by Jesus Ibarra
Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer star in this modern update of the 60s TV series as a CIA agent and KGB agent forced to work with each other at the height of the Cold War. The movie is very much a mismatched couple meets spy conventions, and it is highly entertaining. Yes almost everything in this movie you’ve seen before from the two differing personality types bickering, to the spy tropes, to the twist at the end, but it was all done with an eye for style and tongue in cheekness that makes it all instantly charming.
by Jesus Ibarra
The eighth book in this exciting urban fantasy series is in a way a readjustment that cleverly sets up a possible endgame. It adds creative energy into this long-running series by having Kate and Curran break away from the Pack. This book takes that energy and runs with it. Seeing Kate and Curran living away from the Pack and dealing with new problems is so much fun.
by Lorie Lewis Ham
Richard Kadrey’s seventh installment of the Sandman Slim series picks up directly after the events of The Getaway God. Stark—having saved Los Angeles, and the universe, from old vengeful gods—is now saddled with his greatest challenge: living like a mere mortal. Still, there are supernatural shenanigans, like having to solve the Angel of Death’s murder while investigating cults dating back to the Weimar Republic, and figuring out where all the ghosts in LA are disappearing to.
by Jesus Ibarra
Ant-Man is another good hilarious Marvel movie that actually blew my expectations and continued to lay the groundwork for the hero stuffed Captain America: Civil War coming next May. Centering on Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) an exceptionally good thief who is enlisted by a retired genius scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) to steal a new super powered suit that will unleash a secret he tried to bury many years ago. Marvel continues to use its tried and proven formula of taking a film genre and injecting its superheroes in it. Here is a heist film wrapped in super heroics and tied to the larger MCU.
by Jesus Ibarra
The Avengers: Age of Ultron picks up a couple years after the original film building on the development of the Phase 2 Marvel movies. When Tony Stark and Bruce Banner jumpstart a peace keeping Artificial Intelligence, Ultron (James Spader), things go terribly wrong and Ultron decides that the only way to keep the peace is through the mass killing of the human population. The Avengers must fight with everything they have to stop him, even adding new recruits to the team along the way.
by Jesus Ibarra
Skin Game, the fifteenth book in the Dresden Files, is a heist book. Still acting as Winter Knight for Mab (the Queen of the Winter Fae) tasks him with helping Nicodemus (one of his most hated enemies and a fallen angel) break into the vault of the Greek god Hades to retrieve the Holy Grail. However, as always the case with the Fae everything is not as it seems and Harry has to figure out the real game Mab has him playing before Nicodemus stabs him in the back.
by Jesus Ibarra
Robocop, a remake of the cult classic 1980s movie of the same name, stars Joel Kinneman as the titular hero who is turned into a cyborg to combat crime. This movie shares only two things with the original, the transformation of Joel Kinnaman’s Alex Murphy into RoboCop, and the corporation that makes him. Other than that it is a pretty good reboot of the franchise with a look at more contemporary views about technology, corporate control, and what those things mean for people and government.
by Jesus Ibarra
Rachel Morgan returns in the addictively soon to be ending Hollows series by Kim Harrison. Yes folks this is the penultimate book in the Hollows series with the grand finale coming in book thirteen, which hopefully comes next year. The Undead Pool definitely feels this impending end, because a lot of stuff happens in this book that moves a lot of pieces in this universe.
by Jesus Ibarra
I, Frankenstein, an adaptation of a popular comic book of the same name which itself is an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, stars Aaron Eckhart as the titular creature. In this adaptation, Frankenstein creates his creature, his creature gets revenge on him for making him and then that’s where things delve into craziness. The creature is drawn into a war for humanity between gargoyles (basically angels) and demons, who want him for some reason.
by Jesus Ibarra
After a long wait, Tempt the Stars is the sixth installment of the Cassandra Palmer series, once again featuring our favorite clairvoyant and time traveler, Cassie. After the events of the last book where she found she was a demigoddess, she has to deal with how this revelation affects her current life, as well as question exactly who her parents really were. On top of all this, Cassie has to deal with her relationship with the vampire Mircea, and half-demon, Pritkin, who is now in the demon realm, and with the increasing threats the old gods pose who want to come back to Earth.
by Jesus Ibarra
David O. Russell, director of last year’s hit Silver Linings Playbook, is back with a new drama, American Hustle. Loosely based on the FBI ABSCAM operation of the late 70s, American Hustle stars a fantastic ensemble who give “mind blowingly” amazing performances.
by Jesus Ibarra
From the creators of Fringe, comes Almost Human a show set in 2048 where science and technology has advanced so far that crime has risen to unmanageable rates, forcing police officers to be paired up with lifelike combat androids. Part police drama and part science fiction, Almost Human stars Karl Urban as a gruff Detective John Kennex, who is forced to pair up with a discontinued model of androids who were created to be as human as possible and known as DRN’s. Michael Ealy has the incredibly hard job of portraying Kennex’s android partner, Dorian.
by Jesus Ibarra
Richard Kadrey, best known for his Sandman Slim urban fantasy series, enters the world of YA fiction with Dead Set. Not a completely unexpected thing, as YA fiction has become an incredibly popular genre, with almost every popular urban fantasy author writing a YA novel. However, Dead Set strangely does not read or feel like a YA adult novel. It doesn’t focus on a lot of the current YA tropes such teenage romance, someone finding their destiny and or trying to save the world. Kadrey avoids these trappings by making Dead Set all about dealing with grief– specifically the grief of the teenage character, Zoe, who is still mourning the loss of her father.
by Jesus Ibarra
The Walking Dead premiered its fourth season this past week to some of the biggest ratings seen on television in recent years. Based on the widely popular comic series of the same name, The Walking Dead is a show about surviving in a world after zombies have taken down civilization. The other side of this show is that it’s not only the zombies you have to worry about– or walkers as they are called on the show–because the survivors are often more dangerous than the dead. This and the theme of what surviving in this world does to people and their humanity are the three long running themes of the series.
