February 2012
6 posts
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The Week In TV 19/02/2012
30 Rock, Season 6, Episode 6: The Tuxedo Begins
A mostly fine episode of 30 Rock, albeit one that leans too heavily on an extended Dark Knight gag that comes several years too late. When Jack is mugged by a seemingly respectful man, his gripes about New York becoming a cesspool of crime and decrepitude dovetails with Liz’s own grumbles that nobody follows the rules anymore. As Jack...
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Martha Marcy May Marlene (2012)
We first meet Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) laying the table for dinner at a seemingly benign rural commune, but the heavy way in which she thumps the plates down suggests that there’s something darker underneath the scenes of serene communal slumber and back-to-basics manual labour. Fleeing the commune for what one would assume to be safe haven in her sister Lucy’s fancy lakeside house in upstate...
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The Week In TV 12/02/2012
30 Rock, Season 6, Episode 6: Hey Baby, What’s Wrong?
A curiously over-long episode that, one suspects, might have been a lot funnier if it was cut back to its regular half hour format. 30 Rock has always been suspicious of Valentine’s Day sentiment, but this episode veered a little too close to misanthropy for comfort, especially on a show that, in its prime, always celebrated...
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The Week In TV 05/02/2012
30 Rock, Season 5, Episode 5: Today You Are A Man
After four episodes that seemed like a solid return to form, this week’s 30 Rock was a little more ho-hum. In a neat mirror to Alec Baldwin’s contract negotiations offset, Liz and Jack enter into a negotiation-off, with Liz learning from an old tome written by Jack himself back in the 80s about how to overcome your opponent. And whilst Liz is...
January 2012
11 posts
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Shame (2012)
Steve McQueen’s last film, Hunger, about IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, was a rigorously controlled, unjudgemental piece of filmmaking; technically virtuosic and riveting, but somewhat impenetrable emotionally. It served to announce the arrival not only of a singular new voice in British cinema, but also proved the crossover vehicle for Michael Fassbender, with whom McQueen again teams up with...
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The Week In TV 29/01/2012
30 Rock, Season 6, Episodes 3-4: Idiots Are People Three and The Ballad of Kenneth Parcell
Is it too soon to suggest that 30 Rock’s sixth season has more life in it than the past two seasons combined? Probably, and it’s not like this double-header didn’t have its problems, but I’m finding myself looking forward to 30 Rock more than I have for some time. ”Idiots...
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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)
Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s (Let The Right One In) adaptation of John Le Carré’s spy novel is a murky but rigorous entry in the genre. If Jason Bourne represented a sleeker, bleaker take on Bond, then George Smiley is Bourne’s even bleaker cousin. Played out in shabby offices filled with cigarette smoke, and grey eastern European locales, Tinker Tailor would be dreary were it not so...
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The Week In TV 22/01/2012
30 Rock, Season 6, Episode 2: Idiots Are People Two
After repeatedly voicing my disappointment at the dip in quality 30 Rock took during its fourth and fifth seasons, I’ve enjoyed the first two episodes of its new season more than anything the show has aired in quite some time. Taking as its basis Tracy Morgan’s real-life homophobic rants, we see Tracy Jordan give a watered-down...
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The Week In TV 15/01/2012
30 Rock, Season 6, Episode 1: Dance Like Nobody’s Watching
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think 30 Rock has declined rapidly in quality since its fourth season, too often reducing its characters to one-note stereotypes and failing to push the format in the same way as something like Community does on a weekly basis, but the sixth season opener was something of a return to form. ...
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X-Men: First Class (2011)
After the disastrously middle-of-the-road third entry in the franchise, an origin story actually seemed like a good idea for X-Men, even in a movie landscape populated by them. Matthew Vaughn’s film takes us back to World War II where, as a child, Magneto exhibits his first surge of magnetic power as Nazi General Kevin Bacon (overegging it) kills his mother. Years later, Magneto (now played by...
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Moneyball (2011)
Sports movies tend to follow a similar template: triumph over adversity, the little guy succeeding over the big man. And whilst Moneyball contains elements of this, it’s also a robust film in its own right, spearheaded by a marvellous performance from Brad Pitt. He plays Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, a team at the bottom of the league whose best players are...
