The Inbetweeners USA 1.11 - Spa Time

At the school's car wash, Simon moves in on Carli by stepping up to give her a lift when her boyfriend claims to be too busy and Samantha tells Will she'll sleep with him after he loses his virginity. Then, they go to a spa. Jay spends his time looking for the spa whore for Will, Simon takes Carli home and ruins her surprise party and Will meets another girl who tells him she'll sleep with him if he loses his virginity first. As usual, the other one does nothing of consequence.

Painfully, embarrassingly bad. Whether it's Simon's pathetic fawning over Carli and panicking over whether he's late to pick her up or Will's excruciating demonstration of "clinginess", it's not an enjoyable experience on any level. It's easy to see what they're going for: humiliate the boys and make us laugh at their expenses. Swing and a miss. It's not crude enough to be funny like the original series and it's not clever enough to be funny like The Office. They go for "gross-out" jokes and then bleep every swear word. They go for physical humour and the best they can manage is wrapping up Simon like a tortilla. They try and copy the original series and fuck it up. They try something new and all they can manage is, Neil thinks he's died and gone to heaven. I'm honestly surprised they didn't make any racist jokes when Simon was covered in mud from head to toe. Remove the bikini car wash and this episode would get a zero.

2 out of 10.

The Inbetweeners USA 1.10 - Reading Gives You Wings

Will meets another girl, Samantha (Marie Avgeropoulos), the library is turned into a Red Bull bar and it turns out that Simon's girlfriend likes stealing things. She gets caught stealing and dumps Simon and Will's plan to protest the "library" goes up in smoke when he decides that he likes Samantha more than reading.

How ironic, the library is sponsored by Red Bull and becomes a hollow shell of its former self, stripped of all its contents and replaced by a mockery of what it once was that exists only to peddle fizzy, sugary pigswill. It's a perfect analogy for the way the original series has been treated.

I watch it so you don't have to.

0 out of 10.

The Inbetweeners USA 1.9 - Fire!

For some reason, Will is both blamed for starting a fire and credited with putting it out. Given a week to clear his name or... he'll get a medal, he questions everyone. It's boring. Meanwhile, the lads go to a party. On the way, they pick up Lauren (Avery Camp), Simon's new girlfriend, and the 12-year-old that Jay obsessed over in the last episode. With Simon's parents away for the night, it turns out that the party is at... Simon's house and hosted by Simon's younger brother. Going to a party with a load of twelve-year-olds is as funny as it sounds.

If they were going to make jokes about paedophilia, they could at least have told funny ones. It's the story of the series, nothing they do or say is funny. Why should it change now? Even Hulk Hogan's cameo at the end is lame.

0 out of 10.

The Inbetweeners USA 1.8 - The Field Trip

The remaking of random episodes continues as the first episode of the second series is re-told this week as the lads go to a budget school trip to an American Civil War site. Keeping up the tradition of ruining the supporting characters, there's no Mr. "Paedo" Kennedy. Instead, there's a couple of Southern hicks trying to sell stuff from their gift shop. Will and Simon pursue the same girl, Lauren (Avery Camp) and Neil learns about the Civil War.

Well, this was really, really, really boring. It's strange to say that a twenty-one minute show dragged but this episode really did. Nothing was even mildly amusing. Not Jay's pursuit of a twelve-year-old girl, not Neil learning that Abraham Lincoln died at the end of the Civil War, not Will throwing up on himself in the toilet and emerging naked but for his pants and especially not the boring Civil War re-enactment scenes.

Yawn, yawn, yawn.

0 out of 10.

Looper (2012)

Hype can be a dangerous thing. The posters and trailers for Looper were covered in lashings of quotes about how brilliant it is and studded with stars in clusters of four and five. One critic's hyperbolic review even suggested that it was "the new Matrix". With a build-up like that, how could the film possibly disappoint me!

In hindsight, perhaps it was always going to disappoint me. That's not to say that the film's bad, it's certainly not. It's good. But that's all it is: good.

