Black Sails Review

Black Sails is a Pirates of the Caribbean style romp following the adventures, or rather misadventure of Captain Flint and his crew as they hunt for the motherload of all Spanish gold cargoes. 

The series opens with a high-seas battle, where a crew is picked off one-by-one by an enemy they cannot see. However, once that is done with and we are introduced properly to the attacking crew - led by Captain Flint - the sailors turn out to be quite a boring bunch. 

Visually Black Sails is beautiful, with great sets and good camera work but the story gets bogged down very quickly with constant double-crossing between the characters. In the first episode this is quite confusing as you are introduced to a lot of characters. Then it just keeps going for the rest of the series. 

It also takes six episodes before Captain Flint sets sail in search of the ship carrying the Spanish gold haul - despite talking about it for so long. Once at sea though, the pace does pick up and there is a lot of action but I don’t understand why it took six episodes to get to that. 

Bland characters and constant faffing aside though, Black Sails does have some interesting side plots and funny moments. It also cuts quite close to the knuckle at times and can be quite grisly but these moments are few and far between like the action. It’s still a decent series though and I would recommend a watch if you have Amazon Prime. 

It gets 6/10. 

Film Review: Need for Speed

If you aren’t looking forward to seeing Fast and the Furious 7 starring Paul Walker’s ghost, then Need for Speed might be a suitable alternative if you are a woman and don’t like drooling over dead men. Adrenaline junkies and the male demographic probably will not care which of the two movies they see.

My expectations for Need for Speed were pretty low. For those who do not play video games, you will probably not be aware of the curse that haunts games which are given a movie adaptation. Basically the formula is this: Hit game series = shit movie. As thus it has been for years. But I was shocked by Need for Speed, (the movie that is) it was actually quite good.

Despite the first twenty minutes being slow (no pun intended) the film had a strong storyline. Yes, it had dumb moments and more plot holes than a sieve but I was willing to forgive all that because it was hugely entertaining and for 132 minutes made me feel half a kid again just wanting to race around in fast cars. 

Also Aaron Paul (AKA Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad) makes an excellent piece of eye candy. And for the guys there is Imogen Poots to gawk at. 

When it comes down to it, Need for Speed is basically a revenge film - with cars. It’s a formula that’s been done may times before but this movie’s take on the concept is very fresh. There are a lot of jokes, a lot of action and a lot of heart as well. There is also a Mustang, race tracks, flying cars, super cars, an office worker stripping off for no apparent reason, explosions, random cement mixers in the middle of the desert and an apache helicopter. The only thing this film didn’t have was a giraffe. 

Need for Speed gets 7/10.