7 films on TV for the week ahead.

Sat 18/2 3E @23.00

Kiss The Girls. A serial killer is preying on women in North Carolina and Morgan Freeman is on the case in this adaption of the James Patterson book. It's a pretty pedestrian film but far from a bad one and Morgan Freeman's gravitas as always gives the film a much needed bit of oomph. He also gets great support from Ashley Judd and Cary Elwes.

Sun 19/2 E4 @22.00

The Adjustment Bureau. Matt Damon & Emily Blunt headline this highly entertaining twisty turny science fiction/love story about a politician and a dancer who meet and are then kept apart by ........ watch the film and find out!. An original, suspenseful, absorbing, fast moving and fun film. I love seeing Damon in a film where he isn't kicking a bad lads head in and Blunt is always good.

Mon 20/2 Film4 @01.00

Amour. A devastating portrayal of the ravages of old age and the effects it has on a marriage. An elderly Parisian couple find their lives turned upside when illness rears its ugly head. Warning, this film will break you but that said its portrayal of what people will do for the people they love makes for superb cinema. I wish film 4 would show more French stuff. It never disappoints.

Wed 22/2 RTE 1 @21.35

The Help. An absorbing little tale of 2 African American women working as domestic servants in the American south of the 1960's and a journalist who decides to expose the adversity they have faced all their working lives. Viola Davis & Octavia Spencer are fantastic in this film that will piss you off then make you laugh and then make you want to punch a wall.

Thurs 23/2 TCM @21.00

Lone Star. In my opinion one of THE most underrated films of the 90s. A cracking mystery thriller set on the Tex/Mex border about a sheriff investigating a decades old crime. It's a long film but its so engrossing, has atmosphere by the bucket load and some super performances from Matthew McConnaughey, Chris Cooper and Elizabeth Pena. Film of the week for me.

Fri 24/2 Film4 @14.30

Winchester '73. The first and for me still the best of a series of westerns James Stewart made with director Anthony Mann. Stewart stars as a sharpshooter who's gun is robbed from him and passes through many people's hands during the course of the film. A lovely looking, exciting and well acted film with a final shootout that is still influencing films today. Watch out for a very young Rock Hudson as a native American!

Fri 24/2 RTE 1 Midnight

Multiplicity. A man driven demented by trying to keep up with the pressures of his job and the demands of his family comes up with a novel if bonkers way of dealing with things. Michael Keaton is deadly in the main role(s), you'd forget just how wacky he can be when he gives his all & Andie McDowell makes the most of her straight role. A warm, wacky and easy to watch film with a couple of big belly laughs.

7 films for the week ahead

Sat 11/2 TG4 @22.20

Maps To The Stars. A trip into the slimy and sleazy underbelly of the rich and famous of Hollywood courtesy of David Cronenberg. The stories of a young tourist, a limo driver, a psychiatrist and 2 actors, 1 on the way up and one on the way down become intertwined. Great performances from Julianne Moore and John Cusack anchor an intriguing and compelling drama. Carrie Fisher makes a welcome appearance too.

Sat 11/2 Film4 @23.15

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. The absolutely bonkers sequel to the 70's cult horror classic. A radio DJ teams up with a Texas ranger to take on a cannibalistic family of murderers. The results are both hilarious and hideous. It's the kind of film you watch with your jaw dropped until you realise you are in tatters laughing. Dennis Hopper gives one of his most crazed performances in this and that's saying a LOT.

Sun 12/2 CH4 @23.00

127 Hrs. A man gets trapped whilst exploring in the desert and must summon great inner strength to free himself. Danny Boyle directs James Franco in this thrilling, absorbing and Ill be honest, at times disgusting and hard to watch survival drama. I know Franco gets on a lot of peoples nerves but this is a career best performance right here. And its all based on a true story.

Tues 13/2 Film4 @21.00

Le Weekend. A couple having their 30th anniversary decide to go away to Paris to try and inject a bit of life back into their relationship. Of course things don't go to plan. An engaging film that's warm but still spiky and dark in places and with the added bonus of great acting from Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan. If you liked '45 Years' from last year this will be right up your street.

Wed 14/2 Syfy @21.00

The Faculty. Something very strange is happening inside a Texas high school and a band of teenagers get together to figure out what it is. Full of early turns from now well known actors like Elijah Wood, Clea Duvall, Famke Jannsen and Josh Hartnett, this is well worth a watch. Its thrilling, scary, crunchy, gooey and funny. Just like secondary school really.

