Movies - The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn review

FILM REVIEW 

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: THE SECRET OF THE UNICORN

Dir: Steven Spielberg

Stars: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost

Running Time: 115mins 
  
[A version of this article was first published on Flixist and is being reprinted to coincide with the film's US release.]
 

Tintin may not be particularly well known in the United States, but he is something of a treasure for most people in Europe who ever enjoyed a childhood. The news that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson were mounting a big-budget remake caused considerable consternation that everything special about the character would be drowned in Hollywood gloss. Hergé, the writer and artist of the original albums, had selected Spielberg as the man he believed could do justice to his creation, but that was back in the '80s, when the director was fresh off the back of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. It appeared a dark omen that the Spielberg who finally managed to get Tintin onto the silver screen was coming from the woeful Kingdoms Of The Crystal Skull.

Fortunately, Tintin fans can breathe a sigh of relief. Secret Of The Unicorn is far from a perfect film, but is the best one Spielberg has made in the better part of a decade. The director seems to have been reinvigorated by new possibilities in directing his first animated film and though the motion capture animation can't match the warmth of Hergé's drawings, the Tintin spirit is very much kept alive.

 

Television - Chuck 'Chuck vs The Curse' review

Since my Christmas holidays start on Monday, this will be my last Chuck review until the new year, with tomorrow's tenth instalment of DEAD DROP ending this blog's 2011 (and marking the serial's halfway point) with a bang. If you enjoy spies and action, which should be a given if you are reading this article, check it out.

Enough with the promotion, though. It's a shame not to be able to say better things about this week's Chuck, which turned out to be a mixed bag. It is obvious that showrunners Josh Schwarz and Chris Fedak want to see their series go out on a high - though a few episodes will be missed, my reviews will definitely be back in time for the big farewell, 'Chuck vs The Goodbye', on Jan. 27th - and have been throwing bigger and braver ideas at the screen to ensure that happens. Noble ambition, no doubt, but storytelling has rarely been one of Chuck's many strengths, and even the most sensational of plots can feel flimsy if not handled correctly, as was the case last night.

  

Movies - We Need To Talk About Kevin review

FILM REVIEW

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
Dir: Lynne Ramsey
Stars: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Ashley Gerasimovich

Running Time: 112mins

No-one ever told you parenting would be easy, an old adage suggests, but even fewer said it could literally be murder. Can a child be born evil, or is such an inclination solely a result of their upbringing and surroundings? Lynne Ramsey's adaptation of the Lionel Shriver novel of the same name seeks to offer a thoughtful  representation of every mother's worst case scenario, but ends up delivering something closer to lurid pulp in the Bad Seed vein.

The film's constant use of symbolism punches in the face when it should be whispering in your ear. The recurring motif of the colour red to reflect the guilt suffocating protagonist Eva is particularly obnoxious and deployed at every possible opportunity. It turns what should be a slow-burning dread into an exploitation tagline: 'Can your stomach handle the blood about to spill? Watch as a poor, innocent woman is destroyed by the very thing she sought to love!'

  

Movies - Another Earth review

FILM REVIEW

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.

ANOTHER EARTH
Dir: Mike Cahill
Stars: Brit Marling, William Mapother, Jordan Baker

Running Time: 92mins

Another Earth may be arriving in the UK at the worst possible time - who is looking for a slow-paced, ruminative science fiction drama in the middle of the Christmas rush? - but is definitely worth seeking out should time permit. It's more of a January film, if anything: where the festive season is a time for cherishing the here and now, the new year is when thoughts turn to possibilities new and old, with resolutions made and old habits left behind. Another Earth is highly concerned with such ideas.

The second earth, which inexplicably appears in the sky one night and distracts drunken student Rhoda enough for her to cause a devastating car crash that ends with her in gaol, is not vital to the progression of the narrative, but does give it purpose. The image of it hanging in the morning sky is as beautiful as it is tantalisingly scary for the challenges it offers to the concepts of free will and predestination.

  

Television - Chuck 'Chuck vs The Hack-Off' review

Yesterday, Chuck finished principle photography on the series' final episode. The day before, Community waved a seasonal farewell before embarking on a hiatus of undetermined length. How appropriate that these two fan-favourite programmes should collide at such an opportune moment, in an episode already so concerned with endings. Danny Pudi's cameo took up only a few minutes of screentime - and included one other, completely unexpected but resoundingly excellent, reference to Dan Harmon's series - but the circumstances surrounding it gave a twinge of extra poignancy to what at any other time would have been a throwaway gag.

