Television - Breaking Bad 'Hazard Pay' review

Many of fiction's greatest villains are mirrors to the protagonists who take them down, and it is becoming increasingly obvious how much alike Walter White is to Gustavo Fring. The parallels were there from the beginning, notably in Gus' origin as a once timid man who built a criminal empire in the aftermath of a personal disaster, having seen his partner executed by Tio Salamanca. Walt got started in the meth business after being told he had cancer, but it soon became obvious his reasons for continuing, despite regularly putting in danger the family he vowed to protect, were rooted in bitterness and anger at a world which had stuck him to the bottom of its food chain.

There have been numerous landmarks throughout Breaking Bad marking the deepening stages of Walt's journey to the dark side, be it his first kill, allowing Jane to drown in her own vomit near the end of season two, going full measures in season three's incredible finale, or poisoning a child at the end of last season to claim his final victory over Gus. On each occasion, Walt had circumstances to mitigate his decisions. Now, with no visible danger posed to his life or family, we are seeing how Walt's rise to the top of the drugs world has completed his descent into absolute villainy.
 

Television - Futurama 'The Six Million Dollar Mon' review

I wasn't planning on reviewing this season of Futurama, given how disappointing the series has been since its move to Comedy Central in 2010 (or 2008 if you count the movies), but while the first six episodes of this seventh season are still some way from the delightful insanity that marked the show's heyday, they have been consistently amusing and unexpectedly dark.

Case in point: 'The Six Million Dollar Mon', whose plot was almost certainly built out of an excuse to use that face-palm of a pun, centred around Hermes' desire to increase his bureaucratic efficiency by becoming a robot. Nothing particularly dark there, until jokes from the second act onwards start focusing on backstreet surgery, skin peeling, epidermicide (my new favourite crime) and the reconstruction of a human being from individual parts stored in a bloody paper bag. The show also appears to have killed off its second robotic supporting character in the space of under half a season (following the demise of Calculon in 'The Thief Of Baghead') in the shape of the stab-happy Roberto.

  

Television - Breaking Bad 'Madrigal' review

Walter White is a man with a lot of knowledge, but a complete lack of wisdom. He can restart a broken RV with a homebrew chemical reaction, blow up a car with a windscreen wiper, and cook meth purer than almost anyone on the American continent... set him a practical task and he will accomplish it without batting an eyelid. In the real world, though, Walt just doesn't learn his lessons. He's a petty egomaniac, bitter, insecure and constantly compromising his moral boundaries, what few he has left, by telling himself he has no choice. Even as the excuses dry up, with his cancer in remission, his treatment paid for, his family safe from harm following the death of Gus Fring, he keeps on coming up with new ones. Or at least, he did. Perhaps the scariest thing about the first two episodes in Breaking Bad's fifth and final season is that Walter White isn't making excuses anymore. He's lying to everyone around him, but stopped lying to himself.

He knows what he's doing, and he's proud of it.

  

Movies - The Dark Knight Rises review

FILM REVIEWS 

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 DARK KNIGHT RISES

Dir: Christopher Nolan

Stars: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard

Running Time: 164mins
  

In all the discussion surrounding the third entry of Christopher Nolan's Batman saga, little has been said about how the story was never planned as a trilogy to begin with. Dark Knight carried through only a handful of pieces from its predecessor, Batman Begins, and Nolan had to be convinced by the studio to return for a final bow. Rises often seems intent on tying up narrative threads never intended to be joined together, and might have been a stronger movie had it stuck to the (relatively) standalone format of the previous outing. It's a commendable technical achievement, recklessly ambitious and often thrilling, but bloated by an unnecessary desire to conclude a clunkily retrofitted story arc.

Those who go in anticipating the same pleasures offered by The Dark Knight, but on a greater scale, will at least emerge satisfied: where Begins and its sequel were distinct in their intentions and storytelling style, Rises has taken heed of Dark Knight's enormous success and emulates it at every turn. There's a villain taking over a city, a self-doubting hero, an under-siege tone (Begins indulged Batman's fantastic elements to a much greater extent) and a multi-layered narrative driven by a large cast. What Rises lacks, for all its grandstanding, is focus.