2 Razors

The Maze Runner

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Maze Runner
  • IMDb: link

The Maze RunnerA thinly-veiled sci-fi version of Lord of the Flies, The Maze Runner (based on the novel by James Dashner) casts Dylan O’Brien as the newest member of a group of children abducted and forced to live in a small wooded clearing in the middle of a vast and deadly maze. Despite the rules against him entering the maze, Thomas (O’Brien) is drawn to it as his actions will have sever repercussions for both himself and the entire community.

By far, the most interesting character of the movie is the maze itself, and the scenes outside the gigantic moving and changing monstrosity suffer as they lose what little magic the film has to work with. The more Thomas remembers about his life and the maze itself the more the film struggles as the answers provided by the movie’s plot are far less interesting than the mystery itself. Pulling back in what is meant to be an epic Dark City style reveal, The Maze Runner flounders at its climatic moment foreshadowing what will be its inevitable sequel.

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Detective Comics #38

/ / Comics

Detective Comics #38After Batman saves Wayne Tower from exploding, the Anarchy storyline continues as the villain decides to enlist the people of the city to help create the chaos he so desperately wants to achieve. It’s hard not to think about V for Vendetta (the so-so movie not the terrific graphic novel) as Anarchy somehow leaves blank masks on every doorstep in Gotham enlisting others to redefine themselves and fight back against the system. The derivitive plot twist isn’t helped by the final panel where the police gun down an innocent kid… which somehow becomes Batman’s fault? Um, what?

On the plus side Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato offer some beautiful panels, but even the tease of what the Mad Hatter‘s story has to do with Anarky isn’t enough to keep my interest once the masks are put in the hands of the people of Gotham. As I’ve already seen this story maybe I’ll take a break from the comic for a few months to see what it might have in store after the Dark Knight Detective after this arc runs its course. Hit-and-Miss.

[DC, $3.99]

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Percy Jackson (Double Feature)

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief / Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
  • IMDb: link

Percy Jackson (Double Feature)Based on the young adult novels of Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and its sequel Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters come off as Harry Potter-lite with a Clash of the Titans-level understanding and use of various mythological elements.

Centered around Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) – the son of Poseidon (Kevin McKidd), and his fellow demi-gods Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and Grover (Brandon T. Jackson), both films feature the threesome embarking on some kind of quest to both learn about themselves and retrieve a powerful mythological weapon which has been stolen.

In Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (read the full review) Percy learns of his true parentage and sets with his two new friends to retrieve the stolen lightning bolt of Zeus (Sean Bean). In the second movie (read the full review) the group must retrieve the Golden Fleece and stop the resurrection of Kronos (Robert Knepper) and the Titans.

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Congo

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Congo
  • IMDb: link

CongoAlthough it’s not his best work, Michael Crichton’s 1980 novel Congo is actually a pretty good story. Sadly, the same can’t be said for the big screen adaptation made 15 years later. The film stars Dylan Walsh as a scientist who has raised a sign-language speaking ape named Amy and decided to return the gorilla back to the wild with the help of a bizarre financier (Tim Curry) whose interests in the gorilla’s doodles make him believe Amy could lead the group to the legendary lost city of Zinj.

The movie condenses and jumbles the motives of everyone involved producing a single expedition which also includes a scientist (Laura Linney) looking for her ex-fiancé and his team who were attacked by strange murderous gray gorillas (rather than motivated by the corporate greed of the priceless diamonds lost in the jungle as in the novel), a great white hunter who happens to be black (Ernie Hudson), and a member of the group who you know has no chance to make it out alive (Grant Heslov).

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Rio 2

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Rio 2
  • IMDb: link

Rio 22011’s Rio was a colorful (if mostly by the numbers) film featuring a domesticated Spix Macaw (Jesse Eisenberg) who finds himself stuck in the wider world in your basic fish (or in this case bird) out of water storyline. The sequel doesn’t stray far from the original as Blu (Eisenberg) once again is put in uncomfortable new surroundings only to eventually prove he has what it takes to survive and thrive.

After the discovery of other Macaws, Blu and Jewel (Anne Hathaway) head into the Amazon with their children (Rachel Crow, Amandla Stenberg, Pierce Gagnon) where Blu finds it increasingly hard to fit in (and that’s before meeting Jewel’s disapproving father). Once again the movie gives us both human and bird enemies, unnecessarily returning Jemaine Clement as the vengeance-obsessed Nigel, along with the supporting cast of the first film and a few new faces (most notably Kristin Chenoweth as a poisonous tree frog) as well.

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