3 Razors

Citadel – Baked Alaskas

  • Title: Citadel – Baked Alaskas
  • IMDb: link

The original, and arguably weakest, of Amazon’s Citadel shows returns for a Second Season. We begin with narration from the still-captured Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci) which works as a recap of the show’s First Season (notably somewhat reconning the most important revelations from the season finale) and also sets up Bernard as a major character rather than just a supporting player. Following Bernard’s escape, the show also introduces dimwitted shoot-first former CIA Agent James Hutch (Jack Reynor) who is going to help Bernard stop Manticore from using mind-control technology that they forced him to invent, whether Bernard wants his help or not. He really doesn’t.

Citadel – Baked Alaskas Read More »

Nine Guests for a Crime

  • Title: Nove ospiti per un delitto
  • IMDb: link

The 1977 giallo film, an Italian subgenre featuring both murder mystery as well as slasher and thriller elements, offers up 9 rather unlikable members of a dysfunctional rich family who start being killed off one by one when they gather at their family villa on a private island far removed from the prying eyes of the rest of the world. The family of the authoritative Ubaldo (Arthur Kennedy) include his disturbed sister Elisabetta (Dana Ghia), his second wife Giulia (Caroline Laurence), and his children Lorenzo (John Richardson), Michele (Massimo Foschi), and Patrizia (Loretta Persichetti) and their their mix of oversexed or frigid spouses Greta (Rita Silva), Carla (Flavia Fabiani), and Walter (Venantino Venantini).

Nine Guests for a Crime Read More »

Arabesque

  • Title: Arabesque
  • IMDb: link

Hitchcock-lite, director Stanley Donen‘s 1966 spy thriller Arabesque stars Gregory Peck as a college professor in over his head after being pulled into a world of intrigue involving an Egyptian cypher which killers, the government, and foreign officials all want translated. For a film that doesn’t do anything great, other than properly framing Sophia Loren as the film’s femme fatale whose true loyalties are always in question, Arabesque is only mildly diverting.

Arabesque Read More »

The Thing

  • Title: The Thing (1982)
  • IMDb: link

Flashback Friday takes us back to the icy tundra and a new battle for survival against an alien from another world. Director John Carpenter‘s adaptation of John W. Campbell Jr.‘s novella Who Goes There? stays closer to the source material than The Thing from Another World. Set in Antarctica, our evil invader from outer space had already been thawed by a group of Norwegian scientists, the last of whom are chasing an infected dog to the American outpost. Killing the out-of-control foreigners, our team of protagonists will have to piece together how the story began not realizing the cute sled dog they’ve just let into their camp could very well mean the death of them all.

The Thing Read More »

Black Cat #9

While helping Mary Jane Waston steal from a secret vault in the Negative Zone, Felicia and MJ find themselves pulled into an alternate reality and given to chance to live without costumes and capes, heroes and villains, and explore lives which might have been. For Felicia that means marriage and kids with a Peter Parker never bit by a radioactive spider, and for MJ that means the acting stardom she’s always dreamed of. It’s a great life… for awhile.

Black Cat #9 Read More »