Posts

It’s familiar stuff for late-career Neeson at first glance: he plays alcoholic, retired Irish hitman Jimmy “The Grave Digger” Conlon, estranged from his fully-grown son Michael (the RoboCop remake’s Joel Kinnaman) but still friendly with his old mob boss Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris). Jimmy’s suffering through a thoroughly miserable Christmas in New York – even demeaning himself by playing a particularly bad Santa at a gangsters’ festive party – when the actions of Shawn’s hot-headed son Danny (Boyd Holbrook) land everyone in a world of pain....

The Sailor Guardians use their vague sailor mojo to go to the Sea of Serenity on the moon, where they find the ruins of the Silver Millennium. In the heart of the castle, they come across a sword embedded in a pedestal of some kind, and have an Arthurian moment where they attempt to pull it out. Even with Mercury and Mars’ help, Jupiter can’t pull it out, but Venus manages to do it on her own....

Having recently covered this story in the original ’90s anime, there are a lot of items fresh in my mind, and there’s bound to be some comparison, but I’ll do my best to take this one on its own merits. Even though they’re only shorter by about a minute, it seems like the story is just starting to get going and then you hit the commercial break at the halfway point....

Scandal Season 7 Episode 12 How to Get Away With Murder Season 4 Episode 13 The crossover event between Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder was one for the record books. The once-mighty Olivia Pope has fallen from her high perch and has taken refuge as a lecturer at nearby Middletown University in Philadelphia. In her previous world of power brokers, B613, and as the former mistress of President Grant, this would qualify as a step backward....

Freddy hasn’t really done much more than hang around in the background, looking confused and inducing comas to all around him this series. Sometimes he even makes sounds with his mouth which could be mistaken for words. At least that’s what I could pick up over my own yawning. He’s so blissfully content in his obliviousness that he even failed to react when Katie’s head landed up in his lap last week....

Most notable was Javier Bardem’s performance as Raoul Silva (he is the bad guy, here). Bardem (No Country For Old Men) plays the role of a former M16 agent who is seeking revenge on M16 for betraying him. Specifically, Bardem spends the entire film trying to kill M, played by Judi Dench. Bardem has definitely made his mark on the Bond franchise by creating a villain unlike any other in the bond series....

The stand-off between director Bong and the Weinsteins, who wanted to make Snowpiercer accessible to “audiences in Iowa and Oklahoma” has, thankfully, been resolved since, and it seems that Snowpiercer will soon be screened uncut in countries such as Britain and America. In a strange parallel between life and art, the Weinsteins’ implied assumption that audiences in the southern states of America are too dim to understand Snowpiercer‘s quieter moments is something that could have come from the mouth of one of the brutal oppressors in Bong’s movie....

Son of Zorn was a fairly ambitious idea that married ‘80s nostalgia with modern sitcom tropes when it imagined a scenario where the He-Man-esque Zorn, an animated barbarian warrior from the fictional island of Zephyria (and voiced by Jason Sudeikis), showed up in modern live-action Orange County, California. Zorn is attempting to connect with his flesh and blood son, Alan (Johnny Pemberton), as well as with his ex-wife Edie (Cheryl Hines) and her new fiancé Craig (Tim Meadows)....

South Park was gone longer then we’ve been used to. In this case absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder, but it left the feeling that Matt Stone and Trey Parker would come out firing like they tend to do for each season opener. While tonight’s “Let Go, Let Gov” reminded us how good it feels to be immersed in the South Park universe, it’s clear the show’s creators have plenty on their minds and roughly 20 short minutes to get their point across....

3.8 Separate Paths Well, we knew this was coming, but that didn’t make it any less awesome when it happened. Crixus and Spartacus finally part ways, as demanded by historical record – only this time, it wasn’t a fundamental disagreement, but an amicable parting made of everything that came before. Of course, at this late stage in the series those goodbyes felt palpable and real, and the subsequent battle between Crixus and the Roman forces contained the promise of death for much of the cast....

Terrorists and kidnap take precedence this week, as a team member’s family are drawn into the fray. With an imprisoned religious fanatic, Zubier Al-Saad (who bears a passing resemblance to a real-life preacher who may have difficulty scratching an itch on his nose) preying on the susceptible and indoctrinating them into his terrorist cause, the team are well aware of the potentially volatile situation. As such, they have Ashur Mohali, a mole working on the inside....

