3 Razors

Sleeping with Other People

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Sleeping with Other People
  • IMDb: link

Sleeping with Other PeopleWriter/director Leslye Headland‘s indie romcom doesn’t stray far from the basic formula of the genre. After meeting, and loosing their mutual viriginity to each other one steamy night in college, Jake (Jason Sudeikis) and Lainey’s (Alison Brie) paths cross again years later. Despite their mutual attraction, the two agree to keep things platonic given Jake’s womanizing ways and Lainey’s hang-up on an old college ex (Adam Scott) who she still carries a torch for despite how awful he’s treated her over the years.

There’s little to no surprise in Headland’s script and when Sleeping with Other People works it does so on the talent and likability of its stars and supporting cast that includes Scott, Amanda Peet, Jason Mantzoukas, Andrea Savage, Natasha Lyonne, and Margarita Levieva (in an opening cameo so good she nearly steals the entire film). We know where Jake and Lainey are going, how long it will take to get there, and can guess (pretty accurately) on the stops they’ll take along the way. Thankfully the movie’s cast keeps the predictable story from becoming stale and boring. It’s far from a must-see, but if your girlfriend is determined to drag you to a romcom you could do far, far worse.

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The Muppets – Hostile Makeover

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: The Muppets – Hostile Makeover
  • wiki: link

The Muppets - Hostile Makeover

I was lukewarm to last week’s series premiere of The Muppets. Taking place behind the scenes of “Up Late with Miss Piggy,” the show is set-up to give us a peek at the lives of the characters when they aren’t on stage. It’s like the old Muppet Show in that we get a look at Kermit (Steve Whitmire) struggling to keep order behind-the-scenes but without the great performances and musical numbers that made the previous show such a stand-out. Immediately dumping the premises of new love interests for both Kermit and Fozzie (Eric Jacobson) from last week’s episode, “Hostile Takeover” is more enjoyable in that it unleashes the wrath of Miss Piggy (Jacobson) upon the rest of the Muppets.

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Continuum – Power Hour

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Continuum – Power Hour
  • wiki: link

Continuum - Power Hour

Kiera (Rachel Nichols) continues to struggle to deal with the future soldiers by continuing her shaky alliance with Garza (Luvia Petersen) on an information-gathering mission about their adversaries motivations that will leave another former Liber8 member dead. Meanwhile both Alec (Erik Knudsen) and Julian (Richard Harmon) take steps to change their futures as “Power Hour” continues to move Continuum one step closer to the series finale.

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Everest

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

Everest

Based on a true story, Everest recounts the events of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster. There have been plenty of mountain climbing movies over the years and Everest does little to break from the pack. Working against the movie is the extended opening which plays like a Travel Channel infomercial attempting to sell the audience on traveling to Nepal to climb the world’s biggest mountain with the help of experts like Rob Hall‘s (Jason Clarke) Adventure Consultants.

The climbers themselves are the typical hodgepodge of one-note characters you always expect to see in movies like this with a couple of stand-outs (Clarke, John Hawkes, and Josh Brolin) while the rest (Martin Henderson, Tom Goodman-Hill, Naoko Mori, Michael Kelly, among others) quickly fade into the background. The movie picks up a bit once the climbers begin their ascent of the mountain in earnest and the disaster porn part of the plot kicks in.

The film, and the scale of the undertaking, is certainly helped in IMAX 3D. As a theatrical experience Everest does have something to offer (even if the story feels more straight-to-DVD). It’s certainly not a must-see, but it works as escapist entertainment.

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Black Mass

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Black Mass
  • IMDb: link

Black MassBlack Mass is a semi-successful film highlighting the amazing story of Irish-American mobster Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp) and his rise to prominence in South Boston in the 70s and 80s as the head of the Winter Hill Gang in large part thanks to his role as an FBI informant for Agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton). What should be a thoroughly engrossing character study becomes a by-the-book gangster movie that entertains but doesn’t due justice to the source material.

Screenwriters Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth adapt the non-fictional account of events from Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill’s book that is highlighted by Depp’s performance under heavy make-up as the charismatic violent sociopath. There’s certainly more to the story than we get here, and I do have to wonder how much director Scott Cooper left on the cutting room floor. I expected far more about Bulger’s rise to power, which we hear the FBI talk about constantly but we don’t see evidence of over the course of the film. The filmmakers’ focus on the lives of Whitey Bulger and his closest associates leaves the larger canvas left half finished.

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