Review: Arrow 3.17 - Suicidal Tendencies

Diggle and Lyla get married, Ray finds out Oliver is the Arrow, and fake Arrow is really causing some problems for the team. Suicide Squad goes on a mission with serious consequences, and we get flashbacks from someone besides Ollie. This episode was incredibly busy, which was rather detrimental. It was difficult to be interested when we were zooming from one storyline to another. The newly Mr. and Mrs. Diggle are summoned for a mission alongside Deadshot and Cupid: to save a U.S. senator from a hostage situation. It ends in a shootout and a fiery explosion, naturally, and has Diggle and Lyla both questioning their career choices in the face of parenthood.

Ray, meanwhile, discovering the Arrow’s identity and takes it upon himself to get justice for the murders committed by Fake Arrow, who is not one person but many League members, including Maseo (who looks mighty fine in the Arrow get-up, I might add).

Ray’s discovery puts an obvious strain on his relationship with Felicity, and Oliver still firmly believes that it’s impossible to be a hero and be a person at the same time. Maybe he has a point, but I’m so bored by this excuse and by this attempt at a love triangle.

We get some flashbacks of Deadshot’s pre-A.R.G.U.S. life, of the family that he briefly had and of his PTSD. It’s meant to build sympathy leading up to his sacrifice, but it doesn’t quite work for me.

This could have been a solid episode if it hadn’t tried to juggle several storylines at once. A main story with a couple of subplots works just fine, but in this episode the focus was everywhere at once. Plus, I’m pretty over the love triangle. After everything, Ray still isn’t very likeable, so I find it hard to root for his relationship with Felicity, though her and Ollie’s mutual pining isn’t much better.

This episode ends in a cliffhanger of sorts. And we’re nearly at the end of season three and Lance still has no idea who the Arrow is. I feel obligated to bring that up until he works it out. I very nearly wrote “until he inevitably works it out” but Lance has been completely clueless for this long, so honestly who knows.

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Score: 2/5

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Arrow 3.17 – Suicidal Tendencies

Watch Arrow on the CW, Wednesdays at 8/7c.

Review: Marvel's Agents of SHIELD 2.14 – Love in the Time of Hydra

Coming down from last week’s action packed B-List slug fest things slow down a little and we get a couple of very claustrophobic stories.  Unfortunately none of those stories involve what happened to Cal and the Inhumans last episode.  I was looking forward to some payoff on that but that’s not what I got.  Instead we spend our time working through a couple of intense, interpersonal stories. It’s hard to pick an ‘A’ story, that is to say, a main story.  Two of the stories impact the main plot but they are both very separate while the return of Ward and Madame Masque is clearly a ‘B’ story because that doesn’t really seem to affect anyone or anything other than to reintroduce us to those characters.  The two A stories are divided between Skye and Coulson coming to terms with Skye’s powers and Hunter being introduced to the ‘Real SHIELD’.

The Skye and Coulson story was interesting in that it forced several characters to come to terms with things boiling under the surface.  The father/daughter chemistry between Coulson and Skye is still there and there’s something unique about it because Clark Gregg doesn’t seem to be able to have the same kind of scenes with anyone else.  When it’s Coulson/Skye time it’s unique to those characters.  Coulson takes Skye to an undisclosed location to figure herself out away from the SHIELD crew.  They talk a little about what the changes are to Skye and what Skye should do.  She’s essentially a prisoner in a very fancy prison.  Most of that interaction though is pretty forgettable and kind of standard comfort banter.  It’s white noise, if it weren’t there you’d notice it but it being there doesn’t do much for your experience.

The more important part of this plot comes in the form of a side exchange between Fitz and Simmons.  Fitz points out that Simmons is afraid of the changes that happened to both Fitz and Skye and that fear has in fact changed Simmons the most out of everyone.  It’s something they’ve been building to and they dropped the bomb a few episodes ago when they were all cleaning up the mess left by the Kree agent and Fitz lets Simmons know he knows how Simmons is behaving and how he relates to Skye.  I really liked how they’ve changed Fitz and Simmons dynamic this season giving it a bit of depth and stretching Fitz out a bit in the process.

