Category: Reviews

Box Office Democracy: The Fate of the Furious

I don’t believe in objective reviews of media.  I think the personal subjectivity of the reviewer is impossible to remove and, honestly, that it would be boring if you could.  That said, I am not capable of being remotely objective when it comes to the Fast & Furious franchise.  I find the formula they have stumbled upon since Fast Five to be unbelievably charming and I can’t separate the movie from the joy they’ve brought in to my life and the friendships these movies have enriched.  If this bothers you, I can give you the low down on how I feel about this movie and you can be on your way: if you’ve liked any of the last three entries in the franchise you’ll like this one, and if you didn’t this will not change your mind.  If my F&F obsession does not bother you, come on and let me geek out a little bit.

If you’ve seen the trailer you know the hook for The Fate of the Furious: Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) has turned against his crew, his family, and is now working for the super hacker Cipher (Charlize Theron).  That’s sort of the whole film.  Cipher has a nefarious plan but it’s very nebulous.  She wants nuclear weapons and she wants to launch one, but I’m not sure what she wants to do after that.  It all feels hastily thrown together so we can get the shots of Dom in his evil black jumpsuit driving a more evil-looking black Challenger.  That’s all fine, the plot is only there to hold top the action sequences— but this feels less substantial than usual.  There’s also the idea that Cipher would blackmail someone who has pulled off some of the zaniest heists and car chases in history but only uses him as a glorified bag man that rubbed me the wrong way— but again it’s all about big action sequences and meaningful glances, so whatever.

There are two signature action pieces in The Fate of the Furious and they’re the most important thing to judge the movie by.  There’s a big second act set piece in New York where Cipher hacks a bunch of cars and controls them remotely as a big swarm to take out a motorcade.  This is a visually interesting bit but it might finally be the moment where a Fast & Furious movie got too far out there for me.  I know cars don’t work like that.  More importantly, it doesn’t feature any characters we care about so it’s literally just cars smashing in to each other with no purpose.  The sequence picks up a lot when it becomes about Dom and the rest of the crew, but by that point you’re kind of tired of action.  The movie’s climax is a race across a frozen bay to stop a submarine while being chased by cars firing missiles.  I know I said self-driving cars were straining my suspension of disbelief earlier in this very paragraph, but I loved every ridiculous second of this sequence.  It feels a little like they’re trying to top the tank sequence from Fast & Furious 6 by using a bigger more menacing piece of military hardware and it doesn’t live up to it, maybe nothing ever could, but it’s great in its own right.

Fast Five was a heist movie with all the wonderful twists and turns inherent in the genre, and in the two films since they’ve abandoned that to make straight-up action movies.  While they haven’t gone back to stealing giant safes, they have returned to meaningful third act twists and I’m so thankful for it.  There’s so many things we find out were slightly different than the first time we saw them, and it’s what these movies need to not just be an endless parade of flashy car tricks.  It needs characters, it needs stakes, and it needs to be just a little bit surprising.

Reading this back, I can see how much I’m grading The Fate of the Furious on a curve.  If this was any other movie with the flaws this one has I would probably be here tearing it apart and begging you not to see it.  I love this franchise, I love these characters, and I can’t set that aside.  There are so many little things to appreciate from an eight movie franchise that can’t be replicated.  It’s nice just to hang out with these characters and exist in their world for another couple hours.  It’s fun to pick up on the callbacks and see them pick up threads that were set down years and years ago.  I still find The Fate of the Furious as refreshing as a Corona on a hot LA afternoon— and as long as that’s true, I’ll carry water for these movies.

REVIEW: Teen Titans: The Judas Contract

teentitans-3d-e1487271578408-7804139Condensing nearly eighty years of comics continuity, characters, and interpretations into other media allows for cherry-picking and revision to be done, so the resulting new work has the look and feel of the original while offering up something fresh, and hopefully, good.

One of the best-regarded storylines in DC’s history is “The Judas Contract” which was the culmination of a two year thread in New Teen Titans because no one saw the twists and turns in the storyline while it also dramatically shifted Dick Grayson’s status quo. It also provided readers with the origin of the Tiran’s great foe, Deathstroke. The ending was emotional and strong while the entire story holds up on rereading.

