Politicians mope behind their desks. Flags fly at half mast. A group of thugs upset a table of fruit and veg outside a supermarket. A homeless guy sits on a city pavement, gazes forlornly at the sky while clutching a sign that says, “I tried.” Yes, things have started looking pretty bleak since the end of Batman V Superman, and with its beacon of hope gone, humanity has drifted into a gloomy funk....
Rather than focusing on catfights, tight outfits, glasses of wine in the bath, and honey traps, it covers: women struggling and fighting to be listened to, the sexism of male bosses (even the good ones!), and husbands who assume being busy with work actually means you’re cheating on them. Of the four main women, two are over forty and two are women of color. All are fully realized characters, with assets and flaws, dark sides and redeeming qualities....
Kiss Me First Episode 3 It’s for this reason that the opening of episode three works so well. Having been left on the apparent cliffhanger of Leila transported to a world where she is still a child and her mother still alive, we’re thrown into what we can assume is the original launch event of Azana. We meet Ruth Palmer, the creator of the game, and later see that she has been convicted of the manslaughter of her husband and partner....
Krypton Season 1, Episode 6 Would you trade the future of your planet for a grandson you’ve never met? This is what Adam Strange inarticulately asks of Seg in “Civil War,” a dramatic irony-laden, intensely suspenseful episode of Krypton that addresses some of the lingering time travel tensions in complicated, character-driven ways. I’m glad that Krypton is finally addressing the Adam Strange situation, but I do wish Adam and Seg had developed more of a friendship prior to this episode....
Legends of Tomorrow Episode 11 “I refuse to live with the regret I see on your face right now.” Stein’s little side quest to save that little boy in Salvation was far from the focus of the episode. But it was (again, the dopey moment at the end aside) an effective illustration of so much about what makes this show work, even when the writing is as flawed as its characters....
Legends of Tomorrow Season 3 Episode 7 A show like Legends is sometimes tough. With a cast like this, all the stories that need developing, and all the tones the show cycles through, sometimes you get an episode that feels confused. This week was one of those, and despite the tonal whiplash, it ended up beng pretty good. It helped that both halves focused on different strengths: Mick Rory and being completely ridiculous....
Luckily, the good press and decent poster campaign Let The Right One In has been receiving can only help. The campaign is clearly aimed at the crowd who lap up all of the Asian horror films that we have been seeing over the past 5 years. Director Tomas Alfredson composes a beautifully shot film. It isn’t hard for him to make the snow heavy landscapes stand out and support its characters....
Lethal Weapon Season 2 Episode 6 The opening scene of this episode of Lethal Weapon begins with the peculiar double feature of Heat and Grumpier Old Men at a cineplex. The image flies away before it has much of a chance to register with the audience, but it feels representative of something larger here. A double feature of Heat and Grumpier Old Men shouldn’t go together. It shouldn’t be something that works....
Although, while its ephemera are often highlighted, its more subtle aspects are rarely championed. Has there ever been a similar cultural organ, which acts simultaneously as an online archive for visual media, and a platform for everyday voices? At its heart, it is an immersive catalogue of video culture, from music promos and trailers to skits and spoofs, from astoundingly creative content to self-obsessed vlogging. Out of this struggle for legitimacy and definition comes Life In A Day, an ambitious, unashamedly self-aggrandising project, which takes one aspect of the YouTube phenomena, that of micro-autobiography, and uses it to tell the modest story of life as we knew it on 24th July 2010....
Meg (Willa Fitzgerald), Jo (Maya Hawke), Beth (Annes Elwy), and Amy (Kathryn Newton) are sisters living together with their mother (the divine Emily Watson) in Massachusetts during the American Civil War. Their father (Dylan Baker) is away with the Union Army and though the fighting is distant, its effects are still very much felt. Their neighbour Laurie (Jonah Hauer-King) becomes their close friend as the sisters grow up, each with their own very set ideas of the lives they want to lead....