The other A plot is Hunter being introduced to the ‘Real SHIELD’ which was kind of a letdown after all the mystery and hype of Hunter being choked out.  The core conceit of the ‘Real SHIELD’ is transparency and apparently the irony of wanting to be a transparent organization that uses spies and hides in the shadows never occurred to anyone.  Which is strange because I know for a fact Edward James Olmos has a highly defined sense of irony.  I know that from playing chess with him.  In my mansion.  Where I keep all my money.  Have I mentioned I don’t believe in lying?  I believe in only telling the truth.

Anyway Hunter escapes and they have 12 hours before he makes shore and they’re pretty sure he’ll blow their cover at that point, instead of say, fuck off and drink himself unconscious which is the cover they’ve been using to Coulson and he seems to believe that pretty easily.  But they’re worries about their precious cover they’ve tried so hard to keep.  Because they don’t believe in hiding in the shadows like Fury or Coulson.  Because they’re transparent…  Mockingbird asks to be put back in to… ‘Fake SHIELD’… I guess… so she can take out Coulson.  For this organization.  That doesn’t believe in backstabbing or lying.  When presented with the 12 hour deadline she grimly assures everyone she can do it in 6 hours.

Meanwhile Coulson and May decided to take Mack out because they know he’s a spy.  Of course they do, you can’t subtly choke a guy out and drag his body somewhere.  Trust me, I know this from experience.  Metal Gear Solid makes it look so easy but it’s not, you try it and suddenly everyone at the church is looking at you wondering what you’re doing to the priest.  I’m just glad I didn’t know anyone at that wedding.

The decidedly B plot is Ward and Agent 33 (Madame Masque) go to get her face fixed so she doesn’t look and sound like a broken Agent May Hall of Presidents robot.  It starts with a Pulp Fiction-esque café kidnapping and ends with General Talbot delivering the best parts of this episode.  After they get her face fixed she tries to seduce Ward by looking like Skye but sounding like May.  She should have known that wasn’t going to work, that’s far too confusing for a penis.  Ward tells her the way to get her groove back is to go after Bakshi who you may remember as Hydra’s number one number two.  They do this by breaking into Talbot’s Air Force base.  Talbot is the star of this episode by far, he has the most personality and delivers the best comedy.  If it weren’t for him then this episode would have been a dumper.  From talking about riding lawnmowers to yanking on some woman’s face to prove she’s an infiltrator to pointing a gun at his own wife he makes this episode worthwhile. Not a whole lot of forward momentum and it’s definitely missing that Cal payoff they tried so hard to set up last episode but it keeps the story floating, even if it doesn’t go very far.  If you like Marvel's Agents of SHIELD then this will sit as one of those mediocre episodes if you don’t like the show then this is just going to be another reason to not watch it.

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Score: 3/5

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Marvel’s Agents of Shield 2.14

New episodes of Marvel’s Agents of Shield – Tuesdays 9/8C

Review: The Flash 1.16 – Rogue Time

Holy shit, the real villains of this week are Cisco’s shitty fucking family.  Jesus.  I mean Thong Song wasn’t exactly groundbreaking but it did pretty well.  It was all over the place in the 90’s, that’s respectable, even if there wasn’t a follow-up hit.  But man are they a crappy group of people.  I kind of wish last week’s tsunami hit landfall if it meant wiping that colony of assholes off the face of the map.  Good god.  Speaking of last week’s tsunami it was apparently the only thing that ignited Iris’ love for Barry.  See boys, the woman you love probably loves you back, you just need to put her in a life threatening situation and then save her and all those feelings will come gushing out.  Also keep in mind, as the show has established, that if you ARE a hero you are allowed to look at a woman naked without her permission.  The Flash ladies and gentlemen!  He’s a role-model to poorly adjusted perverts everywhere!  His costume should really come with a red fedora.

Flash immediately subverts everything that happened last episode without any sort of debate that makes it worthwhile.  All the debate about time travel comes after the fact, Wells warns that any tragedy subverted by time travel will only be replaced by an equal or greater tragedy.  Apparently this means that Barry doesn’t get his sex prize because suddenly Iris doesn’t love Barry the way she did at the end of last episode.  By Odin’s hoary beard this aspect of the show pisses me right the hell off.  I can’t focus on anything else.  While I’m just generally venting, before I get into the episode proper, let me tell you how well the show hooked me this week?  After 5 minutes, when they made last week totally irrelevant, I decided that my living room really needed to be cleaned.  Then, boy, those dishes should probably be put away.  Then, man, I should probably use that Neti Pot I got to try to help with a sinus infection.  I decided sinus irrigation with warm water was preferable to watching this.  DO YOU KNOW WHAT A NETI POT IS?  DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT DOES?  Look that shit up and realize that I would rather do that than watch this week’s Flash.

