The Fall: Season 2

When a television series has a really excellent first run, it's always an anxious wait to see if the follow-up will repeat the success. Quite often, it cannot help but fall short. Homeland is one of the more high profile casualties of this sequel sickness. Once an example of how to make gripping, politically astute drama without resorting to cliche, it became lost in a mire of Dana-based plot lines and Clare Danes cry-face memes. 

The Fall is an interesting case study because it arrived in 2013 looking a lot like things we'd all seen before -- Silent Witness, Prime Suspect, The Killing -- and yet managed to do something new with the 'murder mystery' genre. It gave us our killer on a plate. Paul Spector, played by the unreasonably handsome Jamie Dornan, could not have been more unlikely (save, of course, his suspicious surname). Apparently devoted to his family, and highly respected as a grief counsellor (BBC does irony), he unleashed wells of sexual rage in a murder spree that lasted most of the first season. His targets, with one unplanned exception, were of a kind: young, attractive, female.

Following his traces throughout was D.S.I. Stella Gibson, a performance of icy composure from the magnificent Gillian Anderson. The psychology of Spector and Gibson's mutual obsession was the compelling centrepiece of a show tautly conceived and teasingly played out across five impeccable episodes. Both characters were evidently plagued by childhoods that remained (and still remain) only half-spoken. They also share a tendency to use their sexuality to manipulate others, each possessing an allure that disturbs and excites in equal measure. In another fictional set-up, theirs would be a love story, which, I'm sure, is the point.

Season 2 marks a change in pace and direction. The Belfast police now know that Spector is the killer, and most of the episodes revolve around his abduction of Rose Stagg (Valene Kane) and the subsequent rescue effort. Well, I say revolve, but one of the problems with this season is that it doesn't strictly revolve around anything. Side-plots sprawl from the main action in increasingly ludicrous number and content. Minor characters, whom we are led to believe are important, are introduced then hastily dropped. The dialogue veers between the mundane and the ridiculous. Fuseli's Nightmare becomes the focus of some pretty painful art history analysis. Oh, and Rose Stagg is all but forgotten for three whole episodes. I like to think abduction investigations are performed with a little more energy, particularly when the known culprit is taking a jog through the Botanic Gardens.

All this aside, The Fall could still have worked as a fairly entertaining and well-acted thriller. More difficult to swallow is its portrayal of women. I was initially ambivalent about criticisms of the show's gender politics. The first season was truly horrifying in its depiction of Spector's assaults on his defenceless victims, but it managed to serve a dramatic purpose without glamourising sexual violence. The second, however, shifts the balance perceptibly from representations of women as victims of masculine power, to the intricacies of feminine sexuality (these two issues are, of course, far from exclusive). It runs into problems because its approach to this topic is predictable and, at times, tasteless.

The first and worst example is Katy Benedetto (Aisling Franciosi), whose involvement in the whole affair is a travesty of storytelling. A teenager infatuated with Spector, she becomes increasingly embroiled in his twisted fantasies, first by offering herself to him, then by concocting alibis, briefly kidnapping his daughter, and breaking into his house. Whilst it is not impossible to believe that an otherwise apparently stable adolescent might conceivably risk so much for a man she thinks is a murderer, it is certainly difficult. It is made more difficult by the fact that the show's writers make little attempt to expose her motives, anxieties, or personal circumstances. There is also a highly disturbing scene in a hotel room where Spector ties her to the bed, a sequence the seedy hotel owner captures on his surveillance system. It is a scene overlaid with aggressive misogyny and male voyeurism, and Katy's apparent compliance, aside from being unbelievable, desperately needed to be further unpacked.

The other women, unfortunately, don't always fare much better. DC Gail McNally (Bronágh Taggart) is reduced to yet another one of Spector's fantasies, sent in to arrest him in his cell with her hair tumbling loosely over a thin blouse. Dr. Reed Smith, played by the wonderful Archie Panjabi, is seriously underused, save for a brief gay kiss with Gibson that has no purpose other than to titillate and ends in possibly the most cringe-worthy line of the season: 'I can't. I'm from Croydon.' Kalinda Sharma would never say that. And who knew sexuality was a postcode lottery? Even Gibson is rendered in more shallow terms this season. With some of the show's original urgency lost (Spector doesn't actually kill anyone this time), the glacial precision of Anderson's performance had less to counter, and sometimes meandered from the calm to the soporific.

