Dante's Hotel is one hell of a dumb horror movie about Father Time (a looming figuring in a Spirit Halloween Grim Reaper costume) taking 12 souls every 12 years from a downtown hotel on New Year's Eve without any trace of bodies and always leaving the same survivor (Judd Nelson) for police to question. New Year's Eve comes again with recovering alcoholic Goldie (AnnaLynne McCord) being the hostess for a party from which the malevolent spirit will choose a dozen new victims.
The museum heist episode. Traveling to Madrid, Ava (Alba Baptista) and Beatrice (Kristina Tonteri-Young) have a run-in with Father Vincent (Tristán Ulloa) before their reunion with what remains of the OCS. It won't be the last they see of the priest. Ava from Yasmine (Meena Rayann) about the weapon used to trap Adriel (William Miller). The Crown of Thorns is a device from his realm and can shut off divine power and was used centuries ago to help trap him under the Vatican. After being lost for generations it now resides in the Prada Museum. It's time for a heist.
"Air Force Wong" features a number of callbacks including Rick's (Ian Cardoni) unhealthy friendship with the President (Keith David) fueled mostly on loathing and petty jealousies that is only exasperated when the President takes a romantic interest in Rick's therapist Dr. Wong (Susan Sarandon). Speaking of love in the air, the episode also features the return of Unity (Christina Hendricks) who takes over the entire state of Virginia just to get Rick's attention after he ghosts her following their break-up. Attempts to control the spread of Unity spiral out of control when the needy President sees a way to take control of the hivemind and earn the love, and votes, of the masses.
Without prelude or explanation, Giant Robot Hellboy #1 kicks off with Hellboy being set up and kidnapped off the street in 1967 London. Taken to laboratory run by a mysterious, but obviously well-funded, group, Hellboy is strapped into a machine just as half a world away a giant box is delivered to an island of the eastern coast of Africa next to a mysterious bunker full of dead bodies and mutant spiders. And so the odd adventure begins.
In the final two episodes of the season, our podcasters manage to put together the series of events that led to murder of Ben (Paul Rudd) and manage to put on an opening night performance without anyone dying on stage. The bulk of the investigation takes place in "Thirty," named for being Mabel's (Selena Gomez) thirtieth birthday which she spends happily with Charles (Steve Martin) and Oliver (Martin Short) coming up with a new suspect that is neither Dickie (Jeremy Shamos) nor Loretta (Meryl Streep). In the season finale, the trio manage to get their easiest confession yet, although it turns out not to be the full story.
I'll admit picking up this comic only for the opening few pages which take place on Earth-26, the reimagined anthropomorphic Earth-C of my childhood, featuring the greatest heroes in the Multiverse. Our story involves someone targeting Harleys across all dimensions which leads to the death of Harely on Earth-26 and her girlfriend Python Ivy. Sure, the fact that when relaunching him no one bothered to see that Captain Carrot was a brown bunny rather than a white rabbit still sticks in my craw a bit, but the issue does give us his classic alter-ego in artist Rodney Rabbit.
It's Leo's (Rahul Kohli) turn to die in an episode that features our mystery woman (Carla Gugino) psychologically torturing him more than the previous kills. After selling him a demon cat to replace the one he killed (but did he?) things go downhill fast with Leo loosing sanity at an alarming rate after a series of attack from the cat and dealing with the stress from Camille's (Kate Siegel) death eventually leading to murderously plunging to his death.
While I'm not overly interested in the Amazon's Attack! event that this comic is helping to set up, and which the back-up story foreshadows, Wonder Woman #2 is easily one of the best comic books I've read this year providing action while at the same time exploring the character of Diana, who she is, why she fights, and why she must take a stand for what's right.
The third and fourth episodes of Netflix's One Piece center around our trio making landfall in the port of Syrup Village after their existing boat begins to sink. The episodes introduce an important new character in Usopp (Jacob Romero) who apparently has lived on the streets since his mother died and is a general menace in his constant crying wolf of arriving pirates to the point when pirates do arrive at the port no one will believe him. However, it's not the Straw Pirates Usopp is afraid of but the group led by Kuro (Alexander Maniatis) which is hiding as the wait staff of his friend Kaya (Celeste Loots) planning to kill her on her next birthday and steal her wealth. Given the situation even Nami (Emily Rudd) decides it would be in bad taste to steal from Kaya and instead, surprisingly for her, she makes a new friend.
