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“War at First Hand” opens in France in 1470. This gave me hope, until Anne Neville (Juliet Aubrey) started talking and the first thing that came out of her mouth was they were going back to England. The Bad Queen Margaret of Anjou (Veerle Baetens) assures Anne that the captain says it is safe and Anne says “with a knife at his throat” or neck, can’t read my notes. I complained about the lack of humor in The White Queen before and I was reminded by her line reading....

This review contains spoilers. It took the work of solicitor John Mayhew (Toby Jones) to uncover her motivation. An anonymous note led him to a facially disfigured ex-colleague of Romaine’s with a tale to tell of sadism and revenge. Mayhew lapped it up, and produced evidence in court of Romaine’s plan to get Leonard sentenced to death so she could be with her new lover. The twelve good men loved the opportunity to punish Romaine for her infidelity – Vole walked free while she ended up in prison, serving a brief amount of time for perjury, and we were only half way through the running time for this final episode....

The X-Files Season 10 Episode 5 It was brief, but it took me far away from what by all conceivable critic logic tells me is an episode that takes bigger swings than “Fox Mantle,” and harder misses. Speaking as a fan, from X-Phile logic, this moment is on par with Mulder’s advice during the infamous batting practice scene in “The Unnatural” that sent ‘shippers into a drool: “We’re not gonna think,” he tells Scully, hands firmly on her hips....

This is Us Season 2 Episode 2 “A Manny-Splendored Thing”, delves deeper into Jack’s battle with alcoholism, Kate’s issues with her do-gooder mother, Rebecca, and Randall and Beth’s ongoing fostering challenges. Kevin’s been asked to return to the show, “The Manny”, that made him a star before his on-set meltdown co-starring Alan Thicke. One of the show’s strengths is toggling between the past and the present, allowing us a window into crucial character-building, and in Kate’s case, personality-crushing at the hands of her mother....

Rainbow Six allowed you to step into the boots of a counter-terrorism unit in a tactical tour de force in which one false move made all the difference between completing your mission and getting your entire team eliminated. Ghost Recon raised the stakes, giving you the power to influence world events by taking down oppressive regimes. And who can forget Splinter Cell? There’s no deadlier weapon than an agent of the Third Echelon....

It certainly seems that way. While the world of Tron: Legacy is replete with references to the original movie, it treats itself as a mostly fresh take on the franchise. The familiar elements are in place, but if you’ve never seen the original, you won’t be excluded. True, you might not feel the tingle of familiarity when the Recognizers approach – but their monolithic threat looms even larger today than it did the first time round....

Back for the penultimate episode in its second season run, Frenzy more than lived up to its title, before setting up what will be the final showdown to end all final showdowns. Welcome to the beginning of the end of Bon Temps. Bill, having gone to Queenie – as haughty as one would expect for a vampire in her position – spent a lovely day playing Yahtzee and declining the smorgasbord of hot young things, before Maryann’s immortality was finally revealed to him, along with the dastardly plan that she’s apparently been trying to carry out for centuries....

The people in the movie that aren’t Bella are also awful. Of course, there’s complications. First of all, Jacob is still in the picture, still shirtless, and still surrounded by other shirtless dudes who like to walk in slow-motion through fields like some sort of Indian tribe of jorts-wearing Reservoir Dogs. Oh yeah, there’s the little matter of Victoria (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard), who still has an unreasonable axe to grind against the Cullens and their pet human....

As it turns out, you should never trust a big screen robot who whispers ominous threats in your ear. It always ends badly. If you don’t believe me, just ask Logan Marshall-Green’s Grey in Upgrade, the new sci-fi thriller that concludes with the lad taking a long sabbatical inside of his own head. So how did we wind up at the point of Grey off to la la land and Stem, the artificial intelligence who was connecting Grey’s brain to his body, gaining complete control over Grey’s now vacated body?...

Veep Season 6 Episode 7 Maybe one of the reasons ex-President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is having such a hard time getting her presidential library going is because she doesn’t read books before she writes endorsements for them, or tasks Mike McClintock (Matt Walsh) to ghost one for her. Veep season 6, episode 7, “Blurb,” won’t bring literacy to schools, but it might bring depth to history lessons. There was an advance to the book, Mike asks, and illuminates why he is always a day late and a dollar short....

