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In Munich a mysterious Englishman assassinates a German political figure with a seemingly-impossible piece of marksmanship. At MI6 headquarters in London, an analyst, Bianca Pullman, takes notice and thinks she might know a way to identify the killer.

A great, though not perfect, start to the series. The opening scenes are fantastic, showing the master-assassin at work, his preparations, skills and thoroughness. The subsequent scenes involving the Jackal are also similarly great at showing the how he operates and his abilities.

However, the MI6/Bianca stuff feels derivative and forced. The whole "she's just a humble, innocent working mum" shtick is unoriginal (Killing Eve, as just one example, already did that, and did it much better) and Disneyfied.

I don't dislike Bianca but in the "which team are you on?" competition (which is what the writer is trying to create through getting us to engage with the two main characters) right now I'm on Team Jackal.

In 1765 Kunta Kinte, a 15 year old boy, is captured by slavers near his village in Gambia. He is transported to America and sold at auction to a landowner in Virginia. Thus begins the generations-spanning tale of Kunta Kinte and his descendants.

A classic TV series, based on Alex Haley's book of the same name. The narrative is a true one, based on Haley's own family history, the details of which have been handed down from generation to generation.

Quite the epic story, spanning over 100 years and showing the African-American experience quite vividly. Quite balanced in the way the story is told. While Kunta Kinte and his descendants' experience is horrendous and slavery is heinous, the writers and director avoid cheap soapboxing, empty stereotypes and cartoonish villains. This results in a realistic, edifying, lasting impression.

Arthur Fleck is in Arkham State Hospital while awaiting trial for the murder of five people, including talk show host Murray Franklin live on TV. He is hardly the animated, wise-cracking Joker we knew before, a shell of his former self. However, things change when he meets a woman at a musical activity. Her life story seems very similar to his and they immediately hit it off. She is Lee Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn.

I enjoyed the first Joker movie. A great blend of action, drama, intrigue and psychological themes. The movie was lifted to another level by the performance of Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck / The Joker, a performance that won him the Best Actor Oscar in 2020.

Joaquin Phoenix reprises that role here in a film that promises to further progress the Joker story. The addition of Harley Quinn, played by Lady Gaga, makes things even more intriguing.

Well, so much for that. For one, rather than the dark, tight, intense atmosphere of the first film we have a film that aspires more to being a musical than anything else. Any tension and atmosphere is lost pretty quickly once one of the musical numbers starts up, and there's plenty of them. Quite irritating as any momentum is lost due to these unnecessary detours, the main reason I tend to dislike musicals.

You also get the feeling the musical numbers are just there to draw the movie out, making it appear to have more substance than it does. The net result of the musical interludes is an unfocused feel to proceedings.

Despite the setbacks caused by the songs, there are several points in the movie where it appears that the plot will find a direction and go somewhere quite powerful and entertaining. You can see the plot options opening up and think, aha, at last we're getting somewhere, just for your hopes to be dashed by writer-director Todd Phillips taking the least interesting, plot-progressing option.

The end result is a plot that feels like it hasn't progressed at all, despite taking up nearly 2.5 hours of your time.

Can't fault the performances though. Once again, Joaquin Phoenix delivers in spades and Lady Gaga is solid as Harley Quinn. Good supporting cast.

These performances can't make up for the drab script and musical-theme-caused inertia and lack of focus, they simply lift the film from bad to mediocre. Quite a disappointing offering especially considering how good the first film was.

Frank (Johnny Depp) is your average American tourist, travelling through Italy. On a train is befriended by Elise (Angelina Jolie). However, there is nothing innocent about her motives, as Frank is about to find out.

Mediocre. The films starts well enough - interesting and intriguing with some degree of character engagement. However it quickly degenerates into your average spy/crime-thriller. It still has enough intrigue to keep it going but it is fairly conventional and never goes anywhere special nor original.

Considering the end result, the all-star cast - Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, Rufus Sewell - is wasted.

