The billion-breaking success of Skyfall was such that it’s little surprise that its leading players, from director Sam Mendes to Daniel Craig, were given pause. That 50th anniversary adventure – Bond’s 23rd – left them with a tough act to follow, after all. Fitting, then, that Spectre’s opening sequence takes place in front of a huge crowd; all eyes are on Mendes and his team of filmmakers to see what they can come up with this time....
You may remember that, come the 20th anniversary of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, director Steven Spielberg followed the path of George and made some digital alterations to the film. This included adding in new visual effects, and the digital removal of guns, to be replaced with walkie talkies. These certainly weren’t dramatic changes, but they were daft and pointless ones, toning down a film that was hardly causing people to go off and use guns in the first place....
3.13 Monster That time has come and, oh boy, disappointment is not on the agenda. In fact, we’re blessed with a plethora of Maul-a-likes, or Nightbrothers as they’re also known, in the latest installment of The Clone Wars. Following on from last week’s cracking episode, Asajj Ventress, hellbent on exacting revenge on Count Dooku for dumping her quicker than garbage from a Star Destroyer (well, trying to kill her, at any rate), is on the trail for a Nightbrother, the males who live on the far side of her her planet, Dathomir....
Star Wars: The Last Jedi picks up where The Force Awakens left off: Rey, Finn, Poe, and Leia must deal with the repercussions of Han Solo’s death, the discovery of Luke Skywalker, and the continued rise of the First Order. However, while The Last Jedi may be taking all of its plot-related cues from The Force Awakens, its thematic interests are much more in line with the subtly subversive Rogue One....
Star Wars Rebels Season 2 Episode 10 Throughout the clone antics and high-stakes flying of the first half of season two, Agent Kallus has been hounding the Rebels. His generally ineffective strategies threatened to make the Imperial military look buffoonish, leaving the Force-using Inquisitors to shoulder the load when it came to presenting actual danger. “A Princess on Lothal” uses a young, politics-savvy Leia Organa to give a new look at how the Rebellion and the Empire interact, reinvigorating the “war” part of Star Wars Rebels without necessarily upping the stakes....
As episode four kicks in, we see two sides of how things are on the good ship Destiny. On one hand, you have Dr Rush, who is struggling with what appears to be his sanity and anger. On the other, you have the rest of the crew, who seem to be trying to get along and find out ways to muck in. Robert Carlyle continues to be on top form and he had a lot of scenes in which to prove his worth, even if it’s unnecessary to....
Supergirl: Season 1, Episode 11 I’m rooting for Supergirl to be a good show. I like what it represents (that you can do an effects-laden superhero show and not have it be typical CBS schlock), and I think on balance, it’s done a really good job. But I thought last week’s episode was almost offensively bad, like a fart in church if the fart sounded like a bunch of Richard Dawkins tweets....
According to Variety, Danneel Ackles will join the Supernatural fray, starting with Season 13, Episode 13, titled “Devil’s Bargain,” which will air sometime in the season’s second half in early 2018. Ackles is set to play Sister Jo, a faith healer –apparently legitimate – whose ability for miraculous mending attracts the attention of Lucifer (Mark Pellegrino), whose motivations for finding her is a mystery, though seem understandably ominous. For Danneel Ackles (née Harris), whose marriage to Jensen started in 2010, yielding three children, the role of Sister Jo will be her first acting gig since the 2014 TV movie Baby Boot Camp....
For those who saw the last series (which ended in a dramatic cliffhanger, which we’ve reviewed here, along with the prior episodes), this season opener kicks off mere minutes after the critical standoff between Greg, Tom and the sinister Dexter and abduction of Abby by the security forces who are working for the secret cabal of scientists. With Greg bleeding to death we get a little Lost-style flashback to the past life of this closed character....
3.2 Chaos Rising I have no doubt that this new twist on werewolves, like most of the others in the show, springs from the mind of writer, executive producer, and creator Jeff Davis. The show isn’t offering a traditional take on werewolves, and that’s a good thing. It’s got a harder edge than, say, Twilight‘s take on werewolves, but it’s not going as far out as to the torment felt by, say, The Wolf Man....
