The Rocketeer & The Spirit: Pulp Friction #4

/ / Comics
  • Title: The Rocketeer & The Spirit: Pulp Friction #4
  • Comic Vine: link
  • Writer: Mark Waid
  • Artist: J. Bone

The Rocketeer & The Spirit: Pulp Friction #4The four-issue mini-series comes to a close with The Spirit able to talk a mind-controlled Betty out of going all stabby-stabby on the undead hero and the two heroes once again putting their differences aside and The Spirit and The Rocketeer work together to uncover the plot of the Octopus and Trask who attempt to use their new teleporting television signal to deliver the President to the Nazis.

The Rocketeer & The Spirit: Pulp Friction #4 works well to wrap-up the various storylines (although it gives Betty a far bigger part of the final chapter than the largely absent Ellen). The use of FDR was well done, as was Cliff learning to use leverage to keep the rocket out of the hands of the U.S. Government.

The storyline ends with a hint of another possible team-up between the pair which I would certainly be up for (although next time maybe we could stick with a single artist to give the story a more consistent look?). I’d also love for DC to actually give The Spirit new life of his own in an ongoing title, but I won’t hold my breath for either to happen anytime soon. Worth a look.

[IDW, $3.99]

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Inside Llewyn Davis

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Inside Llewyn Davis
  • IMDB: link

Inside Llewyn DavisOver the years the Coen Brothers have used setting, music, and tone to tell a variety of tales. Lacking the broad comedic strokes of Burn After Reading or the darker undertones of No Country for Old Men and their True Grit remake, the brothers’ latest is a more straightforward and personal character study of life of a struggling artist. Thinking over their filmography you can say the Coens have produced funnier, stranger, more disturbing, and perhaps even more memorable films, but this immersive drama ranks as one of their best.

Set primarily in the Greenwich Village folk music scene of 1961, Inside Llewyn Davis follows the life of Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a known and liked (or at least tolerated) folk singer in his small circle and a real son of a bitch to nearly ever single person he knows. Over the film’s 105-minute running-time we witness Davis nomadically travel with his guitar, a carton of unsold records, and a friend’s cat as his only prized possessions.

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Saving Mr. Banks

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Saving Mr. Banks
  • IMDB: link

Saving Mr. BanksWritten by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, and based off pieces of the life of P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), Saving Mr. Banks is half of a really good film. The story is broken into flashbacks of Travers’ childhood and decades later when Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) was attempting to buy the rights from the author’s children’s books to make Mary Poppins.

Although there is much to enjoy in the later Disney years (despite the oversimplification of Travers’ stubbornness) the film gets bogged down in the weight of the constant flashbacks which may offer a peek at the real story that first created Mary Poppins on the page but ignores much of the life story of the woman who wrote her.

The scenes involving the young Travers’ () drunken but imaginative father (Colin Farrell), troubled mother (Ruth Wilson), and larger-than-life aunt (Rachel Griffiths) fall in the realm of Dinsey-ized melancholy, but the scenes in California between the equally stubborn Disney and Travers provide its magic.

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American Hustle

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: American Hustle
  • IMDB: link

American HustleFor this 70’s tale of con men (Christian Bale and Amy Adams) in over their heads writer/director David O. Russell reunites with Silver Linings Playbook stars Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Part character study, part insane and over-the-top adventure, American Hustle offers audiences one of the year’s best films.

After a brief introduction to Irving Rosenfeld (Bale) and his mistress and co-conspirator Sydney (Adams), the pair are busted by up-and-coming FBI hot-head Richie DiMaso (Cooper) who decides to use the pair to pull in even bigger fish. Regardless of danger or consequences, and against the orders of his boss (Louis C.K.), DiMaso pushes Irving and Sydney into going after both the mob and local politicians, beginning with Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) who is interested in rebuilding Atlantic City.

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