As I’m one of those carping, bitter writers who’ve yet to make an actual living doing this, I’ve resigned myself to a day job. Not just any day job, but one as part of perhaps the most despised profession in the universe (Which? A virtual muffin basket and free copy of my as yet unpublished masterpiece for the most imaginative answers).  While I don’t see anyone rushing around creating shiny TV around my job (come on, cops? Surgeons? Serial killers? What’s so hot about them?) it seems TV-land loves the jobs you hate. Not least of which, lawyers, which populate drama series The Good Wife.

The wife of the title, Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies, ER) begins the series as the least interesting aspect of this sleek legal drama. First seen demure, devastated and in pearls by the glare of flashbulbs. Alicia’s doing a Hilary, choosing to stand by disgraced District Attorney Peter Florrick. No, that allusion isn’t one of mine; the writers directly reference Hilary Clinton as a role model for Alicia – make of that what you will.

As Peter (a sleazily magnetic Chris Noth being Big behind bars) fights allegations of corruption, Alicia returns to her previous career as a lawyer to make ends meet. While Alicia’s struggles at work and at home are the stuff of drama, they don’t make her a character to warm to, as the writers at first appear to assume. This being a long held bugbear of mine – that being a Mom gives a character instant access to the viewer’s, and indeed other characters’ sympathies, negating the need for further character development.

Alicia lands on her feet at a prestigious Chicago law firm, at which old flame Will Gardner is one of the partners. Will (Josh Charles, who played an angry, unhappy husband with painful realism as part of the excellent In Treatment) carries a torch for Alicia, making him the obvious choice for a will-they-won’t-they dance.

More interesting are the peripheral characters: Alicia’s younger rival Cary and the mysterious in-house investigator Kalinda (Archie Punjabi, White Teeth). She’s steely and sexy in her uniform of tiny skirts, knee-high boots and black eye-liner. Yet, Punjabi’s performance is such that I’m far more excited by what’s she’s thinking than what she’s wearing, unlike Alicia – so often the stylish blank.

Better played are Cary and Alicia’s battles, his struggle to reconcile his ambition with his scruples, and his hopeless attraction to the secretive Kalinda. Cary’s a handsome, well-connected WASP endowed with a certain obnoxious charm by Matt Czuchry. Cary’s a familiar character (imagine Czuchry’s poor little rich boy routine in The Gilmore Girls, plus a few years, a very few disappointments and a well tailored suit), until the second season, when he gains a little more vulnerability without resorting to a total personality bypass. Czuchry even gets to use some facial expressions beyond smug or faintly annoyed!

The strange chill at the heart of The Good Wife means the initial premise of Alicia breaking down the door to the boys’ club of the legal profession doesn’t quite fly. The Good Wife recalls series’ like The Closer and Medium, in which the protagonist relies on supposed feminine qualities like emotional intelligence and empathy to give her a leg-up in a brisk, factual, masculine world. But this distinction is made with all the subtlety of a falling gavel: note a scene during the pilot, where Alicia tries to track down evidence to exonerate a client; she makes vital progress by bonding during a vacuous, lazy oh-dear-aren’t-men-silly moment with a female clerk.

The series tries to cast the poised, tamped-down Alicia as the heart of the series, often expected to bring her time as Wronged Woman and Mom, rather than any political nous or legal skill, to bear on sensitive cases involving victimised women or families. This patronising characterisation aside, The Good Wife develops the glimmer of something special in its mix of female characters.

Ally McBeal this isn’t, the cases often dry, or sad, or self-consciously earnest rather than outrageous, with febrile twists and long-reaching consequences. Alicia and Kalinda develop a tentative, barbed, sardonic friendship lubricated by tequila, which doesn’t fall easily into the broad types of female relationships beloved of TV-land. It is neither the shrieking singletons who bond over the fecklessness of men, nor the catty on-off rivals over men, or work, or men. Did I mention men? All of which makes for perhaps the most genuine female friendship on US TV.

The Good Wife doesn’t break new ground in presentation or point of view; its stories are told in traditional Good vs. Evil fashion, the courtroom debates are pitched battles for the most part, exciting at the time, but not memorable. The second season introduces more moral ambiguity and twisty plotting that’s a marked improvement, as well as the sense of a wider, murkier network beyond Alicia’s firm. The Good Wife’s latter cases revolve around the meeting of commercial, legal and political interests, in a gratifying fashion that’s less tidy, but more believable.

Never mind if Alicia and the terminally boring Will continue to circle one another, or if Peter revives his political career. I want to know more about Cary and Kalinda, about the somewhat clichéd Dianne Lockhart (fabulous Christine Baranski) and her endless collection of shoulder-padded outfits, the deliciously amoral spin-doctor Eli Gold (an entertaining, if slightly overcooked guest turn from Alan Cumming). Look out, too for  a daring, cynical recurring role for Michael J. Fox  and for an appearance from America Ferrera post Ugly Betty – her guest role proves that she deserves a character that isn’t hemmed in by her ethnicity.

The Good Wife seeks to make a point about women’s place in American society and politics. I don’t even mind if it’s not quite sure what that point is. As a comment on the status quo The Good Wife doesn’t reveal anything earth-shattering: gender and race remain factors in American politics, but the attempt is intriguing. Even Alicia becomes slightly more human as the series progresses, though improbably made up and coiffed round the clock.

