Warning: the following contains spoilers.

2.8 Malice

Robert Carlyle dubbed this as one of “the best things (they’ve) done so far”, and from the opening, it may well be true. The ending of The Greater Good left us with Simeon alone with Ginn, who was body-swapped with Dr Amanda Perry, and it doesn’t pan out in either of the two ladies’ favour, as both are killed in an attack by him.

Simeon then proceeds to take out a few guards and head through the gate with Dr Park taken hostage. Dr Rush follows and the usual suspects aren’t far behind, and soon enough, the team has split off into groups. Lt Scott and Sgt Greer accompany Dr Rush as they attempt to find the snaky bastard and capture him, although that may not be everyone’s agenda.

Robert Knepper finally gets some proper screen time here to show off his evil routine, and it works pretty damn well, I’d say. When he tells Rush that he will kill him, you can hear the intent and purpose in his voice, and you wonder for a moment whether he will actually succeed. Of course, you then dismiss it, as they aren’t going to let Carlyle slip through their fingers just yet, because he is truly showing a masterclass in acting here, displaying everything you would expect of a smart man out for revenge.

Just watch him. The horror on his face when he finds Ginn dead, the anger he expresses as he searches the hall for Simeon, the stubbornness you can see when he goes charging after him, the pure heartfelt emotion when it all hits him, the resolution and blank determination on his face in the final showdown.

The direction here is hands down the best the show has seen. Robert C Cooper has so far directed the two best episodes of Stargate Universe, Time and Human, and has clearly honed his skills since then. For this is a truly fantastic example of just how good the direction of a cable show like this can be. What comes out best though are the scenes in which the slow down effect is used during explosions. In what seems like a direct nod to The Hurt Locker, it's used to create some of the most impressive scenes like this I’ve ever seen, Cooper capitalises on this effect and creates some incredible sequences.

What’s also great is the choice of location, the Bisti Badlands in New Mexico, which is truly a stunning mass of land to be filming on. It looks superb on screen and never has the area had a better tourism film than this. With the sun making shadows look the complex landscape becomes even better looking as filming progressed. However, it brings up some continuity errors, but it’s easy to overlook by the simple fact that this episode looks gorgeous.

The performances of Carlyle and Knepper may be superb and the look and direction may be nearly flawless, but the structure of the episode got me a little annoyed. Every time the episode switches from the planet back to Destiny, the tone changes entirely and the soundtrack feels completely separated from the western edge they have tried to create.

When Col Young is trying to rally his troops into finding Simeon, the musical touches seem to speed up and get a momentum going that wasn’t previously in place. It would probably be fine in any other episode of Stargate Universe, but here, where they have clearly tried very hard to have a particular tone on the planet, it seems unnecessary and almost cuts the tension of the episode in half.

The final showdown is perfectly executed however, and makes the whole episode worthwhile, as Rush is given a superb chance to show of not only his smarts, but also his cold hearted rage that is stored up inside him. The final shot of the showdown is especially wonderful and creates puts the whole ordeal in perspective, while the shots immediately after put Carlyle’s character in focus, showing him in a brilliant series of shots.

While this episode may not be perfect, or exactly what I wanted when I heard this was going to be a western episode, it looks a whole lot better than I could ever have dreamed of, and places this flawed yet brilliant experiment high on a list of episodes brimming with quality.

Read our review of episode 7, The Greater Good, here.

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This review may contain spoilers.

4.9 Chuck Versus Phase Three

Chuck Versus Phase Three is the second part of a double episode, which started last week with the rather limp Chuck Versus The Fear of Death.

Having watched and reviewed this show from the outset, I've noticed that it goes through creative cycles where the writers try to breathe new life into it. If last week was a jarring pothole on the road of entertainment, then this one saw a welcoming stretch of freshly laid asphalt.

I'm not going to talk about the plot as such, because it's not a major component in what makes Chuck enjoyable generally, and the one here was more about resolving the abduction of our hero from the clutches of the titular Richard 'The Belgian' Chamberlain.

No, I'd like to talk about two things. The first of which is the Intersect.

Early in the last season, it became obvious that the Intersect was just too useful, because it could get Chuck out of almost any bind. So a decision was made at some point to muck it up and take it away. What I'm glad to report is that, against what I expected, the Intersect doesn't come back in this story. That was a brave choice from the creative team, because it does leave Chuck somewhat pathetic as spies come.

Logically, the path they've chosen is for Chuck to become a great spy without the Intersect, if that's possible. So we'll get to see how that pans out, or if they eventually accept that's not plausible and the Intersect returns. Then again, it might be back sooner if the laptop Papa Bartowski left Elle gives it to her and Devon! That would be very funny, so I hope it does.

The other point about this story I want to cover is the acting of Yvonne Strahovski, the delectable Agent Sarah Walker. This was a very good episode for her, because she carries much of what happens, and she was great.

But there was a moment where I wondered what show it was that I was watching, and it was the pivotal point where she finally tells Chuck (after 3.5 seasons!) how she feels about him. The scary bit about this scene was that she emotes so effectively and convincingly, I wasn't sure if I'd accidentally hit the remote and changed channel.

When actors are given light roles to continually perform, it's often hard to remember that they can do much wider things, and seeing what Yvonne can really do was more than a little bit shocking. In my heart I can't really see Chuck progressing to season five, so I'm glad that they're letting some of the performers in here the chance to show their skills more.

I can't see that Yvonne Strahovski will have much trouble finding a job after Chuck, but maybe she'll want something with more cerebral content next time around.

Overall, this wasn’t classic Chuck, but it was entertaining. They also managed to get a small cameo in here for Big Mike which, along with the other Buy More employees, was a very welcome diversion. What it lacked perhaps was the out-and-out crazy stuff that only Chuck brings us, but I've got a strange feeling that they've saved the best hallucinogenic cranberry sauce for the Thanksgiving episode next Monday.

Let's hope that Chuck can now take some momentum into the second half of the season, and deliver the conclusion to this show it truly deserves.

Read our review of episode 8, Chuck Versus The Fear Of Death, here.

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Not a frame of The Apprentice had been screened this week, and already, I figured Stuart had to go. The minute he even steps onto the boardroom carpet after losing a task, I figure the taxi may as well be called for him there and then. But that wasn't set to happen this week.

Anyway, we were down to the last eight this week, and the call came in that it was a two-day foreign business trip on the cards. Ah, the culture clash episode, I figured. Is it that time of the series already?

Kicking off with a little bit of xenophobia, the posh cars took them to the German embassy. The plan this week? Making crisps, and then flying off to Hamburg to flog them. You could almost sense how this was going to turn out.

I took a swig of my exceedingly cheap wine at this point. I figured this could be a long hour.

Project managers this week? Once Stuart declared he was knackered, Stella got the job. He also did another of those silly talking heads, where he talked about how he couldn’t lose. Sigh. Meanwhile, Chris stepped up for the other team, looking to break his losing streak.

Stella’s team, then, starting working around a traditional Sunday roast theme. Let’s play on British strengths, they wagered. And then Joanna suggested curry. Laura started complaining. It was business as normal.

More interestingly, my red wine was actually surprisingly good, given that it was part of a three for a tenner promotion. Drink that, Baron von Sugar.

Over in Hamburg, then, Jamie led a research team that revealed spicy sausage was very much on the agenda. Spicy sausage crisps? The news was relayed back to Chris in Essex, and curried sausage crisps were suddenly on the agenda.

Meanwhile, Stella got assigned to Gloucestershire, while Stuart and Joanna got sent to Germany. They, too, stumbled on the idea of curry, interviewing someone who looked like Leonardo diCaprio in the local supermarket. Stuart concluded, surprisingly adeptly, that sausages were a good idea, and proceeded to eat a lot of them, and drink some beer. The conclusion from the research? Sausages and curry. What was Stella making? Ham, beef and other stuff that people didn’t seem to want.

Hmmm. Stella ignored the market research, the editing suddenly seemed a bit stop motion, and the potential boardroom battle was already brewing.

The teams then proceeded to make crisps with strange white powders, making Karren Brady choke in the process. Nick Hewer, meanwhile, was pulling a face akin to a bulldog licking piss off a proverbial thistle. I, meanwhile, was onto my second glass. Oddly, the episode was improving too, as I consumed more of my glorified paintstripper.

Stilton and paprika, and chilli and beef flavours were chosen by Stella. I’d drunk enough by this point for both to be quite acceptable. I quite fancied a bag, truth be told.

Stuart, meanwhile, was doing his bit for the diplomacy, seamlessly managing to convince Germans that he was a bit of a tit, as well as taking swipes at Joanna. Stuart also described himself as “endearing”. I nearly choked on my drink. That would never do.

Both teams were heading for the Marriott hotel chain to flog their crisps, with Stuart and Joanna wisely getting in first. That should give Baron von Sugar something to fondle his beard over, especially as Christopher moved the other team’s appointment. It would prove to be a crucial decision.

So then. Local businesses were lined up to sell to, and each team lined up appointments. We’ve seen this several times over the years, and once we’d got past the fact that very bad German was being spoken, the orders were starting to roll in.

The comedy gold, of course, was when Stuart starting to speak terrible German, and the production team enjoyed this, by putting on screen the English translation for everything he said. Laura was speaking in English, meanwhile, and the subtitles would have been just as useful, the speed she was going at. Bluntly, I didn’t have a clue what either of them were saying. I was, however, wondering what happened to red wine when you put it in a Soda Stream, but you probably didn’t need to know that.

Over to Christopher and Jamie, then, who were going door to door with their crisps. The goulash flavour looked like it was going to make one of their potential customers ill. The curry one? We’d wager three days on the toilet followed.

Chris went off selling next, and the problem appeared to be that the crisps looked genuinely vile. But at least he found an English speaker. Reading between the edits here, and finding someone that the teams could communicate with looked like the hardest job of all.

It was interesting, I thought, how most of the candidates way of approaching talking to German residents was by reference to back episodes of ‘Allo ‘Allo. Put on a fake German accent, speak English, what could go wrong?

Laura, meanwhile, decided that the remaining members of her team were “pieces of shit”, and got the hump when Stella nicked her appointment. Meanwhile, Chris discovered, when he got to the Marriott Hotel, that the other team had got in first. Tut, tut. My head was getting light with all the wine, but even I could foresee a congregation of shit around the proverbial fan.

I instantly did the logical thing, and recharged my glass. I’ll need it to get through the upcoming treat sequence, I figured.

To be fair, for all the toing and froing of the episode, it was unclear who was going to win. Deals were being done and lost, some were coming across better than others, Laura decided that her team shouldn’t win and kept grumbling, and the usual dash for final orders kicked in. I figured it’d be a heavy win one way or the other when the totals were calculated, but ultimately, I figured wrong. And so we were off to the boardroom to find out more, while I sketched out ideas for a Stuart-related drinking game.

