Author: Robert Greenberger

People who have stuck with Gotham since its inception will admit it is over-the-top, over-packed, and incredibly messy but they can’t stop watching. Thankfully, an increasing number of people have gotten wise to the nonsense and the ratings dictated that the forthcoming short season five will be its last.

Gotham the Complete Fourth Season, out Tuesday from Warner Home Entertainment, presents all 22 episodes on four Blu-ray discs and you can see for yourself the chaos that masquerades as a prequel to Bruce Wayne becoming Batman (an act we’re promised we’ll prematurely see in 2019 when the series returns).

From the outset, the villains have always been outsized personalities, with grand schemes, unable to spread their criminal behavior to neighboring cities. Something roots them to Gotham even though none never clearly win. They would rather fight with or betray one another, each with some ambitious plan that seems to smack up against someone else’s plan.

Then you have the civilians with the women a collection of off-kilter kooks and the men relatively flat and uninteresting. The titular focal point, Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) spends the season regaining his moral center, setting him and Bruce (David Mazouz) as Gotham’s savior as it descends into No Man’s Land. While producers Bruno Heller and Danny Cannon will tell you, the season was loosely following the Batman Year One and Batman: The Long Halloween storylines, you’d be hard pressed to see how.

I suppose the whole Sofia Falcone (Crystal Reed) power play can be traced to the latter event, but in name only. Her scheme to rule Gotham with Barbara Kean (Erin Richards), Tabitha Jessica Lucas), and Selina (Carmen Bicondova) pits her against the Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) and his Iceberg Lounge, where he doles out permission to commit crimes like a lord. To fight back, he summons Sofia’s dad, Carmine (John Dorman) to handle his scion only to lose his life.

GOTHAM: Camren Bicondova in the “Pax Penguina” season premiere episode of GOTHAM.

Once the pieces are in place after the first half season, we then move things into high gear, tearing the city further apart, creating the finale as Gotham is cut off from America and everyone carves up the streets into fiefdoms. Behind the scenes, the would-be-Joker Jerome (Cameron Monaghan) casts a cackling shadow. His shooting of Selina at the end echoes Killing Joke and takes her off the board for now.

As the chaos descends. Bruce is in a teenage funk, an emo-boy as opposed to a vigilante in training, refusing help from Alfred (Sean Pertwee). Thankfully, he has enough sense also to not kill Ra’s al Ghul (Alexander Siddig), who sees something in the kid none of us do.

Thankfully, the city is large enough so there’s plenty of scenery for every actor to chew. They all get choice moments and good lines now and then, but everything is moving at such a fast clip, you’re riveted to the screen so you don’t miss a twist. And I suppose that’s the mad genius behind this wreck of a series.

The high definition transfer to 16×9 1:78:1 audio with DTS-HD Master Audio are fine for watching the madness on any screen.

The special features are scattered across the four discs starting with deleted scenes for four episodes on the first disc; and one deleted scene on the second disc; and no deleted scenes on the third disc. Disc four, though, has no deleted scenes but you have Solomon Grundy: Born on a Monday, The Sirens Take Gotham, and The Best of DC TV’s Comic-Con Panels San Diego 2017 (58:25).

Although Arrow set the tone and allowed the CW to grow its own integrated television universe, the series itself has been a maddening, uneven affair that always seems to take three steps forward then backslide at least one.

In what could have been a final season, that unevenness was never more frustrating as the show whipsawed characters and situations into increasingly dumb configurations that annoyed rather than entertained.

You can revisit all the nonsense in Arrow: The Complete Sixth Season, out now on Blu-ray and Digital HD from Warner Home Entertainment.

Season Five ended with Oliver (Stephen Amell) and Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) finally comfortable with one another, ready to resume their romance. Everyone is manipulated or kidnapped to find themselves on Lian Yu as Adrian Chase John Segara), who is excessively over-prepared, blows it all to hell.

We open the new season with the aftermath, starting with the death of Samantha (Anna Hopkins), who begs Oliver to care for their son William (Jack Moore), who has just learned of his father’s alter ego. As everyone is licking their wounds, we meet the tech savvy Cayden James (Michael Emerson), who is working to subvert Mayor Queen and ruin Star City. Not helping matters is FBI Agent Samanda Watson (Sydelle Noel), looking into the Mayor and the city’s leading vigilante.

