Tag: UK

Boudica: Rise of the Warrior Queen

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★½
“Boudica: The Moping About the Forest Years”

I try and not let my expectations influence my reviews: a movie deserves to be judged on what it is, rather than what I expected it to be. A film-maker usually doesn’t get to decide, for instance, the DVD sleeve. But when you invoke the name of Boudica in your title, this creates certain requirements with regard to your content, especially when combined with the words “warrior queen.” These are requirements which this movie is utterly incapable of meeting. Technically, the word “rise” is probably the only accurate element to be found, on the cover, which certainly counts as among the most inaccurate in recent memory.

At least it is set in Britain, during the Roman occupation not long after the birth of Christ. Boudica (Peel) is scheduled to be wed to the son of another tribe, to cement their anti-Roman alliance. But virtually on the eve of the wedding, her mother, Lucilia (McTernan) spirits her away. Mom, y’see, had gone through the whole arranged marriage thing to Boud’s brutish Dad, Scavo (Pengelly), and is damned if she’s going to let her little girl suffer the same thing. Quite why Lucilia has a Roman name is never explained. Anyway, they set up home in the woods, while Scavo and the husband-to-be roam the countryside looking for them. But one day, Boudica discovers an injured warrior (Cooke) near their home.

At no point does Boudica dress in the manner depicted on the cover. There is no castle to be seen: a mud hut is about it. There appear to be thousands of extras present, when I don’t think there was a scene where the count of players reached double digits. And I’m not sure where the “epic battle scenes” allegedly experienced by the “Geek Legion of Doom” (whatever that is) are. But they would seem to be full of shit, because they ain’t in this film. What you do get, is the sure and certain knowledge that whiny teenage girls bitching continually at their mothers is not a modern invention, and was in full effect in 47 AD. Boudica, of course, falls for the warrior, about whom Lucilla has qualms, causing the daughter to fling back her mother’s words about following her heart.

This soap-opera nonsense is, apparently, what is meant by a warrior queen rising. Who knew?

Based purely on content, this probably doesn’t deserve to be here, but it is technically about one of the most-renowned women warriors in history, so I feel under an obligation. For the first hour-plus, the closest we get to seeing Boudica in action is whacking a tree with a stick [I would at least have laughed, if she’d yelled repeatedly while doing so, “Why are you hitting yourself?”] Eventually, the warrior turns out not to be who he seemed – that’s a shock – leading to about the only sequence which could even remotely be described as the “passionate fighting spirit” claimed on the cover. Though you’d still need to be squinting from the right angle, to see even that. I strongly recommend you don’t bother.

Dir: Zoe Morgan
Star: Ella Peel, Michelle McTernan, James Cooke, Simon Pengelly

Killing Eve: Season Three

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★★
“How the mighty are fallen.”

I remember how the first series of Killing Eve blew my socks off, and was completely unlike anything else on television. The second series fell short, but that was unsurprising – how could it be otherwise? – and there was still the chance for it to mount a course correction and recover. This third installment, however, has if anything accelerated the downward trend. What was once must-see television has become something which sits on in the background, typically as I surf the Internet on my phone. I can’t think of another series which has collapsed in such a remarkably brief time-frame.

The problem is, the writers have completely forgotten what made the show work was the dynamic between Russian assassin Villanelle (Comer) and the MI5 agent, Eve (Oh), who is on her tail. I was wary of the frantic, moist fan ‘shipping which went on over this – at a level I haven’t experienced in anything I’ve been part of, since the more rabid elements of Xena fandom in the nineties. Yet I couldn’t deny it was the chemistry between the two characters which defined the show and made it work. Yet, the focus of the second season seemed to drift from this, and in the third, it felt more like I was flicking between two different shows. It felt as if Villanelle and Eve operated in the same universe only barely, and hardly crossed paths at all.

Indeed, it also seemed to forget what Villanelle was: an assassin. We’ve gone far from the glorious spectacle kills we saw previously, Here, she has become so sloppy, she can’t even dispatch Eve’s husband with a pitchfork to the neck properly. Our anti-heroine seemed instead to spend more of this season faffing around Europe, from Spain to Russia. This involved Villanelle either bitching at co-workers with the shadowy organization known as The Twelve, trying to reconnect to her family (an endeavour so clearly doomed from the start, you wonder why they bothered), or grooming the daughter of former handler Konstantin, for reasons which never pay off adequately.

