Film reviews

An archive of The Medium is Not Enough’s film reviews

What did you watch last fortnight? Including Moone Boy, Homeland, Revolution and Mob Doctor

1 October 2012 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

It’s “What did you watch last fortnight?”, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I watched in the past two weeks that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.

First, the usual recommendations: The Thick of It and Homeland.

So here’s a few thoughts on what I have been watching:

  • Go On – Still okay. Last week’s episode was dedicated to giving the lesbian character some actual, you know, character, which actually worked quite well – looking at with less tired eyes, Go On actually probably has the most diverse cast on TV. It’s just a little too Perry-focused, a little too Benanti-light still and the rest of the cast need to get more characters, too
  • Homeland – Well, I watched the first 20 minutes last time, and good news! The rest of it’s really good, too. While Carrie’s storyline is more obviously mental than last year’s, Brodie’s is working out well quite tensely, thank you, and the final scene with his daughter was surprisingly touching. So still one to watch.
  • Mob Doctor – Switched off halfway through episode two. Jordana Spiro’s great but this show isn’t the vehicle for her, unfortunately.
  • The New Normal – episode two was such a hate crime, I gave up. I hear episode 4 might have been interesting though, since it’s from Ellen Barkin’s point of view. Not going to try it though.
  • Perception – While the finale was still marginally ludicrous, everything with Daniel worked well. Overall, a pretty good first season, hampered by its format. Jamie Bamber was woefully under-used, while Rachael Leigh Cooke shouldn’t have been used at all. Definitely recommended as a bit of fluff with surprising depth, and I’ll be tuning into season two.
  • Revolution – Episode two was possibly even more boring than episode 1. If it weren’t for the sword-fights, there would be literally nothing to this show at all.
  • The Thick of It – The beast is back! Good to see Malcolm back to his old fieriness and poor old Nicola. A beautifully written piece of political manipulation.
  • Animal Practice – A mild improvement on episode one, but still a fundamentally flawed, stupid NBC comedy.
  • Moone Boy – The IT Crowd‘s Chris O’Dowd writes and stars in this semi-biopic as the imaginary best friend of his 1989 self. Very weird, but charming and amusing.

Still in the pile: Made in Jersey and 666 Park Avenue. I’ll get onto them later today and tomorrow.

And in movies:

  • The Dark Knight Returns: Part 1 – A pretty decent animation of Frank Miller’s acclaimed “Batman when he’s old” graphic novel. This only covers Batman’s return, the new Robin and the pre-Superman half, with a second movie to come dealing with all of that. Peter Weller is a little miscast as the voice of Bruce Wayne, lacking much expressiveness, but he’s not the worst Batman there’s ever been, by any stretch of the imagination. It also shows its age, having originally been written in the 80s, and its vision of the future is indeed very 80s. Ariel Winter from Modern Family is the surprising choice for Robin, but she works quite well, too.

“What did you watch last fortnight?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

What did you watch last week? Including Toast of London, Hunderby, Dredd 3D and Total Recall

10 September 2012 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

It’s “What did you watch last week?”, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I watched last week that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.

First, the usual recommendations: Perception and Doctor Who. Not much on, is there?

So here’s a few thoughts on what I have been watching:

  • Perception: Not bad, but not great.
  • Royal Pains: Meh.
  • Hunderby: Julia Davis does Daphne du Maurier but set in Jane Austen’s time. Silly and dark, with some great moments, but ultimately, it feels like one of those obvious parodies you’d write in the sixth form of school in which adding the word ‘bum’ to a classic novel made it somehow inherently more amusing.

  • Toast of London: A pilot for a show written by Matt Berry and Arthur Mathews that had more than a few funny moments and embodies a lot of Berry-esque idiosyncrancies and Mathews-esque surrealism, but which I still wouldn’t describe as hilarious.

And in movies, it’s been something of an action movie-fest:

The Expendables 2
Basically a lot of shooting and in-jokes, with not much by way of script. Jet Li gets written of it quickly as does one of the other cast members, so we only get a couple of scenes with them. But it seems a shame to assemble the likes of Jean Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren and Chuck Norris and not to actually do much by way of martial arts, which is something the first movie excelled at. But Bruce and Arnie got more to do this time, which is a bonus.

Sudden Death
JCVD does Die Hard in an ice rink. Dreadful.

Time Cop
JCVD’s one undeniably good movie.

