The episode opens with Norma and Norman still reeling a little from the murder Norma committed, and then they both covered up. Added to that, who lands on their doorstep but Norma’s prodigal son (and Norman’s older brother), Dylan. Ewwwwww. That visual will unfortunately stay with me for quite some time. As the police gather and investigate, Norma makes small chat with weird undertones with Sheriff Guyliner. He is still suspicious of her....
1.1 First you dream, then you die Still with me? Good. Bates Motel introduces us to a seventeen year-old Norman Bates as he and his mother start a new life in California after the death of Mr. Bates Senior. It may be a reboot, but young Norman’s destiny is inescapable. It needs to be an interesting journey. Freddie Highmore is great in the lead. It’s fortunate that he bears a passing resemblance to Anthony Perkins, but the real work is all his own....
Let’s commence with the Cylons (old-timey numbered variety) – after all, they started it. At the end of last week’s episode, the centurions were armed with the power of reason, and Brother Cavil et al were on their way to the warm liquid goo phase. We now catch up with everyone’s favourite wrinkly priest on a resurrection ship, catapulting himself out of the bath and into the arms of model-turncoat Boomer....
2.2 Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? Being Human enjoys being over-dramatic, so it’s really no surprise that the latest episode begins with positing that for our characters, their nightmares are their reality. What is surprising is that this actually pans out into a pretty good episode. Sally ended last week’s episode by having her first nightmare since she died, and her afterlife becomes more nightmarish itself as a result....
4.11 Ramona The Pest Fresh off of last week’s World’s Most Awkward Kiss, Aidan is full of conflicted feelings about Sally. It all boils down to everyone’s favourite part of the friends-to-lovers trope, namely that he’s afraid he’ll risk their friendship by trying to be anything more. There’s also the whole incorporeal issue to work through, and sure, not being able to touch might be a problem if the delightful Pushing Daisies hadn’t already worked that through several years ago....
1.2 Mijo Is this a problem? For me, the fact that the second episode of Better Call Saul is just so damn good makes up for the fact that, stylistically, it owes a hell of a lot to its parent series, from the visual choices – the extreme close-up on the vegetables at the beginning, the striking and peculiar camera angles dotted throughout – to the mounting tension of the desert scenes....
Better Call Saul Season 4 Episode 7 I expected fireworks. When interviewed ahead of the premiere of Better Call Saul Season 4, Bob Odenkirk, Peter Gould, and Rhea Seehorn all teased the creeping influence of Breaking Bad ‘s world and the introduction of a massive, previously unseen heavy that promised to shake-up Jimmy McGill’s life as we’ve come to know it. Perhaps they were playing misdirection. There’s been plenty of smoke, the Salamanca cousins’ raid was as violent as we’ve gotten on this show, but no grand display, and still no Lalo after seven episodes....
The opening image of BlacKkKlansman is unmistakable. It is a classic moment from one of the all-time Hollywood classics: Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara wades through the dead and dying of the Confederate Army, slowly realizing the sheer hopelessness of the Southern “Cause,” a cause which Gone with the Wind (1939) demurred from explicitly stating (unlike what D.W. Griffith’s love letter to the Ku Klux Klan, The Birth of a Nation, had done 24 years earlier)....
In Bleed For This, directed by Ben Younger (Boiler Room, Prime), Miles Teller provides a sinewy performance as real-life boxer Vinny ‘Paz’ Pazienza, but the most startling turn in the movie comes from Aaron Eckhart, who plays his hard-drinking trainer, Kevin. When Eckhart climbs out of his Porsche to meet Vinnie for the first time in the opening act, it’s not so much the prominent belly and half-moon hairline that render Eckhart unrecognisable as his body language and thick east-coast accent....
We’re not safe. That’s what Jed Mercurio thrillers have been telling us for years. The institutions there to protect us—hospitals, the police—are only as dependable as the people in them. And people, according to Mercurio’s dramas, are fragile. Greedy and arrogant, or damaged and under pressure, our protectors don’t always act in our best interest. Jed Mercurio’s Bodies and Line Of Duty gave us incompetent surgeons and bent coppers; Bodyguard gives us a personal protection officer who wants to put a bullet in the head of the person he’s been charged with personally protecting....