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My Week With Marilyn (2011)
Biopics are a hard genre to nail. Try to squeeze too much in, and you risk thinning out the story of whatever cultural icon you’re attempting to recreate. Far better, surely, to focus on a single moment in history, an approach that worked well for films such as Elizabeth and Hilary and Jackie, both of which achieved potency through their approach to very specific moments in their subject’s...
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The Best of 2011 - Film
Best Film:
1) Margaret
One of the year’s real surprises, finally released several years after filming wrapped in 2007. Kenneth Lonergan’s film concerns a teenager (Anna Paquin giving a career-best performance) who becomes involved in a terrible accident, the ramifications of which draw in an increasing cast of hurt, wounded individuals. One of the best post-9/11 films ever made, it...
December 2011
8 posts
14 tags
Best of the Year - TV
Best Show:
1) Friday Night Lights
One of the all time great TV shows that, by and large, nobody is even aware of here in the UK. Friday Night Lights finished its final year in 2011. Whilst it’s had its low points (the ratings-baiting murder plotline in Season 2 springs to mind…), no show in recent memory has delivered such uniform excellence, and the show’s last season was no...
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Margaret (2011)
Margaret’s troubled production history, during which director Kenneth Lonergan and Fox were unable to agree on a final cut of the film, and a limited release in both the UK and US, would suggest that there’s nothing worth seeing here. Instead, Lonergan’s film feels fully formed in its messiness, an almost-masterpiece of anger, grief and heartache. Anna Paquin is a revelation as Lisa, the...
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The Week In TV 12/12/2011
Community, Season 3, Episode 10: Regional Holiday Music
If there’s one show that can pull off a parody of Glee, then it’s Community. Not least because Community has always gazed open-mouthed in horror at the success of the entertainment behemoth, waiting quietly as the show first devoured, regurgitated and then devoured itself again. I’m a fan of Glee, or at least I think it’s capable of...
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50 / 50 (2011)
Three hanky weepies aren’t really designed for men, which is why Will Reisner’s semi-autobiographical cancer comedy feels unusual. When Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, his best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) encourages him not to worry, but to use his terminal diagnosis as a pick-up line instead. 50/50 takes some time to really dig beneath the surface of its...
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The Week In TV 04/12/2011
Community, Season 3, Episode 9: Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism
If there’s one thing Community has taught us, it’s that it’s okay to re-visit old TV tropes if you can do them in ways that illuminate character and/or are very funny. This week, Community re-visited two such tropes, one in which two of its characters discovered that they knew each other as children (in an...
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Beginners (2011)
Sometimes a film will come at you sideways and hit you when you least expect it. Beginners is one of those films. Starting with a meet-cute reminiscent of Miranda July or Wes Anderson, Mike Mills’ story possesses a strength and individuality entirely its own. Ewan McGregor plays Oliver, a graphic artist who, in two separate timelines, is helping his father, Hal (Christopher Plummer),...
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The Help (2011)
Adapted from Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel, Tate Taylor’s film feels in every way like 90s Oscar bait. The book’s whitewashed vision of racism in 60s Mississippi has been carried over to the big screen, but so have its undeniably big-hearted (if naive) message of acceptance and strong characters that we care about. Emma Stone plays Skeeter, a recent university graduate...
November 2011
10 posts
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The Week In TV 27/11/2011
The Good Wife, Season 3, Episode 9: Whisky Tango Foxtrot
One of the many impressive things about The Good Wife is that it’s always known how to re-use its guest stars without it seeming like the show has a paucity of ideas. And so we saw a return to military court, which proved so amusingly infuriating back in Season 1. This time, a young woman has been accused of ignoring orders from...
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Snowtown (2011)
A fairly remarkable, chilling true crime drama concerning notorious Australian serial killer John Bunting, Snowtown begins as it means to go on. Opening in a shabby neighbourhood near Adelaide, a single mother leaves her children, including sixteen year-old Jamie, alone with her boyfriend. Little does she know, but this same boyfriend has been taking naked photographs of her boys, and when she...
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The Week In TV 20/11/2011
Community, Season 3, Episode 8: Documentary Filmmaking: Redux
After the sad news that Community would be going on hiatus, and questions hovering over its cancellation, the show pulled out an episode that was every bit as alienating to newcomers as one would expect from such a singular show. Dean Pelton is tasked with creating a new commercial for Greendale, for which he ropes in Jeff’s inspired...