Strange, too, are the viral video and YouTube skits created by various characters as part of their politicking – neither as funny, nor shocking as they should be.  Rather like the often painful efforts of countless rom-com writers trying to convince us that their fictional novelist/songwriter/screenwriter character can really write (see Music and Lyrics, Alex and Emma, Never Been Kissed, etc)! American TV has long been accomplished at high concept,  topical dramas ripped from the headlines, and  The Good Wife continues the theme. It also consistently manages to be a little odd and suprising while mired in gloss, and for that, worth watching.

If you haven’t seen enough spandex and CGI yet, here’s an offering from director Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, Kick-Ass), which both is and is not another superhero film. X-Men: First Class ties well into the rest of the film franchise, through careful plotting and some rewarding cameo roles. Thankfully, it dispenses with the too-obvious loose end, ready for another chapter, which blights many a summer blockbuster.

It begins with an origin story known to fans from the first film, which develops to introduce an uncomplicated, old-fashioned, boo-hiss villain, in the form of Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon, sinking his teeth into German, Russian and English dialogue) as a sinister Nazi scientist with a unique gift.

This the first surprise, given that the X-Men universe and its struggles can be interpreted as a heartfelt plea, not for mere tolerance, but integration of various forms of human difference treated with fear or condescension: race, gender, sexuality or disability.

The most obvious parallel, and one that has been drawn before, is gay rights – as in the first X-Men film, there’s a mischievous exchange or two revolving around a character’s coming out. Most notably, during the introduction of another youthful version of a character from the previous films: Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult, Skins, About A Boy), here a prodigy working for the US government, undergoing a painful quest for self-acceptance. He’s forcibly outed in the workplace within minutes of meeting Charles Xavier. When questioned by his well meaning boss (the always entertaining Oliver Platt, Lake Placid, The Big C), he stammers ‘you didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell’.

It also begins to explore the value of a separate, underground culture to any marginalised group in society and questions whether integration is desirable or helpful – no accident, then, setting the film during a decade defined by those questions, which continue to resonate. It also revisits other characters from the franchise, like William Stryker, and purports that the Cuban Missile Crisis might have played out a little differently, too.

Shaw’s sneer, groovy supervillain pad and penchant for cravats is a little too Austin Powers for the required suspension of disbelief; surprising too, given the comic-adaptations’ recent predilection for humanising its villains. Though I’m going to drop a cliché here, and reference Heath Ledger and Jack Nicholson, both performances as The Joker form part of an established wider trend that shows no signs of going away.  As in Batman, and the Spiderman trilogy, X-Men: First Class continues to use a psychological vocabulary familiar to all filmgoers, making villains complex and tragic, mad, not (all) bad.

It’s a curious period piece, interesting since most of the recent comic adaptations are sleek, ultra-modern and careful to remove themselves from anything that might whiff of kitsch. This usually results in a jettisoning of most of the comic book canon and lengthy character histories, for fear of alienating non-fans. The deliberate retro styling of X-Men: First Class and the Sunday serial tropes that recall Indiana Jones, like Nazi gold, cold war paranoia and treacherous blondes make the film a pleasure best enjoyed as parallel but separate to the books and comics.

It also introduces Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, Shameless, State of Play, The Last King of Scotland, Atonement) without the trademark shiny pate and chair. Here, he’s a faintly pretentious geneticist from a well-heeled background in 60s Oxford. Rather sweetly, he’s more than a little vain about his hair.

The action begins when a CIA agent (Rose Byrne, Sunshine, Marie Antoinette, Casanova) stumbles onto the existence of mutants and seeks out an expert on the subject whilst investigating something to do with the mob, or communists or both – sketchy period backdrop to what happens next.

For the initial scenes, Charles does what any bright young man who finds he can read minds would: use his considerable talent for getting his leg over rather than saving the world, ignoring his lovelorn friend Raven/ Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence). More about how she came to grow up alone and homeless might have fleshed out her story, but this is really a film about the friendship between two central characters.

The screenplay and McAvoy’s lively performance also give the young Xavier sufficient depth to be believable as the man who eventually develops into the paternal teacher familiar from the later films. His occasional too-arch delivery of the dialogue might be a minor flaw, or a fun, tongue-in-cheek addition to the period charm.

Xavier’s story unfolds alongside that of Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto – the orphaned boy who survives a concentration camp grows up into an obsessive, murderous Nazi hunter with no room for anything else, as played with requisite intensity and an accent which teeters between Irish and a non-descript transatlantic twang, by Michael Fassbender (The Devil’s Whore, Hearts and Bones).

One of the pleasures of the X-Men films for the casual viewer unfamiliar with the Marvel universe is watching two gifted actors square off with seemingly little effort. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen respectively managed to cut through the paranormal fireworks and special effects wizardry to make us believe these two are weary veterans of decades-long battles for civil rights. They also portray two people with a deep and abiding affection for one another, one that lingers despite a radical difference in world view. Fassbender and McAvoy come pretty close, their scenes together compelling to watch, and carrying much of the film’s emotional weight.