At least Villanelle is getting some stuff to do, even if it’s far from enthralling. Eve, on the other hand, spent much of the season stuck in a holding pattern, when seen in any form – at least one episode went by without her appearing at all. Eve appears little if any closer to tracking down her nemesis than she was at the beginning of the first season, and her investigation into The Twelve has born equally little fruit. It has cost Eve her husband, so there has been an emotional price. However, he was always painted by the show as being a bit of a dick, whose fidelity was questionable, so the impact of this loss feels limited.

Put bluntly, while the two lead actresses are doing their best, I don’t care any longer about the characters or their fates. And probably never will, for as long as the showrunner appears more concerned with shoehorning in Taylor Swift covers than developing the story. Sorry. Just not interested.

Showrunner: Suzanne Heathcote
Star: Jodie Comer, Sandra Oh, Fiona Shaw, Darren Boyd

Book of Monsters

  By

★★★
“Killer party.”

Ten years ago, the mother of eight-year-old Sophie (Craine) was attacked and killed by what her daughter insisted was a monster – a claim to which she held, resulting in her being institutionalized. Now, a somewhat recovered Sophie is about to enjoy her 18th birthday, having organized a party with her friends. But she’s about to discover that the monsters were very real, and just waiting for her to reach adulthood. Fortunately, Mom was a bit of a monster hunter, who conveniently left a book of helpful tips as well as a secret vault of tools and weapons. Together with her pals, Sophie is prepared to make a stand and defend her home against the attackers.

This is, basically, rubbish, assembled on a budget which was clearly woefully short of the needful: the monsters, for example, are little more than blokes in masks. The plot is so hackneyed, it should be pulling a carriage, and the characters are a collection of stereotypes – even if the Goth girl is apparently unable to recognize a pentagram. I’m still unsure whether or not to be annoyed that Sophie’s a lesbian. On the one hand, it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. On the other… Well, it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. Yet, I sense that much of this is entirely deliberate. As the sleeve (right) shows, Sparke wanted to make a British version of The Evil Dead 2, complete with a central character who goes from zero to hero.

And, despite all the shortcomings, there’s an energy here which can only be admired and appreciated. It’s very British nature is one of the factors which help skate past the flaws, and it manages simultaneously to be played tongue-in-cheek and dead straight. The fact the lead actress is the world’s least-convincing 17-year-old (I’m not sure how old Craine is, but she graduated university, never mind school, eight years prior to this!), can only be presumed to be part of the joke. Once things start, they don’t stop, and even when the end results are more than a little rough around the edges, you’re still be more inclined to laugh with the film, rather than at it. The demonic worms which turn into killer garden gnomes are a good example of this spirit.

Similarly, despite my qualms about Craine’s credentials as a teenager, she is by no means bad in the role, and has a nicely-developed character arc. Initially, she’s still damaged by the experiences of a decade previously, yet has largely put that behind her. When everything she thought was her imagination, turns out merely to be an appetizer, you can see her internal steel buckle, yet not give way. By the end, she’s kicking arse and wielding that chainsaw as if to the manner born – which, I guess, she was. For a budget of about £60 grand, Craine and his team undeniably do more than a little. Now, someone give them $5 million and let him remake his own film with the budget it needs.

Dir: Stewart Sparke
Star: Lyndsey Craine, Michaela Longden, Lizzie Aaryn-Stanton, Daniel Thrace

Viking Destiny

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★★★
“Low-rent vikings”

The success of Vikings has spawned its fair share of similarly set films, and this isn’t the first such to stray into our purview, following Viking Siege. As there, it’s clear that the budget isn’t anywhere near its television inspiration. As a result, these films have to work harder in other areas, to make up for what they can’t offer in spectacle. Siege did this by mostly taking place in a single location. Destiny tries (and fails) to be at least occasionally epic, but benefits by having a genuine action heroine, front and centre. Not quite Lagertha, perhaps, yet close enough to be a pleasant surprise.

It’s Helle (Demetriou), who was the daughter of King Asmund of Volsung, swapped out for a male child, due to heir-related reasons. However, her replacement has grown up neither interested in, nor suitable for, leadership, while Helle has turned into a bit of a bad-ass. After Asmund’s death, his brother Bard (Nieminen) tries to take the throne, framing Helle for the murder of the official heir. She manages to escape, and with a little guidance from Odin (Stamp, who must have needed a house car TV payment or something), prepares to claim her rightful place on the throne of Volsung. Meanwhile, Bard has some divine guidance of his own, in the shape of Loki (McArthur).