Joe (Joseph-Gordon-Levitt) is an eponymous Looper: an assassin hired by criminals living in the future to kill people they send back in time and then dispose of their bodies. He lives in Kansas in 2044. They live in 2074 when time travel has been invented and, according to his boss Abe (Jeff Daniels), who has moved permanently from the future to run the looper operation, it is apparently advantageous to know Mandarin. Loopers are paid in silver bars strapped to the people that are sent back in time for them to kill, except for when they are released from their service and gold bars are strapped to their future selves. After killing themselves, they have a few decades to live as they please before their future self is abducted and sent back in time for their past self to kill. Failure to kill your future self is punishable by death and is brutally enforced. Everything's going fine until a mysterious figure in the future called "the Rainman" decides to start having all of the loopers kill themselves off. After Joe fails to kill his future self (Bruce Willis), the two go on the run from Abe's goons whilst trying to solve the mystery of who the Rainmaker is and why he is shutting the looper programme down.

The film, to its credit, doesn't get into complex metaphysical discussions of the inner workings of time travel and give us a conversation we've already seen and had many times before. In a scene in a diner, Future Joe tells Present Joe that it makes his head hurt and the younger man drops the subject. It also presents an interesting argument: that if your future self came back in time and told you to change your actions, you'd probably carry on and do what you thought was right anyway. Still, for pleasing moments like those, there are some very dumb ones as well. Particularly, the fact that in the future time travel has been banned and is operated only by crime lords who use it to dispose of their victims. Joe gives us some reason about people in the future being "chipped" and the film brushes it off, but it's not a satisfying explanation and makes you really wonder what's going on with these gangs that possess incredibly complex and illegal technology like time travel, but haven't mastered the art of surgically removing tracking chips or throwing bodies in the ocean à la Dexter Morgan. Furthermore, requiring loopers to kill themselves presents myriad problems and results in both Joe and a looper friend of his (Paul Dano) failing to kill themselves. The much simpler idea of loopers at the end of their contract receiving a pile of gold bars and their future self being sent to a different looper to be killed apparently went over the heads of the criminals from the future.

After the two Joes meet, the younger man fails to kill himself. They later meet in a diner and Future Joe tells Present Joe that someone called "the Rainmaker" is killing off the loopers and he's going to find out who he is and kill him as a child. After the diner they're meeting at is attacked by Abe's men, Present Joe nearly gets caught and ends up hiding at a farm owned by Sara (Emily Blunt), who lives with her young son, Cid (Pierce Gagnon).

Some parts of the film may feel superfluous but turn out to play a necessary part in the film, namely Joe's stripper friend and lover Suzie (Piper Perabo) and the mutation that affects one tenth of the world's population and gives them the power to make small objects like coins and cigarette lighters levitate. Both of these feel like pointless plot additions when they come up but don't pass them off as such. Instead, there are plenty of other pointless characters - Kid Blue (Noah Segan), an incompetent employee of Abe who more than outstays his welcome and Future Joe's wife (Xu Qing), who serves only to highlight that the film has serious problems with plot holes. Additionally, the main problem is that the film pretty much comes to a grinding halt just over half way through. When Present Joe arrives at Sara's farm, he decides to hide there while Future Joe does his thing and spends most of the rest of the film hiding and talking to Sara and her son and, quite frankly, it's a bit boring.

In contrast with a fantastic first act full of action, great visuals and effective storytelling, the second act sees the film going round in circles, like Present Joe lost in Sara's corn field. It apes The Terminator as Future Joe tries to change the world and Present Joe hides out with a woman and develops feelings for her. If you've seen that film, you should be able to see the "twist" that arrives in this one. When the third act rolls around, director Rian Johnson throws in a couple of shootouts and tries to cobble things together but the damage has already been done. The resolution is different but still feels unsatisfying. I'd like to see if there's an alternate ending provided with the DVD release.

Plot holes, logical inconsistencies and a rambling middle section detract from interesting ideas and good performances. Jeff Bridges in particular is very good and Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a decent Bruce Willis impression. It's just a pity the two share so little screen time after their meeting in the diner.

