What I was watching... um... in summer?
Feb. 17th, 2026 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisbluespiritI've had this post stashed away since late November, meaning to come back to it and write something more sensible about The Stone Tape that wasn't how much I wanted to icon Jane Asher's face. The reviews were already at least a couple months out of date, I think. Then life intervened and alas, I have even less brain now than then, so I should get on and post it anyway.
Eye in the Sky (2015)
This was one of the later things I pulled off Jeremy Northam's CV. The JN tumblrs reckoned it was a good one - and it was.
It's about an international military and political operation to capture the three top leaders of an Islamist extremist group in Somalia, with various layers of people involved via video conference - the UK Colonel in charge (Helen Mirren), the US soldiers running the 'eye in the sky' (Aaron Paul, Phoebe Fox), the Somali agents on the ground (esp. Barkhad Abdi), and a small group overseeing it from a meeting room in Whitehall (Alan Rickman as General Benson, Jeremy Northam as the Minister in charge, Monica Dolan as PR), plus various others who need to be consulted, including Iain Glen as the Foreign Secretary. And right there in the middle of it all, is Alia (Aisha Takow), a child who lives close to the target house.
Intended to be a capture mission, once it turns into a 'kill', things get complicated as everything is passed up and down this chain of people, which culminates in the whole thing turning into a real life trolley problem, as Aliah inadvertently puts herself in the firing line.
It's v well done - excellent cast, smartly made, intelligent, balanced - pretty much everyone has a valid point of view, even if some of the politicians primarily want to evade the responsibility - with no clear cut answers. (A lot of comments online I've found about it unsurprisingly quote Alan Rickman's final speech before he leaves the room - sadly rather literally in terms of his live-action performances - "Never tell a soldier he doesn't know the cost of war." But this film is never simple - his general then goes off to casually give his own young granddaughter a doll, in contrast to Aliah's parents at the hospital.
Smartly made modern film, but also exactly the kind of knotty moral problem and intelligent writing you'd have got in a Play of the Month.
Talking of which...
Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape (BBC 1972)
I this via Talking Pictures, after having heard of it forever, and it was great! I really loved it. The creepy concept, the scientific approach - I really wished I had screencaps so I could icon Jane Asher in it (she was wonderful generally, not just icon-able) and everything. The way that the misogyny was used was also great, and took me by surprise because I had felt my one other Nigel Kneale did give way to a 1960s/70s misogynistic trope that I had seen too often by that point, but perhaps the "seen too often" part was more of the problem, because this just made me sit up and do the, "Oh. oh" moment for real. Highly recommended if you like any brand of creepy UK 70s TV. (It IS creepy/disturbing, though. This is not a chirpy watch that will end well, please do note). It starred some other people who weren't Jane Asher, too, like Iain Cutherbertson and they were all also good, I just didn't want to icon them and their face and their red hair in quite the same way. XD
So glad I finally watched it & I enjoyed it even in summer, when I so often can't manage TV downstairs.
Official Secrets (2019)
EitS having been so good, when I realised that this one (featuring one of the 2 brief cameos that are all JN has done since 2016) was also directed by Gavin Hood, I checked for a cheap copy & obtained it poste haste. I really liked this too, and watching them close together made me think even more highly of both - this is the story of a real incident from 2002, while EitS is a theoretical piece behind its tension, but underneath, they're both smartly done morality plays with excellent casts. (Incidentally, there are 3 actors who feature in both - Monica Dolan, John Heffernan and Jeremy Northam).
When I looked up both films online the first description is always "underrated" and the Guardian apparently ran a piece for Keira Knightley's 40th earlier this year recommending a top list of her films to watch, and put Official Secrets at no. 1.
Official Secrets isn't as tightly contained as EitS, as it's based on a real UK whistleblower incident from 2002, but which ended up not having much effect, so it's a really unusual thing to tackle (& as faithfully as this - they had a lot of the real people involved in the production in some way or other). As before, it's a large but excellent cast (Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Adam Bakri, Matt Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Indira Varma & more).
Like EitS, it's another morality play - asking the viewers questions rather than providing answers about whether or not Katherine Gun does the right thing(s) here, along with the whole issue of speaking truth to power, and where does the Official Secrets Act leave the intelligence service in particular?
It's as intelligent and rounded as EitS was, and while, set in 2002, the incident involves the Blair gov't and the weapons of mass destruction deception, but it points out several times that part of the issue is stricter amendments made to the OS Act by the Thatcher gov't after the Falklands.
Matt Smith has a fairly major role in it, btw, and it's a very engaging one - well worth it for him, too. (I say, given the no. of DW fans around here!)
(I mentioned tosovay at the time, I think, but it also had a brief, bonus 21st C Clive Francis as an admiral still as quirkily charming as ever he was in his Poldark days, if not more so).
They made a good compare and contrast pair of films, too - quite different in many ways, obviously stylistically similar, but also Eye in the Sky is very tightly inside the room where decisions being made; Official Secrets runs around the outside of it, always a hole where powerful people are making decisions that we never really see or understand, beyond Jeremy Northam's brief cameo, and Ralph Fiennes's rejecting of him and his explanations.
Anyway, after watching both, I got excited by clearly liking a director's stuff, so I looked up what Gavin Hood had done since - and the answer was nothing, dammit! (Before that he did Wolverine and Ender's Game, which are not tightly done morality plays. I mean, I assume not?? But I might need to investigate the first half of his CV more closely sometime. He has something upcoming lurking on imdb, which sounds more similar, but I'm not sure if that's real, or just a production hell mythical something or other.)
Eye in the Sky (2015)
This was one of the later things I pulled off Jeremy Northam's CV. The JN tumblrs reckoned it was a good one - and it was.