What is offered up in Teen Titans: The Judas Contract animated feature, out now from Warner Home Entertainment, is a pale comparison for a number of reasons. First, the lineup of characters is substantially different so the bonds of friendship are different. We open with a flashback to the original Titans (more or less) showing their ease with one another, their trust and teamwork. It nicely introduces Starfire and shows her immediate connection with Robin. Then we move five years into the Animated Universe continuity and we have the current Titans: Starfire (Kari Wahlgren), Robin (Stuart Allan), Beast Boy (Brandon Soo Hoo), Raven (Taissa Farmiga), Blue Beetle (Jake T. Austin), and Terra (an excellent Christina Ricci). There is little explanation of when Terra joined the team, but in the comics, she was around for quite some time before betraying the team.

In the comics, Deathstroke was hired by H.I.V.E. to destroy the Titans and manipulated Tara Markov, a sociopathic teen exiled from Markovia, to be his mole. He played the long game, getting her deep with the team’s trust, even initiating a romance with Changeling (Beast Boy), before having her deliver them to his grasp. She wound up sacrificing herself to save the team, a noble final act.

In the animated film, this is a much more condensed story, with lots of character threads that are under-deserved while the comics’ concurrent Brother Blood (Gregg Henry) story was given way too much play here. Ernie Altbacker, who did a great job on Justice League Dark, has a tough job in adapting the story for film and by using Brother Blood and his cult, serves up nonsensical action in lieu of the real emotional core. Terra’s introduction to the Tians is skipped over while flashbacks show a vastly different origin than the comics, a cliched one at that.

judas-contract-2-e1492268933806-6790902Terra’s romance with Beast Boy comes too late in the story and doesn’t have the same deep resonance it had in the comics, the same with Deathstroke’s uncomfortable sexual relationship with Terra. In the film, he is colder towards her, redeemed only by Miguel Ferrer’s strong (and sadly, final) performance as Slade Wilson. I still dislike how Deathstroke was appended to the League of Assassins in these films since it makes little sense and wish they’d move past that.

Blood’s device, designed to drain the Titans’ powers into him, transforming him into a god, is perhaps the weakest part of the story and an illogical one since Beetle’s alien tech or Raven’s supernatural force cannot easily be captured and transferred.

Where Altbacker excels, is with the evolving relationship between Starfire and Nightwing (Sean Maher) as they move in together at the same time she is jealous with his easy rapport with the team he no longer leads. The other character subplots – notably Beetle’s tense relationship with his father – could have been stronger. At least this film runs longer than most, clocking in at 85 minutes, allowing even this much characterization. His use of Damian is an excellent addition although he’s off the gird for a long stretch in the middle, as if Altbacker couldn’t figure out what to do with him.

Long-time fans will recognize Jericho in an early scene and we’re rewarded with a hint of things to come with a post-credits scene. Similarly, Wonder Girl is seen at the end, and should be showcased whenever the Titans turn up next.

Overall, if you take the film as the latest installment in the shared animated universe, it’s a strong entry. As an adaptation of this cherished comics tale, it falls woefully short. The film can be found in a variety of formats, of course, including a nifty gift set complete with Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD code, and a Blue Beetle figure.

The Blu-ray comes with a 28-minute chat between New Teen Titans co-creators Marv Wolfman and George Pérez which shows their easy camaraderie. Marv brought along some nifty artifacts enhancing the video.

Less interesting is the Villains United—Deathstroke (9:00), with Wolfman, Pérez, and Mike Carlin talking about Slade Wilson’s evolution and place in the pantheon of great antagonists.

There’s a fun Sneak Peek for the next offering, the stand-alone Batman and Harley Quinn with the return of Bruce Timm to the team. Rounding out the video are two thematically-related episodes from the DC Comics Vault: “Terra” and “Titan Rising”, both from Teen Titans.

Box Office Democracy: Gifted

I feel like I never see movies like Gifted anymore.  Gifted is a smaller movie, almost completely devoid of the spectacle that snobs complain about in modern cinema.  It’s as anonymous a movie as one can get from the director of The Amazing Spider-Man franchise, the star of Captain America and Octavia Spencer.  It’s funny when it wants to be, touching when it tries it’s absolute hardest, and if you’re willing to suspend an ample amount of disbelief there’s a heartwarming message to be found here.

