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One thing that unites all of cinema’s most iconic characters is that they were able to make a memorable first impression. Whether it’s bursting onto the scene in a flurry of noise or slowly skulking their way into shot, there’s a fine art to ensuring a character makes an instant impact on screen. An iconic entrance is not just about a momentary impact however, it can also emphasize a character’s importance and help to cement their influence over the rest of the movie....

Take Helene. Her brusque manner seemed tempered this week, but her justification for becoming project manager, if we heard right, was that she used to model wedding dresses in the past. Now knowledge of the product is always good, particularly as selling wedding dresses was the key objective, but isn’t that like offering to run a window selling company because you happen to clean them from time to time? But we’re getting slightly ahead of ourselves....

In a sense, it’s a clothing-based variant of last week’s task. And with Liz and Paloma chosen to lead the teams, it was down to business fairly quickly, with only Alex doing one of those silly to-camera talking head bullshit pouring exercises, where he talking about leading people to honey, or something like that. On the other team, we learned that Jamie doesn’t like fashion, which for some reason inspired Nick to turn up his nose....

Ever since a small but perfectly-formed teaser at the end of Iron Man heralded the coming of the Avengers, it’s been tough to keep expectations reasonable. For every good Marvel film, there was a bad one. For every reason to get excited, there was a reason to be cautious. A complete disaster seemed unlikely, but anything less than genre-defining brilliance was going to be a let-down. Of course, with seven lead characters, a villain backed by an army and a supporting cast pulled from multiple sources, it could never be anything but....

7.9 The Thanksgiving Decoupling Like any show in its seventh season, The Big Bang Theory has been excavating its own former glories to revisit old jokes, reinvigorate some, and even address some its own issues, a trend that we’ve seen throughout this season and that continues here in Amy’s amusingly horrified reaction to Sheldon’s insistence that being taken to Howard’s Mom’s for Thanksgiving is equivalent to being sold into slavery....

The main character in The Boss is Michelle Darnell (played by McCarthy, who co-wrote the script with Falcone and Steve Mallory), a powerful, forthright and fairly unpleasant millionaire tycoon who, after exacerbating and exhausting everyone with her actual best interests at heart, finds herself isolated when she loses everything. Released from prison with nothing, she crashes former assistant Claire’s apartment and sets about rebuilding her fortune in the cut-throat girl scout cookie selling industry....

Throw in some diverting games and theme music that instantly lifts the spirits and you’ve got a remedy that gives you an hour (or, forty-five minutes not including ads) in which to forget the world’s parlous state and feel once again like a kid balancing a plateful of beans and potato waffles on your knees in front of the telly. As the new Maze Master in this revival, Ayoade is a natural fit....

As adaptations go, it’s come out of long spells of development by JJ Abrams and Ron Howard with a killer idea – it’s billed as a continuation of the series, in which its events take place over again at some point after the final book. You’d expect that this approach will offer a new story for the experts and a jumping-on point for the newbies, especially as Sony hopes this will spawn a multimedia franchise across TV and cinema....

However, there’s nothing like a bit of horror to cheer me up so I continued on, took my place at the screening and made sure to sit near the front to ensure no one blocked my view (also limited by the fact the cinema was packed), settling in to try and relax for the first time that day. The film started and luck dictated that the girl sat behind me had decided to bring three friends, one of whom decided to spend the entire film giving his own commentary, spouting clichéd macho bullshit like he was Oscar Wilde, jeering at other people for quietly enjoying the film, “Quiet people crack me up, innit!...

1.23 Fast Enough Sometimes it’s our failures that make us who we are, as much as our successes. The bad things that happen to us, especially early in life, can set us on a path that’s actually more full of love and purpose than the one we might have had otherwise. This can’t always be the case but, for Barry Allen, he ultimately decides that it is. As part of a seemingly throwaway television show like The Flash – a silly superhero romp celebrated for its lightheartedness – that’s a pretty big thing to be grappling with....

