Cod Almighty | Diary
No, me neither.
13 June 2025
Last Sunday. Your A46 Diary had the pleasure of what may have been the perfect cinema double bill - The Ballad of Wallace Island followed by From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Two films so different and so perfectly suited to their genres that the differences in them made the joy of cinema all the more splendid.
It made me think of what two games, completely different and yet completely satisfying and thrilling, might I want to watch back-to-back on a close-season Sunday afternoon/early evening.
One has to be Wrexham away, obviously, while the other should be something more muted, tense because of long-held fine margins, a tightrope of the tentative rather than the table tennis tantrums of the Racecourse. That's the play-off final of 1998 - very topical right now due to the latest strip - and the one-goal lead held for 77 minutes makes it perfect.
So, which films match the matches? The thrills and the spills of Ballerina surely fit perfectly with Wrexham and the gentler, at times maudlin, at times hilarious Ballad fits with the quieter game. No, not for me; the Ballad and the Ballerina will be the Hollywood and the Brexit respectively.
First up then, director James Griffiths’ Ballad and manager Paul Hurst’s
Racecourse Raid. Spoiler alert: happy endings incoming! Tim Key is Luke Waterfall, a humble but awkward man who knows what he wants and is prepared to power through brick walls to get it. Tom Basden is John McAtee, the creative genius willing to take on an unusual gig in a backwater place to get the boost he needs for his career. Carey Mulligan is Ryan Taylor, a solid option that holds the team together, links the play and provides that all-important last ten percent.
Followed by Len Wiseman’s Ballerina alongside Alan Buckley's Wembley Winners
Winners Chicken Dinners. Spoiler alert: flame throwers! Ana De Armas is Aiden Davison, stunned, dazed and beaten, stumbling like a concussed cockatoo. Ana de Armas is Peter Handyside, marching forward and blasting, hanging back and defending desperately. Ana de Armas is Paul Groves, a leader, a powerhouse, box-to-box and always ready with a big gun. Ana de Armas is Kevin Donovan, firepower and a slinky jink – she’s bringing out the flamethrower...
Laugh-a-minute, tear your hair out fun, fear and roller-coaster scorelines in Wrexham and on the fictional Wallis Island - the filmmakers used locations around the coast of Wales to create a suitably isolated setting. The Ballad is delightfully, darkly, awkwardly British, a perfectly sentimental story of a widower determined to put on a private gig with his favourite band just for him. But the band, two folk musicians, former lovers of course, split years ago, and so the island becomes the setting for dreams to be shattered, made, shattered, remade, failed, re-built and achieved. It’s impossible to settle while watching film or game, switching from hilarity to torturous heartache, over and over.
Gritty, tense, each moment extended to an eternity of delicious torment, the Ballerina embarks on her first missions, not as a straightforward John Wick-style assassin but as a kikimora, a killer and a protector, attack and defence. And concussed? She must be! She's battered throughout and rises again and again to thump, kick, shoot and burn the bad guys as they come at her in wave after wave. She must’ve missed a penalty at some point too... As the tension rises, the suffering becomes exquisite, the moments of fear extend again, stretching, filling, forcing us to reach out, our fingertips desperate to touch safety.
A perfect double bill with perfectly opposite narratives and climaxes. What wouldn’t we give to experience films and games like these for the first time again?