Where is your character now as opposed to where she ended up in the first film? And it was just a delight to have another colour to play for this next film, I suppose. I still think she’s a hoot, I love her and I love her sense of humour, and she’s having a go, but it was just another side to her that you should hopefully see, which is of course lovely to play....
Last week, I made murmurings about the viewing figures on Chuck and how, if they didn’t spark into life, then season 4 would be shorter than the rest, and the last. It wasn’t that Chuck Versus The Coup D’Etat didn’t have its moments, but coming on the back of the previous revisiting of old characters, this one followed exactly the same formula. The episode this one sequelled was Chuck Versus The Angel De La Muerte, episode 3 from last season, where Armand Assante strutted around as likeable dictator Allejandro Fulgencio Goya....
Colony Season 2 Episode 10 In the past few weeks, Colony has gradually shifted into full-blown genre TV territory. The Bowmans are no longer tied to their Spanish Colonial Revival style residence in the Los Angeles suburbs. They don’t have quiet breakdowns because the secrets they hide from each other are so immense that they threaten to rip their relationship apart anymore. Also, guess what? They don’t have to live by the Host’s rules based on psuedo-morals they never believed in just to keep their comfortable home....
Because of these factors, Crazy Rich Asians doesn’t need to be as good as it is. Frankly, this film simply existing, both as a rom-com and a domestic film featuring an exclusively Asian cast, would probably be enough to bring audiences to the cinemas in droves. However, Crazy Rich Asians goes for top marks, with its creators aware of how much cultural weight lies on the execution of this film....
Like I said, Lorenzo wakes up and is talked out of his confused frenzy by Da Vinci. He soon learns of his brother Giulino’s dark fate from last season. Lorenzo’s reaction is gut wrenching as Elliot Cowan gives an energetic performance that ranges from pure rage to profound loss. It must be said that Lorenzo looks pretty spry for a guy who just received the first sheep intestine blood transfusion....
3.5 Anima Venator Da Vinci’s Demons has been kind of problematic for me throughout its third season thus far. It seems like everything is different, all the ideas of the first two seasons are just scrambled up to make everything a muddled, grey mess. Are the Sons of Mithras the bad guys? Are the Labyrinth bad guys? Sure, when you look at the surface, it’s the bad guys like Carlo Medici and Riario involved in the Labyrinth and the Sons of Mithras have Leo’s old ally Al-Rahim AKA The Turk (Alexander Siddig) and the true pope, Francesco (James Faulkner)....
Damnation Episode 2 Humans and animals are presented with options in life. Both species have to choose sides or travel along one path or another, and in doing so suffer the consequences of their choices. Parents consciously and subconsciously favor one child over the other, which creates an emotional and spiritual divide among the siblings. The chosen one can do no wrong in the eyes of the adoring parent, and the overlooked offspring might become insecure, jealous, or competitive....
We enter the story with a Churchill who is 66-years-old and mostly bedridden. He meets his new secretary Miss Layton (Lily James), who has been hired to type up whatever thoughts he needs to dictate. At the same time, Neville Chamberlin is retiring as prime minister, and King George VI decides to appoint Churchill in his place, a very unpopular decision among Churchill’s own party and Parliament as a whole....
Despite this, Ryan Reynolds is back as the wise-cracking, gun-toting, hyperviolent mercenary with a penchant for one-liners, having pledged to do the character justice the second time around. It’s fair to say that he manages it. Probably the best praise you can give this movie is that it completely translates the appeal of Deadpool to the screen, and if you’ve got even a passing fondness for the character’s brand of comedy then you’ll have a grin plastered over your face for the whole running time....
Captain America: Civil War Heroes fighting heroes was a recurring theme at the multiplex this year, but it’s not Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice or X-Men: Apocalypse that we Den Of Geek writers voted for. Instead – in alignment with both the box office leader board and the critical consensus – it’s Captain America: Civil War that won our hearts. The bust up between Chris Evans’ Cap and Robert Downey Jnr’s Tony Stark was everything we’d hoped for; the epic payoff, four years after the star-spangled man and ol’ shell head first rubbed each other up the wrong way in The Avengers....
