Posts

Gotham Season 4 Episode 7 For the first time, potentially in the four-year history of this show, Gothamhas made an effective argument for the GCPD. It only took playing the corrupt cop thing out to some of its darkest conclusions for it to get there. “A Day in the Narrows” sees Gotham plagued by Professor Pyg, who continues to go after corrupt cops — i.e. literally every police officer in the GCPD save for Jim Gordon (who admits openly in this very episode, that he used to be a corrupt cop — my, look how honest with itself Gothamis being)....

5.13 Silence Of The Slams It’s a shame the show is pulling its punches at this stage in the season when there’s so much going on, least of all a global Wesen uprising and the discovery of an ancient artefact that can heal the sick and dying. But no, let’s create an episode centred on the Portland wrestling scene! Hands up; I love wrestling so seeing the two worlds collide did provide a little excitement this week....

Doss was a real-life US soldier, a devout Christian who flatly refused to pick up a gun even in bootcamp, yet went on to serve as a medic during America’s war in the Pacific. In its opening hour, Hacksaw Ridge lays out the case for Doss’s pacifism, which Gibson suggests is a reaction to his father’s drunken bursts of violence. With picturesque actors shot in warm hues, Hacksaw Ridge worryingly resembles Michael Bay’s misguided Pearl Harbour in its opening hour, as Doss meets the love of his life, Dorothy (Teresa Palmer)....

Thing is, it’s quite a lot like something you probably have seen on your telly before, because it’s exactly like a computer game. The setup is pretty brief: Henry (a GoPro camera and a pair of hands) wakes up in a lab, gets new robotic arms and legs screwed on by his hot scientist wife Estelle (Haley Bennett, in a lab coat and high heels), and is told that although he’s got no memory of anything happening, he’s just been saved from certain death....

This would not be the first time Duke’s awkwardly had sexual chemistry with a relation — need I remind us all of us the awkward time Duke’s mom offered him sex in exchange for drugs? What a table web we weave when we are Duke’s relations, apparently. Blinded by his growing concern that Nathan and Dwight are no longer on his side, Duke and Mara are a team now. Albeit it, an ineffectual one....

Admittedly, it was good to see David Anders back as Adam Munroe, though largely as a reminder of happier times for the series, when they had a villain with clear motivation and purpose. Although, he did get the first genuinely funny line for a while: “Objection, your honour, he’s quoting the intro to Quantum Leap.” Regrettably, this confluence leads to two new plots emerging that are both a bit rubbish: Sylar deciding that he wants to lose his powers, which involves him turning up at, er, the Parkman household for what one imagines will be tedious scenes of Matt Parkman shouting at him....

Director Seth Gordon and lead actors Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day enjoyed a surprise critical and commercial hit back in the summer of 2011. Their hapless Strangers On A Train-style plot to murder each other’s loathsome employers won over cinemagoers, particularly with a comedic chemistry that made them something like the Three Stooges for the modern R-rated comedy audience. Instead, the Hansons force the business into imminent foreclosure with the aim of buying it for cents on the dollar at auction....

One of the most quietly impressive things about Humans is the use of physical performance to carry some of the story. An awful lot of this is done by the actors playing the synths, who manage to convey the similarity of the production line with the individuality of the womb and make each one the same while being recognisably different. Compare, for instance, the machine-like movements of Vera with the Bambi-on-the-ice awkwardness of Niska, and you’ll see how well it is being done....

Uwe Boll: They’ve been very positive. We’ve screened it in New York, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco and LA now, and I think 80% of the people really like it. Of course, if you go into a movie like Postal, you are already a little edgier, and I think, let’s say, the audience of Harry Potter will definitely not like it, it will be maybe too hard or too offensive for those guys....

2.4 Cold Comfort – Steve Pemberton on Cold Comfort A whole episode filmed CCTV-style with script-writing, acting and directing duties being wrangled by show creators Pemberton and Shearsmith simultaneously? This was never going to be boring. In this week’s tension-filled playlet Cold Comfort we were dropped into booth number 9 of call centre Comfort Support Line with new volunteer Andy (Pemberton) as he’s trained up to provide a sympathetic ear over the phone....

Like Seinfeld did before them, the cast of Sunny is at its best when they are able to play off of each other. The episode challenges the strength of the show by making the cast play a lavish game of chicken from afar. Dennis gets the restaurant warfare going by sending over a single glass of red win to Frank and Charlie’s table. Frank is angered by their offering and retaliates by sending Dennis and Mac a fancy bottle of white wine....