January Jones (Mad Men) as Emma Frost isn’t given nearly enough to do – she treads the unlikely middle ground between Betty Draper and Barbarella, largely by virtue of some spectacular outfits and a faintly sulky expression. She’s an archetype, who is never given the opportunity to be anything more interesting, since X-Men: First Class treats its women with a borderline contempt which may not be entirely due to the period setting.

What comes over most in X-Men: First Class is neither misogyny, nor a cynical commercial exercise in exploiting the fanbase, but genuine warmth for the universe it plays in, without being overly reverential. Bringing in stars and directors with mainstream appeal does more than put bums on seats: it allows an exploration of characters and story which might not sit well with diehard fans, but can, at its best, bring imagination, vigour and humour to a well-loved story.

As we’ve already discussed, that sodden, reeking writer-as-rebel-rockstar myth just won’t die.

In another film about a writer, made for a nebulous group of people who will probably never read his work, this myth resurfaces in the wilds of Wales. Based on memoirs by poet Dylan Thomas’ offspring, The Edge of Love concerns a defining, and disputed triangle: Thomas (Matthew Rhys), his wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller - Casanova, Factory Girl), and childhood sweetheart Vera Philips (Keira Knightley).

Though Thomas is portrayed by turns as a pretentious ass and a sulky child, judicious, if occasionally too literal use of his verse is made, mostly in order to remind us: he’s also a poet. I laughed aloud at this clankingly dull and inadequate explanation for his bed-hopping, and at the idea that an explanation is needed.

That said, Rhys possesses a unique gift for making lairy, vicious drunkenness at least a little entertaining (see Kevin Walker in Brothers and Sisters), and makes a good fist of Thomas’ hell-raising reputation, his strange accent, and ambivalence towards his heritage. Keira Knightley turns in an appealing, spiky performance, and a competent Welsh lilt. Finding her vapid and irritating has long been a dismal cliché for any reviewer, but the effect is lessened by her losing the Home Counties lockjaw.

There’s warmth and brightness in the flirtatious dialogue in the opening scenes – we see why Thomas is fixated on Vera, though content to have both women orbiting around him, he grows fractious when Vera begins to drift toward a handsome army captain (Cillian Murphy – Breakfast on Pluto, Batman Begins).

The Edge of Love glows and gleams; the refracted sheen puts the viewer at an even greater distance than the medium typically creates, relative to novels or poetry, and makes it difficult to engage with the characters. The opening shot is of Knightley’s pristine, painted mouth in close-up – a telling image which is both intimate and remote. The lens spends most time and attention on the glossy images, even an explosion in a nightclub is glittering and lovely. There’s nothing grimy or ugly here – only a kind of artful, utilitarian shabby chic that’s all over the Sunday glossies just now, and splatters The Edge of Love’s set dressing.

Lest anyone should object to Thomas’ having these people living in thrall to his talent, the film gets there first – Vera and Caitlin both know that they sacrifice something of themselves and they aren’t always happy about it. The film doesn’t make any judgements as to whether or not this is worth it, for them, or for Thomas’ art and is ambivalent throughout.  The Edge of Love isn’t afraid of making all its protagonists unlikeable and selfish, nor of raising the disparity in the creative, intellectual lives of men and women.

The question remains: why make The Edge of Love at all? Thomas is an important and intriguing literary figure, but the film fails to convey to anyone who’s never heard of him why he deserves their attention. Why make any biopic of a literary figure, when a half-decent biography would give so much more? As scenes of a man pounding away on a typewriter are seldom cinematic, nor particularly insightful (ditto scenes of someone scribbling by candlelight, as in Becoming Jane), one wonders who these films are for. Not for established bibliophiles, who could find out all they wanted about Thomas, his life and influences by heading for a library, or at a stretch, Google. How about those new to poetry, then? Is a soapy rendering of the author’s life enough to prompt someone to pick up a volume of poems for the first time? I rather doubt it.

Better to leave out the true-life aspect, then, and focus on The Edge of Love as a story in its own right, made for cinema-goers. It’s a handsome effort, unusual for a film set during the Second World War, for its greater interest in the lives of its women than that of its men, with some well-crafted dialogue, but it proves ultimately superficial.

If so, then the film is a fitfully entertaining, occasionally affecting curiosity, which indicates than when given enough to do, both Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley are capable of more than wafting through fashion and gossip pages.

The film resists, mostly, the cliché of having the women only exist as rivals for Thomas’ attentions, but the tabloid lather at the time of release about a possible Sapphic connection is mostly baseless froth (yes, I too lost count of the number of scenes which took place in or around a bathtub). Though Thomas is ostensibly the apex of the triangle, he is, more importantly, the catalyst for a powerful, if unusual friendship.

After finally sitting through Knocked Up with every intention of reviewing it, but unable to scrape together any reaction more articulate than ‘ugh’, I reached back a little way for something to blast away the indifference. During my occasional, occasionally misguided wanderings through the ‘90s, In The Company of Men is one of those films I always meant to watch.

Neil LaBute’s no-budget 98 minutes of idle talk is worth making time for and worth watching with the subtitles on, because not a syllable is wasted.  The blistering, vitriolic misogyny stings from the get-go, and makes for disturbing viewing, as two jilted businessmen hatch a revenge scheme against womankind.