Along the way, we have the crossover “Crisis on Earth-X” which ended with Ollie and Felicity finally tying the knot and shifting her from the geeky, fun, and intense hacker to the nurturing surrogate mother, watering her down as a character.

The producers decided their overstuffed Team Arrow needed pairing and contrived to force them into betraying and distrusting one another so they’re split into the Original Team and the New Team, none of which is convincingly handled. Neither is the internal strife between Ollie and John Diggle (David Ramsey), as they feud over which ones gets to play Green Arrow, further splitting the team.

In perhaps the most interesting twist, halfway through the season, James is killed off by the real mastermind behind everything, thuggish Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevado) who then is revealed to have somehow put every cop and judge in the city inside his suit pockets. Once more, the antagonist appears to have thought of everything while our heroes stumble into one another, blindly led into trap after trap, never growing wiser or better prepared. Aiding him is Anatoli (David Nykl), who really added little this season and was wasted while Black Siren (Katie Cassidy) seemed to play both sides against the middle with no clear agenda.

Diaz forces his way into The Quadrant, described as the secret cabal running America’s underworld but they come across as boobs, as one by one, Diaz shoots them without consequence. He, sadly, repeatedly survives near death and will remain a threat in the seventh season, commencing in October.

We wind up with Quentin (Paul Blackthorne) dead, Thea (Willa Holland) leaving to find herself, and the team reunited, saved from the FBI by Oliver giving himself up and going to prison so he has failed his city and is paying the price.

The sheer incoherence of the plotting spoils some great performances and the overemphasis on the amazing stunt fighting has long since become boring. Should the seventh be the final season, one hopes new showrunner Beth Schwartz will bring some dramatic coherence and discipline to the series.

The Blu-ray discs are AVC encoded 1080p transfers in 1.78:1 with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, making for a fine home entertainment experience.

The special features are scattered across the four discs with the first offering up The Split of a Man: Deathstroke (11:48); the second gives us an in-depth Inside the Crossover: Crisis on Earth X (41:59); the third offers up Revenge in Ones and Zeros: The Story of Cayden James (10:52), which just reminds us how wasted Emerson was; and finally The Best of DC’s Comic Con Panels San Diego 2017 (58:27). No deleted scenes or gag reel this time.

Doomsday. The unstoppable engine of destruction also appears to be the unstoppable antagonist having been a regular in the comics since 1992 and brought to the animated and live-action films. The sheer power on display is catnip and allows DC Comics’ most powerful figure to go mano y mano.

The DC Animated Universe of direct-to-video films has been uneven, usually a result of either poor writing, bad directing, or off-putting character design. That they are now linked, building a shared universe is a small pleasure as the producers mine the comics for stories to adapt and weave into their mythos.

The Death of Superman story has been adapted repeatedly but the latest attempt, now available digitally from Warner Bros Home Entertainment, but this may be the most satisfying version. A large part of the credit has to go to writer Peter J. Tomasi, who brings a tremendous amount of humanity to the characters along with some much-needed humor.

Not only does this adapt the classic 1992 story, but also works within the animated universe as it uses their version of the Justice League, nicely uses the Man of Steel’s supporting cast, actively involves Lex Luthor (Rainn Wilson), and sows the seeds for the follow-up Reign of the Superman adaptation, coming later this year.

As Doomsday hurtles to Earth, Superman (Jerry O’Connell) is wrestling with the decision to reveal his secret to Lois Lane (Rebecca Romijn), soliciting advice from his ex, Wonder Woman (Rosario Dawson), and the Flash (Christopher Gorham), who is about to finally marry. Elsewhere, we get glimpses of Lex working on programs despite his house arrest, making him the first to be aware of the danger to humanity.

When Doomsday emerges from the sea, he is making his way across America and the League is summoned to handle the matter but in typical animated style, we see only one member fight the behemoth at a time as opposed to a coordinated group effort, a mistake directors Sam Liu and James Tucker keep repeating. That said, it certainly was nice to see them in action, their personalities clear from Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) to Martian Manhunter (Nyambi Nyambi).

