2.5 Razors

Batwoman – The Complete First Season

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Batwoman – Season One
  • wiki: link

Batwoman - The Complete First Season Blu-ray reviewAfter a string of successes, it’s hard to believe The CW missed the mark so badly, and so consistently, as it did with Batwoman. The show introduced us to Ruby Rose as lesbian soldier Kate Kane, the niece of Bruce Wayne, who returns to Gotham years after Batman disappeared and picks up his mantle as Gotham City’s new hero.

As with every CW show, she’s surrounded with a small group of friends who know her secret and support her while fighting the city’s private army led by her father (Dougray Scott) and the return of her insane dead sister (Rachel Skarsten) and her creepy friend (Sam Littlefield) who plague the city.

From the start, the show was plagued with problems. While relying strongly on the sister vs. sister dynamic for much of the season, the show’s writers also pull in a group of D-list Batman villains for individual episodes to flush out the season with mixed success.

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Unhinged

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

Unhinged movie reviewWhile far less clever than Falling Down, the new thriller from director Derrick Borte and screenwriter Carl Ellsworth plays on some of the same themes with a protagonist completely out of control. The difference here is that “The Man” (Russell Crowe), as he’s credited, is never internally explored. The perspective of the film is shown through the eyes of his victims as he targets friends and family of a woman (Caren Pistorius) for the slight of daring to honk at him in traffic and refusing to apologize.

Prior to introducing Rachel (Pistorius) and her family, the film opens with The Man’s brutal attack on another home. Obviously, he has anger management issues. After targeting Rachel, he gets an inordinate amount of information from her cell phone in short period of time, helped out by the single mother not locking her phone and people making calendar appointments on spur-of-the-moment get togethers. Unhinged isn’t the kind of movie you’ll want to start questioning or dissecting how likely something may have occurred (like the chance second meeting at the gas station) as it relies completely on the rage of Crowe’s character and the pressure it can apply.

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Project Power

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Project Power
  • IMDb: link

Project Power movie reviewThere’s an intriguing kernel of an idea in Project Power about the possibility of a drug that could deliver short-term super-powers. Set in New Orleans where the drug has popped-up, we’re introduced to morally-ambiguous but self-righteous cop Frank Shaver (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who uses the drug to fight off criminals using the drug to get away with crimes. Frank buys the drugs from a teenager (Dominique Fishback), who is a nice drug dealer that only sells drugs to get her mother much needed surgery just like Frank is a nice drug user only taking Power in order to become temporarily invincible and take down those with worse intentions.

That’s enough for story for the film to delve into, but there’s also a former soldier calling himself Major (Jamie Foxx) rousting local dealers in hopes of working his way up the chain to the supplier. As for the supplier, the script feels a bit unsure if they are government or corporate (we know from Frank that the experiments started in the United States Armed Forces, but we see no actual government agents at work other than a couple of Men in Black stand-ins who are never identified).

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Wizards: Tales of Arcadia – Spellbound

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Wizards: Tales of Arcadia – Spellbound
  • IMDb: link

Wizards: Tales of Arcadia - Spellbound television review

The first episode of Netflix’s Wizards: Tales of Arcadia is a bit of a mess. It offers unnamed villains, ill-defined heroes, and because our characters are transported to a different world at the end of the episode it doesn’t even adequately explore the world in which the story will take place. The only character we really get to know in “Spellbound” is Douxie (Colin O’Donoghue), an apprentice to Merlin (David Bradley) for a thousand years who has yet to prove himself. After a brief opening scene in Camelot, the series jumps forward 900 years to modern times where Douxie, who apparently has spent most of that time sweeping floors while workshopping his magic, receives an appearance by Merlin who informs the apprentice it is time to gather up the Guardians (of who? what do they guard? apparently they don’t know either?).

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October Faction – Presidio

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Presidio – Presidio
  • wiki: link

October Faction - Presidio television review

The first episode of October Faction introduces us to monster hunters Fred (J.C. MacKenzie) and Deloris (Tamara Taylor) who head back to their hometown with their son Geoff (Gabriel Darku) and daughter Viv (Aurora Burghart) after the death of Fred’s father (Stephen McHattie) who was also a member of the shadow agency. “Presidio” doesn’t offer much in the way of monsters other than a short tease prior to the credits and a relatively uneventful encounter back home at the supermarket. Instead, the episode mainly centers around the wake for the departed patriarch while dropping breadcrumbs who the monsters are and beginning a confusing subplot about the daughter’s mystical abilities (which may or may not have been linked to a carnival fortune teller machine?). I may eventually circle back around to October Faction, but the first episode doesn’t do enough to sell me on the adaptation of the IDW comic just yet.

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