Set during the era of the prequel trilogy, Tales of the Jedi offers six animated shorts delving into the pasts of fan-favorite Star Wars characters. The anthology centers around two characters in particular with three episodes each dealing with Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein) and Count Dooku (Corey Burton) during the times when both were members of the Jedi Order.
Another of the wolf children's adventures comes to a close as Connor finally has enough of spite and racism of his would-be mentor choosing instead to befriend another wanderer the pair cross paths with in the forest. And so it's Old Sam who the cub brings home with him. Speaking of those returning home, Blossom returns home with a new boyfriend, and Ambrose makes plans for the library he found on his adventure.
Although part of the two-part episode deals with the JSA taking down the cameras spread across the city, the death of the Gambler (Eric Goins) is put on hold for a couple of weeks while Stargirl picks up the threads of Jennie (Ysa Penarejo), her brother Todd (Tim Gabriel), the corruption of the Green Lantern's ring, and a return to the Shadowlands. Although the others get dressed up in taking out the cameras, and Sylvester's (Joel McHale) voice is heard over internal comms, we don't get an appearance by either Starman or Stargirl. Although Courtney (Brec Bassinger) never suits up in the story, she proves to be the hero needed to save both Jennie and Todd while working past her recent self-doubt.
Attempting to breathe a little life into the franchise, Bring It On: Cheer or Die crosses genres while offering us a plucky squad of underdog cheerleaders cheering for an over-cautious school 20 years after the competition accident. Starting with the basic cheer formula with the squad working to overcome the odds, the tone shifts into horror when the cheerleaders are taken out one by one after choosing to hold secret practices in the old abandoned high school.
Like the other sequels before it, Cheer or Die fails to capture the fun and wit of 2000's Bring It On. The move to horror can't hide all of the film's obvious shortcomings. Kerri Medders stars as the the squad's co-captain with Alexandra Beaton, Marlowe Zimmerman, Madison MacIsaac, Erika Prevost, Tiera Skovbye, and Sierra Holder and others as mostly interchangeable potential victims.
NCIS traces the death of a Marine due to fentanyl due to a crashed plane full of the drug and the missing members of a local tour company with a drug cartel company after them. The episode's plot, which at some moments is one step away from an anti-drug PSA with some of its dialogue, is notable for NCIS' takedown of the drug lab operating near the cover of an active volcano in which one member of the team is exposed to the drug. The episode's B-stories involve Tennant (Vanessa Lachey) reacting to another bombshell from her teenage son and Lucy's (Yasmine Al-Bustami) reaction to learning that Ernie (Jason Antoon) father has died, news he hasn't shared with the rest of the team.
Set in England at the tail end of 1979, the first issue of Hellboy in Love features an archeologist named Anastacia who was robbed by goblins while transporting valuable artifacts bound for the British Museum. Thankfully, the B.P.R.D. put Hellboy on the train, which the goblins have been robbing on a regular basis, for protection.
An earthquake announces the arrival of a new magical creature in the city, a giant flying koi living in the sewer, which leads to conflict between Yi (Chloe Bennet) and Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor) about the best way to proceed both in finding the creature and fixing the magic dam in the sewers that needs to be repaired. In order to repair the damn, Yi, Jin, and Peng (Ethan Loh) perform a rather unorthodox, and a bit rushed, magical museum heist while figuring out how to work together. Aside from being the first episode to follow the show's basic formula, the episode is also notable for offering an explanation of getting around why normal people don't notice the various magical creatures around the city (which definitely needed to be addressed).
The struggle with a concept like Bond goes over to the other side is laying out a situation where such a turn could seem plausible under the right circumstances. The third issue of 007 offers flashbacks to a blown mission involving dictator Mahmoud Nassar which Bond and Gwendolyn Gann manage to salvage and then tying that directly into Bond meeting the head of Myrmidon - Sebastian Fromm.
