2 Razors

Charmed – Pilot

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Charmed – Pilot
  • IMDb: link

Charmed - Pilot television review

After only being off the air for a little more than a decade, The CW has rebooted Charmed. I can almost hear George Carlin asking “How can you possibly be nostalgic about a concept like a little while ago?” The new series uses the same basic concept of having three sisters discover they are the world’s most powerful witches and will need to use these gifts in order to save the world and vanquish various demons of the week. There are some changes to the original formula. First, the girls’ mother is killed during the “Pilot” episode. Second, the third sister, unknown to the other two young women, is introduced helping to kick-off of the plot. And third, rather than discovering their powers for themselves, the aggressive Mel (Melonie Diaz), the shallow Maggie (Sarah Jeffery), and the bland Macy (Madeleine Mantock) get their powers and purpose mansplained to them by their whitelighter (Rupert Evans).

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Sorry Nina, It’s All About Mary

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: All About Nina
  • IMDb: link

All About Nina movie reviewI really wanted to like All About Nina. I can certainly tell what drew Mary Elizabeth Winstead to the project in which she plays a stand-up comedian struggling with her career and relationships. While Winstead makes the most of the dramatic moments, particularly during an impressive breakdown on stage, the script from writer/director Eva Vives does the actress no favors.

Had Nina (Winstead) been written as an average struggling comic the script may have worked better, but, while Winstead does her best to sell Nina’s material on stage, the jokes aren’t strong enough to sell the character as comedy’s next big thing.

Leaving New York, and a dysfunctional relationship with a married man (Chace Crawford), Nina heads to Los Angeles. Not the actual Los Angeles, but the cliched movie version with hippie roommates and fame and soulmates just waiting to be found. While auditioning for a job that would launch her career, Nina begins an emotional relationship with an LA local (Common) who apparently is the first nice guy Nina has ever met, let alone dated.

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Magnum P.I. – I Saw the Sun Rise

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Magnum P.I. (2018) – I Saw the Sun Rise
  • wiki: link

Magnum P.I. - I Saw the Sun Rise

On hearing the news, and seeing clips of CBS’ plans to reboot Magnum, P.I. all I could think was that this was the worst idea in network television since the The CW rebooted Charlie’s Angels with Minka Kelly in 2011 (a show so historically bad, even the Internet has done its best to forget its existence). The new Magnum P.I. attempts to hold to the formula of the original but also makes several small changes (including the new, grammatically incorrect, spelling of the show’s title). Set in present day, Jay Hernandez is cast as the new Thomas Sullivan Magnum who works as a private eye while also providing security to the estates of published author Robin Masters. Unlike the original, in which Masters was never seen (or even proved to be a real person), Thomas and the author are old friends due to the writer spending time with Magnum during his time as a Naval Officer in landlocked country of Afghanistan.

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The Darkest Minds

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Darkest Minds
  • IMDb: link

The Darkest Minds movie reviewThe Darkest Minds is a mess. It’s as if someone took an entire season of a Freeform sci-fi series made for a tweenage fanbase and condensed it into a single two-hour film. Based on the story structure and pacing you can tell immediately that the movie was adapted from a novel. Drawn-out events are presented in meandering fashion as we follow Ruby (played in early scenes by Lidya Jewett and later by Amandla Stenberg) through a troubling adolescence when she becomes mutated by a virus that leaves 98% of the world’s children dead and the remainder gifted with poorly explained powers.

After being taken from her family by the Federal Government and thrown into a concentration camp for mutants, Ruby eventually escapes through the help of a social worker (hey, Mandy Moore is still working) who exists only as an agent to further the plot and lead Ruby to other kids like herself (Harris Dickinson, Skylan Brooks, and Miya Cech) hunting for a mythical camp of lost boys living outside the system. Yeah… because societies put together by kids (with super-powers no less) are sure to be super stable.

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Jurassic World Has Fallen (and it can’t get up)

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
  • IMDb: link

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom movie reviewThis franchise is officially out of ideas. Again. The latest entry in the Jurassic Park franchise is a mishmash of plot from the previous entries without much of anything original or surprising to offer. This is the film where you know what’s going to happen every step of the way including when a dinosaur is about to jump out of the water or break through a window. And the film, of course, finds a way to shoehorn the trademark T-Rex shot in an attempt to remind you of better times. If it held any of the wonder of the first Jurassic Park the script’s lack of brains might be tolerable. However, it just feels tired. And dumb. Damn, this movie is dumb.

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