The Maze Runner, Babadook and party-time.

While I a go to lots of gigs and plays I rather neglect the somewhat more prosaic cinema experience. Curiously, while I fancied the look of the new film Interstellar, it wasn't on yet, so I went to see something else that was science-fiction - the Maze Runner.

I didn't know much about this, and in particular didn't realise it was actually based on some cult teen fiction, that not being my normal reading matter. But actually it was pretty good - a perfectly adult film without any sex or swearing, and relatively mild violence.

I think it falls into a genre that has been covered in a lot of mini-series, of which Lost was the main example. Its one where it takes place in some totally unfathomable background. You just have to accept it doesn't make sense, although unlike Lost this does sort of come to some resolution. Not sure it was a convincing resolution, but it was some attempt to let you go home without feeling baffled.

The concept is that a young man wakes up in a cargo lift and delivered to the Glade, with no memory of anything that came before. The Glade is a small patch of grass and forest, surrounded by a huge wall. The Wall opens every day, but beyond it is a constantly shifting maze. The Glade is populated by a group of youths who have been delivered in the same way, with no memory. The Maze Runners are those who go out in the morning to try and map the Maze. Oh, and in the Maze are giant spiders that come out at night, so you need to be back in time. The story is of course in them getting out of this maze.

All sounds a bit outlandish, but actually its pretty watchable. The chase bits in the maze are very good, and the effects very decent. Its quite convincing within its unlikely concept. Its main weakness in my view was that there isn't enough time to develop the characters, which is odd in one way in that I understand that people (ok teenagers) like the characters. I suspect they feel that the characters are well-developed - they might not have the patience for more. It also has an unnecessarily mawkish bit with the little boy getting shot at the end (and it seems there was no logical reason why everyone else was a youth and there was only one chubby little boy, other than to allow for his mawkish demise).

A mate of mine wanted to see the much-lauded Australian horror film, Babadook. This had excellent reviews, but frankly I much preferred the Maze Runner. to be fair this may be because I don't much like horror films. Part of my problem with this one was being unable to work out whether the mother was just going mad, or whether there was something supernatural going on. And the little boy ( a staple of horror films seems to be a small child) was pretty irritating. Not because he was a bad little actor, just because he was irritating.

And the end, well not sure it felt like an ending at all, it just sort of petered out and they put the closing captions on.

Anyway, no doubt extremely well acted - the mother was brilliant, but if you don't like horror films then I guess you just don't like them.

So two films in a week and neither the one that I wanted to see.

Friday night was outside of my normal entertainment.  went to a party, but pretty much a student type party. I was a good 20 years oldest than anyone else there. But with the aid of sufficient alcohol, I enjoyed the evening very much, enough to have comfortably missed last tube home. Although fortunately the flat was very convenient for the night bus back to my house. I had drunk comfortably more vodka than in all my previous 52 years, with some beer added, but felt ok at the end of it. A pre-party curry was probably the key to success.