The only redeeming quality to this episode is the return of Captain Cold and Heatwave along with the debuting Golden Glider.  Although I don’t remember Golden Glider having a gold gun.  There was a DC Green Lantern villain called Goldbug that had a gold gun but Golden Glider just had ice powers like her brother Captain Cold.  Except she ice skated around on ice producing skates and maybe she had a cold wand?  I don’t remember and it doesn’t really matter.  Captain Cold just gets better and better with each appearance as he seems to settle into the role nicely.  His chemistry with Heatwave is really great and understandably so since the two spent a lot of time together as the ‘Prison Break Bros’ but I think their characters and their dynamic was a bit different.  All I know about Prison Break came from watching commercials about Prison Break.  But I welcome Captain Cold any time I get to see him.  On a random note did Barry just make a deal to allow crime as long as Cold keeps his identity?  Did I understand that exchange right?

This episode was worthless.  I would have cut everything but Cold/Heatwave and ran that as an online short.  It would have been just as effective.  Cisco’s family is utterly unlikable so their whole brotherly love sub plot couldn’t have interested me less.  Barry struggling with the changes to the timeline wasn’t very interesting and nothing gets addressed or moved forward.  Not only could they not have aired this episode but they would have been better off not airing last week’s episode as well.  It should have just been an hour of commercials and dead air both weeks.  Where is my fucking telepathic monkey!

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Score: 2/5

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The Flash 1.16

The Flash airs Tuesdays 8/7 C

Review: Arrow 3.16 - The Offer

Ra’s al Ghul wants Oliver Queen to take his place. Ollie, Diggle, and Merlyn are free to return to Starling while Ollie thinks over the generous offer, and then right on cue, there’s a new villain in town. Villain of the week has his mouth sewn shut and a pretty serious hatred for the SCPD. The bad guys eventually make their way to the police station for a shootout, and Team Arrow saves the day. Captain Lance confronts the Arrow about Sara’s death, and he still doesn’t know that Ollie is the Arrow. I can’t believe that.

Thea is working out who she is, and who she’s become because of Merlyn. I don’t blame her for hating Merlyn, but I do think it’s time she went to therapy. She’s certainly been through some stuff, but she needs an outlet to work it out.

There were some good character interactions in this episode. Diggle remains Oliver’s number one confidant, and I really appreciate that. Laurel tries to fix things with her father, but he says he can’t forgive her. This is why lying is bad, Laurel! Laurel and Nyssa bond a bit, and Nyssa offers to train her. Oliver’s been harping on about Laurel needing more training, but he hasn’t exactly offered. Hopefully Nyssa teaches her to kick Ollie’s ass.

Oliver decides he won’t accept Ra’s’ offer, but it doesn’t seem to be a choice.

Not many flashbacks in this episode, which was nice. Ollie continues to be the most dramatic person in all of Starling. We also get our first glimpse of the Lazarus Pit. Overall, decent episode, with quite a bit of family drama and a good amount of action.

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Score: 3/5

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Arrow 3.16 - The Offer

Watch Arrow on the CW, Wednesdays at 8/7c.

Review: iZombie 1.1 - Pilot

If I had to describe this first episode in a word that word would definitely be ‘charming’.  I don’t know much about iZombie only recently learning that it was a comic book and judging by the opening credits it’s a Vertigo book at that.  When I first heard that the show was coming and that it was based on a comic what the title brought to mind was something closer to Clueless meets iCarly with the visual aesthetic of Zombie Tramp.  Some satire of celebrity using a zombie who is super into fashion and a little shallow but ultimately loveable and has a YouTube series where she talks about fashion and graveyards as well as an Instagram where she posts pictures of her brain based food and Pinterest’s the brain based recipes.  Maybe I’m weird or maybe it’s poorly named. The premise, instead, is a pretty straightforward ‘gifted detective’ story.  You could probably slot it into the ‘psychic detective’ genre but really it’s the same as Monk or Psych or The Mentalist or Lie to Me or any of those kinds of shows.  The zombie twist is nice though and makes it stand out on its own a little bit better.  By eating the brains of those she exams medically at the morgue she works at she gets visions.  She can also adopt personality traits and apparently language as she learns Romanian and becomes a kleptomaniac by eating this week’s brain and trying to keep her zombie status a secret also helps to create tension in the setting.