This all sounds pretty damning, and I was disappointed by The Fall this time round. It ducks some of its responsibilities in terms of its treatment of gender and sexuality, and the plotting, at times, is nonsense. But given the strength of its opening season, my expectations were higher than usual, and it is still very watchable stuff. It just suffers from the maladies that so often afflict the follow-up. In an effort to recapture the old formula, shows sometimes get lost in manic methods of narration, and forget how to be curious about their characters. 

The Imitation Game

I had a discussion with my housemates the other night about what constitutes a biopic. Is it just the dramatising of a personal history, or does that person need a certain level of fame and historical proximity (or distance)? Is, for instance, The Social Network a biopic? Lawrence of Arabia? Andrei Rublev? All these films have deeply individualised narratives, and yet each reaches well beyond this remit to offer critiques of art, war, and modern technology.

These questions and definitions matter because The Imitation Game both is and is not about Alan Turing. It also seems unsure of just how much it wants to be about Alan Turing. I sense it would prefer to be about the Second World War, which offers a safe vantage point from which it can explore Turing's breaking of the Nazi Enigma Code. In fact, there is a moment where one of the coders frets about the comfort of their position compared to the soldiers risking their lives on the ground. Oddly, this film finds similar refuge in Bletchley Park, the setting it uses as a hiding place from its own subject.

Turing, played here with wonderfully emotive discomfort by Benedict Cumberbatch, is a man at once applauded and erased by history. He was a war hero who helped to shorten the conflict by approximately two years, and a criminal, chemically castrated on the orders of the British Justice system after his homosexuality was discovered. Morten Tyldum's film struggles to come to terms with the full ugliness of the latter. In a brief, galling postscript, viewers are reminded that Turing was granted a royal pardon in 2013: just one victim amongst 49,000 to receive an apology abhorrent in its inadequacy.

The man's hidden life is largely documented through flashbacks to his time at school, where he fell in love with a classmate, Christopher, whose name is immortalised in Turing's universal code-breaking machine. Aside from these brief childhood moments, Turing is emotionally constrained and socially impossible, grating on his colleagues with regular displays of apathy, arrogance, and contempt for their abilities. As the louche Hugh Alexander, Matthew Goode is a striking antidote to Cumberbatch's pained discomposure, whilst Keira Knightley is surprisingly restrained as Turing's sole companion, Joan Clarke. In a glib attempt at thematic unity, the film spells out the correlations between mathematic and social codes, as a young Turing admits that he does not understand why people never say what they mean. As an adult, he is puzzled by human interaction, finding solace in the cold logic of the machine.

The various strands of this history are too complex to be neatly tied together, which is unfortunately what this film attempts to do as it progresses. Particularly jarring is the repetition of its tagline: 'sometimes it's the people no one imagines anything of that do the things no one can imagine.' Horribly twee, it bizarrely ignores that fact that a prodigious Cambridge mathematics fellow is precisely the sort of person of whom you might expect brilliance. This line's tone reflects the dialogue as a whole: clunky, mawkish, and poorly considered. It's a shame because the acting is generally excellent, and there are glimpses of a better film amongst the softly-lit flashbacks and predictable set-pieces. The real problem is its half-hearted probing of the issues it raises. Where it can be saccharine and sentimental it lingers; where it uncovers real horror, it retreats.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part I

'Part I': two words that chill me to the bone where any 'trilogy' is concerned. My mind makes a swift and painful return to the fateful first chapter of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. That dance. That kiss. With their eyes firmly on the profits, film studios are increasingly using adaptation as a means of turning reasonably structured texts into bloated cinematic non-sequitors. There was no need for the last Potter film to be cut in two; nor, I'm sure, was the world well served by yet another Twilight. I haven't seen it. I'll make the claim nonetheless.

So it was with trepidation that I approached this third instalment in the Hunger Games franchise. Its predecessors are slick, well-crafted additions to the teen adventure genre, and they successfully counteract the inevitable cliches with nuanced insights into the moral and political ambivalences of Suzanne Collins's dystopia. It also helps that Jennifer Lawrence is really very good in everything all the time. People often talk about teen heroes and heroines in fairly unimaginative terms: they are 'likeable' or 'sympathetic.' Katniss Everdeen is better than that: she is interesting, and complicated, and not always that nice.

