2 Razors

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

Rhinestone

Looking 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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Detective Comics #23

/ / Comics

Detective Comics #23After being able to do no more than fight Wrath to a standstill, Bruce Wayne changes tactics by meeting with E.D. Caldwell while allowing Alfred to do some snooping around the man’s weapon factories to prove that he is indeed the man behind the mask of the city’s new deadly vigilante.

The latest issue of Detective Comics has its share of awkward moments, such as Wayne and Caldwell having a business meeting while having a martial arts sparring session at the same time. Although Alfred’s poking around confirms Batman’s suspicions, it puts the butler’s life in danger and doesn’t really explain the wealthy man’s end game (or how killing a bunch of police officers and starting a war helps facilitate that goal).

After giving up Red Hood and the Outlaws last month Detective and Batman and Robin are the only Bat-titles I’m still readying (having given up on the others months ago), but this Wrath storyline is certainly stretching my endurance to the limit. And, sigh, yes we get more of the awful Man-Bat back-up story this month as well. Pass.

[DC, $3.99]

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