Rereleased in theaters for the film's 30th anniversary, Tim Burton's stop-motion mash-up of Halloween and Christmas might be the most Tim Burton film ever made, even if Burton only produced rather than directed the movie. Our story takes place in Halloween Town, one of many worlds centered around a single holiday where the Pumpkin King Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon and Danny Elfman), who admittedly loves his holiday and planning for it every year, feels stuck in a malaise yearning for something new. When he chances upon a door to Christmas Town he gets more than he ever imagined.
While on a trip to Las Vegas to help out an old student, "Lucky Charms" offers the show's most fun episode of the season but also one where it's trademark use of psychology is less overt than normal leading to a more generic feeling episode. When Camille Lawson (Jocelyn Hudon), Alec Mercer (Jesse L. Martin) former teaching assistant turned professional poker player, reaches out in need of help when she believes another player in the tournament is cheating, Alec, Phoebe (Molly Kunz), and Owen (Arash DeMaxi) all head to Vegas to offer their services and help prevent her from getting her legs broken by the easily manipulated members of the mob.
The show picks up for its final season with the Lockes having an uneventful few months since the end of Dodge (Griffin Gluck). Meanwhile, Captain Frederick Gideon (Kevin Durand) continues to search for the door to no avail. He gets some momentary assistance when Nina (Darby Stanchfield) and Bode (Jackson Robert Scott) find a snow globe and matching key which accidentally unleashes two demons (Diana Bentley and Susanna Fournier) determined to help the Captain. The snow globe, basically allowing someone to enter a snowy version of the reality of Key House when the key is inserted, is another fun addition to the show's oddities (as is the animal key shown earlier in the episode). Although Bode gets trapped in the globe for much of the episode, Nina and Kinsey (Emilia Jones) are able to defeat the demons trapping them in the mirror.
Set in the early days of Cassie Hack's days of hunting slashers with her partner Vlad, the opening issue of the four-issue mini-series teases an epidemic of children murdering their own parents while the larger story involves Cassie being invited to join a monster hunter school for girls (after seeing them dispatch a bunny killer in a diner). Lots of gore, off-beat humor, panic, and ominous overtones here from writer and artist Zoe Thorogood. In other words, just what you'd expect from a Hack/Slack comic.
"The Pickleorette" is an example of a common trope on Bob's Burgers where one of the members of the family gets them involved in a situation that quickly snowballs taking poor Bob (H. Jon Benjamin) along for the ride. In this case it's Linda (John Roberts) attempting to make up for accidentally burning Gretchen's (Larry Murphy) lookbook by bending over backward to help Gretchen throw a sloppily-planned bachelorette party for her sister Jestain (Rachel Dratch) in which none of her bridesmaids can attend and the strip club where the event was meant to conclude turns out to be closed for fumigation.
"The Last Days of Moon Knight" bring Marc Spector one step closer to the Black Spectre through a series of fighters, traps, and weapons which will weed out Moon Knight's support (such as poor Tigra being sidelined after stepping on a landmine) and setting up a final confrontation between the pair in the next issue. With the fate of the entire city at stake, Marc Spector cannot fail... no matter what the cost.
Parents Weekend brings a family therapy session for the Addams and the return of Gozmez (Luis Guzmán) to town for the first time since his graduation from Nevermore Academy. Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) confronts both parents about the murder that occurred which allows for some flashbacks to events. The sudden apparent suicide of the coroner leaving an auspicious note about that murder case from long ago also gives Sheriff Galpin (Jamie McShane) the excuse he's been looking for to finally arrest Gomez Addams for murder.
The anthology series featuring Harley Quinn in black, white, and red continues with three more tales. "Harley Quinn and the Seven Sidekicks" is a wacky, if melancholy, tale of Harley Quinn getting her own crew in the form of seven juvenile delinquents who provide some momentary fun for our protagonist but eventually leave her on her own once more.
