2.5 Razors

Still Slightly Out of Tune

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Pitch Perfect 2
  • IMDb: link

Pitch Perfect 2Based on the book by Mickey Rapkin 2012’s Pitch Perfect was an occasionally fun, if wildly inconsistent, story glorifying a bizarre college subculture where a capella groups were the biggest celebrities on a college campus. Picking up three years later, loner Freshman Becca (Anna Kendrick) has grown into the Senior leader of the three-time defending a capella champions who face new adversity when a complicated stunt goes wrong at a public event.

Barred from competing, touring, or defending their national championship by the announcers (John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks) who cover the sport (and also run it now?), the Barden Bellas’ only chance for redemption is to become the first American group to win at the World A capella Tournament.

If you thought it was bizarre seeing colleges go wild over a capella singing in the first film you haven’t seen anything yet as, in typical sequel fashion, Pitch Perfect 2 goes bigger this time around. The results are much the same as the first film with awkward romantic subplots and an odd storyline designed to make Becca the outsider of the group once more as she is the only member of the Bellas planning for life after college.

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Backstrom – Corkscrewed

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Backstrom – Corkscrewed
  • wiki: link

Backstrom - Corkscrewed

It seems family is going to be a big theme of the final two episodes of Backstrom‘s First Season. When the criminal who Backstrom (Rainn Wilson) threatened to stay away from Valentine (Thomas Dekker) shows up dead on the docks just outside their houseboat the unit quickly searches for other suspects besides the most obvious one. Discovering the victim and Valentine were working together on a wine-smuggling scam, Backstrom’s attention is pointed towards those hurt (especially once he learns that all the vintage wines being smuggled are forgeries).

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Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – The Frenemy of My Enemy

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – The Frenemy of My Enemy
  • wiki: link

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - The Frenemy of My Enemy

“The Frenemy of My Enemy” is an odd episode all around. While everyone involved in the Inhuman storyline tries to unintentionally sabotage Skye‘s (Chloe Bennet) new life among “her people” Other S.H.I.E.L.D. attempts to track down Coulson (Clark Gregg) through Deathlok (J. August Richards) in a Three’s Company plot device designed to kick-in at the exact wrong moment, view a sequence of perplexing events completely out of context, and lead to a misunderstanding.

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Sharky’s Machine

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Sharky’s Machine
  • IMDb: link

Sharky's MachineA product of its times Sharky’s Machine feels every bit the early 80s cop drama it is. Adapted from William Diehl‘s novel of the same name Burt Reynolds stars as Police Sergeant Tom Sharky. In the movie’s opening scene the reckless hero cop is demoted from Homicide to Vice after a drug bust goes bad. Stuck in the lowest rungs of the department, Sharky begins investigating a string of high-priced call girls one of whom (Rachel Ward) he falls for while surveilling for weeks.

Slow-moving with much of the plot centered around surveillance of a prostitute’s apartment where not much actually happens, Sharky’s Machine is an R-rated film that could probably be shown today on prime-time network television today except for language and a dark final act involving the torture of our hero. It’s also filled with bizarre WTF? moments (such as when a police informant is killed by ninjas). And it features some old school Bond-style romancing of damsels in distress by slapping them around a bit when necessary.

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Olympus – Ring of the Magi

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Olympus – Ring of the Magi
  • IMDb: link

Olympus - Ring of the Magi

The Mercenary (Tom York), the Oracle (Sonya Cassidy), and Daedalus (Matt Frewer) continue their search for the ring of the Magi which is stalled both by Daedalus’ betrayal and by the travelers being captured by Queen Medea’s (Sonita Henry) minions. The episode also introduces the true purpose of the ring, the secrets locked within the Mercenary’s genetic code, and a new group of characters known as the Magi might not to be walk with the gods in Olympus but destroy them forever.

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