TV

Pitch Battle
1x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Big (1988)
[#91 in 100 Films in a Year 2017]

this week on 100 Films

July has reached us this weekend, so it was time for 100 Films in a Year to look back at June...





There were also 3 brand-new reviews published this week...


Baby Driver (2017)

the main thing the film has attracted attention for is the driving. Done for real by stunt drivers with not a lick of CGI, that knowledge means it packs a viscerally real punch. But it’s not just snobbery: this is genuinely breathtaking action, slickly planned, masterfully performed, magnificently shot and edited. It’s this year’s Fury Road — a kinetic action spectacle made with skill rather than hand-waiving fast-cuts.

Read more here.


Dragon (Wu Xia) (2011)

when the action does kick in, it’s fantastic. With the combat directed by star Donnie Yen, these sequences are expertly and inventively choreographed dust-ups. It’s stylishly directed by Peter Chan — classy, but also thrilling, exciting, and sometimes innovative; and the whole is majestically shot by DP Lai Yiu-Fai

Read more here.


Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

When J.K. Rowling wrote the seven-book Harry Potter series, she didn’t just make it all up as she went along — it was well planned in advance. And she didn’t just envisage a seven-book story, either — she built a whole world, including a massive history that is only fleetingly referred to in Potter itself. It’s part of that history that the five-film Fantastic Beasts series is setting out to explore. (Despite sharing a title with a short tie-in book Rowling once wrote, Fantastic Beasts isn’t somehow an adaptation of that tiny tome, despite what some pithily moronic internet commenters who think they’re funny would believe.)

Read more here.


More next Sunday.