JCVD
Jean Claude plays a version of himself who mistakenly gets accused of robbing a post office. Very meta, but not much by way of action. Big revelation is the Jean-Claude can act pretty well in French.

The One
A dreadful load of old bobbins by a former X-Files writer in which Jet Li has to fight a parallel universe version of himself. A couple of good fight scenes and it’s amusing to see Jason Statham with some hair, but largely silly and way too much wire work.

Dredd 3D
A masterpiece compared the Stallone version, and a really good movie in its own right – essentially The Raid but with guns instead of martial arts as Judges Dredd and Anderson ascend a tower block looking for the source of a new drug. Less futuristic than the comic, it is nevertheless a decent attempt to capture the spirit of 2000 AD, albeit without the satire, and South Africa doubles very nicely for Megacity 1. Hampered by a slightly low budget, it benefits from a good, intelligent script, a good cast (Karl Urban as Dredd, Olivia Thirby as Judge Anderson, here on probation and getting a lot to do, thankfully, and, for once, Lena Headey, embracing the not-pretty look for all it’s worth) and some surprisingly beautiful direction. Definitely worth seeing if you can handle a bit of violence.

Total Recall
If you’ve seen both Blade Runner and the first Total Recall, there is literally no point watching this remake. Colin Farrell makes a better protagonist than Arnie and the writers have realised that the best thing about the original was Sharon Stone’s character, who wasn’t actually in it much, so combined her and Michael Ironside’s character together. But it’s ludicrous bobbins, in which there’s a lift through the centre of the Earth that allows everyone to commute from Australia to the UK and back every day (full gravity until the middle, kiddies…), and most of the clever touches have been removed (although to be fair, so have the crap bits). It also downplays the best part of the original, which was that you really didn’t know if the whole movie was a dream or not. Serviceable, Kate Beckinsale is great (although not Sharon Stone great), but that’s about it.

 

And here’s the original trailer. Watch that instead.

 

“What did you watch last week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

What movies did you watch last month? Including Twilight, The Watch, The Vow, Moonrise Kingdom, Mirror, Mirror, We Bought A Zoo and The Bourne Legacy

3 September 2012 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

As a special one-off, I’m putting all the movies into a separate section this week, seeing as I’ve seen so many. They’ll be reunified next week, don’t worry, unless anyone petitions me otherwise. Or if I decide to go monthly with movie reviews.

Continue reading “What movies did you watch last month? Including Twilight, The Watch, The Vow, Moonrise Kingdom, Mirror, Mirror, We Bought A Zoo and The Bourne Legacy”

What did you watch last fortnight? Including Maison close, Wallander, Dogtooth and The Hurt Locker

27 July 2012 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

It’s “What did you watch last fortnight?”, my chance to tell you what I watched in the last fortnight 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 recommendations from the first-run shows are: Continuum, The Daily Show, The Newsroom and Suits. Hunt them down.

Here’s a few thoughts on those and what else I’ve been watching:

  • Burn Notice: A shocking death… that everyone predicted and almost certainly not the end of the ‘Burn Notice’ plot. Interesting to note that there was more emotion in the last minute or two as the impact of the death sank in than there has been in the last three episodes of Covert Affairs with a similar situation, which tells you a lot about that show. And as for last week’s episode, John C McGinley is now stuck being Dr Cox from Scrubs forever.
  • Continuum: Actually quite a creepy and nasty episode this week, with more sci-fi twists and a very decent couple of cliffhangers. Good to see some bad guys who aren’t idiots for a change.
  • Covert Affairs: Largely forgettable, except when Richard Coyle is in it. Comes across essentially as a set of stage directions for a spy show, lacking in any real passion or excitement, no matter what happens. Nice location shooting though.
  • Maison close: Canal+ drama set in an early 20th century brothel. Lavishly shot, but inherently silly and exploitative, and absolutely nothing to surprise you.
  • Mesrine: Vincent Cassel as the real-life crook, depicting his life from a solider in Algiers through to his death. But I gave up after about half an hour, since although it was a decent enough story and Cassel was fabulous, it was a pretty ordinary story really, and there was enough misogyny to put me off from watching too much of it.
  • The Newsroom: Well, after an excellent fourth episode, we once again plummeted the depths of the Sorkin style for the fifth episode, making this the most inconsistent of his shows in terms of quality. About the only good thing about it was Olivia Munn being deadpan and snarky, as usual.
  • Prisoners of War: In retrospect, this is a show I wish I’d seen before Homeland, since so many of the revelations, although in a different context from Homeland‘s, were the same. No secret terrorist to worry about, but the final frames and much of the final episode were clearly setting the show up for a second series – which is coming in October.
  • Royal Pains: Reshma Shetty acted! Amazing
  • Sinbad: Basically Sky doing a Merlin, but better. Great to see a show with a principally black and Asian cast that isn’t set on a sinkhole estate somewhere, as well. But fundamentally not that great unless you’re a teenager, I suspect.
  • Suits: The ballet side of things in last night’s episode is pushing Louis over the edge of plausibility, but still a reasonable episode, uplifted by the final poker scene.
  • Wallander: After the dreadful second episode, it was a relief to see the third and final episode of the show return to the quality of the first episode of this series. A proper crime that needed investigating, Wallander doing proper police work and occasional breaks from absolute misery, making the episode potentially a good final one for the show. Worth mentioning that it was possibly one of the most beautifully shot programmes on TV recently and Ken was of course was magnificent.