Given the level of devastation, it feels like it takes Superman too much time to get involved, but once he does, he gives it his all as the two battle across Metropolis, including a brutal fight on a bridge that endangers hundreds of civilians.

Of course, Lois and Jimmy Olsen (Max Mitttelman) are on hand for the finale, with Lois risking her life when it appears Superman was down for the count. In fact, having Superman put it all into the killing blow to save her is a great emotional beat.

And then we get the aftermath, the funeral, the tears, and the sense of loss. During the end credits, we cut away repeatedly to tease the coming of the Superboy clone, John Henry Irons (Cress Williams) forging the Steel suit, a floating Eradicator, and the Cyborg Superman entering the atmosphere.

Frederik Wiedmann delivers a strong score to match a well-written, very entertaining film, the best in the series to date. Tomasi and the team sprinkle several winks to readers and long-time fans, adding to the enjoyment. The only design issue I have is that the heroes have bull necks and Superman’s face is just wrong.

Released in the usual assortment of packages, the 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray looks just fine, and the lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio mix is good.

There are just two special features, the obligatory tease for Reign of the Supermen (9:33) and  The Death of Superman: The Brawl That Topped Them All (16:23), a somewhat bloated look at the battle with martial arts expert Christian Medina, along with the usual talking heads, talk about its construction. Sadly, the only participants from the core material was original story editor Mike Carlin and artist Jon Bogdanove.

The two contributions from the DC Comics Vault are Legion of Super-Heroes, Season 2, “Dark Victory” Part 1 (22:54) and Part 2 (22:50), which were the series’ final offerings.

When we first met Archie Andrews, he was the prototypical American teenager when being a teenager was a new concept. The idea of teens having free time was also new and mandatory attendance at high school was just a few decades old. It was a perfect place to explore what it meant to have leisure time to pursue personal interests be it the opposite sex or cars or sports or whatever.

The Archie comics have endured largely through their universality and their gentle humorous antics. Wisely, the company belatedly acknowledged the changing times and revamped the look and feel of the characters with the brilliant Mark Waid/Fiona Staples run which brought national attention and increased sales to the company. (Their digests continued to display the “classic” material.)

The universality and humor was retained but introduced more contemporary themes and issues. This got television interested and the ubiquitous Greg Berlanti convinced the CW that Riverdale was the next great thing. He partnered with Archie’s creator guru Robert Aguirre-Sacasa and they desired that Archie didn’t have to be relatable or funny or anything resembling the comics. Instead, it was propelling the characters and town into uncharted territory: darker in tone, with dollops of premarital sex, illicit affairs, conspiracy and murder.

Purists detested it but you can’t argue with success. The ratings were stellar and the short first season earned a renewal and fans were delighted with a full 22 episode second season. Out Tuesday is Riverdale the Complete Second Season from Warner Home Entertainment. You may judge for yourself if this is how you want to enjoy the characters.

The melodrama has become a guilty pleasure with a rabid audience, skewing mostly to females from 10-35, which may explain why I find this a bad adaptation of the source material and overwrought drama.

While the comics were purely white bread in makeup, the series gets plaudits for being far more multicultural in their casting, more reflective of America today. They also amped up the adult parts so the teens can be contrasted with their parents in addition to a more thorough exploration of the class warfare that was always present in the comics.

That said, the casting is atrocious in that none of the “teens” look like they belong in high school, spoiling the whole feel. Had they changed it from Riverdale High to Riverdale Community College, it might work but then Veronica would have already been sent off to a private college. Archie was always intended to be the everyteen, earnest and klutzy, sincere and unable to control his raging hormones. With newcomer KJ Apa learning to act while playing the part, he’s all hunk and no subtlety. And forget humor, apparently, that was the first thing to go when bringing this from print to screen.

