Milla Jovovich’s badass superheroine Alice in the Resident Evil franchise, from 2002’s first film through five sequels–Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)–has given us the 21st century version of Ellen Ripley and Sarah Conner. And speaking of Connor, the trailers for the next chapter of Resident Evil, a prequel called Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, looks a lot like Terminator 3–plus lots of zombies.
Check out the first trailer and a profile on Hannah John-Kamen’s character Jill Valentine, below:
Milla Jovovich’s badass superheroine Alice in the Resident Evil franchise, from 2002’s first film through five sequels–Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)–has given us the 21st century version of Ellen Ripley and Sarah Conner. The tie-in to the Japanese survival/horror-themed video game Biohazard (renamed for the U.S. market) is a staple in the action movie genre–not only one of the world’s bestselling game series since arriving in 1996, it’s the world’s most successful video game tie-in movie franchise ever. But Alice wasn’t a character in the Capcom Resident Evil games, and 14 years is a long run for any franchise, so it’s finally getting a reboot, and that yet-to-be-titled reboot is coming later this year with a great slate of some of our favorite genre actors. This new film (from Sony Pictures) will be in addition to an eight-part Resident Evil live-action television series and an anime series (titled Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness), both coming to Netflix.
It’s always a big surprise when the holiday episode of Doctor Who is a critical not-to-be-missed episode. When we last saw the Doctor, she was trapped millions of light years away in an alien prison. The New Year’s Day 2021 special Revolution of the Daleksis not a filler, out-of-continuity holiday showpiece, instead continuing after ten months have lapsed for the Doctor’s companions back on Earth, and after the Doctor has been imprisoned for years in that same relative time span. If you missed this episode you missed: the return of John Barrowman’s universal fan-favorite character Captain Jack Harkness, another Law & Order/Law & Order UK crossover/reunion, the last we’ll see of some major characters, a new Prime Minister, a preview of a new companion, and one of the best Dalek episodes in the 57 years of the series. As the studio releases word that Jodie Whittaker will be soon leaving the series, Revolution of the Daleks reflects that both her performance as the 13th Doctor and Chris Chibnall’s running of the series has finally arrived. It’s a timeless story full of important, lovely emotional beats, fantastic new sci-fi special and visual effects, and a return to the classic framework and themes of the show’s past.
Let’s take a look at why this episode was superb and offer up some candidates for the 14th Doctor…
Every single episode of season five left us breathless and anxious for the next. History’s Vikings is returning in early December to begin its sixth and final season, and the network just released the first trailer and poster for the show, based on the sagas of the Vikings in medieval Scandinavia, England, and France. For followers of the series it’s goosebump-inducing stuff. Action-filled, bloody, and dramatic, the series has seen brilliant characters in Ragnar Lothbrok, his sons Bjorn and Ivar, Lagertha, and Floki. It’s also seen some powerful guest stars with roles taken on by the likes of Donal Logue, Linus Roache, Adam Copeland, Kris Holden-Ried, and Gabriel Byrne.
Series star Katheryn Winnick has lead the way with her powerful, historical character Lagertha. Credit goes to creator and showrunner Michael Hirst for his vision and smart writing, getting viewers to this season, and as the trailer reveals, some kind of a resolution between Bjorn and Ivar, for better or worse. It’s great television, and if you haven’t been watching, you have two months left to catch up.
Alexander Ludwig is back as Bjorn, with Gustaf Skarsgård as Floki and Alex Høgh as Ivar. Here is the new trailer for the sixth and final season of Vikings:
Cobie Smulders has enough street cred playing badass leads, including co-starring opposite Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, serving as the most powerful non-superheroine of the Marvel movies as Maria Hill, and she’s the perfect Wonder Woman, although we only hear her voice as the character in The Lego Movie series. So why head back to television? Maybe after 200 episodes of being part of a hit ensemble cast on How I Met Your Mother, she wanted her own series? Whatever the reason, it’s a win for TV viewers. Her new project is Stumptown, and the first episode aired this week on ABC.
