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27 Aug

I Hate Suzie Review (Spoiler-Free): Electrifying Billie Piper Comedy-Drama

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This spoiler-free review is based on episodes one to four of eight. This year has seen television drama so vibrant, inventive and entertaining that the first reaction is gratitude, but the second is frustration. You mean to say it could have been like this all along? This whole time, TV audiences have been stuck at the same party, in the same unending conversations about sad cops and bad men, because prejudice and failure of the imagination has kept a fabulous throng of bold, clever talent locked out on the other side of the door? Why is this only just happening now?…
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25 Aug

Lucifer Season 5 Episode 8 Review: Spoiler Alert

Netflix, New DVD release, , , , ,
This Lucifer review contains spoilers. Lucifer Season 5 Episode 8 “Just to be clear, this is you breaking up with me, right?” It only took 75 episodes, but dear old Dad finally makes an Earthly appearance in the Lucifer mid-season finale, and hopefully, He’ll be able to suss out the details of Michael’s dastardly plan to bring down Lucifer. Directed by Kevin Alejandro (Daniel Espinoza) “Spoiler Alert” covers plenty of criminal territory, addresses personal grudges, and explores individual fears, but in the end, sends fans into the off-season feeling really good about what they’ve experienced and excited for what’s to…
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21 Aug

Hoops Review (Spoiler-Free)

Netflix, New DVD release, ,
Coronavirus has halted production on many projects in Hollywood, but not animation. Animated series have been largely unaffected by shutdowns, with animators and voice artists alike being able to perform their duties from home. Though Netflix claims that their 2020 slate will go ahead uninhibited, it’s fair to assume many other networks and streaming services will be turning toward animated projects to fill programing schedules. Many animated pilots that would have had an uphill battle to be picked up by a network may just find themselves in luck. It’s amazing that Hoops isn’t one of those last-minute replacement animated series.…
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19 Aug

Lucifer Season 5 Part 1 Review (Spoiler-Free)

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This Lucifer review contains no spoilers. Lucifer had a long road to Netflix. After Fox cancelled the procedural comic book adaptation in 2018 for the crime of having a consistent fanbase of mediocre numbers, the streaming service picked it up in a shock acquisition, and its strong fourth season appeared to do quite well in its new home. Lucifer fans were convinced that the show and its stars, Tom Ellis and Lauren German, would be back for a triumphant fifth season, but more mixed news arrived instead: Season 5 was a go, but this time it would be Lucifer’s last…
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14 Aug

Teenage Bounty Hunters Review (Spoiler-Free)

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This Teenage Bounty Hunters review contains no spoilers and is based on the first five episodes. When it comes to television shows about teenagers who stumble into a purpose greater than that experienced by their peers – something both dangerous and occasionally thrilling – Teenage Bounty Hunters is in some very good company. Whether it’s the classics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars, or some of the more recent superhero fare, it’s not hard to find shows that want to capture the particular demographic-conquering magic that comes with this kind of premise. The series follows twin sisters Sterling (Maddie…
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14 Aug

Ted Lasso Review (Spoiler-Free)

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In an early episode of Ted Lasso, the new Apple TV+ comedy about a fictional Division II college football coach from Kansas (Jason Sudeikis) hired to lead a struggling English Premier League Team, an uptight journalist details Ted’s many flaws, but determines that he “can’t help but root for him.” It’s the perfect way to describe the new series developed by Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence (Scrubs), Joe Kelly, and Brendan Hunt (who co-stars as Lasso’s strong, silent assistant Coach Beard); Ted Lasso may not be the comedy that will make Apple TV+ a must-have, but it’s a charming, easy watch that…
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11 Aug

Lovecraft Country Review (Spoiler-Free)

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Imagine yourself and some friends traveling on a road miles outside of a major city, passing fields of green, the car cutting a line between the blue sky and the gray asphalt. There are few other cars around and you are some distance away from the nearest town that you’re sure is a safe place to rest. The sun is slowly descending on the horizon, and the trees that lined the road are suddenly looming and ominous. Now a monster has caught your scent. You speed down the road, careful not to spook your pursuer, and just barely make it…
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05 Aug

Midnight Sun Review (Spoiler-Free)

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Like Edward Cullen, Midnight Sun is older than it looks. Stephenie Meyer’s retelling of Twilight, her iconic YA novel of female desire, from the perspective of the smoldering vampire lover was first teased back in 2008, around the release of the final book, Breaking Dawn. At the time, Meyer announced that she would not be finishing the manuscript, as the first twelve chapters had leaked online and she felt like she had lost control of the story. By the time she warmed again to the idea, over the intervening years, the project was again derailed by the emergence of E.L.…
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27 Jul

The Umbrella Academy Season 2 Review (Spoiler-Free)

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Any successful sophomore season has to build on the strengths of its predecessor, particularly in the areas of world building and characterization, and create a compelling new conflict to grab the audience’s attention, and The Umbrella Academy season 2 does just that. One would think that presenting another impending apocalypse for which our heroes are once again responsible would be repetitive, but if anything, this end-of-the-world scenario is even more thrilling because it places everything and everyone in the context of 1960s Dallas just before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a quintessential time travel setup second only to…
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22 Jul