It's about an international military and political operation to capture the three top leaders of an Islamist extremist group in Somalia, with various layers of people involved via video conference - the UK Colonel in charge (Helen Mirren), the US soldiers running the 'eye in the sky' (Aaron Paul, Phoebe Fox), the Somali agents on the ground (esp. Barkhad Abdi), and a small group overseeing it from a meeting room in Whitehall (Alan Rickman as General Benson, Jeremy Northam as the Minister in charge, Monica Dolan as PR), plus various others who need to be consulted, including Iain Glen as the Foreign Secretary. And right there in the middle of it all, is Alia (Aisha Takow), a child who lives close to the target house.
Intended to be a capture mission, once it turns into a 'kill', things get complicated as everything is passed up and down this chain of people, which culminates in the whole thing turning into a real life trolley problem, as Aliah inadvertently puts herself in the firing line.
It's v well done - excellent cast, smartly made, intelligent, balanced - pretty much everyone has a valid point of view, even if some of the politicians primarily want to evade the responsibility - with no clear cut answers. (A lot of comments online I've found about it unsurprisingly quote Alan Rickman's final speech before he leaves the room - sadly rather literally in terms of his live-action performances - "Never tell a soldier he doesn't know the cost of war." But this film is never simple - his general then goes off to casually give his own young granddaughter a doll, in contrast to Aliah's parents at the hospital.
Smartly made modern film, but also exactly the kind of knotty moral problem and intelligent writing you'd have got in a Play of the Month.
Talking of which...
Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape (BBC 1972)
I this via Talking Pictures, after having heard of it forever, and it was great! I really loved it. The creepy concept, the scientific approach - I really wished I had screencaps so I could icon Jane Asher in it (she was wonderful generally, not just icon-able) and everything. The way that the misogyny was used was also great, and took me by surprise because I had felt my one other Nigel Kneale did give way to a 1960s/70s misogynistic trope that I had seen too often by that point, but perhaps the "seen too often" part was more of the problem, because this just made me sit up and do the, "Oh. oh" moment for real. Highly recommended if you like any brand of creepy UK 70s TV. (It IS creepy/disturbing, though. This is not a chirpy watch that will end well, please do note). It starred some other people who weren't Jane Asher, too, like Iain Cutherbertson and they were all also good, I just didn't want to icon them and their face and their red hair in quite the same way. XD
So glad I finally watched it & I enjoyed it even in summer, when I so often can't manage TV downstairs.
Official Secrets (2019)
EitS having been so good, when I realised that this one (featuring one of the 2 brief cameos that are all JN has done since 2016) was also directed by Gavin Hood, I checked for a cheap copy & obtained it poste haste. I really liked this too, and watching them close together made me think even more highly of both - this is the story of a real incident from 2002, while EitS is a theoretical piece behind its tension, but underneath, they're both smartly done morality plays with excellent casts. (Incidentally, there are 3 actors who feature in both - Monica Dolan, John Heffernan and Jeremy Northam).
When I looked up both films online the first description is always "underrated" and the Guardian apparently ran a piece for Keira Knightley's 40th earlier this year recommending a top list of her films to watch, and put Official Secrets at no. 1.
Official Secrets isn't as tightly contained as EitS, as it's based on a real UK whistleblower incident from 2002, but which ended up not having much effect, so it's a really unusual thing to tackle (& as faithfully as this - they had a lot of the real people involved in the production in some way or other). As before, it's a large but excellent cast (Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Adam Bakri, Matt Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Indira Varma & more).
Like EitS, it's another morality play - asking the viewers questions rather than providing answers about whether or not Katherine Gun does the right thing(s) here, along with the whole issue of speaking truth to power, and where does the Official Secrets Act leave the intelligence service in particular?
It's as intelligent and rounded as EitS was, and while, set in 2002, the incident involves the Blair gov't and the weapons of mass destruction deception, but it points out several times that part of the issue is stricter amendments made to the OS Act by the Thatcher gov't after the Falklands.
Matt Smith has a fairly major role in it, btw, and it's a very engaging one - well worth it for him, too. (I say, given the no. of DW fans around here!)
(I mentioned to
sovay at the time, I think, but it also had a brief, bonus 21st C Clive Francis as an admiral still as quirkily charming as ever he was in his Poldark days, if not more so).They made a good compare and contrast pair of films, too - quite different in many ways, obviously stylistically similar, but also Eye in the Sky is very tightly inside the room where decisions being made; Official Secrets runs around the outside of it, always a hole where powerful people are making decisions that we never really see or understand, beyond Jeremy Northam's brief cameo, and Ralph Fiennes's rejecting of him and his explanations.
Anyway, after watching both, I got excited by clearly liking a director's stuff, so I looked up what Gavin Hood had done since - and the answer was nothing, dammit! (Before that he did Wolverine and Ender's Game, which are not tightly done morality plays. I mean, I assume not?? But I might need to investigate the first half of his CV more closely sometime. He has something upcoming lurking on imdb, which sounds more similar, but I'm not sure if that's real, or just a production hell mythical something or other.)
no subject
Date: 2026-02-17 10:42 pm (UTC)You did mention! And he's currently pulling down raves for his half of I'm Sorry, Prime Minister in the West End, which makes me happy.
I remember hearing about Eye in the Sky when it came out, but I'm not sure Official Secrets had particularly crossed my radar otherwise. I will look out for both as my brain allows. A bonus John Heffernan, even. [edit] The former is currently streaming on Tubi and the latter on Netflix. What is this weirdness where movies are just available.
I remain so happy that The Stone Tape worked for you. I would love to see any icons you manage to make of it.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-18 12:42 am (UTC)