the m0vie blog

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – The Hub (Review)

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Darren

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has burnt through a lot of goodwill at this point. Offering a television spin-off from one of the most popular and successful movie franchises of the last decade (if not all time) should be easy; giving the show to long-time collaborators of Joss Whedon should only increase the series’ likelihood of success. The show has the budget and the scope to offer an exciting slice of pulpy comic book entertainment, but all the episodes so far have been incredibly generic, and could easily have been lifted from shows like The X-Files or Fringe.

At least The Hub offers us a sense that the writers are finally pitching shows to the niche filled by Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s a story about a massive multi-national spy organisation with dark secrets and impossible technology, which places it firmly in the show’s wheelhouse. There are a lot of problems, mostly with finding the right tone, but it seems like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is at least finally finding its own voice. It’s not a strong or distinct voice yet, but there’s still a faint sliver of hope.

Plane sailing…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: brian michael bendis, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Coulson, Fitz, Hub, Jasper Sitwell, Joke, joss whedon, Phil Coulson, S.H.I.E.L.D, Skye, Ultimates, Victoria Hand, Ward | 1 Comment »

Doctor Who: Vengeance on Varos (Review)

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the longest-running science-fiction show in the world, I’ll be taking weekly looks at some of my own personal favourite stories and arcs, from the old and new series, with a view to encapsulating the sublime, the clever and the fiendishly odd of the BBC’s Doctor Who.

Vengeance on Varos originally aired in 1985.

It’s a question of re-imprinting their identities, of establishing again who they are.

– Colin Baker spots the problems with the Colin Baker era

Vengeance on Varos is a serious contender for the best Colin Baker Doctor Who story. Not that there’s too much competition. It’s either this or Revelation of the Daleks. I’m also reasonably fond of The Two Doctors, but I’ll accept that I’m in the minority on that one. Colin Baker’s first season is an absolute mess. It has a scattering of half-decent ideas (paired with some atrocious ones, to be fair) executed in a rather slapdash manner.

The season is obsessed with violence and politics and power and the Doctor’s strange ability to accrue large body counts while nominally remaining a pacifist. Like the last year of Peter Davison’s tenure, there’s a sense that the show doesn’t really like its protagonist. Attack of the Cybermen seems willing to trade him for a murderous sociopath. Still, there’s the nugget of an interesting idea there; it’s telling that the revived series would explore some of these ideas in a more insightful and intelligent manner.

However, Vengeance on Varos and Revelation of the Daleks stand apart from the rest of the season because they explore these issues with nuance and sophistication. Vengeance on Varos is wicked social satire that still stings today, an indictment of reality television that was broadcast almost two decades before the format took over television.

It’s okay, the audience seems to actually like this one…

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: arts, Bad Wolf, bbc, Caves of Androzani, Colin Baker, Dalek, doctor, DoctorWho, fiction, literature, Michael Grade, Online Writing, Peter Davison, russell t. davies, science fiction, Sil, VARO, Varos, Vengeance, Vengeance on Varos, Year of the Sex Olympics | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: Blink (Review)

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Darren

Blink originally aired in 2007.

But listen, your life could depend on this. Don’t blink. Don’t even blink. Blink and you’re dead.

– the Doctor

Like Love and Monsters, Blink is a “Doctor-lite” episode, an effective time- and money-saving measure from the show’s production staff, built around filming an episode that requires the minimal involvement from the lead actors. Also like Love and Monsters, Blink is an episode of Doctor Who that is about Doctor Who.

Granted, Steven Moffat’s script doesn’t engage with fandom as directly as Russell T. Davies did. Here, the fans trying to find their own meaning in the show are the anonymous net-izens on forums and fan sites, rather than a friendly group of eccentric individuals enriched by contact with one another.

While Love and Monsters is about how Doctor Who fandom tends to serve to unite diverse people beyond an interest in Doctor Who itself, forming bonds that become more significant and important than the interest in the show, Blink is very much a story about trying to make sense of the show itself.

Rocking the boat…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: arts, bbc, blink, doctor, Doctor Who fandom, DoctorWho, DVD, Easter, fiction, Moffat, Online Writing, russell t. davies, Sally Sparrow, science fiction, steven moffat, Weeping Angel | 4 Comments »

Doctor Who: Carnival of Monsters (Review)

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Darren

Carnival of Monsters originally aired in 1973.

