The story picks up exactly where The Maze Runner left it. The surviving inhabitants of The Glade are helicoptered to a standard-issue sleek young adult sci-fi facility (see: The Hunger Games’ training locations, Kate Winslet’s base from Insurgent), where Aiden Gillen’s villain Janson quickly starts acting a bit shifty. Sadly, the core young characters of The Scorch Trials are essentially the Goonies grown teenaged and lethargic. And not in a good way....
McMafia Episode 8 “Never ask me about my business, Kay,” Michael Corleone says to his non-Sicilian wife at the end of The Godfather. The new patriarch of the crime family gives her one last bit of information to ease her mind, but it is a lie. Then his trusted counselors close the door on her. In McMafia episode 8, the season finale, set in the modern age of gangsters, this is done with the decline of a call on a cell phone, only slightly chillier than breaking up with someone via a post-it note....
DoG: Your film guides have covered some of the most strange, obscure films ever made – has there ever been a film that you just couldn’t bring yourself to watch all the way through? DoG: I was sorry to read that you will no longer be producing the Psychotronic magazine – is there any chance that this may continue as on online publication? MW: Yes – I intend to eventually have an active web site with new reviews and updates....
With the new characters all introduced and the shock of so much change fading a little, Misfits had the chance this week to get back to business as usual. This means some messed up sexual politics, a creepy villain and some genuine, unexpected emotion for our central characters – all present and correct in this third episode. I called last week a return to form for a series that had started the year in a very strange and worrying way, but I have to say I enjoyed this Rudy-centric episode even more....
This week, Nelson learns that Gary is planning to concrete over his den in order to build a smoking area. After consulting his solicitor, he finds out that if his den is home to an endangered species, then Gary won’t be able to build the smoking area. After failing to adopt a chimpanzee from the zoo, Nelson puts an advert in the paper looking for a lodger. When all seems lost, Nelson’s salvation comes in the form of a red squirrel....
Carter Burwell – True Grit Burwell has composed a near perfect score for the material here, as he evokes a wide range of emotions of the characters and the landscapes seen in the film. He uses hymns of the period in which the film is set as a source of inspiration for his compositions, as well as using numerous pieces throughout. This is why this score was deemed ineligible for the Academy Award....
No Ordinary Beginning Waiting for this last instalment of this show was akin to having a long and painful series of dental procedures, having just one left and knowing it would be over soon. Back when I saw the pilot episode last year, I’d viewed this project with an optimism that was largely unfounded, as it has lurched from one ill conceived rehash of superhero lore to poor emulations of the ‘family at wa’r dynamics of The Incredibles, and the Fantastic Four....
After thinking very positive things about the tonal changes that accompanied episode two of this show, I was slightly shocked by how unsympathetic I felt in the declining viewing audience they suffered, after seeing the third instalment. The whole premise of the stolen wedding ring and Jim’s rather poor attempts to recover it wasn’t actually the worst thing in here. That nomination goes to the very lightweight humour they paced out the story with, that was hysterical in the way that joke books of the very young make you chuckle more in pity sort of way....
This week’s episode was unique, not only because of the story it occupied its time telling, but because it made, to my mind, an unprecedented leap in quality from pilot to second episode. Also, there was more nudity and we got to hear Jamie flirt with Claire for the first time, which was unspeakably delicious. Walking down the hall to the surgery in the final moments of the episode to learn her fate from Collum?...
Can I cop out and say a combination of the three? I say that with the tempered caveat that I thought the show pulled its socks up just a little this week. Oh sure, you could still see where every pound hadn’t been spent, and I’m increasingly dubious about hinging a key role on Tamzin Outhwaite’s shoulders. But the batshit crazy moments were fewer in number, some of the logic gaps had been closed up, and in their place was more of a police procedural....