Andor shifts back into a low gear for an episode where the plot isn't noticeably advanced for much of the episode. We get multiple scenes of the Imperials talking about action (but not really doing much) following the heist, the disgraced Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) getting to work at his new job, squabbling amongst the Rebels concerning the heist, and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) returns home for a brief moment for final goodbyes. While there's some nice moments in the latter, nothing of note happens here. Then, bizarrely, the episode jumps forward an indeterminate amount of time to a different world with Cassian arrested for walking while not Imperial. For an episode determined not to do much, these final few minutes can give you whiplash setting, I almost thought the episode had put me to sleep an I missed a full half-hour of plot. Nope, that's just Andor's attempt at "story telling."
Adapted from a young adult fantasy novel (because of course it is), The School for Good and Evil gives us the odd tale of two friends Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) and Agatha (Sofia Wylie) transported to the paired magical schools for Good and Evil after Sophie makes a wish. Be careful what you wish for as Sophie ends up in the Evil School despite her princess-style. And Agatha, who just wants to go home, ends up in the Good School full of bitchy mean girl princesses.
Neither girl is allowed to change schools or return home as they settle in for their separate Hogwarts-ish training for mostly the descendants of fairy tale characters and a few "readers" like our two protaganists. Oh, and if they fail they will be basically killed off and have their spirit trapped in some kind of magical creature to tea kettle.
The opening episode of The Peripheral introduces us to as talented gamer Flynne Fisher (Chloë Grace Moretz) who would rather spend her time in the real world than VR trying to support her ailing mother (Melinda Page Hamilton) and sketchy older brother (Jack Reynor) who often enlists her help on his various schemes. With enough trouble in the real world, Flynne isn't looking for trouble in VR as well but that's what happens when she helps her brother test a new Sim unlike anything either of them has seen before.
It may have taken more than six issues, but Once and Future comes to close dealing the with final betrayal of and the release of Leir into the world in the final stage of which also allows for one character to find the ending to his story. Our story stays with our main characters, letting the Arthurs and various other characters fade in the mist of forgetfulness.
Kung Fu returns for its Third Season with the city still struggling to get back on its feet after the earthquake and crooked businessman (Seamus Dever) making the most out of the chaos including hiring local gangs to steal from the locals, including the Chen family restaurant, and kidnapping Althea (Shannon Dang) to get rid of evidence tying him to his shady deals. Although Alethia makes it out unscathed, except for her punishment for last season's actions likely limiting her role as the group's go-to techie this season, and our baddie heads to jail, the restaurant is still close to going under leading to the Chen's looking to potential investors to keep things afloat. Looks like nearly everyone has their own stories this season.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Black Adam is a mess. Now, not unlike the first Suicide Squad film, that doesn't mean at times it isn't a fun mess, but it is a mess nevertheless. And the film has more than a few things in common with the first Suicide Squad film including messy magical characters and a problematic final act.
Featuring all the trademarks of a throwaway action thriller, Blackout centers around an undercover DEA agent (Josh 'Tad Hamilton' Duhamel) who awakes in the hospital with no memory but with gangsters searching for something he stole from them. Set entirely within a Mexican hospital, which has a scarcity of nurses, doctors, and other patients, but seemingly no end to henchmen who are sent after our amnesiac like fodder (often forgetting the need to capture our protagonist alive).
A few other familiar faces are slumming it here including Abbie Cornish as a woman's whose motives for helping our hero are murky and Nick Nolte as our agent's boss ready to bring the cavalry (even if it is too late to be of much assistance). And Bárbara de Regil is cast as a perhaps the hospital's only nurse in a role that the script keeps forgetting about.
Looking for any way in which to clear their names, Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) and the other spies go to work for the CIA as Slater (Christian Slater) hires the band of misfits to kill Fabian Kingsworth (Kayvan Novak). Not knowing that Ray (Adam Reed) is actually Slater's mole on the inside leads to some complications as the team eventually agree to Lana's (Aisha Tyler) plan and double-cross the CIA in order to capture, rather than kill, Fabian and hand him over to Interpol. Offering a bit of a reset, the spies return home to the agency with Lana know taking the lead in whatever new trouble the group may find.