As support for Adriel (William Miller) continues to rise, Ava (Alba Baptista) and Beatrice (Kristina Tonteri-Young) have their covers blown while interrogating a possessed follower of Adriel who was captured by Miguel's (Jack Meade) group. Beatrice isn't happy with the situation, but the pair would be moving soon enough when the call goes out from the OCS after Camila (Olivia Delcán) and Mother Superion (Sylvia De Fanti) confirm the last outpost has fallen and meet Yasmine Amunet (Meena Rayann) who has potentially good news for the warrior nun. The reveal of Adriel possessing many of his followers will be further explored in the next few episodes.
Red Sonja #4 gives us the siege of Velanger. Over the course of the comic, the city walls will be overrun by the followers of Thord Varg thanks in part to his agent within the castle helping to undermine their defenses, the power of persuasion Varg has which has others surrendering to him, and the sway he has over his army willing to kill to find that which he seeks: Red Sonja.
Things get crazy when a bickering Rick (Ian Cardoni) and Jerry (Chris Parnell) have their minds swapped, quickly leading to the death of both and a garage computer "fix" which leaves both sharing aspects of each other's consciousness. While the family is obviously concerned, the pair quickly adapt to their new normal with Jerry gaining a bit of Rick's intellect and Rick gaining a bit of Jerry's easy-going nature leading the pair to become a wacky crime duo without a care in the world. Well... without a care except for their family being kidnapped by gangsters. It's as wacky as it sounds, and only gets more so when the pair eventually merge into one being.
After seeing Spider-Man make short work of Spidercide in the open pages of Spine-Tingling Spider-Man #1, with some beautiful art by Juan Ferreyra, the first issue of this series moves in an entirely different direction as we won't see Spidey for the remainder of the comic. Peter wakes up to find his landlord, Aunt May, and MJ don't know who he is. His Spidey powers are gone. The Avengers won't take his calls.
Lana's (Aisha Tyler) choice to spend money on a state-of-the-art control room to control three missions simultaneously goes, of course, horribly wrong. Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) and Cyril (Chris Parnell) have little trouble in the least-stressful of the three locations where malware needs to be uploaded simultaneously (and Archer gets lucky, even in New Jersey). Zara Khan (Natalie Dew) and Krieger (Lucky Yates) also hit it off creating an unexpected friendship. Even the bickering Pam (Amber Nash) and Ray (Adam Reed) manage to fulfill their part of the mission. And Lana learns a valuable mission about leadership... then leaves her teams without methods of escape by listening to the only other employee who stayed behind (and gave food poisoning to all the techs). Whoops! Even with all of her fancy tech, an Agency mission proves to still be an Agency mission.
007: For King and Country #5 opens with a trigger-happy 009 and an assassination attempt James Bond barely survives in an action sequence that cover several pages. Unfortunately, Agent Clark isn't so lucky. After that, it's up to Bond to rally the troops once more in another attempt to take down Fromm and Myrmidon with his small support group of Felix Leiter, Linus, and Gwendolyn Gann, but with so much on the line, who can Bond truly trust as the series moves one-step closer to its conclusion?
While the episode cuts from time to time back to the present, and once back to Roderick Usher's (Bruce Greenwood) early days working for Rufus Griswold (Michael Trucco) which, honestly, I'm already out of patience for since they rarely do more than tease information they have no intention of actually providing, the majority of "Murder in the Rue Morgue" features the family coming together after Perry's (Sauriyan Sapkota) death. We also see Arthur Pym (Mark Hamill) uncover the first clues to the involvement of our mysterious devil woman (Carla Gugino) while the show sets up two more deaths, the first of which will occur at the end of the episode in a sequence that is somehow both creepy and laugh-out-loud ridiculous when our evil woman, in chimp skins, beats the unlikable Camille (Kate Siegel) to death.
While the main storyline features Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy), Nami (Emily Rudd), and Zoro (Mackenyu) being taken prisoner by the clown pirate Buggy (Jeff Ward), the episode's title comes from the flashbacks to young Luffy's relationship with Shanks (Peter Gadiot) and the series of events which led the pirate to leave his hat with him (and provide the episode with its most notable CGI sequence). The big top pirates fit right in with the wackiness that we've seen and working to escape them helps bring Luffy, Nami, and Zoro closer together (although one is keeping a rather large secret from the others).
