Television

It’s been said that anthologies are a tough creative sell to audiences. As movies they offer a quick-hit of variety that’s both the format’s most solid strength and its primary weakness, for while there may be several excellent proffered tales in any individual anthology film, there’s always (at least) one that a viewer may not find to their particular taste. Still, their premise, especially for horror cinema, holds potent storytelling allure. The descendent of the campfire fable of yore, inherited by the classic gothic- and pulp-era short story and sharpened to visceral perfection by EC Comics during the 1950’s, anthologies distill horror to its barest, essential elements: a grimly humorous host announcing a simple set-up, a twist, and (hopefully) a jolt of disquieting terror.

Warner Brothers police drama with a twist, Prodigal Son, gets the Blu-ray release for its second season. Malcolm Bright (Tom Payne) continues in his role of consulting profiler for the police department, bringing his unique perspective to the solving of unique homicides. That perspective comes from the fact that his father, Dr. Martin Whitly (Michael Sheen), is the infamous serial killer known as The Surgeon. From his special accommodations at the Claremont Psychiatric Hospital, Martin stands ready and eager to "help" his son get into the minds of the various psycopathies he must unravel, all while getting further into Malcom's head as he struggles with repressed memories.

After its premiere season, Stargirl had set a rather high bar for itself. But, at least with this initial episode of the second season, the show seems to be hitting on all cylinders, retaining the charm and nostalgia that fans fell in love with last year.

When I first heard that Gotham was going to be followed up by a series called

Pennyworth, I thought, "Okay, Gotham was a wee bit of a stretch, going back to a pre-Batman version of the setting, but going back to Alfred's younger days is probably beyond a capable grasp."

I believe I was correct in this assumption. Even with Bruno Heller attached, Pennyworth seems to very little connection to the Fox series.

In this second season, Alfred (Jack Bannon) is something of a war profiteer. He runs a night club catering to both sides of the war, and puts his former military skills to the test by taking on the odd mercenary job here and there. Some of these jobs are at the behest of CIA field agent Thomas Wayne (Ben Aldridge), who enjoys a tenuous romantic relationship with resistance fighter, Martha Kane (Emma Paetz).

Kevin Smith's Masters of the Universe: Revelation dropped on Netflix today -- or, at least, the first five episodes have. And while many fans are already commenting and commiserating that He-Man is largely absent from this tale that is all about a bitter Teela's quest to save Eternia, there's a mix of good moments in this, albeit blighted by the nihilistic plot points that come up later in the run.

When The Flash series was first announced, nobody was more excited than I was. And in every episode of that first season, I was an excited little boy from opening scene to scrolling credits.

As with any series, the show has had it's peaks and valleys as it progressed from season to season, serving as the fulcrum of the classic CW show crossover, Crisis on Infinite Earths, which saw the multiverse collapse into a singular universe when it was finished. But never has it reached such a prolonged low point as it has with -- well, pretty much the entirety of this seventh season.

Tired of looking thru Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ for movies such as THE TOXIC AVENGER, SGT. KABUKIMAN NYPD, and POULTRYGIEST, and coming up empty handed? Do you crave truly independent cinema and shorts that the mainstream conglomerates refuse to platform and fund?

Well look no more! Lloyd Kaufman, president of Troma Studios and creator of THE TOXIC AVENGER have heard your cries for help. Earlier this year, Troma launched the new streaming service, Troma Now, to Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, and Google Play; and starting this month Troma Now is finally available as a channel on your favorite ROKU device.

Game shows are one of the biggest types of TV entertainment on the planet. Why do we love game shows so much? We took a look here.

When Lucifer went on hiatus in the middle of its fifth season on Netflix, I had the distinct sense that I heard Fonzie revving up his motorcycle in the distance while a crew of marine biologists wheeled back the cover on a tank of sharks. And with the drop of the second half of the fifth season, I can't say I was wrong.

With the Phoenix Foundation having been disbanded at the end of MacGyver Season 3, the team members find themselves forced to work in the private sector -- until newcomer Russ Taylor (Henry Ian Cusick) approaches Angus MacGyver (Lucas Till) with an offer to get the band back together. Taylor has a condition that gives him hyper-acute pattern recognition abilities, and what he has uncovered is a vast global conspiracy by an extremist group to Thanos-snap half the population of the world in the name of saving the world from global warming. Throughout the season, the concept of doing "the wrong thing for the right reason" gets used, becoming the mantra of this arc which sees Mac reunite tragically with his father (Tate Donovan), discover an aunt he never knew (Jeri Ryan) working for the bad guys, and a tenet of beliefs driving the terrorists that was authored by no less than Mac's own mother.

