This week's episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine saw it carry on it's recent trend of focusing on the characters' personal lives rather than cops chasing criminals. However, 'Fancy Brugdom' (based on the name of a Danish magazine but remember the game 'Bugdom'? Ah, memories) faired a great deal better than last week's 'Tactical Village'.

Due to Charles' wedding fast approaching (it's totally the season finale, isn't it?), Charles' and his new best man Jake go shopping for the wedding. Jake learns, while tasting cake, that Charles is planning to retire and move to Canada with Vivian. Charles quickly learns after that this is not something he wants to do. The rest of the episode features Jake helping Charles muster up the courage to tell Vivian that he doesn't want to go.

Charles' has a much funnier rapport with Jake than the rest of the cast. His tendency to say embarrassing mixes well with Jake, a straightman who's also sort of a smartarse. For example, Charles talking about his sex life would simply not have been funny without Peralta's repeat attempts to change the topic. “I don't wanna pry.” Charles asking Jake to be his best man by putting a bow-tie in his drink was adorable and hilarious and Jake telling the paper saleswoman that Amy (who wasn't even in the scene) would pay for the paper was a hilarious extension on the Jake-blames-Amy running joke.

Rosa was surprisingly enjoyable this episode. Her storyline involved Captain Holt wanting her to write an apology to an officer after mocking him for bagging evidence “like a five year old” on her crime scene. Her mocking of Officer Deepmore by treating him like a child was much funnier than her usual “I'm going to hurt you” shtick. The final scene where Diaz apologises for an off-camera drawing she did of Deepmore is made fantastic by the contrast of Deepmore's shock and Rosa's nonchalance. Diaz and Holt were an enjoyable new pairing. Their very serious demeanours played off very well of each other and Rosa's behaviour set Andre Braugher up for some killer one liners that you never see coming due to his monotonous voice.

With Jake and Holt absent, the C story line was left with two often funny secondary characters (Terry and Amy) and Gina (fuckin' Gina). The story focuses on an extreme diet the three characters are on and their struggle to stay on it. The funniest part is in the cold open with Terry cheerfully saying “Hey, guys! Pro tip: Lick The Baggie. There's food molecules in there!” before the three characters grotesquely licking the inside of the sandwich bags. The storyline is mediocre but has it's moments. The scene near the end where Terry soils himself after trying to lift a car is the most childish thing I've laughed at for a while and inspired a brilliant line from Gina. “Go back in.” Terry says lifting a car though a very audible bowel movement. “Are you talking to us or the fart?” (Good work, Gina. Maybe I was wrong about you.) Unfortunately, the episode does feature Amy making up for Rosa by trying the “I'm going to hurt you” shtick for herself.

Overall, 'Fancy Brugdom' was a very fun episode. There wasn't a lot of the Jake and Amy romance as recent weeks but with the finale coming up, I'm sure we'll have plenty of that in the next few episodes. As usual, the shows best storylines featured Peralta and Holt, however, it was nice to see Rosa and Charles get some of the episodes larger laughs.

X-Men: First Class rebooted the mega-superhero franchise three years ago by moulding its own intricate storylines around real-life, historic events. X-Men: Days of Future Past on the other hand decides it’s spent enough time playing slave to our timeline, and secures the future of Professor X’s team, and his franchise, by kicking out the action to a couple different time zones.

Whereas First Class tied its personal battle between Michael Fassbender’s Magneto and James McAvoy’s Charles Xavier into the Cuban Missle Crisis, Days of Future Past ties its key plotline around the overwhelming presence of mutant-murdering Sentinel robots in an apocalyptic future. A bit different then.

It also uses this future to bridge the gap between the two timelines in which X-Men is now set, taking the casts from past and present and mashing them into one big team.

It pans out well, and Bryan Singer looks back to his X-Men 2 best in the director’s seat of this action-packed effort. The post-apocalyptic world where mutants and humans alike are on the down sees Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart return alongside some impressive newbies, the most exciting of which is Fan Bingbing’s Blink – a character who sets about defending earth by playing Portal in real life. While McKellan doesn’t get as much screen time as he could have done with, Stewart does get the chance to provide some great speeches and face off against former self McAvoy in a scene handled with aplomb.