And in movies:

  • Princess Diaries 2: Don’t ask. But one of those minor movies you watch 10 years after it was made and go “Oh my gods, it’s them! They’re famous now! And so are they! And them!” Here, we have Anne “Catwoman” Hathaway, Callum “Kneel before Zod” Blue from Smallville and Chris Pine from Star Trek, with a script written by Grey’s Anatomy/Private Practice/Scandal showrunner Shonda Rhimes. Probably great if you’re an 11-year-old American girl who knows nothing about Europe, royalty, etc, since it takes every stereotype about royalty you’ll ever come across and marries it with American idealism (“Everyone can be a princess and if you just care enough, you can rule a country wisely, too!”). The problem is it’s nearly two hours long and takes out about 20 minutes for a sleepover and karoake session. But okay.

  • Dogtooth: Probably not a movie I would have watched, had it not been to brush up my Greek for holidays next month. Very weird film about a pair of protective parents who keep their grown-up children in an almost childlike state, confined in their home, teaching them the wrong words for things (‘sea’ means ‘chair’ and ‘zombie’ means ‘a small yellow flower’) and that planes in the sky are just toys. The only visitor is a female security guard whom the dad pays to come and have very mechanical sex with the son. And then things go pear-shaped. Some very odd acting and a very odd script and central idea, but a very interesting movie. Worth watching.

  • The Hurt Locker: the movie for which Kathryn Bigelow won the best director Oscar, it’s a much-deserved win, even if the script itself is a little lacking. Jeremy Renner is a adrenaline-addicted bomb-disposal guy in Iraq who puts his comrades’ lives in danger. Interesting as much for its cameos – Ralph Fiennes (who starred in Bigelow’s Strange Days) as a British mercenary, Guy Pierce as another bomb disposal guy, David Morse as another soldier, Evangeline Lilly as Renner’s girlfriend – who disappear as quickly as they arrive. Visually magnificent and extremely tense, the film really only falters when it moves away from action and tries to deal with character and emotion.

“What did you watch last fortnight?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

Streaming TV

What did you watch last fortnight? Including Parents, Romanzo Criminale and Drive

9 July 2012 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Sky 1's Parents

It’s “What did you watch last fortnight?”, my chance to tell you what I watched last fortnight 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 recommendations from the first-run shows are: Continuum, The Daily Show, Suits and Prisoners of War. Hunt them down.

Here’s a few thoughts on those and what else I’ve been watching:

