Mark Twomey

Media has made killers cute. We've given them sardonic voice overs in TV shows. Some have become "I can fix them" characters in books. They'll kill only the bad people, or so the authors would have us believe. That's not how these people work. The reality is that everyone around a serial killer will be in some way damaged or destroyed by them. Other people's pain is their point.

Red Dragon, written in 1981, doesn't do cute. In this book anyone who brushes by evil or confronts it ends up in a worse position afterwards. How could it be otherwise when facing sociopaths and sadists? Someone has to take the blows from these people and in FBI Profiler, Will Graham's case it's him. Graham is intelligent, empathetic and a sacrificial lamb.

Will Graham can put himself in the predator's shoes. He figures out their motivations and the actions those motivations will drive. This puts a distance between him and regular people as he fears he's one degree of separation from the savages he hunts. The problem for Graham is that the predators take as much of an interest in him as he does in them. 

An imprisoned former psychiatrist, Dr. Hannibal Lecter being Graham's most dangerous fan. Lecter here is a supporting character who acts as an evil force. Early on in the book he's offended by Graham's aftershave, I'm convinced the chaos he causes for Graham later is to drive a change of cologne.

A set of brutal family murders by a killer nicknamed the Tooth Fairy, later revealed to be the Red Dragon, has Graham looking for a way into the killer's mind. Lecter gives it to him, and by extension us. It's the strength of the writing that you can empathise with the killer, Francis Dolarhyde, as a result of the abuse he suffered since birth. Then despise him for his insane and murderous actions in the same paragraph.

This is a good book. It's well written, its use of words is tight, and it pushes the realism of the situation by delivering no catharsis. Good people do everything right here and they still lose. I was going to plunge into The Silence Of The Lambs straight after this but right now I don't want to. Next I'll read something where good triumphs and evil is defeated. You know, something not realistic at all.   

When Dante wrote this narrative poem he did so in Italian instead of Latin to make it as accessible as possible. Alas, I can't read 14th century Italian so I have to depend on translators and their copious amount of footnotes. Over the past 700 years the footnotes have piled up at the bottom of the page like centuries of snow. Dante would be horrified.

Ignoring the opinions of academics and slogging my way through the translated poem, this is a groundbreaking piece of creativity. Dante the author was convicted and sentenced to death by burning on invented charges. He fled his native Florence and never gets to return. In the poem Dante the character, one of literature's most famous self-inserts, considers suicide because of his miserable circumstances. The spirit of the Roman poet Virgil appears to Dante at the request of Dante's great unconsummated love, the deceased Lady Beatrice.

Virgil and Dante travel together as they descend into the circles of hell (Inferno) where Dante meets murdered adulterers forever tossed around by the hurricane winds of lust. Gluttons drowning in excrement. Betrayers feeding on each other and even Satan himself. Climbing down the frozen body of Satan, they pass through the centre of the world and "climb up" one of his legs where they exit onto the shores of purgatory.

In the second book, Purgatorio, Dante and Virgil summit Mount Purgatory. A climb of spiritual rebirth where those capable of change work on overcoming whichever of the seven deadly sins they were guilty of in life. The climb up the cornices of Mount Purgatory is difficult and this is where some readers fall away. After the grotesque punishments of the first book this book presents hopeful struggles that can make a reader melancholy. Purgatory is for the flawed, you may see yourself working your way through a penance for decades in the hope of reaching paradise. I found the second book to be the most..human.

The final book, Paradiso, is a leap into the divine. A literal leap as Dante flies from the summit of Mount Purgatory and journeys through the nine spheres of heaven. A mortal visitor allowed to question the nature of God, faith, hope and love. This book is heavy on the theology and gets more abstract the closer Dante gets to becoming part of the eternal. Dante the author does a great job conveying what a mortal mind might think it sees the closer it gets to God.

Like Dante's own journey, making it from Inferno to Purgatorio to Paradiso was a journey for me. It was a good one. Should you read it? If you feel you need to. You need an internal motivation to sustain you through works like this. I closed a page somewhere on Mount Purgatory decades ago and it took all this time to come back, start again and get to the end. I don't regret the wait; I was finally ready to start and finish.

In 1996, Liam Neeson starred in the historical drama Michael Collins; likewise, Pamela Anderson was in Barb Wire. If you had told me at the time that they’d reboot The Naked Gun franchise together, I’d have laughed at you.

In this reboot of a franchise that first started in 1982 with the six-episode Police Squad!, Neeson’s Frank Drebin Jr. takes on Danny Heuston’s reverse effective altruist green technology billionaire. Anderson’s crime writer has a family connection and a score to settle, which brings her into Drebin’s life.

Surprising 1996 me they are good together on screen. Neeson is in his comfortable growling mode while Anderson is upbeat but worldly. As a pair they seem ready to tackle whatever jokes the writers can imagine. There’s a romantic sequence in a ski lodge that’s unexpected and great. To write more about it would be to rob you of some wonderful jokes.

The issue with this movie? It isn’t as cinematic as the first Naked Gun film. This is a streaming series pilot in writing and cinematography. It feels small and TV-like when you’re looking at it. There is no enormous set-piece event where Frank Drebin saves the day while being oblivious to the absolute destruction he’s caused. At 85 minutes, the running time is perfect for a spoof comedy, but I lost focus as time passed.

As a spoof, you expect physical comedy, celebrity cameos, sexual innuendo/double entendres and sight gags playing in the background as an actor delivers lines like it was a drama. It does all these well, but it’s careful. You can tell this movie wants to turn a decent profit from a modest budget. Which is the type of comedy movies we had back in the Michael Collins/Barb Wire era, so this movie is more retro than I thought.

This is an okay comedy that you’ll get some laughs from. It appeals most to people who remember Leslie Nielsen’s glory days, but even back then the first movie was the best one. I suspect this movie will struggle to bring in a younger audience. If you’re new to the franchise and this brand of spoof procedural cop show you could start with this one and enjoy it. But watch the original movie; it still holds up today.

Superman (2025) isn't a movie by someone who studied Richard Donner's Superman. It's a movie by someone who studied Christopher Reeve's performance in Superman. David Corenswet gives Clark Kent/Superman a Reeve's like charisma even though he falls short of giving his Superman a Reeve's like presence.

The cast here outstrips the dialogue. Unlike prior Superman movies everyone can act. Rachel Brosnahan is a modern update to Hildy Johnson's fast talking 1940s reporter in His Girl Friday. She's sharp, a bit spikey, and wants the scoop. Her chemistry with Corenswet sparks on the screen. Nicholas Hoult impresses as the malignant narcissist Lex Luthor. This is Luthor as a long term strategist. The Luthor who looks at Superman and sees the end of human progress. Why strive and claw your way forward as a species when entities with the powers of the gods of legend can solve your worst problems? If they choose to, that is. Luthor is evil but his argument that in a world of super beings the future of humanity bends towards decline and helplessness gnaws away at you when the movie focuses on it.

The central conflict, Luthor seeing Superman as the end, is compelling enough but DC Studios needed to jumpstart their slate of future projects so they overreached. The script bulges with franchise additions. I'd have enjoyed this more were it 90 minutes. But you know what? Superman is a hero again in this movie. He doesn't break anyone's neck to end a fight nor would you think he would. It's a return to optimism for the character.     

Kids will like it. The music is John Williams via swelling choirs, guitars and electronic distortion. If you need two hours of air conditioning relief from the summer heat this will show you a bit more than the latest Jurassic World does. Though I find myself in the uncomfortable position of liking this movie more the further away I get from seeing it.