27 September 2015

Doctor Who S9E2 "The Witch's Familiar" review

I said last week that I was very nearly done with Doctor Who altogether. A combination of poor pacing, a lacklustre story and an overwhelming amount of fan pandering made "The Magician's Apprentice" one of the worst episodes of Doctor Who I thought I had ever seen, an episode so bad that I was certain the the second half of this two-parter would be unable to make up for it. Following on immediately from "The Magician's Apprentice", "The Witch's Familiar" first deals with the continued existence of Missy and Clara (obviously - anyone who genuinely thought they might be dead must be an idiot) before jumping back to the main portion of the episode - a long overdue conversation between The Doctor and a dying Davros.


21 September 2015

Doctor Who S9E1 "The Magician's Apprentice" review

It should be clear to anyone who read my reviews of Doctor Who season eight that I am no 'Whovian', the name that the fandom of Doctor Who refer to themselves as. I haven't really enjoyed watching Doctor Who since David Tennant left the show, my interest only sparked in the show again when it was announced that Peter Capaldi would be playing the newest incarnation of The Doctor. So I stuck with Doctor Who through it's shaky eighth season, always willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and another chance being as it was Capaldi's first run on the show. But after watching "The Magician's Apprentice", this review was nearly titled "Why I won't be reviewing Doctor Who anymore".

The story this time has The Doctor stumbling upon a planet in the midst of a war. On the battlefield, he finds a child in dire need of help - trapped on a small patch of land, booby traps block the scared child's route to safety. But when the child reveals to The Doctor that his name is Davros, he has a rather important choice to make about the fate of the child.


17 September 2015

Legend review

Set in London during the 1960's, Legend tells the story of gangster twins Reggie and Ronnie Kray from the viewpoint of Frances Shea, Reggie's girlfriend and later wife. Already self made men by the time the film starts, Legend is mainly concerned with Reggie's relationships with both Frances and Ronnie, but also tries to take a look at the investigation into the Kray's by Scotland Yard and the events that led to the twins downfall.


8 September 2015

American Ultra review

It can be hard to write a review. Sometimes I find it difficult to look at something critically because of how much I enjoyed it, and at other times it can be hard to find something good to say about something I strongly disliked. But this time, a complete lack of any feelings one way or the other makes reviewing American Ultra hard, a film so unremarkable in every way that I'm certain I'll have forgot I even saw it in a few months.

American Ultra is the story of Mike Howell and Phoebe Larson, a couple of unambitious stoners who live together in the town of Liman, West Virginia. Unbeknown to Mike, he's really a secret CIA asset from an Ultra program, a highly trained killing machine who can be activated with a coded phrase. When the person responsible for the Ultra program that created Mike learns that he is to be taken out by a rival CIA agents operation, she travels to Liman in order to activate Mike and save his life.