We’re often poetic about TV around these parts. It’s no secret that we like to sing its praises as a powerful, restorative, and maybe sometimes therapeutic medium. But during a dangerous, confusing year, delving into the many ways that TV “kept us sane” or whatever feels reductive. What we can say, however, is this: TV was around this year. And that’s no small feat as not every other medium was so lucky....
The Blacklist Season 9 Episode 21 Raymond Reddington is eating chilled Camembert and betrayal in The Blacklist season 9 episode 21, but what has he got to lose? A friend and bag man who sits in a car and cries while he watches his murderous orchestrations unfold in front of Pasqual’s restaurant. According to Marvin’s perspective of Liz’s death and the soundtrack playing through his memory, that fatal bullet took away Red’s “baby” and his “heart....
In the Western pop culture canon, stories about fathers and sons will usually find an apt audience. Dating back to before even The Empire Strikes Back, (usually male) writers in genre storytelling have often used their art to unpack their history with their own respective fathers. What was the deal with that old man? Why was he so ornery all the time? Probably because he was secretly a space samurai killing people on behalf of a Galactic empire....
As Maggie Tokuda-Hall summed up, “Hot people being horny on main; campy violence; himbos.” But while The Mummy is a unique modern classic, it’s not the only one to spark a bisexual awakening among fans: May I present its equally chaotic bisexual contemporary, Brian Helgeland’s delightful 2001 film, A Knight’s Tale. Layering medieval anachronism over the familiar beats of a sports narrative, only with jousting replacing football or baseball, A Knight’s Tale succeeds as both an underdog story and a postmodern pastiche....
The Exorcist Episode 10 So here we are at the final chapter of our Rance family adventure. The Pope is on his way and the world will never be the same. More importantly, though, there is yet another exorcism going on. We have been on quite the journey since the pilot. We started off with a mother who thought her depressed daughter was being possessed by a demon, then it turned out to actually be her other daughter....
It’s giddy news for distributors and exhibitors who bet there was still life in the theatrical model two years after the pandemic, and one year after an opinion piece in The New York Times proclaimed, “Sorry We Aren’t Going Back to the Movies.” But for all the good vibes, the one disappointing box office story continues to be Disney’s Lightyear, the spinoff to Pixar’s flagship franchise Toy Story. Despite opening only three weekends ago, the Disney tentpole underwhelmed again when it failed to crack even the top five this weekend....
To the delight of TV purists, Disney’s major streaming venture Disney+ has returned to the weekly episodic schedule, and was rewarded with massive, sustained weekly buzz for shows like The Mandalorian and WandaVision. Now that the weekly release model seems not only viable, but essential again, it must be protected at all costs. Which is why it pains me to admit that Marvel’s second Disney+ effort, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, should probably not be a weekly show....
So what’s the end of NBC’s beloved sitcom The Good Place all about? Oh, just the death of nearly every character you love and hold dear. Ultimately The Good Place‘s penultimate episode, “Patty,” pretty clearly articulated what was to come for The Good Place’s ending. In that episode, our heroes finally reach the titular Good Place only to find that it’s filled with bored, uninspired zombie-folk. Eternal paradise is great but it turns out that the “eternal” part of the equation tends to be a problem....
Was that the end of June and Nick? It felt like goodbye. When Nick told June to try to be happy, and then took his wedding ring out of his pocket and put it back on his finger, there was a sense of finality. Those two live in different worlds now and their across-the-barricades love faces impossible odds. Just look at the symbolic distance between them in that wide shot outside the school....
June Osborne getting out of Gilead was season four’s major move forward. After several failed and rejected escape attempts over the seasons, June finally stepped foot on Canadian soil and claimed asylum. She reunited with her loved ones and was safe. Except, as season four explored, we bring our trauma with us. You can take the girl out of Gilead, but you can’t take the Gilead out of the girl....
