28
May
This Lucifer review contains spoilers. Lucifer Season 5 Episode 9 “All I wanted was a nice family dinner.” After a nine month Covid-19 related hiatus, Lucifer returns to Netflix for the second half of its fifth season, and the family dynamic changes dramatically with the introduction of Dear Old Dad to the mix. Throughout the course of its run, the series’ writers have masterfully woven a crime-of-the-week drama into the fabric of the emotional turmoil the core characters, both celestial and mortal, experience in their everyday lives. “Family Dinner,” takes this narrative technique and sets into motion a series of…
17
May
This Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. review contains no spoilers. Marvel has already had a big year on the small screen through their Disney+ offerings WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, but on the heels of the latter’s finale comes a strange, quirky show to Hulu. Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. takes the humor of Deadpool, the weirdness of WandaVision, and a small dash of the animation style from Wallace & Gromit to create something…even stranger than it sounds. This adult animated series comes in part from the brains behind Robot Chicken, which does a lot to explain how those three things can be…
11
Apr
Warning: contains spoilers for Line of Duty series 6 episode 4 Nothing is standalone in this Line of Duty series six; everything is linked back to what’s gone before. Ryan Pilkington, Terry Boyle, Steph Corbett, Ian Buckells, Jimmy Lakewell, Blackthorn Prison, Lee Banks, even Jackie Laverty… all of them ‘previously on’ characters who’ve made a reappearance and dragged the past back with them. It should come as no surprise then, that the series six guest lead played by Kelly Macdonald also has a significant link to the past. The end of episode four revealed that Acting Det Supt Jo Davidson is the blood relative…
18
Feb
So you just used your Mind Stone-saturated witch powers to expand the hexagonal barrier further around your false reality entrapping a New Jersey town. We’ve all been there. Or at least that’s what Wanda Maximoff thinks in the latest clip from WandaVision episode 7. In advance of WandaVision episode 7, premiering tomorrow on Disney+, Marvel has unveiled a decently lengthy first look at the episode. The reveals therein are vast. For starters, it’s clear that Wanda is experiencing a bit of a magical hangover from her Halloween barrier expansion. The clip also makes clear that Wanda is not going to…
04
Feb
Warning: contains spoilers for the All Souls books. Vampire families are complicated, and not just because everybody has two birthdays to remember. Each vampire has a sire who becomes their vampire blood-mother or father, and any vampires who share a sire automatically become siblings. If a vampire’s sire is mated to another, that vampire becomes a non-blood parent to their shared ‘children’. The immortality thing also means that multiple generations of a vampire clan often look around the same age, which is why, if the de Clermonts in A Discovery of Witches ever had a family get-together, it’d look more…
21
Jan
Hitman 3’s Death in the Family mission can be completed in a number of amusing ways, but the undisputed highlight of this assignment is the ability to pose as a private investigator and attempt to solve the murder of Zachary Carlisle. You might suspect that a “Whodunnit?” case built into a Hitman game would be somewhat watered down, but the truth of the matter is that Death in the Family’s murder mystery is one of the better examples of this format in video game history (and my personal favorite since the best quest in The Elder Scrolls franchise). In fact,…
11
Jan
All in the Family is roundly considered a touchstone for television achievement now, but when it debuted 50 years ago, even the network carrying it hoped it would fizzle quickly and unnoticed. CBS put an army of operators at phone lines expecting a barrage of complaints from offended middle Americans demanding its cancellation. Those calls didn’t come. What came was a deluge of support from people hoping this mid-season replacement was a permanent addition to the network’s lineup. The premiere episode contained a considerable list of “television firsts.” One of these rarities continues to remain scarce on network TV: creator…
26
Dec
Fast & Furious Spy Racers, like the entire Fast & Furious franchise, is all about family. Not a traditional type of family but one of different people not always connected by blood who come together for the greater good. It’s the main appeal of the Fast & Furious franchise to many of its fans and one that was slowly built over time in the films. But with Spy Racers a whole new family had to be created from the jump and the team behind it didn’t have the luxury of several movies to slowly (and somewhat accidentally) create one. They…
11
Dec
It’s the time of year when you can’t enter a store without hearing those familiar holiday jingles as your shopping soundtrack. With many families reducing their gatherings this year, it’s a good time to snuggle up, stay in, and share some Christmas movies with your kids. Here are some of the best that Disney+ has to offer. Lego Star Wars Holiday Special This season’s brand new holiday special features the cast of the Star Wars Sequel trilogy celebrating Life Day. Rey feels she’s failing Finn as his teacher in the ways of the Jedi, so she seeks out an ancient…
