Movie Review: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

We suddenly seem to be on a run of actually getting out to see movies. OK, so we've usually got at least one child in tow, but with Robert now old enough, and interested enough, to go to the cinema, and Ewan reasonably keen on the idea too, it feels like we've turned a bit of a corner. No longer is a relatively rare, logisitically fraud special occasion, although I would perhaps like to see something with a more adult rating at the cinema more than once a year. Yes, I know I went to see Mad Max Fury Road twice, but shush, OK? So with a couple of days off for just me and Ewan last week we took the opportunity to catch up on our blockbuster watching, this time with Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. 

TV Review: True Detective, Season 2

We seem to live in an era where the snap judgements required of weekly recaps, social media watching and the massive competition for pageviews mean that we are quickly developing a binary view of entertainment. This seemed especially true of Game of Thrones this year, which seemed to swing from hailed as better then ever, to condemned as a spent and hateful waste, pretty much on a scene-to-scene basis. We can add to this the second season of True Detective, which has been loudly pilloried by much of the critical set, even as they hail its first season as even better in retrospect, apparently, than anyone said at the time. So to recap, last year True Detective was a flawless (nope) masterpiece with an host of perfectly drawn characters (also nope, especially outside of the main pair) that was the best show of the year, and maybe ever (still nope). It was excellent, but it certainly wasn't flawless, but season two shows different and now ones, without always carrying forward the strengths, which may be root of the storm that broke over it.