Back in 1967 the John Boorman and Lee Marvin version of The Hunter, Point Blank, failed to make an impact at the box office, though later found critical success, while the Mel Gibson and Brian Helgeland adaptation of the same novel (called Payback) resulted in two completely different cuts after the star and director fell out over direction and tone. Sadly for 2013’s Parker, there appears to be a similar discrepancy in tone resulting in a fun but wholly uneven heist caper....
You know how Doctor Who always has a cheap episode per season? My guess is this was it for Primeval. That’s not to say it was a bad episode, but setting everything in and around a school gave me the feeling that the outside broadcast and location shooting money wasn’t here for this week’s adventure. While in detention, three school kids and a teacher are doing a Breakfast Club, sitting out a punishment for something at school....
At the hospital Joy is walking along, seemingly happy, with one of her colleagues. All is well until the colleague makes the comment that Freddie should be in the bin and Joy punches her in the face. Later, Joy enters the hospital blood bank and empties some blood in Freddie’s ‘bocci’ and replaces it with juice. As Joy leaves she’s being watched by the colleague she punched. Joy returns home after work and George discovers the crossword and is clearly concerned....
In Psychoville Halloween, its writers have allowed their imaginations to run riot, the occasion providing the perfect reason to demonstrate their knowledge and enthusiasm for the horror genre. Taking the form of an Amicus-style portmanteau horror, the hour-long Halloween special introduces four separate, macabre stories all tied together with a single overarching narrative. The two then regale one another with a quartet of spooky stories, each featuring characters familiar from the first series – misanthropic clown Mr Jelly, Lomax, Joy and David and Maureen all make a welcome return....
Rake, right from the get go, feels like a show you’ve watched before, partly because it’s composed of things that TV audiences have been flocking to for ages; lawyer procedurals, appealing, but ultimately flawed protagonists, and a wide supporting cast of endearing straight men to bounce off of the leading wild card. Sometimes, a show feeling too comfortable and familiar can be a detriment, but here, it does no harm....
Here, the camera swoops and pans, adopting dramatic angles and moving through evocative cuts. And indeed, “Until You’re Blue” is about big, operatic passions, bringing the show’s understated melodramatic inclinations to the fore as each respective subplot reaches its requisite unraveling with great pomp and circumstance. Filmed with a shaky, handheld camera, it’s clear that the director wanted nothing more than to behold two actors laying themselves bare for the world to see....
10.6 The Beginning The flashback to Rimmer’s education is an unusual start to an unusual episode, and one that immediately lends it extra scope. Philip Labey and Simon Treves are very convincing in their roles as young Rimmer and Rimmer’s father respectively, and it’s a fun teaser which leaves you wondering exactly how it’s going to tie into the rest of the episode. Back aboard Red Dwarf, we open not with Lister but – in a change to the now-established format – with Rimmer, and an unwelcome visitor… Richard O’Callaghan plays Hogey, the Simulant who immediately endears himself with his manic obsession with duels across time and space....
Thus, Lawrence’s character Dominika joins Charlotte Rampling’s spy school (or ‘whore school’ as they choose to refer to it in the film) so she can help Mother Russia and her actual mother who is suffering from an unnamed illness. During the spy training montage (one of the least fun training montages I have ever seen, absolutely no Survivor on the soundtrack) ‘sparrows’ learn to use their target’s desires to manipulate them to get what they want, all for the good of their country....
It’s the third episode, and we’re no longer involved only in Matilda’s story; Requiem has spread its roots through the whole of the community of the small Welsh town where Carys Morgan disappeared decades ago. There’s plenty to enjoy, and loads of questions to be answered – but is it spreading itself too thin? Still, there was the sense that it was all building to some meaty revelations, and the second half delivered by bringing us back to Matilda (a divisive, driven performance by Lydia Wilson) as an amateur detective who doesn’t know when to stop....
I don’t want to bore everyone by giving a boring by-the-numbers critical review the likes of which you can find anywhere pompous movie fans gather and pretend to be smarter than they are, so I’ll give you one of the reviews I’m known for, in which I make fun of everything I don’t like about the movie. For the record, it’s a solid rental, but not as good as it should have been had they done things right rather than be sloppy with the film....
