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STOKER (2013)
Park Chan-wook’s Stoker is a film with a curious DNA. Directed by the man who brought South Korean cinema to the masses with his highly regarded and highly influential ‘Vengeance Trilogy’, Stoker is his first English language film. The script and story, which owe a heavy debt to Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, were it written by Wentworth Miller. Yes,…
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Trailer – ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING
What’s it about? An ordinary school teacher Neil Clarke (Simon Pegg) is given omnipotent powers by a group of extra-terrestrials (voiced by the Monty Python troupe) planning to demolish Earth, meaning he can do “absolutely anything”. Now the fate of the world rests on Neil using his abilities responsibly. Not, um, wishing himself a more muscular physique, ordering…
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SHERLOCK HOLMES (BBC, 1965-68)
In the pantheon of celebrated Sherlock Holmes adaptations there is one BBC television series that tends to get overlooked. In 1965 the BBC produced a series of faithful adaptations of 13 Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories starring Douglas Wilmer and Nigel Stock. The series is perhaps unfairly eclipsed by the colour series made by the…
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Drama & Delight: The Life of Verity Lambert
If you’re expecting some huge revelations about Verity Lambert’s tenure as producer of Doctor Who in Richard Marson’s new book Drama and Delight: The Life and Legacy of Verity Lambert then you’ll probably be disappointed. As the author emphatically declares, Verity Lambert was so much more than the first producer of the legendary science fiction series,…
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FURIOUS 7 (2015)
The Fast & Furious franchise gets so much right that it’s easy to ignore the things that are less appealing about it. It is sometimes morally questionable/reckless and each film seems to need to feature at least three scenes of scantily-clad/objectified women. But it’s also a oddly touching series about family and loyalty, and it’s essentially too…
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INHERENT VICE (2014)
I’m not sure exactly where to begin with Inherent Vice—I’ve seen it twice now, and I haven’t completely wrapped my head around it, but I know it’s a movie I’ll be returning to for the rest of my life. It’s not a problem of not understanding the plot, as the mystery at the centre of Inherent Vice, while…
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AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (2015)
If the box-office supremacy of The Avengers can be partly attributed to the simple mathematics of four established superheroes appearing in the same film, with lashings of tongue-in-cheek humour and more digital bedlam than the team’s previous solo outings combined, highly-anticipated follow-up Avengers: Age of Ultron has a far tougher job on its hands. If the original succeeded with…
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DAREDEVIL – Season One
The first of Netflix’s quartet of Marvel-produced comic-book dramas, Daredevil wisely introduces the character closest to being a household name—although The Man Without Fear’s last mainstream attempt was Mark Steven Johnson’s floundering effort from 2003, which turned a profit but disappointed DD fans and proved a creative disappointment. So not only does showrunner Steven S. DeKnight (Angel, Spartacus) have to…
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BLOODLINE – Season One
Created by the troika behind FX’s legal thriller Damages—Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman—Netflix’s Bloodline is a very different show on the surface, but the underlying skeleton’s much the same. In both shows, episodes are bookended by flashforwards to events that seem inconceivably shocking, whilst being interrupted by flashbacks that gradually explain character behaviour and the causes…