The Sentinels which lie at the core of the future’s problems are appropriately simple, badass, and hard to evade, and the horrible stormy weather conditions – why can the apocalypse never happen on a sunny day? – are still sculpted well enough to avoid total cliché.

Of course though, the bulk of the movie takes place in the 1970s, where Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is sent back to right some past wrongs and subsequently stop the Sentinels in the future. Jackman’s return as the hard-knuckled Logan feels a little fresher this time around too, despite the audience overdose received from his spin-offs – his jokes work well, he doesn’t overdo the stage presence and despite his claws being bone rather than metal, he handles his fight scenes like an absolute badass.

Needless to say, McAvoy and Fassbender are both impeccable as the arch-rivals gunning for similar targets with vastly different tactics. McAvoy plays the Professor who has abandoned his ethical aims in search of a bowl of ice cream and a James Blunt album – he’ll be waiting a while if he’s in the 70s – but Fassbender steals the show as the villainous vigilante self-assigned to save the mutant race at any cost. Whereas in First Class he finds himself in the middle of history in Cuba, this time around Magneto decides to write history himself by closing in the White House with the shell of a baseball stadium. Just your average day at the office then.

The appearance of Evan Peters’ Quicksilver to break Fassbender out of his maximum security prison – where the prison is and what he’s in for add a nice extra quirk– is definitely another highlight. Peters’ super speedy character looks like your usual brat-come-good character when we first meet, but his comedic value is so much more. A slow-motion scene where he takes down four shooting officers and has extra time to mess around is undoubtedly one of the kickers in the film.

A special mention must also go to Jennifer Lawrence. The actress gets increased stage time as Raven-turned-Mystique, and the confusion, anger and sorrow of the character are portrayed well in her acting. Although I may be a bit bias, because I am kind of in love with her. (Please call me if you read this).

On the down side, Peter Dinklage, while increasingly sinister as Sentinel creator Tyrion Lannister, err, I mean Dr. Bolivar Trask, isn’t quite given the back story or justification the audience need for his hatred of mutants. Likewise, alongside the likes of McKellen, the future X-Men aren’t given enough screen time individually. The reason Blink stands out is because she’s an awesome fighter, and that’s pretty much all that cast get to do. Even Halle Berry’s Storm barely gets a line.

All in all though, the time travel is handled well, the deadlines imposed nicely, the acting is magnificent and the story grips you to your seat.

Verdict: On the back of a disappointing run out with The Amazing Spiderman 2, it’s nice to see Singer stepping up to the plate, hitting a home run here and showing how superhero films should be handled. New, exciting, action-packed and clever. A real winner.

Note: After the end-credits, mega mutant Apocalypse makes an appearance, so you’re going to want to stay around for that. But it’s a Marvel film, so you should already know this.

                                                                                                                                  Stuart Kenny

The latest take on Godzilla is a tough nut to crack. The concept of a giant monster tearing up Tokyo is one that lends itself rather manifestly to the B Movie action template, but director Gareth Edwards and writers Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham don’t seem quite content to be trapped within these walls.

Rather, they launch a film that starts with science – intelligent, gripping science – and form the basis of an intellectual viewing that can also boast a strong emotional narrative on the side. This plotline comes in the form of the on-the-mend relationship of Bryan Cranston’s Joe Brody and his son Ford, a father and son who are reunited to investigate strange occurrences in Japan some 15 years after the death of Joe’s wife and Ford’s mother in similarly suspicious circumstances. Cranston performs well as the father who has lost his way, while Aaron Taylor-Johnson shows promise and sincerity as the loving son insistent on building a happy family life for himself, his wife and his still-young son.