Nick immediately grassed up the fact that Stuart had declared himself knackered, while Laura nodded when asked is she was happy with Stella. In spite of the editing shown her being quite the opposite but minutes before. All of that would prove to be a battle for the future.

Baron von Sugar, meanwhile, was still trying one-liners, that weren’t even funny with the help of a glass of the shit I was drinking. Can someone not make him stop? It'd be much appreciated.

Onto the results. Chris' team picked up a couple of big orders, but Stella's team won the task off the back of the appointments they set up. And Nick was pleased with Joanna. He said so, too. He's getting happier as the series goes on, bless him.

Chris, however, had extended his losing run, and was the instant favourite to get the bullet. Not helped by the fact that he did the pitching to the big companies. Before we could get to the execution firing, though, we had to watch people shop in the 'treat'. It was amazing entertainment. I reached for more drink, you'll be surprised to hear. It didn't help this time, though. But at least I'm steeled for the traditional comments wondering why we review this show. Ahem.

Anyway, in the boardroom, it turned out that it was the Marriott deal that was pivotal, and Jamie and Christopher's switching to a later appointment time lost them the task. Chris, I thought, might just survive this. Although Baron von Sugar didn't seem that keen on him.

The seemingly endless boardroom sequence then went through the usual motions, as everyone's words seemed to merge into a prolonged jabbering of nothingness. They all could have gone, from what I can see.

Unsurprisingly, by this time, I wouldn't suggest I was the best judge, though.

Eventually, Christopher came out from behind the rock of anonymity he's been hiding behind all series, and promptly got the sack. Both Chris and Jamie appeared to have their cards marked. And a fairly conventional episode of the show came to an end.

It wasn't bad telly, to be fair, but it was The Apprentice going through the motions a bit. A traditional task, traditional mistakes, and the removing of a non-ratings friendly candidate. Just business as usual, really.

Next week? It's the buying and negotiation task. Again. The search for new ideas continues...

Read our review of the seventh episode, here.

Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.

It was inevitable wasn't it? Despite strong support for Nathan Fillion and Stargate's Joe Flanigan to take the role of adventurer Nathan Drake in the Uncharted movie adaptation, it looks as though director David O Russell has given the role to his old pal Mark Wahlberg.

The pair have previously worked together on Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees, and as soon as Russell was named as director, Wahlberg was rumoured to be lined up for the role.

The story was broken by MTV, to whom Wahlberg said, "The idea that he has is just insane, so hopefully we'll be making that movie this summer."

Wahlberg also made reference to his co-stars in the movie, none other than Goodfellas and Casino legends Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, who could be set to play partner-in-crime Sully, and villain Gabriel Roman, respectively.

"That's who he wants to write the parts for,” Wahlberg said. “I talked to Pesci about it and I know David's people have talked to [Robert De Niro]... I'm obviously in whatever David wants to do but the idea of it is so off the charts: De Niro being my father, Pesci being my uncle. It's not going to be the watered-down version, that's for sure."

Oh... so not Sully and Roman. Father and uncle? I don't remember Uncharted being a family affair, so heaven knows what Russell has in mind.

Anyway, back to the main story – Wahlberg as Drake. What do we think of that? Now, I have nothing against Wahlberg, he is a fine actor and I love his work in The Departed, Three Kings and Boogie Nights, and the upcoming The Fighter looks amazing. However, for every Departed, we seem to get a Planet Of The Apes, and for every The Lovely Bones, we get something as undescribably bad as The Happening.

To say his roles have been inconsistent is an understatement. So while I can see Wahlberg in the role physically, I'm not 100 per cent sure he has the charm and wit to play Nathan Drake.

On top of that, I still haven’t forgiven him for the dreadful Max Payne...

MTV

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Opinion remains fiercely divided over whether the planned Ghostbusters 3 is a good or bad idea, but the movie – like it or not – appears to be gaining traction. 

Over at Feature Film Auditions, the site has uncovered the news that casting for the new film has begun. And, as a result, one or two names are being thrown into the mix.

Firstly, the obvious pieces of casting. Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd are both definitely on-board, and it looks too that Ernie Hudson and Sigourney Weaver should be returning, too. Bill Murray is listed as appearing, too. Assuming he doesn’t give any more magazine interviews, presumably.

The first new name being thrown into the mix, however, is Anna Faris. Faris remains best known for being the front face of the Scary Movie franchise, and, in our view, is a sorely underrated and underappreciated comedy actress. She’s rumoured to be lined up to be one of the new Ghostbusters in the film, and from where we’re sitting, that’s a smart choice.

Meanwhile, over at What’s Playing, the folks there have also uncovered the possible involvement of both Will Forte and Bill Hader from their source at Sony. Said source, we should note, also noted that they’d not heard of Anna Faris’ involvement in the project.

Make of all of that what you will. But answers will be forthcoming soon, Ghostbusters 3 heads into production next year.

What’s Playing

Feature Film Auditions

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At my local cinema, it’s always conspicuous when my ticket stub tells me that I’m going to be watching a film in screen 7. It’s conspicuous, because that’s where I’ve seen films like In Bruges, Crazy Heart and Ondine. Coincidentally, it’s also the screen in which I saw London Boulevard.

I mention the reasons why I call screen 7 'The Colin Farrell Theatre' because I think, to some extent, it shows the trajectory of Farrell’s career. Screen 7 isn’t a big deal. It’s not 3D-ready, it doesn’t have 400 seats, and it’s not often full up. It speaks of the kind of film that Farrell does these days, having once been in stuff like Phone Booth and Daredevil, while now, he's doing a great job in mid-range work instead.

Perhaps I wouldn’t say I was a Farrell fan, but I do like all of the screen 7 films I mentioned. That is, all of them with the exception of London Boulevard, a film that’s such a misstep for all involved, that it might poison the careers of less well known filmmakers.

London Boulevard is based on the novel by Ken Bruen, itself loosely based on Billy Wilder’s classic movie, Sunset Boulevard, hence the title.

Farrell plays Mitchell, an ex-con, who arrives blurry eyed into the mean streets of London after a spell in Pentonville prison. He’s spent all the time he wants to spend behind bars, so he resolves to go straight.

From there, the plot gets muddled. In one strain, he agrees to act as security for Charlotte, a reclusive movie star who’s hounded by the paparazzi in the wake of a messy marriage breakup. That’s the angle that comes from Sunset Boulevard, and the one that’s being peddled in the trailers and TV spots.

But aside from that, another subplot has Mitchell earning the ire of a big-fish gangster called Gant, and pitting his wits against him. Another has him mourning the senseless murder of his homeless Big Issue-vending friend, and vowing revenge. Another involves Mitchell’s mixed-up sister and her gold-digging ways.

The only thing that all of these subplots have in common, aside from Mitchell, is that they all involve crime. For a story about a guy who’s trying to go straight, our hero only renounces violence in the same way as someone on a diet renounces cake. They’re always coming back to it, and their lapses always come with extreme prejudice.

Writer William Monahan makes his directing debut here, having worked on screenplays with directors like Ridley Scott, Martin Campbell and Martin Scorsese, and picked up an Oscar nomination for his work with the latter, on The Departed. His directorial debut is another gangster film, and that’s the most succinct review I can give of it: it’s another gangster film. Yet another British gangster film.

In terms of direction, Monahan is unmistakably aiming for the feel of British cinema in the 60s and 70s. Specifically, the feel of muscular crime flicks like Get Carter. This can be as subtle as it is in the soundtrack, or as risible and obvious as it is in poor Eddie Marsan being made to dress up as a pre-Life On Mars copper. It’s all just very uneven.

The starry cast is undoubtedly here on account of Monahan’s reputation, because the story isn't up to much, at least in its cinematic form. From early on, I gave a little cheer in my head at the merest first sight of some of these actors. Look, there’s David Thewlis! And there’s Stephen Graham! And look, there’s Eddie Marsan, even if he is made up to look like Gene Hunt’s dad!

Colin Farrell delivers a really convincing Cockney accent and a fine performance, but it feels like he’s being pulled this way and that by the careering tone of the film, rather than his character having any kind of sway over what happens. This is to say nothing of Ray Winstone, who at least has the presence of mind to be bored with his own same old gangster shtick.

These are the men of the film, and they might as well be the only ones there. Don’t be deceived by how Charlotte gives a bitter diatribe about what women are for in movies, namely “getting into the head or trousers” of the male lead. Just because that gender inequality is lamp-shaded in the dialogue, it doesn’t mean it’s not constantly present. Keira Knightley gives one of her better performances, making a starlet seem very convincing and very human, but it figures for nothing in the grand scheme of the film.

As it wears on, the film becomes aggressively profane and unlikeable, losing any scintilla of insight it might have had. It opens well, actually, but everything that happens feels like something from the beginning of a better film. All those subplots crowd each other out, so that as each of them are developed, there’s a sustained preliminary feel to the thing, not that you’d know it from the eclectic editing and pacing.

Opening in the much larger screen 6 this week is Unstoppable, in which an unmanned cargo train ploughs along, independent of any direction or interference. In the screen next door, I saw a beast even more out of control with London Boulevard. At least what Denzel Washington is chasing is restricted to rails, so it can be followed. This one starts strong, and then carries right on irrespective of being comprehensible or enjoyable or even any good.

It careens wildly between drama and caper, between gruesome circumstance and pandering humour. In all senses, it’s elevated by the highly experienced cast. What would this film be without them? Without all the prestige of its performers, or its Oscar-nominated screenwriter, then London Boulevard would be a Danny Dyer film.

If that doesn’t tell you that it’s beneath the talents of Colin Farrell, then nothing will. Clean-up in screen 7, please.

It seems to be a bit of a week for revisiting your past projects. A few days’ back, Mark Wahlberg hit us with the revelation that M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening wasn’t much of a film. And now? Mr Leonardo DiCaprio has revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that he, too, found Inception a bit confusing.

DiCaprio, to be fair, was talking with specific reference to the script for the film, which he seemed to have a bit of trouble fathoming out when he first got it.

"I needed to know implicitly where we were," he said. "It got incredibly confusing at certain points in the beginning, but the more we talked, the more I understood."

Those who didn't have the luxury of a chat with Mr Nolan about the film may yet still feel in the 'confused' camp.

For opinion has been split, since the film was released, as to just how much of a puzzle Inception really was. Some we speak to find it surprisingly straightforward, and certainly a million miles away from the complexity of one of Nolan’s earlier films, Memento. Others? Their brain ends up hurting. Let’s just say, then, that Mr DiCaprio feels your pain there.

While you're working out where you sit on the matter, we'll just leave you with the news that Inception arrives on DVD and Blu-ray in December, having cleaned up over $800m at the worldwide box office. Gadzookz.

