Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980): Ice, Walkers and a Very Dark Ending
My The Empire Strikes Back review: the Hoth battle, Luke and the wampa, Yoda, Cloud City and Vader’s reveal. One of the darkest endings ever. 10 out of 5.
My The Empire Strikes Back review: the Hoth battle, Luke and the wampa, Yoda, Cloud City and Vader’s reveal. One of the darkest endings ever. 10 out of 5.
My X-Men: Days of Future Past review: two casts, a wrecked young Charles, the Quicksilver scene and an ending I’m still in two minds about.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 crams in three villains and one devastating ending. Garfield and Stone are great. The film around them is doing too much.
My Words of Radiance review: Shallan, Adolin and Wit step up, Kaladin’s weaknesses show, and it lands at a 4 out of 5 with one worry.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier turns Marvel into a seventies conspiracy thriller, and I think it’s one of the better MCU films so far.
The Time of the Doctor strands Matt Smith’s Doctor on Trenzalore for nine hundred years, and a messy first half gives way to a great goodbye.
The Day of the Doctor takes the Time War apart with a tired John Hurt, a weapon wearing Rose’s face and three men stuck on one big red button.
Old Man’s War is Scalzi’s page-turner about a 75-year-old who joins the army to be made young again. I really liked it and gave it 8/10.
The Name of the Doctor answers the Impossible Girl question properly, goes to Trenzalore and ends on a John Hurt shot I can’t stop thinking about.
Nightmare in Silver gives me the best Cybermen in years and Matt Smith playing chess against himself, then buries both in a theme park.
The Crimson Horror drops the Paternoster Gang into a Victorian model village run by Diana Rigg at full tilt. I give it 4/5.
Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS takes us inside the ship at last, then throws it all away with a reset button. A 2.5/5 from me.
Hide sends the Doctor and Clara into a haunted house in 1974, and the ghost story turns into something kinder than I expected. I give it 4/5.
Cold War thaws an Ice Warrior aboard a Soviet submarine in 1983 and leaves the Doctor with no TARDIS. Tense, tight and old-fashioned.
The Rings of Akhaten sends Clara to an alien market and a girl singing a god to sleep, then ends on a leaf. Thin plot, big heart.
The Bells of Saint John harvests people through the Wi-Fi as the Doctor meets Clara a third time. Fast and fun, but far too easily solved.
Arrow Season 1 brings the Huntress, a rival archer and a rattled Oliver in my recap of Legacies, Muse of Fire, Vendetta, Year’s End and Burned.
The Snowmen drops a sulking, retired Doctor into Victorian London and hands him a barmaid he can’t quite stop thinking about.
The Angels Take Manhattan sends Amy and Rory off with a chosen ending, a book from the future and the nastiest Weeping Angels idea yet.
The Power of Three drops a billion black cubes on Earth that do nothing for a year, wonderful about ordinary life and hopeless about its monster.
A Town Called Mercy hides a war criminal in a frontier town with a cyborg waiting outside the line, and the Doctor nearly throws a man to his death.