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Reviews
Pride (2014)
An absolute joy to watch
It's a difficult balance to achieve - making a film funny and feel-good and uplifting, whilst still acknowledging the violence, hardship and miseries inflicted on both the miners and the gay community. "Pride" succeeds in this magnificently, manage to be both laugh-out-loud funny and incredibly moving. I wasn't the only person in the cinema when the lights came up to have tears rolling down my cheeks.
The performances are uniformly excellent - hardly surprisingly in a cast that includes Bill Nighy, Paddy Considine, Andrew Scott, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton - but relative newcomers Ben Schnetzer and Jessica Gunning made strong impressions too, and there was a haunting cameo from Russell Tovey.
I urge you to see it. If you liked Billy Elliot or the Full Monty, you'll love this. Right, I'm off to join a union.
Outside the Rules (2002)
Second episode better
The first two-parter was okay, but not great. The second two-parter, concerning a serial killer called the Carpenter, was much more effective. I always thought knives, scalpels etc. would probably be the worst instrument you could have used on you, but the idea of being nailed to a table and then having your limbs crushed with a hammer takes the cake. I think what made this a cut above the usual crime dramas was the acting - both Nardini (especially in the scene in which she finds out what's happened to 'boyfriend' Mo) and Tim Dutton (as the only victim of the Carpenter still alive) were excellent. His performance rose above the cliches that are inevitable when describing a victim of that kind of trauma. I'm hoping for a third installment.
Homicide: Life on the Street (1993)
Kellerman and the end of the sixth season
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR EPISODE "FALLEN HEROES PT.II" (season 6) AND FOR LUTHER MAHONEY STORYLINE (season 5)
Well I just saw the sixth season finale, and it just blew me away. I thought Fallen Heroes pt 1 had been good, but pt 2 was even better. Reed Diamond's acting was so good: he got a lot of flack when he first joined the cast - a lot of regular viewers thought he was just there to add some eye candy - but he's really proved his worth.
To me, Kellerman's character has been one of the most interesting and complex; over two seasons the character evolved and changed, from an easy-going, very moral person (in his first few episodes you see him turn down offers of casual sex from various witnesses...), to someone made bitter by accusations of corruption, when in fact he was the only officer in the department not on the take, to finally a man willing to break the law to make a drug lord pay. By the final episodes we see his disgust for the victims (usually drug dealers themselves) as well as for the criminals. "We're supposed to speak for the dead," Terri Stivers reminds him, but the old Kellerman is now long gone, and the new Kellerman doesn't give a damn.
The expression on Kellerman's face when he steps into the Box and realises Frank is there to try and make him confess just broke my heart. I was so fond of the sweet guy from Arson that was nervous about whether he could cut it in Homicide; now you could see him realising his own colleagues were after him, that his one mistake was going to cost him his badge. Kellerman was always about doing right; he thought he was justified in killing Luther Mahoney. Now his friends are turning on him and he's losing everything he cares about. This was Diamond's scene: hurt, lashing out in defense, he brilliantly conveyed Kellerman's desperation. Whilst Pembleton and Falsone believed Luther didn't even have a gun, Kellerman could truthfully argue with them; once they realised by his stance that Luther had the gun but it wasn't raised, Kellerman seemed to freeze, to realise that they'd caught him out. He didn't lie to them; he told the truth. You could see his pain at their reactions of disgust, trying to persuade them he'd done the right thing.
In the end, Kellerman gets his final test - Giardello says if he resigns, then Lewis and Stivers won't get any repercussions. And Mikey does what we know he'll do - ever loyal, even to those who gave him up, he sacrifices the job that defines him, that he loves, that has ended up ruining him, for his partner.
Good luck to Reed Diamond for the future - if I could bestow blessings that came true, my best wish for you would be that all the parts you play could utilize your skills as well as they were used in this one.
Cube (1997)
Compelling, if flawed
When I sat down to watch this film, I deliberately put my dinner aside for the first scene. I knew what was coming - I'd read about it in the few reviews of Cube that appeared - and didn't particularly want to be snacking on spaghetti pomodoro when it happened.
There were a few more moments like that in the course of the film, where I was so tense I had to peek from behind my fingers. I was surprised it was only rated 15 in Britain, as it scared me more than plenty of 18-rated horror films.
In between the moments of tension we're introduced (in some cases briefly) to a group of people who seem to be on the corporate team-building weekend from hell. The characters are not rounded - that would either require a long introductory segment in the world outside of the cube, or long periods of dialogue which would slow down the film. Whilst this has the effect of making a character's death cause you to wince rather than feel sorrow at their demise, if you try and bear in mind that this is more of an "idea" movie than a character study you can let it pass. The acting is competent, although due to the lack of major characterization the actors tend to be reacting rather than acting. Quentin, the police officer, is occasionally hammy, but his descent into savagery from his initial role as the galvanizing leader of the group is interesting to watch. As for the others, you wonder what the rest of the group would have done if the essential members - the maths student, the autistic savant and the architect - had bought the farm early on in the film; you also wonder what the diced guy at the start did for a living, and how he could have added to the skills of the group if he hadn't had that unfortunately cheese-wire accident.
At the end you do wonder if you're going to get to see on the other side of the final hatch - but then sometimes too much explanation spoils things. I prefer the original version of "Close Encounters" when you *don't* see inside the spaceship, and believe me I was much happier pre-Highlander 2, before I knew Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery were aliens from the planet Zeist.
Cube CAN be viewed just as a horror sci-fi movie, although if you feel like looking for an allegory between the cube as our society and reaching the outside as salvation/heaven, then you'll certainly find a lot here to back you up.