Jason Fuchs, who wrote Wonder Woman, will pen the first cinematic adventure of the intergalactic bounty hunter. He has apparently completed a draft, and The Wrap reports that none other than Michael Bay came in to give some notes on the screenplay. If Bay is happy with the rewrite, Warner Bros. may try to convince him to direct. There have been attempts to bring Lobo to the screen before, with Guy Ritchie interested at one point, and San Andreas director Brad Peyton involved as recently as 2012....
Lucifer Season 3 Episode 14 “Save it, Evil Lopez.” When Lucifer tells Chloe that “brothers can’t be trusted,” he not only sums up the heart of the murder in “My Brother’s Keeper,” but brings the dissention within his own family back to the forefront. The beauty of tonight’s Lucifer episode lies in its examination of the tenuous bonds that hold family members together despite their often conflicting motivations and aspirations. However, it’s the friction between Cain and Amenadiel that truly sets the stage for some intense soul-searching down the road....
So, after the trailer and the first film, we’re already familiar with the cinematic language of Machete. We know how it looks, we know the tone, we know the character and we know to expect the unexpected. The question we have for Machete Kills, then, is how do you give an audience the unexpected when they’re already expecting it? Well, hats off to Robert Rodriguez, who’s found an unexpected answer to this question....
7.5 The Runaways Ginsberg is the first, however, to be wheeled out in restraints after uttering what has to be the creepiest and most Lynchian line in Mad Men’s seven year history. Ben Feldman’s matter-of-fact delivery of “It’s my nipple. It’s the valve” was a moment of unexpected grotesquery, a dark conclusion to last week’s manic couch comedy and a reminder from Mad Men that civilised man is always just a low hum and a box cutter away from psychosis....
For Robbie, encouraging and embracing the vision of Terminal writer/director Vaughn Stein meant going a step further and becoming a producer on the independently made film, her second project as a producer after I, Tonya. “The script was on my kitchen bench,” she recalls, sitting with Stein and co-star Simon Pegg among a small circle of journalists during a roundtable discussion in Hollywood. “I was living, at the time, with my producing partners, because we’re first and foremost friends, and we were all living together in London....
Since last week’s review, a few people have tried to explain that some of what was presented there with the dragon related to the oldest Merlin tales, Myrddin Wyllt, and Myrddin Emrys. I’d have accepted that if those stories fitted this show, but they don’t in any substantive detail. But I care less about that and more about the idea that Merlin and Arthur are the same age. To my mind they’re not meant to be buddies like Spock and Kirk (yes, Spock is older…....
Why? First of all you know how Doctor Who has ‘cheap’ episodes? You know, the ones like Turn Left or that dire one with Peter Kay in it. Well, it seems Merlin has cut the budget already and gone straight for that episode, the one where they have little or no money spent on. No monsters. No great dragon. Nothing. Not one drop of CG or money is shown on screen and while a stripped down character-driven story could have worked in fleshing out the flimsy wafer thin cast, really this is a wasted opportunity....
4.2 The Darkest Hour Part 2 Arthur can’t really abandon his quest to close the rift and sends brave Sir Lancelot back to Camelot with Merlin slung over the back of a horse, through the spooky woods, whilst the others go to fight the good fight, and heal the veil that has unleashed evil spirits upon the world. Whilst Lancelot encounters the river dwelling Villea, good spirits that help Merlin heal, Arthur and crew encounter the giant, hairless rats called Wilderin that occupy the caves and pretty much want to eat our heroes....
4.6 A Servant Of Two Masters As Arthur drags Merlin through the forest, he keeps Merlin’s spirits up by telling him he’ll be fine in the morning and ready to polish his armour (not a euphemism.) Merlin, it turns out, is seriously wounded and Arthur plans to save him, finally confessing that Merlin isn’t a coward and is a great servant, quite brave and all the other stuff that we’ve known all along....
A humble enough beginning is seen here where it seems like the stakes this week might be on the smaller scale of things. We see Tyson and crew seeming entirely content with this week’s mystery simply entailing going to the airport and finding out who needs to be picked up from their flight, as well as the myriad of mini mysteries such as whether they brought luggage with them, had a carry-on package, and other air travel minutiae....