Following on from the events of the first film, House Harkonnen has destroyed House Atreides. The entire Atreides line appears to have been wiped out. However, the heir to the Atreides throne, Paul Atreides, is alive and well, hiding out with his mother and rebel Fremen in the desert. He starts his quest to reclaim his title and exact his revenge on the Harkonnens and the puppetmaster behind the Harkennon victory, the Emperor.

Enjoyed Part 1 of Dune: solid plot, excellent special effects and cinematography, decent action scenes that weren't overdone, good performances. However, I found the hero of the story, Paul Atreides, bland and unengaging and the pace a bit slow and the film unnecessarily drawn out: some scenes seemed unnecessary. Overall though it was a solid, entertaining start to the Dune story.

Part 2 takes the solid start and lifts things up a few notches: more plot development, more action, better character development, faster paced. I even liked and cared about Paul Atreides this time round. The main positive of the first movie - the visuals - is still there and seems even better this time: the desert scenes are incredible. A much more consistently entertaining and engaging experience.

On the negative side, the plot does feel a bit disjointed at times and too fast-paced at times with the story racing ahead leaving you to figure out what happened in between. I usually like that sort of narrative as it requires you to do some thinking and means you aren't being spoon-fed the story. Here, however, it is a bit jarring and confusing.

Some (more minor, admittedly) plot developments don't make too much sense and seem there more for style purposes than anything else.

Overall though, a great movie.

The adventures, misadventures, lives, loves, highs, lows and tragedies of a group of average, school-going teenagers.

A very entertaining series. Some great comedy mixed with teen-growing-up drama makes for a very fun, engaging ride. Quite nostalgic as they discover themselves, the world and other things.

While good all the way through, the plots and characters do get weaker after Season 2. Season 1 was brilliant and Season 2 came close to matching it. However, there was a largescale character rejig after Season 2 which made things less interesting and engaging. The plots and humour seemed more forced, as opposed to the first two seasons where there was a wonderful understatedness to things.

Season ratings: S1 9/10, S2 8.5, S3-7 7.

A scientist wakes up in a motel room to find the town deserted. No humans, alive or dead, can be found anywhere. It appears that an experiment he was involved in went catastrophically wrong. His searches for other life turn up nothing - he appears to be the last person on Earth.

A quite original film from New Zealand. The initial few scenes are very intriguing. The thought of what you would do if you were the last person on Earth makes for an entertaining story.

Once things develop and move on from the novelty of the initial setup cracks do start to show, however. The plot isn't entirely solid and some aspects are quite clumsy. The ending feels a bit trite and too vague, like the writers didn't quite know how to end it.

Overall though, quite entertaining.

Middle-aged Reginald Perrin lives in suburbia with his wife Elizabeth. Every work day he has the same routine, the same train ride ending up at his senior-manager job at Sunshine Desserts. He is, however, starting to tire of the routine and of his job.

An episode that sets the tone for the series, and an excellent start it is. Very funny, though not laugh-a-minute: the jokes are set up very well for a more profound punch line. It also gets better and better the longer it goes on as the charm of the episode, and series, is largely revealed later.

On that note, maybe it is because I am of a similar age to Reginald Perrin and have a similar mindless, soul-sapping job, but I found the episode highly relatable. While clearly a comedy, the dramatic elements of the episode are great too, making the episode highly engaging, powerful and profound.

In 1990 an unidentified pregnant woman was murdered by drowning on the island of Nordkoster off the coast of Sweden. Now, 25 years later, a young police recruit, Olivia Ronning, is tasked with researching the still-unsolved crime as a case study. The case has personal significance to her: her late father was the investigating detective.

A series that looks very intriguing on paper but in reality struggles to ever gain traction, seeming to be continually spinning its wheels. Part of the problem is the time span since the crime, meaning there's no immediate suspects or engagement with the victim. The whole thing seems like an academic exercise (which it is initially meant to be) rather than a live criminal investigation.

The many unnecessary detours and sub-plots don't add much to the overall story and just draw things out even more. The sub-plot involving the homeless people was reasonably interesting but that gets drawn out and padded too.