Kicking off a new twelve-issue run of mysteries, The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries reunites Mystery, Inc. with the Dynamic Duo in the long-abandoned ghost town of Miner's Infraction which has earned their interest for recent odd occurrences which trace back to Ubu and the henchman's master Ra's al Ghul.
The more outrageous the lie, the more likely it is to be believed. Operation Mincemeat offers us a look at the 1943 deception operation instrumental to getting the Allies back in the fight. The group led by Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen) was tasked with convincing Germany the Allies would invade Greece instead of the more logical location of Sicily. Their lie involved the creation of a solider who didn't exist, a dead body, fake papers, and a lot of luck.
The core group also includes Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald) who proved vital to the campaign, although came between the two men, Penelope Wilton as Montagu's loyal assistant, Johnny Flynn as Ian Fleming, and Jason Isaacs as the Admiral who doesn't believe in the plan initially but still supports it when its greenlit by Churchill (Simon Russell Beale).
While not nearly as fun as G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero – Saturday Morning Adventures, the first issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Saturday Morning Adventures #1 follows the same basic formula while attempting to recreate the enjoyment of a classic cartoon in comic form. Offering a single tale, the first issue of the four-issue mini-series gives us the misadventures of Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael who become trapped in a VR training program.
NCIS runs into dead ends while investigation the death of a sailor, and older brother to a star high school football player (Kainalu Moya) whose family is under the thumb of a local group of gangsters expecting to skim money from the kid's promising football career. With a community to scared to talk, Kai (Alex Tarrant) turns to an old friend (Jonah Ho'Okano) for help.
Based on the on-again/off-again horror comic from Marvel Comics that found its longest run in the 1970s, Werewolf by Night offers an hour of Disney-fied horror (i.e. bloodless and never quite creepy enough) by brining together a collection of monster hunters on the Bloodstone property in a race to kill a monster and claim the price of the recently deceased Ulysses Bloodstone (a robotically-animated corpse adding to the goofiness of the proceedings) - the Bloodstone.
Putting their mission to find and help magical creatures in the city on hold, Yi (Chloe Bennet), Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor), and Peng (Ethan Loh) need to help Everest (Darin De Paul) who isn't used to the warmer temperatures of a summer in Shanghai. A short cool down in the restaurant's freezer offers a temporary solution, but in order to save their friend the kids will reach out to the reformed Burnish (Alan Cumming) who, after initially refusing, decides to help by building a cooling chamber for the yeti on the roof allowing Everest to stay with Yin.
After the successful pairing of Red Sonja with Sitha, which has now concluded, Dynamite Entertainment looks for new ways to reexamine such pairings. The first issue of Unbreakable Red Sonja from Jim Zub and Giovanni Valletta pairs the She-Devil with a Sword with a fiery young woman, in this instance a thief who has stolen from the drunken warrior. In a twist, the girl is... Red Sonja?
Yolanda (Yvette Monreal) shares her discovery with the team, but gets caught by Cindy (Meg DeLacy) while putting back to laptop as the years of animosity between the pair boil over leading to more dirty laundry aired by the increasingly dysfunctional team. Feeling appropriately betrayed and her privacy invaded, Cindy to have little interest in helping the JSA moving forward. Mike (Trae Romano) and Jakeem (Alkoya Brunson), unaware of what has happened within the JSA, continue their attempts to recruit Cindy to get their own team off the ground. Will Cindy's split with the JSA be their opening?
After a disappointing showing in the 2004 Olympics, director Jon Weinbach's documentary takes a look at changes to Team USA and the rededication of NBA players to bringing home the gold medal. The film touches on several subjects including Mike Krzyzewski taking over as head coach, the struggles for the team at the 2006 World Championship, the rise of LeBron James and Dwayne Wade as superstars, and how the addition of Kobe Bryant was the final piece of the puzzle for the 2008 team who would go on to dominate in Beijing.
