Movie Review: Doctor Strange

It's almost getting to the point where the release of a new Marvel Studios Movie is greeted with a wave of reviews that almost copy/pasted from the last one, along with the usual barrage of "hot takes". After all,  Doctor Strange is the fourteenth film in the MCU, a movie franchise with patterns just as strongly established as say, James Bond, so to an extent if you like the others (to lesser or greater degrees) you can be confident you'll like this, and vice versa. Marvel has a process, and a template, that it know works, and it's not going to change those fundamentals until it can be demonstrated that they don't work. Maybe this sounds defensive, but it's not supposed to - I like the MCU films, I get out of them what I want from them, but at the same time much of the commentary around is superfluous, unless something radically differnet happens. And Doctor Strange isn't radically different, not really, attempted appearances to the contrary. 

TV Review: Supergirl, Season 1

And so we come to the end of this year's DC TV Universe Review Extravaganza! Four shows from the CW/CBS stable, three in the same world, and one, because it's on a "grown up" network, out  on it's own barring a single crossover. Because yes, one of these shows jumped from the smaller network on a Major Network, building off the success of it's predecessors and presumably hoping that it can make it as a breakout hit. It's an interesting choice of lead character too; an all too rare female lead; a character that a wider audience may not be aware of, but part of hugely popular brand. I'm talking, of course, about Supergirl, cousin that grumpy guy that was up on cinema screens not so long ago. 

TV Review: Legends of Tomorrow

I think it's fair to say that expectations were running pretty high for Legends of Tomorrow, a full spin-off of both The Flash and Arrow incorporating supporting characters from both, running around time and space. Both their parent shows spent a good amount of time setting it all up to, introducing both it's primary villian, Vandal Savage, and moving it's existing cast members into the right places to picked up in it's opening episodes by suspiciously bearded Rory Pond Rip Hunter and send off on a grand adventure. Sadly, and maybe inevitably, Legends of Tomorrow stutters throughout it's run, sitting in that slight frustrating zone of always being watchable but always falling short of it's true potential. Spoilers under the cut, naturally. 

TV Review: Arrow (Season 4) and The Flash (Season 2)

So we reach that time of the year when the US TV Season draws to a close, and all the imported shows start to finish at once in a blaze of finales and cliffhangers. Exciting, but also daunting, as the long summer stretches out in front of us, although we're so behind on some shows we've got enough catching up to do. And iZombie just dropped onto Netflix, so there's that too. We've struggled to keep up with the superhero shows this year, as there are just so many of them, not least four - four! - from the CW stable  (yes I know Supergirl is on CBS but it's the same production house) in what is an increasingly ambitious TV shared-universe. With both Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow on their first season I'll talk about them separately, but it feels fair to wrap up the other two together. So how are things with The Flash, and The (Green) Arrow? 

Movie Review: Captain America: Civil War

It's strange how conversations on the "geek internet" create consensus around movies, or franchises, and how bubbled that can get. We decree movies as "success" or "failure" on different metrics than say, studios, or wider audiences, and the driving need to get a distinctive opinion out there means that we have to sort films into "love" or "hate" with little room for just sort of liking something. And it means that a film like Avengers: Age of Ultron, which made a lot of money, was a lot of fun and generally pretty well received, is now commonly described as "dissapointing" or a "failure". (There's another film, out now, which I could reference but i won't, because I've not seen it and there is enough bandwagon jumping on that front as it is). AoU clearly struggles under it's franchise obligations, and I liked it well enough, although it left a worrying sense that it was all going in a troubling direction. Leave it Captain America: Civil War to save the day.

TV Review: Agent Carter, Series 2 and Star Wars Rebels, Series 2

Quick catch-up time for two shows that finished their second series in the last week or so. I'm afraid it's heading into that time of year where season finales start to snowball up, and even keeping up is getting difficult. At least Star Wars Rebels is on a Saturday morning, and we watch it with the kids, so it doesn't come out of "grown up TV time". It's interesting to see both seasons change and build on their respective firsts, and whilst I'm a lot more confident of seeing more Rebels than seeing more Agent Carter (dammit) they both build solid foundations to go forward with. So lets start with the LA adventures of Peggy Carter, shall we?

TV Review: Marvels' Daredevil, series 2

It's funny how fans can affect your perception of a character. For example, I've never had any time for The Punisher, despite hardly reading a single issue of a comic he's in, largely because way back in the day I knew a couple of big Punisher Fans who put me off him. Their genuine enthuiasm usually translated into a love for a character because of sweary ultra-violence, a one note bullet-hose of a character who didn't have any truck with "softer" heroes, and even back then I was never really into that sort of thing. I've always liked my heroes, well, heroic. Still do. So I may have been one of the few fans of Daredevil Season 1 who wasn't looking forward to his appearance in Season 2 with a great deal of enthusiasm. 

