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The Witcher (2019) s02e03 – What Is Lost
It’s old home week on “The Witcher,” with Anya Chalotra getting back to the Mage Fortress just as MyAnna Buring has finally come to terms with Chalotra’s presumed demise. We also find out when Buring tortured Eamon Farren in the season premiere, and they cut away… they cut away from Buring not finding anything out… 📖
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The Witcher (2019) s02e02 – Kaer Morhen
The episode opens with Anya Chalotra having a domestic bliss dream about Henry Cavill. Last season it seemed like “Witcher” was setting up Cavill, Chalotra, and Freya Allan as a surrogate family unit—seemed might be too strong a characterization, but there were definite tones. The dream sequence is very… lovey-dovey. Very unlike “The Witcher.” It… 📖
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The Witcher (2019) s02e01 – A Grain of Truth
Despite “The Witcher” taking place in a world of magic and monsters, they don’t come up with a cool way to explain why Freya Allan’s all of a sudden got brown eyebrows this season. This episode picks up immediately after last season’s cliffhanger, with Henry Cavill and Allan finally united and trying to find Anya… 📖
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Hitman: For Tomorrow (1999-2000)
Back in the early days of comics collections—and I'm talking mid-to-late eighties, pre-Dark Knight Returns, pre-Watchmen—there were occasionally collections on themes. Hitman: For Tomorrow feels very much like a collection of Hitman comics based on the theme. It's writer Garth Ennis leaning in on taking Tommy and friends out of their comfort zones but into… 📖
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Hawkeye (2021) s01e05 – Ronin
Okay, now I’m “worried.” They’ve only got one episode left, they just introduced the big bad, and it’s a surprise reveal for… streaming media rights disputes geeks (like myself), but otherwise, it’s just a Marvel property. I’d seen the rumors, and then this episode, there are some big hints, but it turns out the villain… 📖
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018, Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman)
Like most superhero origin stories, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse suffers from some third-act problems. It doesn’t just have a lengthy final fight scene between new Spider-Man (voiced by Shameik Moore) and Kingpin (Liev Schreiber in maybe the film’s only pointless voice casting), it’s got some inherently reduced stakes being an animated movie with a PG… 📖
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Batman ’89 (2021) #4
I’m verklempt. I wasn’t expecting to be verklempt. But writer Sam Hamm is going for it with Batman ‘89, with artist Joe Quinones going along with all of it—try to make a community march, but in Tim Burton’s Gotham City, you got it—and this issue might be where the elevation is permanent. Hamm’s taken this… 📖
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Superman ’78 (2021) #4
Well, it’s easily Robert Venditti’s best writing of the series so far. After an utterly pointless waste of a couple pages on Brainiac’s origin story, we get to Kal-El in the Bottle City of Kandor. Where, surprise, it’s not the adventures of Nightwing and Flamebird, but the continued adventures of Marlon Brando and Susannah York.… 📖
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Hawkeye (2021) s01e04 – Partners, Am I Right?
It’s a shorter episode, but a lot is going on. Especially since it’s often a bridging episode setting up the rest of the season, which is only two more episodes, which is frankly terrifying given all they’ve got to do. But more on that bit later (I’ve been thinking “Hawkeye” ran eight, not six, so… 📖
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Hitman: Tommy’s Heroes (1998-99)
By the fifth Hitman collection, DC has given up on the six or eight-issue collection and just gone whole hog. There are fourteen issues in the Tommy’s Heroes collection. Two full story arcs, a couple done-in-ones (including the DC One Million crossover), and then a haunting two-parter to close it off. Writer Garth Ennis runs… 📖
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Doctor Who (2005) s13e06 – The Vanquishers
What a lackluster conclusion. There’s actually a bunch of good stuff, including a triplicated Jodie Whittaker they should’ve been doing since the cliffhanger on the first episode. Still, as the finish to “Doctor Who vs. The Flux,” it’s minimally successful. The resolution with rubber mask supervillains Sam Spruell and Rochenda Sandall is lousy, and then… 📖
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Ida Red (2021, John Swab)
I don’t think I’d ever have foreseen the Heartland Family Crime Saga genre. Or how it basically employs every white actor who isn’t in a Marvel movie (currently) or once tangentially appeared in some East or West Coast Crime Saga. For example, I didn’t recognize George Carroll from his Ben Affleck Boston Crime Sagas. And… 📖
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The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors (2021)
According to the "About the Creators" section, the 2004 prose non-fiction book, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, is based on declassified documents and interviews with participants, which raises the question of whether or not Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors comic adaptation writer Doug Murray ever read the book. Or were… 📖
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Hawkeye (2021) s01e03 – Echoes
