Benedict Cumberbatch | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: The Imitation Game

Posted on October 8, 2014 by Darren

The Imitation Game is a solid and effective bio-pic elevated by a sharp script from Graham Moore, tight direction from Morten Tyldum and a superb central performance from Benedict Cumberbatch. There are points where the film seems to over-simplify its protagonist, trying to reduce his fascination with computers to a series of Freudian quirks, but the movie is held together by witty dialogue and a mesmerising turn from its lead actor.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: alan turing, Benedict Cumberbatch, bfi, mystery, non-review review, review, second world war, the imitation game, the turing test, turing, world war two | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: 12 Years a Slave

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Darren

12 Years a Slave is a harrowing and moving piece of cinema. The most profound and cutting of the recent studio films to explore slavery in America, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is almost relentless in its probing explorations of the systems an structures that allowed and reinforced that slavery – it’s hard to watch at points, providing a deeply unsettling glimpse at the suffering that man is capable of inflicting upon his fellow man.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: 12 Years a Slave, Benedict Cumberbatch, chiwetel ejiofor, Darkest Africa, John Ridley, Michael Fassbender, Slavery, Solomon, Solomon Northup, steve mcqueen, United States | 7 Comments »

Star Trek: Mirror, Mirror #1 – Fragile Glass (Review)

Posted on October 12, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second season. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

One of the benefits and the curses of tie-in material is the ability to connect the dots – to tie together two parts of continuity separated by time and space, filling in the blanks in some character or plot arc. Often, this feels extraneous at best. In order for the televised stories to work, there must be enough information conveyed effectively to the audience so they can make their own leaps. Trying to plug imaginary and unnecessary holes is seldom satisfying.

On the other hand, there are occasionally gaps that are worth exploring. These are gaps that have been explained on the show, but which are still large enough that creators can fit their own interesting stories between them. The divide between Mirror, Mirror and Crossover is one such gap, as we go from the original Star Trek‘s version of the mirror universe to the very different iteration seen on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Tom DeFalco’s Fragile Glass attempts to sketch in some of the details around this gap. While it’s not entirely satisfying as either a missing link or a story in its own right, it does offer some nice pulpy fun and gets considerable mileage out of the “Spock vs. Kirk” premise.

I am not Spock…

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: Amok Time, Benedict Cumberbatch, deep space nine, games, kirk, Kirk/Spock, Klingon, mirror, science fiction, spock, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: enterprise, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, StarTrek, Sulu, Tom DeFalco, Zachary Quinto | Leave a comment »

Watch! The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug Trailer!

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Darren

The latest trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug has arrived on-line. Check it out below. While I’ll concede that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was over-long and quite padded, I enjoyed it more than most. Part of that is down to Martin Freeman’s charisma, but also in the way that Jackson seems to relish the relatively lower stakes of this story. (Musical dish-cleaning sequence anyone?) I’ll admit that I’m curious to see what Jackson’s second installment holds in store. That said, the trailer does seem to suggest quite a lot of superfluous material – a Legolas romantic subplot? really? – but it also teases Benedict Cumberbatch as a flame-throwing pun-wielding dragon. So it’s safe to say the jury’s still out.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Hobbit, Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, ian mckellen, Martin Freeman, peter jackson, Smaug | Leave a comment »

Watch! UK Trailer for The Fifth Estate!

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Darren

Entertainment One just sent of this latest UK trailer for The Fifth Estate. It is very similar to the trailer we previewed way back in July, running just five seconds shorter. Still, it looks like it should be one of the more interesting features of award’s season, exploring the life and times a personality whose story is still very much on-going. It’ll also be interesting to see how the movie addresses the controversies surround Assange. (And whether it will help cement Benedict Cumberbatch as the kind of actor who can anchor movies like this.)

Anyway, the trailer’s below. The US version is here. It is released in the UK on October 11th.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Assange, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bill Condon, Daniel Brühl, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Fifth Estate, Julian Assange, Wikileaks | Leave a comment »

Watch! The Fifth Estate Trailer!

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Darren

The summer’s barely over, but we’re in Oscar trailer season. Or, more accurately, Benedict Cumberbatch season. Yesterday we had our first look at Twelve Years A Slave. Today, it’s The Fifth Estate, the film looking at Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Cumberbatch is interesting here, with his bleached long hair quite a departure from what we’ve come to expect from the actor, and his Australian accent somewhat warping his recognisable deep voice.

The film itself looks interesting, if only because the material is so recent and so controversial. Given that popular culture has yet to make a judgement on Assange, it’ll be intriguing to see what Bill Condon’s biography offers. The cast does look superb, though.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Assange, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bill Condon, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, dreamworks, Fifth Estate, Julian Assange, Wikileaks | Leave a comment »

Watch! First Twelve Years a Slave Trailer!

