Thor: The Dark World is a film all about gods but, like its predecessor, it’s at its best when it focuses on the foibles of humanity. The film’s first half is spent primarily on Thor’s plane of Asgard – and somewhere called Svartalfheim (Gesundheit!) – and it’s mostly a slog. There’s some overly-serious exposition about…
The title “Still Positive” is apropos to an episode that restored some optimism towards Homeland. This is an episode that restored a ragged sense of tension without relying on lame narrative trickery. The plotting is still haphazard (most television shows make things up as they go along to some extent, but that’s more evident than…
I guess I’m just going to have to get used to being an Arcade Fire contrarian. Don’t get me wrong, I like the guys. I have a beard and wide-rimmed glasses and I wear skinny jeans, what did you expect? But I always found the smoky neo-Springsteen stylings of Neon Bible just that little bit…
If you’re not already, you should be watching Masters of Sex, the second-best new show of the year (after Hannibal). The show follows the scientific research of Bill Masters (Michael Sheen) and his assistant Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) into human sexuality. Set in the fifties, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Mad Men,…
The opening shots of Y Tu Mamá También stem from the mindsets of its two male teenage protagonists. They’re sex scenes, of course, rushed and frantic; defined by jealousy and uncertainty. But the film – part sex-comedy, part coming-of-age story, part road-movie, part reflection on the class inequities of modern Mexico – has broader ambitions…
You don’t have to look at a calendar to recognise that it’s Halloween: I don’t know about you, but the trickle of horror reviews and features on my WordPress Reader has become a flood over the last week or so. Any regular readers of ccpopculture know that horror is a regular feature here, but I…
Tonight’s episode of Ja’mie: Private School Girl has to shoulder the burden of being a second episode, moving the plot along while ensuring viewers who missed the pilot won’t miss any key details. It does a decent job, but it’s a step down from the premiere, spending a lot of its time laying out what…
Some films are just impossible to evaluate with any kind of objectivity. For me, Toy Story is one of those movies; when that Randy Newman theme kicks in I’m transported back to my youth in a nostalgic rush. Even when trying to view the film with a critical eye, it holds up pretty damn well.…
Ridiculous twist aside, last week’s episode of Homeland at least gave the series an opportunity to return to what it clearly loves best: high-stakes spy shit (even if it as at the expense of realistic consequences for its protagonists). Unfortunately that opportunity was squandered in an episode that’s compromised my already waning faith in the…
Martyrs is a unique horror movie. It dabbles in the tropes and traditions of the torture-porn genre (to adopt a misleading descriptor), but inverts the tone and structure. Instead of establishing characters and gradually accumulating dread, it opens in media res with a pre-pubescent girl fleeing in terror from unexplained imprisonment. Instead of giving the…
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