JUNE 2017 - FILMS + TV

A few bits and pieces watched in the month, including Line of Duty - Series 3 and the start of another hard-hitting bit of British drama in the shape of Jimmy McGovern's Broken!

Line of Duty - Series 3 (2016)

Six episodes, all watched and now I'm all up to date on this fantastic drama. Top bloody banana!
Keeley Hawes, Adrian Dunbar, Vicky McClure, Martin Compston, Daniel Mays, Craig Parkinson, et al were pretty fantastic. Highly recommended!

Police drama about the investigations of anti-corruption unit AC12. Sergeant Danny Waldron and his team shoot dead a criminal, but cracks soon appear in their story. Are they covering up a murder?

Jaws 2 (1978)

Forty years after the rest of the world I watched Jaws 1 last month and enjoyed it. I wasn't too fussed about seeing the sequels, but 2 and 3 were on TV last week, so we taped and watched the second one with the third to follow in July. A lot of the characters were the same as in the first movie and it wasn't too bad to be honest. There's been worse sequels.

PS Half watched Jaws 3 last night...it was awful. Ended up playing snog, marry or avoid with the family while it unfolded in the background.

Police chief Brody must protect the citizens of Amity after a second monstrous shark begins terrorizing the waters.

Pompeii (2014)

 Despite Kiefer Sutherland and the Jon Snow dude from Game of Thrones, it was a bit of a poor man's Gladiator. An okay hour and a half's TV. 

A slave-turned-gladiator finds himself in a race against time to save his true love, who has been betrothed to a corrupt Roman Senator. As Mount Vesuvius erupts, he must fight to save his beloved as Pompeii crumbles around him.

Broken (2017)

A bit more like it with some gritty Liverpool drama featuring Sean Bean as a priest and the lovely Anna Friel as a single mum down on her luck. I've only watched 2 episodes so far and am about four behind. My wife was finding it a bit too grim so bailed. I need to find time to watch it without her!

Broken is a six-part British television drama series, created by screenwriter Jimmy McGovern, that first broadcast on BBC One on 30 May 2017. The series focuses on Michael Kerrigan (Sean Bean), the priest of a community parish in suburban Northern England, who despite suffering from his own troubles stemming from a traumatic childhood, tries to guide a group of his most vulnerable parishioners through the trials and tribulations of everyday life. The series, produced by LA Productions, was commissioned in 2015; with filming taking place throughout 2016.

Identity Thief (2013)

I adore Melissa McCarthy. She is as funny as F*^*! She reminds me of a female Sid James, one look at her and I'm grinning from ear to ear. I've only ever seen the start of this one before and watching it all the way through brightened up my day. Not everyone's cup of tea, but certainly mine.
Jason Bateman holds his own as her co-star.


Mild mannered businessman Sandy Patterson travels from Denver to Florida to confront the deceptively harmless looking woman who has been living it up after stealing Sandy's identity.

Grow Your Own (2007)

A quirky little comedy with a serious point to make about how people can feel threatened, (needlessly, in my opinion), by immigration and its effect on communities. Stars Olivia Colman, Benedict Wong, Eddie Marsan, Omid Djalili. Whatever happened to the warm British welcome? 

 An English community gets testy when a refuge family is granted a plot of land on which to grow vegetables.

The Mummy (2017)

I got to see this last week with my wife. I hadn't heard there was a sequel and was surprised to see Tom Cruise in a cameo (or so I thought). I spend a good half an hour waiting for Brendan Fraser to rock up with Rachel Weisz. (Never happened.) Enjoyable enough and probably benefited from being a big screen movie rather than viewed through a DVD on my telly. Not sure it was as good as the original. A portly Russell Crowe also features. Not too bad, but thankful the cinema was offering a two-for-one deal, otherwise I might have felt mugged-off.

An ancient princess is awakened from her crypt beneath the desert, bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia, and terrors that defy human comprehension.

Fargo Season 3  (2017)

Oops only one episode watched and about 4 behind..WTF! Can't say too much about it, apart from that I'm going to love it. Ewan McGregor stars as twins.

From Wikipedia.....

The third season of Fargo, an American anthology black comedy–crime drama television series created by Noah Hawley, premiered on April 19, 2017, on the basic cable network FX. The season had ten episodes, and its initial airing concluded on June 21, 2017. As an anthology, each Fargo season possesses its own self-contained narrative, following a disparate set of characters in various settings, albeit in a connected shared universe.

The third season is set primarily between December 2010 and March 2011 in three Minnesota towns: St. Cloud, Eden Valley, and Eden Prairie and is the only season not to feature the titular Fargo, North Dakota. It followed the lives of a couple, Ray Stussy (Ewan McGregor) and Nikki Swango (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who, after unsuccessfully trying to rob Ray's brother Emmit (also played by McGregor), become involved in a double murder case, including an old man with a mysterious past whose stepdaughter Gloria Burgle (Carrie Coon) is a policewoman. Meanwhile, Emmit tries to cut his ties with a shady organization he borrowed money from two years prior, but the company, whose employees include V. M. Varga (David Thewlis) and Yuri Gurka (Goran Bogdan), has other plans.