I'm Climbing Up Those Walls Again

Finally a movie I probably wouldn't recommend. Last night I saw The Time of the Wolf (Le Temps du loup) a French film which, while never quite telling you how, depicts the demise of civilization. A husband and wife, with their children, arrive at their summer home to find a man, with his wife and child, living there. The squatter seems scared and violent, and ends up shooting the husband of the arriving family. The mother then flees with her two children into the French countryside. There is little food and water, and no electricity. They run into a boy, who, while being intelligent, probably represents the wolf in the title.

After following railroad tracks, littered with dead bodies and burning cattle, they find a rail station being led by a pretty awful man, who basically taxes the fellow residents for staying with them. People in the movie are always bartering, and it is interesting to see how things of great value now, don't translate into useful items when civilization crumbles.



The title of the movie refers to the brief period before Ragnarok, and many of the characters are well convinced that the end is nigh. While the movie is visually quite beautiful (although a great deal of it is filmed in the dark, as there is no electricity at all), there isn't much of a story, and you feel like you are as lost as the characters. Unless you are practicing your French, or love the French countryside, I'd pick up Brotherhood of the Wolf instead of The Time of the Wolf and see some awesome French kung-fu instead.

I've been watching a lot of Red Dwarf recently. The library has a couple of tapes from season 7, with that great episode where Ace Rimmer jumps out of an airplane surfing on an alligator, and then takes out an entire German platoon while driving on a motorcycle with just a pistol. The most classic part is when he rescues the damsel in distress he says:

"There be time for talking later... and hopefully some sex!"

Last night I saw the episode where the crew had to crawl through the ventilation shaft, and Kryten said to Kristine:

"He looks at you like a starving man looks at a packet of roasted peanuts."
"What do you mean?"
"He can't wait to rip open the bag and taste the salty goodness!"

Ah well, back to more fun.