Overall, disappointing and hardly the Nordic noir I was expecting.

Denmark, 6th Century AD. Driven on by the murder of his father troll Grendel exacts revenge on those he holds responsible. Sent to stop him is the great warrior Beowulf and his troops. However, Beowulf discovers the reason for Grendel's murderous rampage, making him think twice about his mission.

I didn't have much in the way of expectations for this. It stars Guy Butler, he of the style-over-substance, mindless action and empty dialogue variety of acting, as Beowulf so was never going to be brilliant. However, I was hoping it would at least be reasonably entertaining.

While it has its moments it's still quite bad and not even mindlessly entertaining. Everything seems so clumsily done.

Not worth the time.

Private detective Jake Gittes has a new client. Jake Berman believes his wife is cheating on him and wants Gittes and his associates to catch her in the act. Everything appears to be going according to plan until Berman shoots the man dead. It should be an open-and-shut case but now Gittes is drawn into a complex web that involves far more than infidelity.

Directed by Jack Nicholson, The Two Jakes is a sequel to Chinatown, the great Roman Polanski mystery-thriller of 1974. Nicholson reprises his role of Jake Gittes and the screenplay is written by Robert Towne, who co-wrote Chinatown with Polanski, so there's a fair amount of continuity between the two films despite the 16-year gap.

Plot-wise, the links to Chinatown are slender and you don't have to watched Chinatown to understand The Two Jakes (though I recommend that you watch Chinatown for the simple reason that it is a great film).

Unfortunately, however, The Two Jakes is no Chinatown. Nicholson and Towne try to recreate the atmosphere and intrigue of Chinatown and the plots are even fairly similar: mystery, murder, wheels within wheels of complexity, machinations over a valuable resource, a femme fatale (or two). However, for all its complexity Chinatown was always engaging and had a plot that always made sense and could be followed. The Two Jakes sometimes seems complex just for the sake of it and some elements seem more about style than substance.

It all comes together in the end and largely makes sense but it can be quite bewildering at times. Overall, okay but not in the league of Chinatown.

I had pretty low expectations for this. On paper this seems like a typical cheap B-grade slasher-horror film. In reality it's even worse.

It is cheap and a slasher-horror but calling it B-grade would be flattery. The plot is very basic and what there is doesn't make much sense. Production values are incredibly poor. Direction is woeful: some of the scenes seem more like a slapstick comedy than a drama.

Dialogue is laughable and, allied with this, performances are poor. Worst of all is the guy who plays the slasher-murderer. So bad you'd think it is a comedy.

Nothing positive at all about this movie except than it is quite short (83 minutes) so at least the pain of watching this is over quickly.

Syria, mid-2010s. The radical jihadist group Islamic State / ISIS is gaining ground, arbitrarily murdering anyone who gets in their way and kidnapping women. Over time the people of the area start to fight back. One such unit is a group of women, who, due to the atrocities committed against women and against their families and friends by ISIS, are personally invested in the fight.

An interesting story and one that needed to be told. The fact that it is a group of women makes for particularly powerful story as the barbaric customs of ISIS saw them treating women as less than human. The women are thus fighting for more than just their homeland but for their right to exist and be treated equally. It also makes the stakes very high for the women in the unit as capture would mean a fate worse than death.

While the film has great ideals and a good central story, unfortunately the execution is quite clumsy. There's heaps of sub-plots and scenes that add nothing to proceedings. The plot is filled with trite, predictable, cheesy developments and gung ho characterisations. Some originality and grittiness would have gone a long way.

Overall, not terrible but could have been a whole lot better.

In 1990 a pregnant woman was murdered by drowning on the island of Nordkoster off the coast of Sweden. Now, 25 years later, a young police recruit is tasked with researching the crime as a case study. The case is still unsolved and it turns out it has a very personal aspect to it.

A series that looks very intriguing on paper but in reality struggles to gain traction, based on Episode 1 at least. It's interesting enough but the pace is quite slow, with many detours and sub-plots that aren't very engaging and don't add much to the overall story.