There’s a reasonably famous book on screenwriting called Save the Cat.  It’s a guide to crafting marketable scripts, there’s good advice in there, and it sold a ton of copies.  The title refers to the need to have your main character do something early in the film to get the audience on their side; something like saving a cat.  I’m telling you this because in the first scene of Gifted we are introduced to Fred, the one-eyed cat who was adopted by Frank the protagonist of this film (Chris Evans).  He assures his niece Mary (Mckenna Grace) that while he doesn’t generally like cats, he likes this one.  It’s such a transparent use of this trope that was the title for this wildly successful screenwriting book that this is either an insane coincidence or a stunning lack of self-awareness on the part of the writer. (I know this probably won’t occur to 95% of the viewing audience who have never read any books on how to write a screenplay but it was distracting for me.)

Other than the whole cat bit (which also comes back in the third act for extra emotional stakes but I said I was moving on) the story is suitably interesting.  Mary goes to her first day of school and is clearly a prodigy, and through her being a precocious scamp who is good at math and beating the hell out of children twice her age she gets the attention of her grandmother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan) who does not like Frank.  A custody battle ensues, and the crux of the film is if Mary should be allowed to have a “normal” life or if she should be pushed to be the mathematical whiz her mother was and that she seems to have the potential to be.  It’s kind of interesting that this film just assumes that mathematical aptitude is some kind of hereditary trait that was passed through three generations.  I could see that an overbearing mother like Evelyn could make her daughter in to a mathematician through constant effort but I’m not sure how Mary, orphaned as a young child and raised by smart but not genius Frank, is on the same level.  I suppose it isn’t exactly the point but it’s a weird universe to assume.

A lot of the movie is tied up in this custody battle and I like a good courtroom scene as much as the next person, but the real joy in the movie is away from all of that.  The scenes with Octavia Spencer as Roberta, the next-door neighbor, and Jenny Slate as Bonnie, Mary’s first grade teacher, are universally the best ones.  Chris Evans is great at trading barbs with his inexplicably British mother but I’d much rather see him having quasi-meaningful conversations with Jenny Slate.  This is the first dramatic role I can remember for Slate, and while she might not be the second coming of Meryl Streep she’s fun and interesting— and most importantly, a breath of fresh air for a part that sometimes feels like it cycles between the same six actresses over and over again.  Octavia Spencer is a delight in everything she does; I don’t feel compelled to sell anyone on her.  Spencer has a small part here, but she talks the most like a real person and that’s worth a lot.

Gifted is a fun movie.  It’s nice to see Evans and Slate playing against type.  It’s a heartwarming story that never twists itself in to being a downer.  I sort of wish that the end result of all of Frank’s handwringing about whether he’s going to screw up Mary’s life was answered by someone telling him that he will definitely screw up and it will definitely be okay because that’s what parenting is.  That isn’t what this movie is though, and it’s okay.  I liked watching Gifted and I would be absolutely thrilled to stumble upon it again on cable on a slow afternoon or on an airplane, it’s the perfect movie for those contexts.

Tweeks: 3 Minute Review Underworld Blood Wars

This week Maddy gives a quick 3-min review of Underworld Blood Wars which is now available on Digital HD from Amazon Video and iTunes and will released on DVD and Blu-ray April 25, 2017.

With the war between lycans and vampires still chugging along, it’s up to death dealer Selene (Kate Beckinsale) to put an end to the conflict. Drawing on a small group of allies, Selene must also fight the lycans new leader, Marius, who wants Selene taken care of, but with the help of the hybrid blood strain, she hopes that she can at least bring peace.

Box Office Democracy: Ghost in the Shell

Scarlett Johansson in Ghost In The Shell

I’m sort of curious why Dreamworks even wanted to pay for the rights to make a Ghost in the Shell movie if they weren’t particularly interested in doing anything with the property they acquired. They seemed interested in making a cyberpunk movie, a cyberpunk movie about a badass lady android with some identity issues. I’m pretty sure you could just make an original one of those, no one owns cyberpunk or androids.  If you’re going to pay for a beloved property you could try and tell a story they’ve already told, or at the very least not one that’s just like one they’ve told but much simpler and with a healthy dose of cliche.  I don’t understand why you would buy a Japanese franchise and decide that you only want the Japanese-ness to be set dressing.  If this was an original property it would be a dull movie with a draggy second act; as Ghost in the Shell it’s a colossal failure.