The Hollywood Reporter

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This review contains spoilers.

3.12 June Wedding

It’s official. SAMCRO are out of Belfast and back in Charming. I knew it to be true when the theme tune kicked in and it was back to the country-fried rock from before, rather than the “Oirish” one that they’ve been using for the past few weeks.

This episode was set up perfectly from last week’s: the main strand is for the Sons to get Tara back from Salazar, which takes up the majority of the episode.

The first half of the episode is fairly slow, with a lot of time divided between the Sons, the Mayans, and the ATF searching for Tara, but this serves to build tension, rather than to serve up boredom like a few of the misfires earlier in the season. It also gives us a few excellent moments with Gemma. Long term fans will have enjoyed the friendship between Gemma and the police chief Wayne Unser.

Due to pressures from outside Charming PD, this has been under all sorts of strain, but they had a very sweet ‘welcome back’ this week, and it feels like Wayne is back to being a friend of the club again. With the new threat of Charming PD being dissolved, Wayne is in danger of losing his job shortly, but as he has been such a strong character from the beginning, it would be madness to write him out.

There was also some closure on the beef between Tig and Kozik, and the closure was pretty unexpected. All season the two have been putting down and beating on each other at every available opportunity. Tig, again vetoed the vote for Kozik to become an official SAMCRO member rather than a nomad. Shortly after this they are discussing the woman, that was mentioned a few episodes again, and it is made clear that she has since died. As Kozik walks away he says “I loved her too”. We are then left with Tig removing a photo from his wallet, only to discover that this great love was a German Shepherd.

It really says a lot about the type of character Tig is - we’ve seen him do all sorts of horrible things through the last three seasons, and he can’t forgive Kozik over a dog. It showed quite a tender side to the character, but I can’t imagine that anyone would have assumed Tig was hurt that way that he was over a dog.

The episode title, June’s Wedding, implies that this episode would really be all about Stahl (her first name is June, you see?), and for the first half, it isn’t really. She’s milling around in the background for the first twenty minutes, aside from briefly being kidnapped by Gemma, and having the odd confrontation with Jax regarding their deal (speaking of which, Jimmy O is hardly in this episode, save for a few minutes where we see him with the Russians and waiting for his associate to get him enough money to ensure safe passage to Brazil - I’d imagine they’ll come back to it next week).

The second half of the episode, for a large part, plays out like Kurt Sutter’s previous creation, The Shield, except if you thought Vic Mackey was dirty, he has nothing on June Stahl.

Salazar’s hostage situation comes to a head at Jacob Hale’s office, where he takes both Hale and Tara hostage and starts making his demands. One of his demands is to trade Tara for Jax. He proudly states to Tara that he is going to kill her and make Jax watch before killing him.

How Salazar made it to adulthood is incredible, because he is the most inept criminal on television. Within two minutes of Jax entering the building, Hale has jammed a pen into his side, Salazar has lost both of his weapons and is on the run. Jax takes this opportunity chase him down, and stab him using Salazar’s own knife. Before the SWAT team arrives, Jax cuts himself using the axe that Salazar armed himself with and claims self defence.

During this altercation, Stahl and Tyler have moved to the rear exit, whilst the rest of the police force are still at the front. When Stahl is informed of Salazar’s death, she shoots Tyler in the neck, throws some of the guns around and radios in that three Mexicans shot Tyler. This is Stahl at her absolute coldest. It’s absolutely horrifying to watch her tell the woman that she apparently loves to “just go”.

And it gets worse. The episode ends with Stahl recounting her version of the events in an interview, before tearily confessing to her relationship with Tyler and then fabricating a story about how Tyler, with her dying breath, told Stahl that she had framed Gemma for the murder of Edmond Haynes.

The scene is incredibly well done, very unshowy, relying purely on the actor’s expressions, and with a conclusion that will leave you desperate for next week’s finale. Stahl had concreted herself as the kind of character that you love to hate some time ago, but even then the conclusion here was absolutely appalling. I was amazed to see that even Stahl would sink so low as to murder her own girlfriend to save her own skin.

So, that’s three great episodes in a row. Kurt Sutter did the right thing in finishing off the Ireland plot before the end of the season, and certainly seems to be keen on treating us to the old Sons Of Anarchy style plots before the season is out. The finale is next week. Colour me excited.

Read our review of episode 11, Bainne, here.

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Unstoppable, now out on general release in cinemas, has Denzel Washington stepping up to the plate and attempting to stop a runaway freight train that a hysterical Rosario Dawson has reimagined as "a missile the size of the Chrysler building".

Washington is a capable go-to guy, and - confronted with a crisis involving hazardous chemicals, school kids and out-of-control missiles the size of the Chrysler Building - I'd trust him to avert potential disaster every time.

After he's done that - and because we know he's a hardworking actor who can't stay inactive for long - I'd like him to pursue and put the brakes on our out-of-control movie trailers. Looking around at the movie marketing machine lately, I've come to the view that maybe things have gone slightly off track and need slowing down.

Ignoring the awkwardly mangled train imagery, I do feel that there's an issue and something odd going on with our trailers. Somewhere down the line, on the ever-evolving media landscape, the things that sell upcoming features to us morphed into being altogether very different creatures. What are essentially commercials have become a pop-culture phenomenon in themselves.

We know the drill - we get a rapidly edited montage mixing music, title cards and scenes of action with flashes of exposition. We see stars mugging and get character clues (ah! Denzel Washington is the grizzled veteran good guy who can save the day!). We get intense dramatic pronouncements (oh! "We're talking about a missile the size of the Chrysler Building!").

We also usually get a clip of comic relief (ha! The kid who thinks he's Captain Kirk just made a joke about not wanting to work in a retirement home!).

So goes the conventional two-minute blast, but trailers now go beyond this, and have taken on a life of their own off-screen. They're now an event in themselves in contrast to what they used to be way back when - and way back when is once upon a time when people went to the theatre to watch Pathé newsreels and double-bills through a fog of tobacco smoke.

In the past - before marketing whiz kids and focus groups got their greasy hands all over things - trailers were hammy, hilarious and horribly inept at doing their job, but I love them regardless. There's a charm to them that modern commercials lack, and I could happily spend hours on YouTube or rifling through DVD special features discs just to experience the kitschy retrograde pleasure of old-school promo reels.

I and a few other hipster film buffs appreciate them, but in their day chances are no one actually ever watched them. They were probably too distracted getting supplies from the cigarette girl and the choc-ice vendor or fondling their date.

Already, then, they are failing in the purpose as adverts. Their futility goes even further when you see the trails that ruin the ending by showing the climax, where the monster loses the fight and perishes in flame. Some, such as the trailer for Forbidden Planet, do nothing but retell the entire plot in a cut-down three minute version of the film.

In spite of it all, you can’t help but enjoy them as mini-epics, effervescent with bombast and melodrama. They scream out lurid titles promising “the most exciting adventure ever seen!” and threaten you with things “more horrifying than any horror known to man!” with a total earnest that I don’t think exists in the modern moviemaking machine.

Slicker and stripped of kitschy thrills, but still exhilarating articles of geekish appeal, today’s trailers can also conjure up a hell of lot of joy and excitement. Every time they release a new Tron: Legacy teaser you can feel a palpable wave of anticipation ripple through cyberspace, and it can only be a good thing that, within minutes, a montage blast of audio and images can lift people up and fill them with hopeful enthusiasm.

What's strange is the way that these adverts have assumed a position in popular culture as events in themselves. The arrival of a trailer is now arguably as big a deal as the actual premiere itself. They have become an integral part - and in some cases the most vital aspect - of the film production and distribution process.

Last week saw the dissemination of trailers for The Green Lantern, Your Highness and Cowboys & Aliens in swift succession. The amount of buzz generated by this blockbuster marketing barrage was amazing and, if you take a step back for a moment, bewildering.

There are reasons to be stoked, what with these teasers offering the first glimpses of Ryan Reynolds with the power ring, some medieval stoner comedy and the men who double as James Bond and Indiana Jones appearing together in a sci-fi western. My concern is that there might be too much excitement. Perhaps it's all distracting from the feature presentation, like a scantily clad usherette who's shouting "cigarettes for sale!" and obscuring our view of the main event and the bigger picture.

We're all guilty of being led by trailers and making judgements off the back of what's a mere hint of something much larger. For me personally, last week's possibly unprecedented flurry really highlighted how unusual Hollywood hype has become in the digital media age.

When we have favourite lines from films we haven't seen because we can't actually see them until next year, something is surely skewed. Likewise, seeing reputable websites devoting tremendous amounts of energy to full analytical deconstructions of the Cowboys & Aliens commercial raises my eyebrows.

Sections of the blogosphere are ablaze weighing up Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet and making evaluations of a montage probably compiled by some studio cog who wouldn't know Kato from Kate Winslet, doing what the marketing executives dictate. This amounts to: provide hints of plot, humour and hail the big name stars, edit in music and titles and make sure the audience wants to come back in a few months.

There is no one absolute, right way to advertise an upcoming film, especially if you take viral marketing into account. What I fear, though, is that we might be too hyped up on these hot trailers and consequently the whole experience and actual end effect gets distorted.

Perhaps we need to refocus and reconsider the way we exhibit and experience trailers. Perhaps we need some Denzel Washington figure to usher in some order. Alternatively, maybe we need a choc-ice vendor to bother us next time they drop a Tron: Legacy promo.

James' previous column can be found here.

James sketched a series of movie-spoof comics and they can be found here.

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A horror with a heart, Dream Home attempts to balance satire, all-out gratuitous violence and gore with an underlying social message about the Hong Kong property market. And it almost succeeds. 

The story centres on Cheng Lai-sheung. Obsessed with owning a seaview apartment in a block opposite her childhood home in Hong Kong (an obsession we learn that is driven by heartache in her past and a desire to do right by her family), she works two jobs to achieve her dream.

After discovering her ill father’s medical bills aren’t covered by insurance, she lets him die so that she can get his death benefit and move herself and her brother into her dream home. But when the stock market plummets and the sellers decide to up the price, she goes on a killing spree in the apartment block to reduce its value.

This film is certainly deeper than your average slasher film, and calling it such doesn’t really do it justice. It’s rare to feel any sort of sympathy with the psychotic protagonists in this genre, but director Pang Ho-Cheung and leading lady Josie Ho manage this with relative ease.

What opens as an apparent motiveless attack on a security guard unfolds into quite a sad, and all too familiar, concept of struggling families, growing up in cramped conditions, soaring property prices and wanting what’s best for your family. And that’s where this film excels. Many Cantonese films fail to translate to Western audiences because of quite strong cultural differences.

Although Dream Home uses Hong Kong as a backdrop, it could be any city and any property market in the world, really, and there aren’t too many Eastern references that could be ultimately lost.