It's not the new Matrix but it's better than both of that film's sequels put together. An infuriating case of what might have been.

7 out of 10.

The Inbetweeners USA 1.7 - Crystal Springs

So, we're back to shamelessly ripping off original episodes. This time, it's the fifth episode of the first series, when the lads go to a Caravan Club. It's all pretty much the same: Jay lies about pulling loads of girls there and sets Simon up with someone, Will decides to slide across the floor instead of making out with a hot girl and Neil gets with her instead.

Jokes-wise, the "highlights" are Jay and Neil adding "with my dong" to the end of everything and Neil squirting a ketchup bottle as Jay's dad squirts out a runny shit on the toilet while they're eating. Jay's dad still puts down his son but it's not funny. In the original series, we feel for Jay. Yeah, he makes shit up but he doesn't deserve the ribbing his dad gives him. We sympathise with him because he's a character with depth. In the remake, none of it feels genuine: not Jay's dad's teasing, not Jay's reaction, not any of it. Will's turning down of the hot girl in the original series is borne from his nerves about his lack of experience. In this series... who knows? Will's not relatable in any way, he's just a twat in a sweater vest. Think Rick Santorum without the charm and charisma.

When Jay getting hit in the face by a condom is the most original thing all episode, you know things are bad. Although, it did at least draw the first genuine laugh from me. Congrats guys, it's only taken you seven episodes.

2 out of 10.

Hostel: Part III (2011)

Some sequels are what you might call "SINOs" or "Sequels in Name Only". It happens quite frequently in the horror genre - a successful film or series of films have low-budget follow ups with none of the original characters or settings (ie: Halloween III: Season of the Witch) and for the most part are churned out to go straight-to-DVD. That's pretty much the case here with Hostel: Part III, as it was for that other sequel to a successful Eli Roth film, Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever. As with the sequel to Cabin Fever, Roth has no involvement here. Instead, the reins are handed over to Scott Spiegel, who co-produced the first two films. The only thing that makes this film recognisable as a Hostel film is the presence of the "Elite Hunting" club. And even then, the link is pretty tenuous. In the first two films Elite Hunting were based in mysterious Eastern European countries, where no-one notices you go missing and the authorities look the other way. Unsuspecting American tourists are abducted and then sold off to be tortured, eaten, killed and subject to whatever else the customer can think of. The idea plays on that fear of travelling to the unknown, particularly to an area such as the former Soviet Bloc. What made it really scary was just how plausible it was and it was a decent commentary on both the situation in said countries and of the paranoia of tourists. The third film transports the action away from strange foreign lands. In fact, Hostel: Part III is set in... Las Vegas. It's about as far removed from the first two films as you can imagine.

The story centres around four friends: Scott (Brian Hallisay), Carter (Kip Pardue), Justin (John Hensley, a.k.a. Matt from Nip/Tuck) and Mike (Skyler Stone, who looks a lot like Alan Tudyk). The four are on Scott's stag do in Vegas and everything's going fine until Mike disappears. So basically it's Hostel meets The Hangover. After half an hour of the four of them gambling, drinking and travelling to a club in a deserted backwater, Mike is kidnapped. Thank god because he's the annoying one. Well, they're all annoying really but Mike's the really annoying, obnoxious one. Groom-to-be Scott is the bland one, best man Carter is the douchebag and Justin is the "sympathetic" one, although that's played up so much and he's such a buzz kill that he just comes across as patronising. They even give him a walking stick to try and make him even more sympathetic for goodness sake!