Vikings Season 4 Episode 13 It’s understandable why the latest episode of Vikings bears the title “Two Journeys,” however, the beginning of Lagertha’s long awaited overthrow of Queen Aslaug must be considered along side Ragnar’s trip to Wessex and Bjorn’s voyage to the Mediterranean. When you throw Ivar and Rollo into the mix, we watch as the family members’ journeys toward absolution, retribution, and self-discovery take us down familiar paths whose endpoints remain obscured....

This Vinyl review contains spoilers. Everybody thinks they’re a comedian in the industry and when the record labels get together to celebrate Maury Gold (Paul Ben-Victor) it’s an open invitation to a roast. That stunt that American Century Records pulled on Polygram has become the stuff of legend in the music world and Richie Finestra is teetering very close to being a laughingstock. But it gives Bobby Cannavale a chance to pull one of his patented Gyp Rosetti faces....

So what’s it about and where should it go? The show follows “Kazuda Xiono, a young pilot recruited by the Resistance and tasked with a top-secret mission to spy on the growing threat of the First Order.” They (Kazuda’s gender is yet to be announced) will presumably fill the Ezra Bridger role as a young point of view character with some growing to do, but their skill as a pilot also puts them in the position to be an important member of the New Republic’s military....

I have discovered the fundamental flaw in the Wii Fit program. I’m bored. During week 1, I worked out four out of seven days. During week 2, that dropped to two. Part of the problem is due to my lack of time. I’m a busy guy, work a minimum of 50 hours a week, and I have a family to take care of, laundry to do, dinner to cook etc....

2.1 Leader of the Pack The threat of Shannon and Tom discovering the Wolfbloods’ secret now removed (not that it’s stopped Stoneybridge’s Mulder from continuing her investigations), fresh peril was required for the series two opener. It arrived in the form of wild Alpha Ulric, set on killing Rhydian. Ulric’s introduction, if he goes on to fulfil a traditional ‘big bad’ role (nothing’s a given in Wolfblood), signals an older, more frightening direction for series two....

It’s somewhat depressing, then, that as scientists have discovered more and more about our galaxy, the planets that neighbour our own have gradually been ruled out as candidates for intelligent life. Mars, once thought to be home to an ancient civilisation living among a network of canals, is now known to be extinct, its core frozen and its atmosphere now a mere wisp of methane. Venus, alternately thought to be a covered in swamp and desert, and was the favoured setting for works of fiction by writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury, is a hostile planet of volcanic eruptions and poisonous gas....

This is just the way it should be of course: the Toy Story films may have been about the secret life of toys when they’ve not being played with, but it was three substantive and interesting narratives that ultimately made the trilogy sparkle. With Wreck-It Ralph, the same is true. It’s not at Toy Story level, but it gives Pixar’s trilogy a real run for its proverbial money. Outsider number one is Ralph, voicing by John C Reilly....

Unlike most people, I decided to try and put the time I actually spent watching Yogi Bear to good use, and conducted an experiment. Maybe if I expected it to end with a dead Yogi, and willed it with all my might, then through the magic of 3D, that’s what I’d actually see at the end. I called this experiment “Schrödinger’s Bear”. I say “classic”, but does anyone else find themselves knowing very little about Yogi Bear except what they’ve absorbed through popular culture, through The Simpsons and such like?...

Blunt and DeWitt play adoring half-sisters Iris and Hannah, whose relationship is tested when Iris’ best friend Jack (Duplass) spends a drunken night with Hannah at their father’s idyllic island cabin. While the dramatic situation may seem contrived (especially as Hannah’s grieving the end of a seven year same-sex relationship), the performances are nothing but warm, convincingly human, and often very funny. The story unfurls against a screensaver-pretty backdrop of forest coastline and log cabins, which, if nothing else, is guaranteed to give you holiday home envy....

This review contains spoilers. Say what you want to about American Horror Story, but it knows what it wants to be, and knows the best way to make that happen: lots of random sex scenes, and more butts per hour than any other show on cable. In between that, there are any number of horrifying events, from the throwing of bodily fluids to brutal canings, unwanted surgeries, and some of the best dialogue on television....