Early earthquakes and journeys into the depth of radiated territory give rise to suspense and allow the man pointing the camera to flex his big ass FX budget even before the monsters show. For a while, early on in the film, the efforts of the production team to take this blatant B Movie subject matter into the A leagues seems to have worked out surprisingly well. The only problem is that at some point in a film about giant fighting monsters, you’ve got to have giant monsters fighting – and when Godzilla and the M.U.T.Os (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms) begin to face off, all the serious tone of the film completely falls out the frame.

This can basically be seen as a movie of two very different halves. To start with, you’ve got your early plotline and tension building scenes set across America and Japan which are acted out wonderfully, crammed full of enough emotion to glue you to your seat and boast enough dramatic scenery and CGI to impress the best of us. Next, you’ve got your mucho monsters destroying landmarks around the planet while the previous plotlines effectively deteriorate as a bunch of irrelevant characters, including Ford Brody, now fighting with the US Army, fail to make any impact on the war taking place.

Seriously, as soon as those monsters get fighting, the characters may as well just set off. Ken Watanabe is the thoughtful Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, a scientist charged with helping David Strathairn’s template Admiral William Stenz with stopping the beasts destroying the planet. Only problem is, Serizawa very rarely actually offers any scientific input, instead sticking to a more philosophical approach, only ever providing long-winded answers to questions that nobody ever actually asked. Watanabe’s character does provide the signature moment of the film with his dramatic denunciation that the beast is named ‘Godzilla’ though, so we’ve got to give him credit for that. Some quotable shit right there.

Anyway, the visual FXs are impressive, but not to the point where it shocks. Godzilla is effectively a giant scabby dinosaur on steroids, and he appears as such, and the M.U.T.O.S he fights are overgrown bats that are indeed presented well but are hardly an innovation. The big set battles are fun and provide the set pieces that the audience look for in such a film, but after such a strong narrative build up, the remaining storyline descends into army-driven repetition and weakly presented plotlines as the film peters out.

Ultimately, after such good work from Cranston and indeed Gareth Edwards to create an intelligent foundation for the film, the inevitable and necessary scrapping of two overgrown play toys retracts the good work of the script and removes any decent plotline. Perhaps all the early stuff was just out of place intellect, and the film should’ve stuck to the B Movie script throughout – either that or stuck out the clever plotlines better. Either way, the resulting film is a fun watch, but not much more.

Verdict: The big money FX shots and the big set battles are there, but despite a build up which promises much more than just another battling B Movie, that’s exactly what this film inevitably ends up being.

                                                                                                                                  Stuart Kenny

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a fun show but it's quite never lived up to creators and executive producers Dan Goor and Michael Schur's other effort, Parks and Recreation. While Andy Samberg's childish yet competent Detective Jake Peralta is one of the better comedic performances on TV just now (evidenced by Samberg's Golden Globe win), other characters do not seem as fleshed out.

With the series nearing its end, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is starting to build up drama for its finale. For example, Boyle is getting married while Peralta and Santiago are hinting heavily at the old classic will-they-won't-they romance.

Unlike most of ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s episodes. ‘Tactical Village’ did not focus on any police cases and instead saw the detectives go to Tactical Village Training Day with the day concluding with a police simulation using paintball guns. The interesting twists and turns that come with each case the Nine-Nine solve were instead substituted for cliché end-of-season plotlines.

Tactical Village introduce that oh so familiar ingredient to Jake and Amy’s unrequited love trope, an another man. Teddy, an officer from Queens also attends Tactical Village Training Day with his unit and spends the majority of the episode flirting with Amy, with whom he used to date. Seeing Amy get along with another guy helps Jake realise his true feelings for her. Jake ends the episode by asking Amy if he can ask her something. Predictably, this does not get asked as Amy tells him that she is going on a date with Teddy (who will probably stick around till the finale).

The B storyline is no less predictable. Back at the station, Captain Holt gets addicted to mobile phone game named ‘Kwazy Cupcakes’. Once Gina showed Holt the game, the entire storyline could be guessed.