This sympathy does change, however, when Lai Sheung lets her father die, and in the delight she expresses from getting her hands on the flat with his death benefit. Suddenly all the sentiment that is created by numerous flashbacks to her childhood (in which we see her best friend forced out of his home by developers), and touching scenes with her parents is completely undone by this one action.

Suddenly, it becomes more about Lai Sheung’s obsession for herself over and above the needs of her family. In a conversation with her married lover in which she asks to borrow money for her father’s operation he tells her to dip into her savings. She replies, “But that’s for me. For my future.”

But then this sympathy is so surprising that you forget it’s not meant to be just a social commentary film. Just as it’s not meant to be an all-out slasher either. And that’s the problem with this film. It tries to be too many things at one time. It even attempts to add humour in parts, which falls flat, because neither her predicament nor the gore that surrounds it is funny.

It wouldn’t have got anywhere near the amount of publicity if it was just a film about struggling to get on the property ladder. And it would have made a weak slasher movie without this underlying tale. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a winning formula when put together.

Any tension that is created in the murder scenes is flattened completely by the intertwining flashbacks and flashforwards. The attack on the students doing drugs is clichéd and the constant references to unfaithful relationships, which don’t actually add anything to the film, make it seem preachy and moralising. Whether that’s to heighten the social stance of the piece or not, it, in fact, detracts from this message.

But where there is blood and gore, Ho-Cheung has not pulled any punches, literally. Ho is seen garrotting a security guard, and suffocating a pregnant woman (after pushing her to the ground and causing her to miscarry). There’s a screwdriver through the eye and a disembowelling. There’s even a revenge attack from a naked student whose face has been impaled on a slat from a wooden bed.

Despite the fact that each victim drags out their respective deaths with gurgles and wails, and then some more groans and convulsions, which is probably done so the slasher element occupies a greater proportion of the film, each attack is choreographed superbly and the CGI, aside from one occasion, actually works.

There is, just about, enough gore, and it’s shocking enough to satisfy slasher fans. There’s enough of a back story to satisfy traditionalists, but on the whole it doesn’t pack enough of a punch to be brilliant.

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Those of us who are fans of science fiction and fantasy shows on television will have noticed that certain ideas seem to get 'homaged’, if we want to be polite ('recycled’ if we want to be slightly less polite and 'copied’ if we want to be downright rude), on a regular basis. 'Copied' is really rather unfair, as the writer usually has no desire to steal others’ ideas, they are simply familiar with the genre and want to tell a similar story.

There are only so many ideas in the multiverse, and they occasionally get reused, some more than others. TV Tropes lists many hundreds of them, but this article is about the special few that provide the basis for episode after episode of television.

Some ideas are so common that just about any science fiction or fantasy television series, if it runs long enough, will end up using them at some point. These are the top six. You’ll be hard pushed to find a genre show that doesn’t use these eventually!

1. The Bodyswap

Named for the Red Dwarf episode Bodyswap, which features this trope in its purest form, as the crew literally swap bodies with each other. Usually, this episode revolves around the theft of the body of a regular cast member by an enemy, as in Stargate SG-1's Holiday, Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Who are You?, Angel's Carpe Noctem, Star Trek: Voyager's Vis-a-vis or Doctor Who's New Earth.

Ideally, the return of the right body to the right person will involve some swapping among the regular cast members, as it does in The Holiday, while Voyager’s Body And Soul, like Bodyswap, features only body swapping among regular cast members (though one could say, given Rimmer’s terrible personality and his actions in the episode, that he himself is the enemy who steals Lister’s body).

Alternate realities and fantasy or dream scenarios also occasionally make use of this trope, such as Farscape’s Unrealized Reality.

The point of the bodyswap is, essentially, to get regular cast members to play an entirely different character from their usual role. This allows the actors to flex their acting muscles a bit, the writers to write some amusing visual gags as one character takes on the mannerisms and habits of another and the show runners to shake up the characters’ relationships, especially their romantic ones.

Since one regular actor playing the character of another is a difficult concept to deliver with too much gravity, these episodes are usually comic, unless the show in question is Farscape, a show whose writers have the uncanny ability to create a serious, dramatic and often tragic situation out of almost anything.

2. The Time Loop

Used most famously and most simply in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Cause And Effect, this can be the basis for the whole episode or just a part of it, depending how much enthusiasm the writer has for writing the same scene over and over again while trying to keep it fresh.

For this reason, and because of the difficulty of getting out of it, the time loop that no one is aware of is rather rare, though it does appear briefly in Red Dwarf’s White Hole. A more useful variant is the Groundhog Day scenario, in which one person, or a small number of people, remember everything each time they loop, though those around them do not.

This one forms the basis of one of SG-1’s best and funniest episodes, Window Of Opportunity, and also appears in Buffy’s Life Serial.

The time loop is also usually exploited for its comic potential (anyone who’s seen Window Of Opportunity may never want to eat Froot Loops again). However, it can offer a splendid opportunity for the writer who enjoys playing around with structure, and the end of Cause And Effect is terribly poignant.

Surprisingly, Steven Moffat, the structure king and current showrunner for Doctor Who, has yet to use this one. I’ll be looking out for it over the next couple of seasons.

3. Ascension To A Higher Plane Of Existence

A long-running character is leaving the show and you want to give them a big, emotional farewell. However, despite the often impermanent nature of death in the world of science fiction and fantasy, you are reluctant to actually kill them off. They might want to come back later, or perhaps their character is too beloved of the audience to risk annoying them by killing their favourite.

Then you hit upon the perfect solution. Instead of dying, your character will 'ascend’ (never 'descend’) to a 'higher plane of existence’, rendering them effectively dead as far as the show is concerned, but ensuring that, regardless of religious affiliation, it is canon that their soul, or mind, or essence, or whatever, is still around, somewhere, somehow. Possibly wearing a cricket jumper, as Daniel Jackson appears to be in SG-1’s Abyss.

Because this trope tends to be used as a substitute for an actual belief in an afterlife, the more secular the show, the more likely this trope is to turn up (with the notable exception of new Doctor Who, in which eternal life inside the Matrix is used instead). On the other hand, if the show is too hard and cynical, this will be too soppy for it, so there are no Farscape examples and certainly no Red Dwarf examples.

SG-1 used it occasionally, most notably for Daniel Jackson in Meridian, but by far the most frequent user and abuser of this trope is Star Trek. Wesley Crusher, Captain Sisko and Kes have all ascended (and sometimes, like the aforementioned Dr Jackson, descended again), and even the movies have got in on the act, with two characters in The Motion(less) Picture managing to achieve glowy ascension.

A more unusual example is provided by Angel, a show where everyone bar the vampires definitely has a soul, but Cordelia ascends anyway in Tomorrow, except that’s not really what happens...

4. Alternate Dimensions

This is really more than one trope, as there are so many different varieties, but all come under the general umbrella heading of alternate universes, parallel dimensions, etc, etc, etc. There are, however, two main types.

In a Type A alternate universe, something has been changed, through time travel, magic or other messing about with the space time continuum, and the world has changed as a result, for the worse, naturally, or we wouldn’t be invested in changing it back again.

This has been the basis for some very good It’s A Wonderful Life-type episodes including Doctor Who’s Turn Left, TNG’s Yesterday’s Enterprise, Buffy’s The Wish and SG-1’s Moebius. These episodes tend to be somewhere on a sliding scale between poignant and tragic, and killing off at least one, preferably several, major characters is a must, since the episode is designed to allow the writers to go to emotional places they cannot usually go to in the daily running of the show.

Like the Bodyswap, these episodes often offer the actors a chance to play against their usual type, but for emotional rather than comic effect.

Type B parallel universes are those that exist all the time, and are visited by our heroes, usually via wormhole. Some of them are based on the same line of reasoning as the Type A variety, where one small change has altered the course of history, but the difference is that this universe will go on existing after our heroes have travelled back to their own.

Examples include SG-1's There But For The Grace Of God and Red Dwarf's Dimension Jump, in which the dimensional traveller ends up in our universe.

Then there are the broader parallel universes, where something is different but on a much bigger, high concept, scale, like Red Dwarf's Parallel Universe, Doctor Who's Rise Of The Cybermen/The Age Of Steel and any episode of Star Trek set in the Mirror Universe.

Angel featured an unusual variety in Over The Rainbow and the following two episodes, in the form of a dimension in which vampires could walk around in the sunlight and the land was apparently entirely populated by angry green Klingons ('Numfar! Do the dance of joy!’).

As you can see from these examples, although Type B universes can be just as tragic as Type A, they are much more likely to be exploited for comic effect, showing alternate versions of our regular heroes doing things our they would never normally do: wearing their hair long, perhaps (Samantha Carter, SG-1), being generally brave and admirable (Rimmer, Red Dwarf) or running around in the sunlight (Angel, Angel).

The Star Trek Mirror Universe is usually used to get all the regular cast into even more sexualised costumes, up to and including bondage gear, and have them flirt outrageously with each other. (In Captain Kirk’s case, it’s quite hard to tell the difference.)

Both types of alternate reality, whether poignant Type As or sexy-comic Type Bs, do one thing above all else. It is absolutely compulsory to bring a deceased character back in Alternate Universe form. From the Master, to Kawalsky, to Tasha Yar to Rimmer himself, someone will come back from the dead in an Alternate Universe episode. And probably die again by the end.

5. The Doppelganger/Double/Duplicate

All three of these terms are used frequently, often concurrently, often with slightly different meanings every time they are used. Just defining one of these terms could be the length of a book chapter.

What I have in mind here, however, is a bit more simple. The Doppelganger staple can refer to any episode in which the same actor plays the same character, or variants on the same character, twice.

Characters can be 'split into two’, though they somehow end up with two whole bodies (Star Trek's The Enemy Within, Buffy's The Replacement), or they can be cloned or otherwise duplicated (Farscape's Eat Me, Red Dwarf's Me², TNG's Second Chances, Doctor Who's Journey’s End), while occasionally the duplicate is the result of messing around too much with time travel (Voyager's Relativity, Red Dwarf's Stasis Leak).

The net result is that we see two versions of the same character. Variations on this theme can feature a single character from an alternate universe getting through to ours and meeting their opposite, as in SG-1’s Point Of View or Buffy’s Doppelgangland, or bad guys posing as the main characters and taking on their appearance (so the actor plays their own character plus a bad guy pretending unsuccessfully to be their own character) as in SG-1’s Foothold.

Sometimes, the trope goes super-sized. In Voyager, the entire ship is duplicated in Deadlock, while Red Dwarf gave us the quite horrific concept of hundreds of Rimmers in Rimmerworld.

