Bad Teacher
(19.04.13) - After being dumped by her rich fiancée a foul mouthed, attitude filled and lazy teacher finds her way back into mainstream eduction with an unrivalled lethargy. Determined to beg, steal or borrow enough money to pay for a breast enlargement to help her win the heart of a sensitive (and rich) substitute teacher, she discovers that the teacher who has the class with the highest test results wins a large cash sum. Embarking on a plot to win the prize, she steals the test papers and finds herself at the receiving end of the obsessive rivalry of one of her fellow teachers. This film was just plain awful. Billed as a comedy, it seems to try to find it's humour in asking "girl next door", Cameron Diaz, say "my tits" and "fuck" a lot. Unfunny, convoluted cliché and embarrassing are just some of the words you could use to describe this dire misfire. You have to genuinely wonder why Cameron Diaz, and in particular Justin Timberlake, would bother with being involved in this utter pile of rubbish. This completely laugh free 90 minutes had virtually no redeeming features whatsoever.
Spartacus Vengance
(19.04.13) - Following on from the events of Blood and Sand, Spartacus and his band of freed slaves hide out in the shadow of Vesuvius, taking shelter in an abandoned temple. As the troops from Rome are dispatched to prevent Spartacus from causing any more damage and upheaval Spartacus is caught between obtaining revenge on the man who led to the death of his wife and keeping his growing army from imploding. This second series of Spartacus, one of my viewing highlights of last year, was enjoyable watching, but unfortunately did not quite reach the dizzying heights of the first series. Liam Mycintire does a good job of filling the sandals of the late Andy Whitfield and appears unsteady in the first few episodes, but he soon finds his feet. The violence in this series was stepped up considerably perhaps owing to the bigger budget and the return of various characters from past series proves an interesting twist. This series was more political than the other two, with the backstabbing and social climbing taking more of a prominent role in the story. The thing that was missing was that in the first series, there was always a gladiator battle at the end of each episode, but not in this one. That said, there is still some excellent action, with two highlights being the assault on the arena itself and the final episode. It concludes with a slightly downbeat ending, leaving it open for the third and final series, and despite not being as good as the first series, it was still a great 10 hours of television.
Happy Endings - Season 2
(19.04.13) - Yet more gentle comedy from the hit US sitcom revolving around six friends living in Chigaco. Laid back Brad and obsessive control freak Jane are happily married. Max is a freeloading gay man who takes no responsibility for himself or others whatsoever. Despite Alex leaving Dave at the alter, they are now firm friends and Penny is still looking for love, but failing miserably. Over 22 episodes, the gang fight, laugh, cry and find and loose love together. The series remains great fun, with it's writing improving throughout the series and the witty one liners becoming increasingly clever. The series finds it's strength in it's subtlety, avoiding the obvious belly laughs and thankfully free of an imposed laughter track to tell the audience when a joke has been made. One of the better quality US sitcoms and thoroughly enjoyable and undemanding television.
Olympus Has Fallen
(14.04.13) - Following the death of the President's wife in a car accident, a CIA agent finds himself stuck behind a desk. Until, that is, the White House is attacked by a group of Korean terrorists. With the President trapped in the bunker in the basement of the White House, the building itself decimated by bombs and gunfire and the CIA almost wiped out, it it left to the pen pusher to step back into action and infiltrate the occupied building to rescue the President and his son. This film was a genuine guilty pleasure. It was a real, rip-roaring, over the top action flick, with some excellent set pieces, great action (the initial (sustained) assault on the White House being a particular highlight) and decent fight scenes. There are fantastic gun battles, plenty of blood and guts and corny one liners. In many ways, it was reminiscent of the Jerry Bruckheimer films of the 90's, in so far as loud, spectacular and very slightly tongue in cheek. Gerrard Butler is great in his role as the disgraced CIA agent and Morgan Freeman effortlessly sleepwalks his way through his role as a the Speaker of the House (and acting President). There is nothing new in this film, there are clichés aplenty (the slow motion shot of the bullet ridden Stars and Stripes falling from the roof of the White House is a particularly corny one) and there are some one liners which make you groan. But in all of the lies the fun of the piece. It is just complete, no brainer, action packed entertainment and one of my film highlights of the year to date. Put your brain into neutral and enjoy this rip roaring action film.
Contraband
(12.04.13) - A former smuggler, Chris Farraday, now living a quiet, respectable life becomes embroiled with smuggling again when his brother in law finds himself in debt to a local crime lord. Trying to straighten out the mess, Farraday has to head to Panama to pick up some counterfeit money. But he discovers that the counterfeit money is not what it should be. However, Farraday's brother in law steals the counterfeit money and uses it to buy cocaine to smuggle back instead. Farraday now has to save himself as a result of the stolen money and get him, his brother in law and the cocaine back safely to avoid his family being killed. This was a run of the mill thriller. It was nothing special in terms of plot, action or originality and was clearly aimed squarely at he US market. The leads were all good in their roles, with no one particularly standing out in terms of either a good or bad performance. The story was engaging enough, but this amounted to nothing more than an average crime thriller with nothing to raise it above the standard fare of the genre. There was an excessive amount of swearing in it, which was wholly unnecessary (I'm no prude, but even I found it too much) and overall, the film can be summarised as "it's not great, it's not terrible". Watchable, but ultimately forgettable.