Anyway, Mike is kidnapped and taken to a room and strapped to a chair to be played with. Then the film deals its Joker - instead of him being tortured in private, he's put on display and tortured in front of other customers who proceed to bet on things like what weapon the torturer will use and how he will beg for his life. It's an interesting take on things but it doesn't really work. Turning the killing into a spectator sport drains the scenes of any tension. Watching onlookers cheer and enjoy drinks served by scantily-clad (and I mean really scantily-clad) women makes it less like peering through the window as a sadistic killer toys with his victim and more like watching some extreme reality show. Secondly, above all else, the Hostel films are best known for their realistic and extremely bloody torture scenes. Unfortunately, the budget is so low for this film that there's hardly any blood whatsoever. Someone has their face cut off but there's less blood than when Sean and Christian give someone breast implants on Nip/Tuck. Other death scenes include: choking on cockroaches (what is this, I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here?) and being shot with a crossbow. Yeah, seriously. It's as lame as it sounds. Combine these two factors and the end result is that the film sucks. The death scenes aren't gory enough to be enjoyable when an annoying character dies and they're not dramatic enough to make you care when a less annoying character dies.

The stupidest moment comes late on in the film. As one character is about to be tortured, management decides to release the victim from his bonds. This begs the question: just how do the viewing customers feel about this? The member has paid handsomely for the privilege of this person being kidnapped so they can torture and kill them and now, despite their membership and their money (this person is a top-tier customer), the club decides to give their victim a sporting chance. Bizarrely, rather than being worried and disturbed by this, concerned that they too could be betrayed for the pleasure of other watching customers, the live audience laps it up. Had I been there, knowing that the club can turn on its paying members just as quickly as it can unsuspecting members of the public, I'd have made my excuses and left! Seriously, how do they expect to sustain this business model when they quite willingly use their own members for sport?!?

Logical inconsistencies, the lack of tension, annoying characters, silly deaths and the general lack of blood and gore aside, this is really just a low-budget thriller. And not a very good one at that. It's not all bad, though. There are a couple of good moments, including the opening scene and Playboy playmate Cassie Keller, who serves drinks in barely more than two pieces of ribbon, but it's not enough to dredge it out of the stinking swamp of mediocrity. If you're looking for torture porn, you'll be disappointed. If you're wondering what happened to Beth after the events of the previous film, you'll be disappointed. If you're looking for a competent thriller, you'll be disappointed. Honestly, I can't see who this appeals to other than completists who want to see all the Hostel films. Even then, you'll still be disappointed.

Not awful but with nothing to recommend it and nothing outstanding about it, Hostel: Part III is a pretty pointless film.

3 out of 10.

The Inbetweeners USA 1.6 - Class Clown

This week, Will is "tortured" by Donovan. What does he do? He eats Will's hummus. Yeah, it's fucking stupid. When they ruin such a simple idea like that, you know this series has no hope. In the original, Donovan genuinely terrorised Will. In this one, who cares? Simon has Carli over for a sleepover, Jay worries about his chances of being voted class clown and Neil does fuck all (as usual).

It's Jay's storyline that has the potential for laughs this week but once again it passes them up entirely. When Jay decides to give up trying to be voted class clown, he decides to go for class badass instead. What does he do? He decides to ride a motorcycle across campus. Yes, this is the point where they decide to copy the infamous "Jay rides a motorcycle" scene. One of the best moments from all three series, they surely can't fuck this one up like they fucked "bus wankers" up, can they? Yes, they can. In the original series, it's brilliant. Cocky Jay brags about his skills and is brought down to Earth with a wobble and a pathetic crash. It's so funny I had tears streaming down my face and my sides hurt from laughing so much. The remake has a weird moment with his dad beforehand and then has a voiceover on top of it. To top it all off, the punch line is ruined by bad editing, cutting away to a crowd of onlookers. Their awkward fake laughter only ruins it further.

A hideously bad episode that completely ruined one of the ten best moments from the original series.

0 out of 10.

The Inbetweeners USA 1.5 - The Masters

This episode is sort of based on the fourth episode of the first series of the original series, where Charlotte humiliates Will at the charity Blind Date. The US version is slightly different, with people bidding for "slaves" who must work for them for a day. Will's plan to buy Charlotte goes wrong when they decide to bid on a guy first to make it less obvious that Will is just interested in Charlotte. Unfortunately, Will places the only bid on a black student. If that wasn't bad enough, they then take him to the country club that Simon's father is a member of. The attempts at "not racist" humour completely fails. Oh look, there's a black man at the country club, let's dress him up just like the staff who work there! Hahaha! I said last week that the series plays like it was written by Mitt Romney and that only rings more true this week. Imagine if Mitt Romney had written jokes about a black guy coming to his country club. That's this episode, only even more boring.