The paucity of resources available is most painfully apparent during the final battle for the kingdom, which clearly has little more than a football team (plus substitutes) taking part on each side. Unless Volsung is smaller than San Marino, they shouldn’t have bothered. Considerably more successful are the one-on-one fights, such as Helle’s battle against one of a pair of hulking giant killers (note, no hyphen!), both played effectively by 6’8″ body-builder Martyn Ford. Demetriou has a fast, athletic style in combat, which is a nice contrast to the brute strength used by her far larger opponent. Generally, though, she looks and acts her part very well: as mentioned, maybe Lagertha Lite, yet a worthy shield-maiden, none the less.

The supporting cast may err on the side of panto, Nieminen and McArthur in particular, yet this doesn’t feel particularly inappropriate, given their villainous nature. Rather less interesting are the low-rent hippies with whom Helle joins up in her wandering through the woods. They show up to spout pacifist philosophy and drink fermented turnip juice (!), before mysteriously acquiring weapons and the skill to use them – just in time to slaughter and be slaughtered in the final battle. Pacifism: it’s vastly over-rated…

But when it sticks to the smaller scale, and its heroine in particular, this is by no means terrible, providing your expectations are similarly restrained. In some ways, it seems like a throwback to similar British sword and sorcery flicks of the early eighties. from polished entries like Excalibur, down to the cheap ‘n’ cheerful (yet not necessarily less fun) end represented by Hawk the Slayer. That’s not entirely a bad thing, in my humble opinion.

Dir: David L.G. Hughes
Star: Anna Demetriou, Timo Nieminen, Murray McArthur, Terence Stamp
a.k.a. Of Gods and Warriors

Prime Suspect: Tennison

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★★★½
“Before she was famous…”

Origin stories are all the rage, it appears. Though it’s probably just coincidence we watched this prequel to Prime Suspect the same week that Joker came out. It’s not quite as successful in terms of reinventing an iconic character, or shedding light on how they became who they are. This is largely because lead actress Martini is not Helen Mirren. Though it would unfair to hold that against her – because, let’s face it, who is? While I found it interesting to see some of the early influences which turned Jane Tennison into who she is, what she became is more notable than how she got there. It’s probably more enjoyable if you can separate them, and just enjoy this on its own terms, as a period police procedural.

It’s 1973, and we join the 22-year-old WPC 517, Jane Tennison (Martini), as she tries to find a footing in her first posting, to Hackney Police Station in East London. There, she has to cope with a time where women police officers were largely sidelined to making tea and taking messages. However, one of the detectives there, D.C.I. Len Bradfield (Reid) takes her under his wing, as the investigation begins into the murder of a prostitute, found strangled with her own bra. Meanwhile, long-term criminal Clifford Bentley – against whom Bradfield has a grudge – has barely got out of jail, before he and his family are planning a new robbery. But Jane is about to discover that things are not always as cut and dried as she’d like, and that the law and justice can be different, too.

It’s when the heroine is forced to confront these dilemmas that the show is at its most interesting. For example, when Tennison witnesses a colleague roughing up a suspect in the murder, actions which could allow them to go free. Should she speak up or keep silent? There are no easy answers, and depicting the dramatic tension is where Martini is at her most effective, along with trying to deal with her “helicopter mother”, who doesn’t appreciate her little girl is all grown up. [As an aside, there’s no denying the actress does bear more than a slight resemblance to a young Helen Mirren. Compare the pic on the right to this one of Mirren, from 1972, a year before this takes place]

Of course, if you’ve seen the episodes with Tennison all grown up, you’ll not be surprised by much here. There’s no way, for example, that Jane and Len are ever going to end up happily ever after. That said, the double-whammy in which this is accomplished was undeniably effective. It goes some way to explaining her aloofness in middle-age, as the scars of her early experiences. Being able to hang more personality trains on FutureJane, in a similar way, would have helped link this to what was to come. Instead, it’s just a little too disconnected, though on its own merits, we still were solidly entertained.

Dir: David Caffrey
Star: Stefanie Martini, Sam Reid, Blake Harrison, Alun Armstrong
a.k.a. Prime Suspect 1973

The Aeronauts

  By

★★★
“Full of hot air.”