We open the season with the repercussions of Fred Andrews (Luke Perry) being shot and end with Betty’s (Lili Reinhart) dad Hal Cooper (Lochlyn Munro) locked up behind a pane of glass and Archie arrested for murder. In between we see Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse) and Betty become a thing while he adjusts to running his father’s biker gang. Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) is dragooned into learning the family business, which backfires when she takes Hiram Lodge’s (Mark Consuelos). lessons and saves Pop Tate’s diner. Haunting them all was a killer (or killers) dubbed the Black Hood (a nod to Archie’s comic book origins) in addition to the shady world the adults seem to prefer living in with questionable moral choices, making them lousy role models for their offspring. Hiram has gone from the big business tycoon in the less offensive Trump mode to being Don Lodge, head of a shadowy crime family that tries to seduce Archie with offers of easy cash in exchange for easing of morality. Yuck.

Aguirre-Sacasa has made much of the tonal shift from the mystery of who killed Jason Blossom in the 13-episode first season to the serial killer threat in season two. Death is still death and really, the issues confronting teens today, including incredible peer pressure and fully packed schedules, is totally absent from the show making it a funhouse mirror reflection of being a teen today.

The darkness grabbed hold of the cast, especially Betty who veered between innocent crusader and sexual being, complete with black wig. She had to confront this dichotomy and her struggle was perhaps the best character arc of the season and it was nice to see her smile at the end.

What’s to come in season three, arriving October 10? We’re told “Tales from the Darkside”, S2E7, offers some clues.

The Season is sold widely as a DVD box set although a Blu-ray edition can be ordered from Warner Archive. The DVD transfer is fine and looks just as it on broadcast TV, with an equally good audio track (important since the music is sometimes more enjoyable than the plotting).

There are just a handful of special feature, starting with the behind-the-scenes Caught between Two Worlds: The Darkness Inside and Making the Musical: Riverdale. The requisite Riverdale: 2017 Comic-Con Panel is on hand along with a Riverdale Pop Quiz!  There are Deleted Scenes for just about every episode (some interesting, some easily left out), and of course, the Gag Reel.

Ready Player One burst out of nowhere and has become a beloved novel, already taught in schools around the country, making Ernest Cline a hero in the very pop culture the novel celebrates. He took his personal Golden Age and wrote an adventure celebrating the icons of the late 1970s and 1980s, the era when computers and video games changed the world, ushering in the Age of the Geek.

Of course it was going to be turned into a movie but the question is could any film essentially capture the brio of the novel, and could anyone secure all the rights necessary to populate the film with the very icons required to make the virtual world of the Oasis plausible? When Warner Bros. won the bidding war, they wisely turned it over to the one man whose name alone would help secure those rights as well as make a faithful film: Steven Spielberg.

The eagerly awaited film adaptation arrived this spring, earned some favorable reviews and enough box office receipts to make it a modest success, nowhere near the phenomenon the source material was. If you missed it or want to study it frame by frame, the disc release is coming tomorrow from Warner Home Entertainment.

The world has gone to hell by 2044 so people have retreated from reality by entering the Oasis, a virtual reality where you could be anything and do anything as long as you paid your utility bill. James Halliday (Mark Rylance), the co-creator and public face of the Oasis, died and left behind the ultimate video game: find three keys hidden in the Oasis and the winner inherits running the company that owns the game. Nolan Sorrento (NAME) wants to win so his Innovative Online Industries could rule the world and throws countless resources at the problem.

What he doesn’t count on is Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), a lonely teen who thrives in the Oasis as Parzival but really just wants out of the “Stacks”, the vertical Ohio ghetto where he lives with his aunt. He’s the next generation Halliday, having studied everything about the great man, making the elder’s favorites, his favorites. As he races to unlock the mysteries with his best bud Aech (Lena Waithe), he winds up teaming with Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), Zhou (Phillip Zhao), and Daito (Win Morisaki) to form the High Five, watching one another’s backs as they compete to win, literally, the keys to the kingdom.

Spielberg, along with screenwriters Cline and Zak Penn, take tremendous liberties with the narrative, collapsing story arcs, narrowing the scope of the Oasis, and showing much more of the real world than the novel attempted. Some of this is fine as it lets us see how squalid life has become and how tempting the Oasis can be but it’s all surface. Similarly, the High Five are largely reduced to hangers-on with little attention paid to developing them into characters. The exception is Art3mis, who in some ways feels more complex and interesting than Parzival which may be why Spielberg cast Cooke first.