Other attempts at humour involve watching Jay get his penis stuck in the nozzle of a Jacuzzi, Neil drinking lots of cocktails and Simon's dad being very angry when he plays golf. Hilarious.

When it's not offensive or boring, it's just pointless.

0 out of 10.

Weeds 8.12 & 8.13 - My Time

After seven years and eight series, Weeds is finally ending. They've teased us for a while now, but this really is the end. Will it go out with a bang or a whimper? Only one way to find out.

In Connecticut, at a PTA meeting, Nancy is arguing against mandatory helmets for kids playing football ("soccer"). The series has jumped forwards an unspecified number of years, around eight, and Nancy is a widower. Again. She married Rabbi Dave but he died when he went over a cliff in his car whilst swerving to avoid a bear. How ironic. Nancy loses the vote and breaks the bad news to Stevie (Mateus Ward), who loves football but hates the idea of playing in a helmet and wants to move to a boarding school in Minnesota. She refuses to talk about it before his upcoming bar mitzvah.

Silas and Megan (Shoshannah Stern) are married with a daughter and living in Florida. They've come up for Stevie's bar mitzvah but Megan still doesn't like Nancy. Silas tells her to try to get along with his mother for the sake of Stevie. Back in California, Nancy is in one of her successful weed cafes, meeting with her business manager, Tim Scottson (Daryl Sabara). Yes, really. She wants to know if Andy is coming to the bar mitzvah but Tim doesn't know. He leaves and she gets a visit from Crick Montgomery (Patch Darragh), which sets up some exposition revealing that in most states, weed is legal. Oh, and she's had an offer for her business from Starbucks. Everyone else is on board but she owns 51% and refuses to sell.

Shane, his girlfriend Tiffany (Natasha Lyonne), Mitch (Michael Harney) and Mitch's girlfriend Beatrice (Nancy Youngblut) arrive at Nancy's house to find Silas and Megan but no Nancy. As expected, Shane's life has gone down the toilet and he's basically a younger version of Mitch - a crooked cop with a drinking problem.

Nancy picks up her dry cleaning and Stevie worries that no-one will come to his bar mitzvah. One person who has come is Doug. Along with several concubines and a massive bus with his face on the side. Looks like his cult idea worked out well for him. And for Nancy too, his followers work at her cafes for minimum wage. Nancy comes back and has an awkward moment with Megan. She tells Nancy to go away while she's trying to breast feed and then ignores her as Nancy says that she doesn't know what she did to annoy her.

At the pre-bar mitzvah party that evening, we meet a load of old characters. Sanjay Patel (Maulik Pancholy) is married to Clinique (Julanne Chidi Hill) and has kids. He's still gay though, as he tells Marvin (Fatso-Fasano). Jill's living in India and Dean (Andy Miller) reveals that Isabelle has had a sex change. Nancy worries that Andy will be a no-show and shoots down Dean. Again. Guillermo (Guillermo Diaz) tells Doug that he has ten kids, calling them his "legacy" and Doug feels guilty for neglecting his gay son, Josh (Justin Chatwin). Josh is now a lawyer, married to a painter and living in Brooklyn. What does Doug do? He has his followers kidnap him. Then, Guillermo talks to Stevie. Turns out Stevie thinks his dad was a politician who was framed by the cartels so Guillermo sets him straight. This is only going to end well...

