2.5 Razors

Pieces of a Woman

  • Title: Pieces of a Woman
  • IMDb: link

Pieces of a Woman movie reviewPieces of a Woman offers impressive performances by Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf as a couple who lose their baby during a lengthy home birth that kicks off the movie. The extended sequence, like the rest of the film, is too long while putting the performances of its actors over any narrative or plot.

Adapting their own play, director Kornél Mundruczó and writer Kata Wéber attempt to sell us on the situation rather than the underdeveloped characters with the idea that we should feel for the couple regardless of any of their other actions. While it is interesting to see the actors hit their marks, Pieces of a Woman works more as an acting exercise than a film.

The film viscerally explores how both characters deal with their loss. In so doing, it produces several strong individual scenes which are loosely tied together by a lot downtime as the film meanders absentmindedly to the next big moment. While Kirby’s character shuts down, LaBeouf and Ellen Burstyn look for someone to blame starting with the midwife (Molly Parker) who was unable to keep their child alive while waiting for EMTs to arrive.

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MacGyver – Eclipse + USMC-1856707 + Step Potential + Chain Lock + Ma

  • Title: MacGyver (2016) – Eclipse + USMC-1856707 + Step Potential + Chain Lock + Ma
  • wiki: link

MacGyver - Eclipse + USMC-1856707 + Step Potential + Chain Lock + Ma television review

When one of their own (Henry Ian Cusick) is kidnapped by Leland (Tobin Bell) and Ramon (Zach McGowan), Team MacGyver is blackmailed into breaking a murderous psychopath turned pacifist (Joe Pantoliano) out of prison to exchange. Pantoliano is fun here in an otherwise forgettable episode, although MacGyver (Lucas Till) creating a makeshift bazooka out of a telescope in the unrelated opening sequence is a highlight. Although Leland and their kidnapped prisoner both manage to escape (apparently not earning any animosity to the Phoenix Foundation from any other agency), a discovery of what Leland was ultimately after provides Team MacGyver with valuable information to halt a possible resurgence of Codex. Their time alone with the reformed killer offers MacGyver and Desi (Levy Tran) a chance to deal with the lingering issues for their stalled relationship.

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HBO’s Perry Mason – Chapter One

  • Title: Perry Mason – Chapter One
  • IMDb: link

HBO's Perry Mason - Chapter One television review

Bearing little to no resemblance to either Erle Stanley Gardner’s original novels nor CBS’ long-running television show, the first episode of HBO’s Perry Mason reimagines the famous defense lawyer Perry Mason as a low-rent private detective (Matthew Rhys) who only steps into the courtroom once, as a witness. Down on his luck, with questionable morals, and in need of money (that he unsuccessfully attempts to extort from a client), Mason accepts a job from an old friend (John Lithgow) to look into a case involving the kidnapping and ransom of a baby that goes horribly wrong.

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The Croods: A New Age

  • 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

  • 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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