You might not expect a more full and frank procedural approach from a film that’s been garlanded with awards nominations for the last few months, but you might expect it of director Tom McCarthy, who previously gave us Win Win and The Station Agent. For better or worse, his latest truly has no frills, instead zeroing in on the nitty-gritty of how a major true story was reported. As it turns out, one of Marty’s very first moves is to assign Robby’s Spotlight team to look into an unreported tip that the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Law (Len Carlou) was aware of child abuse in the church and covered it up....

“Slavery and the desert forged Skywalker,” Sidious says, smiling, crowing because the dark side has Vader so completely enslaved. Tarkin is very much a story about people being forged – specifically, rich, powerful men. Tarkin himself undergoes a primitive rite of passage. A Rebellion so young that its members are referred to as Republic loyalists leads the Empire on a dangerous chase. James Luceno is known for politically complex, atmospheric, encyclopedically knowledgable books about Star Wars villains like Darth Plagueis, and Tarkin very much continues in that vein....

2.4 Brothers Of The Broken Horn Brothers Of The Broken Horn brings the young Jedi Ezra into the smuggler side of things, as he encounters a rogue’s gallery including The Clone Wars’ Hondo Ohnaka. Although I’ve been wary of Rebels leaning too much on The Clone Wars before, Hondo earns his keep with his trademark clever dialogue. The episode doesn’t quite put a finger on Ezra’s emotional story, but the madcap plot is almost — almost — enough to make up for that....

Star Wars Rebels Season 3 Episode 7 The third season of Rebels is finally exploring backstories. We saw characters’ histories come to the fore in “Hera’s Heroes,” we saw it in Zeb’s adventures with the Lasat, and now Sabine’s heritage becomes more important. The motivating force behind this episode is Fenn Rau, the Mandalorian soldier we saw fighting on behalf of his people during the Clone Wars. In season two he was captured by Sabine and Kanan, who wanted to offer him an alliance, but he isn’t interested....

3.9 The Wynkahthu Job Remember Hondo? He’s back in The Wynkahthu Job, and his banter with Ezra makes for an episode that feels a bit more essential than the last few have been, even if it doesn’t actually move the plot forward much. The titular Wynkahthu job is an Imperial cargo ship slowly being pulled into a planet’s stormy atmosphere, apparently unsupervised. Hondo offers it and the bombs it carries to the Rebellion in exchange for other valuable cargo on board....

Steven Universe Season 5 Episode 8 Is Peridot depressed? Look at this quote from the end of the episode. She glosses over it, as if everyone deals with that all the time. Now that might just be Peridot assuming things but it does strike at something very real. Again bringing my own life into viewing this episode, that’s what depression can feel like. That everything is hopeless. Sure, you can still have fun and hang with your friends....

The title character this week is Madeline Pratt (guest star Jennifer Ehle), a flame of Red’s with an eye for art and artifacts. Less someone who needs to be stopped at all costs and more a criminal who needs to be manipulated into doing what the FBI thinks it wants (but, as usual, is really what Red wants), Madeline isn’t the most compelling villain of the week we’ve seen on The Blacklist, but at least Ehle and Spader have enough chemistry to make us believe that there were some sparks between them....

I’ve got a lot of uncles, and I think I can say with 100 percent confidence that the most they would do if they discovered that my boyfriend or husband was a lying spy is look vaguely uncomfortable and ask me about work. Because it would be weird for them to reveal that they are somehow embroiled in an intrigue with your now-ex lover and have paid them off to be sure they never mess with you again....

Kicking season four off of the Star Wars animated series is a double bill of underwater action on the home world of the Mon Calamari, Mon Cala. And look who’s making his series debut, Admiral ‘It’s A Trap!’ Ackbar. Well, actually, the rubber faced fish creature is just a Captain here, but it’s great to see the wobbly-handed lobster boy in animated form. His world is descending into war with the other indigenous species, the Quarren (or ‘Squid Head’ to the less tactful), leading to an opening scene full of politics and reminiscent of the senate scenes from The Phantom Menace....