident knocks the ship off course. However, while conducting repairs, the crew pick up a strange distress call from an alien planet that seems too good to be true. Seeing a potential opportunity, the crew decide to explore this strange new world. There, they find horrors beyond imagining.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: alien franchise, alien: covenant, Andrew Quinn, creation, creativity, Darren Mooney, destruction, dual role, female representation, genre narratives, imdb, jess dunne, manipulation, Michael Fassbender, peter mcgann, podcast, Prometheus, ridley scott, The 250, themes | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “TENET”, and Christopher Nolan’s Fascination With Time…

Posted on May 24, 2020 by Darren

I published a new piece at Escapist Magazine this evening. This week saw the release of the latest trailer for TENET, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to talk a bit about the work of Christopher Nolan.

Nolan’s filmography is absolutely fascinated by the flow and manipulation of time. It warps, distorts and bends around his protagonists. However, it’s a force that cannot be controlled or governed, but which acts upon the characters nonetheless. The trailer to TENET is interesting because it seems to suggest that the villain of his latest film has learned to manipulate time, which in the context of Nolan’s filmography suggests that he’s messing with the most primal of forces.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: Christopher Nolan, Inception, manipulation, TENET, time | Leave a comment »

Millennium – Through a Glass Darkly (Review)

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Darren

This July, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the sixth season of The X-Files and the third (and final) season of Millennium.

Through a Glass Darkly is a terrible piece of television.

There is no nice way to say it. There is no excusing it. Through a Glass Darkly is an absolutely wretched script directed in a cloying manner. It is cliché, it is clumsy, it is trite. It is manipulative and cynical. There are no redeeming features to Through a Glass Darkly beyond the fact that it makes Human Essence and Omerta look significantly better than they actually are. This is an abysmal production, and one of the worst forty-five minutes of television that Ten Thirteen has broadcast to this point. It is up there with Excelsis Dei.

"You are a paedophile, you are a nonce, you're a perv, you're a slot badger, you're a two pin din plug, you're a bush dodger, you're a small bean regarder, you're an unabummer, you're a nut administrator, you're a bent ref, you're the crazy world of Arthur Brown, you're a fence foal, you're a free willy, you're a chimney bottler, you're a bunty man, you're a shrub rocketeer..."

“You are a paedophile, you are a nonce, you’re a perv, you’re a slot badger, you’re a two pin din plug, you’re a bush dodger, you’re a small bean regarder, you’re a unabummer, you’re a nut administrator, you’re a bent ref, you’re the crazy world of Arthur Brown, you’re a fence foal, you’re a free willy, you’re a chimney bottler, you’re a bunty man, you’re a shrub rocketeer…”

Child sex abuse is an absolutely horrific reality. The world is not always a nice place, and the world is not always a safe place. In the late nineties, film and television were growing more comfortable with exploring and addressing issues of child abuse. However, it was something that needed to be handled with a great deal of care and skill. Millennium had already learned how difficult it could be to tell a story about child abuse, with Chris Carter’s well-intentioned but clumsy The Well-Worn Lock.

Through a Glass Darkly manages to retroactively make The Well-Worn Lock seem like a work of genius.

“…this paedophile has disguised himself as a school in Sheffield.”

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Filed under: Millennium | Tagged: Child abuse, child sex abuse, cloying, happiness, manipulation, millennium, paedophilia, terrible, through a glass darkly, todd solondz, trite, violence | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: If I Stay…

Posted on August 26, 2014 by Darren

If I Stay… has a pretty great leading performance from actress Chloë Grace Moretz and a fantastic supporting turn from veteran character actor Stacy Keach. Both actors do the best they can with the material on hand, although it is clearly an uphill struggle. There’s a sense that the two actors are wandering lost through the film. Moretz’s character is not so much trapped in a hospital as in a terrible screenplay.

If I Stay… squanders these performances with an incredibly cynical and calculated narrative that plays less like the reflective highlights of teenager’s life, and more like a collection of young adult clichés combined together and served up through a blatantly manipulative framing device.