All too often, the cultural touchstones are there in a blink-and-you-miss-them blur with exceptions being King Kong, Mechagodzilla, and the Iron Giant (substituting for Japan’s Ultra-Man which I was really looking forward to seeing). Warners wanted to avoid the Blade Runner riffs since they had their sequel in production at the same time so Penn and Cline used Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining as a substitute and it works quite well here.

What works less well are the conventional movie storytelling aspects, notably in the final quarter of the film where the constant ticking clock is repetitive and annoying.

Overall, the movie is good but nowhere near as engaging as I had hoped but Spielberg does manage to add some nice tenderness to Halliday and his one-time partner Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg).

The film is offered in a variety of combinations including the ever-popular Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD code package. The High Definition transfer is crisp and clear, which a film like this demands. Warner comes through, matching it with a wonderful Dolby Atmos soundtrack.

The packaging insists there are fun Easter Eggs scattered throughout the disc but I didn’t go hunting. I do note there is no commentary or deleted scenes, both would have been welcome. We do get the following Special Features:

Game Changer: Cracking the Code, a lengthy look at casting, costuming, set construction, and more (what’s missing is an honest conversation about which properties they didn’t get and other changes that had to be made); Effects for a Brave New World, the special effects gets its due here; Level Up: Sound for the Future, a nice look at the sound effects creation for the many layers, High Score: Endgame, spotlights Alan Silvestri, subbing for John Williams in his first ever-collaboration with Spielberg; Ernie & Tye’s Excellent Adventure, writer and star bond in Austin prior to the film’s debut in March; and, The ’80’s: You’re The Inspiration, the crew talk about how the era was deserving of a fresh look.

Did we really need another DC Comics super-hero on television? That was pretty much the thought rattling in most minds when Fox first announced development of a series based on Black Lightning. When they passed on it, the CW snatched it up (of course), and ran the short first season starting in January.

The answer is a resounding yes. The show is most certainly heroic, but whereas the other Greg Berlanti-centric series fully embrace their four-color roots, this series pivoted for delving into its ethnicity. The production team of Mara Brock Akil and Salim Akil wanted something more urban, something more “street”, exploring the black experience with heavy doses of super=powers to keep you riveted.  In the special feature Art Imitating Life: The Pilot Episode, Salim Akil described an all-too-familiar incident of being pulled over by a police officer and the choices a black man has at that moment. He wanted to translate that to something dramatic and make viewers understand in tangible ways.

The 13-episode series is now out in a two-disc Blu-ray set from Warner Home Entertainment well before the second season debuts in the fall. In case you missed it, this is a good chance to get familiar with the story. While there are heroes and villains, they are more relatable in some ways and they serve the black community well by showing a wide array of types.

We have the title star, Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams), a high school principal, his estranged wife, Dr. Lynn Stewart (Christine Adams), the albino criminal Tobias Whale (Marvin “Krondon” Jones III), and Police Inspector Henderson (Damon Gupton), all petty much as depicted in the comic book cocreated by Tony Isabell and Trevor VonEeden. However, another way this show differentiates from the Arrowverse is that Pierce has two daughters, teenage Jennifer (China Anne McClain) and her older sibling, Anissa (Nafessa Williams), a lesbian and counselor at the school.

Nafessa Williams as Thunder and Cress Williams as Black Lightning — Photo: Annette Brown/The CW — © 2018 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved.

The notion of Pierce being older, with children, went beyond Isabella’s original plan but enriches the character and setting. Pierce retired nine years before the show started, in order to give his girls a normal life. He threw himself into his work at Freeland High School, making the school a safe place for its predominantly black population.  That all changes when Jennifer gets caught up with a boy tied to The 100, the mob controlling the underworld, and is held against her will. Pierce suits up and gets back to work as Black Lightning, recognizing his city needs a hero.

Supporting him, in the most Berlanti-esque way is Paul Gambi (James Remar), no longer the humble tailor, but a covert operative who was involved in the government program that gave Pierce his powers and was now searching for ways to create more metahumans. Between this and the 100 spreading a drug called green light that addictively gives people temporary powers, Black Lightning has his hands full. With Gambi operating from a secret base, guiding Pierce and being a computer whiz (of course), the two pick up where they left off.

