TV
The IT Crowd, season three (15)
4/5
Graham Linehan’s surreal world of basement IT workers has traditionally suffered from two fundamental problems: firstly, the delivery, which tends to level off somewhere around deafening; and secondly, the set-up. The ‘Have you tried turning it on and off again?’ gag died a death by the end of the first season (something actually mocked in season three), and the lack of any idea of what to do with the three main characters has all too often shown – hence the rise to prominence of Matt Berry’s brilliantly narcissistic tyrant boss. But this season really finds its feet. Episodes such as Moss and Roy’s (picture above) attempt to become ‘men’s men’ (spiralling from football banter to organised crime) show Linehan at his surreal best and the jokes hit harder and faster than ever before.
Gareth Clark
Eli Stone, season one (15)
4/5
Funny, witty and charming, this is the kind of series that could easily drown in syrup, or become cold and serious. But, somehow, Eli Stone manages to plough a likeable furrow through both extremes. The story revolves around Jonny Lee Miller’s eponymous hero, an up-and-coming attorney who suddenly begins seeing strange visions as the result of a brain aneurism. Sliding relationships, office politics and courtroom drama are balanced by the often comic goofiness of his ‘visions’ – not to mention the occasional musical number. The visions inevitably lead to unforeseen revelations, or spiral into alternate meanings come act three, but there is enough invention to stop the stories descending into cliché and Miller makes a charismatic lead.
Gareth Clark
How I Met Your Mother, season two (15)
3/5
When Friends finally ended – waddling like an elderly lame duck into the televisual sunset – something had to take its place. Thus How I Met Your Mother was born. Yes, they congregate in a bar and not a coffee shop, but try as it might to escape the stigma of always coming second, something still reeks. The slick writing does at least lend it the dignity the largely talented cast deserves, albeit the jokes come at you with mathematical precision (the studio audience must laugh every 30 seconds or, presumably, they’re shot). The characters also fall into one of two categories: soppy or cynical. Spread over a number of seasons, this tends to pall. In the end, as mainstream Friends clones go, it’s not bad; it’s just that there’s so much better out there.
Gareth Clark
Film
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (12)
3/5
The sickly parade of overly sincere teenage romances has been incessant since the late John Hughes kicked the genre off back in the mid-’80s. Yet, occasionally, the barrage of hormones and hijinx provides a welcome dose of nostalgia. This heartwarming tale of adolescent awkwardness and mix tapes set over one night is such a tale. Yes, the supporting cast offers little more than a platform to show how geekily cool the two leads are, but there is more than enough pathos and humour to carry proceedings along. Suspense is nonexistent and you’re never in any doubt that a happy ending is just around the corner, but there is enough charm to ensure that you don’t care.
Gareth Clark
Angels and Demons (15)
3/5
This prequel to The Da Vinci Code trades in exposition-heavy machinations for a more action-packed scenario, but it hardly matters whether Harvard symbologist Langdon (Tom Hanks) is waxing philosophic or racing against the clock. He and the world he inhabits are always set to ‘fever pitch’. Langdon tears around Vatican City and its surroundings, searching for four kidnapped cardinals and an ‘antimatter’ bomb while simultaneously offering snack-time discourses on history, philosophy, art and religion. How dark the con of Ron (Howard) that he can so vividly simulate thought in what is truly an intellect-free enterprise. But no number of quizzically furrowed brows, solemn proclamations of faith or brawling stem-cell protestors can cloak Angels & Demons’ summertime superficiality.
Keith Uhlich
Laila’s Birthday (15)
4/5
Director Rashid Masharawi crams an occupied-territory’s worth of social dys- function into a day in the life of Abu Laila, an unemployed judge reduced to borrowing his brother-in-law’s taxi to make a living (see pic below). Haplessly stuck behind the wheel, actor Mohammed Bakri’s features grow beleaguered as the parade of absurdities drives the ex-judge to commandeer a loudspeaker and attempt to direct, not only the population of Ramallah, but also the Israeli choppers patrolling the skies above. Unlike the perpetually grid-locked city, the narrative moves at a brisk clip, ticking up incidents like a metre on overtime. This collection of vignettes mostly plays as surface-level reportage, as opposed to the poetically subtle, subtext-rich work of Masharawi’s Palestinian art-house peers Elia Suleiman and Hany Abu-Assad. Nonetheless, Masharawi’s film is a vivid passenger-seat tour of a society perpetually crashing into madness. (Subtitled)
Kevin B Lee
