Bloody, brutal, and bolstered by two magnetic baddies, Daredevil's second season is as confident and compelling as it is refreshingly inclined to critically examine its hero's more hypocritical aspects.
Despite landing in a television landscape already inundated with antiheroes, Damien can certainly claim to boast an unusually noteworthy anchor: the Antichrist himself. All grown up almost 30 years after the events of Richard Donner's 1976 classic, the Satanically inclined Damien Thorn (played here by Bradley James) is now a war photographer, working in the Middle East and constantly putting himself in harm's way in order to capture the region's pervasive human suffering. (Why he's drawn to such a fatality-filled field is a plot point that goes unexamined in the pilot but may well yield some intriguing character development later down the line.)
It's more fitting than frustrating that Slasher, horror network Chiller's first foray into original scripted programming, unspools as an unabashed amalgam of horror movie tropes. After all, the NBCUniversal-owned channel has carved out a funky little niche for itself broadcasting "scary good" films and TV series, from classics like Kolchak: The Night Stalker to little gems like Harper's Island, not so much curating its content as airing it all as a bloody buffet for horror hounds.
You can say this much for London Has Fallen: it's exactly the sequel one would expect to Olympus Has Fallen, the White House takeover actioner in which impossibly effective Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) at one point literally beats a North Korean enemy to death with a bust of Abraham Lincoln. Yeah, remember that?
Talk about timing. After a year in which systemic racism - in the arenas of government, everyday society, popular culture, and especially law enforcement - has dominated the national discussion, Zootopia charges out of the gate as an impassioned, ingenious defense of diversity, one as unusually committed to its topical themes as it is awash in some of the most gloriously imaginative, seat-of-your-pants storytelling Disney has delivered in years. Hitting theaters less than a week after Inside Out's Best Animated Feature win at the Oscars, the film is at the very least a lock to be nominated next year.
Questions of purpose hang heavy over Hap and Leonard, SundanceTV's sweaty and savory adaptation of the detective novels by Joe R. Lansdale. Set in the 1980s, the series revolves around two best friends haunted by the events of years prior. Hap (James Purefoy), who spent time in jail after fighting the draft during Vietnam, has a faint glimmer in his eyes, the last vestige of a once-passionate force of personality. Leonard (Michael K. Williams), who did serve, has the hang-dog look of a man haunted, both by his military excursions and the cultural hostility that he, a gay veteran, found in his homecoming.
Amid its recent rebranding, USA can't get no (more) Satisfaction, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The drama, about a married man who starts moonlighting as an escort after catching his wife in the throes of paid-for passion, lasted two seasons before getting the axe, but its long-term prospects seemed dismal from its inauspicious debut onward.
It's no secret things get kinky in Fifty Shades Darker, the sequel to last year's (punishing) BDSM romance, but it looks like they might also get more than a little hairy. According to TheWrap, Teen Wolf actor Tyler Hoechlin is coming aboard the Universal pic, taking on the supporting role of (no joke) Boyce Fox, who works with Anastasia Steele (star Dakota Johnson) at a publishing company.
As Star Wars: The Force Awakens continues to do solid business more than two months after opening to record-breaking numbers in December, Lucasfilm and Disney's next trip to the galaxy far, far away has been kept surprisingly under wraps. Outside of some news about cast members and screenwriters, not all that much has come out about Star Wars: Rogue One, the Gareth Edwards-directed spinoff set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.
Is Netflix turning into Showtime? Like that premium network, the streaming service doesn't seem prepared to say goodbye to House of Cards, the political drama that marked one of its earliest successes in the original programming arena, despite showrunner Beau Willimon opting to jump ship. Instead of sending the show off with him, Netflix is tapping Frank Pugliese and Melissa James Gibson, both senior writers, to take on showrunner duties.