This episode has some real highlights, including a great New York action sequence, but the most impressive one has got to be the comic book talking heads sequence. Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld are sitting and talking to each other. They’re staring almost directly into the camera in one-shot close-ups, and they just have a… 📖
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Superman & Lois (2021) s01e15 – Last Sons of Krypton
Since I never got comfortable recommending the show, it’s fitting “Superman and Lois: Season One” finish on something of a fail. It’s not terrible. I don’t think it’s the worst episode, but it’s definitely in the bottom three. Not because there’s anything particularly wrong with it; there’s just nothing particularly right with it. It’s a… 📖
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Superman & Lois (2021) s01e14 – The Eradicator
This episode picks up three weeks after last episode’s hard cliffhanger, which had Adam Rayner escaping the Army and zooming off to the sun to suck in its energies. He’s still at it three weeks later. Apparently, it takes a while to charge a Kryptonian flesh battery. We also hear all the voices stuck in… 📖
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Superman & Lois (2021) s01e13 – Fail Safe
There’s some good, bad, and weird this episode. Mostly good and weird. The bad—besides A.C. Peterson ever-wanting Emperor Palpatine and then Eric Keenleyside’s similarly weak performance as the conniving Smallville mayor—is when all the adults of color are mean to Erik Valdez. Valdez and Emmanuelle Chriqui are feeling the fallout from Valdez cheerleading literal supervillain… 📖
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The Equalizer (2021) s02e07 – When Worlds Collide
I’m trying to remember the last Chris Noth-centric episode of “The Equalizer;” it must’ve been last season. This episode has him running around with a machine gun and fist-fighting like they promised him he could do American James Bond or something. Instead, however, it’s old man James Bond with Noth teaming up with previously unrevealed… 📖
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Halloween 5 (1989, Dominique Othenin-Girard)
What is it with Halloween sequels and hospitals? This time it’s Danielle Harris spending most of the movie in the hospital. Sure, it’s officially a children’s clinic and appears to be shot in a converted house, but it’s still a Halloween movie where the lead damsel in distress is in a hospital bed. The plot… 📖
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The Equalizer (2021) s02e06 – Shooter
It’s a city-in-crisis episode, with a sniper terrorizing New York. Only the show skips the first two attacks, and it doesn’t appear there’s a lot of crisis going on. Even though the expository dialogue makes it sound like everyone’s staying inside when Queen Latifah and Liza Lapira go to the crime scene, there’s a bunch… 📖
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Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021, Andy Serkis)
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is under ninety minutes without the end credits, which is fine. While the third act is a perfectly decent bit of action “gore,” once it’s clear Naomie Harris and Woody Harrelson aren’t going to stop embarrassing themselves, the sooner the movie can end, the better. Harrelson is the titular Carnage,… 📖
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Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s07e07 – A Woman’s Place Is in the War Effort!
So, A Woman’s Place Is in the War Effort! bombs Bechdel in a really, really bad way. Like, there better be a scene cut or some really good excuse because it fails it by not giving Kimleigh Smith a name. She’s a Black woman working in an airplane factory in World War II; the Legends… 📖
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Hawkeye (2021) s01e01 – Never Meet Your Heroes
Outside wistfully hoping Edward Norton would bring art-house sensibilities to the mainstream, “Hawkeye” is the first official MCU property I’ve ever been emotionally invested in. I mean, obviously, East Coast “MCU” (the Netflix series) were a thing—and “Hawkeye” reminds of them immensely—but in the straight Disney-for-teens MCU? “Hawkeye” ’s it. Go read the Matt Fraction… 📖
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Hitman: Ace of Killers (1997-98)
Having read Garth Ennis for so long, I can get a sense of his structure. He’s traditionally too rushed in three-issue arcs, much more comfortable with four or more. Hitman: Ace of Killers collects a six-issue arc and then two done-in-ones. The main story is a siege story, too, with the heroes getting pinned down… 📖
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Doctor Who (2005) s13e04 – Village of the Angels
Most of this episode—save a brief appearance from rubber masked villain Rochenda Sandall—is quite good. Not just the best episode of the season so far (though it’s handily the best episode of the season so far), but an actual good episode. Doctor Jodie Whittaker is solo in late sixties small village England, trying to stop… 📖
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Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s07e06 – Deus Ex Latrina
“Legends” hasn’t been renewed yet, and it’s kind of been a bubble show forever, which is why it’s always so nice when they get an early renewal. But this season now seems to be arranging things for a send-off. At least, potentially. Events are perturbing towards closure—or at least not unresolved cliffhangers—and it kind of… 📖
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Krisha (2015, Trey Edward Shults)