Hoover used a loophole in the immigration laws of the time to arrest and deport hundreds of foreign anarchists under federal law, which got him attention and got his agency more power. When scandal forced Attorney General Palmer and most of the senior staff out of the Bureau of Investigation, a 24-year-old J Edgar Hoover took over. Hoover, through eight presidents and 47 years of service, built the modern FBI brick by brick, turning an underfunded arm of Justice Department into a modern, sophisticated law enforcement office with a comprehensive fingerprint database, evidence laboratories, and legitimate crime-fighting power....

Luceno’s ninth Star Wars novel (he has also written several short stories and The Revenge of the Sith: The Visual Dictionary) features characters from both Star Wars canon and the defunct Legends universe. Part of the novel becomes one long chase scene, as Tarkin and Vader hunt down the proto-Rebels who stole the future Grand Moff’s high-tech starship. Make sure to check out my review of the book. I was fortunate to be able to ask Luceno some questions about canon, Darth Sidious, and why Alderaan had to die: What inspired the idea of Tarkin undergoing the primitive rite of passage at the Carrion Plateau?...

Say ‘Paranormal Romance’ and there’s still a residual image of a greased-up buff guy standing next to a wolf on a book cover. Say ‘Romantic Comedy’ and there’s still an image of two self-obsessed own-fart-sniffers trampling over other people’s lives to get married. Whedon has concocted a paranormal romantic comedy, though the emphasis is on the romance. Joss Whedon gets away with this artifice better than most, because he’s written a love story between two people who live on opposite sides of America....

The cat then runs all the way to Rell (Jordan Peele), a heartbroken layabout who’s recently been dumped by his girlfriend. Keanu the kitten brightens up Rell’s life considerably, much to the relief of his strait-laced cousin Clarence (Keegan-Michael Key). Their happiness is short-lived when Rell’s home is targeted by burglars looking for his drug-dealing neighbour (Will Forte) and they’ve catnapped the only one who was at home. While Clarence’s family is away for the weekend, the pair go looking for the beloved cat, only to discover that Keanu has some unexpectedly complex connections within Los Angeles’ criminal underworld and it seems like every bad guy in the city wants to get hold of him too....

Killjoys Season 4 Episode 9 “Take the RAC. Free the kids. Kick some green ass.” It seems simple enough, but the best laid plans often go awry, and now Turin and Team Awesome Force must regroup and find another approach in the fight against the Hullen. Unfortunately, the victory comes with an unexpected loss, and Killjoys says goodbye to a character who struggled to earn respect right up to the very end....

Of course – whether the inclusion of all these elements makes for something dramatically satisfying is another matter. Viewers can no doubt rejoice that the episodes have dropped their rigid flashback structure, but there’s a slight concern that no structure has replaced it. What we get are several concurrent stories running, Heroes-style, towards their inevitable conclusion without any unifying narrative. While I’ll take this over what we used to have, it does leave the series with a slightly more workmanlike feeling than Lost viewers are used to....

The relatively recent trend for darker interpretations of family-friendly properties has been tricky to get right, what with the difficulty of balancing more complex material with nothing more commercially troubling than a 12A classification, and stories focusing on villainous characters make that process even harder. Maleficent, then, with or without the fresh memory of Frozen proving that it can be done, is a confused movie. It never quite decides what it wants to be, and sadly falls just shy of its considerable potential....

McMafia Episode 7 McMafia episode 7 is a shocker, and a very sad entry in the series as the collateral damage of the war between the Russian crime factions hits close to home, yet again. All the best gangster movies are family-driven, and McMafia continues to take on and out key emotional figures. Dmitri urges Alex to go to Vadim on his knees and beg for forgiveness, and gives him the name of his friend Oleg at the Russian embassy who can lay down the padding....

This opener follows the revelation in last series’ finale of Nathan finding out he’s immortal, just after being buried. Lucky for him, the ‘Super Hoodie’ glimpsed in the last series (hobbies: free running and stalking) alerts Kelly to Nathan’s life status. Using her telepathic power, a new meaning is given to ‘stiff one in the coffin’ when she hears his thoughts being broadcast from six feet underground. Misfits’ second series starts off equally as confident as its first....