  • Burn Notice: Continues to tread slightly away from its formula, so I’m countenancing watching it again.
  • Wilfred: Is now just dark, not funny at all, so I gave up after the first 10 minutes of episode two.
  • Suits: Loving the Hardman narrative and that they’re starting to explore the secondary characters more. The must-see show of the week.
  • Continuum: Starting to weaken a little, now most of the SF elements have been stripped from the present-day side of things. But still a pretty good show, and Rachel Nichols is an involving lead.
  • Men At Work: Thought I’d give it a try again since Alex Breckenridge was in last week’s episode, but they gave her one funny line, and the rest of the show was as desperately unfunny as the previous episodes I saw.
  • Parents: I must remember that although Sky Atlantic is getting better, Sky 1 is merely trying to get better. Despite the presence of Sally Phillips and Tom Conti, this is a really poor sitcom about Phillips getting fired from her job and being forced to move herself and her family back in with her parents. Couldn’t even survive one episode, although Phillips is as excellent as always and it did have a few decent touches.
  • The Newsroom: Dear God, what is up Sorkin’s writing of female characters. Quite a poor episode, too, that had me yawning for most of it, and it comes to something that Olivia Munn was actually the least annoying actress on the show (Emily Mortimer and Alison Pill beating her on that score). I’m hoping last night’s episode was better
  • Line of Duty: Episode two was marginally less ludicrous than episode one, but most of the flaws are the same, particularly the lead’s lack of charisma. But it did have a very interesting cliffhanger, so I’ll be sticking around for episode three.
  • Romanzo Criminale: Sky Arts is currently repeating what is supposedly Italy’s finest TV show. This is a very low bar indeed, apparently, because this tale of the Mafia in the Rome of the 70s was so laughably ridiculous, I switched off after 10 minutes. I think there’s an intended level of humour to it, but it was just plain daft.
  • Royal Pains: Marginally improving, but the departure of Jill Flint in a typically unresolved, undramatic way signalled a sharp downturn in quality for the last episode.
  • Prisoners of War: It’s interesting to see what elements of this were retained for Homeland, since they are both similar and different. No terrorist plot and no real Carrie character for the original, but still enough elements retained by the remake that you can still see how much the remake owes to its originator.
  • Alan Partridge: The two new Sky Atlantic episodes both contained a good number of funny moments, but I didn’t think the episodes as great as everyone else seems to. But a good deal funnier than Parents.
  • Coming Here Soon: BBC3 does investigative reporting. Give me strength. Just horrendous. Like a lot of BBC3 shows, this has a good concept at its core – here, it’s let’s go and talk to the people on the ground about how the economic crisis is affecting real people in different countries – and then in an attempt to get young people to watch it, puts a suitable young person with no training or perceivable talent beyond an ability to talk to other people in the role of reporter. Here we had Stacey Dooley tackling Greece – someone who thinks the Parthenon is the Akropolips (sic) and who “totally, totally gets” the situation. While she had a certain gumption and the show did manage to speak to some useful spokespeople, it was so utterly bereft of any ability to ask any probing questions of those it had concluded had done Greek society wrong, that you might as well have sent a tape recorder instead – and then ignored it and simply passed judgement anyway. As a sample, in an interview with a Greek politician who said there were basically two ways to resolve the crisis – a bad way and a very bad way and the politicians had had to go for the first option, all Dooley could do was say after the interview was over “I don’t understand how people can do this.” What option would she have picked or does she disagree with the fundamentals of the politician’s premise? Who knows. It’s just A Bad Thing and politicians should only do Good Things using their special magic powers. Judging by the BBC3 blog on the subject, I’m not the only one who thought it was a bit of a waste of time.
  • Blackout: No, not the SyFy gameshow but BBC1 trying to do noir with Christopher Ecceleston (currently appearing as quite a poor Creon in Antigone at the National at the moment. Sigh) and apparently that means renting out an old copy of Dark City. Possibly a good script in there, although given that the way to indicate Ecclescake is an alcoholic is to have him with a drink in his hand at all times and having is wife comment on it so not the subtlest of scripts if it is, but the direction is so effected and stupid, that it’s impossible to pay any attention to its possible saving graces.

And in movies:

  • The Ghost: Essentially, one of the least thrilling thrillers ever, with Ewan McGregor as a ghost-writer hired to edit the memoirs of Pierce Brosnan’s Blair-like former PM, following the demise of the previous ghost-writer in suspicious circumstances. Sometimes funny, with one good twist, but that’s about it.

  • Drive: Starring that Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, who are both so hot right now, this is a La Samourai-esque thriller about a taciturn getaway driver who’s empty existence is turned upside down by a waitress he meets and her ex-husband. Surprisingly little driving but a whole lot of ultra-violence, it’s a beautifully shot and intelligent thriller with a great cast that includes Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman. Not to everyone’s taste, but if you can stomach a little blood and do look the occasional tense car chase, this is one movie that is very definitely worth watching. Incidentally, it’s free on Netflix – yes a decent recent movie on Netflix: how extraordinary. The trailer does give away almost all of the movie, mind.

Still to watch: Mesrine – Killer Instinct, starring the always reliable Vincent Cassel, in a French gangster mini-series that has already aired on FX but is now on BBC4. Anyone seen it? Also on the Sky box is the latest Ken Branagh Wallander and Sinbad, which looks fun and has that nice Naveen Andrews from Lost as a baddie.

“What did you watch this week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?