For over two minutes, Jack Black hams it up as the evil Bowser, who fries up some penguins in the trailer, while our titular plumber (Chris Pratt) tries to get his footing in the Mushroom Kingdom with the help of Toad (Keegan-Michael Key). Mario seems far from the platforming king we know him to be at the start of the trailer, which may just come down to balancing issues caused by his lack of ass....
The Expanse Season 6 Episode 5 No matter how explosive the coming finale might be, The Expanse season 6 will best be known as the most well written set of episodes where not much happened. There is no argument that “Why We Fight” is thematically very rich and filled with amazing dialogue, but aside from satisfying our need to have Drummer front and center for the final battle, this penultimate episode doesn’t scratch many itches....
The Flash Season 5 Episode 2 First, a confession. I should have given last week’s episode of The Flash five stars. I don’t know why I knocked off that half. Maybe I was just tired or something. I just needed to get that off my chest. I can lie to myself about any number of things, but I cannot lie to you, the readers. Ahem…anyway… “Blocked” got immediate points out of the gate for that atmospheric, eerie opening that completes the Cicada introduction from the ending of “Nora....
M Night Shyamalan’s eco-horror was released in 2008 after his declining run of hits, which began with The Sixth Sense (absolute masterpiece, nominated for 6 Oscars), Unbreakable (well liked, now part of a trilogy), Signs (pretty well liked), The Village (opinion is divided) and The Lady in the Water (bad). Perhaps because of Night’s rise and fall, taking the piss out of The Happening became an extreme sport, with the movie bagging worst film noms rather than oscars and being treated as a movie making pariah....
This The Last Kingdom review contains spoilers. The Last Kingdom Season 3 Episode 4 Ragnar Ragnarsson was right about one thing – that was the last extra-marital field he’d ever plough. Ragnar’s promise to Brida was made woefully true by the cowardly Aelswold and the manipulative Cnut, a typo in a ginger beard. It wasn’t a glorious death. Like his father before him, Ragnar was betrayed by a snake in the grass....
That man is Mark Watney (Matt Damon), the botanist on board a manned mission to Mars who is accidentally left for dead and stranded when the crew has to take off suddenly from the planet’s surface during a destructive storm. By the time Watney recovers and secures himself inside the crew’s habitat, the spaceship Hermes and its commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) have already embarked on their long journey back to Earth....
It should be said there’s nothing wrong with realism, but the focus on this style by many has severely restrained what animation can do. Disney can pour millions into making the CGI of The Lion King look so real it can be called “live-action,” but the great thing about animation is that it can be anything. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a fantastic example of what animation can do with its stylized look, pushing what animation is capable of....
(The team behind The One also made the updated War of the Worlds drama that aired around the same time as the BBC’s latest adaptation and is currently readying series two. Risk of confusion or comparison clearly doesn’t faze them.) Written by Misfits creator Howard Overman, The One is the eight-episode story of Rebecca Webb, the ruthless CEO of a billion pound introductions agency that has revolutionised love. Submit a DNA sample, pay the fee, and find your perfect genetic match....
The Orville Season 1, Episode 3 Forget the prime directive! The Orville this week explores ethical and cultural issues Star Trek never got a chance to attempt, and the episode admirably forces viewers to formulate their own opinions. Although “About a Girl” is ostensibly about gender politics among the Moclans, it also skillfully pulls in issues surrounding humans imposing their moral structure on an alien race as well as our preconceptions about same-sex relationships....
The world of Miss Fisher is filled with many rich character dynamics, but the relationship between Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis) and Detective Jack Robinson (Nathan Page) has always been at the heart of the period mystery drama. Three seasons of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries chronicled their ever-burgeoning romance, as they slowly fell in love over various murdered bodies (it’s more romantic than it sounds). The dynamic is also at the heart of Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears, the feature film continuation of Phryne’s story, which sees Jack pulled back into Phryne’s orbit after some time apart....