Yeah, so I was wrong. 

Movie Review: Deadpool

So with a rare chance to get out to the cinema - on Valentines Day, no less - then going to see a "grown up" movie was one the cards. Given it's Oscar season, there was quite few on offer, but Z wanted to see Deadpool, and thats a grown up romantic movie for a night out, right? Right? Aside from good early reviews and promising trailer, I can't say that I have been itching to see it based on the property alone; Deadpool isn't a character that has ever grabbed me, and I think I've mentally filed him away other hyper-violent 90s creations whose fans are always a little bit too enthusiastic about the "blood and swearing" element of the character. Which I admit is narrow-minded of me, and I guess it's a credit to the marketting around the movie that it got me past that hurdle in the first place. Z, to her credit, just watched the trailers and though "Yes, I want to see that." And I'm glad we did. 

DVD of the Week: Kingsman: The Secret Service

Early Spring seems to be the time when Hollywood drops a supposedly "edgy" and "growed up" comic action movie on the eager public who have suffered through the post-xmas rush of Oscar Fodder. This year we have Deadpool, and in past years we've had Watchman and Kick-Ass in the same slot. They tend to do pretty well, too, and I'm not going to claim that I haven't enjoyed all or part of these films. Last years was Kingsman: The Secret Service, which seemed a little divisive, some seemingly repelled by it, others entraced, and that divide seemed to break down in unpredictible ways, too. But with a lot of talent both in front of, and behind the camera, I was largely expecting to enjoy it. And i did - with reservations. 

Best of 2015: Books and Comics

So to finish off our trilogy of 2015 reviews, we come to the written word. This year I've managed to read 30 books, which I think is a record for recent years, and I'm quietly pleased about it. It's been skewed in some strange ways (more on that for a minute) but its also broadly diverse in others. I've rolled comics into this post as there has been a more "steady as she goes" feel to my comics reading, but even there I think I've done alright. Lets get to it.

TV Review: Marvel's Jessica Jones

When Netflix announced it's deal to bring a bunch of Marvel Superheroes to it's service in the form of four "street-level" stand-alones followed by a "Defenders" series, one of the more interesting aspects was the choice of characters they were using. Sure, Daredevil is a reasonable name, and Power Man and Iron Fist (currently also appearing in the Ultimate SpiderMan cartoon) are names you might be able to pick of a line-up, but Jessica Jones? Thats pretty obscure. Not that that is in itself a problem, of course - a clean slate in terms of wider perception can be a great opportunity - but there was definately an audible sound of journalists rushing to Wikipedia to try and work out who she is, and what the story would be. And Daredevil came and went, and was a great meditaion on the morality of violence, and guilt, and power, and brought us the stand-out villian that the MCU in any form has been desperately lacking (give or take the occasional Loki). But now we have Jessica Jones, which is about something entirely different. (Warning: Spoilers) 

DVD(s) of the Week(s): Round-up!

So, the holidays have come and gone, and as we've been out and about and not sat in front of a computer screen, the blog has taken a week or so off. To bring us back up date, I'll do a few catch-up posts, for books and films and so on. First up will be Gone Girl, which we had started to watch a few weeks back only to discover that the disc was faulty, leading to a somewhat frustrating case of interuptted viewing! So if nothing else, it was good to get closure on that!

Movie Review: Ant-Man

I can't shake the feeling that there is a body of opinion that is waiting for Marvel Studios to screw up. On the critics side, it seems to be the usual sort of critic that doesn't like big summer blockbuster season by it's very nature, and sees the MCU as a sort of poster-child for it. On the audience side, I think there is a relic of the DC-Marvel rivalry (the longest and stupidest fan-rivalry in comics, which is saying something) and also a wariness at seeing about 2 billion superhero flicks scheduled and feeling some odd obligation to see them all. Wherever it comes from, it seemed to circle Guardians of the Galaxy last year, before that turned out to be huge, and then focused on Ant-Man, after some high-profile behind-the-scenes changes and y'know, being about Ant-Man. Who is small, and commands the Ants. 