I'll stick with it, for now. Hopefully things pick up in subsequent episodes.

Gotham City is in a state of chaos after the sea wall is blown up by The Riddler and large areas of the city flooded. The crime underworld is in a state of transition after the death of kingpin Carmine Falcone and the passing of the baton to his wild, hedonistic son Alberto. A soldier in the Falcone army, Oz Cobb, sees an opportunity.

A spin-off of the movie Batman (2022). This series continues the dark, tense atmosphere of that film. Ultimately the plot and atmosphere are far more The Sopranos, Goodfellas or The Godfather than a comic book movie, which is a very good thing.

Solid plot, great cinematography and special effects and great performances make for an excellent series.

Talking of performances, of the best aspects of the series is the performance and appearance of Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb. His performance is superb and he is absolutely unrecognisable: if the credits didn't tell me it was him I would never have guessed.

Cristin Milioti is also great as Cobb's arch-nemesis, Sophia Falcone.

One of the best shows of the year, if not THE best.

Excellent series. 9/10

Gotham City is in a state of chaos after the sea wall is blown up by The Riddler and large areas of the city flooded. The crime underworld is in a state of transition after the death of kingpin Carmine Falcone and the passing of the baton to his wild, hedonistic son Alberto. A soldier in the Falcone army, Oz Cobb, sees an opportunity.

A spin-off of the movie Batman (2022). This series continues the dark, tense atmosphere of that film. Ultimately the plot and atmosphere are far more The Sopranos, Goodfellas or The Godfather than a comic book movie, which is a very good thing.

Solid plot, great cinematography and special effects and great performances make for an excellent series.

Talking of performances, of the best aspects of the series is the performance and appearance of Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb. His performance is superb and he is absolutely unrecognisable: if the credits didn't tell me it was him I would never have guessed.

Cristin Milioti is also great as Cobb's arch-nemesis, Sophia Falcone.

One of the best shows of the year, if not THE best.

Two US Navy sailors, Petty Officers Buddusky and Mulhall, are tasked with escorting a prisoner, Seaman Meadows, to military prison for where he is to start an eight-year term. Being a long trip, Buddusky and Mulhall, see an opportunity to have some fun.

A movie which is highly engaging and interesting early on but struggles to maintain the interest throughout. The characters are immediately intriguing, especially Buddusky (played by Jack Nicholson) and the initial plot seems to have heaps of potential.

Some of the hijinks the three get up to are good fun but there's spells where it just seems flat and lethargic.

Overall it is interesting enough but not overly memorable nor profound.

Bex is a former fighter, now working at an animal shelter. When she discovers that her sister Kate is indebted to a gangster she comes out of retirement to train girls for an underground fight club. She soon discovers that this job may be tougher than she expected.

An incredibly predictable action film. It's all been done before, and generally done better. I know the idea is to take the usually male-dominated fight club-like story and turn into a female story, which is fine, but the writers could at least have written new material while they were at it.

Add in poor performances, lame dialogue and a general lethargy to everything, calling this B-grade would be a compliment.

In the small English seaside town of Broadchurch, a young boy, Danny Latimer, has been found murdered on the beach. Investigating the case are Detective Inspector Alex Hardy and Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller. The case threatens to tear the community apart.

A series that starts brilliantly: a senseless murder of a young boy, no clear suspect or motive, police detectives with their own demons and a strained working relationship, a host of shadowy characters and a seemingly idyllic village harbouring a host of secrets. The initial three or four episodes had a great dark, foggy atmosphere to it (figuratively speaking) giving it the feel of a Nordic murder-thriller.

However, after about four episodes the shine starts to come off as the plot gets a bit weaker, with scores of red herrings, gaps in police procedure which seem unrealistic, developments that don't make much sense and one quite predictable sub-plot. After the substance-filled start it does feel that more style and less substance permeates through the latter episodes.