Krisha is an eighty-minute film with a present action of maybe twelve hours. It’s about a family’s black sheep (Krisha Fairchild) coming to Thanksgiving after some time away. There’s no big exposition dump—it isn’t until the third act the film confirms the basic information the characters have all been dealing with—and for the first half… 📖
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Superman & Lois (2021) s01e12 – Through the Valley of Death
This episode has several things going on, like Wolé Parks delivering (compared to before) when the story requires it, Emmanuelle Chriqui having a great mom scene (shedding any memory of her lackluster performance a couple episodes ago), one low-key but big twist, what sounds like Man of Steel music cues (but for Super-sons Jordan Elsass… 📖
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Superman & Lois (2021) s01e11 – A Brief Reminiscence In-Between Cataclysmic Events
So, A Brief Reminiscence In-Between Cataclysmic Events confirms a question I didn’t realize I had—who’s the perfect director for a Superman movie? Small Soldier turned “Everwood” star turned TV director Gregory Smith. This episode’s chock full of Superman: The Movie references, most of which fail earnestly, and then some genuinely excellent Lois and Clark stuff… 📖
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Doctor Who (2005) s13e03 – Once, Upon Time
One of the reasons it’s easier to look at this season of “Doctor Who” through the lens of previous sci-fi is just talking about the new season of “Doctor Who” is boring. And narratively cheap. Chris Chibnall’s script this time uses two major manipulative devices just to get it across the finish line, and it’s… 📖
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Hitman: Local Heroes (1996-97)
Local Heroes collects two story arcs; the first is the Local Heroes one, about metahuman hitman Tommy having to team up with Kyle Rayner Green Lantern to take on the C.I.A. The C.I.A. wants to start controlling the supes, and suddenly it's like The Boys in here. I hadn't realized writer Garth Ennis worked through… 📖
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Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s07e05 – It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Scientist
When I read Matt Ryan was leaving “Legends of Tomorrow” as John Constantine but returning in a different part, I initially assumed it was Constantine-adjacent. But it’s not. Even after he started showing up in the opening credits photo roll—“Legends” does a speed-roll of the regular cast without text—and then appeared in every episode’s “starring”… 📖
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Doom Patrol (2019) s03e10 – Amends Patrol
This season finale of “Doom Patrol” is not perfect because it realizes all my hopes for the season; it’s perfect and just happens to realize all my hopes for the season. First and foremost, it doesn’t play chicken with the network (or, in this case, streaming service) as far as renewal. We get closure. There… 📖
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Rocky IV (1985, Sylvester Stallone), the director’s cut
Sylvester Stallone’s director’s cut of Rocky IV arrives four sequels and thirty-five years after the film’s original release. Stallone says it’s for the thirty-fifth anniversary; Robert Doornick (who voiced Burt Young’s robot in the original cut and owns the copyright on the robot) says it’s because Stallone didn’t want to renew with him and had… 📖
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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021, Destin Daniel Cretton)
The third act of Shang-Chi makes it real obvious what’s been wrong with the movie the whole time–it doesn’t matter if Simu Liu is onscreen. The third act has a bunch of different characters fighting a bunch of different bad guys, and Liu disappears for a few minutes to do the whole “how’s the hero… 📖
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Superman & Lois (2021) s01e10 – O Mother, Where Art Thou?
Turns out when “Superman and Lois” wants to do a fairly straightforward “Superman” episode, they can do it. Like it balances out well, even if Elizabeth Tulloch gets shockingly little to do but stand around in a show where her character’s name is in the title. And there are some performance problems, but it’s a… 📖
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Doctor Who (2005) s13e02 – War of the Sontarans
So, one thing I don’t understand about “Doctor Who: Flux” is writer Chris Chibnall’s Marvel Cinematic Universe nods. Last episode, they established the only good special effects were going to be the Thanos disintegration effect (presumably the VFX staff bought an iPhone app for ninety-nine cents to get it done), but this episode…. Well, this… 📖
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Superman & Lois (2021) s01e09 – Loyal Subjekts
Right up until the second, harder cliffhanger—the first cliffhanger ought to be a hard one, but ends up being soft, which actually might end up being better given the characters involved—but right up until the finale, it’s a really effective episode with solid acting throughout. And a good explanation for why bad guy Adam Rayner… 📖
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Hitman: Ten Thousand Bullets (1996-97)
So when I said I was going to keep going with Hitman after reading the first volume last June, I meant it. I did not go back and reread it (though I’ve perused since finishing this second collection) and was able to mostly follow the story so Hitman can withstand a sixteen-and-a-half-month break, which is… 📖