Owlish, nerdy Howard (Matt Molloy) is persuaded into an uneasy partnership with charismatic Chad (Aaron Eckhart), as they plot to find the most trusting, unsullied woman they can, date and then dump her. Chad takes the lead, choosing Christine, a young deaf woman from the office.

Throughout, the two men share an unequal friendship; Howard is the superior at work, but less articulate, less physically imposing than Chad, and therefore less able to survive the series of setbacks that seem to arrive all at once. LaBute’s dialogue creates a subtle unease, in Chad’s constant, insidious undermining of Howard, under cover of a certain kind of back-slapping male camaraderie. Eckhart’s performance as Chad is controlled and faultless, as he shifts from slippery charm to unprovoked malice.

Things get complicated when Howard develops what he believes are genuine feelings for Christine and a nasty attack of conscience. But, even as he declares himself, he descends into contempt for her refusal to see him as ‘the good guy’ of the scheme, then into impotent, violent rage. 

The choice of camera angles echoes the unreliability of In The Company of Men’s protagonists – a disconcertingly distant, ambivalent view of a rooftop date between Christine (Stacy Edwards) and Chad dehumanises the apparently tender moment, serving as a reminder of Chad’s murky intentions.

LaBute’s film is a changeable beast on repeat viewing. For instance, imagine Chad and Howard as a bromance taken to its sinister nth degree, the savage flipside to the equally unsatisfying and narrow view of gender in the Judd Apatow canon, populated by hapless, immature men-children bemused by and fearful of women. It isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine the slackers of today’s film and TV landscape, after being forced to smarten up to win the love of a good woman, turning into men like Chad and Howard ten years later.

 In The Company of Men subverts romantic comedy conventions, too, by setting up a barbed love triangle. The setting of mostly grey, grainy office spaces that could be anywhere, a dissonant, driving score and the propelling, oppressive weekly countdown transform a downbeat two-handed black comedy into a claustrophobic almost-thriller, reminiscent of the slick brutality of Se7en.  Like Se7en, though so often referenced, LaBute’s debut retains its power to shock, with Howard’s powerlessness emphasised by the closing seconds, in which he screams at Christine, unheard, his rage and misery unresolved.  In The Company of Men works best not as an essay on the gender wars, but a satire on the strutting, charmless corporate environment that creates men like Chad and Howard. It disturbs, not in the characters’ views on women, but in its’ dismal assessment of men.

A little time away teaches valuable lessons, gentle reader. Not least that it really can take several months to pick up my jaw and scoop my brain up off the living room carpet.

For here’s a film featuring not one, but two thinking woman’s pin-ups for the price of admission: Gabriel Byrne and Kevin Spacey (if I have to include much here, see me after class, kids). Both shine in a strong ensemble cast, including a slightly less careworn Benicio Del Toro, in The Usual Suspects. It’s a sly, tricksy, cleverly plotted noir-ish thriller propelled by a series of audacious, hairpin twists, from director Bryan Singer (The X-Men trilogy, Superman Returns) and writer Christopher McQuarrie (Valkyrie).

Even Stephen Baldwin (Shark In Venice, apparently) enjoys one of his better roles; his limited facial expressions serve him well as the dead-eyed brute McManus. He’s part of a reluctant group of crooks handpicked for one last heist by mysterious, legendary crime lord Keyser Soze.

Spacey sinks his teeth into the narration, telling the story in flashback to a set of disbelieving cops, as the fast-talking Verbal Kimt. He’s an unassuming, moderately successful con-artist, unfurling his woeful lot to the police, as the sole survivor of an explosion on a boat, a suspected raid gone wrong.

The Usual Suspects resists the temptation to open with a bang (almost), rather grabs the attention with a low-key, sinister meeting, in which only one party is clearly visible. The famous line-up scene now part of movie-land shorthand and beloved by the YouTube collective, often imitated, but never bettered, it forms part of the same myth-making that produces thoughtful, flawed heroes out of thieves and thugs. Object as ye may to the glamorising of the criminal fraternity,  the characters are compelling, like the tormented, morally flexible Keaton.

In a soulful portrayal by Gabriel Byrne, Keaton’s a former bent cop who tries, unsuccessfully, to set up a legitimate business with his lawyer girlfriend. Though the viewer is allowed a glimpse of vulnerability, they aren’t permitted to forget what Keaton is. Nor, tragically, is he.

Elegantly lit and filmed, with acres of shade and shadow, especially in the opening dialogue, and the waterside scenes. Complemented by an old-fashioned score, which is atmospheric, dramatic but never intrusive – unlike the often distracting pop and rock artists crammed into the soundtracks of latter thrillers, without regard for the mood being created. It is filled with violent death, which is the more chilling for never being shown directly, and the eminently reasonable, soft-spoken way in which the most horrific acts are discussed.

The moment when the viewer is finally let in on the last twist truly satisfying and perfectly executed, in showing the viewer where the clues lay all along. While there’s nothing more irritating than a series of red herrings that neither further the plot, nor develop the characters, The Usual Suspects’ respect for its audience, and its well-oiled, meticulous construction avoids the need for such cheap tricks. Thoroughly conned by the end of the film, the viewer won’t sit through the final credits feeling cheated. The Usual Suspects entertains, while comprising a note-perfect demonstration of the golden rule in any good cinematic mystery: if we’re shown it, it’s important, even if that importance doesn’t become clear immediately.

