Double Review : TV and DVD

Our Christmas pressies to Us this year were season 15 of NCIS

and a couple of DVDs: White Christmas, X-Men Dark Phoenix and Angel has Fallen.

White Christmas is a classic, and I’ve already done a review of the X-Men movie

We watched NCIS over about six days, one disc a day, though recapped a little by watching disc 6 of Season 14 (I did a mini review of that too)
Quinn was mentioned once, a passing remark on disc one about her being on leave to look after her mother, and that was the end of her character. The new female agent Jaqueline ‘Jack’ Sloane played by Maria Bello arrives in episode 5.
The stories are pretty good, though I found myself wanting to grab a hairbrush for Jack as her hair always seemed to look a mess, and Torres being obsessed with the size of his biceps and tightness of tee shirts didn’t really do anything for me.
Robert Wagner turns up as DiNozzo Senior, though why I can’t work out as his character was totally irrelevant to the episode plot. He was there to hand in his magnifying glass as he was resigning from The Sherlocks, the amateur sleuths he joined having got the hots for Judith, who has now dumped him (why am I not surprised, the character’s a womaniser!).
MI6 agent Clay Reeves was still in attendance, there being some sub story lines filling us in on his background. We never really could warm to his character though or see where it was going until episode 22 and another change of cast.
McGee becomes a Dad, and a couple of felons put behind bars seasons ago make guest appearances. It made me feel old as we have them all.
As expected, the final story ended on a cliff hanger with Vance being kidnapped by the torturer from Jack’s past (she throws a mean right hook by the way but a lousy dart), so when Season 16 is released over here next year, we will add it to our collection.
NCIS is changing, and I just hope it doesn’t go the same way as CSI which we stopped watching after season 9. Mark Harmon has apparently signed on for another two years so I can still get my Gibbs fix, but if he goes, that’ll be the end for me.

Film Review:

In my opinion Angel has Fallen is a worthy final installment to the trilogy, and we have the other two already. Alan Trumball (Morgan Freeman) is now President, and there is an assassination attempt taking out the entire security detail except Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) who is framed for it.  Naturally with the President in a coma, Mike’s in serious trouble and the Vice President is sworn in.
Note: this cover is not the same as the one we have

We learn who is running the show relatively quickly, but that doesn’t detract from the story or finding out who the Voice on the Phone is. As with the previous two there are plenty of explosions and a high body count as Banning tries to track down the bad guys and clear his name. We have a different actress playing Leah Banning this time round.
Loads of action and we thoroughly enjoyed it, despite what some of the critics have said, so on our scale, we give it an extremely worthy so there!
There is a great one liner at the very end which had us both in fits of laughter.