2.8 Legends Of Today That said, Legends Of Today is an absolute delight from start to finish, fitting in more (good) fan-service moments, gags, character-building and plot than could be expected from a movie, let alone a 42-minute episode of a show already under pressure to re-introduce an entire cast of characters a good portion viewers might not even remember. We’ve had the odd little crossover since Flash Vs Arrow, but nothing on this scale....

1.1 Pilot In the halls of a maximum-security prison in Waverly, Virginia, sits Dr. Joe Carroll, an English professor and fanatical Edgar Allen Poe fan turned serial killer. He’s a very dangerous man, and when he ends up missing and half-a-dozen guards are found slashed to death, he proves just how dangerous he is. Now Carroll is free from justice, on the prowl for Sarah Fuller (Maggie Grace) aka the one that got away....

The Gifted Episode 7 This was probably inevitable, but inevitability didn’t make The Gifted‘s first wheel-spinning episode any less tedious to sit through. Let’s start with the good: Jamie Chung is pretty good at acting. Thunderbird decides to try and bring Blink back to the underground, so he helps her find the place she kept opening portals to when she was sick. It turns out it was a foster family that cared for her a great deal, and also Sentinel Services figured it out, went there, and killed the family....

At the heart of The Gruffalo is a small mouse (voiced by Gavin and Stacey star James Corden), who encounters various predators as he takes a stroll through the deep, dark wood in which he lives. In an effort to persuade them not to gobble him up, our small hero tells tall tales of a fictional beast, The Gruffalo, who seems like every hungry forest animal’s worst nightmare. However, as the mouse continues on his journey, he learns that nightmares sometimes come true… It helps, of course, that the makers of The Gruffalo have managed to pull together a very impressive voice cast....

Ah, that nice Mr Morgan Freeman, he never lets us down. Bless him, brilliant actor and charming old man that he is. If you erased him from the background of half the movies he’s appeared in you’d be left with an entire DVD collection worth of features that can’t support themselves. They’d all collapse without his confident, calming influence. Build your movie on the solid-as-a-rock 72-year-old and you can only succeed....

The striking trailer for Zack Snyder’s upcoming feature definitely delivers a blow. I’m looking forward to seeing it on the big screen before a feature-length blockbuster in order to appreciate the full effect. In fact, I’d like to go along to the cinema with someone who isn’t as desensitised to stylised cinematic hyperviolence as I am, to see how it affects them. In the beginning, it all looks like Watchmen, with a funeral sequence and what’s possibly attempted rape, underscored by Led Zeppelin’s When The Levee Breaks....

Episodes 3.5 & 3.6 Not heeding the kidnapper’s instructions – again! – Lund’s co-workers Mathias Borch and Asbjørn Juncker aren’t far behind with Juncker tailing the truck the perp is driving. Unfortunately, Emilie Zeuthen’s abductor proves to be one step ahead of the Copenhagen police department. There are mobile drops and vehicle swaps, even blocking tunnels off to give Juncker the slip. The beginning of episode five feels like it could be a season finale given how dramatically and quickly this whole scene plays out....

The Last Man on Earth: Season 2, Episode 17 Let’s get something out of the way right from the start: How dare Tandy share bacon with someone else other than his Original Bacon Brother! All bets are off once Tandy messes with Todd and the man’s Breakfast meat, and he knows it. Time to get ready for the fallout. Picking up from the last episode’s sizeable cliffhanger, we see that Gail’s drinking is finally catching up with her in the form of her looking like the “woman who cried crazy....

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping was – yep, it’s time to call it – the funniest film of 2016. For those who blinked a little too long and didn’t catch it on its brief appearance in cinemas, the DVD release is your chance to find out what you’ve missed: a hilarious parody of current pop music’s excesses that blends acerbic criticism of predatory gossip shows and social media mobs with a sweet story of three feuding rappers struggling to mend their friendship....

The Magicians Season 1 Episode 2 Julia appears to be the only one able to remain somewhat aloof, although it appears she is unaccustomed to the rejection Brakebills visited upon her and views her introduction to the so-called “hedge witches,” with a certain calm disdain. The hazing ritual she endured was entertainingly disgusting, and the fact that the door was unlocked was as welcome a twist as the true status of her newbie-in-disguise companion, Marina....