The point of the Doppelganger is usually to explore different aspects of a main character’s personality, the basic trope having been set by Good Kirk and Evil Kirk in The Enemy Within. In most instances the ‘extra’ character will have been disposed of by the end of the show, through death, re-integration with their other half, or in extreme cases execution (as in Me² and in the reverse-doppelganger Voyager story Tuvix, in which the titular hybrid must be split back into two characters).

On rare occasions, the duplicate may be set free to live their own life at a safe distance from their double (Journey’s End and Second Chances). Only Farscape, which just has to be different, actually hung on to both versions of the character for quite a substantial period of time before finally succumbing to narrative imperative and killing one of them off.

6. The Dream Episode

Dream episodes, in which most of the episode is made up of dream sequences, come in a variety of flavours. The simplest and most immersive form of Dream Episode is the Nightmare On Elm Street model, in which something or someone attacks our heroes in their dreams: Voyager's Waking Moments, Buffy's Restless and Xena: Warrior Princess' Dreamworker are all good examples (and excellent episodes).

The most common variation is an episode based around hallucinations and visions experienced by one or more characters, as in Angel's Orpheus, Voyager's Projections, Farscape's Revenging Angel and Red Dwarf's Back To Reality. Sometimes the hallucinations are induced by someone or something which wants to get some kind of message to our heroes, as in SG-1's Forever In A Day and Absolute Power (where Forever In A Day is directly referenced in an attempt to cover up the fact they’ve used the same plot device twice on the same character).

Doctor Who’s Amy’s Choice plays on elements of all three types, depending on whether you consider the Dream Lord’s actions to be carrying a message of some kind, and whether our heroes are ever really threatened.

Some episodes based around computer simulations can function a bit like Dream Episodes as well, such as Voyager’s The Thaw, Red Dwarf’s Better Than Life or Farscape’s John Quixote, but simpler simulation-based stories, like Star Trek’s perennial holodeck-gone-wrong scenarios, lack the ‘weirdness’ element crucial to a good Dream Episode.

As the title of Amy’s Choice implies, the majority of Dream Episodes are designed to move one of the main characters forward emotionally (which is rather important, since usually nothing has actually happened over the course of the episode).

A Dream Episode will usually force a character to confront an emotional problem and often they will move on with renewed or changed purpose in the following episodes (so Voyager’s Doctor confirms his identity as an intelligent hologram in Projections, Daniel Jackson starts looking for the Harsesis child after Forever In A Day and stops again after Absolute Power, and in the most dramatic example, Angelus is once again replaced by Angel after Orpheus).

Sometimes, though, the Dream Episode is just an excuse to indulge in something truly outrageous or silly that can’t work outside a dream context. Red Dwarf’s Back To Reality does this to some extent, but Farscape’s Revenging Angel is the classic example, existing for no other reason than to mess around with some Looney Toons-inspired animation.

Et voila, those are the six staples of science fiction and fantasy television. We could perhaps add a seventh, The Return Of The Character Who Was Really, Really Dead, but not only does this trope, though undoubtedly universal, usually rely on one of the others listed here to function (from Alternate Universes to Doppelgangers to Dreams) it also exists outside genre television as well.

Just about any really long-running show will fall prey to this trope eventually, usually through another non-genre specific trope, the Flashback (see, for example, Heckles in Friends' TOW The Flashback, Mrs Landingham in The West Wing's Bartlett For America or Laverne in Scrubs' My Comedy Show).

For genre television, however, the six concepts listed here are central to the maintenance of a long-running show. Sometimes, they can be so central that an entire series is based on one of them, as Sliders is on the Alternate Universe or Quantum Leap on the Bodyswap.

The point of repeating these stories for writers is not, as is often assumed, laziness. Rather, by playing with a well-known theme, they can explore areas of their characters that are normally inaccessible. Their aim, we may be sure, is not to mindlessly repeat their predecessors, but to offer an exciting new twist that makes the story their own.

As you may have guessed, Farscape is probably the most successful!

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I can think of few comedy shows that, seven series in, still deliver the same consistent belly laughs as Peep Show. It’s a testament to all involved that, from the opening five minutes of this series opener, it felt like it had never been away. I make no bones about declaring that this is one of my all-time favourite comedy shows, and deserves to be mentioned in the same company as Curb Your Enthusiasm, I’m Alan Partridge and Spaced.

Picking up directly where the last series finished, the episode began in a labour ward where Sophie was giving birth to what has been firmly established as Mark’s baby. It would end with the little fella being born and cradled by Mark, accompanied by the finest line of the entire episode: “My son. Minimal water damage.”

That line was such a perfect ending to the episode, as it brought together several strands that were running throughout. Mark’s boiler – the cause of so much happiness, and distress, last series – is on the blink and, finding this out during the impending birth, it’s in his nature to not let such a pressing matter go away, no matter the situation currently facing him.

Asking Sophie for her opinion on the matter brought one of many chuckles from me, as this was a perfect indication that Mr Corrigan hadn’t changed a bean since we last saw him. Finding out that the boiler repair by Super Hans had caused little water damage, then, was a perfect finale to round things off. And that line? Perfection, although that term could be applied to the writing throughout.

Wonderfully crafted and pitched exactly right for each and every character and situation, it seems to get better and better with every new series. If they keep this up, there’s no reason the show couldn’t go on for years to come.

In truth, the show retreads much old ground. There’s Mark’s self-loathing and failure to stand up to his responsibilities, and  Jez’s ongoing mission to bed anything that moves. But this familiarity is all key to Peep Show’s charm, placing you right back with a couple of friends you know all too well, but placing them in new, exciting situations week-in, week-out. It’s the hallmark of what will surely be recognised as a stone cold classic in years to come.

Take Jez’s exploits in this episode. Only he could find himself pondering whether or not it’s right to make a play for a girl whose boyfriend is in a coma, and while that might not sound all that funny on paper, it was exquisite to watch. That’s probably largely down to the fact that while Jez does horrible things and thinks terrible thoughts, he is not, deep down, a bad person.

Earlier series painted him in a less favourable light, but the Jez of the last few series has mellowed out a little, and become more of a friend to Mark than ever before. He’s growing up, just not that quickly. Hence the moments of madness he frequently finds himself in. But if you can’t laugh at a man wondering whether to tell someone that their boyfriend’s foot has just moved, as, if he doesn’t, the life support machine will be switched off and he’ll get his girl, then it’s probably time to switch over on Friday nights.

As for moments of madness, they don’t come much worse than Mark finding himself down the arcades, trying to avoid Sophie’s birth canal. You see, they might go about things in different ways, but Jez and Mark are both really rather superficial, selfish blokes. More alike than Mark would wish to let on, the arcade scene was really well played out, with even a stray interloper getting Mark’s goat.

The episode also rang true with me on another level. As someone who has attended his own baby’s birth, and encountered many a brusque midwife while doing so, the scenes of Mark’s ‘negotiations’ struck a real chord with me, which elevated the humour that little bit more. When you’re in the heat of the battle, so to speak, the last thing you need is an officious nurse proving less than helpful. Kudos to Mark for reacting so sternly, though. (“Very well, good day.”)

Oh, and I couldn’t finish this review without mentioning the brilliant Olivia Colman, as Sophie. She played pregnant highly effectively, but also with great humour: “I want an epidural, or just someone to smack me over the head,” and “She put her whole hand in… I didn’t think she’d put her whole hand in!” are just two of her choice lines. Also, her gritted teeth reaction to Mark having to “weaken his negotiating position” was a truly beautiful moment among many for one of our finest comediennes.

So, a glorious return for the El Dude brothers. They’re back in the game.

Peep Show airs on Channel 4, Friday nights at 10:00pm.

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Warning: the following contains spoilers.

1.8 No Ordinary Accident

I'm rapidly starting to lose patience with No Ordinary Family, because, for every positive step the show takes, it then takes another three in the opposite direction.

Last week, the plot got a welcome shot in the arm when it transpired that the super-human killer, the Watcher, wasn't quite as two-dimensional as he's so far been presented.

No Ordinary Accident is all about Jim losing his powers, which is probably the oldest superhero story there is. And how is this resolved? He was allergic to Stephanie's lip gloss! No, really. It was that dumb.

But if that was pretty insulting, it was also initially wrapped up like some bizarre metaphor for the loss of sexual virility amongst middle-aged men. What?

The more they plugged on with this, the more uncomfortable it became, but then I'd already had a negative reaction to the romantic setup between Jim and Stephanie. I don't want to know about their sex life, and frankly, I can't even see them as a believable couple.

But my biggest complaint this week is the way Jim and Stephanie talk to their children, where they appear to have taken lessons in being hypocritical and condescending. Every week they seem to get into a bind where one of the children does something they don't approve of, even if they'd have done exactly the same thing themselves. This week, it was a painful diversion where JJ stupidly hacks the school computer and gets caught by the teacher that hates him.

When the teacher gets hurt, JJ, for some reason, feels guilty, in the irrational way that characters in this show do. It turns out the teacher will die, but for some inexplicable reason, JJ decides to save him with the help of super-speed surgery performed by his mother.

The idea that you could just borrow any critically ill patient and perform surgery on them in a hospital without anyone noticing was one that could only happen on this show, and maybe Chuck. Given the nature of litigation in the US, if a hospital couldn't prove who'd performed the operation, they'd be the target of a massive court action, at the very least.

None of this made much sense, and the bit where the teacher recovered and didn't remember anything made me groan out loud.

I won't even talk about the Daphne subplot, because it was yet another example of how to make her character totally uninteresting and terminally shallow.

If these things weren't bad enough, they even managed to undo the good work they did last week by revealing that The Watcher is an addict, taking away much of the mystery they'd briefly empowered him with.

Those responsible for No Ordinary Family need to get a grip fast, because currently this is so cliché riddled that I keep having Heroes flashbacks. The show's logo, of a curtain blowing out of an open bedroom window, has become something of an ironic symbol, considering how it's progressed. None of the characters in No Ordinary Family can fly, and the show itself has failed to take off in any sense.

I'm beginning to wonder if the Powells all need to use the Kryptonite lip gloss, so they can go back to being the entirely ordinary, bickering and boring family they are at heart.

Read our review of episode 7, No Ordinary Mobster, here.

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This episode’s guest star is American comedienne Phyllis Diller. One of the first women to have a successful career in comedy, Diller is an influential figure who is seen to have inspired and opened many doors for those who followed in her footsteps. She’s no longer working in stand up, but her career spanned fifty years until she had to retire in 2002 due to ill health. She still appears in the odd documentary, as well as lending her vocal talents to the likes of Family Guy and Robot Chicken.

There are plenty of sketches and musical numbers in this Muppet Show episode that don’t contain Diller, but unfortunately, most of them aren’t of that high a standard. Statler and Waldorf’s appearance in the At The Dance segment was entertaining, as was the Hugga Wugga rendition of You Are My Sunshine, which would give Avery Schreiber’s musical number a run for its money for the title of weirdest musical number of the series to date.

