It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.
The usual “TMINE recommends” page features links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended, and there’s also the Reviews A-Z, for when you want to check more or less anything I’ve reviewed ever. And if you want to know when any of these shows are on in your area, there’s Locate TV – they’ll even email you a weekly schedule.
I’m not exactly behind on my TV viewing, so much as watching certain shows at Mrs TMINE’s pace and she’s been very busy of late. That means I still haven’t seen the latest two episodes of Strike Back or this week’s Humans. And as ABC Australia only aired the first episode of its new supernatural chiller Glitch last night, I’ve not yet had the time to watch it, which means I’ll review it on Monday or Tuesday next week.
All the same, this week, I’ve passed third-episode verdicts on:
- The Brink (US: HBO; UK: Sky Atlantic)
- Killjoys (Canada: Space; US: Syfy)
- Ballers (US: HBO; UK: Sky Atlantic)
- Mr Robot (US: USA Network)
And after the jump, I’ll be looking at the latest episodes of the usual regulars: Dark Matter, Halt and Catch Fire, Hannibal, The Last Ship, Suits, Stitchers, True Detective, UnREAL, Westside and The Whispers.
I’ve also watched a couple of movies.
Terminator: Genisys (2015) (in cinemas)
Probably the first proper sequel to the first two Terminator movies, this does for the franchise what JJ Abrams’ Star Trek did for Paramount’s space epic, effectively recasting and rebooting the whole series while still maintaining continuity.
Here, the idea is that the timelines are being altered again, with more Terminators being sent further back in time to both protect and kill Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones) that by the time 1984 rolls round and Kyle Reese goes back to save her, she’s not in need of saving, having been raised by an ageing Terminator (Arnie) to be a warrior. The question is: can Reese, Connor and daddy Terminator now stop Skynet from taking over the planet and nearly exterminating humanity? And what will Skynet do to stop them?
The first half hour or so is actually very good, with not only some good ‘future shock’ scenes, but near frame-by-frame recreations of key scenes from The Terminator that even give us a young Arnie v old Arnie fight. We also get Lee Byung-hun (Red 2, GI Joe) as a T-1000 and Jason Clarke (Brotherhood, The Chicago Code) as John Connor.
The trouble is that the rest of the movie suffers from ‘CGI weightlessness’ – while the CGI is impressive, it also gives us physically impossible physical effects that rob the action of impact and any sense of tension. It’s basically just computers plastering the screen with pixels, for all the emotion that’s conveyed.
All the same, much better than it has any right to be, quite funny in place and although it often feels like fanboy homage to the original, it never feels slavish and often innovates and takes the story in unexpected directions. Blink and you’ll miss Matt Smith, by the way.
Man of Tai Chi (2013) (Now TV)
It’s a Matrix reunion for Keanu Reeves’ directorial debut, with this Chinese-set, half-Mandarin, half-English martial-arter that stars Reeves’ Matrix martial arts instructor and bestest friend Tiger Chen as a T’ai Chi student who wants to show the world the power of T’ai Chi in conventional tournaments. However, Reeves’ evil billionaire wants him to star in underground fight movies and tries to corrupt Chen.
With fight choreography by The Matrix’s Yuen Woo-ping, naturally everything’s dead exciting but littered with wire work, and although my six months of T’ai Chi at university doesn’t exactly make me an expert, I didn’t notice an awful lot of T’ai Chi on display (“What sort of T’ai Chi is that?” “My own style.” You betcha), beyond a couple of scenes with Chen’s sifu. The plotting is pretty much exactly what you’d expect, with only a couple of twists, and unfortunately, despite his presence towards the end, The Raid/Star Wars 7’s Iko Uwais doesn’t get much screen time.
All the same, enjoyable enough, some good locations and with enough variation from the standard formulae that you’ll never be bored.
