Ulrich Thomsen

Oscar-winning Danish director Susanne Bier’s latest film is an emotionally-charged thriller, centered on a successful police officer who has recently started a family. Andreas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his wife Anna (Maria Bonnevie) are coming to terms with their new lives as parents, struggling to adapt to their baby’s challenging sleeping patterns and find time to spend alone together. However, they are devoted parents who are raising their baby in idyllic circumstances, with absolute financial security and a stunning lakeside home.

Seemingly late in the game of David Koepp’s Mortdecai, the eponymous character (played by Johnny Depp) asks his wife, “Are you quite finished with your barrage of insults?” It’s an apt question for the film itself, a cataclysmically unfunny, unbelievably tedious disaster of baffling misjudgments and multiple career lows that feels as long as Shoah, and only a little less harrowing. No such luck, though, as the film goes on for another 25 minutes. It then ends on people about to throw up. Also apt.

“A Fixer of Sorts” is, to be clear, one of the best episodes of Banshee and a firm testament to the show’s deserved place among the best current TV has to offer as a medium of entertainment.

If last week’s season three premiere suggested the importance of legacy in Banshee, “Snakes and Whatnot” is the companion piece that shows how one’s legacy can be controlled by perception. It’s said that history is written by the victors, and several characters here–Rebecca, Chayton and Nola chief among them–want to make sure that they’re both taken seriously and come out on top.

Penultimate episodes in a season of television usually suffer from over-reliance on exposition, because that’s just how they function. It’s something totally excusable, because these episodes are meant to build up to the big bang of the finale, which – if any show on TV right now could pull off – Banshee should be able to deliver with an exclamation.

One series, though, is leading the charge at the beginning of the year. The most unlikely of heroes, Cinemax’s Banshee, in just a matter of three weeks, has matured into something truly special – something a lot of TV writers refer to as “appointment viewing” when describing other series.

The International 2009, USA Directed by: Tom Tykwer Written by: Eric Singer Produced by: Lloyd Philips, Charles Roven, Richard Suckle Starring: Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Ulrich Thomsen Filmed all over Europe and the US, The International aims to be a slick action thriller in the vein of the Bourne films, with a bit …