Dialogue-heavy, The Usual Suspects has a scatological vocabulary to rival Tarantino without the pop-culture riffs, and an equally tarry sense of humour. As is often the danger with a script in which much of the plot is delivered through conversation, it risks losing momentum, but remains immensely involving.

As the saying goes, you couldn’t make it up. Except sometimes, you should.

It seems a moot point that Real Life should make good drama and very often doesn’t. Yet, those disease-of-the-week weepies, those grit’n’glitter biopics of music stars, those docudramas of historical figures with disastrous gummed-on beards just keep on coming.

Occasionally, true-life and rampant commercialism achieve an uneasy union, as in Michael Apted’s 1992 film, Thunderheart. Loosely based on the 1973 Wounded Knee Incident, it takes full advantage of both Dakota’s haunted landscape and its star’s striking looks, coaxing an equally haunted performance from Val Kilmer (Top Gun, Batman Forever, The Prince of Egypt). He leads as Ray Levoi, an ambitious, tightly wound FBI agent in a cynical Washington.

The film opens on a meeting heavy with cigarette smoke, condescension and nepotism, in which Ray is reluctantly despatched to a new assignment. He heads with a trusted senior agent (Sam Shepard) to the scorched off-world terrain of the Badlands, as a nominal figurehead to try and appease the warring locals. His knotty family tree brought to bear on a violent power struggle between factions on a neglected reservation, he’s immediately established as an outsider, both in the FBI, and the reservation.

Ray unwittingly stumbles into a conspiracy, while the resentful locals do their best to drive the feds out of town, and is forced to acknowledge his heritage – his internal transformation made external by the gradual stripping of his Washington uniform of suits, shades and gun.

In addition to grisly murder and conspiracy, Ray undergoes something of a spiritual awakening, passionate enough to sweep the film along, despite skimming both the fish-out-of-water and noble savage clichés, via the wily, ancient medicine man with a face like cracked earth, who runs rings around the suits and serves to correct Ray’s ignorance.

The latter is also gently satirised by a dust dry performance from Graeme Green. As the sharp-tongued local beat cop Walter Crow Horse, his character takes pleasure in winding Ray tighter still, as in a fun exchange in which he bemoans the unfairness of the role this outsider has taken on his patch. Despite the film’s original tagline, Thunderheart never quite turns into a buddy-movie, though the relationship between the two men is the most convincing and complete of Thunderheart’s character interactions.

While Thunderheart’s screenplay sends up one cliché, it conforms to another. There’s the standard movie-land device of wedging a romantic interest into the plot; the tough no-nonsense woman Ray has an almost-romance with, teacher and activist Maggie Eagle Bear (Sheila Tousey).  Unusually, vicarious filmgoers are denied so much as a peck on the cheek, much less the obligatory soft focus sex scene. After a series of antagonistic meet-cutes, Ray bonds with her through their common interest in the case, and the usual chink in any Strong Woman armour – an abusive past. The film then tries to drum up a little sexual tension, but just before things get too predictable, the relationship is cut brutally short before it truly begins, leaving viewers with something unresolved, frustrating and pleasingly ambiguous.

This ambiguity in Ray’s relationship with Maggie carries through into the central mystery; the sense that despite the involvement of the FBI and Ray’s eventual understanding of the cover-up, the reservation’s problems will continue unchecked.

The mystical elements of Ray’s awakening might, in the hands of another filmmaker, have been a sickly representation of Ray’s conflicted state of mind, or a thoughtful exploration of a specific set of beliefs. But, Hollywood mythologizing can’t resist the notion of Ray as a messianic saviour of his people, blessed by visions for an unknown purpose. This sits oddly with the matter-of-fact humour and thriller elements, as does the clunking ‘cross-roads’ ending, the panoramic closing shot is of Ray at a literal and figurative junction.

Kilmer, an inconsistent performer with a clenched intensity which is rarely relaxed (parodied brilliantly in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and arguably, in Batman Forever, too), at his best in roles which play to his strengths, like the elegant Doc Holliday in Tombstone. The humourlessness of this approach works in his favour when playing Ray Levoi the Uber-FBI-Agent, but is less successful later in the film, when portraying Ray’s ultimate acceptance.

Despite and because of its lack of commitment to the conventions it employs, juxtaposed with occasional heavy-handedness, Thunderheart makes for an entertaining, if odd, mystery thriller.

That rumble in the distance, dear reader, is the sound of hordes of Mrs. Edward Cullens’ on the march, armed with laptops and pitchforks. From my improvised bunker, I’m about to make an unthinkable admission.

Here it is: I have yet to read Twilight.

In a moment of weakness, desperate to fend off the marauders, I’ve cracked open the DVD case and write this while cowering in a corner to await my doom.

Catherine Hardwicke’s heavily stylised take on Stephanie Meyer’s novel concerns new girl in town Bella Swan, and her passion for Robert Pattinson’s Edward. Pattinson is arrestingly beautiful and mysterious, in that anaemic way that appeals to pubescent girls and their mothers. Alas, Edward’s mystery consists of an irritating mumbling, looking up at Bella and at the lens through his lashes, and very little else. Where are Christopher Lee and Gary Oldman when I need them? I’d even take Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in frilly shirts. None of them available? No?

