-
ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK – Season Four
The fourth season of Netflix original Orange is the New Black picks up directly where we left off, with the inmates all swimming in a lake, having left Litchfield through a cut in the barbed wire. However, thoughts of the series continuing without exploring fresh territory are diminished by the season’s fast-paced premiere, where creator…
-
PREACHER, 1.8 – ‘El Valero’
Much like the previous episode, “El Valero” had its ups and downs. I loved the clever way the writers have been steering us towards this point, however: with battle re-enactment hobbyist Donny (Derek Wilson) dressed in his military gear to help Alamo fanatic Odin Quincannon (Jackie Earle Haley) destroy Jesse’s (Dominic Cooper) church, which gave…
-
20 Years On: THE FRIGHTENERS
On 19 July 1996, Peter Jackson’s THE FRIGHTENERS was released to disappointing box office sales, but 20 years later it’s clearly an important transitional movie for the LORD OF THE RINGS director…
-
COCOON (1985)
After a group of old men start swimming in a pool full of alien cocoons, they become rejuvenated with youthful vigour, in Ron Howard’s 1985 sci-fi drama…
-
ANOMALISA (2015)
A man, crippled by the mundanity of his life, experiences something out of the ordinary in this stop-motion animation from Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson…
-
MR. ROBOT, 2.1 & 2.2 – ‘eps2.0_unm4sk-pt1.tc’ & ‘eps2.0_unm4sk-pt2.tc’
It’s always a mistake to think that you have any real grasp on what’s happening in Mr Robot, given that creator Sam Esmail could upend the whole thing at any moment, showing you that black was white and truths were lies, but the basic situation laid out in this well-paced double bill is as follows:…
-
GHOSTBUSTERS (2016)
Following an invasion of ghosts across Manhattan, paranormal experts Erin Gilbert and Abby Yates, nuclear engineer Jillian Holtzmann, and subway worker Patty Tolan, band together to stop this otherworldly threat.
-
HIGH-RISE (2015)
Life for the residents of a tower block begins to run out of control in Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of J.G Ballard’s novel…
-
PREACHER, 1.7 – ‘He Gone’
My biggest gripe about Preacher has been how scattershot everything’s been, but “He Gone” felt more harmonious and structured. The flashbacks didn’t seem as random, they enlightened the present day’s concerns—mainly the mindset of anti-hero Jesse (Dominic Cooper). Our preacher’s a man whose father was violently executed in front of him as a boy, but…
-
OUTLANDER, 2.13 – ‘Dragonfly in Amber’
“Dragonfly in Amber” avoids the elephant in the room. The season-long build-up to the devastating battle of Culloden is simply that, a slowly mounting, unfulfilled tension that provides the fuel for a different kind of resolution in this year’s finale. The tragedy of that day’s cultural genocide takes place off screen, perhaps held back until…
