2.5 Razors

Materialists

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Materialists
  • IMDb: link

I had some trepidation walking into writer/director Celine Song‘s Materialists. On one hand, Song provided my favorite film of 2023. On the other hand, the set up of a beautiful matchmaker, starring my least-favorite mainstream actress, who just can’t seem to find her own Mr. Right, sounded like the kind of bargain-basement romcom that would normally make me want to run quickly in the opposite direction. Thankfully, that’s not what Materialists turns out to be. However, what we do get is only somewhat more successful.

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The Unholy Trinity

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Unholy Trinity
  • IMDb: link

Set in the late 19th Century, the town of Trinity is presented to us through the unassuming eyes of Henry Broadway (Brandon Lessard) who has just watched his estranged father (Tim Daly) hung for a crime he didn’t commit. Trinity is your typical Old West town with raucous inhabitants, a sheriff struggling to keep order, and justice often coming from the end of a rope or a gun. Mistaking the current sheriff for the one who framed his father, Henry has a run-in with Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan), although the misunderstanding is quicky resolved. 

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Miss Congeniality

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Miss Congeniality
  • IMDb: link

Wayback Wednesday takes us back to the year 2000 and Sandra Bullock starring role as FBI Agent Gracie Hart who goes undercover at the Miss United States Beauty Pageant to prevent a terrorist attack. The joke of the film is that the gruff feminist is far from a dream contest. Enter coach Victor Melling (Michael Caine), and his team, who helps Gracie fake it until she makes it (including the obligatory makeover montage) while the experience, and the friendship she makes along the way while searching for a terrorist, change Gracie’s opinions on pageants and those who enter them.

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Final Destination 3

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Final Destination 3
  • IMDb: link

Final Destination 3 is proof that a strong lead and a fun concept will only take you so far. Featuring a similar set up to the first two films of the franchise, a group is saved dying in a roller-coaster accident by the premonition of Wendy Christensen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). The survivors then begin to die to odd occurrences throughout the film which are increasingly elaborate, gorier and more mean-spirited, less amusing, and far less fun with every entry into the franchise. You don’t have to look past the airheads (Chelan Simmons and Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe) dying in the tanning salon during an overly-drawn out sequence to see this film isn’t going to end any better for the audience than it does for Death’s victims.

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Basic Instinct

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Basic Instinct
  • IMDb: link

It’s hard to describe how big director Paul Verhoeven‘s stylish neo-noir was when it hit theaters in 1992. Splitting audience and critics, the controversial erotic thriller cashed in big at the box office (providing a boom for the genre that was never quite duplicated, despite many imitators) while stirring up controversy for from both the left, for its depiction of a bisexual woman as a nymphomaniac serial killer, and right with the kind of explicit sexuality usually reserved for softcore porn shown late at night on Cinemax. The film made Sharon Stone a star moving her on to bigger and better projects including being the rare woman to headline a western in The Quick and the Dead and a supporting role in Casino both just three years later.

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