2 Razors

Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
  • IMDb: link

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword movie review

When I first heard that Guy Ritchie was going to direct a King Arthur movie my reaction was that this could well be the worst idea for a movie I’d ever heard. By that standard, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is actually better than I expected. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a full-on trainwreck in innumerable ways, but it wasn’t altogether unwatchable. (Let’s see them work that ringing endorsement onto the poster.)

This movie is (supposedly) about King Arthur, played here by the often shirtless Charlie Hunnam, and his magic sword which apparently can freeze time while also creating shock waves and explosions. (Who knew?) However, it becomes blatantly obvious Guy Ritchie (who both directed and co-wrote the movie) has no real idea who Arthur is. It’s like he saw a poorly-translated anime on the subject and decided to make his own movie. It’s so bad that this movie should come with a disclaimer that any relation to King Arthur or his legend is purely coincidental.

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Power Rangers

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Power Rangers
  • IMDb: link

Power Rangers movie reviewBoy, is this movie dumb. Imagine mashing up Breakfast Club with Suicide Squad, removing Margot Robbie, casting an even worse version of the Enchantress, and then inexplicably throwing Voltron and the Dinobots in at the end, and you might understand what you are in store for with Power Rangers. I have no attachment to the 1990s television show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in which five teens from the same town find magic alien discs and fight various monsters (mostly pulled from stock footage of Japanese shows) every week to protect their home of Angel Grove, California, and felt lost early on in the gradually intensifying insanity.

The film has the multi-cultural breakfast club leave detention to be granted super-powers. Power Rangers hits most of the archetypes of John Hughes‘ classic. We get a troubled football star (Dacre Montgomery), the nerd (RJ Cyler), the beautiful girl (Naomi Scott), the outcast (Ludi Lin), and the crazy girl (Becky G.). These characters are all given names, but since they are only really differentiated by the color of their skin and threadbare character motivations, it’s not worth the space to go into further detail.

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Life

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

Life movie reviewLife is the exact opposite of Kong: Skull Island. Whereas Kong knew exactly what it was and embraced it, Life is a pretentious wannabe that flails around for far too long before ultimately turning into a cliche and running out of gas long before the credits roll.

Wanting desperately to be a genre-shaking art film which takes the science seriously and has something to say about extraterrestrial life, like the original Alien, instead director Daniel Espinosa‘s (Safe House) movie is a plodding, somber affair with nothing we haven’t seen multiple times before. Very early on, I lost track of number of extended sequences showing off the film’s art design set to ominous classical music. I get it, you guys liked 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unfortunately this isn’t the kind of movie you are making here.

Life is a bottle-show monster flick with a small group of people trapped with a creature they can’t understand let alone defeat. By the time Life gets around to throwing the pretension of actual science out the window and becomes a monster movie there’s little the latest tentacle monster can offer in way of surprise, let alone general horror.

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Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #16

/ / Comics

Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #16 comic reviewHal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #16 is a headscratcher. While it certainly delivers Guy Gardner being Guy for his fans, the entire issue is little more than filler. Having rescued Saint Walker, Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner return to Mogo only to find John Stewart and Guy gone. This leaves their story to wilt on the vine while the comic looks elsewhere for plot.

The idea of Green and Yellow Lanterns working together to begin bringing in Sinestro Corps stragglers is largely dealt with in a single montage. The only example we see see expanded is Guy, heading out without his ring, picking a fist fight with Arkillo. It’s a bloody, brutal sequence inter-cut with scenes from a young Gardner’s experience with an abusive father. While the extended sequence isn’t without merit in showcasing what is happening behind Guy’s constant posturing, it’s allowed to go on far too long indulging writer Robert Venditti and artist Rafa Sandoval at the cost of further expanding the arc’s plot.

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The OA – Paradise

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: The OA – Paradise
  • wiki: link

The OA – Paradise television review

You know you’re in trouble with a show when the big dramatic reveal built up over half a season elicits laughter rather than appreciation, surprise, or even anticipated acknowledgment. The end of “Paradise” didn’t just make me laugh. It made me laugh out loud. Hard. And continuously. Seriously, WTF? I know there are still three episodes left to this season, but now understanding just what direction the show is heading I’ll be taking the off-ramp now.

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