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Saturday, 30 April 2022

Death Race 2000 (1975)

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 "I think you're one very large baked potato." There's such a concept as "the greatest film ever". This film doe...
Friday, 29 April 2022

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)

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 "The're going to kill you, and then dissect you. In that order." This is, perhaps, a mainly predictable sequel in which anoth...

Breaking Bad: Face Off

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 "All I can say is... if I ever get anal polyps, I'll know what to name them." Wow. That's how you do a finale. This is th...
Wednesday, 27 April 2022

Breaking Bad: End Times

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 "There will be an appropriate response..." The landscape in Breaking Bad , showcasing the severely expansive vistas of New Mexico...
Tuesday, 26 April 2022

Breaking Bad: Crawl Space

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 "This man needs help!" "This man pays my salary..." The walls are closing in. Walt has alienated both Gus and Jesse, he...
Monday, 25 April 2022

Why Didn't They Ask Evans?- Episode One

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 "Do you have any balls?" This is an interesting concept for what is the first original BritBox series I've blogged or, indeed...
Saturday, 23 April 2022

Inspector Morse: The Ghost in the Machine

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 "You'll never get on if you can't master your subjunctives!" This is, if I recall correctly, only the second episode of I...
Thursday, 21 April 2022

Luke Cage: Suckas Need Bodyguards

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 "Bugger off!" This is, I must hasten to point out, a splendidly clever and entertaining episode in its own right,  but it's s...
Wednesday, 20 April 2022

Poirot: The Dream

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 "I am too understanding towards my employees!" I may have been somewhat ambivalent towards this series- despite some solid acting...
Tuesday, 19 April 2022

Breaking Bad: Salud

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 "I had to spank you..." Wow. Yet again we see how this extraordinary season fits together like clockwork as we follow on from the...
Monday, 18 April 2022

Breaking Bad: Bug

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 "A guy this clean has got to be dirty..." This entire season, as I've said more than once before, is something of a multi-dme...

Doctor Who: Legend of the Sea Devils

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 "Good, love it when there's not enough time." Well, that was... perfectly fine. Yes, I'm damning with faint praise a bit ...
Sunday, 17 April 2022

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne

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 I can honestly say, English graduate that I am, that I’ve never read a novel quite like this before. I’m familiar with the broad course of ...

The World Is Not Enough (1999)

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 "There's no point in living of you can't feel alive." This is the finest Brosnan Bond film so far. I was unimpressed with...
Friday, 15 April 2022

Luke Cage: Just to Get a Rep

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 "Don't you need a gun?" "I am the gun!" This is yet another superlative episode. On the surface it's about the ...
Wednesday, 13 April 2022

Poirot: The King of Clubs

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 "Dear oh dear! Here we go again..." This is one of those stories with a very Agatha Christie twist about the very murder itself. ...
Saturday, 9 April 2022

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

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  This is the first time, I think, that I’ve ever blogged a novel after seeing and indeed blogging the film adaptation, something I vaguely ...
Friday, 8 April 2022

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)

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 "The public love to live dangeroiusly, as long as there's no real danger in it..." Not every Hammer horror is a classic sadly...
Thursday, 7 April 2022

Luke Cage: Step in the Arena

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 "I'm kind of strong..." Wow. I'm on record as saying, several times, that superhero origin stories often disappoint. I...
Wednesday, 6 April 2022

Poirot: The Incredible Theft

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 "No, no, no, Hastings! Women do not want to talk about Berninis and cubic thingummies!" This episode was... actually pretty blood...
Tuesday, 5 April 2022

Breaking Bad: Hermanos

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 "You're not in Chile any more...." Breaking Bad doesn't have bad episodes. It doesn't really have good episodes eith...
Sunday, 3 April 2022

Breaking Bad: Problem Dog

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 "Let's ditch the thesaurus..." I'm loving this season. It is, as I suspected, all a (mostly) very calm and totally zero s...

Aliens vs Predator (2004)

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 "And they usecus like cattle. They're hosts for us to breed."  I was poised to watch something su/btitlred and intellectual u...
Saturday, 2 April 2022

Clockwise (1986)

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 “It's not the despair, Laura. I can stand the despair. It's the hope." I was probably still in primary school when I last saw ...
Thursday, 31 March 2022

Luke Cage: Who’s Gonna Take the Weight?

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 “He was fine!" This episode has, in contrast to the last two, a relatively simple plot. Luke Cage decides to strike back at Cottonmout...
Wednesday, 30 March 2022

Poirot: Problem at Sea

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 "One cannot hurry the little grey cells, captain." This is another decent episode, not only as a whodunit which works well and do...
Monday, 28 March 2022

Breaking Bad: Cornered

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 "I'm not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger!" Another fascinating character episode here, in the middle of the seasaon, as te...
Sunday, 27 March 2022

Breaking Bad: Shotgun

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 "Since when do vegans eat fried chicken?" This is a bloody clever, subtle, psychological episode, from the opening char chase wit...