I was genuinely stoked when I got to the end of this one, which details the derring-do of 19th-century pioneers James Glaisher (Redmayne) and Amelia Wren (Jones). The former is a scientist in the fledgling field of meteorology, who wants to obtain data from the upper atmosphere. The latter is a balloon pilot, carrying on despite the death of her husband on a previous flight. Together, they team up, to fly higher than any person had ever gone before. Indeed, further than even they wanted to go, as a frozen valve prevents them from descending when they need to do so. With Glaisher out of commission through oxygen deprivation, it’s up to Wren to climb, by herself, up the outside of the balloon, in order to reach the top and clear the valve.

The in-flight entertainment is excellent, right from the take-off, in front of a sizable crowd of onlookers, to whom Wren is delighted to play. But as they rise up, you do get a real sense of the appeal of flight, in a way which feels almost like a Hayao Miyazaki film. That matters, having gone into this wondering why someone would willingly dangle from a wicker basket, below what is effectively a large bomb (here, lifted by inflammable coal gas). But the beauty of the air is well-captured, as well as its immense scale, with any number of shots depicting the giant balloon reduced to little more than a speck, beside the massive clouds. And Wren’s solo ascent is the stuff of heroic legend.

But that’s also the problem. For she never existed. Oh, Glaisher did. And so did his flight, in 1862. It set an altitude record for any craft of 36,000 feet, which would endure for more than sixty years. And after Glaisher lost consciousness, his companion did end up needing to pull the release valve by mouth, having lost all feeling in his limbs. Yeah: his. Because it was professional balloonist Henry Coxwell who was the hero in fact. Now, I get that cinema will play fast and loose with facts. But swapping out a real person for a fictional one of the opposite gender? Really? There weren’t any actual aeronautical heroines about whom a film could be made? Oh, hang on: there were. Most obviously, Sophie Blanchard, a Frenchwoman on whom the character of Wren was partially-based, and who was Napoleon’s head of aeronautics. A future feature on her may beckon.

The more grounded stuff in the film also doesn’t work as well. There’s a narrative conceit which holds back information about the circumstances surrounding Mr. Wren’s death. And background stuff on Glaisher’s struggles to raise funds for his expedition into the sky, as well as his relationship with his father (Courtenay), don’t add much to proceedings. I’d have been happier with a real-time recounting, purely focused on the flight up and down. The contrast between the staid Glaisher and show-womanship of Wren, offers enough fuel to keep things going, until the latter’s perilous ascent is needed. Just don’t ask why neither of them thought to pack a pair of gloves.

Dir: Tom Harper
Star: Felicity Jones, Eddie Redmayne, Himesh Patel, Tom Courtenay

Tiffany Jones

  By

★★½
“Immodesty Blaise.”

Fashion model Tiffany Jones (Hempel) finds herself dropped into the middle of international intrigue, after President Boris Jabal (Pohlmann), leader of the Eastern European state of Zirdana, takes a shine to her during a state visit to Britain. It’s supposed to be a trade negotiation, but is really to allow Jabal to broken an arms deal with some shady Americans. Her meeting the President brings her to the attention of two factions of Zirdanian rebels.

The nice is led by Prince Salvator (Thomas), the ruler in exile. The not-so-nice are a more aggressive faction, operating out of a restaurant kitchen. Both wonder what Tiffany is doing with Jabal, and are keen to use her to achieve their ends. Which is fine by her, since she has no love for the authoritarian regime which controls Zirdana. So Tiffany agrees to a plan where Jabal will be distracted, preventing from seeing the arms dealers, and a substitute will take the meeting in his place.

Walker is better know for his S&M horror films, with titles such as House of Whipcord, and it’s safe to say saucy comedy like this is not his strong suit. There’s no shortage of sauce, to be sure. It’s reported that Hempel (now known as Lady Weinberg, through marriage) bought up the rights to the film, as well as her work with Russ Meyer, Black Snake, for showing rather too much of her. And that’s before we get to the garden party she throws for Jabal, populated by a flock of 1970’s dolly-birds, who shed their clothes enthusiastically at the drop of a cocktail napkin. The whole thing – a plot to get sexually compromising material on a visiting foreign leader – does still have contemporary resonance…

It’s the comedy angles which are a horrible failure, with virtually every attempted joke falling flatter than Hempel’s chest [quite how she ended up in a Meyer film escapes me, given his fondness for the more-endowed end of the feminine spectrum. Then again, he said later of Hempel, “We had a stand-in for the tits and wouldn’t let her speak.”] It’s not just the passage of time, for the Carry On films of the same era have endured very well: I suspect this was simply not very funny to begin with, and appears to have tanked at the box-office. Like Modesty Blaise, it was based on a British newspaper comic-strip, which ran from 1964-77. Unusually for the era, it was created by two women, Pat Tourret and Jenny Butterworth, though I suspect the newspaper version was likely less salacious.