The little flashes of comic drawings to introduce the next scene and the great narration mechanic they use really helps add personality and quirk to what could be a pretty boring show.  All those little bits help but what made everything really pop for me was the cast.  They did a good job of assembling a cast that has excellent chemistry.  Everybody puts in their A-game and they all work well together.  Our three mains are each unique and work well as a group and as their various pairings.  The only one we get to see alone is Liv, our titular zombie, and she is interesting enough to carry scenes by herself even though she works best playing off her M.E. boss or her detective partner.  Her supporting cast, namely her family and her ex, do well enough with the brief time they’re given providing a bunch of interesting and conflicting personalities.  Not that those personalities are well-rounded or 3 dimensional, because they aren’t, they’re prone to broad characterization but not in a way that pulls me out of the story.  All in all, despite its flaws, it connects me to the cast and makes me want to see more of what will happen.  Add in a reveal of an antagonist as potentially supernatural as Liv and you got something that could carry the show all the way to mid-season without a problem.

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Score: 3/5

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iZombie 1.1

Watch iZombie on CW, Tuesday 9/8 C

Review: The Flash 1.15 – Out of Time

“Don’t bother talking to them, they’re extras, they’re not paid enough to talk.”

For the most part this was yet another boring episode from the Flash with a few moments that captured that old Flash feeling I had at the start of the series.  Most of it was more boring family stuff and more Wells “Is he good or evil?” stuff.  Stuff they’ve been retreading since mid-season.  Meh, I could do without that kind of drama.  What bothers me most is the relationship between Barry and Iris which happens to be the exact kind of relationship that resonates on the perfect frequency to piss me right the hell off and its presence sours an otherwise good episode.  At least they don’t mention millennials again.

Wells is an out of the closet bad guy now with Cisco discovering the recorded message in the trap they set for Reverse Flash in the mid-season finale that allowed Wells to be in two places at once.  With this discovery came the dropping of all pretense on the part of Wells who reveals himself to be Eobard Thawne which cements him as the Professor Zoom incarnation of Reverse Flash.  The scene was great and played to perfection by both Cisco and Wells who are probably the best actors on this show and consistently save it from dropping into the trash bin.  Sadly it ends with Reverse Flash driving a vibrating hand into the chest of Cisco and Cisco’s last words being a chilling “Dumps like a truck, truck, truck.  Let me say it again…” Touching, truly touching.  I cried.

Barry reveals his identity to Iris when he is forced to stop a tsunami by running really fast.  Running really fast, the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems!  He runs so fast however he goes back in time.  I’m going to assume they’ll use this mechanic to erase all the cool things they did this episode.  They’ll probably retcon the secret identity reveal for both Flash and Wells, reverse Cisco’s murder and the tsunami.  It kind of takes the sting out of everything that happened here knowing that it’s probably all meaningless.

It’s no secret that I haven’t been that huge of a fan of Flash since its return and it’s too bad I couldn’t establish my love of the show by reviewing the earlier episodes because this is by no means how I want to come off about this show but it just hasn’t been good lately.  I think they’re trying too hard to be Arrow and that’s not what this show needs to be.  Let Arrow be Arrow, let Flash be Flash and let the new Atom die in a fire.  Sorry, that’s another thing I’m passionate about.  There have certainly been worse episodes of the Flash and this one at least establishes some momentum towards being the Flash that I loved before which grants it a watchable score.

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Score: 3/5

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The Flash 1.15

The Flash airs Tuesdays 8/7 C

Review: Marvel's Agents of SHIELD 2.13 - One of Us

Do you know who this is?

That’s Angar the fucking Screamer!  Number one in obscure Marvel villains that I am SO happy to see.  Shit like this hits me right in the fanboy and makes me mark out like crazy.  All they need to do now is have an appearance by Armless Tiger Man and I might just ask Marvel's Agents of SHIELD to marry me.