4.12 Smoke And Mirrors There’s a visual similarity between the two properties. Highlander is two Immortals in the neon-lit darkness, bathed in harsh spotlights and deep shadows, battling to the death. Teen Wolf is the same, except replace sword-wielding Scotsmen with suburban teenagers. The battle scenes are stylized to the point of being ballet; even when it’s Peter Hale versus his teenage Beta-turned-nemesis Scott McCall beating the crap out of one another in a dusty old church (“Holy ground, Highlander!...
There’s a lot of discussion in this episode on what is “good.” Noah says that he wants to raise “good” children. His dedication in his first (and only) book to his wife says that she makes the world “good.” And constantly Noah is trying to do what’s “good,” even though the narrative he’s spinning to do so is becoming ever frayed with lies and rationalities. Through a lot of this episode we see Noah just wanting to be alone, while people like Bruce become time burglars, stealing his time and interrupting his escape, having reality seep in....
The kick-off of the fourth series of Apprentice UK showed some similar warning signs. A parade of people who had clearly seen every episode of The Apprentice ever broadcast gave a series of eyeball-rolling vox pops where they talked about “winning”, “money” and “not losing”. We had the man who would sacrifice people for cash. A woman blurting on about how she was the best salesperson in Europe. And then there was the toff, who they bring along usually so they can fire them in the first episode....
Like you don’t know the answer. Sralan picked his team leaders again, and it was bad news for Michael. After last week’s ‘I’m not begging to stay but your shoes are looking a bit dirty and my tongue could do a fine job on them’ outburst, he pleaded to be made project manager again. Yet Sralan chose Raef to lead Renaissance, and Alex to lead Alpha. Not that the team names seem to matter anymore, given how often they’re switched around....
The episode started with Sralan dividing the teams up into two, with Helene and Alex on one team, and Claire and Lee on the other. This, if I’d got to the final, would strike me as a tad unfair: after all, all it would take would be for one half of the team not to work, and it’s farewell Sralan, hello the fag counter at Tesco. Nonetheless, Helene and Alex happily welcomed one another, unaware of the friction that was just around the corner....
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Episode 5 This episode gave a much-needed look into Jeff Trail, Finn Whitlock’s evocative character who we saw abruptly killed at the beginning of the previous episode. While this necessarily meant another look at David Madson, Jeff is the real focus here. If it weren’t a true story, so much about Jeff and this episode would seem completely unrealistic. Right off the bat, the inclusion of a member of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell-era military feels like a gift to the message Ryan Murphy wants to send with his story....
11.14 The Separation Triangulation Raj is still working at the planetarium for example, which might not have lasted more than a single episode in previous seasons. It’s finally giving the writers something to do with their most under-served character – as if the new setting has suddenly reignited their imaginations – and, even though the revolving door of unsuitable love interests is still open for business, for once Raj seems comfortable enough in his own skin that the inevitable breakups aren’t always his fault....
What a strange and uneven season finale both parts of “Berlin” turned out to be. When you think about it, though, these two episodes are almost like the entire first season of The Blacklist in microcosm. There are moments of greatness interspersed with all manner of questionable storytelling and character decisions. Legitimate mysteries are made tedious by extension and obfuscation. And through it all, we’re really just waiting for the next great Red Reddington quip....
I’m not saying that The Boy is the shining example of a brave new voice in cinema; ultimately this is a film in which decisions were made that work against its success, but The Boy goes to bizarre places where few films choose to stray. Amid the cheap thrills there’s a sense of style and a wonky ideology in play that’s worthy of something – perhaps even your hard-earned cash....
The Collection is a super-creatively titled sequel to The Collector, a successful horror flick from 2009 that was originally intended as a prequel by writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (Dunstan directed) for the Saw franchise (and those who know their Saw will be quick to remember these two wrote Saw IV, V, VI and VII). And while The Collection doesn’t feature a wise, murderous geezer, it does contain the passing, at times creative, carnivorous experience of a Saw movie....
