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2.1 The North Remembers Buoyed by the confidence instilled by its massively successful maiden season, the season opener for Game Of Thrones season two showed little desire to compromise. By the time the best part of an hour had gone by, we’d had killings, nudity, sex, the murder of a baby (a genuinely nasty, jaw-dangling moment, one that thankfully occurred off camera), along with ongoing war, and the clear promise of more conflict very clearly around the corner....

But, even people who struggle with confidence, and giving things a go, occasionally have a day of light. And on that day, words spilled out. A page of text that they felt was theirs had been produced. All was going well. Then they showed it to someone. They showed it to a friend, and asked for an honest opinion. Only, as it turned out, that wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted some encouragement....

The problem too is the assumption from people around you – and there’s no callousness in this, it’s just life – may very well be that all is good. They don’t see the sleepless nights, they can’t tap into the endless worry. That’s no slight on them, as chances are they’re battling umpteen problems of their own. It just doesn’t always make things easy for you. What, then, can you do?...

As someone who battles with both depression and anxiety, to the extent I felt suicidal during one particularly low period of my life (I’ve written here before about this) it’s something that never felt really likely. I could tell you what it meant to be sad, truly sad, devoid of feeling and trapped by my own self-doubts. I could tell you what it meant to be nervous, crippled by uncertainty, trapped by self-doubt and riddled with self-loathing....

I don’t think it really makes any difference any more. We know to accept all such claims with a pinch of salt, and even if the plot is an exact replica of someone’s life, the artistry of the movie-maker will always be in play to tweak our emotions in a certain direction. Maybe nothing we can see on screen is exactly true any more. And those films that claim to be based on a true story seem to have all, sadly, developed the same manipulative bag of tricks....

There are few films that really can be called cult classics, but if you were to compile a top ten list then The Rocky Horror Picture Show would surely be somewhere among the top three. In a bid to try and impress Emma, who has found a love of the musical thanks to her new boyfriend Carl, Will decides to put on a production of The Rocky Horror Show, enlisting Emma’s help to do the costumes and to spend more time with her....

Gozo, Miranda Bowen’s directorial debut, endeavors to capture that feeling of crushing isolation and paranoia that comes from becoming the outsider in a place seemingly unwilling to provide the escape you desire. Lucille (Ophelia Lovibond) and Joe (Joseph Kennedy) have emigrated to the titular Gozo after Joe’s ex-girlfriend – having discovered the new relationship – kills herself, but they soon realise that things aren’t going to be that easy. Speaking about the film, Bowen and Kennedy (who was the source of the film’s original idea) compared their intentions to many of the themes of Don’t Look Now, and its influence can be felt throughout....

5.3 Lost Boys Lost Boys sees Nick and Hank coupled up once more to fight crime – in this case it’s a group of orphaned teens with abandonment issues. The episode draws on Peter Pan (we are introduced to characters called Peter, Wendy, and the villain, Hooke) and features a gang of kids living in the wild, who decide to kidnap nice women to be their ‘mother’. The twist is that Rosalee’s kindness makes her a target, prompting a search and rescue mission led by Monroe....

Remember the first time you saw Hellraiser, with the meat hooks and the ripping? Kind of like that. The sequence also had the unmitigated gall to force the viewer to watch every second of the poor victim’s agony, no hard cuts, no trick lighting, just pure nerve rending physical atrocity. The suddenly patchwork man escapes, only to botch a cliff dive, ending his suffering. Meanwhile, Scully, erm,I mean, Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier ends her professional relationship with Hannibal, but how does one spurn the devil?...

2.11 Ko No Mono When we think of parenthood, creation is central. After all, life is literally created in the act of human reproduction. But for the most part, this biological act of creation is not what’s addressed in the episode. That sort of creation is almost beside the point, except in one heartbreaking case, which I’ll come back to in a moment. No, in Ko No Mono, if the relationship between parent and offspring is biological, that’s almost beside the point....

2.5 Mukozuke He has done this in a thousand visual ways, topping even himself this week with the image of Beverly Katz cryosectioned and placed between human-size slides—a gruesome allusion to her own profession as a forensic scientist. While we are sad to see the alive version of her go (there are strong suggestions that she will replace Garret Jacob Hobbs this series as a recurring spectre), it’s hard to think of a more memorable way of sending her off....

This sets a chain of events in place that ends up with Sylar visiting the Company’s underground prison, and after killing Robert ‘golden balls’ Bishop he then sets about his sociopath daughter Elle. That’s a big mistake, because she freaks out and emits an EM pulse that disables everyone in the vicinity, including Sylar. It also releases all the most dangerous inmates from confinement, including Noah and another that currently holds the consciousness of ‘Present’ Peter Petrelli....

Part of the game’s success has to do with its unique style. Insomniac Games’ take on the webslinger isn’t a direct adaptation of the comics or any of the movies. Instead, Insomniac’s Spider-Man lives in a universe all his own, which means that some parts of the beloved Spidey mythos are bound to get remixed. For example, in this version of the story, Peter Parker’s beloved Mary Jane Watson is an investigative reporter while the snarling J....

Then there’s producer Matthew Vaughn, who has since gone on to build an enviable film directing career, with movies such as X-Men: First Class, Kick-Ass, and Kingsman: The Secret Service. And that’s exactly what Tom Cruise did. He went along to a tiny screening room on the lot at Sony Pictures, and sat and watched the movie. Even then, this was not movie star behavior. Stars were for premieres, not for buyers’ screenings, something that Styler pointed out to Vaughn....

When a shipment of smuggled Cesium is discovered by the FBI, the agency is quick to presume it was intended for a radical Muslim terrorist cell. But case agent Angelina Zampino (Toni Collette) suspects it was the work of white supremacists, and against her superiors wishes sends idealistic young analyst Nate Foster (Daniel Radcliffe) undercover to investigate. He shaves his head, reads up on Timothy McVey and Mein Kampf, and soon enough he’s in deep, way over his head....

Inhumans Episode 6 I’ve been catching up on Gifted lately, and I’ve been greatly enjoying it. Mainly because Gifted feels like it is deeply immersed in Marvel and Fox’s world of mutants. Watching Gifted got me thinking about Inhumans and how the producers and showrunners of ABC’s Marvel series just aren’t leaning into the Inhumans mythos. I mean, whenever there is a crowd of Inhumans, they just look like intense looking regular people in drab colored clothing....

This review contains spoilers. With its single location, limited cast and playful, macabre twists, the 1972 film Sleuth starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine is a godfather of sorts to Inside No. 9. This week’s especially slippery episode pays homage to Anthony Shaffer’s warped story of revenge between two rivals in love. It’s the most complicated tale Inside No. 9 has ever spun. As co-creator Steve Pemberton told us at the series three press launch, “If you missed two sentences in a row, you’d be like ‘what?...

This article contains spoilers for the Iron Man and Avengers films, as well as Captain America: Civil War and Guardians Of The Galaxy 2. “I can’t imagine how they could but that doesn’t mean that they can’t,” original Iron Man director Jon Favreau admitted to IGN last year. “I just can’t wrap my head around that one. To me he’s the one element that has unified all of it, and I think kept a consistent tone, and the integrity of his acting ability and his talent really works wonderfully synergistically with the Marvel universe....

In the film, based on Turner’s memoir, Jamie Bell plays Peter and Annette Bening portrays Gloria, and from their first moment together (an impromptu dance in Gloria’s rented room), the chemistry and compassion between these two actors is palpable and intense. Directed by Paul McGuigan (Sherlock) and produced by Barbara Broccoli (the James Bond series), Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is one of the more unusual love stories you’ll see on the screen this year....