2.5 Razors

All the Old Knives

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: All the Old Knives
  • IMDb: link

Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton star as spies and former lovers reunited eight years after a terrorist attack in Vienna. Still with the agency, Henry Pelham (Pine) is tasked with discovering whether or not an inside man helped the terrorists nearly a decade before with the obvious suspects being his former lover and her boss (Jonathan Pryce).  

The film from writer/director Olen Steinhauer attempts to be a slow-burning thriller revealing secrets and twists while poking at old wounds as Pine and Newton hash out past events over dinner. Never as thrilling as it should be, and with an odd choice to jump into extremely jarring close-ups at random intervals, All the Old Knives is really only worth noting for the performances of its two stars, as the plot, despite its attempt at shocking twists, is mainly just an excuse for the two to eat dinner while telling lies and variations of the truth.

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X-Men: Red #1

/ / Comics

Making a pun out of the X-Men’s home on Mars, Marvel Comics relaunches X-Men: Red as an assortment of mutants are gathered together to keep the peace on Mars, now known to the mutants living on the terraformed world as Planet Arrako. It’s an X-Men comic with Magneto (now back to his traditional costume), so it got my attention, but for someone with only a passing interest in a minimal of recent X-Men stories there’s quite a bit of confusing plot that assumes the reader knows exactly what’s going on.

We are introduced to various entities on the planet who each seem to have their own agenda. Storm, who beat some kind of doppelganger, is now the Queen of Mars (but only sort of wants to be), Magneto is looking to be left alone. Abigail Brand is looking for a mutant police force, Sunspot is running some kind of disco casino, and Vulcan and Thunderbird are looking to cause trouble.

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The Flash – Reckless

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: The Flash – Reckless
  • wiki: link

While Iris (Candice Patton) remains in Coast City to deal with her “time sickness” (seriously?) and attempt to help Tinya (Mika Abdalla), Team Flash continue to search for the Black Flame (which may or may not have ties to a member of the team’s past). Over objections, the team decides to use Frost (Danielle Panabaker) as bait to lure out the meta with the help of Dr. Carla Tannhauser (Susan Walters) who has been keeping a secret about her own latent metagene. Other than exploring the theme that Frost tends to be the most reckless member of her family, the episode is your typical mid-season forgettable fare where Team Flash’s plans end up with mixed results.

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Fantastic Beasts: The Politics of Dumbledore

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
  • IMDb: link

I’m not the biggest fan of the Fantastic Beasts series. The Harry Potter spin-off has offered the opportunity to explore other corners of the wizarding world outside of Hogwarts, but the results have been mixed. While I still enjoyed both Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and The Crimes of Grindelwald, I’d rate them as the least engaging of the Wizarding World films.

So what does Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore offer us? Secrets into the life of Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law)? New spells and magical artifacts? Strange new creatures? Instead we get… politics. I think given all the possibilities what fans would least expect is wizard politics, but that’s where Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), Dumbledore, and their various allies journey into trying to protect a wizarding world election from being stolen by Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen replacing Johnny Depp).

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Sonic the Hedgehog 2

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Sonic the Hedgehog 2
  • IMDb: link

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 offers your typical sequel with the return of all the core characters, a larger budget, more special effects, and the addition of new characters. The results are largely the same. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is likely to keep the attention of younger audiences, although the biggest audible pop in the screening I attended came during the mid-credit sequence, but other than the pretty visuals and the occasional fun action sequence there’s not much here for the rest of us for a film that clocks in at over two hours.

Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) returns seeking vengeance and power. With him this time is Knuckles (Idris Elba) in search of an ancient power known as the Master Emerald hidden by Sonic’s mentor Longclaw (Donna Jay Fulks). Tom (James Marsden) and Maddie (Tika Sumpter) return to help Sonic who also gets a new friend in Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) who arrives to help Sonic save the emerald.

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