Doug has his son brought to his bus, where he tells him "still gay, still hate you". Doug tells him he wants to re-connect but Josh isn't interested and leaves. He catches up with Nancy whilst he's waiting for a taxi and she asks him how he turned out so well. He credits luck, therapy and his mom. With still no sign of Andy, Nancy wakes Silas up and quizzes him. Turns out they don't speak much recently but Silas knows he owns a restaurant in Ren Mar. Lenny died so he named his daughter Leni. Nancy had no idea about any of it but Silas tells her that he's happy and she accepts that he's not coming.

The next morning, Nancy goes downstairs to find Andy in the kitchen but he sends her to get goats milk for Megan. At the bar mitzvah, Stevie throws away his speech and tells everyone about his father, that he's not Jewish and that he doesn't care, promising to tell them "where I land" on whether he's even religious. He calls his bar mitzvah a load of shit and says that he doesn't know who he is and wants to go to boarding school. Back at home, Nancy talks to him about his dad and tells him that he can go to boarding school.

Shane's hungover but Nancy drags him out of bed to go and pick up Stevie's cake. At the bakery, she tells him that she wants to get him some help because he's not doing well. He says he's doing fine, then proceeds to shoot the cake when the woman behind the counter tells them they'll have to pay extra to have a message written on it.

Doug, moved by the party, has his followers kidnap Josh again. Nancy tells Shane that she's worried about him and he promises to get some help. She suggests they find him a place in Pittsburgh and he smiles. Back on his bus, Doug confesses to giving a guy a blowjob and tells his son that he messed up. Megan still hates Nancy and she has no idea why. Silas tells her that she wasn't a perfect mother but he doesn't resent her and he never wonders what might have been because his wife, his daughter and his life, doing what he loves, makes him feel lucky. Doug and Josh come out of his bus and hug. Josh calls his husband and tells him they've made up. "Holy shit", he replies.

Back inside, Nancy runs into Andy and starts crying. He sits her down and they talk. She tells him to come back and even offers him 50% of the company. He says that he doesn't need the money so she tells him to use it to start a new restaurant in town, but Andy says no. "I have a life I like and I'm not leaving it", he says. She offers to move in with him but he tells her to stop. Her husband's dead (again) and her kids are all gone but he tells her she'll be fine. "You did your job. Now it's done. No-one there to answer to. No-one to hold you back from becoming the person you always want to be, doing only what you want to." He tells her that he's grateful she let him in and he'll always love her but he can't be around her. He tells her she'll be fine, kisses her and leaves. Nancy calls Crick and tells him to sell the business. "And then there were none", she says. The party is ending and a montage of Stevie's life is playing on a projector. He thanks everyone and tells his mom that he loves her.

It's gently snowing and Nancy is sat outside, alone, on the steps. Doug comes out and sits with her. Silas, Shane and Andy join them and they sit in silence, passing round a joint and smiling.

Not the ending we quite deserved but better than the rest of the series suggested it would be. Things between Nancy and Andy wrap up quite nicely but she doesn't learn anything or achieve redemption for her past discretions. At the start of the series, she said she wanted to make up for the bad things she's done but that idea just petered out as the series meandered along. She did a good job raising Stevie but the jump forward meant we never got to see or appreciate that. Silas had a decent (if predictable) conclusion to his story but Shane's was a bit of a let-down. The idea of him becoming a crooked cop had legs but it was never really used to its full potential. Again, I blame a series' worth of pointless storylines in Connecticut. Aside from Andy, Doug was probably the only main character to have a satisfying conclusion: the guru of his own cult. Brilliant!

Then there were the past characters who made come backs. It was nice to see Dean again but I was disappointed that Celia didn't show up, even for a brief cameo. She was in the series for five years for goodness sake so even if Elizabeth Perkins was unavailable, they could have made a throwaway comment about what she was up to. They brought back Sanjay and Marvin but not her?!? Madness.

There were some good moments in this episode and viewed by itself, it's pretty good but when you consider that it's the last ever episode of Weeds, it feels a bit disappointing. Most of this series has been pointless and the last three episodes have tried to rectify this by rushing to wrap everything up. The result is that it's too hurried and feels slapdash. Still, it's better than most of what we've been offered this season.

7 out of 10.