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Darren

Shame was one of the best movies of 2012. So it stands to reason that I’m looking forward to the next collaboration between Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender. Twelve Years a Slave looks to be a decidedly larger-scale affair than either of the duo’s past collaborations, based on the epic and heart-wretching true story of Solomon Northup, a man born free and then sold into slavery. The cast is also a lot more impressive, with well-respected character actors (like Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch and Chiwetel Ejiofor) standing alongside Brad Pitt. It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out, even if it does look a bit more like conventional Oscar-bait than Shame or Hunger.

Of course, that could simply be a stylistic decision made when cutting up the trailer, given the success of other slavery-themed epics (Lincoln and Django Unchained) at this year’s Oscars. Either way, UK and Irish audiences won’t know until 24th January 2013.

Check out the trailer below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: 12 Years a Slave, Benedict Cumberbatch, brad pitt, chiwetel ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, paul giamatti, Shame, Solomon Northup, steve mcqueen | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – Operation — Annihilate!

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the release of Star Trek: Into Darkness this month, we’ll be running through the first season of the classic Star Trek all this month. Check back daily to get ready to boldly go. It’s only logical.

How do you follow The City on the Edge of Forever? The previous episode is one of the best-loved episodes of Star Trek ever produced, one of the great science-fiction television episodes of the sixties, and one of the best science-fiction romances ever written. It’s a gigantic and massively influential piece of television, one of the cornerstones of Star Trek and perhaps the best indicator of just how thoughtful and how genuine the franchise can be when it tries. So, what’s next? Where do we go from here? What is the next shot after that last scene of Kirk abandoning the Guardian of Forever on a desolate rock?

It’s always interesting to compare the first season of Star Trek to the first year of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The former can be counted among the very best of the show’s thirty televised seasons, while the latter can be counted among the worst. However, they do have something in common. They both probably should have ended an episode early, with The City on the Edge of Forever and Conspiracy serving as effective caps on each show’s first season, leaving the audience a chance to digest what they had seen.

Unfortunately, neither show ended on anything that could be measured among the strongest show of a given year. The Neutral Zone ended the first season of The Next Generation with a moralising whimper. While Operation — Annihilate! is quite entertaining on its own terms, it doesn’t rank among the best of the season. Still, it’s a solid pulpy science-fiction tale, which might not be the worst thing.

Man of action!

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Benedict Cumberbatch, City on the Edge of Forever, france, gene roddenberry, kirk, Leonard McCoy, Lysergic acid diethylamide, Mark Kurlansky, Mexico, Mexico City, Operation: Annihilate!, paris, Peter Hitchens, Poland, Pont-Saint-Esprit, Return of the Archons, Royal Navy, Social Sciences, spock, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, star trek: the next generation, star wars, Starfleet, United States, Vietnam War | 2 Comments »

Star Trek – Space Seed (Review)

Posted on May 25, 2013 by Darren

Following the commercial success (and lack of critical success) of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Paramount made a conscious decision to side-line Gene Roddenberry. Given that his plans for the sequel involved Spock travelling through time to assassinate Kennedy, we can likely all agree that was probably a good thing. Harve Bennett was tasked with producing the sequel, and took to the task of researching what would become the second Star Trek film. Demonstrating considerable respect for the source material, Bennett locked himself away and screened all three seasons of the show, looking for inspiration.

Apparently he only needed to reach the tail end of the first season, because he had found the basis of his film by the closing credits of Space Seed.

You Khan do it…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Benedict Cumberbatch, Earth, james t. kirk, khan, kirk, Lieutenant, Mister Spock, racism, science fiction, Sexuality in Star Trek, Space Seed, spock, star trek, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, StarTrek, Uhura, William Shatner, Zachary Quinto | 13 Comments »

Star Trek – The Alternative Factor (Review)

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Darren

Well, here we are. The Alternative Factor. We’ve had weak episodes before. I’ll concede that shows like Court Martial and The Menagerie, Part II wouldn’t rank among my favourites of the season. However, there was always just enough there to make them interesting, if not compelling. There were good ideas, clumsily executed. There was something value to be found in watching these episodes. The Alternative Factor lacks those sorts of redemptive values, and it’s the first time on this re-watch I have actually wondered where my fifty minutes went, and lamented the fact that watching The Alternative Factor inched me ever-closer to death.

The Alternative Factor is – I’d argue – the weakest episode of a remarkably strong first season of Star Trek. While some would consider it one of the worst episodes the show ever produced, I’m reluctant to commit to that sort of certainty. After all, we still have the third season to come, and I’m hesitant to rank The Alternative Factor as that much worse than The Turnabout Intruder or The Way to Eden or And the Children Shall Lead or Spock’s Brain. Yep, there’s a lot to look forward to if I ever get around to finishing the third season of the show.

Still, the fact that The Alternative Factor might possibly not be the worst thing to happen to Star Trek in its nearly fifty years of existence is damning with faint praise. But I’m sure the episode will take whatever it can get.