Despite some attempts by the director, players, and a couple of the sport's talking heads to cast the 2008 team as the best Olympic Team ever, there's no real argument that this team (or its journey) was better than that of 1992's Dream Team.
The sixth episode of Andor finally gets to the heist, although the show's method of drawing events out unnecessarily continues even during the heist itself often flashing to events elsewhere on the military base or with the locals amassing to view the celestial event. The choice would seem to be done in attempt to draw out the tension of events even longer. However, the result is actually the opposite as editing of the episode continually undercuts and distracts from the events the show has finally gotten around to delivering. If Andor was a comic book series it would be a three-issue story stretched thinly over an entire year's run where you could easily miss two or three months at a time and still have no trouble staying caught up with the story.
While it might not have been the strongest of Legacies four seasons, the final season does pay off on the promise introduced in The Originals with the death of Hope (Danielle Rose Russell) and the rebirth of the Tribrid who kills Malivore, and Landon (Aria Shahghasemi), and unlocks the final third of her powers when she comes back as a vampire. Most of the season plays on the fallout of Hope's reemergence who returns without her humanity becoming a dangerous frenemy to the school for most of the season.
While evil-Hope is the villain for part of the season, the larger looming threat are the returning Gods who are aided by longtime Mikaelson family enemy Aurora de Martel (Rebecca Breeds) who gets a body-swap episode with Hope and her own redemption arc before all is said and done.
In the calm prior to the final two episodes of the season, with nearly the entire world swallowed up by nothingness, Luther (Tom Hopper) and Sloane (Genesis Rodriguez) decide to get married. The episode offers us a bachelor party, the wedding and reception, and a nice family moment that even Ben (Justin H. Min) gets let into. We also see Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) remain a bitch and refuse to reconcile with Viktor (Elliot Page), and a drunken Five (Aidan Gallagher) gets a glimpse of something which will impact the final two episodes of the season, the journey into the Hotel Oblivion, and beyond. Aside from the fact the all reality is ending, it's a fun and lighthearted episode, although dark times aren't far away.
Two separate plotlines are at play in "Irons in the Fire." Josh's (Brendan Hines) investigation into the journal which Nina (Darby Stanchfield) provided allows for flashbacks to fill in some of the backstory of the Locke family and their history with the portal to the other dimension, demons, and keys. Elsewhere, Kinsey (Emilia Jones) and Tyler (Connor Jessup) gather their friends and prepare for a fight with the new turned minions of Gabe/Dodge (Griffin Gluck) which ends with one of their friends being turned into a demon leading to the need for a new key.
A couple weeks too early for Halloween, "Primal Fear" offers a search for a serial killer who scares his victims to death after spiking their adrenaline and causing a coronary. The less-than-scary visage of the killer (i.e. random guy in a Halloween mask) doesn't help sell the premise nor does the rather obvious suspect who is immediately identifiable as the likely killer after showing up on-screen. The episode also sees the return of Coast Guard Special Agent Neil Pike (Mark Gessner) and delivers on the breadcrumbs with Tennant (Vanessa Lachey) meeting his son's older girlfriend (Sierra Swartz) leading to concerns she decides not the share.
Spinning out of the radio drama of the same name, the first issue of the new seven-issue mini-series finds Batman on the hunt for those responsible for the Black Market Massacre and searching the city for an ancient artifact. As someone who never watched the HBO Max show, I can only assume that the comic may feel a bit more substantial to those already exposed to this version of Batman.
Spinning out of the underrated 2019 animated feature Abominable, the new series brings back Everest (Darin De Paul) to Shanghai to help Yi (Chloe Bennet) with her magic and deal with a magical bird known as a Fenghuang which shows up in the restaurant in need of help. Offering reunions between the yeti an the the kids, the first episode of Abominable and the Invisible City also sets up the premise of the show with Yi, Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor), and Peng (Ethan Loh) helping a different magical creature in every episode.