For the movie adaptation they decided to make Ghost in the Shell an awful lot like Blade II. The Major is the first of her kind and her special forces team needs to take out a mysterious terrorist who turns out to be a failed attempt to create the same thing that The Major is.  if you replace “terrorist” with “vampire” and “The Major” with “Blade” that is a perfectly apt description of Blade II.  I happen to believe that Blade II is a terribly under-appreciated movie; it isn’t because it has the world’s most compelling plot.  In things it does worse than Blade II the bad guy i always talking about having his own neural network and there’s a location with a bunch of what look like religious types plugged in to some machines but they never even attempt to define any of that stuff.  It appears to be an artifact from when the plot more closely resembled the animated movie from the 90s and they didn’t want to throw away any of the imagery.

There’s some fantastic visual design in this movie.  The city sequences look a little like Blade Runner turned way way up.  There are these recurring holographic fish through the advertising in the movie, and there’s a certain sense of high tech whimsy inherent in seeing insubstantial fish float all over the place.  There’s a sequence where the robot design becomes absolutely chilling as a robot clearly designed to appear normal and non-threatening becomes less and less tethered to human form as it experiences more and more distress, showing off the horror of inhumanity.  I also enjoyed the cloaking device effect when they let it shimmer and fade and much less when it felt like an excuse to not actually film some action sequence or another.  It’s also an exceptionally well scored movie if you’re as into this vaguely pulsating cyberpunk-style of music as I am.

None of this is super important though, because the biggest problem with Ghost in the Shell is that it’s profoundly racist.  The central plot is all about how to make the next step in human evolution the brains have to be taken out of Japanese people and put in to more perfect robotic bodies, robotic bodies that happen to be Caucasian.  Despite taking place in a clearly Asian city (filmed in Hong Kong but seemingly trying to invoke Tokyo) none of the starring roles are played by Asian people.  There are two Asians in Section Nine but neither has an incredible number of lines.  The evil corporation is seemingly exclusively staffed by white people.  It’s like Dreamworks wanted the Japaneseness of the story but didn’t want to use any Japanese people as anything but small parts and set dressing.  Asian writing can be in the background, Asian people can be the majority of the extras, but if anyone needs to do a bunch of talking this movie would just prefer if they were white.

Ghost in the Shell would be a bad movie even if it had perfect racial politics, but instead it gets dragged down in to being a dreadful slog of a movie.  It’s poorly paced, the action sequences run hot and cold, and there’s just too much unexplained nonsense to let the movie work even at all.  This is a movie that will look great on the resume of a visual effects artist and everyone else will spend the rest of their careers trying to gloss over it.  Ghost in the Shell is a lousy movie and a repugnant adaptation of a beloved property.

REVIEW: Batman: The Brave and the Bold The Complete Third Season

batman-bb-s3-e1490635388395-3441834Well, it’s about time. For the last twenty-five years or so, we’ve had one animated Batman series after another but to be honest only two are really good: Batman the Animated Series and Batman: The Brave and the Bold. The latter has been slowly coming out on Blu-Ray with season one in 2013 and season two in 2015. This month, we’re getting the third and final season and the good news is that it is as entertaining as remembered.

After increasingly odd interpretations of Batman, Warner Animation decided to go retro and bring back the Batman of the 1960s, who was not afraid to operate in daylight and would partner with just about anyone in a mask as the need arose. Producer James Tucker saw to it that it honored the comic the series took its name from while modernizing it with contemporary characters and characterizations. The result was a delightful thirty minutes for three seasons and now we get the final thirteen installments.

Episodes 53 through 65 continues to have Batman (Diedrich Bader) mix and match heroes and villains, zaniness from emotional intensity and serving up action, laughs, and fine vocal work. Each episode has a teaser bit that as often as note, relates to the main story, allowing for tonal variety. We open with “Joker: The Vile and the Villainous!” as the Clown Prince of Crime (Jeff Bennett) comes to appear in the majority of the story, much to the Caped Crusader’s chagrin. It also shows how deep into the vault they will go for characters as they resurrect the Weeper (Tim Conway) from Bulletman’s exploits in the Golden Age of comics.

Throughout the season we see Batman dealing with Justice League International as Blue Beetle (Will Friedle) continues to grow as a hero and Captain Atom (Brian Bloom) is welcomed to the team.

