Andy-296

Spartacus second season is not as good as the first one, but is still very entertaining, if you enjoy as I do this sort of overcharged pulp. The first season brilliantly ended with Spartacus and his fellow gladiators rising up and massacring their master Batiatus and escaping to become fugitives. The illness of star Andy Whitfield (regrettably, he ended up dying of cancer soon after) changed the plans of the producers, and instead of making a regular second season following Spartacus exploits as a rebel leader, they choose a short six episode prequel. The action takes place some years before Spartacus arrival in town, and we see how the upcoming Batiatus rises up to become the top lanista in Capua, against his main rival in the gladiator business, the very evil Tullius (Stephen Lovatt, who is great). To achieve this, he will rely, among others, on his top gladiator, Gannicus (Dustin Clare), originally bought to Tullius at a bargain price, as well as in Crixus and the trainer Oenomaus (the last two, seen in the first season).

If Batiatus seemed quite a mean man in the first season, here we see him fight against an even meaner man, Tullius, so we sort of end up sympathizing with him. For something that for obvious reasons was rushed into production, the script is rather good. As with the first season, Gods of the Arena is full of graphic violence and sex filmed with relish. A problem with the second season, in my opinion, is that Gannicus is not as an interesting character as Spartacus (we don't have much of a background story on him), so the focus of the season is on Batiatus, and actor John Hannah does not disappoint. While the machinations between the two masters are great, what is lacking is something as interesting in the sand.

Emotionally overwhelming documentary series from Germany is about kids going to school in some of the most remote places in the globe. To reach school, they have to walk scores of miles through scorching hot deserts, tropical jungles full of wild animals, dangerous rivers, the frozen tundra. A lot of these children live in extreme poverty and one hopes that the filmmakers did at least share some of whatever money they earn from these documentaries with them. All the series is very good, but I particularly reccomend the episode set in Bolivia and in Papua New Guinea.

A biopic of Bert Trautmann, a once German POW in England who unexpectedly succeeded as a goalkeeper in the English football league during the immediate postwar years. German directed but filmed in England with mostly English actors, this film is quite awful with its maudlin, manipulative dialogue. The issue of Trautmann being a German soldier during the war is almost continuously raised during the movie - obviously if the film wanted to be honest it has to talk about this, but was it necessary to mention it all the time? The actors are good but they can only do so much faced with the awful lines that they have to utter. Some of the subplots, like the one of the English rabbi who first opposed him playing in Manchester City as a Nazi but then supports him, are incredibly embarrassing. Another awful scene is the one where the German prisoners in England are made to watch (real) films of the concentration camps. Trautmann's life was surely interesting but it needed a far more subtle film. The only thing to recommend for it is a good reconstruction of the English working class milieu during the postwar.