The first issue of Briar feels like something inspired by Fables or Once Upon a Time, however things take a decidedly dark turn. The idea is simple, what if Sleeping Beauty never woke up? Prince Charming married the sleeping princess for control of the kingdom and decades (centuries?) later the princess was awoken by a thief stealing whatever was left in the shambles of the castle.
Combining Arrival and Jurassic Park into a single idea, "Juricksic Mort" sees dinosaurs return to the Earth in spaceships to be surprised by humanity's rise and offers to fix the world for them (which they do in record time). Rick's (Justin Roiland) obsession to prove himself better to the dinos leads to a discovery about mildly-sentient asteroids out to destroy them. While not one of the strongest episodes, there's fun to be had such as the family turning to Jerry (Chris Parnell) as the expert on how to get by doing nothing (now that nothing is needed).
Not diverting too much from the formula of the original, Hocus Pocus 2 returns the Sanderson sisters (Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy) back to Salem when someone lights a candle on Halloween. The movie plays fast and loose with the events of the previous film in what characters remember, playing up the same shock of the witches to the modern world as in the first film. The film focuses on the three actresses hamming it up again on-screen while a small population of the town becomes aware of them (despite their mass cursing and flying around all night).
This time our teenagers are Becca (Whitney Peak) and Izzy (Belissa Escobedo) and their estranged childhood friend Cassie (Lilia Buckingham) who traded up for a relationship with a football player (Froy Gutierrez) and hasn't been spending time with them recently.
Well, at least the Daredevil scenes were fun. Sandwiched between the show's mediocre sitcom writing about a super-hero lawyer who dosen't do much super-heroing or lawyering, the meat of the episode offers the return of Charlie Cox both in and out of costume as Matt Murdock and Daredevil. Also, points for getting the yellow version of Daredevil on screen (even if the reason for the change in costume is never addressed). For a series fumbling around the idea of female empowerment, there is some irony in the idea that it's a man who gets Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) back into the courtroom (as a lawyer and not a defendant) and into her super-hero costume for the first time.
After a six-month hiatus, The Human Target picks up with Christopher Chance halfway through his remaining days on Earth after drinking the poison meant for Lex Luthor. Issue #7 offers a chance for Chance and Fire to test each other while dancing around the question of whether or not Fire is our would-be murderer. The back-and-forth is fun, and will eventually lead somewhere Chance doesn't expect.
As Courtney (Brec Bassinger) begins spending more time with Cameron (Hunter Sansone) and pulling away from the team, Sylvester (Joel McHale) steps up to fill the hole with another angry outburst and some questionable advice to Rick (Cameron Gellman), Mike (Trae Romano), and Yolanda (Yvette Monreal) foreshadowing trouble as Rick removes a safety on the hourglass and Yolanda makes a discovery that leads to more assumptions about Cindy (Meg DeLacy). As for the investigation into the murder of the Gambler (Eric Goins) no new suspects emerge. Flashbacks seem to clear Cindy of the crime, although Yolanda's discovery of the laptop should lead to another confrontation between the pair.
After being played by Fabian Kingsworth (Kayvan Novak), our spies are on the run being hunted. Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) comes up with a plan of distraction to get Lana (Aisha Tyler) into court while calling on for some dirt on Robert (Stephen Tobolowsky) from an old friend to help Lana win custody of her daughter. "Distraction Action" is notable mostly for crazy distractions of Cyril (Chris Parnell) and Pam (Amber Nash) and the near total incompetence of the government agents assigned to capture them. Wacky fun, but rather standard Archer-craziness without any stand-out moments.
