Kiera did put her trust in Betty, though, and she let her know before the end that she might be “switching horses.” This is a welcome if subtle payoff to the awakening Kiera claimed to have experienced in the last episode. And although she rejects Garza’s idea of them as partners (did she forget the Freelancer prison escape?) it’s clear the tide is turning. I like seeing a few characters start on new endeavors this week....
2.6 To One Shortly To Die This week, Corky and Francis are back together on a case. The stage is set for sparks to fly… and they don’t. Aside from a few plot developments (which could have been covered in a total of ten minutes), To One Shortly to Die is mostly filler. Even the episode’s criminal investigation makes so little progress that it has not been solved by the end of the episode....
I am reminded by this week’s section, that the real Blackbeard married a girl of good family after he retired. Apparently he thought that being married and living the life of a rich, but respectable man would be a lot more interesting than it was. The real Blackbeard kept the most loyal of his former crew around, and was going out to sea with them within a couple of months of “going straight....
Damien season 1, episode 1. Damien opens with horror within a horror. In the middle of war torn Damascus where people are being ripped from their homes, their heads being smashed along with their religious iconography, an old woman sets the tone. Damien Thorn had been photographing the woman right before the tanks rolled in. The soon to be Antichrist’s first instincts are to help the old woman as she is about to get crushed by an uncaring invading force but she winds up giving him his first lesson in his new education....
And that’s even taking into account Datak’s early release from Camp Reverie, which was sooner than expected but brought a welcome resolution to a potentially stale situation. The obligatory weekly bath scene was a masterful Godfather-esque alternative to the musical montage Defiance occasionally indulges in. The conditions of his release also give me great joy: he must protect Doc Yewll as she continues her incomprehensible Indogene research on behalf of Pottinger....
2.5 Put The Damage On So far I’ve not been a big fan of the subplot where Amanda becomes a drug addict, but here it found a place to thrive, when she started to imagine that the man who raped her had come back to terrorise her. This coincides with the reappearance of an old flame of the Doc’s, and while these two things seem at the time entirely unrelated, they’re actually importantly connected....
Which makes their uncomfortable union even more bizarre as this season develops. Is it a marriage of convenience? And if so, how unpleasant a divorce are we likely to experience at some point? Soon Dexter is distracted when he turns up at another skinning crime scene, this time for the kid, Wendell, that Debra tried to get to talk in the previous show. Someone is killing all those related to Freebo, and it isn’t Dexter!...
But what on earth is it? The most obvious place to start is with an anagram. Osterhagen itself can be rearranged to form the words ‘Earth’s Gone’. So does the key bring it back? Or is it the kind of key that you use, as we suspect, as a very last resort once the fate of the world looks doomed? It wouldn’t surprise us if it proved to be a suicide device of sorts for whoever chose to use it, for use when the future of the planet looks doomed....
Warning: this review contains spoilers. A spoiler-free version is here. From the off, we got Matt Smith as we met him on New Year’s Day, desperately trying to safely land a Tardis that’s feeling the after effects of the Doctor’s regeneration. And the immediate impression is that this is very much business as usual. Smith comes across not a million miles away from early David Tennant, not least with the “still cooking” sequence as he comes to terms with his new personality (although that was a fun scene, nicely played....
The general consensus come the end credits of The Eleventh Hour seemed to be that the new era of Doctor Who was off to a good, solid start (that’s a little bit of an understatement). But for me, it’s this second episode I’ve been waiting for, The Beast Below. That won’t be happening here, though. For The Beast Below was very good indeed. It worked on more than one level too....
In some ways the spectacular return of Alpha in season one was the highlight of that year, so it was kind of natural that he’d be back again this year. Except I’d thought they’d hold that till the finale, which they still might do. His first action is to get the attention of Dollhouse by systematically working his way through Echo’s romantic engagements clients, killing them. But initially, Dollhouse is too preoccupied with the returned Echo to really take notice....
Dragon Ball Super Episode 40 “That’s the mysterious effect of Goku!” It’s not every episode where a tournament comes to an end and Goku also gropes an alien ruler’s genitals! There’s a lot to talk about on this latest Dragon Ball Super! Seriously though, that gag with the Galactic King genital tentacles is so insane and out of place, yet it’s one of my all-time favorite moments from the entire series....
Nothing is really known about the project right now, which has been quiet for quite some time (and has apparently changed studios from Warner Bros to Paramount since we last heard anything). Last year the word was that David Leslie Johnson, who has some fantasy experience from Wrath Of The Titans would write, while Rob Letterman, who had fun with the Goosebumps movie, would direct, and the plan was that they would be looking for a lighter, Guardians Of The Galaxy flavour to this one....
3.3 Just A Regular Irregular To my mind, Elementary’s story-of-the-week cases are at their best when dealing with eccentrics and their nutty, nerdy obsessions (remember last season’s nano-dino fun?), so this week’s was spot-on for me. Funny, revealing and engaging, the high-end mathematics puzzle-turned-revenge hunt unravelled entertainingly, driven along by the engine of Sommers’ endearingly neurotic mathematician. The rich kid may have been a prime candidate from the moment he walked in (we all know how Elementary feels about people who like money), but enough threads were left dangling to keep it fun until the end....
Enemy Front has “unfinished game pushed out the door by a publisher who’s lost its patience” written all over it. Ignoring the fact that the game was announced in 2011 and missed its 2012 release date by two freakin’ years, the dearth of previews, trailers, or any fanfare whatsoever was suspicious at best. When I picked up the game and was charged only $40 dollars for it, those suspicions turned to dread....
Whether you think they’re the best thing about superhero movies or a cynical attempt to generate marketing hype, it’s hard to remember what it was like to see a superhero film in the cinema before they all had their customary post-credits sequence attached. Daredevil might not have done a lot for the superhero genre, but its comedy post-credits appearance of Bullseye paved the way for what was to come. Easter eggs and fan-service for all!...
One of the things I loved most about the original Terminator film was the brief glimpses the audience got of life after the robot uprising. Once the Terminators started roaming the wastes and hunting humans, and humans organized a resistance, things got interesting. One of the problems with V was their unwillingness to get into the actual resistance part, instead turning the Fifth Column into more of a terrorist group than organized fighters....
Needless to say when I glanced over just who is involved, my excitement spiked like a diabetic’s blood sugar after a doughnut binge. Danial Knauf, late of the absolutely brilliant series Carnivale, wrote the script. That was all I needed to see to be squirming in anticipation, but then I saw it was directed by Hong Kong kung fu and horror specialist (and secretly one of my favorite directors), Ronny Yu....
Fear the Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 8 I’m just going to cut to the chase here and say that “Grotesque” is not only one of season two’s best episodes, it’s also one of Fear the Walking Dead’s best episodes overall. Most of the credit for this is due to Frank Dillane’s Nick, on whose shoulders “Grotesque” squarely rests. Dillane’s up to the task, delivering a performance that ranges from gleeful to terrified to grateful—all in the span of an hour....
1990’s Flatliners is a sci-fi inflected psychological horror, directed by Joel Schumacher and boasting an all-star cast. In the original, Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt and William Baldwin star as medical students who conduct ill-advised experiments on themselves in the hope of proving that there is life after death. So, in case you haven’t seen the original, Courtney Holmes (Page) enlists her classmates to stop her heart and then resuscitate her, monitoring and recording her brain activity....