For a series where the stakes are the every life in existence, it seems a bit weird to do a mostly farcical episode like "1893" which only undermines further Kang (Jonathan Majors) as a legitimate big bad in the MCU, but I've only read comics for four decades so what do I know. While the TVA continues to break down, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson), and later Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), catch up to the missing Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and an overly goofy con man Kang variant whose history the former agent of the TVA and Miss Minutes (Tara Strong) have being manipulating to put him on the path to become a replacement .
Evil in film is often overt, larger than life. A clown torturing children. A giant monster trampling cities. A high-priced killer or alien leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Real evil, however, is more insidious. Killing with a smile, insidiously operating with no compunction or fear of reprisal. Adapted by Martin Scorsese and Eric Roth from the book of the same name, Killers of the Flower Moon centers around the Osage Indian murders in the early 20th Century.
On an alternate timeline, it's the turn of the new millennium, Florida is owned by Spain, there are only 31 states within the United States, and supernatural creatures such as ghosts and vampires are not only quite real but also known and accepted by the general public. And you thought Florida was crazy in our reality. And it's in this world that newly-orphaned Vince Okonma steps after losing his parents.
This show is Viagra for conspiracy theorists. Not only do we get a conspiracy centered around a hero FBI Agent (Gabriel Basso) shunned after saving dozens of lives in a subway bombing forcing him into a desk job to wait for call of agents in trouble, but we also get the conspiracy around his father's history with the bureau being railroaded for a crime he didn't commit. And we haven't yet gotten the conspiracy that actually drives the plot of the series when a young woman (Luciane Buchanan) learns her aunt and uncle were spies believing in a conspiracy so deep within the government that it reaches all the way to the White House.
Working with his daughter Naomi, Ethan Sacks offers the first issue of the this new four-issue mini-series featuring a troubled 16 year-old adopted Japanese American teen struggling to get back on her feet after a failed suicide attempt which isn't helped by her being visited by all manner of ghosts starting on her 16th birthday. Returning to high school after two months in a psychiatric hospital isn't exactly fun either.
Alec Mercer (Jesse L. Martin) is hired by a couple whose teenage daughter (Rhinnan Payne) is kidnapped and ransomed for a price they can't possibly afford. Connecting the kidnapping to the missing girl's connection to the wealthy family her mother once worked for, Alec eventually connects to dots and uncovers the identity and motivations of the kidnapper (Ben Cockell) who mistakenly believes his father's (Vincent Gale) affection for the girl somehow means he loves him less. The episode is notable for Owen (Arash DeMaxi) teaching a pair of lectures in the professor's absence, the first of which crashes and burns, and guest-starring Karen David as a K&R expert who takes an immediate shine to Alec. More of her, please.
The holiday-themed one-shot opens with Espio and Vector preparing to take Charmy Bee out trick-or-treating only to have a knock at the door alerting them that someone is stealing Halloween candy. The pair are joined by Sonic and Tails who, of course, just happen to be flying by and spot the trio searching in the woods as the group works together to find the monster and the missing candy.
Picking up two months after the events from the First Season finale, Warrior Nun returns with Ava (Alba Baptista) and Beatrice (Kristina Tonteri-Young) living quietly in Switzerland while followers continue to flock to Adriel (William Miller). In Portugal, Lilith (Lorena Andrea) confronts Father Vincent (Tristán Ulloa) searching for the truth about Mary (Toya Turner). In Vatican City, Pope Francesco Duretti (Joaquim De Almeida) faces questions of what to do about Adriel from both friend and religious journalist Yasmine Amunet (Meena Rayann) who it turns out is after far more than just an interview about religious artifacts. And across the world, the secret bases of the OCS come under attack, including the one where Camila (Olivia Delcán) and Mother Superion (Sylvia De Fanti) are staying.
Kicking off a new set of Space Usagi adventures, the one-shot Space Usagi: Yokai Hunter begins not in space but in the forest where Miyamoto Usagi helps a pair of travelers being attacked by yokai spirits who have kidnapped their daughter. Tracking them to a haunted castle, Usagi battles a series of challenges including henchman moving too fast for him to see (but not too fast to cut down with his sword), a weeping ghost, a spider bride, and a demon cat, only to run into a familiar enemy at the top of the castle.