After picking up the pace and finally beginning the main story in the previous episode, Andor slows to a crawl again as we spend another full episode waiting for the mission to begin. The season's fifth episode also spends more time with Mon Mothma's (Genevieve O’Reilly) family and with the disgraced Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) without advancing, or yet justifying, either of those subplots. We also check in with Imperial Security Bureau Supervisor Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) despite no progress being made in her investigation. If you are looking for the definition of a filler episode, you've found one.
The "Secret of the Green Dragon" arc concludes with an issue more about Miyamoto Usagi, Yukichi, and Chizu out-running and out-thinking the perusing Komori Ninja than battling them. Chizu's dangerous decisions will push Usagi to the breaking point especially after he learns they are going to all this trouble to protect a document that isn't even real leading to a final face-to-face with the Komori.
Finally putting the infighting behind them, the Umbrella Academy and the remaining members of the Sparrow Academy come together in an attempt to defeat the Kugelblitz and save the world. Although initially successful, by the end of the episode the universe is still in danger and the Sparrows are down two more members. "Auf Wiedersehen" postpones the fight between Viktor (Elliot Page) and Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) over the fate of Harlan and provides a sweet moment between Luther (Tom Hopper) and Sloane (Genesis Rodriguez) in the calm before annihilation comes calling again.
Weekend plans take unexpected twists as Chrissy's (Lucy DeVito) weekend with her dad (Danny DeVito) leads to a hellish games show of murder, and back on Earth Darlene (Lennon Parham) drags Laura (Aubrey Plaza) on a night out that also ends in murder (following some foreplay with a serial killer) and getting trapped in her pocket dimension running for their lives from an out-of-control ego monster. While Chrissy's murderous winning streak on the game show ends up being disappointed by a parent, again, Laura learns to let loose a bit with Darlene eventually bonding with the noisy neighbor trying to push her out of her comfort zone.
The march towards G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero #300 continues in G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero #298 with the two Snake Eyes putting up one last fight before being captured in Dr. Mindbender's laboratory. A prickly Genghis Khan proves harder for Mindbender to control and decides to update his wardrobe. And the Joes who made it out of the casino await the arrival of reinforcements on the island.
I'm not sure exactly how a low-budget horror flick about a puzzle box from Hell spawns a franchise of more than ten films, but here we are. Without the input of franchise creator Clive Barker, but still based on his 1986 novella, the 1987 film gets a reboot introducing Goran Visnjic as the rich douchebag attempting to use the box to achieve his dreams, with ghastly results, and a group of dumb and unlikable twenty-somethings (Odessa A'zion, Adam Faison, Drew Starkey, Brandon Flynn, and Aoife Hinds) who the box falls to six years later with equally horrific results (at least for the audience).
More fetish porn than horror, the new Hellraiser isn't creepy or thrilling, isn't fun or wacky, nor is it kinky or alluring (it is released by Disney after all). Neither the humans nor the Cenobites are strong enough to root for or against leaving us to watch events unfold without caring much about what happens.
The investigation of a car crash leads to unexpected twists and turns when the victim turns out not to be a very pregnant, and very alive, Naval officer (Kate Miner) but a Bulgarian imposter who stole her identity. Given her resemblance to the victim, NCIS sends Whistler (Tori Anderson) in undercover to try and find the victim's partners and discover what they wanted with stealing the identities of three Naval officers none of which have access to classified information or access to anything obvious of high monetary value other than medical supplies.
The four-issue mini-series continues with a feverish Hellboy living out a fantasy of an adventure with his hero the Lobster while unknowingly being pursued by a very real threat in the assassin from a cult sent to kill him.
Fortune cookies are made from alien poop. And fortunes from the cookies are real. Oh, and Jerry (Chris Parnell) is fated to sleep with his mother. That's the basic premise for a wacky episode of Rick and Morty as steps in after Jerry receives an odd and specific fortune that the rest of the family laughs off. The more Rick investigates the more he suspects something odd is indeed going on, leading to a confrontation with a business woman (and her many, many troops) and a discovery behind the alien origins of fortune cookies. Things get a bit weird after that.