The revelation of the murderer is also a bit of a let-down as it comes out of the blue. However, the final episode is also very good in that it shows the aftermath of the arrest of the perpetrator: the effects on the family and the town and its people, the police procedure.

Overall though Season 1 was very good and the season wrapped up neatly, making the show a decent mini-series. However, there were still two seasons to go. What would these bring? It's not like there's going to be too many murders in Broadchurch (unless the series goes down the Midsomer Murders / Murder She Wrote route and kills off 150% of the inhabitants of the town during its course) so what would the plots for Seasons 2 and 3 consist of?

It turns out that, while mildly interesting, Seasons 2 and 3 don't add much to proceedings and simply dilute the overall quality of the show. Season 2 continues with the Danny Latimer case, even though it's been solved. An old unsolved case of Hardy's is thrown into the mix to try to spice things up but this is not very interesting or engaging. The whole thing felt like padding, just playing out time.

Season 3 covers a new case, one with a delicate subject. Initially this was interesting and sensitively covered but eventually the season degenerates into scores of red herrings and patronising speeches and preachiness. Police procedure now seems to be to arrest the latest suspect until you've churned through them all. When the music stops at the end of the season, whoever is in custody is perpetrator.

It also doesn't help that the Danny Latimer saga still isn't over (to the writers and producers, at least) with the subject being milked dry. By now it resembles a soap opera as the focus is largely on the effect on the family.

Season 6 is still watchable but only just as it can be quite tedious at times.

Just watch Season 1 - save your time and skip Seasons 2 and 3.

Season ratings: Season 1 8/10, S2 6.5, S3 6.

A young Harvard Law School graduate, Mitch McDeere, gets a job offer too good to turn down from a Memphis law firm. Once there his mentor is a master of corporate and tax law, specialising in off-shore tax havens. After two lawyers at the firm die in a boating accident McDeere starts to suspect that something sinister is afoot at the firm.

An okayish crime-thriller. On paper it looks great: directed by Sydney Pollack, based on a novel by John Grisham, starring Tom Cruise, Gene Hackman, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ed Harris, Hal Holbrook, Holly Hunter, Gary Busey and David Strathairn.

Yet it doesn't quite click until the very end. The start is very slow and the setup feels overly elaborate - a lot of the detail could have been left out. Even once we get into the meat of the plot it feels long-winded. The plot also feels quite clumsy and unfocused. Some plot developments feel quite contrived and convenient.

It all comes together quite well though in the last few scenes but, with a 2.5 hour film runtime, it's a test of patience to get through to them.

Overall, watchable but prepare yourself for a bit of a slog.

The story of the Boston Red Sox's 2004 World Series win, starting with the heartbreak of the 2003 ALCS vs the New York Yankees. The Red Sox has not won a World Series since 1918, a winning drought put down to the "Curse of the Bambino" - the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1919.

An interesting, engaging series. I am far from being a Red Sox fan and am a Yankees fan so this should not have piqued my interest but it did. Very well told, showing how a team rebuilt after a major setback and ultimately triumphed.

The Red Sox had more than the average battle to wage as the Curse of the Bambino seems to have a mental hold on Red Sox players and fans. Plus there was the long-standing rivalry with the Yankees, made more intense in that period due to the Yankees being so strong and seeming to always have the wood on the Red Sox, even when it seemed like the Red Sox couldn't lose (like the 2003 ALCS).

All these factors are examined plus we see the camaraderie, team spirit, astute management and plain baseball skills that saw the Red Sox home. Great footage of the games and off-field plus interviews with most of the main players and management.

Gotham City is in a state of chaos after a part of the sea wall is blown up by The Riddler and large areas of the city flooded. The crime underworld is in a state of transition after the death of kingpin Carmine Falcone and the passing of the baton to his wild, hedonistic son Alberto. A senior soldier in the Falcone army, Oz Cobb, sees an opportunity.

Excellent start to the series. Solid plot, great cinematography and special effects and great performances. If you're thinking this is just another dime-a-dozen comic book turned into TV series, think again. The atmosphere and writing is far more The Sopranos or The Godfather than Batman, which is a very good thing.