Remember that time Rick (Ian Cardoni) partied with Hugh Jackman (playing himself) and got hunted by a Predator? Rick and Morty return for a new season with Rick rounding up his old friends to throw an intervention-like event, which he swears isn't an intervention (because those are dumb!), for his old friend Mr. Poopybutthole (Jon Allen) who has been living with the Smiths for several weeks. Things quickly go off the rails. While the rest of the family don't get much more than cameos here, the episode does allow for an assortment of Rick's old pals to get together and party with Jackman and the Smith's neighbor Gene (Tom Kenny) who is literally left holding the bag to close out the episode.
The final season of Carmen Sandiego opens with another win for Carmen Sandiego (Gina Rodriguez) who prevents V.I.L.E. agents Lady Dokuso (Sumalee Montano) and Mime Bomb from kidnapping a dignitary with access to China's gold reserve. The episode is notable for the dignitary's kick-ass daughter Xifeng (Krista Marie Yu) whose quick reflexes and attention to detail help save the day and A.C.M.E. still having no clue as to Carmen's true motivations, ignoring the testimony of Graham Calloway (Michael Goldsmith) in favor of the suspicions of the ever unreliable Chase Devineaux (Rafael Petardi).
Setting up the new volume of Superior Spider-Man, Superior Spider-Man Returns gives us a confused Otto Octavius attempting to put his fragmented memories of his time as Spider-Man together and discovering, while his consciousness was in control of Peter Parker's body, he may have just completed his life's work of harnessing the power of a sun. Well... not exactly.
Largely ignoring more immediate threats, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) go in search of the missing Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) which leads them to Hunter X-05 (Rafael Casal) who abandoned his hunt for Sylvie to live out his life as a movie star in the late 1970s. The majority of the episode features Loki and Mobius capturing X-05 and then threatening and torturing him for information (showing off a bit of Loki's more sinister side) before eventually leading to Loki's reunion with Sylvie and basically lucking into a discovery of just what some members of the TVA are up to.
Taking place in 1940 before Wesley Dodds joined the Justice Society of America, Wesley Dodds: The Sandman #1 gives us a Dodds early in his career as the Sandman still struggling to find his place in the world. Haunted by nightmares he doesn't understand, Dodds' attempts to help the war effort by selling them on his non-lethal sleep gas lead nowhere. While he is able to put his talents to use taking down gangsters and muggers, he still has yet to find where he, and the Sandman, belong.
Inspired by the horror young adult novels from R. L. Stine, Disney+'s new series offers five stories of teens being haunted when a vengeful spirit is unleashed. Giving us boilerplate horror characters without much depth, our teens include the brash jock (Zack Morris), his mean girlfriend (Rhinnan Payne), his longtime female best friend (Isa Briones), and goofy sidekick (Miles McKenna). Taking advantage of a remodeled empty house for a party, one where their new English teacher (Justin Long) is about to move in and has unknowingly awakened the spirit of a high school student who died in the house 30 years earlier, our dumb kids are about to find themselves trapped in situations they can neither explain nor escape.
Using the framework of the works of Edgar Allen Poe as a guide, The Fall of the House of Usher begins with a funeral and a confession. Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood), the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that has skirted and broken laws for decades, invites the attorney who has worked in vain to bring him to justice to his crumbling boyhood home to offer confession and revelation about the evils his family brought upon the world over the past few decades and the evils brought upon them in the past two weeks leaving only Roderick and his sister Madeline (Mary McDonnell) alive.
The opening episode of Netflix's One Piece, adapted from the manga of the same name, introduces us to would-be pirate Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) who, like so many others, has gone in search of the former pirate king's treasure known as the One Piece. Over the course of the first episode, in his attempts to find a map to lead him to the treasure, Luffy will run into others such as the thief Nami (Emily Rudd) and the swordsman Zoro (Mackenyu) who will become the start of the crew of what eventually will become known as the Straw Hat Pirates. In his adventure at sea, Luffy also meets the amicable Koby (Morgan Davies) who he saves the the pirate captain Alvida (Ilia Isorelýs Paulino), but Koby decides to pursue the dream of becoming a Marine rather than throwing in with another pirate.