We jump around Batman’s career as we see him partner once more with Robin (Grey DeLisle) to take down goes including Catwoman (Nika Futterman) and King Tut, as a nod to the 1966 TV series in addition to time travel tales that involve Kamandi,

There are Easter Eggs aplenty and many a reference to elements and stories from the comics themselves such as “Night of the Batmen”, taken from the eponymous comic book version, which was inspired by a story from Batman #177, as an injured Batman watches Aquaman (John DiMaggio), Captain Marvel (Jeff Bennett), Green Arrow (James Arnold Taylor), and Plastic Man (Tom Kenny) don the mantle of the Bat to protect Gotham City from Deadshot (Kenney), Cavalier (Greg Ellis), Babyface, Killer Moth (Corey Burton), and Sportsmaster (Thomas F. Wilson). Another episode was taken from 1976’s DC Superstars Giant #10. Then you have a variation on an old 1950s story as the Batmen of All Nations are confronted by the Jokers of All Nations (I’m genuinely surprised Grant Morrison didn’t come up with this first).

As the series wound down, the penultimate episode pulled out all the stops with four vignettes that focused on the guest stars over the title hero. We have “Adam Strange (Michael T. Weiss) in Worlds War” as Kanjar Ro (Marc Worden) makes his second appearance this season; “Flash (Alan Tudyk) in Double Jeopardy” with appearances by Captain Boomerang (John DiMaggio), Mirror Master (Tom Kenny), and Abra Kadabra (Jeff Bennett); “’Mazing Man (Tom Kenny) in Kitty Catastrophe”, a delightful use of the charming character; and ”The Creature Commandos in The War That Time Forgot” which focuses on a mission to Dinosaur Island and confrontation with the Ultra-Humanite (Jeff Bennett).

The fourth wall is shattered in the final episode when Bat-Mite (Paul Ruebens) pops up and has decided this format is tired and needs to be retired by making the show so awful the Cartoon Network has to cancel it. With Batman, Aquaman (Ted McGinley), and the whole cast endangered, the only one to stop Bat-Mite is…Ambush Bug (Henry Winkler)?

The shows are tremendous fun and if you’ve never experienced them, now’s a good time to find them all.

REVIEW: Static Shock: The Complete First Season

static1-3923575Animated fare was very slow to integrate, largely because there was a paucity of useful source material to mine from. In the 1990s, that began to change, largely thanks to Milestone Media, a multicultural operation that had a line of comics distributed through DC Comics.

Milestone’s best known character is Static, a young urban teen with a definite modern-day Peter Parker vibe to him. Virgil Hawkins just wanted live his life when he was accidentally exposed to mutagen gas, giving him electromagnetic powers. Donning a self-made outfit, he protected his corner of the ‘Hood as Static.

The show arrived in 2000 with a bang and became a cause because it not only featured a positive image of a black male, but closely resembled the source material thanks to Milestone co-creators Dwayne McDuffie and Denys Cowan being heavily involved in the show. Static has been back every now and then and the 52 episodes remain well-regarded even today. Thankfully, Warner Archives has released Static Shock: The Complete First Season.

For those unfamiliar, McDuffie started on staff at Marvel, rising to be a writer with a distinct voice. At much the same time, Cowan broke in to DC, training under the last full generation of master editors, allowed to develop his own, gritty style where he blossomed on The Question. Joining them on the production side was producer James Tucker under the guidance of supervising producers Alan Burnett and Scott Jeralds along with executive producers Jean MacCurdy and Sander Schwartz.

The subject matter was certainly different for cartoons as we meet Virgil (Phil LaMarr), who lost his mom to gang violence, being recruited to join one of the gangs that rule Dakota City. When the gas explodes, not only does Virgil gain powers but so do others and they are all dubbed “Bang Babies” whether good or bad. As Static, he tries to do what is right, despite the complications and obstacles. He also pines for her best friend Frieda (Danica McKellar). Thankfully, he has a faithful best friend in Richard “Richie” Osgood Foley/Gear (Jason Marsden), who covers for him and helps make equipment as needed. During the season, he also befriends Daisy Watkins (Crystal Scales), who becomes a confidant.

There are complications aplenty starting at home with his father, Robert Hawkins (Kevin Michael Richardson), who runs the Freeman Community Center and disapproves of the Bang Babies and their antics. This is contrasted by Ivan Evans/Ebon (Gary Sturgis), leader of “The Meta-Breed”.

The show is grounded in ways most other super-hero fare has not been and did not shy away from social issues such as the gangs and gang violence that was there from the beginning. A strong episode in the first season also dealt with racism while another dealt with responsibility after he took a job but had to leave it to save the day, only to be fired. There are ties to the Milestone universe as he comes under the watch of Edwin Alva, from Hardware.

