Pete Messum Reviews...

This week on Agents of SHIELD, Coulson deals with finding out that Ward is still alive, Malick believes that Ward is going to murder him and Daisy and Lincoln visit some strange Australian person to recover forgettable SHIELD mystery box No 1,171. It's a shame that the plot provides basically nothing to talk about, as the episode fails to actually provide a proper resolution or even a proper cliffhanger. The plane is taken over by Giyera and crashes(?) in...some place... Daisy is reluctant to form that super team that she set up to fight against Hydra because of her having a vision of someone wearing a SHIELD badge in a crashing spacecraft... Urm...was this the first part of a two-part episode or something? Now, let's talk nitpicks. Early in the episode, the Agents mention how Giyera can only telekenetically move objects in his sight. So how is it that he can start levitating objects with his eyes closed in one scene? I know its a nitpick but if the show is going to set up

Self-fulfilling prophecies are difficult to handle in stories. Quite often it can seem like the teases for the future are developed before the writers actually work out what happens in the future, and sometimes the teases can be really obvious, making the characters seem a little bit stupid for misunderstanding them when you, the audience, can. "Spacetime" falls into the latter category, with Daisy encountering an Inhuman with insight into future events, who upon falling into the hands of Hydra spurs Daisy and the rest of the agents to go after him and try and avert a potentially horrific future. There are some interesting if complex time-travel ideas at play in here, especially given that Marvel haven't really dealt with time travel as a concept prior to this, but one can't help but draw comparisons to The Flash, which has also been dealing with lots of time travel and alternative reality concepts recently. It also doesn't help that the time travel elements b

Jon Favreau is a director who has a track record of making seemingly doomed movies good. Iron Man in 2008 had pretty much no reason to be any good, but somehow without even a proper script Favreau made one of my all-time favourite movies. His 2003 film Elf is one of the most heart-warming and funny Christmas movies ever made, yet should surely not work on any technical level. Add this to other Favreau projects Chef , Iron Man 2 and Zathura , and you'll realize that Disney's "live action" remake of The Jungle Book isn't actually as condemned as first thought. With Disney's recent trend of remaking classic animated films as live action reboots, sequels or prequels that turn out to...not really be that good, The Jungle Book would at first appear to be another one to add to the list. However, with Jon Favreau directing and an all-star cast of Ben Kingsley, Bill Murray, Idris Elba, Scarlett Johansson and Christopher Walken, not to mention the brilliant cast

Holy crap...Marvel, you've done it again. So, a trailer dropped on the Jimmy Kimmel show in America last night for Marvel Studios new Autumn blockbuster Doctor Strange , starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams and Mads Mikkelsen and directed by Scott Derrickson. The two minute preview for the new film, however, was pretty mind-blowing. I remember when the first trailer for Ant-Man came out, and I was sorely disappointed with how underwhelming it was and the serious and dour tone it seemed to be going for. Ant-Man just didn't look different enough to seem worth watching at the time. Of course, since then, we've all seen Ant-Man and loved it. With Doctor Strange though, I feel completely blown away by the trailer. I'll be honest, I've never read a Marvel comic. I think I might have read a short story in an annual years ago, and I've read bits of this Avengers guide I got a few years ago, but never a proper comic. I&#

Oh, Agents of SHIELD, you were doing so well... This week the agents faced threats from an anti-Inhuman group known as the Watchdogs after an attack on an ATCU building, while Mack was trying to spend some time with his brother. It was a little odd to see that Mack's brother Ruben didn't even get acknowledged as such until after the opening title card, meaning that as an audience who didn't know this character was or his connection to Mack - made even more difficult by the fact that the two actors look nothing alike. If you didn't see where this episode was going from the opening five minutes, I'll assume you enjoyed this episode much more than I did. Maybe I've watched too many serialized American TV shows but the entire plot of this episode was just filled to the brim with cliches. One of the main characters re-united with family member (probably brother), family member is having a hard time, family member reveals his/her support for the antagonists of the e

