Josh Brolin looks tailor made for the part of Eddie Mannix, the hard-nosed head of physical production at Capitol Pictures, an amalgam of 50s-era Paramount and MGM. It’s up to Mannix to keep his actors sober and on set in the mornings, prevent the press from catching wind of a starlet’s illegitimate child, or making sure his unseen money man in New York is happy to spend his cash on the latest horse opera, melodrama or sword-and-sandal epic....
1.11 Rôti “Poke around a psychopath’s mind, you’re bound to get poked back.” One of the themes of the universe created by Thomas Harris in his Hannibal Lecter novels is that when we entrust psychiatrists to use the skills at their disposal to help improve our mental health, we are also placing ourselves in jeopardy because those same skills can be used in nefarious ways. The mind is a delicate thing; in the hands of the wrong person, it can be easily destroyed....
So alongside memorable characters such as Tony Montana, Martin Riggs and, er, Han Solo, we can now add Roger, the central character of Norwegian thriller, Headhunters. Diminutive in stature and terrified that his leggy, attractive beau Diana will leave him for a superior male, Roger leads a double life: ostensibly earning a decent wage working as a corporate headhunter for a recruitment firm, he earns extra pocket money (and most importantly, the sort of money that keeps his other half in the manner to which she’s accustomed) as a part-time art thief....
OK, so the writers’ strike ending season 2 of Heroes early clearly doesn’t deserve that Douglassian level of histrionics. But you get my point. That’s all folks; that’s Chapter 2 done and dusted – and currently whether Chapter 3 will happen as part of the second season, or when it may actually air, is in the lap of the WGA and AMPTP. And do you know what? Good. I’ve had a real Heroes crisis over these last few months, as regular readers will know – and there have only been a couple of episodes from the last 11 that have come anywhere near to recapturing the standard achieved in the first ¾ of last season....
Finally, after weeks of dithering, we have an explanation (or at least, the beginnings of one) for Edgar’s role in the story. And could it be that they’re actually going to explain how, exactly, all those premonitions of the planet splitting in two came to pass? Exponentially amplifying the powers of a man with soil-moving ability could arguably lead to that level of disaster, after all. I’m just glad that, finally, we understand our villain’s agenda....
This review contains spoilers. The test is presented in a deliberately clinical, simulated manner, from the precise legalism of the arrangement to the intentional absurdity of the examiners expecting somehow to see Niska’s consciousness, her ‘soul’ if you like, as a digital readout on a screen. Set up like some cross between the Voight-Kampff test and the Ludovico Technique, Niska was presented with a series of fake ideas and scenarios and expected to react....
From the outset of this series there has been a slightly tongue in cheek underlying message about con men: that they can only really operate with the help of a genuinely corrupt and greedy mark. In this story, Mickey uses their latest project to demonstrate to new girl Emma Kennedy that emotional content is vital, otherwise it’s just about money – and not actually any fun. We first meet them throwing out a PR company who came along with a lack-lustre promotion for their latest stolen idea, ‘Spider’s Web’, a security system for priceless paintings....
I Am Legend: Awakening contains five stories: “Losing Voice: Ethan’s Story” by Steve Niles and Bill Sienkiewicz; “Death as a Gift” and “Sacrificing the Few for the Many” by Dawn Thomas and Jason Chan; “Isolation” by Mark Protosevich and David Levy; and “Fighting Change” by Richard Christian Matheson (that name sounds familiar…) and David Levy. Three of these stories, “Losing Voice,” “Death as a Gift,” and “Sacrificing the Few for the Many,” are available as PDF versions on the I Am Legend website, which is how I’m reading them as we speak....
I’d been pre-warned by the series creator that Pariah, the third Identity outing, would move the series up a gear, and he wasn’t kidding. Identity takes more the Maxine Carr angle, where the spouse of a child killer is the protected one who is suddenly outted by an anonymous Internet posting. In one respect, the story has only that much to do with the subject of identity, but what it then goes on to explore is the true personality of the ‘victim’, Amy Quilan (played very effectively by Sarah Smart), whose life is turned upside down when her exposure leads to the abduction of her own son, mirroring her husband’s original crime....
Our own review will be live in the next day or two. But ahead of that, here’s what people are saying about a summer blockbuster this year that actually seems to deliver the goods. Lots of goods… “Inception is an exhilarating cinematic experience that suggests there is still room, even in the blockbuster world, for big ideas and dangerous emotions, and that may be the single most thrilling thing about it....
