Is it golf or money that is A Dangerous Game?

The choices were limited on Friday night, so we opted for this docu-drama, focussed on exposing the ugly arrogant and ignorant Donald Trump trying to bully the locals near Aberdeen, to build a very expensive golf club and resort. This was really the second drama by the British director Anthony Baxter, to follow 'You’ve Been Trumped' which grabbed news headlines back in 2011. It continued the protest against property tycoon Donald Trump’s scheme to bulldoze a luxury golf resort across environmentally sensitive coastline in northeast Scotland. There were quite a few strands to this drama; the corruption of many by money and perceived power; the portrayal of golf as an elite sport for the super rich and the stoic attitude of people who really love the land and their lifestyle in Aberdeen and later Dubrovnick. It was quite disjointed in places and there was a feeling that the film was just another different level of propaganda. There are always more than two sides to every story. But I think the take home message for me was something about the power of bullies to engage people with formal power, such as police and Mayors, to take their side, probably with promises of lots of money! Is it also a coincidence that these people are often over weight and have a very superificial way of thinking and speaking?

Gone girl twists in the tail

The film opens with a scene on their fifth wedding anniversary, where Nick(Ben Affleck) laments that he can not know what his wife Amy(Rosamund Pike) is thinking. It quickly becomes clear that this marriage is all but over, except when he returns home from a fairly honest bar chat with his twin sister, we realise that Amy has gone missing. So the plot moves quickly to find out what has happened and why? Was she kidnapped? Did Nick kill has wife? Did she stage her own murder in revenge for him cheating on her? No one is quite what they seem in this tantalising adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s bestselling marital mystery. The pace quickens and each argument is conveyed very convincingly, until we see a version of the truth that is very confronting... There are questions about who could be a sociopath and at times, it seems both could be.