2 Razors

Pitch Black Deja Vu is Riddick-ulously Familiar

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Riddick
  • IMDB: link

RiddickHow much do you love Pitch Black? For those passionate few whose fandom is strong enough to warrant sitting through a nearly identical (but inferior) film with all the originality of say Teen Wolf Too, Riddick may offer some late summer mindless entertainment. Everyone else may want to wait for home video for this IMAX version of a straight-to-DVD sequel that may not skimp on effects but could have used at least one new idea. Well, at least this one’s got Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff) in it.

Although it hasn’t as aged as well as I would like I will still admit to having some affection for Pitch Black, the 2000 sci-fi adventure about a murderous thief trapped on a world of monsters with people who want him dead, but I draw the line at the ridiculous trainwreck of a sequel that stalled this “franchise.” To call Chronicles of Riddick something akin to Underwold-level terrible is frankly being kind. That Riddick got made at all, even nine years later, and isn’t nausea-inducing is something of a minor miracle.

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Getaway

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Getaway
  • IMDB: link

GetawayFrom the director of Dungeons & Dragons comes a convoluted chase film that makes the logic behind The Chase look sound by comparison. You know you’re in trouble when you start a review with any variation of that sentence. To be fair to director Courtney Solomon, the many issues I have with Getaway have far more do with the troubled script by Sean Finegan and Gregg Maxwell Parker than the director’s occasionally worthwhile attempts to make a story impossible to take seriously moderately engaging. (How’s that for a ringing endorsement?)

We’re thrown right into the overly complex plot as former professional driver Brent Magna (Ethan Hawke) steals a suped-up Shelby Mustang Super Snake after thugs working for a nameless voice (Jon Voight) on the phone kidnap his wife (Rebecca Budig). The choice to jump right in and show the kidnapping in broken flashbacks (as if Magna is piecing together what happened from the evidence left behind) works well. The trouble, however, starts once he gets behind the wheel of the car and begins taking orders from his new boss.

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Blue Jasmine

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Blue Jasmine
  • IMDB: link

Blue JasmineBlue Jasmine reminds me quite a lot of Celebrity, writer/director Woody Allen‘s 1998 trainwreck of a film casting another actor (Kenneth Branagh) in Allen’s trademark role with mixed results. Allen’s latest is noteworthy for the terrific performance of Cate Blanchett as the female version of Allen’s hopelessly paranoid and neurotic character. Blanchett is amazing as Jasmine, but unlike Allen who was able to consistently charm his way through such portrayals, Jasmine’s cynicism cuts like a knife forcing audiences to keep their distance and never embrace the character in the way the film needs to ultimately succeed. Blanchett might be terrific, but the script give us no reason to care about what happens to her.

Despite loosing her fortune and marriage due to her husband’s (Alec Baldwin) shady business dealings and womanizing, it’s impossible to see the self-obsessed Jasmine as anything approaching a legitimate victim. There’s little reason to feel sorry for the oblivious and neurotic Jasmine, nor is there reason to hate or take joy in her fall from grace. All she can earn is our pity.

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Guilty Pleasure – Rhinestone

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Rhinestone
  • IMDB: link

RhinestoneLooking back at Sylvester Stallone‘s long (and checkered) film career it’s hard not to argue that 1984’s Rhinestone is perhaps the most ridiculous premise the actor ever signed-on for (which you consider movies like Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Lock-Up, and The Specialist is really saying something). Stallone stars as a New York cabbie who country star Jake Farris (Dolly Parton) bets her sleazy manager (Ron Leibman) she can turn into a country star in two weeks. If she wins Freddie agrees to cancel her contract, but if she looses she is looking at five more years working for the sleazeball on stage… and in his bedroom.

A basic fish-out-of-water story, Jake takes the musically inept Nick back home to Tennessee for a two-week crash course on country music where the two bicker and, you guessed it, eventually fall for each other. Writer Phil Alden Robinson would go on to pen Field of Dreams, Sneakers, and All of Me. Rhinestone is far from his best work but director Bob Clark does have the luxury of two charming stars to help sell the uninspired premise.

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Beware the Batman – Toxic

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Beware the Batman – Toxic
  • wiki: link

Beware the Batman - Toxic

The show introduces a second member of the Outsiders, although Katana (Sumalee Montano) doesn’t appear in this episode, as “Toxic” offers the origin story of Metamorpho (Adam Baldwin) – a security guard exposed to a dangerous experiment by Simon Stagg (Jeff Bennett) who didn’t want the man dating his daughter Sapphire (Emmanuelle Chriqui). I’ve never been the biggest fan of Metamorpho and thought it strange when Justice League an entire two-part episode to his origins a decade ago. We’re pretty much given the same treatment here as Batman (Anthony Ruivivar) is forced to deal with the out-of-control monster while attempting to find a cure.

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