Kidding aside this was an excellent episode, a damn near perfect one for me.  We get more of Cal, whom I love.  Kyle MacLachlan as Mr. Hyde has really transformed that character from some Z-Grade Hulk villain that I don’t care about into one of my favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe baddies.  I’d love to see Cal make it into a movie or become a more permanent fixture in Agents of SHIELD.  Mr. Hyde’s storyline gives me everything I really enjoy about Agents of SHIELD: dramatic monologues, bad bad guys, good good guys and dredging the obscure depths of the Marvel Universe for B-squaders and making them super badass.  Scrubs like Angar or Ajax (called Francis Noche here, I’m calling it based on the fact they share a first name, some powers and some origin) or enhanced references like Carla Faye Gideon (you might remember her from Daredevil, here they pay off her origin with a twist) all have great moments and fantastic real world depictions.  Add to that a movie worthy showdown between SHIELD and Cal’s group and you’ve got one of the better A-plots since before the break.  Stuff like this is why I thought SHIELD was immediately better this season than last, each episode felt like a mini-movie and it captured that feeling here again.

The B-plot is about Skye getting a psych evaluation from Agent May’s ex-husband.  It didn’t make me mark out like the A-plot did but it does a good job of exploring Skye’s new position within SHIELD and uses it as a platform to explore pretty much everyone else’s interpersonal relationships in the process.  We see Simmons and Bobbi get a moment, Fitz and Simmons, May and Skye, Skye with May’s Ex and so on.  We also get some closure on Mack choking out Hunter at the end of the last episode as he gets introduced to the ‘Real SHIELD’ which uses the old SSR logo.  The final sting is Cal facing Inhuman justice.

I doubt Marvel would debut someone as powerful as Black Bolt, who may or may not be Vin Diesel, but who knows.  With this show pretty much anything could go.  If I were in charge every big name movie actor contract would come with mandatory appearances on Agents of SHIELD.  You sign up for 3 movies you make 6 appearances on Agents of SHIELD, you appear every season.  These people make enough money in their contracts you might as well get your money’s worth.  Run the show at a loss and use it like a cool commercial for your movies.  Seeing people like Chris Evans or Jeremy Renner or Scarlett Johansen would do wonders not only for the TV show but also as a way to promote your huge movies.  Who knows maybe Black Bolt will be the first big reveal they do here.

I’m now really excited to see what happens with the series.  With only a few episodes left, according to Wikipedia, I’m interested in seeing where it’s all going.  Who is the real SHIELD?  What will happen with Skye?  Are they going to make her full Quake with gauntlets and everything?  How will the Inhumans play a role in all of this?  Will old Peggy Carter come back as the head of ‘real SHIELD’?  I know she was kind of out of it in Winter Soldier but maybe they cured her of that.  Maybe it’s Nick Fury.  Maybe it’s Maria Hill or someone else entirely.  How will it all go into Avengers 2?  So many questions and I’m excited to get the answers.

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Score: 4/5

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Marvel’s Agents of Shield 2.13

New episodes of Marvel’s Agents of Shield – Tuesdays 9/8C

Review: Marvel's Agents of SHIELD 2.12 – Who You Really Are

“We’ve worked together before.  See, here are the promotional photos from the last crossover.”

This week opens on the totally surprising cameo of Sif!  In a budget friendly leather jacket!  At least it is a total surprise to me, Hulu doesn’t have previews and I guess it hasn’t been that big a deal online but I’m always happy to see Sif.  Along with Sif we get our first exposure to the Kree.  Could this mean a possible introduction to Captain Marvel sometime down the road?  With the establishment of Terrigen gas/Inhumans could we see Kamala Ms. Marvel?  A final, random, observation before we get into the review proper: Agent May tells Sif that they’ve met Odin.  What!?!  When!?! Before or after The Dark World!?!  THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!  ANSWER MY QUESTIONS PRE-RECORDED TV SHOW!

For a show that usually hangs on to its mysteries, milking them for all their worth, they really hotshot the whole Skye/Fitz conspiracy.  It comes to a head by the end of this episode while the whole Mockingbird/Mac conspiracy gets cleared up a little.  We know they aren’t Hydra, at least they imply they aren’t Hyrda, what they could be is still up in the air.  Personally I think it’s some kind of pro-registration deal, an internal, more hardline organization looking to displace Coulson’s more meta-friendly one.  I also think they’re turning Mac into New Warrior Rage.  Which, if true, might lead to the start of Captain America 3: Civil War when fellow New Warrior Speedball gets blow’d up.  Who knows what their take will be on it, if instead of the New Warriors being a group a doofy kids in a reality show maybe they’ll be a public meta strike force.  Anyway, who knows, I just think it’s fun to speculate.  Which is probably why I like this show so much, it leaves a lot of room for speculation.