Review is one of the most surprising, glorious shows that I’ve ever seen on television. I was anticipating these final episodes almost as much as I’ve been looking forward to the new season of Twin Peaks (which is saying something, guys). Continuing to defy expectations, this final season is not at all what I expected, yet it still manages to simultaneously be a very different Review as well as the same old one....
By episode nine of the series, the end of the conflict is truly in sight and the men of Easy are finally entering Germany itself. The real Easy veterans at the beginning of the episode make the point that as the war drew on, they came to realise that many of the German soldiers were just young men like them, trying to do a job. This theme is then continued in the episode itself as we see German civilians going to great pains to explain that they were not Nazis....
1.4 Code Of Honour It’s profoundly disappointing that a show spinning out of the original Star Trek, which had racial diversity woven into its very DNA, could turn up an episode like this. The problems are almost too numerous to list. The Ligonians are a race of black people speaking in thick East African accents, and who appear to be ruled by their own sexual appetites. Every Male Ligonian sports a facial scar, they all dress in tribal garments, and their culture is primitive yet “noble” – they have a rigid code of honour, after all!...
1.10 Hide and Q Rather strangely, the episode’s high concept – the bit you remember where Q gives Riker his limitless powers – doesn’t happen until almost twenty minutes in, after an extended sequence involving crazy man-beasts in Napoleonic uniforms. The start of the episode is all about Q playing some kind of game with the Bridge officers (sans Picard) which seems to serve no purpose and goes nowhere. It’s as if the writers got halfway through the episode and thought “actually, I’ve had a much better idea…” Even when Riker receives his powers, he spends a lot of time chatting to Q, before returning to the Enterprise and promising not to use them – at all....
2.15 Q Who In Ten Forward, Whoopi Goldberg has a strange feeling, so she calls the bridge. Even though Riker doesn’t know Picard is off the ship, he’s apparently been promoted to Captain Obvious as he reminds her she doesn’t normally call the bridge. She simply asks if anything unusual is happening, and rather than saying “Probably, something unusual always happens to us at this time of the week” the crew just shrug and let her dismiss her own fears offhand....
This review contains spoilers. 4.26 Redepemption Pt. 1 As the episode begins, Picard is taking his whole ship to Qo’noS so that he can perform a minor role as arbiter in the appointment of the Klingon Chancellor’s ascension. He uses this opportunity to meddle in Worf’s personal life, encouraging him to clear his family’s honour while they’re in the neighbourhood. You know, like he’s suggesting he visit his great aunt (he might also be doing that, to be fair....
3.3 The Survivors While the psychic earworm drives Troi insane, the Enterprise crew gently interrogates the two survivors about how they came to not be vaporised alongside everyone else. Suddenly, the Enterprise is attacked by a large warship which runs away the second they fire a return shot. Picard gives chase of the space cowards, but is unable to find them. When Data points out that there’s no record of this warship ever having existed before, Picard returns to the survivors in their home, hoping for more answers....
3.15 Yesterday’s Enterprise Worf and Guinan are having an increasingly weird chat in Ten Forward (“Earth females are too… fragile.”) when suddenly a time hole appears next to the ship! Worf is called up to the bridge in case they need to shoot it, and Guinan is left looking concerned. As the Enterprise crew scan the time hole, a starship suddenly flies out of it. At the same instant, everything changes: the Enterprise is now a warship fighting the Klingons, Worf is gone, and Tasha Yar is back on the bridge!...
Two of the Four Heavenly Kings have failed to obtain the Silver Crystal, so this time Zoisite tries his hand and actually does a pretty good job. Working some fantastic drag – for… some reason? – – he plants a story in the news that gets the general public to do the searching for him and then drains their energy once the search proves fruitless. Meanwhile, Luna’s growing suspicion of Tuxedo Mask runs counter to Usagi’s growing trust in him....
Sailor V introduces herself to the Sailor Guardians, not only as the costumed crime fighter they know, but also as the Princess of the Silver Millennium, Serenity, as well as her earthly identity, Minako Aino. Welcomed by her new teammates, Minako’s friendly smile and enthusiastic attitude hide her unwillingness to think outside her lone agent mentality, having worked solo for so long. Despite the counsel of her cat mentor Artemis, the yang to Luna’s yin, Minako decides to take Kunzite on alone and realizes with the eleventh hour arrival of the other Sailor Guardians that being part of a team might just work for her after all....
