This week I’m going to flip-flop somewhat because, for one, it now appears that the show has got a second season. Something I hadn’t anticipated, and depending on how the rest of the season goes, it’s a show I’ll be happy to see return. The story starts with some animal rights protesters breaking into a test lab at night to release the animals, and getting significantly more than they bargained for....
During the midpoint of that movie, Winona Ryder’s Mina Murray flees the influence of Dracula to be reunited with her weakened but living fiancé Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves), and the two are soon married inside a Romanian Orthodox church. However, while promoting Destination “We actually got married in Dracula,” Ryder recently told Entertainment Weekly. “No, I swear to God I think we’re married in real life…. In that scene, Francis used a real Romanian priest....
Daniel Radcliffe plays Ginsberg, a nervy, naive young man still coming to terms with his sexuality in an aggressively homophobic time. The story begins as he earns a place at the prestigious Columbia University, just as his mentally ill mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh, who’s as excellent as ever) is sent to an institution of a more troubling kind. Drawn into Lucien’s world of drunken parties, jazz bars and drugged-up poetry, Allen finds an outlet for his frustrations – specifically, the rules of rhyme and meter established by his father, Louis (David Cross), also poet of some repute, and his stuffy old teacher, Professor Stevens (John Cullum)....
Legends of Tomorrow Episode 13 And we’re back in business. After last week’s rather inconsequential episode, it finally felt like Legends of Tomorrow got back to telling a story with some actual weight to it this week. If I’m reading this thing right, “Leviathan” is basically the first hour of a four hour season finale, and Legends has by far done its best work when it behaves as if it has no time to lose....
Line Of Duty’s second run has been a series of optical illusions. You know the ones: duck is rabbit, Marilyn Monroe is Albert Einstein, young woman looking away is old lady in headscarf, innocent victim is scheming villain… This week’s final shot of Denton sipping Chablis and watching the news of Dryden’s arrest was a page from a Magic Eye book. Let your eyes defocus and out of ‘innocent woman with wine’ looms a cackling she-devil with horns, tail, and glossy fringe....
Some of these films work, but the sheer number of them relative to the amount of classically romantic and/or comedic additions to the genre ensures that the effect has quickly worn off. The subversive rom-com, then, is now as spoiled as the thing it seeks to lampoon and, on paper at least, that may have been a worry of Ben Palmer’s Man Up. It’s a farcical premise that is thankfully never really allowed go off the rails, mainly due to the two central performances and the commitment to keeping the date itself as painfully ordinary as possible....
5.6 Fun And Games There is a lot to cover this week on Agents Of SHIELD as Marvel kicks off 2018 with a bang. This is the year Marvel will present Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, and Ant-Man and the Wasp in cinemas; it’s the year that a number of Marvel shows return to Netflix, and it’s the year where Cloak And Dagger should be arriving on TV. But Agents Of SHIELD stands as the old stalwart of the MCU, and the series gets off to a good start for 2018 this week as we must bid farewell to a few new characters and are introduced to an Inhuman straight out of the comics....
The episode’s title “Kyrie Eleison” is Greek for “Lord, have mercy” and there’s no shortage of mercy being asked for this week as many people try to get back into the swing of things and rebuild normalcy. After the emotional stabilizer that was last week’s premiere, it’s back to work for everyone as this episode explores the idea of reintroduction and expectations. Masters is beginning work at Memorial Hospital, Coral, a nanny has her first day with Libby looking after their child, everyone is rebuilding schedules, but in spite of this familiarity, things are not the same; a change is coming....
The BBC has put a great deal of money, time and commitment into the show and, as it is airing at the usual Doctor Who slot, the intentions are alike. However, just like Robin Hood, bad casting choices and flawed ideas make for a show that is at times just unwatchable. Moving away from the Merlin/Arthur relationship and the usual by the numbers Merlin saves Arthur with a bit of magic on the sly plot device that has been used week on week, we instead focus on the other members of the cast....
Director and co-writer Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo, adapted from the novel L’Écume des jours by Boris Vian, has a similarly airy quality; it’s a romantic melodrama shot like a lucid dream. Vian’s novel has appeared in the cinema before, as Spray Of The Days, directed by Charles Belmont, and Chloe, directed by Go Riju, but Gondry makes the story his own. The French director clearly feels at home with this tragic romance, and he wears it like a warm fur coat....