Following a second brutal run in the sadistic reality show that is The Hunger Games, Katniss finds herself esconced in District Thirteen, a concealed military base preparing for revolution. She spends a while being quite stroppy, largely because her rescuers failed to save fellow volunteer Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) from the clutches of the Capitol. President Snow, played with malignant intensity by Donald Sutherland, delights in dangling Peeta in front of the rebels via a series of staged interviews, hosted by a dentally luminescent Stanley Tucci. This is the real thematic focus of the film: the relationship between media and power. Both sides embark upon elaborate propaganda campaigns, creating an uneasy symmetry between state and rebel force. Katniss is the reluctant face of a war fought with screens; a revolution that begins to look curiously like the teen adventure genre it finds itself in.

There is certainly a real seed of interest here in the way conflict is mediated by modern technology, and there are some provocative if unpalatable overlaps with contemporary footage from Syria, not to mention the recent report on torture practices in the C.I.A. But the film drags in places. Boy two in the obligatory love triangle, Gale (Liam Hemsworth), is once again trapped in a personality-free zone. His generic 'pained' expression does not vary -- perhaps he had heartburn all through shooting? This is annoyingly at the expense of other characters: the fascinatingly tattooed filmmaker Cressida (Natalie Dormer) and the always entertaining will-they-won't-they pair, Effie (Elizabeth Banks) and Haymitch (Woody Harrelson). The film is dedicated to the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, who resumes the role of Plutarch Heavensbee with a performance that showcases his usual combination of gritty charm and integrity. 

It is no surprise that this third instalment feels like a disjointed accompaniment to its predecessors. Without the rapid but formulaic pace of things in the arena, director Francis Lawrence has to really delve into the story's knotty ethics, with the odd explosion thrown in for good measure. The result is good but not great; an unsettling and uncertain half-of-a-film. 

Pride

A sensitive coming-of-age tale; an astute commentary on the politics of the 80s; and a newly Welsh Imelda Staunton brandishing a dildo -- how could this be anything other than brilliant? Pride is raucously funny and unapologetically camp, yet its humour is always firmly couched in a respect for its subject matter: the shared struggle of mining communities and gay rights activists in a decade of social and economic upheaval.

Things begin in Croydon, where the frustrated, outspoken Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) is looking for a cause to back. The plight of the miners provides the perfect opportunity for demonstrative action. And so, the succinctly named Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) is born -- a group which includes the still closeted Joe (George MacKay) and a wonderfully bleached Dominic West as Jonathan, an ageing thesp. Inevitably, tension and hilarity ensue when they shack up with their reluctant comrades in a tiny mining village in South Wales.

Where this film really succeeds is in capturing the intense social web that exists in such small, rural places. Power is wielded by those who have survived it the longest -- in this case, a wonderfully eccentric best-of-British lineup including Staunton, as the inimitable Hefina, and Bill Nighy as the modestly tortured Cliff. When LGSM arrive, friction blisters between the opposing factions, although the demarcations are not always clear. 

Pride doesn't exactly go in for gritty realism. There are several references to the deeply ugly, often violent effects of homophobia, but any examination of prejudicial structures is fairly light. Matthew Warchus is keen to keep his film in the crowd-pleasing realm of sex toys and 80s disco. And there is nothing wrong with that. There is some truly touching evidence of human empathy amongst the gags (in both senses), and moments of comic levity are often balanced by an awareness of the hysteria surrounding homosexuality, which found its focus in the AIDS crisis. 

This is a film of fiery divisions and unexpected unions. It works because it plays to its strengths, namely a brilliant cast and a razor-sharp script. All jokes aside, the song of protest at its core is one inscribed on British social history, and here it is given a worthy rendition.

Lucy

Nobody makes an action thriller quite like Luc Besson. It's been twenty years since the French director's cult classic Leon: The Professional, and he is very much back to his old tricks with Lucy, a frequently entertaining, often bizarre mashup of suspect science and gangster politics. Led by Scarlett Johansson, riding her post-Under the Skin wave of edgy appeal, this foray into the world of brain-altering narcotics is consistently ridiculous, and all the better for it.

The premise is this: Johansson's Lucy is led astray whilst studying in Taipei and finds herself the involuntary carrier of a new drug, CPH4, which, we are assured, all the kids in Europe are going to love. Somehow, its inventors have failed to realise that their creation will allow consumers to unlock their full brain capacity. We are told (by none other than Morgan Freeman, so it must be true) that most humans use only 20% of the cerebral function available to them. Unsurprisingly, when Lucy accidentally ingests large quantities of CPH4, things start to go awry.