In this week's episode, Hunter and Morse are being interrogated by an Interpol detective about the murder of the Russian Prime Minister's right-hand man, with various flashbacks fleshing out what occurred in the hours prior. Telling a story in this format is nothing particularly original, though I'll admit it did throw me at first. I wondered if we'd get a Hunter and Morse origin story of sorts, but alas we've got to deal with a rather forgettable plot involving a Russian conspiracy and an Inhuman we barely get to see. What worked about this episode was that it focused on everyone at SHIELD being actual spies. Now, I love spy dramas and I think there are all sorts of directions such an idea can go. Setting up a cover that goes so far that you have to leave the organisation is a new one for me, but damn did it work. Sure, I think the episode overplayed the Hunter and Morse farewell to 112%, but it was an interesting idea explored. Having a near Cold War scenario w

"The Inside Man" saw the return of General Talbot as the new [acting] head of the ACTU, with him and Coulson teaming up to set-up an Inhuman initiative with ambassadors from other countries, and made for a mostly very fun episode with an admittedly unnecessary twist. The dynamic between Coulson and Talbot is a consistently amusing one in Agents of SHIELD, and Clark Gregg and Adrian Pasdar have great chemistry together. The scene where Talbot meets all of the ambassadors is a great and very amusing little scene that just highlights this perfectly. Then, the episode has to go and pull the rug out from under us and reveal that Talbot was in fact working with Hydra all along - after his son was kidnapped by them. *Sigh* Could we not have just had a fun little episode at a peace conference interrupted by Hydra, instead of having Talbot betray Coulson and Malick come in to reveal Coulson as a "traitor"? It would have been so much simpler and so much better. Honestl

While the mid-season finale seemed to almost end the series entirely, "Bouncing Back" kick-starts the second half of Agents of SHIELD's third season with a big bang. It feels like a brand-new season, even though there's been no mid-season break in the UK broadcast, and I certainly felt a lot more confident in this opener than I did in Episode 1. "Bouncing Back" followed the agents investigating a woman who can move at super-speed, who has been destroying police weapons. As Mack deepens the investigating however, he finds that the woman - called Elena - was in fact trying to prevent the corrupt local police from gaining and using the weapons. The police have an Inhuman assistant, however, who proves to be a problem for the Agents when Hunter and Morse are kidnapped. This leads Daisy and her mini Inhuman squad (known as 'Secret Warriors' apparently) to rescue the agents and stop the police. This is actually a really good standalone plot, building

***CONTAINS SPOILERS*** FBC Reviews takes a spoiler-filled look at the second installment of the DC Extended Universe with Zack Snyder's 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice'... Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). Starring: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Lane and Jeremy Irons. Director: Zack Snyder. Plot: It's been nearly two years since Superman's colossal battle with Zod devastated the city of Metropolis. The loss of life and collateral damage left many feeling angry and helpless, including crime-fighting billionaire Bruce Wayne. Convinced that Superman is now a threat to humanity, Batman embarks on a personal vendetta to end his reign on Earth, while the conniving Lex Luthor launches his own crusade against the Man of Steel. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) belongs to Warner Bros Pictures, DC Entertainment, Ratpac and Atlas Entertainment. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice soundtrack is composed by

While DC seems to be failing to conquer the big screen with 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice', they do seem to be doing pretty well on the Television front, with a whole interconnected universe of shows with 'Arrow', 'The Flash', 'Vixen', 'Constantine', 'Supergirl' and now 'DC's Legends of Tomorrow' - a mini-series following Time Master Rip Hunter on his mission to prevent a dystopian future overruled by tyrant Vandal Savage. Hunter is aided by the Atom, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, both halves of FIRESTORM, Captain Cold, Heat Wave and White Canary as they journey throughout space and time to fight their nemesis. This show pretty much embraces how silly and at points cheesy it can be, with lots of sci-fi techno-babble on the effects of time travel, plenty of Universe-building and lots of little in-jokes and Easter eggs for fans of the other shows and for comic book fans. So, is it any good? Well, I can say that 'Legends&#