Secret Galaxy (formerly Toy Galaxy) takes a look back at the history of The Monster Squad, that 1987 classic that taught kids everywhere that wolfman's got nards.
The search for Launchpad's missing compass continues without any new leads as Darkwing Duck #9 offers a middle issue in the larger arc primarily centered around the terror who flaps in the night getting more and more agitated. However, news of a crime spree in St. Canard forces Darkwing Duck back home where the new thefts shine a light on his search.
King Randor's journey of peace through the lands of Eternia, hoping to unite allies against Skeletor, runs into trouble when the royal caravan is attacked by warriors of Anwat Gar wrongly believing Prince Adam is the cause of their own prince's suffering.
Continuing the "Dark Droids" crossover event, on Mustafar an infected Zed sends an Octuptarra tri-droid after Darth Vader in an attempt to finally put the Dark Lord of the Sith down. It's another issue of a struggling Vader facing off against dangerous droids (although I could never quite buy the Octuptarra as a Sith-killer). The attack forces Vader to stop relying on the crutches which helped him reconnect with the Force and reclaim his power once more.
Based on true events, The Burial offers the odd couple pairing of Tommy Lee Jones as the owner of a family funeral business in Mississippi who enlists the help of a flashy attorney (Jamie Foxx) after being taken advantage by the CEO (Bill Camp) of a Canadian company that backed out of a deal that would have saved the family business. The curmudgeonly Jeremiah O'Keefe (Jones) and the flashy Willie E. Gary (Foxx) have their ups and downs, but the film is as much (if not more) about the respect and friendship that develops between the unlikely pair as the court case itself.
Despite being a little uneven in places, with the more serious moments of the film clashing against the rest of the film's lighter tone, The Burial is worth seeing primarily for the performances of Foxx, Jones, and both Mamoudou Athie (as Jerry's fresh from law school friend who plays a pivotal role in bringing Jerry and Willie together and in the final verdict) and Jurnee Smollett as the head of the opposing legal team.
Archer (H. Jon Benjamin), Cyril (Chris Parnell), Zara Khan (Natalie Dew), Krieger (Lucky Yates), and Pam (Amber Nash) go undercover at plastic surgery resort in search of an elusive criminal who no one knows what he actually looks like. It takes almost no time at all for the Agency team to get distracted with Archer's confidence plummeting after a doctor informs him his body can't take much more of his hard living, Krieger corrupts one of the doctors, and Cyril gets some unnecessary surgery done on his calves.
Three episodes in the show seems to have found its formula with the FBI being completely clueless about a crime, ready to place blame on the wrong suspect, and utterly reliant on Alec Mercer (Jesse L. Martin) to find the truth. The case of the week involves a plane crash authorities are all too willing to blame on pilot error, although thanks to some sleuthing by Alex, his assistants, and the victim's brother, someone far more sinister is eventually uncovered. Highlights continue to be how the show works in psychological experiments into the show's premise while the breadcrumbs of Alec's past tragedy and who his wife is currently aren't nearly as engaging.
As the title suggests, "The Amazing Rudy" focuses not on the Belchers (the first show of the series not to do so) but instead on Rudy (Brian Huskey) and his growing dread for the awkward family dinner later the night involving his equal anxious father, his father's new girlfriend, and Rudy's mother and her boyfriend. Bob's Burgers is a show that is often at its best when embracing awkward moments and there's plenty of those throughout the episode between father and son, Rudy's failed magic trick (and the heartbreaking montage of how his dinner magic once connected his now fragmented family), and the growing concern of the Belchers when Rudy admits he fled the restaurant after the trick bombed and showed up at their home for dinner.
It's all Ted's fault. This comic continues to be delightfully bonkers and I'm totally into it. While the rest of the family is still dealing with paperwork brought to them from the space dinosaur lawyer, Billy runs into some trouble on the moon first with Garguax and later with Zazzala. Of course Billy is also fighting off the meddling of the Olympian Gods who continue to play puppeteer with the Captain's state of mind. Oh, and then there's Ted and his Gorilla Militia who head into space to wage war on the moon.