They need help and it first comes from Anissa, who has discovered her super-strength and invulnerability, suiting herself up to strike her own form of justice. When she and Black Lightning faceoff, secrets are revealed and an alliance is formed. Jennifer wants nothing to do the family business, preferring to work towards college and having a good time. However, an adrenaline surge reveals her own powers and like it or not, is caught up in the fight.

The series’ thirteen episodes touch on life in Freeland, which is where it excels. We see all strata of people and the difference good people can make. There’s the flipside, the dropouts and wanna-be thugs who contrast nicely with those just trying to get by. Most of the good guys and bad guys are of color and race is not avoided. The show is less interesting when it comes to the government conspiracy stuff in the background and with luck, it’ll be less relevant in the second season. Pierce is a little too perfect, a little too much the role model as a principal but he certainly commands the students’ respect (if only…)

The writing is certainly a cut above the Arrowverse shows with the Salim Akil setting the tone with the first two episodes then letting Jan Nash, Charles Holland, and playwright Kelli Goff among others run with it. Akil also directed the first and final episodes, again, bringing his vision to life.

While OWN’s series like the admirable Queen Sugar do a wonderful job treating the black experience with the respect it deserves, its noteworthy that many of the same issues and themes are on display here, a series more likely to be seen by a wider range of viewers, letting its message waft over us, seeping in between bouts of electrically-charged action.

The high def transfer and DTS HD audio track are just fine. The other special features include the too-short A Family of Strength, the obligatory Black Lightning: 2017 Comic-Con Panel, and Gag Reel. It would’ve been nice to have the source material explored giving Tony, Trevor, and DC their due but maybe next time. The bulk of the Special Feature time is well over half an hour of Deleted Scenes, clustered together rather than interspersed episode by episode. They’re worth a look since there are some nice character moments among the family.

Let me stipulate upfront that I have never played a Lara Croft game or saw the first film adaptation of the Tomb Raider franchise. I have a passing familiarity with her thanks to the virtue of Lara being the first major adventure video game female star (where are the others?). As a result, I approached the Blu-ray release of the March Tomb Raider film, out tomorrow from Warner Home Entertainment, with an open mind.

While Angelina Jolie seemed picture perfect in her turn, the slightly smaller, more athletic Alicia Vikander has made the part her own. It helps that the film is effectively her origin story and for 118 fun minutes, we watch her go from clueless Millennial to adventurer after being told she has to claim dad’s inheritance or lose it all…now. She is 21, aimless, and seeking a purpose when life hands it to her and she decides to grab it. Then hang on to it, when she heads for the isle of Yamatai. Dad (Dominic West) leaves a message warning her off, but by then she’s invested and goes for it. I gather this script from Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons is based on the 2013 reboot of the video game franchise.

Lara Croft feels right and solid as a character, thanks in a large part to Vikander’s strong acting in any role. Unfortunately, Lord Richard Croft, rival Mathais Vogel (Walton Goggins), and other supporting roles are less well-defined, a disservice to actors involved, notably Kristin Scott Thomas and Derek Jacobi.

The movie zips along just fine and the stunts and escapades feel good, more than just an 8-bit video game come to life, but there’s also an unevenness throughout spoiling the fun.

The film comes in a variety of packages and the Blu-ray, DVD; Digital HD combo pack was reviewed. Word is the 4K UltraHD looks spectacular and since it was shot digitally, it looks pretty darn sharp in 1080p. The lossless Dolby Atmos/TrueHD 7.1 and DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio tracks are equally attractive.

The film underperformed at the box office, which is a real shame, but it may explain why we get a mere four bonus features. First up, is Tomb Raider: Uncovered (7:04) as cast and crew talk production; Croft Training (6:03), Vikander prepares and gets buff; Breaking Down the Rapids (5:33), Director Roar Uthaug leads us through the set piece; and, Lara Croft: Evolution of an Icon (9:51), a nice history of the video game that became a phenomenon with fans/experts Megan Marie and Erika Ishii giving us gushing context.