And thus far, it’s been quite a mixed bag, if anything edging towards the negative. The Guardian, meanwhile, hated it, calling it a “colossal armour-plated turkey from hell”. It continued: “It is achtung-achtung-ach-mein-Gott atrocious. It isn’t funny; it isn’t exciting; it isn’t a realistic war movie, yet neither is it an entertaining genre spoof or a clever counterfactual wartime yarn.” It praised some of the performances, but ultimately damned the film because “everything is just so boring”....
Intruders, created by Glen Morgan of X-Files fame (a man who knows his creeping dread), is based on the 2007 Michael Marshall Smith novel. Like Morgan, Smith is not a newcomer to the sci/fi thriller genre. Winner of the Philip K. Dick award, he is a prolific author who has been compared to both Dick and Stephen King. Such recommendations can have polarizing effects. On one hand these are writers who have made their money churning out commercial paperbacks....
When Kingsman: The Secret Service exploded on to screens back in 2014 it was a bolt out of the blue, with a large part of its appeal down to originality and its ability to take conventions the spy genre possessed and turn them upside down, throwing over the top violence and a dark, yet obscene humour around with such abandon that the resulting film was a fast paced delight from start to finish....
Krypton Season 1, Episode 10 Thank Rao there’s a second season of Krypton! The Superman prequel series ended its first season with its strongest episode yet, proving that this show is at its best when it goes big. It’s horrifying even if you don’t fully understand what Brainiac’s ship represents, which is a majority of the people who live in Kandor. Krypton never really pulled off giving this city a real personality beyond its main characters, but that doesn’t mean we can’t empathize with their terror as Brainiac’s ship floats closer and Brainiac’s alien, all-powerful self looks down over the city he’s about to conquer....
It’s the 1920s, and Franklin, Virginia’s reputation for illegal liquor production is such that it’s nicknamed The Wettest County in the World, the name of the book on which Lawless is based, and also its shooting title. Based on the true story of the Bondurant family, a group prolific moonshine producers, Lawless introduces Forrest (Tom Hardy), a mumbling Great War veteran convinced of his own invincibility, Howard (Jason Clarke) his shellshocked older brother who drinks almost as much alcohol as he sells, and Jack (Shia LaBeouf), the meek youngest brother who’s uncharitably described as the runt of the litter....
This Legends of Tomorrow review contains spoilers. And so does its tagline. Though there’s no way you didn’t see this coming. AAAAANYWAY. The best part of the first half of this season of Legends was watching Wentworth Miller’s Leonard Snart and Dominick Purcell’s Mick Rory just completely annihilate the scenery every time they were on screen. I have a seriously low tolerance for anything approaching camp under normal circumstances, but they were so committed to being over the top, so ecstatic to be doing it that it was almost impossible to not enjoy watching them work....
Legends of Tomorrow Season 2 Episode 10 Usually it takes me until the last third of an episode to start writing it up, but “The Legion of Doom” started so well that I couldn’t hold back. From the opening to the first commercial, I must have written at least eight lines in all caps: This episode was pure fanservice from the very beginning, and I loved every second of it. Much like how the best parts of last season were Len and Mick Taste The Scenery, this episode’s A story follows Damien Darhk and Malcolm Merlyn as they shit talk each other, try and figure out Thawne’s deal, vamp, shit talk each other some more, and generally be Bad Guys (capitalized because here they are the Platonic form of comic book villainy)....
However, head and shoulders above these stood Lemmy, the compelling character study from co-directors Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski, which came across as fiercely distinctive, keenly insightful and wildly entertaining. Later, he walks around the corner to his local boozer, which just happens to be fabled nightspot the Rainbow Bar & Grill, second home to many West Coast rockers over the years, and takes up his regular spot, right next to the quiz machine....
Lethal Weapon Season 2, Episode 5 Lethal Weapon operates at its best when it plays the comedy against the drama and the episode finds an unusual theme to hang its hat on. “Let It Ride” features all of those elements and as a result it’s certainly one of the strongest installments of the season. The episode begins at a racetrack and quickly becomes all about dramatic irony in its various shapes and forms, like how a man experiences the best luck of his life, but the only catch is that right beforehand someone murders the guy....
And why do they grind to a halt? Well, because it’s time for a Jack episode, and Jack’s only relevance to the plot at this point is in being an irritating, gurning fool torn between two inexplicably attractive women who somehow want to get horizontal with him. Never before has a TV show has such a bizarrely repellent lead as Jack from Lost. Meanwhile, in the future, Jack and Kate are living together like a happy couple some time after Kate’s trial but before Jack’s famous “we need to go back” rant from the end of Season 3....