The main redeeming aspect here is Hempel, who has a lovely, breezy charm which manages to sail above the leaden material, almost redeeming it. She portrays Jones with an endearing mix of savviness and innocence, as she dodges the (literal) grasp of President Jabal, and the more fanatical of his opponents, while working to help the Prince regain his throne. Probably wisely, the morality of replacing an absolute, unelected leader with another absolute unelected leader, simply because the latter is younger and cuter, is never addressed. Hempel is not quite enough to rescue this, and it’s perfectly understandable why this vanished into obscurity, with or without the lead actress’s help.

Dir: Pete Walker
Star: Anouska Hempel, Eric Pohlmann, Damien Thomas, Susan Sheers

The Rizen

  By

★★½
“Tunnel of love-craft.”

This is about the third Lovecraftian film I’ve seen with a heroine in the past year or so, after Black Site and The Creature Below. While I’m not sure it’s still quite a trend, it’s notable, considering I’ve only seen three Lovecraftian films over that time. It certainly stands in sharp contrast to the original author, for whom women were very rarely the protagonists. However, this equally provides clear evidence that this isn’t enough, on its own, as a guarantee of quality.

It’s 1955, and Frances (Swift) regains consciousness to find herself being dragged through an underground tunnel by a half-human monster. She bashes its head in with a convenient rock, and starts trying to figure out what’s going on, since her memory is all but gone. She encounters a scientist (Tajah) and then a handcuffed soldier (Knowles) – neither of whom can remember much either – and more of the monstrous humanoids. As the trio make their way through the complex, fragments of flashbacks reveal this was a NATO project, using captured Nazi occult research with the aim of getting a Cold War edge. However, this has backfired, and control over things has been lost. With emphasis heavily on the “things”…

It’s one of the most blatant and annoying cases of amnesia as a plot device I’ve seen of late, with characters conveniently remembering things at the precise moments needed by the story-line. However, even to get to that point, you have to endure painfully repetitive meandering through dark corridors for what seems like forever. It feels like a bad RPG, in which the heroine picks up largely useless sidekicks to follow her around, in the expectation that they might eventually serve some purpose. Indeed, the whole thing resembles an unofficial adaptation of Resident Evil, made by people too concerned about loyalty to the game, rather than an entertaining movie.

To that Jovovich-shaped end, Swift is one of the film’s better elements – a stuntwoman, with a good physical presence which is (to some extent, deliberately) far better than those of her male co-stars. However, only to some extent: it doesn’t excuse the painful nature of Tajah’s performance, for example. This stands in awkward contrast to the “name” British actors whom we see in the flashbacks, including Bruce Payne, Ade Edmondson and Sally Phillips. Clearly the budget could only stretch to bringing them in for cameos, though it just emphasizes the gap in ability. The main problem, though, is a structure where the viewer spends the first hour with no clue what’s going on – and with little reason to care, either. There’s only so much slinking around dark corridors I can take. This movie delivers all of that quota, plus an extra 30 minutes for good measure.

It’s a shame, since if they’d started with the explanation, we could perhaps then have gone along with the characters on the journey. As is, we alternate for most of the running time between bored and confused. When everything eventually makes sense, it was good enough to leave me somewhat intrigued, on reading there is a sequel in production. Pity that intrigue comes an hour too late.

Dir: Matt Mitchell
Star:Laura Swift, Christopher Tajah, Patrick Knowles, Bruce Payne

Wish Me Luck

  By

★★★½
“Life during wartime.”

This British TV series ran for three series from 1988 through 1990, with 23 episodes (each an hour long including commercials) in total. The same creators had previously been responsible for another WW2-based show, Tenko, about women in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp after the fall of Singapore. The time period here is similar – the second half of World War 2 – but the focus moves from the Far East to Occupied Europe, in particular, France. At this point, the Allies were sending in agents to assist the local Resistance – and as we’ve documented before, this was one of the few areas where women were used as much as men.

