Doctor Who Review: The Bells of St Johns

Oh hello blog. It's been a while. Due to my business there's been no film reviews on here and there hasn't been any new Doctor Who since Christmas. But here's the new... season? Half-season? 8/13 of a season? Oh, I don't know, I just know what I thought of it.


As episode 8 of season 7 this was a reasonably good episode. The script was rather witty at points (although certain bits like the now obligatory "Doctor Who?" line were somewhat cringe worthy) and the direction was fast paced which is what this particular story needed. The acting was top notch and there were some lovely (if completely under-developed) character moments for the lead villain and her staff. Even the monsters were pretty nice, a very creepy image, even if the turning head thing has become a bit over-used in Who, it's rarely used as well as it is here.

As a season opener though? This was a bit rubbish. So far I'm not convinced by Clara. I mean she's fine, but I was hoping this episode would make us care about her. At the moment most of her lines could have been said by basically any of the past New Who companions. She doesn't seem to bring anything new. Which is a shame, because I really liked her at Christmas and I think Jenna-Louise is a good actress, it's just the character isn't very interesting except for her mystery. While she might become better as time goes on, she's the main problem with this episode as so much time is spent with getting to know her character that the actual plot is sidelined. The idea of the Wi-Fi could have been really creepy, but without the time to slowly build the threat, it felt a little empty and the story just felt a bit hollow.

So all in all, it was a fun ride that didn't bore me, there was just enough going on that I had a good time, but after Moffat's previous season openers (which is what this was billed as), it just feels a bit shallow. If we'd already met Clara and this was just a random mid-season story I can imagine it being reworked as quite a chilling tale, but the way it is now, it's probably the most 'popcorn' that the show's been all season. Great fun, but with no deeper meaning or intelligence.

3/5

Review: Movie 43/Flight/Hyde Park on Hudson

HYDE PARK ON HUDSON



FLIGHT



MOVIE 43

Review: Zero Dark Thirty

Review: The Last Stand/Lincoln/The Sessions

THE LAST STAND



LINCOLN

THE SESSIONS

Review: Les Miserables

Review: The Impossible

Top 10 Worst Films of 2012

I’ve done the best, now the rest. With the amount of shite that came out this year it was difficult to pick the worst movies but I’m done my best. If you hated another movie that isn’t here, well I probably hated it too, but just not as much as these; it was tough competition to get to the worst of the worst. Bet the filmmakers are proud.

Honourable Mention: Ted

Ted was crap. It wasn’t nearly as gut-wrenching terrible as the rest of the films here so it doesn’t have an official place on the list, but it deserves a mention because so many people liked it and I don’t understand why. It wasn’t funny at all. At one point the joke is that there is a shit on the floor. No jokes are made about this; that in itself is supposed to masquerade as a joke. I don’t know what everyone was drinking when they saw this, but it wasn’t funny, it was bottom of the barrel childish stupidity. And Ted himself was fucking irritating. It would win my trophy for most overrated film of the year if that trophy existed. But it doesn’t so let’s just do the list.

10. Mirror Mirror

When this came out I predicted it would be in the top 5 worst movies. How wrong I was. It was still rubbish though. Except for a weird design style that wasn’t bad in itself (neither was it good though), everything in this film was rubbish. The only reason it isn’t higher on the list is I remember almost nothing about it anymore because everyone in it was so unmemorable and the plot was non-existent.

9. The Cold Light of Day 

This film was horrendously dull. Bruce Willis turns up for about a second and then is replaced by charisma vacuum Henry Cavill. The action’s poor, the plot is supposed to be a mystery but you don’t care at all what the truth is, it’s too long, and you don’t care about any of the characters. I suppose it didn’t actively irritate me, but this film was the closest I came to sleeping through, because I cared so little about it.

8. The Darkest Hour 

This was basically an Asylum movie. They’re the people who make mockbusters like Transmorphers. And while I actually kind of enjoyed this movie in a straight-to-dvd car crash sort of way, it has no business being released in cinemas. It was appalling to expect people to go to the cinema to see this crap, it was so poorly made and unpolished, and not on purpose. I still kind of liked it though, but don’t tell anyone.

