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At cinemas: Magic midriff, mediocre middle (beginning and end)
Mark Walker
July 2nd, 2015
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This article is more than 8 years old.
From the original, sequel? Not sure the ladies care
While this page is dedicated to cinema, what’s really on my mind this week is drama’s relatively new frontier: television.
While the studios play it safe with colourful caped characters battling it out across the summer screen, something infinitely darker and more interesting is unfolding on your goggle box at home.
True Detective is back and I’m respectfully waiting for people to quit their whinging about the absence of Matthew McConaughhey and Woody Harrelson (whose buddy chemistry was admittedly transcendent in season one) in this new iteration.
This second season is a fresh story, with new characters in a different locale, but that same brooding, Lynchian tone is fully intact.
Two episodes in and I’m hooked. The third arrives on HBO Nordic on Monday and is directed by Janus Metz Pederson, the Dane behind the acclaimed documentary Armadillo.
Provoking similar cries of dissent over a lack of McConaughey is this week’s cinema release Magic Mike XXL.
A sequel to 2011’s Magic Mike, the film continues to chronicle the adventures of Mike, a male stripper (Channing Tatum), who after leaving the profession at the top of his game, has agreed to return with his troupe (sans McConaughey) to Myrtle Beach for one last explosive gig.
Produced by the lead actor, the narrative is notably based on his own experiences as a stripper in his late teens. Reviews have been middling …
For the more family-minded, there’s the ubiquitous, goggled yellow sidekicks from the Despicable Me films, who now have their own adventure: Minions.
As their sole purpose in life is to serve an evil overlord, they now find themselves at a loose end without one.
Note that the majority of screenings will be in dubbed in Danish, although CinemaxX and all Nordisk Film theatres will be showing additional screenings in the original English without subtitles.
Also still showing are two films which, despite their rural Welsh settings, couldn’t be more different: the warm and fuzzy Brit-flick Pride and the significantly more sombre UK/DK co-production Bridgend, which is reviewed this issue.
Be warned – neither features Matthew McConaughey.
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