Smulders is promising as Dex Parios, an army vet with PTSD, who takes care of her brother and has a gambling problem. Happily for her, everyone, including the head of the gambling house, seems to be on her side. In her first case, she’s trying to locate the missing daughter of her deceased college boyfriend, in exchange for having a five-figure tab written off at the local Portland casino (yes, evidently Portland has had casinos since 1988). Initially she fails, but before she’s totally written off by everyone except her brother (played by the engaging Cole Sibus), the writers skillfully show viewers why she might be a character to return to each week. Dex is a fighter, while also a mess and a bit snarky, but hopefully that’s not all she is. Her old red Ford Mustang and its broken cassette tape deck that offers up the right song at the right time is a nice throwback to Philip Glenister and his red Audi Quattro on the classic detective series Ashes to Ashes.
Along with good writing in its opener, Stumptown boasts a supporting cast that brings plenty to the show. Jake Johnson(New Girl, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, Jurassic World) as bartender pal Grey demonstrates again why he’s the best at playing the best friend. If you missed Michael Ealy as a great cop on Almost Human (or as Slap Jack in 2 Fast 2 Furious) you’ll appreciate him back with a badge on this series. Even better, it looks like Donal Logue(Gotham, Vikings, Life, Zodiac, Sneakers) will join the cast in next week’s episode. The only thing the series could benefit from is tapping all those local Portland actors like NBC’s Grimm did so well. Unfortunately, other than some establishing shots, it doesn’t look like the series will be filmed there.
Probably the second best-known work writer Alan Moore is known for in the U.S. outside of his Watchmen series, Batman: The Killing Joke was both a retelling of the origin story of The Joker and the story of his using a physical assault on Barbara Gordon aka Batgirl to attempt to torture and ruin Gotham police commissioner Jim Gordon. The book is one of the 1980s big four revolutionary comics (along with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, and Watchmen) that caused a shift in how superhero stories are told (and it was the only comic director Tim Burton had ever read, setting the tone for the dark 1989 Batman movie featuring Jack Nicholson’s version of The Joker that Burton would begin filming only weeks later). It’s a controversial graphic novel–the sexual assault and gunshot that resulted in Barbara Gordon losing the use of her legs and resulting in her change of persona to the deskbound computer whiz called Oracle angered many readers, and the ending is ambiguous and perplexing–why is Batman laughing at the end of the story? Following the lead of the Marvel Comics new library of novelized adaptations of comic books and graphic novels, Batman: The Killing Joke is now the first of at least three new hardcover novel adaptations of DC Comics stories (to be followed by Batman: The Court of Owls on November 13, 2018, and Harley Quinn: Mad Love on February 12, 2019) published by Titan Books (also the publisher of the Marvel paperback novels). Written by Christa Faust(Peepland, Fringe, Supernatural) and Gary Phillips (Violent Spring, Peepshow), their adaptation is a straightforward, faithful take on the graphic novel with a few updates.
The impact of the graphic novel cannot be overstated. A key draw was the prestige format and the fact the book was a one-shot story, not like the three big predecessor books mentioned above that were monthly single issues compiled into a trade comic. At the time we didn’t think the story would be absorbed into the regular continuity of DC Comics, but it slowly became a reference point even beyond its impact on Batgirl stories for the next 30 years. (The book was so popular we couldn’t wait a minute to read it–one of my oldest friends was reading his copy on his music stand during our high school band practice, prompting the band director to throw it across the room, to our horror).
So how is the new novel adaptation?
