Author: Alex Cole

The Girl King tells the story of Sweden’s 17th Century ‘Virgin-Queen’. Queen since the age of 6, Kristina has been raised as a man so she’d be fit to rule. On her 18th birthday and her true ascension, Kristina embarks on a short but progressive rule as she fights for French modernisation whilst battling with her own religion and sexuality.

Queen Kristina’s thrity year rule in an infamous one. Leading to her eventual abdication and residence at The Vatican, flouting her strict Lutheran upbringing throughout her reign. Mila Karismaki’s film is undoubtedly an interesting portrayal of this infamous Queens life. Yet, for me, it’s overall finish doesnn’t equal the interest of the Queen herself. Skipping almost instantly from her time living with her grief ridden mother, who still insisted Kristina kiss her father’s putrifying corpse two years after his death, we’re taken immediately to Kristina’s ascension twelve years later.

Whilst the film tried to build on Kristina’s motivation and her exploration of self. The sudden rebellion during her ascension seems odd and difficult to understand without context.

We know very little of her upbrining since being removed from her mother’s care and Kristina’s opposition to marriage, her sexuality and love affair with lady in waiting Countess Ebba Sparse (Sarah Gadon) aren’t explained or understood except for reference to her being ‘ariased as a King’. There’s such an incredible focus on Kritina’s love affair that it’s clear that Karismaki sees Kristina as a beacon for dicussing sexuality. Whilst this is an incredible discussion and a great aspect of this characters life, Karismaki would have been better either to focus entirely on this point or more evenly spread it throughout. It dominates her other traits and becomes so much of a focus later on that we lose sight of all the other intricacies. This ultimately makes he eventual conversion to Catholicsm confusing as we’ve seen so little of her religious growth.

Malin Buska gives a good performance, winning awards in Montreal. However, overall, I feel the piece has very much a silver screen vibe and was a dissapointment. It didn’t hit the heights of expectation or possibility created by it’s source material.

Unfortunately, I’d say this is one to miss. But, if you’re still interested, the trailer is below.

The second helping in the latest movie iteration of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; TMNT: Out of the Shadows sees our unlikely heroes take on a fight of inter-dimensional proportions as they’re forced to unite with the city of New York and reveal themselves for the first time.

TMNT has everything a fan of the turtles could want. April O’Neil, Casey Jones, Rocksteady and Beebop as well as the indomitable Shredder;there’s lots of pizza and even the odd Kawabunga for good measure. Unfortunately, the film itself isn’t worthy of its contents. TMNT: Out of the Shadows is possibly one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. Having actually enjoyed the first (unlike many) I was more than willing to give this film a chance, I even hoped the consensus was horribly wrong, having seen so so many bad reviews before going in. They weren’t wrong.

TMNT: Out of the Shadows goes so far into the childish category, delving so far into the world of slapstick that TMNT feels more like a set of sketches designed to make children laugh rather than build any sort of atmosphere. There is so much cutting and changing that everything happens within a five minute window. Clearly designed for an audience with the attention span of a gnat, there is no time to build up suspense or to build any kind of 3D characters. The ‘twists are so regimented and formulaic that for the first time in years I considered leaving the cinema many many times.

There are no acting performances worth discussing in this film, but I feel I need to defend the actors in someway. It’s clear throughout that thee script,the direction, but more than likely the force of the studios and audience polls has pushed this film so far down into the toilet, not even DiCaprio could make this film look good.

I love TMNT, and I wanted to love this. Unfortunately, the only good bit about the film are the closing credits.

You can see the trailer for TMNT: Out of the Shadows below.

Lurking Fear can only be described as a B-movie. Telling the tale of a town ravaged by humanoid creatures lurking underneath a church whilst terrorising the town above. When thieves cross those trying to put an end to the horror, things get a little more complicated.

Re-mastered and released, much like the monsters in this tale, Lurking Fear remains at the bedrock of the horror genre; yet, that in itself might be this films truly redeeming feature. The pretense is terrible, the application even worse, and there are no two ways about it, the acting is poor. Ashley Laurence (Hellraiser) gives one of the few decent performances, but ultimately the script and direction did nothing to help.

Nonetheless, and despite the fact that the beginning of this film was so poor it almost made me turn it off, I grew to like Lurking Fear as it went on. At less than eighty minutes, Lurking Fear is just long enough that we can all laugh and enjoy a truly, truly terrible film, for everything that it is and not have the experience drawn out and ruined. Lurking Fear doesn’t hide from what it is, and I don’t think the actors or directors do either. It is a B-movie, it knows it’s a B-movie and that name sums up this film completely.

Worth every inclusion in a B-movie and beer marathon Lurking Fear is exactly what it thinks it is and if that’s what you enjoy, you’ll love this film.

Before I start talking about X-Men: Apocalypse in detail, I want to start this review by stating two things about myself. Firstly, I’m not the kinda guy who usually says a film isn’t worth watching, or be completely damning. I like to find the good in everything, and I’ll pretty much watch and enjoy something even if I know it’s no cinematic masterpiece, or, in this case, worse than others in the series. Secondly, I liked Batman Vs. Superman. Say what you want, I thought it was great, that’s right,… not good, but a great film.

X-Men: Apocalypse, in which we our famed heroes, plus a LOT of new ones, fight a tyrannical and all-powerful God like villain hell bent of destroying everything is an OK film. It had redeemed parts and it had long drawn out wasteful parts. It was good and bad in equal measure. We saw plenty of great comedy action sequences and the portion of the film set mainly in Xavier’s school was almost perfect. Quicksilver was a delight once again and the new mutants were ones we all knew and wanted in the film, these parts were fantastic. Apocalypse however, Apocalypse was awful.

The writers somehow managed to take one of the meanest and most insane villains from the X-Men universe and make him meh. His motivation was strange, his expressions odd and he simply caused big and powerful explosions. He had no depth and no soul. He’s a typical third film villain, designed only to be bigger and badder than everyone who’d come before. For me, this isn’t what made X-Men great, and it’s the same thing that brought down X-Men: The Last Stand and the same reason again, Captain America: Winter Soldier was my least favourite Cap film so far. Constant action, huge explosions and bigger everything doesn’t guarantee a strong film.

When all is said and done, and despite my rant, I liked X-Men: Apocalypse and I will be watching it again (the day after I’m writing this review in fact). It had enough redeeming features for me to enjoyable. I laughed and in times I was even in suspense. Not only that, but like many others I’m sure, I’m involved in this story line. I still want more, and I hope they make more. If they don’t it’ll be a great shame. I just hope the box-office does enough to placate the seemingly many, bad reviews.