7. Paranormal Activity 4 

I watched this film in Russian so I can’t give that much of an impression, but literally nothing happens in it. At all. Except for some ghoully thing right at the very end which in another movie would signal the start of a plot but here is the end. I’m fed up of the Paranormal Activity movies and even the novelty of another language didn’t make this anymore dull and pointless.

6. Savages 

This was the most pretentious movie of the year, because luckily for it Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder got postponed to the next year. This one has an irritating ethereal female voiceover that isn’t at all necessary like Uncle Terrence would enjoy, but it also had a very weird story, a terrible ending, not one good performance, dull/horrible direction and shockingly bad characters. The female lead is probably the worst non-comic performance of 2012. Oh and there’s a white character called Chon, and that’s just stupid.

5. Jack and Jill/That’s My Boy

Yesterday on my top 10, I put The Muppets lower on the list than I would’ve because it came out everywhere but the UK in 2011. Same here, except Jack and Jill is so much worse than The Muppets was good. Both of this year’s Adam Sandler films reached a new low for him in terms of complete lack of any kind of subtlety, enormous amounts of racism and childish humour, and just not being funny. If you laughed when Adam was sexually assaulted in That’s My Boy or when Al Pacino ruined his career by rapping about doughnuts, well then, you’re an idiot and that’s who these movies are made for.

4. The Devil Inside 

Much as I dislike Paranormal Activity it does have something going for it: it’s not this. This film was another badly made found footage movie. It’s not scary, it’s poorly made, it’s boring and it has the worst ending of any film I’ve ever seen. I’m not kidding about with that. The film simply ends  in the middle of the action and a message comes up with the link to a website where you have to look up what happens next. People complained Prometheus relied too much on other sources, at that had an ending. That put the prefect crap topping on a cake of undiluted rubbish.

3. One for the Money 

Maybe this film was released in February so people would forget about it when it reached time to make lists of the worst movies of the year. Well, I’ve not, much as I wish I had. This film is the tale of an OTT sexist stereotype of a woman ineptly trying to be a bounty hunter and her failing because she’s an idiot. The whole film is more about her being ridiculously stupid and her simply bizarre reactions to the man she fancies. It’s like someone saw The Bounty Hunter and decided to make a more irritating and sexist version of it with the most third most unintelligent and annoying main character of the year. Oh yes, that’s third most.

2. Lay the Favorite 

All of the other films I’ve just put a picture for. This one I’ve embedded the trailer. That’s because you have to see it to believe. Go ahead watch it. The entire film is as bad as that trailer. Admittedly this film wouldn’t have been the second worst of the year if it hadn’t been for one thing. Because never mind the disinterested Bruce, the terrible nonsense plot, the bizarre motivations of the characters which I still don’t understand or poor direction, the thing that sinks this ship is the main character Beth. She’s so stupid, so annoying, so poorly acted, so unlikable and nothing she does make sense that this film could have been Citizen Kane around her and I still would’ve given it the second worst place. At least no-one saw it. What could possibly be worse than that, well…

1. Keith Lemon: The Film 

Fuck this movie. I’ve never seen a worst movie at the cinema. I take it back The Smurfs, all is forgiven! Oh, there’s going to be a Smurfs 2? Fuck. Anyway, never mind 2011’s worst film, 2012’s was far worse. I’ve never seen Keith’s shows, but from what I’ve heard and the adverts I’ve seen, they look terrible. This movie certainly was. The celebrity cameos all look depressed to be in it, and if Ronan Keating is depressed to be in your movie nowadays, well you know you’re doing it wrong. Keith is more annoying that Beth and the woman from One for the Money combined, the ‘jokes’ would be cut out of Jack and Jill and the director of The Darkest Hour would’ve thought this movie looked cheap and substandard for even TV never mind the cinema. This is one of the very worst films I’ve ever seen, and I don’t say that lightly. Please, can we just get rid of Keith Lemon once and for all?

So that was the worst movies of 2012, and if there’s something worse out in 2013 than Keith Lemon: The Film, I’ll eat my hat. That’s a promise. That I can’t lose.