When I was a kid, I gobbled up all my grandmother's discarded World Weekly News copies. The stories in them were so fantastic and inspiring, I was surprised they didn't make the nightly news. To be fair, this was around the time Close Encounters of the Third Kind was huge, and the Betty and Barney Hill story, and Project: Bluebook, glued me to my television set. I'd cut out all the articles and paste them in a scrapbook. I would later go get books by J. Allen Hynek and Erich von Däniken.

The aliens were here, and I was going to be prepared.

If you're a fan of superhero stories, but require a more intricate level of storytelling than the standard fare, Netflix delivers. Mark Millar's Jupiter's Legacy makes its first season drop this week, and gives the reader a world fully-populated with powerful beings, good guys and bad guys, with a traditional flavor of comic book morals juxtaposed against the reactions of a real world backdrop.

Taking a page from the first seasons of Arrow, the series jumps back and forth between where we are today and how we got here -- which entails a span of nearly 100 years.

PREVIOUSLY, ON THE FIRST EPISODE OF DON’T LET HER IN:

Perky blonde twenty-something artist Amber (Kelly Curran) and her rock-band boyfriend Ben (Cole Pendery) have the call for a roommate answered by Serena (Lorin Doctor), a sultry, doe-eyed, black-clad “New-Age nerd girl” who keeps a collection of odd crystals and a grotesque stone idol and indulges in witching-hour chants and who quickly succeeds in seducing Ben one evening while Amber sleeps beside them. Once Ben’s band suddenly scores a month-long touring gig and Amber is left alone with an ever-more-domineering Serena, it’s revealed the new lodger’s humanity may only be a mask for something far more diabolical…

Certain storytelling formulas are eternal; a mysterious stranger coming to town, two-timing lovers, jealousy, suspicion, manipulation, betrayal--it’s the stuff of Greek tragedy and the Shakespearean stage, reflective of the darker aspects in human nature and cornerstones of dramatic tension. Endless permutations can be cooked from such simple ingredients, and a textbook recipe is this: take an ordinary, everyday couple, content if not happy, add the presence of an alluring, dark-hearted seductress, bring to a boil and relish what follows. For extra potency, add a dash of supernatural menace and serve immediately before the audience has a chance to notice how half-baked it all really is.

While it's not known yet if this will be a weekly occurrence, it's a nice way to keep those streaming numbers up. Offering live viewers an opportunity to get additional content, could keep those hardcore fans watching two nights in a row. SUPERMAN AND LOIS already broke records for the CW when it comes to ratings for Live+3 (which factors in streaming numbers) with over 2.7 million viewers.

So what important scene was left out of the episode that aired on TV? It certainly wasn't a brief moment between Clark and Lana. Instead it was an important exchange between Sam Lane and Superman.

In just two episodes, we've come to realize that General Lane accepts Superman as an ally (see also: weapon). When Captain Luther fails, yet again, in acquiring kryptonite from a military complex, Superman demands to know what he's looking for. That's when General Lane comes clean about his dirty secret.

He's been stockpiling kryptonite.

PREVIOUSLY ON THE RESONATOR: MISKATONIC U:

The Flash returns to The CW with its seventh season, and -- for the most part -- it's back to firing on all cylinders.

The concept of Barry being on the precipice of using up his remaining Speed Force had drawn on overly long in season six, so it was a relief that the problem finally gets a resolution in this episode, even if it did come at the sacrifice of a major character. Or... did it? We'll get to that in a little bit.

‘Horrible beyond conception was the change which had taken place in my best friend, Crawford Tillinghast.’

With that decidedly lurid line, visionary horror icon H.P. Lovecraft opened his 1934 mini-masterwork, ‘From Beyond’, a brief tale that features a scientist--the aforementioned Crawford Tillinghast--striving to invent a machine that stimulates a person's pineal gland, allowing them to perceive alternate planes of existence, which, unsurprisingly for the founding author of cosmic horror, invokes a menagerie of creepy-crawly, squiggling creatures into our own dimension with dire and deadly consequences.

This fifth season of Mountain Monsters has seen production dial back the drama in a big way. In fact, to some degree, they've almost over-corrected from the season where every night was three or more mysterious encounters with demons, various bigfoots, and ghostly little girls. This seventh episode contains what might have been half-an-episode of those earlier seasons for all the revelations actually emphasized.

Superman and Lois finally gives Tyler Hoechlin a chance to fully flex his inner Superman. Sure, he's been okay in Supergirl and the other Arrowverse crossovers, but now he's got the whole show to himself -- shared, of course, with his family: wife Lois (Elizabeth Tulloch) and twin 13-year-old sons Jonathan (Jordan Elsass) and Jordan (Alex Garfin).