Superman & Lois season 2 was a wild ride, wasn’t it? From the Doomsday fakeout that ended up being Bizarro, to the completely new and unexpected version of Bizarro World we were introduced to, to the even more unexpected Parasite, it packed a lot into its 15 episodes. And the season finale still managed to bring surprises! We finally got an answer as to where the show exists within Arrowverse continuity, and it nicely set up Superman & Lois season 3 with a substantial tease of what’s to come....
Gotham City is a familiar playground for Loeb and Sale, having kicked off their tales of Batman’s formative years with a trio of Halloween-themed specials in Legends of the Dark Knight, before the “real-time” month to month holiday-themed Batman: The Long Halloween. That was followed by Batman: Dark Victory, a sprawling Two-Face origin story that also brought Dick Grayson into the story, as well as Catwoman: When in Rome, which revealed new details about Selina Kyle....
The Simpsons Season 33 Episode 8 The Simpsons season 33 episode 8, “Portrait of a Lackey on Fire,” is a celebration of the long-running series’ most closeted icon. For years, Waylon Smithers did time as an all-too-standard bearer of hidden identity in a workplace where labels stick with the half-lives of atomic residue. The innuendo-laden repartee with his boss, Mr. Burns, includes some of the cleverest writing of the series. In earlier seasons, Smithers’ personal life barely intruded into the office, unless you had to get past his network firewall to see his introductory screensaver....
Despite being a gamble, Burton had some pedigree. Just two movies into his career, he was already proving to be one of Hollywood’s most interesting mainstream directors. And the studio had, after all, seen early cuts of 1988’s Beetlejuice, Burton’s second film. The fantasy comedy, starring Michael Keaton in the title role, actually came to Burton while he was already working on Batman (his first film, 1985’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, had proven a surprise hit)....
While The Untamed is filled with myriad delights, much of the onus of carrying the 50-episode story arc falls on the soldiers of Xiao, who is more than up for the task. The 29-year-old actor— whose name popped up in international news when a part of the actor’s massive fandom was potentially involved in the events that led to fanfiction website Archive of Our Own getting blocked in China—is asked to carry viewers through the utterly confusing first string of episodes and then into a 30-episode flashback more or less on the strength of his on-screen charisma....
Way back in the tenth episode of The Walking Dead’s sixth season, Paul Rovia a.k.a. Jesus (Tom Payne) made a promise to Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln). “You’re world’s about to get a whole lot bigger,” the Messianic-appearing figure said. And it did not take long for Jesus’s promise to bear fruit. Rick Grimes’s world did get bigger with the introduction of the Hilltop Colony, The Kingdom, Oceanside, and even The Sanctuary....
The Walking Dead Season 9 Episode 15 As a general rule, I stand against expanded episodes. Unless it’s a cinematic quality show, and you’re putting extra budget on screen, it never typically works out. Historically, that’s never worked out for The Walking Dead, as it doesn’t work out for most of the shows on Netflix. That was under the old regime. Under the new regime, the extra-long penultimate episode of Season 9 is a stellar exercise in taking a television show and making it look like an event....
The Walking Dead Season 9 Episode 5 In previous seasons of The Walking Dead, there was something of a running joke. Whenever a secondary character got to deliver a speech of some sort or start giving out their backstory, it never went well for that person. If Billy Background suddenly has a dead wife and children that he has to tell a lead character about, then Billy Background is going to die in a hurry....
It’s something Disneyland’s Avengers Campus has been in desperate need for: a third ride. While details are scarce on the King Thanos attraction, even what its official name will be, it acts as a new chapter in the bizarre history of Marvel theme parks. Much like their complicated movie rights, Marvel’s theme park history is a bit all over the place. So all over the place, in fact, that there are currently two different Spider-Man rides on two different coasts, run by rival theme park companies....
The White Lotus Season 2 Episode 2 Do you remember when you’d go on vacation as a kid and your parents would get in a fight about something seemingly innocuous? You’d be sitting in the backseat of the car waiting to get to the beach, or maybe you’d be relaxing at a bed and breakfast, and some tiff breaks out between Mom and Dad concerning the entire state of their relationship....