Curses! Back to Edward and Bella, then – she’s a blank, pallid humourless cipher. Hers is a classic set-up: she’s also a fish out of water when she moves from the heat of Phoenix, her free spirited mother to the town of Forks and her silent, long-suffering father, the local chief of police. Charlie Swan (Billy Burke), who I half expected to turn into a character from Fargo, is one of the best aspects of the film. His laconic, unsentimental persona also allows him to be conveniently distant or absent while his daughter goes gallivanting through the woods. The stuff of fantasy? You betcha.

Played as a gawky tomboy by Kristen Stewart, it’s never quite clear why the girl exerts such a pull over Edward, or indeed the boys at her new school, all of them ordinary, decent, if a little immature. In short, Bella represents the secret belief that lives in the hearts of all solitary, bookish girls. That we’re above the gaudy flutter about prom dresses and dates with silly boys with big cars; we can perceive the inner beauty of an unhappy monster like Edward, as he perceives ours. All without actually having  to form a relationship.

Twilight captures the natural self absorption of a shy introvert like Bella at seventeen in Edward’s one wry line: I tell you I can read minds and you think there’s something wrong with you?

Except there’s one small problem. Edward’s beauty is entirely external and conventional. No beauty-and-the-beast insight needed, and therefore a rather limp conflict. The other boys at school can’t hope to compete with Ed’s rich, bohemian family of veggie vampires, old world manners, his magnificent cheekbones and artfully tousled hair. He’s a risk, too, in a way the other boys aren’t, but somehow, the threat is never believable, even when Edward Cullen frequently refers to himself as a killer, constantly battling his baser urges. A fault of both the underwritten character and flat performances, which neuter any frisson of the erotic danger on which any good vampire, and indeed coming of age, tale relies.

Twilight also suffers for its problematic leaps of logic. Bella goes from knowing nothing about Edward, to finding his odd, creepy stalking romantic, to falling desperately in love. By contrast, their first kiss is an exquisitely pained, over-edited damp squib that takes place well over half way into the film. We never really see her wrestle with Edward’s immortality and extraordinary abilities, or indeed any real connection between them, since anything approaching a full sentence is a struggle for both.

Twilight makes the most of its misty, moody vistas, in glorious great, wide tracking shots on location. The chaste courtship is drenched with dreamy imagery and coy symbolism as the lovers lie side-by-side in a fairytale forest. The recurring deer running through the trees motif recycles that delicious Mills and Boon trope about the swooning heroine bolting like a startled fawn at the merest hint of sexual congress, while yearning to submit.

But, despite the Cullen mania sweeping the world and the interwebs, the nearest I got to an attack of the vapours was during Edward’s halting small talk about Forks’ unrelenting weather. Oh, the constant drizzle, the swirling fog, the ice! The Cullens’ thunderstorm baseball game makes a thrilling set piece, almost worth the dismemberment that awaits me. (I’m British. I don’t play baseball. I can’t help myself.)

An anti-climax in every sense – like many a gothic romance, Twilight is all about the risks and rewards of allowing intimacy. Romance? If you like, but that other stuff’ll kill you: a concept both troubling and refreshing in a teen movie, if for no other reason than the distinct lack of flesh on camera. That really should make plenty of room for exploring the fears and contradictions that still cloud any discussion of teen sexuality, for character and plot, but no such luck. Instead, Twilight frantically sublimates those murky longings into a fetish for violent death.

Quick! The fans are at my door. Maybe I can distract them with something glittery?

If you can overlook the blatant, constant product placement – lookie here, kids! A shiny Volvo!  An Apple computer! – Twilight updates a long tradition in vampire lore and old-fashioned romance with style if not substance.

When not plundering the literary canon for potential screen gold, screenwriters are often concerned with rendering the author’s lot on screen. Three broad myths typically result: the tortured, tragic artist with furrowed brow and repetitive strain injury of the fingers (or wrists, an occupational hazard of all that navel-gazing), the bitter, suicidal drunk, or writer-as-rebel-cum-rock-star, perpetuated by anything vaguely related to Hunter S. Thompson or Jack Kerouac. So too US crime romp Castle.

All of the above inflate the sizable bubble of writerly vanity; heaven forbid readers, you poor, mediocre plebs not gifted by the muses, should run away with the idea that writers of those airport paperbacks and indeed, the literary titans of this world are much like you.

TV-land frequently indulges in this sort of wish fulfilment; recasting it’s often overlooked and beleaguered creatives as youthful, glamorous and dynamic.  True to form, Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Waitress, Desperate Housewives) acquits himself well as the titular Richard Castle. After all, this is a man who makes a flinty space-age outlaw named Malcom sexy. 

Fillion slides archly through the pilot on a slime of dubious hell-raiser charm and blue-eyed handsomeness as the titular crime novelist, who finds himself caught up in a real murder investigation. But, before we get to the gore, the series takes a moment to establish the difficulties of being a best-selling author. Not least of which is chronic boredom, what with the endless hobnobbing with the great and the good at glitzy parties, and having to bat away palpitating young murder groupies.