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Sleeping Beauty (2011)
Endorsed by Jane Campion, novelist Julia Leigh’s directorial debut actually has more in common with Michael Haneke than the director of The Piano. Emily Browning plays Lucy, a college student who also works as a high-end escort, and it’s this line of work that leads her first into employment for a bizarre supper club and then into a more rarefied form of prostitution. Voluntarily drugged so...
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The Week In TV 14/11/2011
Community, Season 3, Episode 7: Studies in Modern Movement
Another warmly enjoyable episode of Community this week, which again proves that it’s able to take traditional sitcom traditions and spin something new out of them. In this particular case, it was moving house, as Annie finally moves out of her scummy apartment to live with Troy and Abed, even as Britta warns her that everything she...
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Weekend (Andrew Haigh, 2011)
Championed as one of the absolute high points of what has amounted to a resurgence of British cinema in 2011, Weekend has met with rapturous praise both here and on the other side of the Atlantic. On paper, it’s a thin story – boy meets boy and they share an illuminating forty-eight hours together – but writer/director Andrew Haigh finds new subtleties to mine in this strikingly original gay...
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The Week In TV 06/11/2011
Community, Season 3, Episode 6: Advanced Gay
Following two slightly more left-of-the-middle episodes, “Advanced Gay” was very much “classic” Community. Pierce becomes an unlikely gay icon when a famous transsexual releases a hit song about Hawthorne’s Moist Towelettes. Pierce is quick to cash in on his new fanbase with the release of “Pride Wipes” and...
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October 2011
15 posts
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The Week In TV 31/10/2011
Community, Season 3, Episode 5: Horror Fiction In Seven Spooky Steps
It would be nigh-on impossible to top the last episode of Community, but if this week’s Halloween special wasn’t quite as impressive as “Remedial Chaos Theory” (and suffered for being fairly similar in format), it was still a pretty solid seasonal treat. It starts with Britta being convinced that someone in the group has...
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Mini Reviews
Archipelago (2011)
British director Joanna Hogg returns to the upper-middle-classes for her second film, Archipelago, set on a holiday home in the Scilly Isles. Patricia (Kate Fahy) welcomes her two grown-up children, Edward and Cynthia (Tom Hiddleston and Lydia Leonard) for an autumnal vacation before Edward is set to travel to Africa to raise awareness about sexual health. As in her previous...
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The Week In TV 23/10/2011
The Good Wife, Season 3, Episode 4: Feeding The Rat
The Good Wife has always excelled at office politics, and if this week’s case-of-the-week wasn’t that exciting, everything going on behind the scenes more than made up for it. The episode opens with the quietly pathetic Travis entering a convenience store to buy his son a birthday present, only to witness a hold-up in which the cashier is...
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WatchThe best thing Justin Timberlake ever did was this section from Southland Tales.
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The Week In TV 16/10/2011
Community, Season 3, Episode 2: Remedial Chaos Theory
This was easily one of the best episodes of Community in some time, and may well join the pantheon of all-time greats like “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” and “Modern Warfare.” Troy and Abed are hosting a housewarming party, which allows for the expected gags about their pop culture-heavy lives (complete with Raiders of the Lost Ark diorama)...
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Mini Reviews
Thor (2011)
Another superhero origin story shoehorned into the summer schedule to help pave the way for Joss Whedon’s impossibly-hyped Avengers movie, Thor is a thudding disappointment as an introduction into the world of one of Marvel’s less well-known franchises. In an overlong, stultifying prologue, Thor (Chris Hemsworth, amusingly self-serious and in search of a better film) is banished...
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The Week In TV 10/10/2011
American Horror Story, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot
This is not just one of the worst pilots of the season, it might just be one of the worst episodes of a TV show I’ve ever seen. American Horror Story comes up with a genuinely solid premise and then proceeds to waste it so entirely that I’m at a loss as to why anyone would tune into episode two, if only out of morbid curiosity. Ben (Dylan...
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The Week In TV 02/10/2011
Community, Season 3, Episode 2: Geography of Global Conflict
After a strangely outside of the box-type episode last week, “Geography of Global Conflict” was pretty much classic Community. Not ground-breaking, perhaps, but a lot of fun. In the A-plot, Annie meets Annie Kim, a more driven, ambitious and tightly-wound version of herself, and must face off against her in a model UN contest. The...