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DOCTOR WHO – Series Eight, Part Two
In the lead up to Series Nine of Doctor Who in September, my review of Series Eight examines the merits and pitfalls of four episodes, from “Time Heist” to “Mummy on the Orient Express”, in the middle of 2014’s run. They demonstrate a series trying to find new ways of refreshing genre conventions while driving…
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AGENT CARTER – Season One
There’s been a lot of chatter over the past few years about Marvel’s inability to release a female-led superhero movie. Despite having a roster of comic-book superheroines prime for a trip to the big screen, the studio won’t unleash its first female-led movie until Captain Marvel debuts in 2018. Thank heavens, then, for Agent Peggy…
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HANNIBAL, 3.13 – ‘The Wrath of the Lamb’
“The bluff is eroding. There was more land when I was here with Abigail. More land still when I was here with Miriam Lass. Now you’re here with me, and the bluff is still eroding. You and I are suspended over the roiling Atlantic. Soon all of this will be lost to the sea.” Throughout “The Wrath…
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WITNESSES – Series One
Following their success with French supernatural drama The Returned (Les Revenants) two years ago, it’s hardly surprising that Channel 4 are keen to keep a toehold on the Euro Noir bandwagon. Viewed from a distance, their latest French buy-in, Witnesses (Les Témoins), looked like another wise acquisition… However, as BBC Four have discovered to their…
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SHOW ME A HERO – Part Three
Things got ever more sticky for our increasingly beleaguered hero this week as Nick (Oscar Isaac) found himself desperately trying to save Yonkers from Judge Sands’ (Bob Balaban) bankruptcy measures, even as his own lawyers conspired to keep him out of the most important conversations. From attempting to cajole figures within the Democrat party (a…
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HITMAN: AGENT 47 (2015)
There’s no real reason why films based on video games shouldn’t work. However, there can also be no denying that the vast majority of such attempts to appeal to the gaming crowd fail. At some point, as happened with comic-book movies, it’s possible that one of these films will really be a hit with viewers and the…
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DOCTOR WHO – Series Eight, Part One
The trailers are already playing on BBC One and very soon we’ll be joining Peter Capaldi for his sophomore outing as Doctor Who. However, before the ninth series arrives on 19th September, let’s look back on how Capaldi acquitted himself last year. More than that, I’ll also consider the significant question of self-doubt that overshadowed…
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ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL (2015)
Like The Fault in our Stars before it, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl grounds the upsetting story of a teenager with cancer in something that feels close to reality, and then pairs its sad subject matter with a heaped spoonful of youthful humour. This is much more self-aware film than The Fault in…
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HANNIBAL, 3.12 – ‘The Number of the Beast is 666…’
Poor Dr. Chilton. A brief history of Frederick Chilton, onetime director of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and self-proclaimed best-selling author. First appearing in Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon, where he mostly serves as Hannibal Lecter’s antagonist, Chilton’s most memorable previous appearance was in The Silence of the Lambs, where he’s tasked both with delivering…
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UK Premiere: FEAR THE WALKING DEAD
While HBO often receives most of the plaudits as being the progenitor of the ‘Golden Age of Television’, over recent years it’s been AMC that has actually produced much of the truly outstanding television: Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and, of course, TV’s most successful show, post-apocalyptic zombie drama The Walking Dead. All of which makes it…