What is surprising, however, is just how awry they go. Apparently, a person with this kind of brain function is capable of such feats as levitation, mind-control, and, finally, time-travel. And so begins Lucy's bloody rampage from the far East to Paris, where she plans to meet with Freeman's learned scientist to tell him the secrets of the universe. On the way, she pulls a bullet out of her own chest and starts to melt after drinking champagne. We've all been there.

What saves Lucy from being unbearably silly is Besson's awareness of just how far he is straining credulity. Everything is performed as if on speed -- the violence is stupidly gory and, crucially, the scientific discussions are usually interrupted by somebody pulling out a gun. Just when you think it can't get any more absurd, Besson brings out the dinosaurs. There are also some wonderfully tasteless montages designed to hammer home the metaphors. As Lucy looks warily at the obviously dodgy group of thugs in black suits, we cut to an antelope eyeing a pack of lions. Deep stuff.

In spite (and possibly because) of its flaws, it is very difficult not to enjoy Lucy. Johansson leads the film effortlessly, even when her apparently unbearable new consciousness leads her to look like she's constantly suppressing a bout of hiccups. Given the joy Besson takes in draining the film of any emotional or philosophical integrity, it is a brilliant move to go all 2001 on us at the end. He might be making a point about the universe's immense unknowability, with Lucy at its heart as a HAL-like cipher. Or maybe he just ran out of fake blood.

Two Days, One Night

The quiet precision of the title is telling: this is a film about the subtle measurements of the everyday. With Two Days, One Night, the Dardenne brothers have accomplished the difficult task of making the resolutely ordinary totally compelling. This is in large part thanks to Marion Cotillard's perfectly judged performance as Sandra, an employee at a solar panel factory who finds herself fighting for her job in the aftermath of a nervous breakdown. Hers is the kind of suffering that so often goes  untreated and undocumented, but here its repercussions are brought into sharp focus.

Sandra's period of depression has left her visibly drained -- Cotillard's usual glamour is replaced by dark circles, hollow cheeks, and messily assembled hair. Her whole way of moving is reluctant and pained, making the weekend's demands all the more excruciating. In order to save her job, she must visit each of her co-workers and ask them to vote that she be allowed to stay, sacrificing their bonus in the process.

In the wake of the world's recent economic catastrophes, this reads like a relatively minor dilemma: one woman's job or €1000? But the Dardennes are keenly aware of the moral and practical agonies this very real question can raise. As we follow Sandra from one house to the next, a picture of a shared struggle gradually begins to emerge. Her colleagues' dramatically varied responses -- from violent rejection to tearful support -- reveal a whole scale of ethical ambiguity within a small group of people. The film's unhurried pace creates the impression that each scene, regardless of its significance or intensity, is just part of life's daily dose of victory and loss.

This could lead to accusations of drudgery, and I would be lying if I said there weren't a couple of people fidgeting in their seats. But there were far more entranced by this picture of one woman's effort to hold on to both her job and her integrity. There is a lot at stake for Sandra, and for her family, particularly her husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione). Their relationship is fraught with pressures like so many -- there are no explosive fights, only one bitter suggestion that they might separate, casually delivered by Sandra. The absence of any melodrama makes these discordant notes all the more powerful.

Although the focus of Sandra's canvassing, Monday morning's vote at the factory is not any great climax. The Dardennes are not interested in big scenes or hysterical set-pieces; their concern is with the human gestures that frame such moments. Glimpses of empathy, humility, and self-sacrifice are the touchstones of this piece, and the story at its core is one that lingers.

Boyhood (2014)

The first thing we hear in Richard Linklater's Boyhood is the unmistakable opening strain of Coldplay's 'Yellow.' Suppressing the vision of a young, pasty Chris Martin walking very slowly along a beach, I slid down my seat and prepared for the worst. (Not that I buy into the rabid scapegoating of Chris and co., but that tune is one jaundiced refrain too far.) Luckily, the song falters into the background, tinkling through the radio in the family home of Mason (Ellar Coltrane). It is of its time - a catchy part of life's daily hum - as it was in millions of homes near the beginning of the last decade. Over the next few hours, Linklater zones in on the experience of one family, and one boy in particular, documenting Mason's childhood and adolescence with an exquisite blend of empathy and curiosity. Boyhood was twelve years in the making but it has been crafted with the lightest touch, creating a story we imagine might have unfolded without us, and may still be unfolding now that we have left.