There was a surprising announcement Friday, as Midway, the company behind Mortal Kombat, and DC Comics announced a joint venture. Hearkening back to the tradition of the ‘versus’ games that I’d hoped were long since gone, the latest awful fighting game in the mix is the tantalizingly-titled Mortal Kombat VS. DC Universe. It just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Of course, because DC is involved, the one hallmark of the Mortal Kombat series will not come into play in the new fighting game....
Like last year, Clint Mansell has been criminally overlooked, this year down to a technicality, so my favourite isn’t listed. BEST SCORE A.R. Rahman – 127 Hours This is far from my favourite score nominated, but does feature a number of highlights, particularly when it moves away from the slower numbers that accompany the earlier moments of the film into the guitar-laden up-tempo numbers that accompany the film as it draws closer to its finale....
No Ordinary Detention After the shambles of last week, I was actually not looking forward to No Ordinary Detention, like I’d actually been given one. The story is actually three entirely unconnected subplots, one where Jim’s actions come back to haunt him at his workplace, another where Joshua’s withdrawal symptoms from the super-serum drive Katie to take him to see Stephanie in the lab, and the detention story, where both JJ and Daphne get on the wrong side of their loveable and rational teacher....
No Ordinary Double Standard I’ve decided that this show is perfectly named, because over time it’s boiled down to a mixture of three different components. There are the ‘ordinary’ parts, where people do or say very ordinary things, usually bickering about nothing of great substance. Then there are the ‘family’ parts, where the Powells do things that the writers have decided all American dysfunctional families do, like having abrupt breakfast conversations or arguing at bedtime....
In his own playful, stylistically fluid way, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho uses his sci-fi comedy Okja to do the same thing: it forces us to confront the everyday horror of the meat on our plates. Assuming you’re not a vegetarian already, Okja may just convince you to switch pork sausages for soya ones. Unbeknown to Mija, her grandfather’s already agreed to have Okja submitted to the super pig competition in New York – which effectively means that the poor animal, once it’s had its five minutes of fame on television, is headed to the slaughter house....
A bit of business first: if you’re a One Direction fan, of a non-geeky persuasion, who just wants to know if the film is any good, two things. Number one: welcome. Number two: you’ll like it. You’re very welcome to stay, but no hard feelings if you don’t. For everyone else? Inevitably, this is 90 minutes of cinema that’s targeted firmly at existing fans of the group. And why wouldn’t it be?...
Did you like being that character that has a touch of danger to him? You seem to be moving more and more towards these characters that have a touch of danger to them. R: Well, just trying to surf and turf it a little bit. [Laughter] Keep it interesting for you guys. You ride a motorcycle in parts of the film? R: I do yeah. Can you talk about that training they put you through?...
The good news, since two hours of Bond-aping could get boring, is that this isn’t what the film is all about. McGregor’s character Perry isn’t actually suave, sophisticated or even a spy. He’s a teacher who’s merely stumbled into this world by accident. It’s a neat starting point for an unpredictable narrative, which serves up plenty of intrigue along the way to an action-packed conclusion. Dima and Perry bond on a personal level, chatting at parties and playfully battling on the tennis court....
When you try and explain Outlander to someone who has neither seen nor heard it before, they often give you a slightly quizzical look because it is a rather unique concept. It’s one that transcends genres; the time-travel angle gives it science fiction leaning whilst the actual process of time travel through standing stones feels more fantastical. Then there’s the historical fiction aspect with Gabaldon setting the bulk of the story in the eighteenth century, a time when Scottish political tensions were running especially high, but with a soaring romance at its heart....
It must have been jarring for Smith to go from this production to production on the first season of Netflix’s The Crown, which, at the time of its filming, was the most expensive TV show in Netflix history. It’s not fair to compare a $130 million production to whatever the hell Patient Zero cost to make, but comparing the work of this film’s talented cast to their work in the many, other infinitely better projects they’ve all worked on is one of the only strategies that makes this truly terrible movie watchable....
