Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/275734
MARCH 12-18, 2014 UCW 17 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Pompeii (105 minutes) is an absolutely forgettable historical romance, in which Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) from Game of Thrones flashes his abs in an attempt to distract the audience from how thoroughly pointless the story is. Also, Jack Bauer from 24 is there and he is mean and wasn't actually paid enough to act, so instead he sneers constantly. And then that leather wearing chick from Matrix (Carrie-Anne Moss) is there, too, and it's just confusing, because she doesn't even do that much. You know who else shows up? Adebisi from HBO's prison soap opera Oz, as a gladiator who is only one day from retirement! The film opens with some quotes from Pliny the Younger — the writer who witnessed the eruption of Vesuvius from across the bay and set down a detailed account of the disaster. These accounts are interspersed with close-up shots of ash-entombed bodies. Then, the narrative jumps a bit to tell the story of a tribe of Celts who were wiped out by Romans led by Big Shot Corvus (Keifer Sutherland). The only survivor, a boy named Milo, is enslaved and grows up to be Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, playing a gladiator named "the Celt." Like how Russell Crow's character in Gladiator was just named "the Spaniard." The Celt looks so good modeling this summer's new fall line of gladiator leather, he is brought to Pompeii. On his way he meets Cassia (Emily Browning) and her servant Ariadne (Jessica Lucas). He promptly mercy kills her horse, so she falls in love with him and his big brown eyes. Cassia is the daughter of a local VIP, Severus (Jared Harris), arriving home just in time for one of those Roman orgies that were so popular at the time. It's a pretty boring orgy, even when Milo and Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) are brought in to serve as male prostitutes. Of course, the male prostitution part is implied by all the money changing hands and under the camera groping, in the name of preserving the family friendly rating. Because when you look for a family friendly film, you look for a film that focuses on half-naked leather-draped gladiators being slaughtered by half-naked Roman soldiers and masses of people dying a fiery death. At the party, Corvus looks around for Cassia. It turns out that Corvus wanted to go steady with her but she didn't like his brush cut or his date-rapist tendencies, so he followed her home to Pompeii. This makes for some awkward conversation. She wanders off to get some of the slaves into trouble by behaving as if they won't be blamed for stuff she does, and then runs into Milo. Milo did such a good job of mercy killing her horse on the road she orders him to help out in the stables, where the horses are all freaking out because of how a volcano is going to erupt and kill everyone. Naturally, he loves it when over-privileged Romans provide him with an opportunity to escape slavery and immediately rides the horse to sweet freedom, taking Cassia along for some reason. When several regiments of Roman soldiers follow them (duh), Milo immediately turns himself in and takes a beating for true love. Because based on about ten minutes total contact, he is in love with Cassia and willing to return to slavery. The next day, during the gladiator fight, the volcano erupts. Overall, the biggest challenge the movie faced was how to make one of the most devastating natural disasters ever, which historical accounts depict as a an utter catastrophe that involved people's brains boiling in their skulls, boring enough to make anybody in the audience care about the B plot, i.e. the romance between the lead actors. In my opinion they did a pretty good job of that. I spent the entire movie waiting for the volcano to erupt. When the pyroclastic cloud finally rained hot death on the populace the filmmakers chose to focus more on collapsing buildings — probably to keep their PG-13 rating. Spoiler Alert: Vesuvius Erupts at End Pompeii (Rated PG-13) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upand- comingweekly.com. The Apocalypse, with Acne In Crisis, criminal masterminds use teenagers to take over the world TV by DEAN ROBBINS An icy CEO (Gillian Anderson), a troubled ex-CIA analyst (Dermot Mulroney) and other D.C. parents drop off their kids at an elite high school for a field trip. Before long, the bus is ambushed by criminal masterminds who blackmail the well-connected parents to do their bidding. This could mean the end of the world as we know it, but there's an even more pressing problem: How will the cool girl (Halston Sage), the disaffected girl (Stevie Lynn Jones) and the nerdy boy (Joshua Erenberg) get along in captivity? The gripping new series Crisis (Sunday, 10 p.m., NBC) skillfully manages its many cast members, giving each one a touch of characterization. The actors make you feel what's at stake, whether family ties or personal redemption. The pilot features stratagems, fights to the death, kindness, cruelty and head-spinning twists. By the end of the hour I was a nervous wreck, wondering what I'd do if I were a hostage or a parent. In the midst of the ambush, a brave Secret Service agent (Lance Gross) yells at one of the blubbering kids: "You have to stop crying!" He couldn't stop. And I wasn't doing so well myself. The Americans Wednesday, 10 pm (FX) Homeland wins all the awards, but The Americans is the superior spy series. Season two has brought more complications for the two KGB agents posing as an American couple during the Reagan '80s. I say "posing," but Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth (Keri Russell) have been together since the 1960s and are raising their two children. If that's not a real marriage, what is? True, most parents don't sneak away from the house in disguise to undermine the U.S. military. On the other hand, many do keep secrets from their kids and struggle to relate to one another. Though The Americans deals with Cold War spying, its subtext – family dysfunction – is eternal. Season two continues to blur the line between the good guys and the bad guys. Elizabeth is not your standard KGB villain, but an idealist who sees the evils of U.S. imperialism. Then again, the fact that she's now the mother of two sweet American children can't help affecting her feelings about murder and sabotage for Mother Russia. Forget Homeland's overheated Claire Danes. Russell creates a character who's believably menacing one minute, believably maternal the next. This season, daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) gets suspicious about her parents and – a chip off the old block – begins snooping around to find answers. That leads to a darkly comic moment when Philip catches her in the act and lays down the law: "Lying will not be tolerated!" Parental hypocrisy is rarely so multilayered. Saint George Thursday, 9 pm (FX) Most sitcoms try to be hip and youthful. By contrast, George Lopez's new series is content to be a moldy oldie. With Lopez starring as George Lopez, a recent divorcé on the make, it's packed with cornball punch lines only a laugh track could love. The lowest-common-denominator humor takes aim at Mexicans, ugly women and the elderly, emphasizing insults. "You're fat, boring and stupid!" George's mother yells at him. The best I can say is that Lopez doesn't really look fat.