Linklater's films have always shown a fascination for time, and the relative brevity of our experiences. In the Before... trilogy, Ethan Hawke (who reappears here as Mason's father) and Julie Delpy snatch brief moments together in Vienna and Paris; the short hours guarding a love that neither character can resist. In Boyhood, we are not quite so pressed for time. There is an organic quality to the film's structure: Linklater drops in on Mason at unspecified intervals, sometimes coinciding with momentous incidents; at other points, turning an eye to the more mundane. This unbiased perspective is what makes Mason's evolution so compelling. His life is not hostage to the vagaries of a Hollywood plot. 

That is not to say that there is anything dull about this film. The supporting players in Mason's history are an eclectic, often hilarious mix. Lorelei Linklater is consistently excellent as his older sister, Samantha - if anything, we could have done with more of her in the later part of the film. Her early scenes with Mason feel like wonderfully authentic representations of sibling behaviour, with all its fractious adoration. A cautious warmth defines the changing relationship between Mason's divorced parents, who are portrayed with untheatrical honesty by Hawke and Patricia Arquette. There is the sense that all these actors become increasingly at one with their characters as time passes and, presumably, their life experiences somewhat coalesce.

In a recent interview, Linklater addressed this point, suggesting that Mason's personality became inextricably linked with Coltrane's as filming progressed. It's interesting to think that throughout the most trying, socially uncomfortable, physically transformative years of his life, Coltrane had this unfinished other self lurking at the back of his mind - a character whose skin he had to annually inhabit. The sheer scope of Linklater's ambition alone is a recommendation. This is a new kind of filmmaking altogether. Yet crucially, Mason's dramas are our own. His young life is as simple and as complicated as most, and the abiding feeling after watching Boyhood is one of recognition. Despite its radical conception, this film looks to the everyday for its inspiration; to lives seemingly less extraordinary, yet full of fire and possibility.

Orange is the New Black: Season 2

'This is, like, next level crazy,' says one of Litchfield's inmates a few episodes into the second season of Netflix's hugely popular prison drama. She speaks the truth. Orange is the New Black pushes the boundaries even further this time round. Whilst still outrageously funny and well-written, it is unafraid to bare its claws, probing deeper into prison's seedy power plays and the fractured instability of life behind bars. Season one's mysterious chicken has been replaced by an army of cockroaches.

And I mean that literally. One of the best things about this show is the weirdness of its comedy. The aforementioned insects make a great cameo in the opening episode, which takes the creative risk of almost completely isolating Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) from the rest of the cohort. After several weeks in solitary confinement  —  following a brutal altercation with Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning)  —  Piper finds herself transferred to Chicago to give evidence alongside her former girlfriend, Alex Vause (Laura Prepon). The tortuous dynamic between these two women made the first season crackle with chemistry and it remains a constant pressure point for Piper in the second, although Prepon's greatly reduced role renders Vause a notable absence at Litchfield. Not giving away any spoilers, the manner of her exit is characteristically Machiavellian.

The sidelining of the central relationship opens up the stage for the rest of the cast. This show is blessed with an extraordinary and diverse collection of characters, and creator Jenji Kohan uses each episode to paint an intimate single history. Brief, wonderfully drawn portraits emerge of drug trafficking, domestic violence, and childhood mental illness. Uzo Aduba is once again outstanding as 'Crazy Eyes,' and Yael Stone gives the performance of the season as Lorna Morello, whose heartbreaking backstory unravels our previous conceptions of her impossibly nasal, consummately cheerful character.

There are new faces too, crucially in the form of Vee (Lorraine Toussaint), who goes back a long way with both Red (Kate Mulgrew) and Taystee (Danielle Brooks). The vicious fight for social capital between Vee and Red sets the tone for this season, which entrenches the aggressive racial groupings and internal hierarchies that inevitably form in this kind of highly managed, claustrophobic space. Friendships and romances are put under considerable strain as tensions bleed between these unhappy quarters. Other narrative arcs include Daya's (Dascha Polanco) illicit affair with prison guard John Bennet (Matt McGorry), and Larry's (Jason Biggs) continual battle for self-preservation in the outside world.

