American Made

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: American Made
  • IMDb: link

American Made movie posterWe’ve seen this all before. And even if we’ve seen it done better at times (see Charlie Wilson’s War, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, American Hustle, and others), American Made certainly entertains. Director Doug Liman and screenwriter Gary Spinelli come together with star Tom Cruise to offer us another one of those stories too crazy not to be true.

Cruise is in fine form. I’ve remarked before that I have always enjoyed the movie star more when he’s able to unleash a bit of the crazy. And American Made certainly has enough crazy to go around. The film is based somewhat loosely on the real experiences of former TWA pilot Barry Seal (Cruise) who went to work for the CIA in the late 70s and 80s running clandestine reconnaissance missions in South America while also working on his own making money smuggling drugs into the United States from Columbia. After introducing us to his Seal, his wife (Sarah Wright) and the CIA agent (Domhnall Gleeson) who enlists him and funds the dubious enterprise, the insanity begins in earnest. What makes things work is Seal is just smart enough to know when to take advantage of the situation and just dumb enough to not know when he’s over his head.

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The Big Bang Theory – The Proposal Proposal

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: The Big Bang Theory – The Hot Tub Contamination
  • wiki: link

The Big Bang Theory - The Proposal Proposal TV review

Picking up immeadiately following the Tenth Season finale, The Big Bang Theory returns with Amy (Mayim Bialik) giving the expected answer to Sheldon (Jim Parsons) proposal. While there are certainly no suprises there, Howard (Simon Helberg) and Bernadette (Melissa Rauch) deal with some unexpected news and Raj‘s (Kunal Nayyar) loneliness continues.

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The Wild Storm #7

/ / Comics

The Wild Storm #7 comic reviewThe Wild Storm #5 offers a bit of breather for readers. And murder. Lots of murder. The introduction of Jackie King, Chief Analyst at I.O. allows the comic to go over the events of recent issues and the growing number of threats I.O. has to solve, primarily that of Angela Spica. While not dwelling too much on what we already know, this works as a nice refresher for those who have read the previous six issues and a primer for those just coming on-board for the first time.

The issue gets nearly all its action from another new character. One of the team who Angela has found herself with gets in trouble while on an undercover mission discovering a dangerous weapon at an I.O. black site. There’s plenty of hallway mayhem and murder before John Colt can find a location safe enough for extraction.

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Scorpion – Extinction

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Scorpion – Extinction
  • wiki: link

Scorpion - Extinction television review

Scorpion returns for a Fourth Season with the first-half of a two-part episode that sends the Scorpion to Norway to plug a methane gas leak which their old frenemy Mark Collins (Joshua Leonard) believes could be the first domino to start an extinction event for all life on Earth. Leave it to Scorpion to bring out the most outrageous stakes ever for the start of a new season. Needing Collins help, the team heads overseas where the the “changed” man slowly begins to sew seeds of discord among the group including between Walter (Elyes Gabel) and Paige (Katharine McPhee). While the episode plays the character down-the-line without concluding one way or the other on how much he has changed, I’m fully expecting a full-on villain turn for Collins in next week’s conclusion (which would be a mistake as the character could be far more interesting in his current role as a potential recurring guest).

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Rick and Morty – The ABCs of Beth

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Rick and Morty – The ABCs of Beth
  • wiki: link

Rick and Morty - The ABCs of Beth television review

Just who is Beth (Sarah Chalke)? For nearly three full seasons Rick and Morty has shown us who people want her to be, but who is she really? The discovery that her childhood imaginary world was actually a pocket dimension created by Rick (Justin Roiland) to keep her away from harming other kids (with ray guns and a whip to make others like her, yeesh), and that a childhood friend believed to have been killed by his father has been trapped there for decades is the start of a father/daughter adventure in which Beth realizes just how much like her father she truly is. Who is Beth? Turns out she’s very much her father’s daughter.

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