Roll up and see the monster show! A carnival of monsters, all living in their natural habitat, wild in this little box of mine. A miracle of intragalactic technology! Roll up! Roll up! Roll–

– Vorg welcomes us to the new world

There’s a valid argument to be made that Carnival of Monsters is the heart of the show’s tenth anniversary celebrations. Sure, it lacks the bombast of recruiting William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton to guest star in The Three Doctors, but it’s very much an affectionate love letter to the show and a bold statement of purpose going forward. With the Time Lord’s ending the Doctor’s exile in The Three Doctors, the whole universe is at his doorstep.

Carnival of Monsters, then, is really the point at which a specific era of Doctor Who can be said to begin. While the First and Second Doctors had journeyed to other worlds and times, they had done so in black-and-white. The whole point of exiling the Doctor to Earth way back in Spearhead from Space was so that the shift to colour wouldn’t destroy the suspension of disbelief. The hope was that grounding the series might make it possible to maintain suspension of disbelief in bright colour.

Here there be monsters…

While the Third Doctor has ventured to other worlds before (Colony in Space, Curse of Peladon, The Mutants), this is the point in the show where Doctor Who becomes the full-colour adventures of a man traveling through space and time in a blue box. This is the point at which cardboard sets and dodgy alien design become more than just occasional quirks – they become an expected part of the formula.

In a way, Carnival of Monsters is just as much a bold statement of purpose as Spearhead from Space was.

In the palm of his hands…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: arts, bbc, Carnival of Monsters, Dalek, doctor, doctor who, Doctor Who Live, DoctorWho, fiction, Frontier in Space, halloween, Jo Grant, Jon Pertwee, Monster Carnival, Online Writing, patrick troughton, science fiction, second doctor, tardis, Three Doctors, VORG | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Don Jon

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Darren

Don Jon is a confident directorial debut from actor and write Joseph Gordon Levitt. Levitt himself stars as the eponymous “Don”, a stereotypically macho young man from New Jersey, who splits his time between nightclubs, churches, the gym, his car and his pornography addiction. Written and directed by Levitt, Don Jon has a charming lightness that allows the movie to play with some pretty heavy subject matter. (After all, the last major film to explore sex addiction was Shame, which was as brilliant as it was harrowing.)

Don Jon is perhaps the sweetest movie ever made about porn addiction. A superb demonstration of Levitt’s already enviable talents, and a confident and slick feature film directorial debut.

Toast of the town…

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: anne hathaway, Channing Tatum, Cuba Gooding, Don Jon, DonJon, Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Julianne Moore, Levitt, List of directorial debuts, New Jersey, pornography, scarlett johansson, Sexual addiction | 7 Comments »

Doctor Who: Love and Monsters (Review)

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Darren

Love and Monsters originally aired in 2006.

Someone wants a word with you.

You upset my mum.

Great big absorbing creature from outer space, and you’re having a go at me?

No one upsets my mum.

– the Doctor, Rose and Elton get their priorities straight

Love and Monsters remains one of the most divisive stories of the Davies era, if not the revival in general. It’s the show’s first “Doctor-lite” episode, a production featuring as little of the lead actor in possible in order to make the season’s arduous production schedule just a little bit easier. The Christmas Invasion had added another episode to the mix, and so the idea was that Love and Monsters could be shot during the production block of The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit in order to allow for a standard length season without increasing an already impressive workload for the leads.

As such, it’s easy to imagine that the “Doctor-lite” episodes could be throw-away adventures, episodes chopped together to meet the quota of stories for a given season – churn them out and focus the attention on to the “bigger” and “more important” adventures. Instead, the “Doctor-lite” episodes have proven to be some of the most experimental and creative episodes of the entire Davies era. While critical and fan opinion remains divided on Love and Monsters, the subsequent “Doctor-and-companion-lite” episodes – like Blink, Midnight and Turn Left – are counted among the best of their respective seasons.

Love and Monsters is a show about Doctor Who. More specifically, it’s about Doctor Who fandom, and a romantic ode to the importance that the show can have in some people’s lives.

Reach out and touch faith…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: art, arts, bbc, Billie Piper, Dalek, Davies, doctor, DoctorWho, Electric Light Orchestra, Elton, fiction, Ian Levine, Jeff Lynne, List of Disney's The Little Mermaid characters, love, Marc Warren, monsters, Mr. Blue Sky, RoseTyler, Roy Wood, russell t. davies, science fiction, spain, Technology, Transportation, Ursula | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Counsellor

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Darren

There are two ways of looking at The Counsellor, both handily articulated by the movie itself.