I am possibly not alone in thinking that the sheer volume of characters makes this show, at times, frustrating to watch. Frequently, we spend an hour delving into a single inmate's psychology only to have her swiftly put at a distance for several episodes. Some characters are simply more interesting than others and I would have been happy to lose Cindy's backstory, or the absurdly irritating Soso, if Nicky (Natasha Lyonne) could have had more screen time. Her biting, incisive humour forms a particularly apt foil for Piper's self-deception.

The panoramic scope of this season is, then, both its greatest strength and its single weakness. Piper might not be the most popular character but I think she's a great anchor for the show's narrative, and Schilling's performance is never less than inspired. Her scenes with Alex, and one particular conversation with Larry and Polly, showcase her ability to move seamlessly between states of comic disbelief, blinkered narcissism, and genuine devastation. The final episodes seem to hint at a full-circle structure, with Prepon's return confirmed for Season three, and Piper's role in this arc has been gleefully established. Orange is the New Black remains utterly compelling, unsettlingly compulsive viewing, and the sheer depth of its fictional world ensures that every episode is rich in dramatic quality and, at times, tragic insight.

House of Cards: Seasons 1 and 2

I watched the first two episodes of House of Cards over a socially acceptable two nights. My general feeling was, 'meh.' Then, I watched a couple more and suddenly found myself totally, irreversibly gripped. It was disastrous. Within a week and a half I'd finished both seasons. This is a slow burner but as the levels of the drama deepen, you find yourself immersed in a high-stakes world of political infidelity, professional manipulation, and a marital complex akin to the Macbeths.

First, let's talk about politics. Kevin Spacey is Francis Underwood, the Chief Whip of the ruling Democrats and basically the go-to man in Congress. He is alternately magnificent, slimy, duplicitous and sympathetic. I hated him and yet I rooted for him. There is something magnetic and endlessly watchable about the way he toys with other people, ranging from the sharp young journalist Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara) to the President of the United States. Over the two seasons, we watch him manoeuvre his way up the party ranks, involved in his most intimate confessions through a clever use of asides to the camera.

The plot lines are too numerous to cover: there is a suspicious campaign to elect former addict Peter Russo (Corey Stoll) to Governor of Pennsylvania; a mysterious cover up involving call-girl Rachel (Rachel Brosnahan); a veiled political relationship with oily businessman Raymond Tusk (Gerald McRaney). At the centre of all these strands sits Underwood, a fat spider, his eyes gleaming with ambition.

Next to him throughout is his wife Claire, icily rendered by an impenetrable Robin Wright. Their marriage is undoubtedly the show's (barely) beating heart. They are a cold, calculating pair, retreating at the end of each day to share a celebratory cigarette by the window as they tot up the body-count. Wright's performance is astonishing - it takes a vast range to create such an unreadable and yet fully-formed character, always retaining an edge of unpredictability. It is never quite clear whether she and Francis are each other's only allies, or, tantalisingly, their most formidable opponents.

Season 1 revolves around Underwood's schemes involving Russo and Zoe Barnes; by Season 2, with a rising death-toll, his sights are set much higher. The pace seems to quicken with every episode and the layers of plot and character become ever more engrossing. This is fantastic television. If you don't already have it, get Netflix!

Orange is the New Black: Season 1

The joy and drawback of Netflix is that it lets you watch entire seasons in one sitting. This means that people across the world are losing whole days to shows like this. Orange is the New Black must have looked like a gamble on paper. It has a predominantly female cast and is set almost entirely inside a women's prison. Unlike House of Cards, this cast is composed of largely unfamiliar faces, and the characters they play are far from conventional. But the results are explosive, heart-rending and, frequently, hilarious.

Our unfortunate convict is Piper Chapman, played to perfection by Taylor Schilling. Chapman is based on the real-life former inmate Piper Kerman, whose memoir inspired and shaped the script. In her early twenties, she had an intensely complex relationship with a drug-dealer and on one occasion, acted as her mule to carry narcotics across international borders. Having totally redefined herself over the following decade - read, become engaged to sweetly dull Larry (Jason Biggs) and started a soap business - she is called to account by the law and forced to serve a late prison sentence.

Piper's first few days inside are comic gold. One of the strongest aspects of this show is its wonderful ensemble cast and as the diverse lineup of characters is introduced, the whole atmosphere behind to hiss with pent-up rage, suspicion and passion. Kate Mulgrew is unstoppable as Red, the Russian cook who rules her kitchen with an iron-fist, tempered with surprising shows of compassion, and Taryn Manning's violently Evangelical 'Pennsatucky' provides a searing point of conflict within the rest of the cohort. Creator Jenji Kohan gives ample time to all of their backstories, allowing a rich and fully realised portrait of prison life to emerge.