While the animation is occasionally stiff, the storytelling, writing, and soul more than make up for it. The first thirteen episodes, included here with a smattering profile-style extras, allows you to watch the series and its diverse cast grow and mature.

Box Office Democracy: “Life”

Life is a fine movie.  It’s reasonably well-acted, the creature effects are stunning, and the script has enough twists and turns to keep the audience on its toes.  Unfortunately, Life is a monster movie set in a confined area in outer space— and while that’s a remarkably specific genre, it contains some titanic movies.  Life is a good movie; Alien is a timeless classic.  It’s not entirely fair to make Life stand against a movie like that but it was all I could think of while I was watching it.  Life begs to be compared to movies it withers against, and while I struggle to say an entire genre/setting is out of bounds, you should probably come with something that makes your movie undeniably special and not just an attempt to be incrementally better than the last horror movie they saw.

There’s a bit of a pacing problem in Life— although one that is kind of unavoidable in a movie like this.  Once the monster is on the loose it moves along nicely but it feels like forever until we get to that point.  Most of the first hour is gone before anything happens, and if we were building a deep understanding of the characters and their relationships it would feel just fine, but instead it just seems like the movie wants to go over the exposition two or three times.  I promise you: I understand that this alien is very strong and very adaptable.  That’s literally every science fiction alien that isn’t going for the War of the Worlds twist.

They have made a very scary alien though.  They stress (over and over) that the creature is infinitely adaptable, that every cell is a muscle, a brain, and an eye, and it gives them an impressive latitude to make the creature more terrifying every time we see it.  It starts as an amorphous blob and gets more and more defined as it gets bigger until it looks an awful lot like the horrifying cross between a dragon and a Rorschach blot.  I will say that for a creature that allegedly has vision capacity in every cell it definitely developed a traditional earth-like face and head, but honestly what do I know about Martian zoology?

Considering how long we have to get to the action it’s borderline outrageous that the characters never feel like more than rough sketches. We have the brash American, the stalwart business-like Russian commander, the British scientist who can’t see past the academic worth of the discovery, the Japanese man torn between the responsibilities of his job and his newborn daughter, the medic who has set the record for longest time in space and sees his home as being in orbit and not on the planet, and the quarantine officer with questionable allegiances.  That’s all the character anyone in this movie shows. It’s not like there aren’t good actors here, but there’s no depth to play.  We’re at the climax of the film and none of the decisions seem based on information that wasn’t in the first 20 minutes.  No one grows and no one changes except from living person to alien food.

If you just want to be scared in a movie theater for an hour and 45 minutes, then there’s honestly nothing wrong with Life, it’s got a great sense of tension and some original creature and effects work.  In the last month or so we’ve seen Get Out and Kong: Skull Island release and both are in the same general zone, and both blow Life out of the water.  Get Out is a smarter, more chilling intimate character piece and Kong is vastly superior at pumping out big spectacle.  There’s no space for Life in this cinematic climate and honesty, with the exception of just being dumped in the doldrum months I can’t imagine a time when Life would stand out.  It’s a fantastic movie to discover some random evening on HBO and a mediocre use of one’s time in a theater.

REVIEW: The Zeta Project

zeta1-7012337Lost amid the hubbub over the animated series based on the traditional DC Comics was The Zeta Project, a fun spinoff from Warner Animation’s first original creation, Batman Beyond. Thanks to Warner Archives the two season series, spanning 2001-2002, is being released on DVD.

The series is focused on Zeta (Diedrich Bader), formally known as Infiltration Unit Zeta, a synthoid, who works for the NSA. The machine was introduced in the season two Batman Beyond episode “Zeta,” written by Robert Goodman, who developed the spinoff.

He violates his programming when he is asked to kill an innocent and goes on the run, vowing never to kill again. Of course, the NSA wants him back and sends a team, led by the clichéd obsessive, Agent James Bennett (the well-cast Kurtwood Smith), convinced Brother’s Day, the terrorists reprogrammed the agency’s machine. He’s often accompanied by the arrogant Agent West (Michael Rosenbaum). Only Agent Lee (Lauren Tom) considers Zeta may be telling the truth. Exasperated, she will eventually leave the NSA at the end of the first season and is replaced by Agent Rush (Erika Alexander, later Dominique Jennings).