The Amazing Spiderman
(12.04.13) - Peter Parker is your average teenage boy, who finds himself in possession of super human powers after being bitten by a spider whilst at a genetics laboratory which is working on gene splicing of animals and humans to cure illness. His heightened sense of danger, super quick speed and strength are developed and following the murder of his uncle in a botched convenience store robbery, Parker uses his new found skills to track down the thug responsible. But the Doctor in charge of the gene splicing project (and former research partner of Parker's late father) successfully completes his work with Parker's help and in an attempt to regrow his missing arm, he mutates into a giant lizard which goes on the rampage. With the police launching a manhunt for both the lizard and Spiderman, the race is on for Parker to stop the Lizard and keep his own identity secret. This reboot of the long-standing franchise was a good film. It fared better in terms of the special effects and was an improvement on the recent Sam Rami version. The performances were all good and the story was your typical superhero fare. It was action packed, fast paced and very enjoyable, but the only thing that let it down slightly was that it was yet another origin film, which effectively went back to the very beginning of the Spiderman story. Whilst I note that this is a reboot, it has to be said that the majority of people know the back story, and so the whole thing had a feel of "seen it all before", simply because it was just a slightly rewritten story that suffered from over familiarity. That said, it was a competently handled and very good superhero film and thoroughly enjoyable. Andrew Garfield as the titular hero put in a solid performance and was much better than anticipated. The rest of the cast were all good too and the action scenes certainly made up for the films minor flaw.
Oblivion
(09.04.13) - Following an alien invasion, the Earth is decimated and the remaining population is to be relocated to another plant. Small droids are scavenging what is left of the Earth's resources and a maintenance man, Jack Harper and his partner, are isolated on the dying plant. When a spaceship crashes, the contents found in the wreckage and the subsequent discovery of a small band of underground fighters, cause Jack to re-evaluate everything that he thinks he knows. Starting with the positives, this film was beautifully filmed. The visuals were stunning and the whole thing was a visual treat. The soundtrack and score was also excellent. So therefore, on an aesthetic level, this film was great. But that is where the praise ends. Tom Cruise played his usual character and did so competently and with his usual charisma. Morgan Freemen was totally wasted and underused in his role as the underground leader. The story was slow moving, fairly uneventful and pretty dull. by the time that some action kicked off in the last 25 mins, you quite literally couldn't care less about any of the characters.I kept looking at my watch (perhaps every 10 or 15 minutes, which is not a good sign). What made it worse was the fact that you could literally sit and tick off a huge number of sci-fi films which had been ripped off, copied, referenced or referred to. Alien, Independence Day, Star Wars, Lost In Space, 2001, The Matrix and an almost endless list of other films were easily identifiable in either story, concept, direction or incident. Some may say that it was a knowing nod and tribute to the films. To me, the whole thing was lazy, cliché tired and unoriginal. But at least this gave you something to do in terms of playing "spot the film" whilst the story plodded on to it's ridiculous and clichéd "seen it all before" ending. This was one of the worst films I have sat through so far this year. It is a shame when something so beautiful to look at and listen to is just so dull you can't wait for it to be over.
Dredd
(07.04.13) - In the near future, Mega City One is a huge city where crime is rife and the police have been replaced by Judges, a band of police, judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one. Whilst responding to a triple homicide, Judge Dredd, accompanied by a rookie Judge who is on an assessment assignment, find themselves trapped in a huge tower block, hunted by the gangs that reside in there and who are ruled by a gang leader who is ruthless in protecting herself and her narcotics production factory hidden with the block. With the odds stacked against them, and running out of ammunition, Dredd and his rookie must fight to survive. This film was a great little action movie. Throwing off the shackles of the association of the name with the pretty dire Sylvester Stallone version, this was more of a cross between The Raid and Robocop, with some nice action filled set pieces, a deadpan delivery of Dredd by Keith Urban and some violent and graphic scenes. This was a cut above your average sci fi. Plenty of explosions, shooting and fight scenes, nice special effects, an interesting use of colour and slow motion and a fairly decent, if predictable, storyline. Overall, a very enjoyable experience and great, fun popcorn film. Hopefully, we will not have to wait too long for a second film.
Acorn Antiques - The Musical
(05.04.13) - Filmed live, this play tells a story of two halves. The first act is a play of a behind the scenes look at an amateur dramatics group putting on a play based on the Acorn Antiques soap opera, with some fading star diva behaviour and an overzealous producer who is determined to "modernise" the play. But all of the cast want to do nothing more than put on a full tap dancing spectacular. The Second half is the play itself, back to basics, of Acorn Antiques involving a story about the take over of Manchesterford High Street by faceless corporations, a story of lost love, a third sister who was given away ("it's like Blood Brothers, but more fun and not as long") and a missing will leading to a secret fortune. Mrs Overall, Babs and the rest of the cast sing, dance and tap their way through solving the mystery of the missing money in their attempts to save the shop. This really was a play of two halves. The first half was terrible. It was just dull, shouty, unfunny and drawn out. There were few laughs to have but even a couple of decent musical numbers couldn't save this hour long mess. There were a few nods to other shows, such as Chicago and in particular Les Mis (this show was directed by Sir Trevor Nunn, who was clearly poking fun at himself) but I have to say that I will certainly skip this Act next time I watch it. The second half was much better and was reflective of the show I saw at the theatre a couple of weeks ago. It was a somewhat "condensed version" of the show I saw, with the songs coming thick, fast and almost consistently. The whole thing felt much more fast paced and bounced along nicely, without every really dragging at all. The plot was daft. but then it was meant to be. The jokes were still funny and the musical numbers were great. Star of the show was Julie Walters, playing the elderly Mrs Overall. Her performance was nothing short of genius and you are reminded of just what a good actress she really is. Watching the extra's, it shows Victoria Wood playing the same part, and she really is not a patch on Walters. I thoroughly enjoyed the second half and would happily sit through it again. It is just a shame I had to sit through the first hour!