Malorie Review: Does the Bird Box Sequel Live Up to the Original? (Spoiler Free )

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When Josh Malerman’s debut novel Bird Box landed in 2014, it was a critical and financial success and quickly found itself optioned for a movie, despite being apparently ‘unfilmable’. The movie arrived on Netflix in 2018, starring Sandra Bullock and was a storming success for the streaming channel. Hot on the heels of the buzz around John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place, Bird Box was likened to that movie, switched hearing for vision. The premise was simple: Earth has been invaded by mysterious creatures. If you look at them, you go mad and kill yourself. The book worked wonderfully, telling the…
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17 Jul

Cursed Review (Spoiler-Free)

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This Cursed review contains NO spoilers. Though many people watching the new Netflix series Cursed may have heard of the character Nimue, they may not be super familiar with how she connects to the story of King Arthur.  Because, unfortunately, although most of us know the basics of this legend – heroic king, a magical sword and a powerful wizard – its women are generally treated as afterthoughts, and remarkable only in the way their lives impact the stories of the tale’s various men. The difference is usually only in whether they’re adulteresses (Guinevere), outright monsters (Morgan Le Fay), or…
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10 Jul

Stateless Review (Spoiler Free): Classy Australian Immigration Drama With a Stellar Cast

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“The title of the series refers to statelessness in a more poetic sense,” explains Cate Blanchett, creator of six part Australian drama Stateless, the latest acquisition for Netflix, which originally aired on ABC, Australia’s national broadcaster.  It also, of course, refers to some of the inhabitants of the immigrant detainee center at the heart of the show – many of whom are refugees who can’t be returned to country where they held citizenship (not necessarily stateless then, but as Blanchett also points out, the title is metaphoric rather than strictly legal). It’s a weighty but accessible drama that would have…
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09 Jul

Japan Sinks: 2020 Review (Spoiler-Free)

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This review is based on all ten half-hour episodes of Japan Sinks: 2020’s first season and contains no spoilers. “Fingers crossed.” Oddly enough, people seem to love the idea of the end of the world. Perhaps there’s comfort to be found in the escape to some alternate apocalypse scenario when the real world feels like it’s spinning off its axis. There’s been a growing trend in apocalypse stories where plucky survivors have to band together, form a family, and survive, whether it’s in movies, anime, or video games. Japan Sinks: 2020 strives to be different by its use of shifting…
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03 Jul

Ju-On: Origins Review (Spoiler-Free)

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The Ju-On/Grudge franchise is one of the most acclaimed horror series to come out of Japan. Despite the series’ reputation, the more recent efforts have struggled to recapture the magic and they’ve stumbled through the franchise’s progressively dense mythos. Not every horror franchise can sustain the expansion to a six-episode television series, but in the case of Ju-On: Origins it allows the show to bring more depth to its characters and help solve a lot of problems.  More than anything else, Ju-On: Origins excels as a metaphor for how abuse can be learned behavior and that generational pain is a…
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02 Jul

Warrior Nun Review (Spoiler-Free): Sisters Doing it for Themselves

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This Warrior Nun review contains no spoilers. Netflix’s Warrior Nun is a loose adaptation of the American manga Warrior Nun Areala. The comic follows the titular Warrior Nun, Sister Shannon Masters, and her friends in The Order of the Cruciform Sword, as they fight the forces of evil. The show is something of a spiritual successor to the comic, which was first published in 1994. It takes the broad premise, a religious sect of nuns and priests that fight evil under the leadership of a superpowered Warrior Nun, and reimagines it for the modern audience. Some characters transition directly from…
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01 Jul

Unsolved Mysteries Review (Spoiler-Free): True Crime With More Questions Than Answers

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This Unsolved Mysteries review contains no spoilers. Unsolved Mysteries Season 1 The Netflix rebooted series Unsolved Mysteries could really use someone like Robert Stack to lead audiences through these mysterious cold cases. He may not have been the biggest named crime-fighting icon, but he brought his Elliot Ness from the original The Untouchables to the scene. He also brought his trench coat. True crime shows are coming from all directions, and most of them follow a similar pattern which was laid out by Unsolved Mysteries. What set it apart were that voice and that trench coat. Stack hosted the groundbreaking…
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29 Apr

Hollywood Review (Spoiler-Free)

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This Hollywood review contains no spoilers is based on all seven episodes. There are two ideas that sum up what Hollywood means to Ryan Murphy, both the place and the new television series he named after it. The first is stated with cynicism by Dylan McDermott, who previously starred in Murphy’s American Horror Story: “The movies hawk an image of wholesome American virtue, right? But the folks making those movies [are] rotten to the core.” And yet, in the same episode, Darren Criss (who starred in Murphy’s Glee) dreams aloud, “Movies just don’t show us how the world is; they…
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DVD Guide reviews current dvd releases of movies and TV shows. The reviews of these dvd releases are my thoughts and understandings of the movie, dvd releases or TV show and not be taken as fact.

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