“The Jedi” is an action-packed episode of The Mandalorian that takes many of its cues from classic samurai and Western movies, two of the genres that heavily inspired George Lucas’ vision for the first Star Wars. Here, we see as two brave warriors take down a cruel warlord hidden within the walls of an oppressed city, all while covered in the thick fog that’s undoubtedly meant to evoke the look of an Akira Kurosawa film....
The Mist Episode 9 In The Mist, episode 9, “The Waking Dream,” shadowy sleeper cell soldiers move under the city or house to house. No, it isn’t the fearsome creatures in the foggy depths. The biggest threats continue to seep in from much closer to home. The series continues to take what clues Stephen King’s book left and run with them, but at their current level of athleticism, they’re in danger of running off course....
In a better world, the quality of these games would cut through the confusion, the social media chatter, and search engine algorithms to generate more noise for themselves when they’re released. Yet, it’s important to remember that it’s never too late to discover any of these titles. Not only do the people who made them deserve for them to be a success, but you, the player, deserve to discover the kinds of games that will remind you why you love gaming in the first place....
The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Chloé Zhao, fresh off receiving a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director, has signed on to adapt Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 novel… as a sci-fi Western set in the future. “I’ve always been fascinated by vampires and the concept of the Other they embody,” Zhao said in a statement, hinting at her approach. This lined up with Universal Pictures president Peter Cramer, whose own statement read, “Chloé’s singular lens shines a light on stories of the overlooked and misunderstood....
Ridley was “less interested in putting obelisks on the timeline,” he said at a roundtable discussion with Den of Geek, and more focused on how some major signpost events in the history of the DC Universe were contextualized and absorbed for different characters. The first issue focuses on Jefferson Pierce (Black Lightning), and it contains a conscious effort from Ridley to marry the DCU to real world history as much as possible....
Because, as it turns out, both of those things are true. Verhoeven is on record as saying he tried to read Starship Troopers but stopped after two chapters “because it was so boring;” meanwhile the movie began as a script called “Bug Hunt at Outpost 7.” Scriptwriter Ed Neumeier even described the original idea for the film as being “a big, silly, jingoistic, xenophobic, let’s-go-out-and-kill-the-enemy movie, and I had settled on the idea that it should be against insects… I wanted to make a war movie, but I also wanted to make a teenage romance movie....
This week’s episode of Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power introduces Elendil, one of the very few characters in the series who also appears in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy. But if you blink you will miss him. In the battle sequence of The Fellowship of the Rings‘ prologue, the character is played by Peter McKenzie. He has a go at fighting Sauron, dies immediately, and his sword is smashed into bits and remains that way until Aragorn puts them all back together again in Return of the King....
Catriona Ward’s latest novel, The Last House on Needless Street, is the sort of book that defies easy description and categorization. Part horror story, part mystery thriller, and part tragedy, the book subverts a lot of expectations about what a genre story should be and do, unpacking a complex emotional narrative in the midst of a menacing tale of fear, uncertainty, and constantly escalating dread. “I’m not sure where it sits,” Ward admits with a laugh during a lengthy conversation with Den of Geek....
The Simpsons Season 34 Episode 3 The Simpsons are back, at least for a week, presenting an episode which ranks with the series’ classics. “Lisa the Boy Scout” achieves greatness through its demerits, and wears it like a badge. The episode opens with what appears to be a now-standard issue pie-in-the-face to the patriarchy, but serves the show up as its own just desserts. The program is hacked, Disney is blackmailed, and whatever viewers who wake up from the Cowboys/Rams game to witness it are treated to the wildest ride in seasons....
As all reality TV connaisseurs know, some of the best drama you can find on TV is not just in police procedurals, heists or Upside Downs; it is with real people living their lives (in front of the cameras) or real people in extraordinary situations (also in front of a camera). The Traitors is a contender for the best TV drama and best comedy of the year. It is a perfect combination of paranoia, misplaced arrogance, over-the-top reactions, distrust, intrigue and ridiculousness....