Being a superfan of this show I enjoyed it.  I thought the action beats were good, I thought the character interaction was good, especially one of the final moments between Fitz and Jemma and I liked what was built upon there.  I also like that Coulson calls his big Loki-buster gun ‘Bambino’.  The show does drift into melodrama at points but that is the language of stories like this.  I don’t know how they could eliminate that without it coming off as flat.  One thing that bothered me was that they pull the Thesaurus out and call Skye every word but Inhuman that still means inhuman.  I wish they’d just own the word already.

Ultimately the show works for me.  It answers questions as it asks new ones and pulls me along the narrative thread.  I want to know what happens next, how these relationships will change, how the story will change.  Will Skye end up joining the Inhumans?  What is this conspiracy that’s going on?  Apparently it’s so important Mac would rather choke a bitch out than talk about it.  How will this play into the next movies?  How will the next movies affect this show?  There are a lot of plans in motion and a lot of players on the field and I’m looking forward to seeing how they all come together.

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Score: 3/5

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Marvel's Agents of Shield 2.12

New episodes of Marvel's Agents of Shield - Tuesdays 9/8C

Trailer Time: Casting Me...

Casting Me... is being billed as Clerks meets The 40 Year Old Virgin... I get the Clerks part because it's trying really hard in that regard, but I don't really see the 40 Year Old Virgin part. It's from South Africa so at times it's difficult to understand what people are saying especially when the music bed kicks in a little to high. I doubt I would ever watch this even for free, but maybe you're going through black & white Clerk withdrawals and need a something trying desperately to fill that void. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPJRlQovHdQ

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Set against the backdrop of a casting agency, Casting Me..., a hilarious comedy from South Africa, is one part Clerks, one part 40 Year Old Virgin and one part "Extras".  This semi-autobiographical feature from writer/director Quinton Lavery - an Official Selection of 2012 Cape Fear Independent Film Festival and 2012 Cape Winelands Film Festival -- makes its digital debut on iTunes, Amazon, Google and Vudu, only from IndiePix Films.  Paul (well-known South African host/comedian Paul Snodgrass) is a frustrated but likeable Casting Director who has dreams of finally making his own feature film.  This is his life: his girlfriend Chloe (Roxanne Prentice) has broken up with him, he hates his job although he has great colleagues in Rueben (Ralph Kossew) and Janet (Simone Cagnazzo) and he lives in a flat with his friend, the gay computer nerd, Nic (Jonathan Hearns). To get his life on track again and win back his girlfriend he decides to make a film about his job, love life and all the funny things that happen behind the scenes at the casting agency.  Will he succeed?  Find out in CASTING ME, which has been called "a lesson in low-budget filmmaking" and "relatable and quite endearing".

PROGRAM INFORMATION Running Time: 97 mins. Genre:  Comedy Aspect Ratio: Widescreen (2.35:1) For the latest breaking news on CASTING ME and other releases, follow IndiePix Films on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/indiepixfilms) and Twitter  (https://twitter.com/IndiePixFilms)

Trailer Time: Self/Less

The trailer for Self/Less is interesting. I mean the concept is interesting until they basically show you how it's going to end and really there's only two possibilities... one he let's go and let's Ryan Reynolds (who is most definitely just playing Ryan Reynolds as Ryan Reynolds as Ryan Reynolds... get it?) take control or what's more than likely is that Kingsley's character will pop his brain into the Doctor's body. It will probably not do well in the theaters because of this trailer, but we'll see. Also I think we can all agree that the writer of the film read Dan Slott's Superior Spider-Man run right? RIGHT? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71fWtJXEI0Q&feature=youtu.be

SELF/LESS

In Theaters Nationwide Summer 2015

In this provocative psychological science fiction thriller, an extremely wealthy man (Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley) dying from cancer undergoes a radical medical procedure that transfers his consciousness into the body of a healthy young man (Ryan Reynolds). But all is not as it seems when he starts to uncover the mystery of the body's origin and the organization that will kill to protect its cause.

