1.5 Razors

The Carpenter’s Son

  • Title: The Carpenter’s Son
  • IMDb: link

For every highlight of Nicolas Cage‘s career there are three or four baffling choices which we can now add The Carpenter’s Son to the list. Inspired by the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the film offers a look at the adolescence of Jesus Christ (Noah Jupe) coming into his powers and knowledge of his destiny. Cage, as you might expect, plays the carpenter Joseph who struggles to keep the boy safe and hidden while also attempting to forcibly instill his own sense of piety.

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Killer Heat

  • Title: Killer Heat
  • IMDb: link

Killer Heat is a flaccid attempt at neo-noir starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a private detective hired by a widow (Shailene Woodley) to look into the death of her husband (Richard Madden). The film is also burdened with a subplot of the family life our private investigator fled from which haunts him (when convient to the script). Adapted from a Norwegian short story, I don’t know if something got lost in translation or if there just wasn’t much here to begin with.

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The Pickup

  • Title: The Pickup
  • IMDb: link

I love of a good heist movie. The Pickup is not a good heist movie. It’s generous to call The Pickup a film at all. The braindead comedy features Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson as armored car guards who get targeted in convoluted scheme by a beautiful young woman (Keke Palmer) with a sob story and a pair of goons (Jack Kesy and Ismael Cruz Cordova). There’s almost nothing believable about the script by Kevin Burrows and Matt Mider and less likable about the movie. 

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The In Crowd

  • Title: The In Crowd (2000)
  • IMDb: link

Throwback Tuesday takes us back to the year 2000. The 90s and early 2000s saw a glut of erotic thrillers including Wild Things, Poison Ivy, and Embrace of the Vampire. Susan Ward starred in a handful of these: Poison Ivy: The New Seduction, Wild Things 2, and The In Crowd (which did get a theatrical release after a bit of trimming got its R-rating slashed down to PG-13). Although none of these would be classified as good movies, it’s the last of these for which I remember the actress far more than her later roles Sunset Beach or Make It or Break It. And she’s really the only reason to check back in with the film 25 years later.

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