Other than that, though, it’s all a bit subpar. The running theme of Hilda wanting to make herself look younger and thusly more attractive is pretty tiresome, as is the Gogolala Jubilee Jugband’s Mississippi Mud musical number. Regular sketches like Veterinarians Hospital and Muppet Labs are fine, but just that, while even Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem, which are usually a favourite of mine, are a little weak.

On the plus side, though, the guest star this week is very strong.
Diller’s first sketch on the show sees her exchanging a series of woes with Rowlf the dog in a bar. What begins as quite downbeat soon lightens in tone, as the two strike up a friendship and constantly try to outdo each other. Soon the pair has a crowd of other Muppets laughing at their tales.

It goes to highlight just what a natural comic Diller is, as she makes delivering such funny lines seem effortless. With an abundance of charm and the ability to make self-deprecation seem so funny, the evidence is there to see why Diller was held in such high regard.

Later in the episode, she joins a long list of names who attempt to assist Fozzie in honing his comic craft, but soon finds the task a little more difficult than she initially assumed.

Other than this sketch, there are a couple of brief appearances in The Muppet News Flash segment, and a backstage conversation with Gonzo, before Diller performs in the show’s closing song, with a rendition of The Entertainer, where she attempts to play the saxophone. As Diller misses notes and struggles with the instrument for comedic effect, Zoot comes and shows her how it’s done. This wouldn’t be the last time that The Entertainer would be used in The Muppet Show, as it would appear early on in the following series.

Diller’s appearances are so memorable, despite often being quite brief, that I couldn’t help but feel she was underused, especially as a lot of the other material didn’t match up to the quality of those she appeared in.

Whilst I would hesitate to say this is one of the better episodes seen in recent weeks, which has seen a major upturn in form overall, it’s still a solid effort. Diller is a charming and funny guest star whose material is of an incredibly high standard. It’s just a shame that the majority of the other sketches that fill out the show fail to match up.

Still, as a whole, this episode is far from a miss, and had it not been for the slightly disappointing filler sketches and musical numbers, it could have ranked up against some of the best seen in the series so far.

As it stands, though, this is a nice showcase for the guest star’s talents, and another solid episode in a run of good form that’s given the series some consistency that was severely lacking in the early stages.

You can read our remembrance of episode 16 here.

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What does the term science fiction mean to you? Laser guns? Spaceships? Mad scientists and crazy experiments? If the answer’s yes, then you’ll probably find yourself bored or even irritated by Gareth Edwards’ Monsters.

Despite the B-movie trappings its title might suggest - and that it contains more than its fair share of giant aliens from outerspace - Monsters is more akin to a road movie or relationship drama than the bombastic, city-levelling event cinema of (Emmerich’s) Godzilla or Cloverfield.

Six years after a NASA probe returning from a moon orbiting Jupiter crashes over a Central American jungle, vast, octopus-like creatures stalk the area, leaving havoc in their wake. The US government, anxious to keep the aliens out of its backyard, erect an equally huge wall between north and south, and regularly despatches heavily armed jet fighters to patrol the skies.

Into this wordless stand-off between humans and aliens steps Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy), a free-spirited photographer keen to make his name by getting a few snapshots of the giant visitors. Before he can do so, he’s saddled with the irksome task of escorting tourist and millionaire’s daughter Sam Wynden (Whitney Able) through the Infected Zone of giant monsters to the safety of the US.

As they travel by train, boat and jeep, they encounter the trail of devastation left by both the huge, clumsy aliens and the planes that fight them, and it becomes ever more apparent which side does the most damage.

Inarguably the most quiet, mature giant monster movie yet made, Monsters is engagingly shot and filled with moments of ethereal beauty. Its location shooting and semi-improvised acting give the film a spontaneous quality, though Edwards makes sparing, restrained use of the vérité approach that’s currently in vogue. Instead, the composition and discipline of his photography recalls the work of Terrence Malick or Michael Mann at their more meditative.

The film has an atmosphere and pace that some will almost certainly find frustrating. Edwards’ film focuses more on the growing relationship between Andrew and Sam than the futile conflict that always seems to be raging somewhere far off.

The effects of the war, however, are everywhere. There are moments where Monsters is genuinely disquieting, even as it enthrals with its atmosphere and local colour. A scene early on, where the couple stumble upon a candlelit shrine to the people accidentally killed by the American bombardment of the aliens, is as poignant as it is understated.

The creatures themselves are majestic and oddly melancholy beasts, roaming jungles by night and emitting plaintive, whale-like sounds.

A curious and unique mixture of romance, road trip and science fiction, Monsters makes insightful, quiet commentary on xenophobia and insularity, and its parallels with current conflicts in the Middle East are plainly in evidence.

This isn’t to say that Monsters is preachy or unnecessarily explicit in its condemnation of modern war, rather, it’s a meditation on the short-sightedness and selfishness of human nature at its worst. As one beautiful sequence taken atop an Inca temple eloquently demonstrates, such selfishness is as old as humanity itself.

On a tiny budget, Gareth Edwards has worked miracles. Acting as director, photographer, editor, and effects designer, the British filmmaker has created a masterful debut feature from the most meagre resources, and there are moments, as vehicles are picked up and sent crashing to the ground, or a jet fighter comes bubbling up from the depths of a swamp, where it’s almost inconceivable that he could have made such a film so cheaply.

Real-life couple McNairy and Able also contribute hugely to the film’s success, displaying genuine affection and charisma in their roles. It’s their honest, unaffected performances that provide the film with the dramatic core it requires.

Monsters isn’t a film that everyone will enjoy. The antithesis of Skyline, another low-budget sci-fi movie I saw a few weeks ago, Edwards’ film is more akin to sci-fi literature than big-screen genre entertainment. Where Skyline attempted to replicate the retina-scorching spectacle of Independence Day, and fell flat on its face in the process, Monsters uses its sci-fi trappings as a mirror, providing a reflection of humanity at its darkest and, at the same time, most affecting.

It’s a film in the tradition of Tarkovsky or Kubrick rather than Emmerich or the brothers Strause, a comparison that will sound either encouraging or depressing, depending on your taste in cinema.

Monsters may lack the laser guns and spaceships that typically clutter up the genre, trappings I also love, incidentally, but in their place it has intelligence, insight, and above all, a heart. God knows, sci-fi cinema needs more films like this.

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Killing is a science, and assassination is an activity that is as much about planning and logistics as it is about the grim act itself. That’s the sentiment that lies at the heart of The American, Anton Corbijn’s slow-burning drama thriller.

Characters talk at length about the recoil of guns and the velocity of bullets, of sound suppression and the tolerances of tiny screws. Weapons are endlessly tested, fiddled with, re-adjusted and then tested again.

In two of The American’s most mesmerising scenes, George Clooney’s careworn assassin, Jack, snaps a sniper rifle together with infinite care, checking the action and movement of every individual part, before improvising his own makeshift silencer with the dexterity of a Swiss watchmaker.

Clooney’s Jack is a lonely, distant character who says little, largely because he can’t afford to. Having lost one love interest during an attempted hit from a group of Swedish killers, he’s advised by his superior (a lizard-like Johan Leysen), “Don’t make any friends.”

Holed up in a rural town in northern Italy, Jack goes about completing his final mission, an apparently simple task of constructing a custom rifle that can fire rapidly and quietly over a long distance. The act of killing won’t be Jack’s. Instead, the task will be carried out by the cold, enigmatic Mathilde (an oddly frightening Thekla Reuten). Once the rifle’s handed over, Jack’s free to retire.

One of the few contemporary Hollywood actors capable of carrying off the kind of silent, macho charisma exuded by old-time stars such as Lee Marvin, Clooney is perfect as the ageing, paranoid assassin whose vocation leaves no room for relationships.

Like the crumbling streets of stone around him, Clooney’s character is tired yet noble, like an ageing samurai warrior, monosyllabic, yet capable of conveying equal parts menace and distrust with a single glance. This is undoubtedly Clooney’s finest performance since Syriana or Michael Clayton, and he plays the part with skill and commitment.

Jack’s coldness is perfectly counterbalanced by Paolo Bonacelli’s warm performance as Father Benedetto, a man of God with a dark secret of his own.

Anton Corbijn’s direction, aided by Martin Ruhe’s startling cinematography, is quietly beautiful, and the unmistakeable remoteness of its rural Italian setting is captured down to the tiniest detail, from the polite nosiness of its inhabitants to the desolate winter landscape that surrounds them.

Long periods of silence are punctuated by occasional flashes of low-key, startling violence. Startling not because of their gore or brutality, but because of their mundanity. Like a butcher slaughtering cattle, The American’s killings are carried out with muted thuds and a casual, chillingly indifferent air.

The American is so well scripted and shot, in fact, that it’s easy to overlook just how clichéd and generic much of its story is. The thriller genre is filled to bursting point with the good-hearted hookers and one-last-job assassins found here, and it’s to screenwriter Rowan Joffe’s credit that he’s taken a stock premise and invested it with such depth.

Possibly the most understated (and, some might argue, uneventful) thrillers in recent years, The American is an intelligent and often tense study of an anxious, sullen assassin and the toll that years of killing have taken on him.

Corbijn’s film slowly, fastidiously dissects the mechanical process of murder with all the precision of its central character constructing his gun. And for that reason alone, The American is one of the most arresting and well-crafted dramas I’ve seen this year.

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If you’re unlucky enough to be male, Ivy The Kiwi? probably isn’t the kind of game you’d want to admit to playing. Depending on the kind of company you keep, the mere mention of its name will most likely be met with snorts of derision.

As unbearably cute as it sounds, Ivy The Kiwi? is a puzzle game with the ambience of a children’s book - its central character, a chick so young she’s barely hatched out of her egg, is on a mission to find her mother and her identity (hence the question mark in the title) and must traverse a series of pastel-hued worlds filled with spikes, malevolent rats and other hazards.

The creation of Yuji Naka, best known as the designer behind Sonic The Hedgehog, Ivy The Kiwi? is one of those rare games that makes proper use of the Wii remote. Like Kirby: Canvas Curse on the DS, the player has no direct control over Ivy herself – if allowed to, she’ll walk mindlessly from left to right, reversing direction if she bumps into a wall, and falling to oblivion if she strays too close to a pit full of spikes.

To guide Ivy along the correct path, the Wii remote is used to draw vines across the screen, which can act as temporary platforms over the aforementioned spiked pits or, by holding down the Z button, can be used as a catapult to flick Ivy up in the air.

This latter technique has all kinds of uses that become steadily more apparent as the levels become more complicated. While airborne, Ivy acts as a projectile, smashing through bricks and knocking rodent enemies off the screen with a satisfying squeak.