Unfortunately, things go from bad to worse for Piper when she is reunited inside with her former lover Alex Vause, played with indecent smoulder by Laura Prepon. A fun drinking game might be to do a shot whenever Vause suggestively removes her glasses. Their relationship forms the core of the first season and it is through this reconnection that Piper's mask of suburban contentment begins to crumble. Her slow transformation is great to watch: often very funny but, at times, vaguely terrifying. The final episode, rather than restoring equilibrium, radically upsets the balance of things within the walls of Litchfield. Season 2 starts on 6th June. I better stock up on snacks.

If there were laws against eyebrows...

The Double (2014)

In this loose adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel of the same name, young British director Richard Ayoade has certainly made his intentions clear. The Double is a highly ambitious project, created by someone determined to test the conventions of cinematic realism. Glum, violent, and played out on a knife edge, this film is bound to split viewers as it does its central character.

Ayoade has undoubtedly lined up an impressive cast: Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska are brilliant actors, and they are both able to convey a captivating sense of unease in their own skin. There is an attractive yet unsettling quality to Eisenberg's fidgety, snarky demeanour, and Wasikowska's innocence inflamed by a sharp perceptiveness. Their characters are well realised versions of Kafkaesque proletarian anonymity. As workers in a nightmarish factory, designed as a tunnel-like structure depressingly similar to the subway of their commute, Simon James (Eisenberg) and Hannah (Wasikowska) are cogs in a grinding industrial machine.

Routine is tensely disrupted by the arrival of James Simon, Eisenberg's doppelgänger, who is both his mirror image and his inversion. Where Simon is shy and reticent, James is confident and sexually appealing, accounting for all of his double's deficits and attracting Hannah, the object of both their affections. Recognising the self as 'other' is a familiar enough trope, and it is essential that the similarities between the two men are unseen by everyone else. Simon is a character on the fringes of visibility, constantly defined in terms of his own lack, whereas James is the apple of everyone's eye.

There is something bitter and unfeeling pervading the atmosphere, with shots starkly rendered in poorly lit interiors and bleak, industrial aesthetics. David Lynch's name has cropped up in several reviews, with Eraserhead in particular cited as an influence. I was put more in mind of Lynch's Factory photographs, recently exhibited at The Photographer's Gallery in London, which display the same kind of looming urban limits: infrastructure that is both imposing and claustrophobic. But I am far from convinced that Ayoade is 'the new Lynch.' The Double has none of the kaleidoscopic contortions in space and time that give a vital, strange energy to Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. For all its nodding to surrealist modes, it feels unsure of its own generic placement.

This creates a problem with pacing and it is one from which this film does not recover. There is a general sense of lurking, self-directed violence but there is little by way of tonal variation. Eisenberg's character(s) suffer from the paradox of the mirror image that attempts to reclaim the original. Both Simon and James seem to be surface projections; two sides of a hollow coin. Ayoade shows us anger and resentment, but without passion and warmth, these displays are shadow-play.

The undercurrents of art house experimentation fail to inject The Double with some much-needed spark. It is a resolutely dark piece, set entirely inside or at night, and ultimately becomes mired in its own mirror logic. Simon and Hannah's romantic narrative is quickly overshadowed by the torment inflicted on Eisenberg by his self-image, the nexus of this dystopian vision's irresolvable crisis of identity. The Double is well-acted and underpinned by intriguing ideas, but I found it a strangely slow and discomforting watch, hampered perhaps by the image of the better film it might have been.

Under the Skin (2014)

That mirror could do with a clean...

Jonathan Glazer's latest film is a deliciously creepy, almost comically absurd foray into horror. It's kind of both brilliantly clever and unbelievably silly.

Her (2014)

In spite of its futuristic feel, the scary thing about Her is that it's not that hard to believe.

August: Osage County (2014)

Adapting a stage play for the screen is a tricky business.

12 Years A Slave (2013)

There are films that we say we want to see; others that we say we ought to see. Sometimes, these two motives coalesce. More often that not, however, the prospect of a weighty, historical drama with a personal tale of abduction, betrayal, and persecution at its core is a daunting one. Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave, as its title suggests, really is a gruelling ride.