At one point, two characters engage in an abstract conversation about grief. They speak on the phone about what it means to lose something that is irreplaceable, and what that does to a person. They speak in metaphors and lyrical turns of phrase, dancing around the issue at hand. One participant in the conversation recounts the story of Spanish poet Machido, who managed to channel his grief into beautiful and moving poetry. Poetry woven from misery and suffering, beautiful and yet torturous. Much like The Counsellor itself, a story about corruption and consequences and greed and wraith, articulated with thoughtful elegance.

There’s a lot going on under the hood…

At another point, one character regales another with a tale of his strange sexual misadventures. Awkward metaphors are used to describe exactly what went down, as the other character (and the audience) watch on in a state of awkward disbelief. Using surprisingly elegant language – never at a loss for words to describe a truly surreal turn of events – the storyteller crafts a stunning portrait of a bizarre encounter. Trying to make sense of it all, the listener articulates the thought running through the mind of most of the audience. “Why did you feel the need to tell me that?”

The Counsellor straddles both extremes almost recklessly, veering from a sophisticated and thoughtful moral tale into something grotesquely indulgent and almost distractingly oblique. During one conversation, the seductive Malkina asks her lover Renier how he sees things playing out. He can’t help but imagine two contrasting extremes. With just a hint of self-awareness, Malkina point out that there’s a middle that Renier just isn’t seeing.

Deal or no deal?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, brad pitt, cameron diaz, Conversation, cormac mccarthy, Counsellor, Daniel Pemberton, De optimo senatore, javier bardem, Malkina, McCarthy, Mexican, Michael Fassbender, no country for old men, ridley scott, Westray | 7 Comments »

Win! Tickets to a Jameson Cult Film Club Screening of Predator on November 19th!

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Darren

Due to unprecedented demand, the Jameson Cult Film Club is returning to Dublin for an explosive screening of the 1987 classic, PREDATOR, at a secret Dublin location on Tuesday 19th November 2013.

These free events are more than just your typical screening, as characters from the movie, live theatre and special effects timed perfectly with on-screen action help to create an electric atmosphere throughout the movie.

*Warning* – the Predator blends in with its surroundings, taking trophies from the bodies of its victims as it goes along.

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Arnold Schwarzenegger, arts, cult film, dublin, DVD, jameson cult film club, Movies, predator | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (Review)

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Darren

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy originally aired in 1988.

Sometimes I think it’s you that’s crazy, not Deadbeat here.

Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way or another.

– Ace and the Doctor cut to the heart of Doctor Who

It’s very hard to believe that The Greatest Show in the Galaxy aired as the final story of the twenty-fifth season of Doctor Who. Stories like Remembrance of the Daleks and Silver Nemesis were clearly anniversary fodder, celebrating the progress of the show to this point. The Happiness Patrol was a delightfully surreal oddity that has only really been noticed by the general public in recent years, with news breaking in 2010 that Andrew Cartmel had been using Doctor Who to tell politically subversive stories. Which, I suppose, confirms just how few people were watching The Happiness Patrol in 1988.

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is as concerned with the legacy of Doctor Who as Remembrance of the Daleks or Silver Nemesis, but it lacks the nostalgic shine. Instead, it’s a stunningly bitter piece of television that offers a pretty damning indictment of what Doctor Who had become by the late eighties, a critique of selling out and chasing ratings and living in constant fear that the gods of entertainment – the middle-class families so desperately courted and so carefully catered to – might tune out and consign the show to oblivion.

The Doctor welcomes you to The Greatest Show in the Galaxy…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Andrew Cartmel, art, Circus, Clown, Cook, doctor, doctor who, entertainment, Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Happiness Patrol, John Nathan Turner, Juggling, Lelex, Mags, Organizations, Performing Arts, Psychic Circus, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, russell t. davies, Silver Nemesis, star trek | 1 Comment »

Watch! Day of the Doctor Trailer!

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Darren

This being the month of the fiftieth anniversary, we’re going a bit Doctor Who mad here at the m0vie blog. The trailer for the special, The Day of the Doctor, has been released. And you can check it out below. It looks fairly epic. Check back daily over the next few weeks for our latest Doctor Who reviews, both classic and modern.