2.5 Razors

Mediocre Sequel, Mediocre Sequel. Whatcha Gonna Do?

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Bad Boys for Life
  • IMDb: link

Bad Boys for Life movie reviewHitting theaters 16 years after Bad Boys II, and 25 years after the original film, Bad Boys for Life feels about as tired as its two stars at times. The film reunites Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in the latest attempt of movie studios to reboot, relaunch, or recycle any franchise they can find. There’s no real reason for the film to exist, but Smith and Lawrence provide some entertaining moments bouncing off one another to keep you mildly interested between explosions and gun fights (which, sadly, fail to reach insanity of Michael Bay at his best).

Reminiscent of the themes from Lethal Weapon 4, the script from Chris Bremner, Peter Craig, and Joe Carnahan (it really took three of you to write this?) centers mostly on the advanced age of our two leads (one of whom is aging more gracefully than the other). After breaking out of prison, a criminal from their past (Kate del Castillo) returns to take revenge through a talented assassin (Jacob Scipio) in a plot that gets a bit more convoluted than it needs to before director Adil El Arbi finally throws in the towel and decides instead to just make various things explode (whether common sense or logic says they should).

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Mediocre Sequel, Mediocre Sequel. Whatcha Gonna Do? Read More »

Silk Stalkings – Curtain Call

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Silk Stalkings – Curtain Call
  • IMDb: link

“It’s a wild world and nobody rides for free.”

Silk Stalkings - Curtain Call TV review

Throwback Thursday takes us back to the unsolved crimes of passion in the wealthy playground of Palm Beach, Florida. Things get messy for Chris (Rob Estes) when a high school girlfriend (Kelly Curtis) he just reconnected with turns out to be the prime suspect in the murder of her controlling lover (Lee Benton). Struggling as much with Sarah’s bisexuality as with the possibility that she killed someone in cold blood (and then took him to bed), Chris finds it hard to focus on the case in an episode that pushes Rita (Mitzi Kapture) into the background for the most part (although she is responsible for a rather obvious idea which helps to lead to the true killer).

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Suicide Squad #1

/ / Comics

Suicide Squad #1 comic reviewDC launches a new version of the Suicide Squad pitting a makeshift team against a group of super-powered terrorists known as the Revolutionaries. There are a few familiar faces in Deadshot and Harley Quinn but the rest of the team, chosen not by Amanda Waller but by her replacement Lok, features questionable members like the Cavalier, the Shark, Zebra Man, and Magpie.

As we’ve seen in several previous versions of the series, not all of the members will make it through the first issue alive. The twist here is that most are used as nothing more than cannon fodder in order for Lok to recruit the Revolutionaries as their replacements. My trouble here is that most of the Revolutionaries don’t seem much more interesting that the Squad members who they are replacing (at least the D-Listers were worth making fun of).

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Bombshell

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

Bombshell movie review Bombshell offers a matter-of-fact, but ultimately not all that illuminating, look at the sexual harassment at FOX News under Roger Ailes (John Lithgow). The film primarily focuses on three woman (Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, and Margot Robbie), only one of whom we see Ailes abuse his power to manipulate and harass (Robbie, in the film’s best, and most skin-crawling and heartbreaking, scene). Undercutting the film’s moral stance more than a little is the fact that the focus of the lawsuit that kicked-off the media storm that eventually led to Ailes departure was less about Gretchen Carlson (Kidman) being harassed and more about seeking revenge for her dismissal from the network due to creative differences.

While Theron gets far more screentime, Robbie steals the film as the naive Kayla Pospisil just starting out in the business who gets a harsh reality check at how things are done. Kate McKinnon has an intriguing role as her friend/lover whose balance of being a lesbian Democrat working at Fox News is actually far more interesting material than most of what is explored over the course of the film surrounding Ailes and the lawsuit. Lithgow is properly slimy as seedy Ailes who is incapable of admitting he’s done anything wrong.

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21 Bridges

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: 21 Bridges
  • IMDb: link

21 Bridges movie review21 Bridges is an action film that thinks it’s a drama. The film from director Brian Kirk stars Chadwick Boseman as tough cop with a heart of gold Andre Davis. Adam Mervis and Matthew Michael Carnahan‘s script goes out of its way to tell us about Andre, including the opening funeral of his father years before (complete with narration talking more to the audience than the young boy who has lost his father) and 19 years later sticking up for himself to Internal Affairs. Davis is the latest in a long line of movie cops who get the job done, even if that means leaving a pile of bodies in his wake.

Our protagonist’s latest case involves an odd robbery by two former soldiers (Stephan James and Taylor Kitsch), a stash house full of too much cocaine, and several dead cops (who we see the soldiers shoot out with early in the film). It doesn’t take long for Davis to figure out something about the night’s events just doesn’t add up. Trapping the crooks in Manhattan, the city closes down the island (including all 21 bridges) as Davis hunts down the killers with the help of a narcotics officer (Sienna Miller) and a city full of trigger-happy cops.

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