You can’t really come up with enough synonyms for vile and despicable to describe The Joker in the original story and in this adaptation. Before this story–and only about nine months before DC Comics would use fans to allow The Joker to kill Batman’s sidekick Robin with a tire iron in the pages of the Batman monthly comic book–The Joker was a bit of a silly villain. Sure, he was always dastardly and Batman’s age-old key foe, but readers never saw him in such “true crime” acts so explicitly. This is commonplace in the Batman stories now, but before you wouldn’t find a character shot, stripped naked, and photographed and another one stripped naked and tortured, both as plot devices ultimately used by The Joker to get Batman to show-up for the battle. Authors Faust and Phillips do the most justice to Commissioner Gordon’s character, whose focus during his torture in a revived old amusement park is only the thoughts of his daughter’s safety and survival. By the end of the book readers have learned that they couldn’t blame Gordon were he to walk away from these events as a destroyed pool of a man. On the flipside, Barbara Gordon’s attack is handled partially from her viewpoint trying to understand what happened to her in real time, and partially from the view of one of The Joker’s stooges. Barbara plays a more active role here in saving her father (and surviving), and instead of seeing herself as the victim she uses the bystander stooge to help further her superhero self into a new persona in a smartly conceived update via a coda to the story.
How far back has this latest chapter in J.J. Abrams mash-up of science fiction and giant monsters been brewing? Back to his 2011 summer coming of age release Super 8? Like M. Night Shyamalan, all of Abrams’ projects, whether as executive producer or director or even writer-director, may not be successful, but they both take exciting risks with their projects. Cloverfield was a well-crafted homage to Godzilla pictures. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a genre surprise, a mix of straight dramatic horror that ended up as a sci-fi monster movie. And this week Netflix released a theatrical worthy next installment, The Cloverfield Paradox, this time providing that relentless sci-fi horror fix perfected with James Cameron’s Aliens. And like Shyamalan’s recent thriller Split, a cool surprise is in store for viewers.
The Cloverfield Paradox is easily comparable to one of the best Doctor Who space station-based episodes (think The Waters of Mars). In fact absent Matt Smith or David Tennant you might forget you’re not watching Doctor Who as so many tropes from Whovian space disaster episodes are weaved into the film. And that’s a good thing for fans of the type of science fiction stories that Doctor Who tends to attract. The cast of The Cloverfield Paradox forms a crew you wish would be around for a TV series. Led by David Oyelowo (Star Wars: Rebels, Jack Reacher) as Commander Kiel, with physicists played by Daniel Brühl (Rush, Goodbye Lenin, Captain America: Civil War) as Schmidt and Ziyi Zhang (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Rush Hour 2) as Tam, and other crewmembers played by John Ortiz (Kong: Skull Island, Alien vs. Predator), Aksel Hennie (The Martian), and Chris O’Dowd (Thor: The Dark World), the space station Cloverfield has a legitimate international crew. But the focus is on crewmember Hamilton played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Beauty and the Beast, Jupiter Ascending), who leaves her husband (Roger Davies) back on Earth after her children die in a fire to help the scientists test a particle accelerator. The success or failure of that test could mean a leap ahead for the planet or certain doom.
Anyone who has ever read an issue of DC Comics can understand the multi-verse science here. Dabbling in quantum physics comes with uncertain risks, and after nearly a year of failed trials, when the station finally creates a stable particle beam, something has changed. Leaving the audience always wondering whether this is going to be another Aliens episode or something else, the effect of the anomaly creates the stuff of The Philadelphia Experiment, smashing one reality into another. One of the results is the appearance from another parallel universe of a Cloverfield physicist played by Elizabeth Debicki (Guardians of the Galaxy 2, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.). Only Debicki’s character was not on the mission in the universe the film started out in, and as radio signals reflect an apparently altered Earth below, the loyalties of the crewmembers come into question. It’s all great fun, and the production quality is good enough–with bonuses like crew costumes from Academy Award-winning designer Colleen Atwood–that it’s a shame audiences can’t watch this play out on a big movie theater screen.
When we last saw Gotham, Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith) was returning to the series to lead a group of denizens from Indian Hill, a motley band of “enhanced” people created by Dr. Hugo Strange (BD Wong). Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie), no longer with the police force, is still working with Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue), but he’s now in bounty hunter mode, investigating the Court of Owls.
