3.5 Razors

Smallville Season Eleven: Continuity #1

/ / Comics

Smallville Season Eleven: Continuity #1After setting up the event in several of the previous mini-series, Smallville Season Eleven: Continuity brings a new Crisis to the Smallville Universe. Lois and Clark may have been able to make it home from a parallel Earth but not before the Monitors have begun deconstructing time and space in the reality they know as home. With all reality being erased, ripped apart to a molecule level, and rewritten, Superman has very little time to save his home.

Writer Bryan Q. Miller gets a little timey-wimey in his explanation of what is occurring across time and space (but not quite all at once as there are pockets left out for heroes to fight back from) but it works well-enough as the set-up to a world-ending event which will need all hands on deck to stop.

The bleak situation should allow the comic to bring back a wide assortment of characters to fight against the end of their universe. Not only do we get the regular Smallville cast but Batman, Nightwing, Zatanna, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and others all make an appearance here as Superman must lead his friends into war. Worth a look.

[DC, $3.99]

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All-New X-Men #34

/ / Comics

All-New X-Men #34The time-displaced X-Men’s (along with X-23) visit to the Marvel Ultimate Universe continues as Jean Grey goes looking for help only to come face-to-face with this world’s X-Men including herself. Reading each others minds creates immediate confusion for both telepaths but also forges an unusual friendship between the pair understanding the highs and lows of each other’s troubled lives. Attempting to return home to Cyclops‘ compound, Angel and X-23 also discover that they are indeed in the wrong world and, as far as they know, without a way to get back home.

Things aren’t any easier for the Beast who has a dinner date with this world’s Doctor Doom who is fascinated with the tale of time-and-space-displaced mutants. Just what the super-villain plans to do with such knowledge is yet to be seen. And, in the least interesting of the three storylines, Iceman finishes battling the mole monster on the streets of New York only to run into a couple of police officers and discover mutants are no more beloved in this reality than his own. Worth a look.

[Marvel, $3.99]

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The Skeleton Twins

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Skeleton Twins
  • IMDb: link

The Skeleton TwinsWritten and directed by Craig Johnson and Mark Heyman The Skeleton Twins, is a holiday release staple of a awkward family dramedy starring Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader as estranged twins who both contemplate suicide on the same day.

Brought back together after Milo’s unsuccessful suicide attempt, Maggie and Milo get to know each other again after being apart for nearly an entire decade as Milo struggles to fit into Maggie’s life with her optimistic go-getter husband (Luke Wilson) while discovering his sister’s life is just as fucked-up as his own as she continually cheats on the man she professes to love while hiding the fact that she’s still on birth control as they try to get pregnant.

Neither as dramatic nor humorous as you might first assume given the subject matter and its two former Saturday Night Live stars, splitting the difference The Skeleton Twins mixes in some dark humor to balance out the siblings’ poor life choices which lead them both to consider taking their own lives.

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Reese Witherspoon takes a cathartic trek through the Wild

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

WildBased on Cheryl Strayed‘s real-life experience of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, Wild stars Reese Witherspoon as the troubled new divorcee with no real hiking experience who latches onto the unlikely project of a 1,100-mile solo-hike as a means to deal with the mistakes of her past.

Adapted for film by Nick Hornby, Cheryl’s self-driven journey is inter-cut with scenes from her childhood and young adulthood involving her mother (Laura Dern), her promiscuity and drug use, and her relationship with her former husband (The Newsroom‘s Thomas Sadoski).

Director Jean-Marc Vallée offers an interesting character study of a flawed woman’s attempt to achieve a moment of greatness. Dreadfully slow in parts, and often lingering too long on some of its flashback sequences, Wild succeeds as a character-driven drama even if it all feels a bit by-the-book (so to speak). Similar in themes to Into the Wild, Strayed’s story speaks to a rebirth of sorts through nature although without a look forward as to whether or not the transformative journey actually led to lasting change.

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Scorpion – Dominoes

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Scorpion – Dominoes
  • wiki: link

Scorpion - Dominoes

In the show’s first Christmas episode the team races against the clock to save a boy trapped under a rock slide on the beach before he’s drowned by the incoming tide. While the convergences of several of Sylvester‘s (Ari Stidham) phobias make him initially useless, at least until he gets a pep-talk by the right person, Walter (Elyes Gabel) takes charge eventually providing just the kind of Christmas miracle needed to inspire his sister (Camille Guaty) to continue fighting her illness.

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