I always say a film must be doing something right if you have a reaction to it, rather than it blandly flitting across your retina. However it’s preferable if that reaction is joy or admiration, rather than a sense of irritation and a feeling that the whole thing is closer to being pretentious toss than a successful trip into the minds of a group of people in their mid-20s. [Read more...]

Director Simon Aboud (who’s Paul McCartney’s son-in-law, no less) assembles a good, small cast for the Comes A Bright Day, including Submarine’s Craig Roberts, 28 Weeks Later’s Imogen Poots, Grey’s Anatomy’s Kevin McKidd and the always excellent Timothy Spall. Roberts plays a young Sam, who bigs himself up when he meets a pretty girl called Mary (Poots) who assumes he’s rich because of the watch he’s wearing. He heads to the upmarket jewellery store where she works to ask her out, just in time for a pair of armed robbers to turn up.

The store’s owner (Spall) trips the alarm, and soon he and the two young people are being held hostage by the sociopathic Cameron (McKidd) and his nervous young accomplice Clegg (Josef Atlin). As the robbers try to negotiate with the police and find a way out, the danger inside the shop increases, with Cameron always on the edge of going loco and killing somebody. As Mary begins to discover Sam has been lying to her about his job and wealth, his position becomes even more dangerous when she begins to think he may be in on the robbery. [Read more...]

Ewan (Sean Bean) is a British secret service agent who starts to realise that a dangerous terrorist plot in being planned. While being manipulated by his superiors, he’s essentially given carte blanche to do whatever it takes to get to the plotters, something he’s more than happy to do, as he wants revenge for the atrocity that took his wife. However he starts to realise he’s mixed up in an ever deepening conspiracy.

Ewan’s incredibly violent and single-minded journey is contrasted to young Muslim Ash, the man who’s going to commit the suicide bombing. In flashback we discover how he got radicalised, while in the present things get ever more vicious as he prepares himself for what he believes he must do. [Read more...]

It’s tough to make a successful sci-fi TV show. Many arrive each year but most quickly fall by the wayside, some getting cancelled because the ratings don’t justify the expense and others ending quickly because they’re simply not very good. Falling Skies however was a ratings hit on its US debut last year, and for the most part tells a compelling story.

In the aftermath of an alien invasion, the major cities have been destroyed, modern civilisation has fallen and only ragtag groups of survivors are around to resist the brutal extra-terrestrials. While he’s spent most of his life as a history professor, in this new world Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) has become second in command of the 2nd Massachusetts, a military unit fighting the ‘skitters’ and also sheltering a group of civilians. [Read more...]

The Rise And Fall Of A White Collar Hooligan feels like a movie made in shorthand, taking a fairly well-worn tale and rushing through it so it seems like you’re getting the bullet points rather than the whole story.

Mike (Nick Nevern) lives for football and the violent disorder that he and other engage in after the match. However he has dreams about getting a decent job and being somebody – unfortunately he has few skills and a tendency to say completely the wrong thing at job interviews. His friend, Eddie (Simon Phillips), offer him a nice, simple, but well-paid position, couriering boxes around London. Mike is initially convinced it has to be drugs, but it turns out he’s actually got himself involved in credit card fraud, where criminals are cloning cards and heading out to cash machines each night to take money. [Read more...]