TV Review: Gotham, Series 1

Back when I did a post about Arrow and Agents of SHIELD, I commented that I was trying to round up all the superhero themed shows that we'd been watching over that season, to try and draw some final curtain around them. Which meant that I'd sort of forgotten that we'd been watching Gotham. Part of me feels like that could just stand as a review in it's own right. But Gotham is a strange beast,  born from a strange concept. If Arrow is the show you get when you want to make a Batman show, but aren't allowed to, Gotham is it's Dark Mirror, the show you get when you don't want to make a Batman show, but feel obliged to have him hang around in the background. 

TV Review: Arrow (season 3) and Agents of SHIELD (season 2)

So to finish up my impromptu trilogy of "double header" reviews, I thought I'd turn to TV land, and mop up the last two Superhero shows of the outgoing season, Arrow, and Agents of SHIELD. On a third and second season respectively, both shows are much more of a known quantity than say, The Flash, and to an extent they are unlikely to massively change in their core outlooks, competencies and flaws. Both have existing fanbases and detractors, too, but whats most interesting - and makes them worthy of comparison - is how they're trying to address getting past the introductory series and the maturation of their characters. It's easy to put the gang together, but what do you do with them then? 

TV Review: The Flash, Series 1

As we continue to plug through the final arc of Gotham, I was wondering out loud why, given the constant criticism that seemed to affect Agents of SHIELD last year, the generally patchier and weaker Not-Batman-Show doesn't seem to be attracting quite as much vocal derision. I mean, I appreciate that internet critics can be a little like Hyenas, deciding to pick on a target and then hounding it over and above any actual flaws it has, whilst mysteriously ignoring others, but I also wondered if a big factor is that this year there is far more choice, and much of it is pretty good. Last year you could watch Arrow or SHIELD for a superhero fix and that was it. This year you have those shows, Gotham, the short-lived Constantine, plus the two stand-outs, Daredevil, and The Flash. 

Movie Review: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Marvel's Avengers Assemble burst onto our cinemas screens as a remarkable Victory Lap for "Phase 1" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. These days, with "universes" being quite the thing for big franchises, it's easy to forget that it was a really astounding achievement - a series of stand-alone movies with different characters that build to a giant cross-over incorporating elements from each of them. Not only did all these films get made - but they were all pretty good, and all pretty successful, and Avengers Assemble went on be a enormous smash hit, a rowdy, crowd-pleasing smash hit. A fews year on the MCU has become a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut; it's last two films, The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy, are amongst it best, and most successful, and now "Phase 2" is rounded out with another great big crossover - Avengers: Age of Ultron. (warning: light spoilers) 

TV Review: Marvel's Daredevil

One of things that all the current crop of superhero shows - an ever increasing list, looking forward to next autumn - is that they all seem to want to stay safely middle-of-the-road. Most of them wear their superheroic costumes over well-established formats - The Flash's "freak of the week", Arrow's soap operatic character work, Gotham's crime procedural roots - and for the most part it works pretty well for them. And why shouldn't they? After all, "comics" isn't a genre, it's a format, and it's adaptations would do well to remember that. But the other thing they have in common is that by and large they're staying mass market, middle-of-the-road sort of shows on major networks. It wasn't until Netflix picked up Daredevil that we would see a superhero show wearing it's costume over a different sort of skin, that of the "quality, cable" end of the spectrum. So it was always going to be something a little bit different. 

TV Review: Agent Carter

Agent Carter has not been picked up by any UK broadcaster. As such there is no legal way for me to watch a show that ran between the two halves of the second season of Agents of SHIELD (Channel 4) and features several returning characters from Captain America: The First Avenger, and is part of Marvel's wider Cinematic Universe. I guess the bubble has burst on US imports onto UK TV, after a run of failures from the "major" free-to-air broadcasters. The BBC and ITV have basically given up on it, preferring to invest in shows it can send the other way across the Atlantic, and both Channel 4 and Channel 5 have fallen into the same pattern of buying a show for a couple of seasons and then gradually letting them slide across the schedules to oblivion. I guess Channel 4 still show infinite reruns of The Big Bang Theory, if that's any consolation (spoiler: it isn't). 

DVD(s) of the Week: Divergent and Amazing Spiderman 2

So in an attempt to clear the decks for the New Year, I thought I'd roll together a last couple of DVD reviews before we get going on anything properly new. It also lets me cover off two movies that I really can't think of that much to say about - one is decent, the other less so, but neither so bad, nor good, that I feel excited enough to write a huge review about. Which is a shame, really, because both have potential, both have strengths, but neither both end up just as easy passers of time rather than anything to shout about, or at. So, without further ado, a quick catch up Divergent, and first, Amazing Spiderman 2.