Despite the great writing and general vibe, the standout from Episode 1 is the performance and appearance of Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb. His performance is excellent and he is absolutely unrecognisable: if the credits didn't tell me it was him I would never have guessed.

A woman, Trish, is raped. DI Hardy and DS Miller are back running the Broadchurch detective team and are on the case but it's slow progress. The incident was two days ago and Trish can't remember much about it and is too traumatised to speak about it.

After Season 1 I wondered how there would be three seasons of Broadchurch as Season 1 seemed like a perfectly complete mini-series. Season 2 turned out to be an (unnecessary, to an extent) extension of Season 1. Season 3 starts anew, with a new crime, new victim. Hardy and Miller are the main characters though and Beth Latimer features prominently too, as Trish's trauma counsellor.

As you would hope, the subject matter is handled very sensitively and delicately and shows well the trauma rape victims go through and how the police and support personnel handle the victims of such crimes.

On the downside, it is quite slow-going and does feel like the Broadchurch modus operandi of deliberately drawing everything out unnecessarily is continuing.

A faux documentary series, parodying documentaries in general. Each episode has is a different "documentary", often parodying, or at least mimicking but in a humorous way, actual documentaries. Created and written by Fred Armisen, Bill Hader and Seth Meyers and presented by Helen Mirren.

A series that is hilariously funny at times but also missed the mark at times. The concept of a documentary-parody series is great and the humour, written by SNL luminaries Fred Armisen, Bill Hader and Seth Meyers, is very clever and often understated. Therein already lies the first problem in that sometimes it is too clever for its own good, resulting in the joke going over the audience's heads.

I also think how much you get out of an episode is reliant on how familiar you are with what they're parodying. The best episodes for me were ones where I recognised the source documentaries. I could then see exactly what of the original they were parodying or adjusting.

The episodes that fell flat for me often seemed to arty or dry though if I knew the source material I probably would have appreciated them more.

Overall, when it's good it's brilliant but it can be quite hit and miss.

My reaction to Episode 1 of Season 2 was (in writing, in an IMDB review) "Is this necessary?". Season 1 seemed like a solid mini-series, complete in every way. I knew when I finished watching S1 that there's S2 and S3 but didn't really want there to be as they could only bring down the overall quality and legacy of the show.

And here we have it. Just when you thought the Joe Miller story was done, like the villain in a horror it springs back to life. The court case is reasonably interesting but I kept feeling this was just drawing out the story unnecessarily.

The Sandbrook case is even less necessary and less well thought-out, plot-wise. Being something dredged up from DI Hardy's past rather than a murder relevant to Broadchurch itself, it is not very engaging. The plot is a random walk, pin-balling between different suspects. Some of the plot developments don't make too much sense and the conclusion seems far too easy.

Overall, interesting enough but not anywhere as good as Season 1.

Early 1980s. Famed German dramatic director Rainer Woltz is working on his latest project - an American sitcom called The Bachelor Nanny. Filming takes place in the desolate, inhospitable Ular Mountains in Russia. What could possibly go wrong?

Documentary Now! Works best when it rachets up the absurdity and here the absurdity amp is at 11. We have a director that is based on the dark, dramatic Werner Herzog and a leading actor based on the irascible, unpredictable, unstable Klaus Kinski. Herzog and Kinski worked on many films together, the most notable ones being Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo.

A "documentary" that simply parodied the relationship between Herzog and Kinski and the nightmarish productions that they were involved in and responsible for would have worked well. Documentary Now! Does that...and then lifts it several levels by having them work on an American sitcom being filmed in one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth. It's absolutely Pythonesque.

Adding to this insane, hilarious vibe is an outstanding performance by Alexander Sarsgaard as Rainer Woltz. Hilarious yet all done in a dark, straight-faced way. Superb.

Part 2 is possibly the best, funniest episode of Documentary Now! Part 1 is also great but the inanity really ramps up in Part 2 - Part 1 feels like scene-setting in comparison.