To add to the challenge, only three vines can be stretched across the screen at one time - draw a fourth, and the first one fades out. In terms of mechanics, that’s it - Ivy’s concept is no more difficult to grasp than the average Flash game, its mixture of puzzles and platforming gently taxing rather than infuriatingly difficult.

The game’s central objective is exactly like Lemmings - guide Ivy to the exit, and it’s onto the next, slightly more challenging area. A secondary task, which involves collecting all the feathers on each stage, adds longevity, while those with a genuinely competitive streak can attempt to complete each area in the shortest time possible.

It’s the quality of Ivy’s level design, and the beautiful simplicity of its controls, that make it such a joy to play. With a little practise, ushering the hapless protagonist through the game’s 100 levels becomes second nature.

Despite its overall polish, Ivy The Kiwi? isn’t without its faults. Draw a vine in the wrong place, and you’ll find yourself frantically drawing more vines to get rid of the first, errant one – it’s not a game-breaking issue, but it lacks the finesse displayed elsewhere, and the ability to dismiss the vines with a shake of the Wii remote, say, would have been a more elegant solution.

There are moments, too, where the (admittedly very pretty) pencil crayon backgrounds make some hazards difficult to see, and it’s all too easy to miss an inbound rat among the vines and hand-drawn trees.

These minor annoyances are more than outweighed by the quality of Ivy The Kiwi?’s production and sheer charm, and the game’s blend of platforming and puzzle elements are a comforting reference back to a more innocent age of 8- and 16-bit gaming.

Ivy The Kiwi? isn’t the sort of game you should admit to playing if you want to maintain your macho façade, but as a diversion between Halo: Reach or Black Ops sessions, it’s a heart-warming, guilty pleasure.

Ivy The Kiwi? is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

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4.12 Blowing Smoke

SCDP is a company in terminal meltdown. Its customers are seeping away, and its finances are at a dangerously low ebb.

To make matters worse, the glimmer of hope given by Faye at the close of the last episode is immediately extinguished at the start of Blowing Smoke – in one of the most quietly stinging rejections in Mad Men history, a Don Draper is politely knocked back by prospective client, Heinz.

“I bet I could get a date with your mother right now” a company rep says, after Don delivers an unusually desperate and spluttering pitch over dinner.

A later opportunity proves similarly disappointing, as another potential client, which could have earned SCDP an agency-saving $5 million, evaporates into the ether. The news of Lucky Strike’s departure has clearly travelled far and, sensing imminent death, SCDP’s clients are staying away in droves.

With SCDP’s partners all forced to pitch in to pay their employees’ wages (an expense Pete can ill-afford), tempers become frayed, and as the first round of workers are quietly let go, the atmosphere in the office is grim.

Desperate and running out of ideas, Don takes it upon himself to make one final, impulsive gamble – sitting down at his typewriter after a few scotches, he hastily drafts an open letter, headed “Why I’m quitting tobacco”, and has it published in the New York Times.

“We welcome all other business because we believe our best work is ahead of us,” the letter reads, having explained that SCDP will no longer be advertising cigarettes. A bold move designed to put a cool, positive spin on the company's rejection by the tobacco industry, it’s not a popular one among Don’s fellow partners.

“It’s suicide! It’s insane!” Pete laments. Roger, with evident relish, sardonically adds that it’s “good not to be the reason this agency’s going down anymore.”

Blowing Smoke is a tense, pressure cooker of an episode for the most part, and the future now looks particularly dim for Don’s once majestic enterprise. The late possibility that the Anti-Smoking Lobby may be interested in working with SCDP provides a tiny escape route, but this could well prove to be too little, too late.

In what is an otherwise engrossing episode, the blood-on-the-carpet events at the office are regularly intercut with the more quotidian developments at Betty’s house. In a rare instance of what feels suspiciously like filler, we’re treated to scenes of Sally talking at length with creepy youth Glen, or playing cards with her psychologist.

It seems rather too late in the series’ narrative for these scenes to have any meaningful impact on next week’s finale, and merely serve to undercut the various sackings and arguments over on Madison Avenue.

Nevertheless, Blowing Smoke provides a serviceable point of entry for the season’s final 45-or-so minutes. The script zings with its usual resonance (Bert Cooper once again gets in a fantastically odd line, directed at Don: "Get me my shoes. We've created a monster!")

There's a beautifully constructed shot early on in the episode, too, where Faye and Don chat in the foreground while vampish secretary Megan types away behind them, that serves to underline the literal love triangle that will almost certainly come to a head next week.

With SCDP's future dangling over the abyss of ruin, and less than six months before the banks call in their debts, Don appears to be living on borrowed time.

I can’t wait to see how (or even if) all these narrative loose ends will be tied up and, most of all, whether Don’s maverick gamble has saved the company, or merely hastened its fall into oblivion…

Read our review of episode 11, Chinese Wall, here.

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Tron’s game world is firmly rooted in the state-of-the-art circa 1982. It was a time when Taito’s Space Invaders was the tabletop game of choice for every youth club, and if you didn’t have a Atari 2600 at home you were relentlessly picked on. By kids in the year below you.

Tron: Evolution, a third-person action fest set seven years after the events of Tron, has all those elements, updated for the 21st century. We identify them and forensically trace their ancestry…

Light Cycles

Tron’s Light Cycles are as central to the action in Tron: Evolution as they are to Tron and Tron: Legacy. Of course they are - Light Cycles has become a mythic game in its own right. The arcade game Tron kicked it off, but several unofficial adaptations have carried the torch since.

The legacy goes back further though. You may best know the gameplay template as Snake, ubiquitous on Nokia mobiles. The earliest example we can find is Blockade, released in 1976, swiftly followed by an Atari console version called Surround.

And, in Tron: Evolution, you get the same fast and furious gameplay in third-person 3D. Which is lovely. There’s one tweak you won’t find in any other Tron game ever (official or unofficial) - you can rez in and out of Light Cycle mode. This’ll be essential while playing the game, apparently.

Mind you, while wandering around the Light Cycle arena you’ll be as squishy as a supermarket carrier bag full of offal should a passing enemy choose to mow you down, so this tactic should probably be used sparingly.

ID Discs

ID Discs are still the main hand-to-hand combat weapons in Tron: Evolution. Deadly discs. That’s one of the reasons Tron is still so freakin’ cool. You can keep your BFGs and rocket launchers, I’ve got myself a frisbee here.

So, discs of death. From whence did you come? We’d hazard a guess that they were inspired by the very first wave of sports-based games. By Pong and Breakout. The evidence? That comes from Tron itself, where gameplay on the Grid resembles the two-player arena format that any vintage console player will recognise for a bazillion cartridges of old. Speaking of which...

Tanks

One of the main, roaming enemy vehicles in Tron, tank combat makes a revamped and upgraded appearance in Tron: Evolution, too. Old-school gamers will instantly identify two classic antecedents. The first is Atari’s Combat - one of the games that shipped with every 2600 back in the day. The gameplay was simple. You’re a tank. Your opponent’s a tank. You trundle around and try to shoot your opponent. Hurrah!

The second, cooler ancestor of Tron: Evolution’s tanks are the vehicles from arcade favourite Battlezone. Released just two years before the original Tron, the 3D vector style and luminescent grid are a clear influence on Tron’s aesthetic.

Recognizers

Updated in Tron: Evolution to be meaner and more menacing than their blocky, original incarnation in Tron, it’s pretty clear where the inspiration for these floaty, lumbering program destroyers sprang from. Space Paranoids, of course! Sorry, we meant Space Invaders. So, in Tron: Evolution, you’ll effectively get to know what it’s like to be set upon by a space invader, while riding a Light Cycle. Ladies and gentlemen, the geek factor has just been set to eleven.

Acrobatic Combat

Wha? How’s that supposed to be classic gaming lore updated for the 3D realm? Oh ye of little etc, etc. Have you never heard of Prince Of Persia? And Tomb Raider? And Prince Of Persia again? Yep. Tron: Evolution brings things right up to date with third-person, parkour-style combat moves that mark it out as a 21st century entry into videogame canon  - but the acrobatic style can be traced way back to Jordan Mechner’s iconic 1989 platformer.

And, spookily, as Tron: Evolution begins seven years after the events of Tron - that puts it right in the same time frame...

Tron: Evolution is due for release on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PSP on 26 November, with a PC version following on in December.

See Also:

• Videogaming's most athletic protagonists
• The top 10 celebrity appearances in videogames
• How Tron's mythology is expanded in Tron: Evolution

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The Toy Story triumvirate will reign supreme among stories of toys coming to life and it's hard to imagine any single film or series that uses the premise of living playthings ever besting the perfect trio of movies.

But having given the hat trick fair praise, the toys in Andy's room weren't the first to walk and talk under their own control, and other stories feature toys springing to life when their owners aren't around or by the power of dreams and wishes, the magic of midnight or, in one case, the might of military grade munitions chips.

So, if you still have room for more childhood toy fantasies and adventures beyond Woody, Buzz and their crew, we offer these additional movie choices old and new...

Babes In Toyland (aka March Of The Wooden Soldiers) (1934)

This is only the first among four titles here that feature soldiers as the main animated childhood objects of attention. They're a popular theme, the tin type being the action figures of their era, and perhaps allowing their adventures to be a bit more daring than the average toy.

This is one of the oldest of our film examples. It's a version of Victor Herbert's 1903 musical (Babes In Toyland), well known to Americans, as it airs annually in almost every state either on Thanksgiving or during the Christmas holidays.

Its greatest draw is in the starring roles of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee, employees of Santa's workshop. Their hopes of raising the mortgage money for Mother Widow Peep are dashed when their boss finds out they've made a mistake and instead of making 600 wooden soldiers at one foot tall, they've made 100 soldiers at six feet tall.

Although these soldiers don't technically come to life, they do come to the rescue when the Bogeymen attack Toyland and Stannie and Ollie are redeemed. And any soldiers who can fight the gnarly bogeymen deserve to be here.

The few songs may be a bit saccharine, but there's so much charm, plus Laurel and Hardy, that the film has remained a favourite all these years. It also has the ingenious casting of a real monkey in a mouse suit (who looks remarkably similar to a mouse named Mickey), and an impressive for its time stop-motion animation sequence as the soldiers head out to do battle with the Bogeys.

The Steadfast Tin Soldier Fantasia/2000 (1999)

Our second soldier entry, this is the tale of a solider with only one leg who falls in love with a ballerina who's posed en pointe, leaving the soldier to believe she too has just one leg.

The Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, first published in 1838, has been interpreted many times in films and a ballet and each handles what is a quite poignant ending a little differently.

In the original story, the soldier falls from a table and goes on adventures before returning to the playroom where he's thrown by a young boy into a fire, melting into the shape of a heart. And the ballerina, made of paper, gets blown to his side and perishes with him, with only her metal spangle remaining.