Thankfully, Zeta has 15-year-old runaway, Rosalie “Ro” Rowan (Julie Nathanson) to help him navigate the civilian world and find Dr. Eli Selig, his creator and the one person who can prove his innocence.

zeta2-4127929Being in the near future of Batman Beyond, everything is high tech, glossy, and interesting to look at. The episodes explore different settings and locales, and you can always count on an explosive action as Zeta uses his holography to disguise himself. After disposing of the weapons he was left with non-lethal tools including handheld welding lasers and extensible limbs.

Unlike its host series, Zeta was definitely aimed at a younger audience so the characters were flatter and the action more frenetic. As a result, it never found the same enthusiastic crowd, even after a dramatic shift in look and tone began with the two-part “Wired” during season two. It might have been too late which is one reason why the show ended after two seasons and it’s taken this long to collect the second season at all.

The series ended without a conclusion so Zeta is still on the run with Dr. Selig seemingly killed. He did make two appearances on BB, “Shadows” and “Countdown”, both of which originally aired on the same day and are included as bonuses in the two-disc Season One set.

REVIEW: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

fb-2-e1490477923131-3565301J.K. Rowling did a superb job creating her magical universe, populating it worldwide with schools, wizards, prisons, creatures, and muggles aplenty. She also gave her world a rich history and then has been mining it with spinoff works of varying lengths and media. One of the more popular has been Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, taking a reference book mentioned in her Harry Potter novels and telling the story of how Newt Scamander managed to pen such a fascinating work.

Warner Bros, seeking ways to continue to profit from the film series, optioned the title and has created a trilogy with Rowling taking her turn as screenwriter for director David Yates, who directed four of the eight films. He did a far more immersive and coherent job on last year’s Legend of Tarzan.

The resulting film has grossed over $800 million worldwide so the gamble seems to have paid off and yet, the film adaptation was surprisingly lacking in charm and, well, magic.

Wisely, the story is set in America so we can see a different attitude and approach to magic as Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) has come to the States in search of more magical beasties to preserve. He has the misfortune to arrive as 1926 New York City is under attack and magic exposed to the No-Maj populace. Fanning the flames is Mary Lou Barebone (Samantha Morton), peddling the New Salem Philanthropic Society. The overly complicated plot also has a search going on for dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald and schisms within the Magical Congress of the United States of America, allowing its director Percival Graves (Colin Farrell) to conduct some extracurricular work of his own.

Coming to Newt’s aid is disgraced Aurora Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), her sister Queenie (Alison Sudol), and would-be baker Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), a non-maj. The Queenie-Jacob relationship is the film’s real heart and soul and I wish there was far more of that rather than sound and fury signifying how large their budget was for CGI. Everything is loud and overly prolonged without necessarily advancing character or story.

Visually, this is a dreary version of Jazz Age Manhattan which was flying high just prior to the 1929 Stock Market Crash. There are dark clouds and somber tones permeating the film, all the more to contrast with the realm where Scamander has been housing his finds, preserving them from a magical community that misunderstands and mistrusts them.

Frankly, the film, out now for home video consumption from Warner Home Video, is a messy disappointment, missing the essential elements that made the host series a cultural event. It looks good, is very well cast, and has some nice moments, but too little is explained, and there is little genuine emotion found in the overall story. Newt comes across as a brave bumbler, far from heroic, and is remarkably uninteresting compared with Jacob or even Tina.

The film is available in all the usual formats and combo packs with the Blu-ray’s high definition transfer superb enough to make every sparkle shine. The audio is a good match so families watching at home will be entertained by the light show.

The disc offers up over an hour’s worth of extras that feel more perfunctory than special. We start with Before Harry Potter: A New Era of Magic Begins (15:31), focusing on Rowling’s process; Characters (24:19), split into five featurettes (The Magizoologist, The Goldstein Sisters, The New Salemers, The No-Maj Baker, The President and the Auror) complete with actor interviews; Creatures (20:59), divided into seven featurettes (Bowtruckle, Demiguise, Erumpent, Niffler, Occamy, Thunderbird); Design (34:33), spotlighting each location (Shaping the World of Fantastic Beasts, New York City, MACUSA, Newt’s Magical Case, The Shaw Banquet, The Blind Pig); and finally eleven Deleted Scenes (14:33), none of which would have improved the film’s messy feel.

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