The resultant unsavoury train of thought on Dan Brown et al and their nocturnal habits requires me to conjure the, ahem, arresting image of Castle’s procession through the streets of New York on a liberated police horse a la Lady Godiva, one of many debauched stories alluded to.  It also begs the question, how on earth do these people find time to actually write?

Castle begins the series failing to tackle this particular problem, having killed off a beloved character, in denial and in search of inspiration. He finds it in the shape of a comely, if gruff police detective, investigating a series of copycat killings. Cut from the same maverick cloth as many a modern TV crime fighter, but with one important difference: Richard Castle is all shiny surface, with nary a smudge of the soul to be found. Instead, Castle flirts with the gamine Detective Beckett (Stana Katic, Quantum of Solace, Heroes) and has himself a grand adventure.

She looks doe-eyed and delicate, but underestimate her at your peril. Beckett’s one of the boys, kicking down doors and taking down perps. There’s a decided whiff of Significant Backstory, about her too, during one of Castle’s many smooth, showboating sequences. As ‘smart, attractive women become lawyers’ not cops, Castle aims his sub-Holmesian slings and arrows at Beckett when the come-hither looks fail. Even if he can’t grasp the chasm between reality and fiction at crime scenes, when it comes to Kate Beckett, Castle hits home almost at once. 

Ah, another one of my favourite cop clichés, in which the damaged woman in a man’s world covers her pain with a tough exterior. Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison remains the best example; she made the archetype smart, complex, if frequently unlikeable – no such luck here. The implication is that Beckett’s a mere kill-joy who needs a  man-child with a no-means-yes approach to gender politics to shake her up a little. One finds more facets to the principal characters in an advert for cleaning products.

That said, Castle refuses to take itself seriously. Instead, leading the viewer by the nose toward a dramatic emotional connection before the punch line, giving said nose a gleeful ‘gotcha’ tweak. Like the majority of scenes in which Castle appears with his vastly more sensible teenage daughter and showbiz mother. If you smell another cliché here, you’d be right – his daughter is wise beyond her years, her sole function being to roll her eyes at the grown-ups’ childish antics, and to prompt one of those squinty, staring-into-the-middle distance eureka moments.

Castle aims some neat jabs at the commercial end of the publishing industry and the nuts-and-bolts formula approach favoured by certain thriller writers; I greatly enjoyed the hideously awkward cameos from real-life authors like James Patterson, and TV screenplay veteran Stephen J. Cannell (currently re-booting the A-Team for the summer). Name-checking aside, we know they’re writers because they say writerly things like ‘self-aggrandising’. But, in essentials, a zippy chimera of Murder, She Wrote, CSI: NY and Moonlighting, with fun dialogue, set in a gleaming tourist-board New York never darkened by rainclouds. Now that The Mentalist’s writers have given their characters a welcome, bloody kick in the teeth, Castle is enjoyable enough to paper over its familiarity.

Here’s a conversation, which may, or may not have actually taken place:

My sister: I’ve stopped watching Heroes.

Me: What? Why? We love that show!

My sister: The story’s gone all wobbly. I’ve lost interest.

Me: Okay. I’ll give you that. But listen! Season Four’s got a creepy travelling carnival, a shape-shifting supervillain, a synaesthetic intervention, a murder mystery, a sweet teenage romance, a-

My sister: Nah. Boring! (*Returns to The Sopranos instead*)

Not enough happening there for you either, gentle reader?

I count myself among the legions of viewers who deserted Heroes well before the writer’s strike, frustrated by the ill-conceived time-bending plots that made no sense in the context of the show, or the characters’ previous actions. Now, I love a good time-space-continuum-conundrum as much as the next girl, and I’ll always make time for Zachary Quinto and his mesmerising eyebrows. But I’d just about reached my limit.

Like many a fantasy and sci-fi series, Heroes forgets that while playing in a universe where almost anything is possible, rules must be set in order to achieve jeopardy and drama – if no character can ever truly die, each resurrection becomes less dramatic, each fight less important, so the viewer needs something else to worry about.

In addition, by neutering its most charismatic villain for an entire season, Tim Kring et al sliced themselves off at the knees, resulting in aforementioned time-bending plots. Persisting with this, endeavouring to persuade long-suffering fans that this was all part of a profound we’re-saying-something-big-‘bout-the human-condition plan met with limited success.

The woolly plotting emphasised further by the vague, quasi-cosmic voice-overs delivered by Dr. Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy), which have been ditched as part of the redux. The new and improved Heroes also returns to some of the original central characters, finding them the same in essentials as in series one, but a little changed.

Hiro’s (Masi Oka) original boyish charm and the pleasure he took in his abilities is back, but his character matures as he faces his own mortality. Watch out for a cheeky exchange in which Hiro acknowledges this and literally dismisses his former self.  

Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) is re-established as the moral centre of the show – he’s dropped the tough-guy stuff for earnest and sensitive, as the universe’s avenging paramedic. The cheerleader (a glowing Hayden Panettiere, Ally McBeal) might have been saved, and finding new ways to save herself, but the world dangles in constant peril.