What makes up for the lack of interesting plot, is the witty dialogue and great comedic performances. Jake’s jealousy of Teddy inspired the episodes best one-lines such as “I thought he was talking to me... and he clearly was.” after Teddy invited Amy to look at the new handguns with him and a childish 69 joke (as opposed to a non-childish 69 joke) ending with Peralta simply saying 69 to make sure his audience got it. Likewise, Andre Braugher’s reactions to getting caught playing the mobile game along with a particularly funny scene where he plays ‘Kwazy Cupcakes’ with bald members of a police line-up elevate his storyline.

While Rosa and Charles’ relationship, has never been as charming as Jake and Amy’s, their storyline was marginally the most imaginative this week. ‘Tactical Village’ saw Charles distribute STDs (Save The Dates) to everyone in the office bar Rosa. By the end of the episode, Charles invited Rosa and told her that not inviting Rosa was Vivian’s idea due to the detectives’ history, only for her to find out that Charles hadn’t even told Vivian that he used to be in love with her. Although Boyle and Diaz are the two most underwritten characters of the show (she’s angry, he’s naïve), it will be intriguing to see whether or not Charles will go through with the wedding (which will surely be the season finale).

As well as an interesting case, the episode also underutilised Terry Crews who only popped into Rosa and Boyle’s storyline. He did, however, have one of the episode's best non-Peralta exchanges:
“Scully, just stand next to me and say 'yes, Serge'.”
“Okay, Serge.”
“Come on, man.”

This episode perfectly demonstrated Brooklyn Nine-Nine's status in the modern American comedy pantheon. While it does provide enjoyable viewing, it is yet to provide the laughs and character empathy other sitcoms, such as New Girl, Modern Family and the aforementioned Parks and Recreation do. The difference in quality between the Peralta story line and the two non-Peralta storyline also demonstrates Brooklyn Nine-Nine's imbalance in characters.

The place of the spoiler has taken on an emphatic yet relatively recent infamy in modern culture that has changed the way we digest film and television.

The rise of spoof and parody films demonstrate how distinct a template the majority of the genres in the medium are now run by, whether it be the Western's lassoing of the runaway bad guy or horror's scary murderer turning out to be the seemingly friendly neighbour all along.

It’s this kind of genre convention that has lead to the rise of our hatred for spoilers and those who carry them. We all know these templates and what we expect to see in a certain genre, and because of this, the biggest thrills available come not just when a scriptwriter disobeys the rulebook, but when he rams a couple of rulebooks together, chucks out the bits he doesn't like and is left with a mongrel the world has never seen before but is dying to meet.

We're not talking about the villain not being the guy you first expected here. We're talking about a film or a series being flipped on its head, ala The Red Wedding in Game of Thrones or the dramatic ending to Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige.  

Before the Naughties, the world of film and television had still been growing, still shifting through a pile of untouched material, but the sequalitis now engrossing Hollywood shows us that the days of original content are coming to a close. Look at recent popular television programming: The BBC’s The Musketeers and Atlantis, Game of Thrones, House of Cards. There is an array of adaptations on offer – not that they are all bad – that have become the favourite shows of the nation.

The big thrill of film from previous generations came in the originality of the story; Ridley Scott’s Alien, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective. Now there have been more sci-fi monster and gangster movies than you can shake a stick at, and the demise of the writer in favour of commercial success – another article for another time – has ensured that the likes of The Singing Detective are no longer commissioned. Where they once were aired, adaptations now live. Whereas they once thrilled through escapism and discovery, modern work is now only able to truly engross the viewer through radical plot twists. 

What this all means is that when something original comes along, a truly innovative and brilliant piece of scriptwriting that shocks the audience, those who are watching it receive a wonderful euphoria where they experience something very rare – a moment of media that is an utterly erratic surprise. It is this kind of shock that has seen the rise of unpredictable programming to award status, the likes of Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones; programmes which install through their plotlines the same sort of wonder that was previously achieved through grandeur and fantasy before these two factors became taken for granted by the viewer.

These are the twists that fans pine for, that they’ll use torrents to get a hold of and sneak into cinemas to see, and if the people are denied their chance to experience these twists first hand, they turn into a right old bloodthirsty mob. 

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