While partly inspired by the exploits of Nancy ‘The White Mouse’ Wake, the show cover a range of characters, both at home on London and on the ground in Vichy France. The main one present throughout is Faith Ashley (Asher), who eventually rises to run the department from London. She is responsible for recruiting (more or less) suitable candidates, getting them trained, and once they’re embedded, managing their needs. In the first season, it’s an exercise in contrasts: the two main agents sent over are an upper-class housewife Liz Grainger (Buffery), and factory worker from a refugee Jewish family, Matty Firman (Suzanna Hamilton). In the second and third series, the focus is more on Emily Whitbread (Snowden), an initially rather naive woman, barely old enough to join up. She quickly has to adapt and make some extremely difficult decisions.

It’s at its most effective when concentrating on ratcheting up the tension and depicting life in enemy territory, where the slightest slip can prove fatal. Interestingly, there’s no attempt made at the players speaking – or in most cases, even sounding – French. Yet, this is easy to forget, and soon seems natural, with their English accents still conveying information about their position and social standing. Less successful, with the exception of the final season, are the aspects portraying life in Britain. These are just not very interesting, save for the last batch of episodes. In those, Faith tries, with increasing desperation, to get much-needed resources for a rebellion, when the higher-ups are far more concerned with matters elsewhere. It’s an object lesson that the needs of the many may outweigh the needs of the few – yet the consequence for the few are no less tragic as a result.

The last season also has considerably loftier production values, with location shooting in France, and significantly more military hardware on view. However, the cheap music still undercuts this, apparently being played by a three-man band, when the action really needs something sweeping and orchestral. That still doesn’t destroy the tension of the final few episodes, when it becomes increasingly clear that the makers have no intention on letting all the characters walk off into the sunset unharmed. But you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because in wartime, there’s really no such thing as a happy ending.

Creators: : Jill Hyem & Lavinia Warner
Star: Jane Asher, Jane Snowden, Michael J. Jackson, Kate Buffery

In Darkness

  By

★★½
“Hard to see the appeal.”

I literally had to check at the end of this, to see if M. Night Shyamalan had been involved. Because rarely since the likes of Signs – or, worse still, The Village – has a final twist so completely derailed a movie. As soon as it happened here, I was immediately listing off the scenes previously which now made absolutely no sense at all. While it’s hard to provide more information without massive spoilerage, it turned a film which was doing not badly, into one which is a poster-child for poorly-conceived ideas.

Sofia (Dormer, who also co-wrote the script with the director) is a blind piano player, living in a London apartment. One night, she hears an argument in the flat above, and its occupant plummeting to her death. Turns out the victim was the daughter of an accused Bosnian war-criminal, Radic (Bijvoet), a man with a murky past and present, whose asylum status is being challenged. The hunt is then on for a USB drive containing incriminating evidence of Radic’s business dealings, with a brother and sister pair of “security consultants”, Marc and Alex, (Skrein + Richardson) heading the chase. Mark saves Sofia from Radic’s thugs, who believe she knows the location of the USB drive. But what is their agenda – and what is Sofia’s? For, as gradually becomes clear, her presence in the affair may be considerably more than coincidental.

This starts off impressively enough, taking you into the world of a blind person living in one of the world’s biggest cities, with some particularly effective sound design. The script is very cautious with its release of information, depicting things that aren’t necessarily explained for some time. Who is sending Sofia notes in braille, that she burns after reading? Or what is the significance of her tattoos, which are not what you’d expect from a classical musician. It’s all quite intriguing, We’re deep into the film before her motives become clear, and it may be too late. For by that stage, we’re already passed the point where people are acting in ways necessary to the plot, rather than that make sense to the viewer.

It feels as if Dormer saw one too many of those awesome Korean revenge films, and decided she wanted to make one while on vacation from Game of Thrones [She, Skrein and James Cosmo, who plays Sofia’s mentor, have all appeared in that show]. She just apparently forgot, those inevitably possess a razor-edged script, in which what drives a character is always kept front and centre. Here, by the time you are given sufficient reason to care about Sofia, you have already waded through too many scenes that are dead weight. Sometimes, this is because you don’t have the necessary information yet; in others, it’s just because the makers thought they were needed. None of which excuses the revelation in the last shot; it’s been while since I’ve come as close to throwing something (remote control, coffee table, dog) at the TV set.

Dir: Anthony Byrne
Star: Natalie Dormer, Ed Skrein, Joely Richardson, Jan Bijvoet