2.5 Razors

The Croods: A New Age

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Croods: A New Age
  • IMDb: link

The Croods: A New Age movie reviewThe sequel to 2013’s The Croods returns the cast of the original for a new adventure. The prehistoric family meet the more evolved Hope (Leslie Mann) an Phil Betterman (Peter Dinklage), friends of Guy’s (Ryan Reynolds) parents, who have created a safe zone that all the Croods except for Grug (Nicolas Cage) immediately fall in love with (although their hosts aren’t all that keen on their guests staying longterm).

The sequels offers much the same humor of the original with its conflict coming from the deepening relationship between Guy and Eep (Emma Stone) which threatens Grug’s pack and the Bettermans’ plan to steal Guy away from Eep for their daughter Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran). Eventually, danger will come to safe oasis and the two families will learn to work together.

There’s some fun here, I did appreciate the choice to make Eep and Dawn friends instead of rivals, but for all its wackiness there’s not much substance. The Croods: A New Age is a so-so sequel to a so-so film. Fans of the original will likely enjoy themselves, but the sequel doesn’t do much to evolve past the limited appeal of the original.

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Tesla

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Tesla
  • IMDb: link

Tesla movie reviewTesla is a lesser version of The Current War, which itself was far from a great film. Narrated by Anne Morgan (Eve Hewson) in the present (despite the fact she died in 1952), Tesla covers the career of inventor Nikola Tesla (Ethan Hawke).

Writer/director Michael Almereyda makes some odd choices here, both in a narrator using an Internet that was developed decades after her death and in some pretty cheap greenscreen techniques the culminate in a bizarre music video that closes out the film. While some of these make the film memorable, they don’t do much for the quality of the final product. Nor does the plot’s choice to largely skip over important events of Tesla’s life. Those with even a cursory knowledge of Tesla won’t find much here, and the film’s meager budget doesn’t offer the opportunity to showcase the scale of his inventions and aspirations.

Hawke is hit-and-miss in the title role and Kyle MacLachlan is entirely forgettable as Thomas Edison (who it waffles on as a villain). If the film has any real star, it’s Hewson whose absence is felt in any scene in which she is not featured.

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Red Sonja #22

/ / Comics

Red Sonja #22 comic reviewRed Sonja #22 offers the introduction of a mysterious new character in the Bird Overlord while focusing on Red Sonja‘s quest to kill the child king Cyril, son of Dragan the Magnificent. Most of the action centers around Sonja barely making it out of Cyril’s throne room alive by wounding the giant and then escaping when Cyril uses his magic to nearly squeeze the life out of the She-Devil with a Sword.

I have to admit I was far less interested in the Bird Overlord pieces, including an opening backstory whose narration somewhat fits into Sonja’s desperation as the comic shifts its focus back its title character and a dungeon escape. It’s weaved throughout the issue, leaving me with a mixed reaction.

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The Last Vermeer

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Last Vermeer
  • IMDb: link

The Last Vermeer movie reviewBased on true events, and adapted from 2008’s The Man Who Made Vermeers by Jonathan Lopez, The Last Vermeer is set in 1945 and centers around Captain Joseph Piller (Claes Bang) of the Allied Forces charged with returning art stolen by the Nazis to its rightful owners. Piller’s latest investigation is of art seller Han van Meegeren (Guy Pearce) who is a suspected Nazi collaborator after tracing a sale of one of Johannes Vermeer‘s paintings back to van Meegeren. Over the course of his investigation, and during van Meegeren’s trial, Piller becomes aware of facts which lead him to doubt the suspect’s guilt.

The film’s biggest problem is how the screenplay by James McGee, Mark Fergus, and Hawk Ostby is framed. We’re given the wrong leading man. As a main character, Pillar is your typical bland police officer. The script isn’t helped by subplots spending time delving into his troubled marriage and his feelings for his assistant leading in large part to the melodramatic air of the tale. The trial’s inevitable big reveal, which takes an amazing amount of Hollywood liberties to show off facts the audience has known for an hour or more, is laughably over-the-top.

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Darth Vader #7

/ / Comics

Darth Vader #7 comic reviewCrippled and left to fend for himself on Mustafar, Darth Vader begins putting himself back together again. However, the Emperor has left another surprise in the form of the Sith assassin Ochi who only gives the Dark Lord of the Sith enough time to connect new robotic limbs before beginning his attack.

Ochi’s involvement offers a tie-in to Rise of Skywalker, although it also confirms that both the assassin and Vader will make it through their confrontation alive (since w know Ochi died on Pasaana and Vader on the Second Death Star).

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