Thurs 15/2 3E @23.00

Miami Vice. Michael Mann's stylish and action packed update of the famous 80s TV show about cops taking on drug dealers. Bristling with testosterone, this is a moody grown up thriller full of suspense, action and neo-nazi's getting shot in the face. Whats not to like about that? Colin Farrell & Jamie Foxx are solid as the leads but Naomie Harris steals the film with one small scene in a mobile home. Great soundtrack too.

Fri 16/2 TCM @22.55

Centurion. One of Michael Fassbender's last films before he became a household name, this is a cracking action film set in Scotland nearly 2000 years ago. A Roman legion is massacred by a Pict tribe & a handful of survivors find themselves fighting for their lives. A thrilling,vicious (seriously rough, beware!)and action packed film with a super cast. Olga Kurylenko is a highlight as a mute blood thirsty warrior & Liam Cunningham is always great.

A thought on tv show binge watching

I know well im going to come across as a precious little gowl in this but i think binge watching is ruining the way we enjoy tv shows.

Anyway. Some spoilers for old shows coming up.

What are your top 10 TV shows? I'm asking for 10 because its a grand round number and its much easier condense your faves down to 10 rather than 3 or even 1.

Mine are, in descending order;

(10) Veronica Mars
(9) Rome
(8) Seinfeld
(7) The Shield
(6) Oz
(5) Buffy The Vampire Slayer
(4) Deadwood
(3) The Sopranos
(2) The Wire
(1) ER

They all have one thing in common. They were all shown on TV first. They were all shown before binge watching either through Netflix or boxsets became de rigeur. We watched 1 episode a week and thought nothing more of it. We enjoyed that episode. Phones were put down, doors were locked, the curtains were pulled, loud people were shushed and the show started. 

When it was over we turned to whoever was watching with us and said either "Jesus I did not see that coming at all!" or "i can't believe i waited a week for that hape of shit." And then we waited for next week. And during the week we thought about what had happened to the characters in the show, how the storylines had played out or how pissed off we were at the horrible cliffhanger the episode had ended on. We talked about it in the work canteen, "Did you see how drunk McNulty was!!", we talked about it in the pub "Jesus, that fight between Dan Dority and Captain Turner was vicious wasn't it, his eye popped out!" and we talked about them on the bus "I CANNOT BELIEVE ROSS SAID RACHEL INSTEAD OF EMILY!!!" And it all added up to a super sense of anticipation for when the new episode aired.

That sense of anticipation is gone now because we can watch the next episode by just waiting, we don't even have to do anything, the next one starts in 30 seconds automatically. Any sense of tension is gone too. If an episode ends on a massive cliffhanger we don't care because we will see the resolution in a manner of minutes. Remember in 'ER' when an episode finished with both Carter and Lucy being stabbed? I was dying, my head was fried having to wait a week to see did they live. But i loved it too. The sense of tension and anticipation was immense. Now, pfffft, all gone.

Another thing is you just don't get to care about the characters as much any more. We plough through a 22 episode tv season in a week or 2. What once took the bones of a year is now at the mercy of how lazy we are feeling on a certain day. 2 examples spring to mind here. Willow in 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' and Bodie in 'The Wire'. Willow is probably my all time favourite TV character. Lovely geeky awkward Willow. I'm an awkward cunt so of course i'd pick her. Over the course of 22 episodes aka 9 months you'd fall in love with her. Watch all 22 episodes in a week and not a hope would you care as much about her. Nope. As for Bodie, at first he seems like just another run of the mill heroin selling scumbag but if you take your time with the show you end up thinking about why he does what he does, what effect being on the corner has on him, how he ended up there and naturally you begin to empathise with him. If you piss through the show in a weekend he becomes just another background face.

I've watched a fair few new shows on Netflix in the last year or so. 'Orange Is The New Black', 'Narcos' and "Braquo" come to mind. All good shows, well made and acted. But i just didn't care about anyone in them. Not saying it's the writers fault, its not of course, i'm blaming the viewing method. 

If you like to watch shows that way, fair play, it's just not for me.

Ignore me, i'm a briary dinosaur.

Lion. A film as magnificent as it's namesake.

Some mild spoilers.

Every year in January we see a huge influx of quality cinema. It's all of course done to make sure certain films are in with a chance of winning awards. It's my favourite time of the year for cinema going too. We are spoilt for choice. Since the first of January we've had Silence, A Monster Calls (Brilliant by the way, go see it if you can), La-la Land, Manchester By The Sea, Jackie, Loving, Hacksaw Ridge and Live By Night. Some were deadly and others were a bit meh but the other day i watched Lion and in my opinion it blew them all out of the water. With a big bastard of a bang.

