theOneliner.com: Handling the Truth

Would you look at that? Another podcast already, as quickly as promised. So please join theOneliner crew yet again as we spew forth our collective insight on Magic Mike, Seeking a Friend For the End of the World and some wee indie sleeper called The Dark Knight Rises.

While admirably never allowing himself to be pigeon-holed into any one genre, Steven Soderbergh's quality track-record is frustratingly erratic - it seems that for every crowd-pleasing knockabout (Ocean's Eleven) or scintillating drama (Traffic) there's an impossibly boring Bloomberg feature (The Girlfriend Experience) or inconceivably pretentious love-in (Full Frontal, Ocean's Twelve). So where in this range from awfulness to excellence does Magic Mike sit? Well, somewhere in the middle, really. Magic Mike is the tale of a young entrepreneur and sometime stripper who realises he needs to stop getting his kit off and sort out his life's priorities. Not the most captivating plot, perhaps, but the characters are interesting, the Tampa setting is visually appealling and there are likeable performances from Channing Tatum, Olivia Munn and Matthew McConaughey (yes, that's two episodes in a row where we've, if not praised, then at least not criticised McConaughey).

Seeking a Friend For the End of the World sees the Earth in imminent peril as a sodding great asteroid is going to plough into it in a few weeks and kill everyone. This news prompting his wife to leave him, Dodge finds himself alone and sad awaiting the end, until he strikes up a friendship with his younger neighbour, Penny. The two unlikely companions head out on the road to get Penny transport to Britain and to reunite Dodge with the love of his life. Leads Steve Carrell and Keira Knightley have good chemistry, and despite a somewhat misleading trailer presenting this as skewed more towards comedy than romance it's funny, warm and worth your time.

After a four-year wait, the final installment of Chris Nolan's Batman trilogy is finally with us. Picking up 8 years after The Dark Knight finished, Gotham no longer needs the Batman and Bruce Wayne has become a shut-in. But when a mysterious mercenary called Bane enters the city at the head of an army, intent on finishing the work Ra's Al Ghul failed to complete in Batman Begins, Wayne puts on the cowl and cape again in the city's hour of need. The Dark Knight Rises is possibly the weakest film in the trilogy, but this is a relative measure since Nolan set the bar so high for himself, and at least two thirds of us think this is the film of the year so far. Other superhero movies continue to look entirely silly in comparison.

Well, that's all folks, but you can be confident we'll be back with you soon.