It hurts seeing how Butler has been reconfigured as a hunk of romcom eye-candy. Some women swooned when they saw his toned abs in 300 and the higher powers consequently decided that he should be cast in mediocre material as a piece of meat. P.S. I Love You? This is madness! I want to see Gerry screaming, sticking a spear in things and going berserk against the amassed nasties of the Persian Empire....
Indeed, the Big Black beyond the stratosphere is anxiety-inducing as an infinite unknown with terrifying potential. As the Alien poster put it, “In space, no one can hear you scream” so the void is the perfect backdrop on which to build a sci-fi chiller. It makes me wonder why there haven’t been more horror films set there. Imagine, for example, how great it would have been if Stanley Kubrick had channelled 2001: A Space Odyssey into The Shining and sent Jack Torrance crazy in space....
This review contains spoilers. Episode six may have started out peacefully with our hero and his lady enjoying an early morning skinny dip on their Winchester mini-break, but it ended in terror and violence. Aethelflaed learned the hard way that not all men were like her father and wound up facing capture by bloodthirsty Danes, doubtless to be used as a bargaining chip in the battle for England. It’s hard to know where she’ll be worse off—as the prisoner of Northmen or in her marriage to a brute....
Su Beifong’s attempt to take Kuvira down backfires horribly when she and her sons stumble into a trap. Kuvira then meets with Korra, declaring that the truce is dissolved and that she plans to take Zaofu. A one-on-one duel is agreed to, the winner deciding the fate of Zaofu, but despite having rid herself of the metallic poison, Korra is still not at the top of her game. She’s still a bit rusty....
Wow. “Original Airbenders” was definitely the breather episode, because we come right back into the main story without missing a beat. This episode’s structure broke formula by having the major action setpiece contained almost entirely to the first act, acting as the springboard for the rest of the plot. I mean, I’m not going to pretend I didn’t smell it before the reveal. It wasn’t a total surprise, but they at least got pretty deep into the interrogation scene before I caught on, so bravo....
The story’s framed through the eyes of a seemingly homogenous, not very special and generally ordinary man by the name of Emmet. Voiced by Chris Pratt, Emmet is a construction worker who plans life literally by the rule book. As the film constantly reminds us, there’s nothing special about Emmet, and there’s no reason at all that he should be a threat to the sinister President Business. We’d best address the song actually: Everything Is Awesome will live in your head, ears and lives for long after the film is finished....
In an altogether more unexpected way, I have to speak highly of Matthew McConaughey. After being busted for driving under the influence in the months before the film opened, Mick is now chauffeured around LA in his mobile office, a Lincoln Town Car, representing anyone who’ll pay well. With the privilege of attorney-client confidentiality, Mick has no bones about representing guilty clients, just as long as he wins the case....
No, what The Meg does surprisingly well is walk the thin line between both. It’s actually a good, old-fashioned monster movie, with laughs and jolts and a few moments of genuine suspense right where it needs them. It’s earnest enough to a degree, but it’s also self-aware: the people in the movie live in a world where movies about monster sharks also exist. Best of all, it’s got Jason Statham to do a lot of the heavy-lifting, keeping the whole thing afloat whenever the titular monster is off-screen....
The Office, on its worst day, is still better than most shows out there. The Office, on its best day, is probably one of the funniest shows of all time. This week’s episode, from start to finish, was hilarious. We start in the middle of a meeting with Michael, who wants to spice up the quarterly reports with racecars and storm clouds and various cute little graphics. Meanwhile, no one is paying attention to him, because they’re watching the DVD screensaver on the TV behind him, waiting for it to perfectly hit the corner and bounce straight out....
1.17 Moon Over Bourbon Street There’s just too much bad blood between everyone, pointed out quite succinctly by Hayley and Elijah’s party, and if the werewolves are seeking revenge on the vampires then the witches and humans also have to eradicate their rivals. That sort of inevitability makes great TV, of course, and Moon Over Bourbon Street was a very effective reboot for a show that, barely out of its infancy, has lost a strong character and a driving force....
Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) is a process server. If you haven’t seen the Matthew Perry vehicle Serving Sara (hey, it has Bruce Campbell in it, how can I not watch it?) and are unfamiliar with what a process server does, basically they track people down and give them subpoenas to appear in court. Nobody likes process servers, which is one of the many reasons slacker Dale smokes pot all day....
Ths penultimate episode marks an upsurge in quality for the miniseries. This is mainly because Ian McKellen is given more to do as Two, and we’re given a clearer view of the Other World that Six comes from. Some of the show’s oddities are addressed and there are some rare moments of action and tension and action. While Six deals with his doppelganger, Two takes a holiday from his responsibilities....
The easy synopsis might go thus: Leonardo DiCaprio’s expert tracker and marksman, Hugh Glass, is mauled by a bear and left for dead by his comrades, not least the treacherous, flea-bitten John Fitzgerald (an almost unrecognisable Tom Hardy). Hauling himself across the icy north-western wilderness, Glass miraculously survives his injuries and resolves to find the man who left him behind. Iñárritu, who shot Birdman in what looked like a single flowing take, pulls off a different yet similarly mesmerising technical feat here....
For The Ridiculous 6 – the first of four Netflix productions he’s signed on to make with the streaming provider – Adam Sandler has gone where (the relatively popular in comparison) Seth MacFarlane crashed and burned just last year with A Million Ways To Die In The West. Along the way he meets five other sons sired by Nolte’s outlaw over the years. There’s Rob Schneider (of course) playing a Mexican man travelling with a donkey prone to diarrhoea, Jorge Garcia from Lost as a mute booze-maker, Taylor Lautner doing his best Simple Jack impression, Terry Crews as a piano player and Luke Wilson as a drunk haunted by past mistakes....
It’s a bittersweet thing to be reviewing series five of The Sarah Jane Adventures. On one hand, it’s great to see the return of arguably the best – certainly the most consistent – of the Doctor Who spin-offs. But it is, of course, the final series, following the tragic passing of Elisabeth Sladen earlier this year. Fortunately, if this opening episode is anything to go by, it’s a show going out at the top of its game....
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel will no doubt be greeted with cynicism by many, given its identity as a sequel more or less brought about by the first film’s financial returns, but thankfully the film itself doesn’t hold the same negative feeling. Like its predecessor, this is a film that’s quite happy being exactly what it is, seemingly untouched by the anticipation for its release from those who so enjoyed the first....
I sense a pattern on The Simpsons season 26 and I’m not liking it. This is the year of the retreaded setups. Last week, Marge took charge of Homer’s fantasy football team, much like Lisa handicapped football for Homer a few seasons ago. Two weeks ago, in the season opener, Krusty’s father died, much like last season opened with the death of the most beloved person in Springfield. And now, Marge is opening a franchise....
The Strain Season 3 Episode 4 So last week, everyone’s favorite heroic vampire Quinlan finally destroyed the Master, but this week, our heroes must deal with a city filled with legions of strigoi who suddenly find themselves rudderless. Without the Master, all the strigoi are basically wormy free agents suddenly on their own to hunt and feed as they see fit. The vampire threat has now metastasized all over NYC. This adds an element of chaos to a series that was already pretty freakin’ balls to the wall and it also increases the importance of both Kelly Goodweather and Eichhorst, the only strigoi that still seem to have an importance beyond feeding....
1.3 Girl, Interrupted While working alongside my father, scraping off wallpaper, we started talking about television. His DVR has broken, so when he gets a replacement from his cable company, he’ll lose all his shows (a true tragedy in this day and age). He asked me about a few different shows, one of which was The Tomorrow People. We talked about the show for a few minutes, about how it has a lot of great potential and should be better than it is, but he perfectly summed up my thoughts on the show by describing it as plain, and then proceeded to blow a hole in the show’s central premise....
This review contains spoilers. Because the US love to take breaks in their television, we’ve been waiting a long while to see more of The Vampire Diaries. As we return to Mystic Falls, the episode’s title, 1912, suggests a flashback episode, and we’re quickly introduced to even more mythology, questions and founding council members than we had already. Now, where’s that family tree? It seems we’re going to need it....