Director: Tarsem Singh ("The Cell", "Immortals")

Writers: Alex Pastor & David Pastor ("Carriers," "The Last Days")

Ryan Reynolds ("Deadpool"), Natalie Martinez ("Secrets and Lies"), Matthew Goode ("The Good Wife," "The Imitation Game") Victor Garber ("The Flash"), Derek Luke ("Empire"), Michelle Dockery ("Downton Abbey"), and Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley

Producers: Ram Bergman, James D. Stern, Peter Schlessel

Trailer Time: Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron, Trailer 3

James Spader is the best thing about this Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron, Trailer 3. That is where I stand. Does the movie look bad? No. It looks like more of the same and the next logical step in the overall story of the universe. Do you need to pre-order a ticket like everyone online is bragging about already? No. Let me ask you something what comes out the week before? Or the week after? Short answers is nothing that's knocking the amount of theaters this is being shown in so settle down you'll see the movie. How about that Vision reveal huh? Looked like... Vision. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAUoeqvedMo

Ultron lays out his plans for decimating Earth's Mightiest Heroes in the latest trailer for Marvel's "Avengers: Age of Ultron," in theaters May 1!

Review: Marvel's Agents of SHIELD 2.11 - Aftershocks

Seeing as this is my first review of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, I should start by giving my overall opinion of the show so you can understand my rating.  I thought the first half of season one was duller than an old penny.  It took me forever to get into the series.  I liked the pilot, but the pilot is where you put your best foot forward so it’s not surprising that the pilot was good but pretty much everything from after the pilot to the fall of SHIELD was hit or miss.  There were some highlights, sure, but things didn’t get good until after Winter Soldier.  There were a couple of really solid episodes leading to the heel turn but Hydra taking over was the best thing that happened to the series.  Suddenly every episode was a homerun and I was anxiously awaiting the next week. Season 2 came along and I thought right from the start it was great.  To me every episode felt like a Marvel mini-movie and I really enjoyed appearances by Absorbing Man and Blizzard as well as the higher stakes SHIELD was playing for.  The introduction of Mr. Hyde, Mockingbird, the change to Fitz/Simmons, everything made the show stronger and more interesting, in my opinion with the height of this season being the mid-season finale.  I have been anxiously awaiting this episode for a while now with only Agent Carter to keep me company.  As far as company goes you could do worse than Agent Carter.

Needless to say I’m a super fanboy of the series which is going to bias my score on the high side a little.  If you don’t feel the same way about Marvel's Agents of SHIELD then you might be able to shave a point or two off the score, but if I tell you something is bad about this show then you can trust that it must have been bad for me to draw attention to it.

The season return of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD is a very emotional one as we find the crew still morning the loss of Trip during the mid-season finale.  Honestly I was kind of heartbroken about Trip, I thought he was a great replacement for Ward last season and I was looking forward to seeing more of him.  He was such a better character than Ward I kind of wish he was on the team from the start.  Ward spent most of last season boring and lifeless, he didn’t start to get interesting until after he turned evil whereas Trip was interesting from the start.  So, Trip is gone and we spend the episode morning him and I have to admit there were some truly emotional moments concerning him.

What can I say, I’m a sucker for fictional emotions, I’m very emotionally reactive.  I tend to feel what I’m seeing being felt more than I tend to display emotion.  I blame my programmers for that.  Dr. Noonien Soong hadn’t perfected the emotion chip yet so my brother got all the feelings, which he passed on to the Borg.  One criticism I have is as much as I like Clark Gregg his emotional notes can be spotty.  Some of his anger came off flat and took me out of the moment but overall I enjoyed it.  However as spotty as Clark Gregg can be, Chloe Bennet does emotion very well and Coulsen and Skye play off each other as characters very well.

While the episode was very emotional it wasn’t without its action moments.  Coulson decides to take Hydra head on, the thought process being with Daniel Whitehall dead (which I didn’t think would be a permanent thing but I guess it was) now is the time to target all the heads of Hydra.  To top this off the end of the episode promises some kind of secret plan going on within SHIELD.  The idea of a plot within SHIELD has been done before on this series whether it’s positive (Agent May reporting to Nick Fury) or negative (the whole Hydra thing), so it’s not groundbreaking.  However whether this is yet another Hydra plot or another internal, rather benign, plot I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays out.  With Mr. Hyde still in play and Skye’s new super powers all they need to do to make a killer finale is bring back Deathlok and Absorbing Man.  Add to that an Inhuman ending that made me mark out a little and you have a really strong return episode.

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Score: 4/5

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD 2.11 - Aftershocks Tuesday's 9/8C