Clash of the Titans (1981)

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 "Once he tried to ravish me disguised as a cuttlefish..." This is Ray Harryhausen's last film. His career was, of course, lon...
Friday, 25 March 2022

The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 7: In the Name of Honour

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 "I gave you my word. I'm with you until we both fall." So the season has ended already. It's been a little uneven and exp...
Thursday, 24 March 2022

Luke Cage: Code of the Streets

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 "Jesus saves." I don't." Wow. That was an unexpectedly eventful and deeply layered second episode with a lot going on. T...
Wednesday, 23 March 2022

Poirot: Triangle at Rhodes

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 "At least he's not a bottom pincher, Mr. Poirot." This episode decidedly departs from the norm- no Hastings, no Miss Lemon, a...
Tuesday, 22 March 2022

Breaking Bad: Bullet Points

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" The ozone layer is already thin because of the cow farts..." This is a second set-up episode in a row, a brave choice but a nece...
Monday, 21 March 2022

Breaking Bad: Open House

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 "What? I'm Nixon now?" This entire episode is about a failure to communicate. Mostly. But it's also, of course, about Sky...
Sunday, 20 March 2022

Bad Boys (1995)

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 "It's ok to be a homosexual, Mike..." Some evenings you just need a big dumb '90s action film. And some dumb '90s act...
Friday, 18 March 2022

The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)

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 "Times are hard. People just aren't dying off so quick..." This isn't the first time I've seen this film, but it'...
Thursday, 17 March 2022

Luke Cage: Moment of Truth

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 "Everyone has a gun. No one has a father." This is a superb first episode. I'm hooked. Obviously, I was rather annoyed when a...
Wednesday, 16 March 2022

Breaking Bad: Thirty-Eight Snub

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 "They're not just zombies. They're Nazi zombies." The opening scene with Walt/Heisenberg carefully buying a gun is fascin...
Tuesday, 15 March 2022

Breaking Bad: Box Cutter

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 "Well? Get back to work." This is, of course, a superlative episode of television in its own right as well as being, although I s...
Monday, 14 March 2022

Doctor Who: The Macra Terror (Revisited), Parts Three and Four

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Part Three "We are all happy to work..." Three episodes in, and The Macra Terror feels like a totally different story with visual...
Sunday, 13 March 2022

Poirot: The Third Floor Flat

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 "Birds do not run, Hastings." Again, we have an episode that is rather clever. What initially looks like a murder with a dearth o...

Frankenstein Unbound (1990)

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 "This is not the end of the world." Some films are very good, so you enjoy them. Some films are pants, so you dontr. This film fi...
Friday, 11 March 2022

The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 6: From the Desert Comes a Stranger

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 "Can we takre your helmets for a cleaning?" Well, Boba Fett is in this one. A bit. This is a most oddly structured series. There ...
Wednesday, 9 March 2022

Doctor Who: The Macra Terror (Revisited), Parts One and Two

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Part One "Well, this is gay." The animation begins with the rather relevant reprise from the end of The Moonbase, showing us how t...
Tuesday, 8 March 2022

Poirot: Four and Twenty Blackbirds

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 "Cricket. The English enigma. I know not of any other game where even the players are unsure of the rules." This is rather good, ...
Monday, 7 March 2022

Breaking Bad: Full Measure

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 "That's like Thomas Magnum threatening that, like, prissy guy with the moustache." This is a big, important finale: we know, ...
Sunday, 6 March 2022

Shivers (1975)

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 " David Cronenberg is a favourite director of mine, He occupies that strange middle ground between respected auteur and body horror ge...
Saturday, 5 March 2022

The 39 Steps (1935)

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 “There are twenty million women in this island, and I've got to be chained to you..." I ought to begin with a confession that I...
Thursday, 3 March 2022

Mad Men: The Wheel

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 "You'll have to give back that copy of Ayn Rand..." This is an interestingly brave, yet satisfying finale. We don't have ...
Wednesday, 2 March 2022

Poirot: The Adventure of Johnnie Waverley

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 "See also under marriage?" Well, after an improvement last episode... we have another disappointment. At this stage we're loo...
Tuesday, 1 March 2022

Mad Men: Nixon vs Kennedy

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 "Mr Campbell, who cares?" It's interesting that this should be the penultimate episode rather than the finale, seeing how it ...
Monday, 28 February 2022

Poirot: Murder in the Mews

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 "Well, I should think it's a jolly good night for a murder." Ok, that was better. No snobbishly depicted working class charac...
Sunday, 27 February 2022

Breaking Bad: Half Measures

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 "I won't be wearing bells..." This, yet another exercise in how to make sublime television from Breaking Bad , is an extraord...

Willow (1988)

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 "Ignore the bird. Follow the river," This is, let's be honest, a fantasy B movie script made to look like Hollywood fare by R...