The Trip (2021) I think all marriages must go through this

I didn't know what to expect from this one - apparently it's one of Norway's first exclusives to Netflix and, if this is anything to go by, I hope they release many more besides.  It's the blackest of black comedies, filled with betrayal, murder and backstabbing (sometimes literally) where a middle class husband and wife decides to get away from it all and take a trip to a deserted cabin for some alone time.  However, neither suspects that the other has secret plans to murder them and live young, free and single once more.

Now, I'm sure you'll have guessed that neither succeeds right off the bat, as this would then end up being one hell of a short movie.  As it is, it clocks in at nearly two hours.  So the two warring spouses come up across numerous foes along the way, namely an escaped band of sadistic criminals who will do anything to avoid re-cacpture.

There are no major action scenes here, but it certainly is a tense little number and it should leave you guessing as to HOW the couple manages to survive and what happens to them during the story.

8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one

Archive (2020) Not bad... for a human

By now my Netflix watchlist was looking pretty sparse.  I'd suffered through their collection of 'original' horror and sci-fi content and got bored of the politic messages it was trying to stuff down my throat.  However, then I came across 'Archive' and was actually pleasantly surprised.  The main character was a man and actually seemed pretty competent about his subject field, which was creating robots in a secret lab, far away from civilisation at the behest of a sinister company.

He's already created some sentient robots, but he doesn't want to expose them yet to the money men for fear of his creations being taken from him.  However, his end goal is really to move his dead wife's consciousness across from its computer storage terminal into a really state of the art robot who you could barely tell the difference if it was standing among humans.

Of course the powers that be soon start taking an interest in his furtive activities and start sending their men to make housecalls.  You could almost seen this as an updated version of 'Frankenstein' as the 'mad scientist' creates his 'monsters' that only he can truly love, much to the disgust of all those around him,

Performances are good and it's mainly just the two stars who hole it together (and one of them is technically 'dead' on screen!) and you can see the loss is weighing hard on the man as he desperately tries to build a body while he still has the resources to do so.

It doesn't sound like much and don't let the run time put you off, but it may take you sticking with it right until the end for you to fully appreciate all the hidden clues dotted throughout the film.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that