Not least from the constant scheming of the elder generation, which is near impossible to follow. Noah Bennett, or HRG as he was better known for the early seasons, plays the morally ambiguous family man, this time attempting to escape his violent past, and protect his daughter’s attempts at a normal life. His father-daughter interaction with Claire (Panettiere) as deft and affecting as any amount of effects wizardry, thanks to dry underplaying by Jack Coleman. Through them, Heroes gropes for a sense of humour, parodying the all-American family ideal, and its recurring theme of belonging during a caustic thanksgiving with the Bennetts’ newly expanded family.

Watch out for the Sullivan brothers and their extended family of gifted itinerants, especially the glittery steampunk aesthetic that provides the effects team ample opportunity to soar. 

That said, some of Heroes’ irritations of old remain – the paucity of characters living outside of the US and the occasionally clunky, sanctimonious dialogue. Let’s not dwell on the currently not-quite undead Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar, Top Gun), and his headache inducing story-arc. For now, I’m content to enjoy the beginnings of a purpose for the main cast, intriguing new characters like Gretchen (Madeleine Zima, Californication) and Emma (Deanne Bray, The L Word). Best of all, Sylar (Zachary Quinto, Star Trek) rediscovering his evil mojo, even if setting his identity crisis in a hall of mirrors is foghorn subtle.

Seems I’m a glutton for punishment, as I’ll keep watching Heroes.  I’ll forgive this time, for its ambition to be more than a niche sci-fi series expressed in those great Acme-anvils of symbolism that sit awkwardly alongside fantastic set pieces, and moments of joyous imagination.

Scary Just Got Sexy.

It took me some time to get round to Supernatural, put off by the ridiculous ITV trailer, with that idiotic tagline. Did it really? How did I miss that?  Oh, wait. It’s for people who’ve never read Dracula. Or even Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, Northanger Abbey. Or, for something more up-to-date, see Ginger Snaps, The Witches of Eastwick, or even Twilight. Simmering subtext is the name of the game, folks.

Supernatural concerns brothers Sam  and Dean Winchester, as they travel the States on a quest-cum-road trip to find their missing father (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Grey’s Anatomy, PS, I Love You, Watchmen) and tackle the demon which left the brothers motherless. En route, they take up the family trade, ridding the world of evil one restless spirit at a time. Played by photogenic alumni of various grades of teen gloss, a quick primer in case you have difficulty telling the brothers apart:

Dean (Jensen Ackles), the stoic, growling elder brother. Distinguishable by his fondness for cock rock, his equally growly muscle car, and by the suspiciously perfect cupid’s bow.

Sam (Jared Padalecki), the introspective, intellectual floppy haired one, afflicted by loss, premonitions of doom, a dark birthright and an inferior pout.

As well as demons and vampires, the boys endure endless artfully grubby motel rooms, and a fractious relationship, which provides most of the humour. The leads founder when the whip-crack brisk plots require more emotional depth than carefully choreographed action, barefaced cheek, or po-faced heroics, but Supernatural is unafraid to tinker with the Monster-of-the-Week formula, or poke fun at itself.

By the second season, the writers experiment with non-linear storylines, and picking apart the absurdities of the show’s mythology, like when someone finally thinks to ask where vanquished spirits end up. There’s the spry, if glaringly obvious running gag that Winchesters are frequently mistaken for lovers thanks to their intimate living arrangements, bickering and over-compensating machismo. Even my creaky and sadly unreliable gaydar pinged a little when watching the show: is it Supernatural’s manly panic about pansy stuff like, uh, feelin’s? Because we all know that real badass,  hard drinkin’, skirt chasin’ ghost huntin’, demon wastin’ manly men only use consonants at the end of verbs when absolutely necessary.

Or is it a nod to the huge, weird and occasionally wonderful fan community that propels this show’s success?  Nah, it’s just odd-couple laughs and copper-bottomed entertainment, as in Mid Season Two episodes Tall Tales and Roadkill.

Supernatural takes sexuality off the back burner, and makes it the text, what with all the nubile young bodies cluttering almost every frame. I could work myself up into a proto-feminist lather about the constant drooling camerawork slithering over cleavages and thighs, the helpless screaming damsels, or lip glossed satanic hellcats who snare hapless men by moonlight to their deaths while chanting pig-Latin in parked cars, or girls without the sense not to do silly, slasher-flick things like head out alone into the woods on a misty night.

But that would be too much like hard work for Supernatural, and much less amusing than giggling over the occasional tumble; memorably, the tortured sex scene that takes place post-peril, in Heart, by a symbolically blazing fireplace. Watch out for lots of gratuitous, waxed male chest, as well as back scratching and coy biting. Y’know, ‘cos the girl’s an animal in the sack, with great nails, one who might tear your lungs out, Jim. No fraidy-cat subtext about the perils of female sexuality there at all. None.

Still, I got a kick out of the movie-nerd in-jokes – using aliases Dante and Landis during a werewolf episode, after the respective directors of An American Werewolf in London and The Howling, or guest turns to tickle horror fans, like The Exorcist’s Linda Blair as a sceptical small-town cop.

Scary most definitely is sexy, even if this doesn’t quite hit the spot. Just watch anything with Kevin Spacey being slippery, or John Malkovitch in Dangerous Liaisons. Or, um, Alan Rickman. But when taken with a pinch of salt tossed over one shoulder, and your brain in neutral, Supernatural serves up big, brash, dumb fun.