But what of our American friends? Do their shows also rise to the festive challenge? Well, the Paramount Comedy Channel is putting that to the test this Christmas with a whole weekend dedicated to back-to-back yuletide episodes of some of the channels big hits – Two and a Half Men, Scrubs, Frasier, Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, and That 70’s Show. Now I’m no fan of ELR or KOQ, but I could happily lap up episodes of the others from now until Xmas day....
I can’t begin to imagine what an insane year you must have had. We’ve read lots of stories over here about the big-name filmmakers showing interest in the film and offering advice. But from your point of view, when did you get the first inkling that this was working, this was going somewhere? Then later when we started showing the movie in festivals and at more public screenings, we were still getting that response....
Peaky Blinders has always been a crossbreed. Part-drama, part music-video, it plays its record collection loudly and deliberately, at times coming off like a studiously cool dad when your mates are round, at other times the marriage of music and visuals stopping you dead. The whole poetic opening sequence, with a similar hospital bed setting and opiated feel to Johan Renck’s Lazarus video, was the hour’s strongest moment. It was also typical of its narrative instability....
9.5 Kid Farm Olivia Colman made a very welcome return to the show this week, returning as a seriously morose Sophie. Acting as an ill-tempered foil to the lovely April, Mark’s real love interest, Sophie instead was a spectre at the feast, a mean-spirited lush come to scupper Mark’s potential happiness. In fairness, ‘feast’ is overstating it somewhat: with Jez scrounging on meagre, cold Kiddie Cave leftovers in an effort to break the rights deadlock with Super Hans, it was left to Mark to slake his appetite....
6.1 Game On, Charles This show pitches itself as a mystery show, but it also masquerades as a teen drama. It’s neither and both of those things at its core, but I’d argue that the reason it’s been on the air so long and retains so much of its Twitter-friendly popularity is because it’s so willing to bend to those genres while telling its story. It’s also a horror show, a romance, a comedy and a psychological drama....
1.9 Breakthrough It’s interesting to watch New World as it debuts on this side of the pond as it still holds up to multiple views and, in fact, knowledge of the twist at the end of episode eight actually adds to the show. After seeing the episodes again, my thoughts on the series still stand when compared to the UK original but they’re nonetheless fun to watch a second time....
How do you up the ante on last week’s ambitious episode? Simple. You throw in a musical number. When the waxwork serial killers began to dance to a song that could have come straight out of Sweeney Todd, I literally had to shut my gaping mouth to stop it from dribbling. It marked another outstanding moment for the consistently brilliant Psychoville, having now firmly established itself as at least as good as the first couple of series of The League Of Gentlemen and certainly better than its third series and associated feature film....
This review contains spoilers. In recent years, it’s never stopped being remarkable that we’re still getting new episodes of Red Dwarf. The show’s second lease on life got off to a bit of a shaky start with 2009’s Back To Earth, but the back-to-basics approach of subsequent series has got the boys from the Dwarf (waggle your hands appropriately) back on track. Red Dwarf XII comprises the second batch of six episodes, out of the twelve that were filmed in early 2016, and as such, you might expect that there isn’t much difference in tone between XI and XII....
That was until he was thrown full force into the DCTV universe. Ryan has now guested on Legends of Tomorrow season 3 and voiced the character in the animated movie Justice League Dark and animated series Constantine: City of Demons. “There was this moment where I was like, ‘this is wrong. This doesn’t feel like John.’” he told us at Wonder Con. After finishing a play in London, where he was using a thick Yorkshire accent (Constantine himself has more of Northern accent), he found he couldn’t quite get the voice of the character right....
The lights come up on Buffy and Angel kissing. It’s really odd seeing them together like this again; we’ve moved so far away from that dynamic that it’s just weird. While they’re still doing the cutesy basking-in-one-another’s-presence thing, Caleb reappears, battered and bloody but still somehow standing, and asks “Are you ready to finish this, bitch?” So, we’re about three minutes into the episode and there’ve been two uses of the word “bitch” already....