Based on actual memoirs, the narrative centres on the harrowing experiences of Solomon Northup, a New York-born musician who was taken hostage and sold into slavery for over a decade in the mid-nineteenth century. Northup is astutely and agonisingly underplayed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who uses physical gestures and silence to convey the slave's reality as one of slow, monotonous horror. He is joined by much touted newcomer Lupita Nyong'o, who gives a dignified and restrained performance as the shockingly abused Patsey.

Slavery, despite its impact on our historical consciousness, is rarely tackled by filmmakers, perhaps because it has left such a complex and unresolved legacy in contemporary race relations. As director, McQueen crucially avoids the exuberant, slapstick violence of a film like Quentin Tarantino's Djano Unchained, using much more subtly affecting strategies to gradually construct a picture of unrelenting suffering. His camera doesn't look away when the lashes of Michael Fassbender's slave owner seem to reach a climax. Instead, he holds his gaze, disregarding the traditional pattern of pain followed by a release. There is no way out here, for the victim or the viewer.

The problem with McQueen's fidelity to cinematic realism is that, as the violence goes on, the experience becomes unbearable and, subsequently, numbing. There is no antidote, as perhaps there shouldn't be for a crime still awaiting atonement. But this makes for a very difficult two and a half hours in the cinema, which is not helped by the fact that Northup's personal history is somewhat underdeveloped. I thought that the depiction of his family home in New York merited more attention, as it would have given his escape route a more concrete endpoint: a destination the audience could have imagined with him as a counter to the hell of the deep South. Moreover, it may be a beautifully shot film, born of McQueen's aesthetically-attuned artist's eye, but the script seemed fairly uninspired, using dialogue only to generate specific incidents or create moments of visual tension.

Whilst undoubtedly captivating, perhaps in the sense that it holds its viewers captive as much as it commands their attention, 12 Years A Slave is a devastating film. Its shockwaves were felt long after the credits rolled onto the screen and people milled around outside the cinema, already trying to forget. A towering visual achievement; it is almost unwatchable.

American Hustle (2013)

And hustle it does, in more ways than one. This is a prime example of a film succeeding spectacularly on its own steam. It has the golden cast - Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, and Bradley Cooper - and the writer-director of the moment, David O. Russell, who has pulled it off again one year after Silver Linings Playbook swept the awards season. American Hustle is a glitzier, trashier version of Silver Linings, using the same combination of cynicism and saccharine screwball to charm audiences into thinking it might actually have something to say.

This may sound unfair, but a film with ten (!) Academy Award nominations should surely be held to a higher standard than most. And, in some respects, it does have a lot going for it. The first ten minutes, in which Christian Bale's balding, bloated con-artist, Irving Rosenfeld, reconstructs his hairpiece are brilliantly played out with painstaking precision. The scene makes a strong statement about Hustle's intentions: get the superficial stuff right, and the rest will follow. But that's where the real problem lies. This is a film full of wigs and mirrors, where the costumes are not just the disguise but the substance itself.

Oh, but what wigs! Bradley Cooper apparently spent more time in hair and makeup than any other cast member and it certainly shows in his perfectly sculpted 70's curls. He plays FBI agent Richie DiMaso, who attempts to carve a career for himself by playing ball with the very people he is supposed to be incarcerating. His efforts to ensnare local politician Carmine Polito (a subtle turn from Jeremy Renner) lead to a convoluted double bluff, in which Rosenfeld and his partner Sydney Prosser (Adams) become both puppets and puppeteers. Bale and Adams do put on a great show, although the suggestion that their romance might become the poignant heart of the film is somewhat lost as they spend gradually less time alone together on screen.

On the sidelines but always threatening to steal the limelight is Jennifer Lawrence as Rosalyn, Rosenfeld's magnificently deranged wife, whose description is probably the film's best line: 'she was the Picasso of passive aggressive karate.' Passive is a stretch. Rosalyn repeatedly sets fire to her home, and nearly gets her husband killed by blowing his cover to her mafia boyfriend. Lawrence might well make it a double and win Best Supporting Actress this year; of all of the cast, she probably deserves it the most.

Despite the fun and the glamour of it all, what finally emerges is a film overly confident of its own appeal. Certainly, it is entertaining and gamely performed, but it is also too long (138 minutes), too repetitive, and too wrapped up in its glossy aesthetic. There is not much more to it than the conning of the title implies: it is a flashy surface display but when the wigs are removed, beneath it is disappointingly bare.