It poses the pivotal question about Dexter: is he a good person doing bad things, or a bad person doing good things? Frankly I don’t care, as long as it takes me along for the ride. Episode three moves Dexter’s world on a pace from the first two, which in many respects tied up events played out for the most-part in season one. He has two big problems on his hands: the discovery of his handwork on the ocean floor – now accentuated by the ultra efficient Federal agent determined to solve that case – and the white lie he told about being an addict at the end of episode 2....
6.11 Talk to the Hand First, though, a complaint. They are showing way, way too much in the trailers for the next episode – any mystery about to what might happen to Angel was blown just seconds after he was knocked out, because we saw him free in the trailer. They also gave too much away this week, but I’m hoping they’ve left a few surprises for us in the finale....
In case you missed the trailer and might otherwise wander into a cinema with any other expectations, the title character is Dick Kelly (Robert De Niro), a septugenarian whose wife has recently passed after a long battle with cancer. He’s not on good terms with his son (Dermot Mulroney), but his buttoned-down grandson Jason (Zac Efron) has fond childhood memories of him. This script, written by John M Philips, was included in the 2011 Black List, the annual industry collection of the best unproduced screenplays....
Lots going on here, in an episode of Doctor Who that does, as expected, ramp up the threat of the meddling Monks we’ve seen over the past two weeks. At the end of The Pyramid At The End Of The World last time, we saw Bill giving consent to the Monks to invade the Earth. It would be correct to assume we quickly see the consequences of that as The Lie Of The Land takes up the story, and we see what happens when that permission is given to take over....
Pain… Pain… Pain… That’s one of the main emotions I experienced while watching this week’s (rather excellent) Doctor Who, as I knew this weekly round-up of references, similarities and generally interesting ‘stuff’ was going to be a whopper. That doesn’t mean I haven’t missed anything, though, so if you spot something I’ve not mentioned, do the honourable thing and leave it in the comments section below… So, Genesis Of The Cybermen, then....
Take that ending. With the sonic screwdriver – for once a key component of a story, rather than a quick plot device to get from A to B – resting on the diary, the Doctor’s discovery that he’d modified it to hold the kind of data ghosts that had been creeping us out for two weeks was an ingenious way to save a character. It certainly put the survival of Jenny a few weeks earlier into the shade, and turned a good ending into a very good one (although you could hardly have argued had the credits rolled with the camera fixed on the diary)....
A manic, self-aggrandising egomaniac, Hemingway talks in spittle-flecked monologues and lashes out in frenzies of bruising violence. He’s a fearsome creation, courtesy of a beefed-up Law, but the film that carries him fails to burrow very far beneath the surface of his character. The movie opens with a confident jolt and a screen filled with crimson, setting the pace and tone of Richard Shepard’s confident, swaggering direction. Yet while the slick patter flows from the very beginning, as an ecstatic Dom delivers a direct-to-camera ode to the rigidity of his penis, the story around him only occasionally shows the same spark....
Based on the Japanese light novel All You Need Is Kill – the film’s original title before it went for the less interesting Edge Of Tomorrow – this is a lithe, exciting sci-fi action film with all the affection for mecha and heavy weaponry you’d expect from such directors as Neill Blomkamp and James Cameron. It also features some great performances and a welcome tendency to subvert genre expectations as well as adhere to them....
Unless you’ve had your head under a rock, you’ll have some kind of idea that the media industries are going through some pretty rough times at the moment, with newspapers and various other outlets haemorrhaging jobs, and this is something that Peary’s film touches in its opening titles and its last minutes: film critics are losing their jobs and the times they are a-changing for what the job entails. As the final part of the film touches on the impact the Internet and writers like Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News, there’s visibly a line drawn between those who have decided to adapt film criticism to match the changing media landscape and those who believe that the Internet is, well, ruining it for everyone....
The evil machinations of Donald Sutherland in Lock Up tried to keep him behind locked doors, a rasping set up by Jack Palance in Tango And Cash ensured he spent some quality jail time in the shower with Kurt Russell, an overzealous legal system and Wesley Snipes’ hair resulted in some high tech freeze-incarceration during Demolition Man, and even a young David Caruso tried his luck at getting Sly behind bars in First Blood, which didn’t really end well for anyone....