Speaking of bad omens, one of the first and most puzzling problems you’ll notice when watching this new Bonnie & Clyde is the fantasy-esque precognitive abilities Clyde Barrow is suddenly endowed with. Stemming from no Google-able historical evidence whatsoever, Clyde is now seen having weird premonitions of his future fate, even as a boy decades prior. Now, seeing the psyche of Bonnie questioned and explored in more detail is something fans of the original film and fervent historians alike would both probably sign-up for, but neither will be happy with the results here....
The riches of its cast aside, where Broadchurch leans away from the majority of mainstream detective drama is its interest in life after death. I don’t mean in the literal, chatting-with-the-deceased supernatural crime show sense (despite Will Mellor’s appearance this week as a psychic telephone engineer), but in the script’s desire to realistically inhabit the skin of a community after a loss. Not in Broadchurch. Two hours in, and there’s been nary a blue light, night shoot, or an exchange that hasn’t illuminated the inarticulate grief or insensitive self-interest that come from people affected to differing degrees by a local death....
This review contains spoilers. Unsurprisingly, McGovern and Father Michael share the same idea. In Broken, McGovern is telling sad stories as a form of protest. Each encounter Sean Bean’s character has with his parishioners is a parable on modern villainy. Employers who don’t pay fair wages, a social security system that makes people anything but secure, underfunded mental health care, vampiric gambling companies… the series is a compendium of warnings about what can happen when profits are privileged over people’s lives....
Ahead of Apocalypse’s UK debut, we sat down for a brief chat with Mr Singer, where we talked about the film’s design and visual effects, and how Michael Fassbender’s abilities as an actor brought real drama to one of its most memorable scenes. Days Of Future Past was set in the 70s, and I remember you saying at the time that you were inspired by conspiracy thrillers of that era....
Igraine Morgan has infiltrated Camelot, having assumed Igraine’s form and is all set to drive a wedge between Arthur and his champion, Leontes. This half of the episode delivers exactly what you’re expecting. Morgan informs Guinevere that she knows about her and Arthur’s tryst before ‘letting slip’ the whole affair to Leontes. Cue outrage, glares and pondering about what to do next. So far, so predictable, but what I wasn’t expecting was to enjoy the rest of the episode, which contained the worst possible thing you could find in a series aimed at adults: a child....
When fire investigator Blake McCann is found overcooked in a fire caused by arson, Beckett and company catch the case. Soon they realize that the case is far bigger than they thought and that McCann was close to something. He was close to catching “The Phantom.” Castle is enamored with the whole mystery of the fires and Nathan Fillion is at his best when his alter ego is engaged and interested in a particular crime....
Ty Bennett, Casey’s Sensei in 1994, turns up in a mission and awakens memories of previous failure, plus some anger that he’s now turned ‘rogue’. Ty Bennett is played ably by Carl Lumbly, previously Alias spy Marcus Dixon for five years. Bruce Boxleitner is ‘Woody’ Woodcomb, and Morgan Fairchild is his perfect wife, ‘Honey’. They’re just wonderful, and take virtually no time to start railroading the wedding like it’s a military operation....
4.19 Chuck Versus The Muuurder Season 4 hasn’t been kind to those who wear green, but in Chuck Versus The Muuurder (that word spoken in a Bronx accent, presumably, by the late Lionel Stander), the Buymoreans are turned loose, and I loved every minute of their insurrection. What I was less than inspired by was the murder mystery that was acted out in Castle, because they used the oversubscribed plot where the first person to survive being killed is actually the killer....
It’s June 1944, and Winston Churchill (Brian Cox) cuts a less impressive figure than he did when he was inspiring the people of Britain as they came under attack from Nazi forces years earlier. In fact, he finds himself listing in the margins of an Allied high command led by Dwight D. Eisenhower (John Slattery) as they plan Operation Overlord and the Dunkirk landings. If you’re looking for this year’s Deep Impact/Armageddon showdown, it might just be films about Winston Churchill....