22
Oct
Tim Burton meets The Addams Family is the kind of union of artist and material that appears obvious. Inevitable, even. Yet despite The Addams Family, which has been a brand since the 1930s, seeing a resurgence in the early ‘90s, around the time Burton was reaching his artistic and pop culture peak with projects like Edward Scissorhands (1990) and The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), the filmmaker and material have never actually come together… until now. As per Deadline, Burton and MGM TV, which owns the movie and television rights to the characters, are shopping around a live-action television reboot of…
09
Oct
The following contains spoilers for Fast & Furious Spy Racers season 2. Fast & Furious Spy Racers is something a throwback to the past, a kids TV tie-in to a popular adult movie franchise. While the Fast & Furious films are no Rambo (which somehow got a kids cartoon) it’s still a challenge to take a well beloved franchise of films and turn them into a TV series meant for kids. That’s just what executive producer Tim Hedrick has done, taking elements of the Fast & Furious universe but making sure the show can stand on its own for kids…
09
Oct
It’s the season for thrills and chills, but if you’re planning to watch movies with your kids as Halloween approaches, you might not be looking for the scariest horror films. Luckily, there’s plenty of family friendly fare on Disney+ to add some spooky to your Halloween season. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad When you’re looking for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow on Disney+, it doesn’t come up on its own. The short from 1949 was released in tandem with another short based on the Wind in the Willows. The combined films were released under the full title of…
08
Oct
The Addams Family 2 is officially set to bring its wholesomely horrifying brand of animated dread back to the big screen for the 2021 Halloween season. The sequel, arriving via MGM’s United Artists banner, follows up the 2019 sleeper animated iteration of the often-adapted iconic 1960s spooky snap-happy sitcom, which went on to gross $203 million worldwide against a $24 million budget. Indeed, The Addams Family 2 was reportedly in the works less than a week after the first film’s October 11, 2019 bow, and signaled an October release date of its own for 2021. While the woeful year of…
06
Oct
In terms of dealing with the pandemic and how to release existing or finished films without having movie theaters available until recently, Blumhouse has been one of the leaders. The company — in conjunction with its primary distributor, Universal Pictures — shifted the arrival of its summer horror movie, You Should Have Left, from theaters to VOD seamlessly, while movies that came out in theaters right before the coronavirus shut everything down — like The Invisible Man and The Hunt — also made the transition quickly and smoothly, extending their shelf life and possibly their audiences. Now, with many theaters…
06
Oct
The latest buzzy Netflix documentary tells the story of Chris Watts who murdered his pregnant wife Shanann and their two daughters Celeste and Bella. In this doc we hear the 911 call from Shanann’s friend Nickole Atkinson the morning of her death and the police footage of the moments they arrived at the house to find a frantic Nickole and later a very cagey Chris Watts. We see the last text messages Shanann sent and the last moments her daughters were alive. And we see Chris Watts lying about Shanann and their kids’ disappearance mere hours after he had killed…
29
Sep
In 2018, 34-year-old Shanann Watts and her two young daughters went missing in Frederick, Colorado. As heartbreaking details emerged, their story made headlines worldwide. Told entirely through archival footage that includes social media posts, law enforcement recordings, text messages and never-before-seen home videos, director Jenny Popplewell pieces together an immersive and truthful examination of a police investigation and a disintegrating marriage.Rated: Not RatedRelease Date: Sep 30, 2020
26
Sep
Admit it—we all think it’d be fun to reenact an Ocean’s 11 heist in real life. To be part of a close-knit team, executing a brilliant score, getting one over on capitalism whether in the form of an evil corporation or a single individual so unfairly rich that you have to make up a word for his net worth. Kajillionaire, writer-director Miranda July’s third feature, punctures that soapy bubble of a fantasy by depicting a trio of amateur scammers whose precarious existence skimming off the top of society is anything but glamorous. Parents—in the loosest sense of the word—Robert (Richard…
25
Sep
You’ve heard of the Babysitter’s Club, but have you heard of The Order of the Babysitters? It’s the super secret society babysitting society at the heart of Netflix‘s upcoming family horror film: A Babysitter’s Guide To Monster Hunting. The streamer just dropped the trailer for the film, which features Harry Potter’s Tom Felton as a very creepy nightmare man, aka Boogeyman, who kidnaps teenage protagonist Kelly’s (Tamara Smart) babysitting charge and promises to “unleash your nightmares on the world.” Yikes! Check it out… A Babysitter’s Guide To Monster Hunting is based on a series of books by Joe Ballarini, and…