It's quite a bleak, romantic ending for small children, and a 1934 Ub Iwerks cartoon short version even has the soldier facing a firing squad before burning in the flames. (As if simply frying wasn't enough!)

An alternate and happier ending features in Fantasia 2000, where the tin soldier defeats the evil, lecherous Jack-in-the-box and he and the ballerina live happily ever after. Of course.

The story uses a motif we'll see again, as the toys in the playroom come to life at the stroke of midnight.

Nutcracker (1986)

The nutcracker's story, written by ETA Hoffman (The Nutcracker And The Mouse King) in 1816, was adapted into a ballet with a score by Tchaikovsky and first danced in 1892. Since that time there have been numerous adaptations on the story of toys (again, mostly soldiers) coming to life to defend young Clara from an army of mice on Christmas Eve.

Dancers including Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov have performed the story of the Nutcracker. So have Macaulay Culkin and Barbie.

Our favourite is the 1986 version because of its costume, creature and set designs by children's book author and illustrator, Maurice Sendak, probably best known for Where The Wild Things Are.

Additional to the familiar theme of animated soldiers, the production also employs the stroke of midnight to kick off the action, and even if you're not a fan of ballet, each set looks like a scene that's danced off the pages of a Sendak picture book.

A very brief bit of narration by Julie Harris makes this version more accessible to the younger fans in the family.

Small Soldiers (1998)

Unlike our hero soldiers above, half of the toys in Small Soldiers pose the biggest threat to their owners, when ordinary action figures are given X-1000 microprocessors, making them capable of thought and violence as The Commando Elite fight the peaceful monster Gorgonites and any humans who get in their way.

Despite a raging war scene, this film may be one of the least frightening here, as the action is always infused with humour and the combination of live actors and animated toys lessens the threat to manageable proportions. It also makes this film as much fun for adults as for the kids.

When the two leagues of action figures are imbued with critical thinking skills, the Commando Elite go A-Team on the Gorgonites, who prefer hiding to fighting.

Highlights of the Joe Dante-directed film are when the soldiers arm themselves with whatever they can get their hands on, with everyday objects in the garage becoming warring weapons, and the Frankensteinesque scenes where Gwendy fashion dolls are mutilated and brought to life, all to a Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack, with a great use of War, and a Spice Girls track used as psychological torture.

The animatronic design and effects (no doubt made more complicated by human beings and animals also in the scenes) are by the late, great Stan Winston, which all adds up to a very worthy romp and inclusion here.

The Mouse And His Child (1977)

Based on a 1967 Russell Hoban novel for children, The Mouse And His Child is an animated adventure of father and son wind-up toys, attached at the hands and built to dance in circles.

The story uses the enchanted midnight hour to bring the pair and the rest of the toyshop to life, where they meet other clockwork characters and learn the strict rules of their existence, including 'no crying'.

When they're knocked to the floor and discarded, the Mouse and his Child try to reunite with the seal and elephant. All they want is to become self-winding, and not rely on someone turning their key to advance in the world, and to form a little family of their friends.

On their travels they meet a villainous rat, Manny, who abducts broken clockwork creatures and makes them slavishly forage for food for him. They have miserable lives and, what's worse, if they complain or shirk their work, Manny has them ripped apart and dismantled into spare parts.

This is quite an upsetting situation for children and, at one point, the father and son face the same fate, although they enjoy a happy ending with the help of a psychic frog and mechanically inclined muskrat, defeating the rats, finding their friends, and becoming self-winding individuals.

Although the slightly awkward animation makes the film appear directed at young children, the story touches on philosophical themes that are explored further in the book. But the movie features a great cast of actors (Peter Ustinov, Cloris Leachman, Sally Kellerman, Andy Devine, John Carradine and Bob Holt) voicing the characters, which are all quite cute.

Unfortunately, this may be a hard film to track down as it was only available on VHS.

The Indian In The Cupboard (1995)

Another film based on a much loved children's book, The Indian In The Cupboard is the first in a series by Lynne Reid Banks. The film, directed by Frank Oz, is all live-action and tells the story of Omri, who's given an old cabinet and key for his birthday and discovers that the combination breathes life into anything put into the cabinet.

Being a modestly-sized cabinet, he tries the small toy figures in his closet. The first, Little Bear (played by Litefoot), a Native American, is a much better live companion than other attempts, including RoboCop, Darth Vader and a dinosaur.

Through a series of events in which he also makes a plastic cowboy live (David Keith as Boo-hoo Boone), injuries occur and it's here where the first real worry is visited amongst the adventures. It's also the entrance of Steve Coogan in his first film appearance, playing a British medic toy soldier who renders aid to the wounded.

Omri becomes aware that actions have consequences, no matter how much fun you're having, especially when he learns that the act of Little Bear becoming real has wrenched him from his own world where he was hunting with a nephew, who's now left on his own, and there are a few moments of genuine peril in the film to drive the cautionary message home.

In the end, Omri remedies most of his mistakes with his new friends and returns them to their worlds and plastic state.

Labyrinth (1986)

Now, here's the film that's probably best known and loved of this collection by readers of this site. And what's not to love? With a nuanced performance by then-ingénue, Jennifer Connelly, original songs written and performed by David Bowie, a screenplay by Terry Jones, costume and creature designs by Brian Froud, the riddles, optical illusions and conundrums, and of course, the whole shebang under the leadership of the incomparable Jim Henson, it's a favourite of many.

On Sarah's unforgettable journey to rescue her baby brother, Toby, from the Golbin King, Jareth, she's aided by allies made up of the toys in her room, who come to life and help her on her journey. In the opening scenes, you can see the stuffed animals, bookend, Escher poster and toy maze as the camera pans her room, ending at a likeness of the conjuror himself, standing right by her bedroom mirror (also seen in the junkyard scene), before the live versions join the toy-filled room for a celebration at the film's end.

Labyrinth is a brilliant collaboration of some of the finest talents in filmmaking, with timeless themes and humour. While it's probably, at first, most popular among those who can relate to Sarah and her age, and the youngest of this generation may not recognise David Bowie or realise the coup in casting that was achieved at the time, it will always be an excellent example of its genre, Henson puppetry, and great storytelling.

Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure (1977)

Raggedy Ann and her brother Andy may be the most US-centric of the characters named here. Created by author Johnny Gruelle in the early 1900s, the siblings' adventures were the stuff of a series of books and, even today, are popular rag dolls still manufactured with their trademark on their cloth chests: the words "I Love You" printed in a heart.

The film captures all the characteristic charisma and spirited determination of  the pair as they set out from Marcella's playroom to rescue her newest toy, a French doll named Babette, stolen by The Captain, who's hopelessly smitten with her. Along the way they befriend the forlorn Camel with the Wrinkled Knees and outwit King Koo Koo, whose body parts expand when he laughs at other people's expense.

The Raggedy story follows the same conventions as the Toy Story films, by having the toys come to life as soon as no humans are around, and the film is bookended by live-action scenes that dissolve into and out of the animated frames.

Sophisticated hand-drawn animation techniques are used, with a very flowing style that was necessary to properly represent the movement of rag dolls. As if to reinforce the fact that the animators succeeded admirably in that task, two other scenes in the storyline feature constantly moving, flowing creatures, The Greedy and Gadzooks.

The songs, while they may not sound brilliant at first, stick with you through the years and the film has all the heart and soul that you'd want from the story of Raggedy Ann and Andy. It's a real delight and well worth seeking out, if you can find or import a copy.

The Christmas Toy (1986)

Another film that shares the Toy Story and Raggedy Ann And Andy rules of life, this Jim Henson Company film tightens the conditions of being to include the proviso that, if any toy is caught out of position from when a human last saw them, it's frozen and lifeless forever.

And that does happen to one of the toy room pals, with a brief funeral ride to the closet in a very sad scene.

Unless you've seen The Christmas Toy before, all of the Muppet-like character puppets are new, except for an introduction by Kermit, who appears again at the film's end.

The story is also similar to the rivalry of top toy favourites' Woody and Buzz, except that last year's Christmas present, Rugby the Tiger Cub, has no idea that the holiday comes more than once and is not prepared to welcome new toy, Meteora, into the family. Also, even the cat's toy, a wheeled catnip mouse named Mew, gets to join the toys, although they constantly complain about his smell.

Like all Henson productions, the movie has some great songs and excellent puppetry in a story to charm all ages.

The Christmas Toy is a brilliant film that was shown as a holiday special on TV in the States and then bundled with A Muppet Family Christmas. Finally, just this year it became available on its own on DVD (in the UK, 2009 in the US) and should be a part of any Christmas, toy lover, or Henson fan's collection.

Pinocchio (1940)

We've saved the wooden prince of toys till last, but his is one of the oldest and most frequently adapted tales of all.

The Adventures Of Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi, began in 1881 in serialised and book forms. Of all the live-action and animated versions that followed, most of us are likely to picture the 1940 Disney version when Pinocchio's name is mentioned.

This is one of the few films where, by becoming real, the toy becomes a danger to himself, as Pinocchio is exploited by strangers and corrupted by bad boys and makes all the wrong decisions when left to his own devices.

Telling the story of the marionette that's brought to life by The Blue Fairy in answer to carver/father Geppetto's wish upon a star, Pinocchio is a classic cautionary tale. While some of the allegorical elements and fates of characters from the original story were changed for the times and youngest viewers, it's still a story of longing and wish fulfilment, provided you follow the rules.

This is old school hand-drawn animation wherein each background scene is richly rendered, shadowed and shaded and still makes much of modern animation drab and sketchy in comparison. Pinocchio is a wonder to watch, and in that final scene where he becomes a real boy, we can share Geppetto's joy, but will miss the unlucky, plucky wooden one.

Special Mentions:

Coraline (2009)

Toys don't feature heavily in this animated treat, but any excuse to mention the excellent Henry Selick-directed take on Neil Gaiman's story is a fair excuse. Coraline's toys in the Other Mother/ Beldam world are full of life, flying and moving about her prettier room, where she eats better food and has more attentive parents, but at a terrible price.

Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

Another Christmas staple in the States, the stop-motion antics of Rudolph and his pals take him to the Island of Misfit Toys, home to Charlie-In-The-Box, the spotted Elephant, the Choo-choo with square wheels, the Water Pistol that shoots jelly, a Bird that swims, a Cowboy who rides an ostrich, and a Boat that can't float. They're all misfits. Though there's no explanation for the toys' actions, they sing and dance, and that, to us, is life.

Winnie The Pooh

The Winnie-The-Pooh books by AA Milne, first published in 1926, have lead to feature films and TV series starring the pudgy stuffed bear and his buddies, and although there is no life generation story, the fact that Pooh is based on the author's son's own toy, Edward Bear, who's since been seen, heard and loved by millions of children is, to our minds, proof that his is a true story of a toy brought to life. 

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