Pomona Rewind

Listen up fans of the US version of ' The Office '. ' Threat Level Midnight ' has finally made it into the cinema. Except it has a different name and it hasn't been directed by Steve Carrell's Michael Scott. Okay, that's not true. It may not be Michael Scott's masterpiece but Michael Flatley's 'Blackbird' might be the closest we ever come to seeing ' Threat Level Midnight ' on a cinema screen. © Dancelord Productions Originally made in 2018 but eventually securing a release four years later, the ' Riverdance ' star ploughed almost £3million of his own money into his personal pet project. And it is so bad, it's hard to know where to begin. So let's try and explain the plot. Flatley is Victor Blackley, a kind of superspy working for.. is it the Irish security services or the British? © Dancelord Productions It's hard to tell but he's apparently a valued member of The Chieftains - not  the traditional Irish music

If you were to identify the toughest drama to watch on TV in 2022, it must surely be Netflix's series 'Dahmer'? The tale of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, it must be one of the most gruelling ever made by the streaming service. I t is also deeply uncomfortable to sit through. Much of that is down to Evan Peters' compellingly creepy performance as the Milwaukee serial killer. © Netflix However a lot of plaudits should also go to Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan, David McMillan, Janet Mock, Reilly Smith and Todd Kubrak whose scripts really take a deep five into his life and the consequences of his actions. Starting with the arrest of Dahmer after the escape of Shaun K Brown's Tracy Edwards from his apartment, the show grimly catalogues his development from a child of divorced parents to a prolific serial killer. It's a hard watch as we witness Dahmer living rough in a house which his mum has left after effectively abandoning him as a teenager and then killing Cameron Cowpe

We've reached that stage where even the sequels to gentle English comedies no longer have numerals in their title anymore. 'Fishermen's Friends: One and All' is a sequel to Chris Foggins' wistful 2019 comedy ' Fisherman's Friends ' which was based on the true story of a group of Cornish trawlermen whose album of sea shanties became an unlikely music industry sensation. This time Foggins has ceded the director's chair to two of the original's scriptwriters Nick Moorcroft and Meg Leonard following the modest success of his low budget film. What emerges is a movie which, like the original 'Fisherman's Friends,' is not the most daring or challenging film you are ever likely to see. © Entertainment Film Distributors At the start of Moorcroft and Leonard's follow-up, the Fisherman's Friends group has been riding the crest of a wave - touring extensively across the UK after the success of their debut album. However they have been roc

Some films simmer and eventually come to the boil. Justin Kurzel's 'Nitram' is one of those films. A powerful warning about gun culture, it is based on the real story of Martin Bryant who went on the rampage in 1996 in the Tasmanian tourist town of Port Arthur, shooting dead 35 people and wounding 23 others. It was the worst massacre in modern Australian history and it resulted in stricter gun laws being introduced by the then Prime Minister John Howard. © Madman Films & Stan The National Firearms Agreement restricted the ownership of semi-automatic rifles, semi-automatic and pump action shotguns. A mandatory buyback scheme was introduced in Australia by the Government which resulted in the handing over of 643,000 weapons across the country at a cost of $350 million, funded by a temporary increase in Medicare. The memories of the Port Arthur massacre remain raw nonetheless. While 'Nitram' may have swept the boards at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Televisi

Are you looking for a charming film to slump in front of over the Christmas break? Then you could do a lot worse than Anthony Fabian's 'Mrs Harris Goes to Paris' which has earned its star Lesley Manville a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. In a role previously played by Angela Lansbury, Manville is Ada Harris, a modest and kind hearted London cleaning lady and war widow who has held out hopes that her beloved husband might still be alive. Set in 1957, her two closest friends are Ellen Thomas's big hearted but no nonsense fellow cleaner Vi Butterfield and Jason Isaacs' silver tongued Irish charmer and bookie's clerk, Archie. © Focus Features & Universal Pictures She also is very good to her clients - even if they are often thoughtless towards her. Ada mothers Rose Williams' shambolic aspiring actress Pamela Penrose and puts up with Anna Chancellor's Lady Dant despite her steadfast avoidance of paying her for her work. It

Just when you thought the definitive First World War movie had been made, along comes another. Edward Berger's 'All Quiet On The Western Front' is the third adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's classic 1929 novel about German soldiers on the front. The first in 1930  by Lewis Milestone became the first Hollywood movie to win Best Picture and Best Director at the Oscars and was the first adaptation of a novel to take the top prize. The second in 1979  was a CBS TV movie directed by Delbert Mann with Richard Thomas, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasance and Ian Holm which won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Made for Television. © Netflix Berger's version for Netflix is the first to be adapted in its original language. Not surprisingly, it is a muddy, bloody and emotionally draining affair. Felix Kammerer is Paul Baumer, the 17 year old hero of Remarque's novel who fakes his parents' signature to enlist with his friends in the Army. Aaron Hilmer's Albert