Gotham dials up more villainy in Season 3, beginning next week, with The Mad Hatter (Benedict Samuel), Poison Ivy (Maggie Geha taking over from the younger Clare Foley), Calendar Man from The Long Halloween, a Bruce Wayne doppelganger (David Mazouz), and more of Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor) and his rise in power, Edward Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) and his downward spiral, Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova), Barbera Kean (Erin Richards), and Fish Mooney. Morena Baccarin is also back as Gordon’s girlfriend Dr. Leslie Thompkins, along with Sean Pertwee as Alfred Pennyworth and Michael Chiklis as Nathaniel Barnes.
Gotham, the great new series from Fox in 2014 that re-imagined Batman’s Gotham City before Bruce Wayne donned a cowl, will be adding even more villains in Season 2. As a bonus, Michael Chiklis will play a new member of the Gotham police force. Marketing for the series’ sophomore season promises the show will dig into the origin stories for The Riddler, which we’ve already seen a fair amount of in his portrayal by Cory Michael Smith, as well as The Joker and Mr. Freeze. And the young Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) is expected to uncover more secrets from his father’s past.
But we’re most anxious to see what’s new with Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) and his partner Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue), and last year’s surprisingly good villain, Oswald Cobblepot aka Penguin, played so well by Robin Lord Taylor.
But how will the writers fill the gap left by Jada Pinkett Smith’s Fish Mooney?
Check out this latest trailer for Season 2 of Gotham:
We love good TV. Nothing is better than looking forward each week to a show you can trust to have great writing and great acting. We’ve made our way through several series again this year, trying out pilots for new shows and adding them into the DVR queue–if they made the cut. Many didn’t. We also re-try series that didn’t prompt us to watch in prior years. Most lose out because they rely on shock over substance and storytelling. Where we ended up was a list of what we love, and what we have recommended all year. These series are our Best of the Best for 2014.
Our biggest disappointments? The cancellations of the brilliant, futuristic Almost Human and the reboot of the TV classic Dallas–these shows were written by the best script writers around and will be sorely missed. We hope you’ll give some of the following shows a try next year, or catch them on streaming media, if you’re not watching already.
Forever — Best TV Series, Best TV Fantasy Fix, Best Actor (Ioan Gruffudd), Best Actress (Alana de la Garza), Best Supporting Actor (Judd Hirsch), Best Villain (Burn Gorman). Contenders for the year’s best series were easy to spot: ABC’s Forever or NBC’s Gotham. In years past at borg.com we have favored cable programming, yet this year the networks surged ahead with these two superb series. Forever nudged out Gotham for top prize because of its straightforward storytelling, small talented cast, superb dialogue, and fun situations. Ioan Gruffudd (Horatio Hornblower, Ringer, Fantastic Four) and Alana de la Garza (Law and Order) were perfect foils for each other in the lead roles, and each created compelling characters. Judd Hirsch played son to younger Gruffudd’s unsinkable doctor and gave us the best father and son team on TV in years. Burn Gorman’s chilling performances toward the end of this season were a great addition, setting us up for more fun next year.
Gotham — Best TV Series Runner-up, Best Supporting Actress (Jada Pinkett Smith as Fish Mooney), Best Supporting ActorRunner-up (Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock). NBC’s Gotham did many things we normally wouldn’t like, including taking source material and standing it on end and adding new characters to a classic story’s established cast. Yet it all worked somehow with this intriguing re-imagining of Bruce Wayne’s backstory. Catwoman and Batman were friends as kids? The Penguin was a mole and stooge for key crime families? Commissioner Gordon took Bruce Wayne under his wing as a child? All of this worked, yet the best view into Gotham life was provided by Gordon’s partner, played by Donal Logue (Life, Vikings), and Jada Pinkett Smith’s sultry and ruthless gangster Fish Mooney.