It's the story of a young Indian boy called Saroo who along with his brother spends his days foraging and ducking and diving to get food to feed himself and his family. They are poor, hungry but somehow still happy. Until the day he gets separated from them all and finds himself 1600 miles away with not a rupee to his name. That's all the story you are going to get.

It's a great beginning, nice and economical, getting us to care about the characters straight away. Which is easily done when you have a super little actor like Sunny Pawar as the main character. He's brilliant, you'll instantly empathise with him and his big wide smile. Downside of this is you'll also instantly be terrified for him when you realise he's an innocent lost in a world full of predators. This is a PG rated film but doesn't sugarcoat the dangers out there for little children. It's upsetting stuff. The tone lightens in the latter half of the film. Sort of. A bit.

The acting across the board is excellent. Sunny Pawar as mentioned already is a little star in the making. Dev Patel fully deserves his Oscar nomination for his acting in the second half when he makes the film his own. Nicole Kidman takes what i thought was going to be a thankless role and turns it into something great, especially with one scene late in the film and Rooney Mara is the same, taking a seemingly one note role and imbuing it with heart. 

Hollywood films about people overcoming insurmountable odds are.......to be honest usually they are a bit sickening. They overload the syrupy stuff and play sad songs on the soundtrack to make sure you feel happy and sad when you are supposed to. They lay it all on thick and the film usually suffers because of it. This film gets it just right. It's not mawkish or sappy or overbearing. By casting correctly and letting the story speak for itself it hits that emotional sweet spot just right. The sad parts will kill you but the happier scenes really feel like they've been earned. But by jaysus do you earn them.

It's a tough film in places and you may leave the cinema with a snotty nose and a pain in your throat but you will be delighted you watched it. I loved it. 

Trainspotting 2

I was 17 the first time I saw Trainspotting. Vividly remember snagging a copy from Oobie's video shop and running home to watch it with the boys. It blew us away. It hooked us in with its superb soundtrack and hilarious scenes of drugged fuelled mayhem while unknowingly to us at the time, beating us over the head with the idea that if you take heroin you were a fucking eejit and it will ruin your life by turning you into a selfish shitebag. When it was over we were exhilarated. It had a great solid ending. Satisfying. Nothing left hanging.

This is why i was slightly disheartened to hear a sequel was in the works. What more needed to be said? Would it just be a rehash of former glory? Would it cheapen the original? Happily the answer is no, it doesn't tarnish the original at all. 

Set 20 years after the 1st film, Renton is living in Amsterdam, things aren't the best so he decides to return home to Edinburgh where his old friends Spud and Sickboy are still eeking out pathetic (Spud) and morally bankrupt (Sickboy) existences. At the same time, the criminally insane Francis Begbie is getting itchy fingers while serving a 20 year jail sentence.

Much more of an ensemble piece this time around, every character gets their share of the film. Spud will break your heart while Begbie will have you on edge every time he appears. Renton and Sickboy are still a pair of selfish pricks so no change there. 

The acting is superb. Ewan McGregor and Johnny Lee Miller are solid but Robert Carlyle and Ewen Bremner as Begbie and Spud are amazing. Carlyle has presence to burn and turns in a far better and more nuanced performance this time around making the most of more screentime. Bremner however is amazing and steals the film imo. It's a heartbreaking turn from him but he'll have you in tatters laughing too. Women though are shortchanged once again. Kelly McDonald and Shirley Henderson get maybe 3 minutes of screentime between them which is a big pity. Anjela Medyalkova plays the woman lead and gets to do nothing but cause tension between the blokes which is a shame too.

The film is patchy in places but brilliant in others. It's a film about old friends meeting after 20 years so understandably is nostalgic but it relies a bit too much on nostalgia at points.The ravages of time will upset you but I suppose thats the point. The storylines that reach towards the future are far stronger and more satisfying. Plenty of super stuff though. It's a love letter to Edinburgh in places and 2 scenes, 1 set in a Glasgow pub and another in a nightclub are as good as anything from the original. Plus as said before anything with Spud is just gold. The soundtrack too is amazing, perfectly complimenting the onscreen action just like the first film. 

Yes, it's an unnecessary film as most sequels are. But happily, it doesn't tarnish the original at all. Far from it. It's still great fun.