There is still half a season of Chuck left to go, of course, but seeing Zachary Levi posting a twitter photo of his last day in the Nerd Herd outfit made everything feel that little bit more final. The episode's events thus took on greater dramatic weight than ever, which is admittedly not saying much about a programme that so strongly favours character over storytelling, but was a stick-in-the-throat reminder that once these last episodes have finished, these characters that fans have grown to care about really will be gone forever in all but memory. The glaring absence of Community in the New Year schedule is an ominous reminder of what is to come.

 

Television - Community 'Regional Holiday Music' review / Parks & Recreation 'Citizen Knope' review

COMMUNITY

Now that we're entering the Dark Timeline, when Community goes off-air for an unspecified amount of time, it's a relief that the series managed to go out living up to high expectations that its previous Christmas episodes have set. 'Regional Holiday Music', a Glee-savaging musical, might even have won the series a few more fans for one of its more accessible, but no less incisive, parodies of recent weeks.

Last week's episode stuck fairly closely to sitcom convention, earning a huge number of laughs along the way but sacrificing some of the unpredictability that makes Community at once so much fun but also so alienating to the masses. This episode found a solid middle ground between the two, softening its more subversive traits by picking on a target that most audiences will be familiar with and probably enjoy seeing skewered.

 

Movies - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy review

FILM REVIEW

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY
Dir: Tomas Alfredson
Stars: Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Hurt, Tom Hardy, Colin Firth

Running Time: 127mins

[A version of this article was first published on Flixist and is being reprinted ahead of the film's US release on Friday.]

A film's central character will usually become the face of the story being told. They will speak when something needs to be said, gasp when something is shocking and cry when something is sad. Other characters will make contributions too, but our guide will always be the one in the middle. By watching that character, the audience understands the film. The story can be read by connecting the dots, but understanding what those connections and dots mean on an emotional level requires a face and a body and a heart to read.

But what if that character had no interest in emotion? What if everything in existence to him was only a matter of connecting dots and people merely a set of tools by which to do so? Someone whose body was not moved by the beat of a heart, but the tick-tock of a metronome moving back and forward, never to falter, never to stop. Tick. Tock. What if that was how we were asked to see life?

George Smiley wishes to ask you that question.

  

Television - Community 'Foosball And Nocturnal Vigilantism' review / Parks & Recreation 'The Trial Of Leslie Knope' review

COMMUNITY

One of Community's biggest strengths is its ability to utilise sitcom conventions against the audience, setting something up one way and then pulling out the rug by going in another direction entirely. That subversiveness is a vital part of the programme's appeal, yet also something which has led to its fanbase being more limited than the likes of The Big Bang Theory or 2 Broke Girls, which offer the comforts of predictability that Community actively tries to avoid.

'Foosball And Nocturnal Vigilantism' was a rare occasion of Community playing a sitcom trope fairly straight - even if it was commented upon - and while many fans will have been disappointed by that, maybe it is what the programme needs right now, at a time when widening its audience is more important than ever. The episode was still a fantastic introduction to the Community combination of a geekily absurdist sense of humour with elegant character writing (plus a sumptuously full serving of Alison Brie, even if Gillian Jacobs was kept on the side this time around), even if the anarchic spirit was more subdued than usual.

 

Games - The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword review

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: SKYWARD SWORD
Format: Wii
Developer/Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
   

Skyward Sword is a game obsessed with motion. That's true of the controls, which utilises the gyroscopic sensitivity of the Wii Motion Plus to manage everything from basic attacks to swimming and various forms of flight, but even moreso of its design. It is a game driven by keeping the player moving at all times towards a new checkpoint or location.

The dowsing mechanic exemplifies this: courtesy of new fairy companion, Fi, your sword is now able to track people, locations and objects of importance, compelling you towards them with an excitable, often obnoxious, bleeping. The game doesn't like the idea of it going unused, either: ignore the prompts for too long and the bleeping will start regardless, nagging you to get moving towards your next destination. No time to lose - there's a thing and it's all the way over there! What are you standing around for?