Pete Messum Reviews...

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword finally graced our screens a couple of weeks ago to critical panning and box office failure. It's been a production years in the making, originally starting out as the first installment in the Knights of the Round Table series, part of a six film series to just a one-off motion picture that will be lucky to even make its money back, let alone kick off a franchise. Now that's not me just slagging off the movie as an abysmal mess before anyone sees me as biased. Despite not being a huge fan of the idea, or the original trailer last year, I've found the more recent marketing material much more pleasing, and the concept of a Guy Ritchie King Arthur movie didn't, and doesn't sound awful, just a likely recipe for disaster. It's as if Warner Bros needed to make a big, $175 million box office bomb in 2017, and came up with this. Not only that, but they cast no big stars in the film and hired a director whose last film was an even

Following on from the last episode, "Identity and Change" introduces us to the Framework version of Mack, who finally gets to live a normal life with his daughter Hope in a Hydra-dominated society. The way the episode tells his story as someone just trying to live a quiet life in a totalitarian state is brilliantly eerie, and arguably brings in some real-world influences - and perhaps not just historical ones too. His ultimate betrayal of Skye/Daisy is a heartbreaking moment, but the episode allows him a chance at redemption by the end of it all. Actor Henry Simmons gives a standout performance in the episode, and really does shine. It's also worth mentioning the Framework version of Fitz, nicknamed "The Doctor" for his cruel experiment on Inhumans, working under Madame Hydra (this world's Aida). The romance they set up between the two is an interesting element to add in, and while it could be seen as just dragging out Fitz and Simmons' relationship w

"What If..." marks the first installment of Agents of Hydra, the third 'pod' in Agents of SHIELD season 4, with the entire cast trapped in Radcliffe's Framework. Anyone who read my last review of Agents of SHIELD would know that I absolutely loved the last episode, and as much as I was fascinated to see where the season would go next, I decided to wait a few weeks to binge through a few episodes at a time, and I was amazed at how strong an opener this episode was. While Mack and Radcliffe remained absent throughout this episode, we got to explore an alternate Daisy, back to being called Skye in this reality, who works together with Grant Ward (a not-so-surprise return from Brett Dalton) in Hydra. Skye and Ward's relationship has always seemed to work against the show, not entirely clicking with either character, but here that prior establishment makes their new dynamic much more interesting. Ward is now a Hydra agent who actually works for SHIELD, as oppose

"No Regrets" is an episode that at least on first viewing I'm not entirely sure how to feel about. The episode handles the death of one of the main characters in Director Mace, but its also an episode with a resurrected Ward that also features a guest appearance form resurrected Agent Triplett, meaning that the show can't entirely provide the death sequence it otherwise would have. Perhaps this really is the end for Mace, but the show has proven the death isn't the end, with the only dead characters not brought back being either villains or Lincoln (who, let's face it - nobody wants to see back again). Mace was a good character, and to see him go out in an episode like this is a great idea, it's just that I couldn't feel the weight of his death knowing that he'd probably come back at some point. Maybe he won't, but I just didn't buy it in the episode. That being said though, his death benefited the arcs of both Framework May and Fitz,

So, I'm writing this to provide my full initial thoughts on this week's Doctor Who - Oxygen - as I'm expecting my opinion to change over time. The episode itself seems to have been widely praised by Who-fans, but I personally felt that the episode was a huge let down. First off, the horror elements of the episode, bar maybe the pre-credits sting, were definitely lacking. Despite some scary moments, darker lighting and a confined setting, the episode never created a feeling of claustrophobia, and any tension created by the space-suit zombies was ruined in the third act. The fake-out with Bill's "death" was very poorly-executed, especially given how the episode tried the same trick twice. Bill's initial space-walk was really well-executed, but her final attack felt tacked-on to build tension...but didn't, because we all know as the audience that Bill won't die in episode five of a twelve episode series. Granted, the same goes for the first case, b

Well, that was really good. Agents of SHIELD brings to an end the second pod of its fourth season in "Self-Control", a brilliant episode written and directed by series creator Jed Whedon. The "LMD" arc has been a little sketchy here and there, and while overall I think the arc has been treading water to allow the show to fill in the gaps between "Ghost Rider" and "Agents of Hydra" (the first and third pods), this final episode in that section is so good I'm pretty much willing to forgive this. With Coulson, Mack, Mace and Fitz all with LMD replicas running around SHIELD HQ, Daisy and Simmons band together to try and escape, enter the Framework and find their real selves in the computer-simulated world...and that's a really good 45 minute plot. It works. It feels like an episode in its own right, but serves to progress the season's narratives. Aida herself takes self-control, realizing her vulnerabilities, imprisoning Radcliffe in