Deadpool (2016) – Tim Miller

Ryan Reynolds was made for the role of Deadpool, the Marvel meta-merc. His appearance as the character in Wolverine: Origins was horrible, and this is nothing but redeeming, and insanely funny. While the film is an origin story, showing how Wade Wilson (Reynolds) became Deadpool, it also knows to make fun of itself and origin…

Mark of the Plague (2016) – Kevin Sands

Simon & Schuster delivers the second book in Kevin Sands’ The Blackthorn Key Series, Mark of the Plague, available on its own or in a hardcover slipcase collection that contains all six books in the series. Picking up a couple of months after the first book, the tale finds apothecary apprentice Christopher Rowe working to…

Shin Godzilla (2016) – Hideaki Anno, and Shinji Higuchi

Crunchyroll, the streaming service, doesn’t just have anime series for every taste and genre, it also contains a number of films, among them is Shin Godzilla. I love a good Godzilla film so I was very eager to dive into this one, and was very happy to see that it had more in common with…

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) – Andre Ovredal

Andre Ovredal’s first English language film is a very well-crafted and viscerally terrifying film starring Biran Cox, Emile Hirsch and Olwen Catherine Kelly. Cox and Hirsch play father and son, Tommy and Austin Tilden who run a morgue and crematorium. Austin has dreams of getting out of the business and town, and taking his girlfriend,…

End of Watch (2016) – Stephen King

The final novel in the Bill Hodges trilogy, End of Watch, adds a bit of the supernatural flavour that King is known for as Brady Hartsfield, the Mercedes Killer from Mr. Mercedes returns for a final confrontation with retired police detective Hodges, his partner Holly Gibney, and their friend Jerome. The thread of material woven…

Batman: The Killing Joke (2016) – Sam Liu

I remember, not that it was that long ago now when the DC animated movie adaption of the iconic graphic novel The Killing Joke was released. Fans were in an uproar about the addition of a plot frontloaded to the beginning of the film which reveals Batman (wonderfully voiced by Kevin Conroy) had sexual relations…

The BFG (2016) – Steven Spielberg

This one seemed like a surefire winner, you’ve got Spielberg working from a script by Melissa Matheson who wrote E.T. The story is adapted from Roald Dahl’s story, and Mark Rylance brings The Big Friendly Giant to life. But no matter how good, the computer-generated images were, combining the computer characters with live-action ones, specifically,…

The Expanse (2016) – Critical Mass, and Levithan Wakes

The final two episodes of the first season of The Expanse aired together on 2 February, 2016. The first part, Critical Mass was written by Robin Veith, Dan Nowak, and Naren Shankar. Leviathan Wakes, which was the title of the first novel in the series, was penned by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby. We go…

The Expanse (2016) – Windmills, and Salvage

Chrisjen (Shohreh Aghdashloo) heads to the Holden farm in Montana to speak with Holden’s (Steven Strait) family in an attempt to better understand him and his actions, even as the UN prepares to remove him from the playing field. Windmills was written by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (collectively known as James S.A. Corey, the…

The Expanse (2016) – Back to the Butcher, and Rock Bottom

Dan Nowak pens Back to the Butcher. First airing on 5 January, 2016 the story this week moves back and forth in time a bit, taking us to an event that happened at Anderson Station when some of the workers (including the wonderful Billy MacLellan) staged a protest because the corporation that owned the station…