Out to Own Today: Man Up, Spooks: The Greater Good and Results

Out to own today:

Man Up

“Everyone knew they were doing it,” Jack (Simon Pegg) to Nancy (Lake Bell)
 
The romantic-comedy. Is there a more creatively bankrupt genre? (Horror is obviously hot on its heels in terms of the ratio between quality and volume.) Actor Simon Pegg needs to stop doing these. After RUN, FATBOY RUN and HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE, his latest is a third strike. Selling the fallacy of partner perfection and relationship plain sailing, after initial trial by fire of finding one another, is an arguable sad contributor to modern Western loneliness – even with an other half. If you look across the room at your chosen one, and they appear lacking compared to the unbelievable fantasy continually projected on our screens, some malaise must set in, surely? MAN UP is guilty of ironing out the complexities of psychological coupling, presenting a tedious, derivative vision of strangers connecting.
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Spooks: The Greater Good

“It comes down to who can tell the best lie longest,” Harry Pearce (Peter Firth)

2015 is the year of the espionage movie. We’ve already had the ridiculously fun KINGSMAN, and upcoming we have behemoths SPECTRE and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION. Alongside those, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.LE. and comedy SPY join the resurgence in the genre. Brit TV show, ‘Spooks’, gets the big screen treatment to dire, budget effect. Every scene reeks of money running out. Po-faced acting and leaden dialogue make a would-be thriller a chore.
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Results

​“You’re not old, you’re just lazy,” Kat (Cobie Smulders) to Danny (Kevin Corrigan)
 
Is it all the testosterone making these personal trainers so aggro? An underserved profession covered by the movies (as opposed to cops, lawyers, doctors, etc) mean the microscope held over the world of fitness is automatically refreshing. Hopes, malaise and insecurities, if done well, are tailored to the chosen microcosm. DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY was too exaggerated to really glean insight (though that didn’t stop it from being hilariously over the top). Here, RESULTS is a more measured take.
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