3 Razors

The Color Purple

  • Title: The Color Purple (2023)
  • IMDb: link

The Color Purple

Taken from the Broadway musical which was itself adapted from Alice Walker’s 1982 novel, we meet Celie (Fantasia Barrino) who, like the other African-American women in the story, is treated rather shabbily over the first two-thirds of the film by men before standing up for herself to her abuser (Colman Domingo) and, at least in this version, having her story turn on a dime (which may or may not give you whiplash) where she receives everything she could ever have wished for over the film’s final act.

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The Boys in the Boat

  • Title: The Boys in the Boat
  • IMDb: link

The Boys in the Boat

As director, George Clooney has tackled period pieces before (see Leatherheads, The Monuments Men, and the terrific Good Night, and Good Luck). This time Clooney follows the journey of Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) who joins the University of Washington junior varsity rowing team not out of any love for the sport but as a way to help cover his tuition during the lean years of the Great Depression. Rowing, or crew, isn’t the most cinematic of sports, but the screenplay by Mark L. Smith which adapts Daniel James Brown’s non-fiction novel, plays on the intense conditioning, hard work, and teamwork of the sport with the JV crew the underdog team at a university of underdogs with much to prove to themselves and others.

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Wonka

  • Title: Wonka
  • IMDb: link

Wonka

The attempt to tell the origin story for Roald Dahl‘s famous eccentric chocolatier is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand we get Timothée Chalamet as the still naive young man seeking his fortune creating chocolate for the world to enjoy which provides the heart of the film. There’s enough here that we can see the possibility of this version of Willy Wonka growing into the far more gruff character we see played by Gene Wilder. On the other hand we’re left with a script that turns out to have little to do with chocolate and more to do with crazy antics, involving bumbling bad guys, really only suited for small children.

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Hellboy Winter Special: The Yule Cat

Hellboy Winter Special: The Yule Cat

This one-shot holiday special set in 1990 from writer/artist Matt Smith takes Hellboy to Reykjavik to investigate the appearance of a giant cat which locals believe to be the Jólakötturinn, or Yule Cat, from Icelandic Christmas folklore, which appears around the end of the year to eat naughty children at Christmas time. Sadly, the issue doesn’t end with Hellboy getting a new pet cat.

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Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

  • Title: Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
  • IMDb: link

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

Man, chickens are stupid. Or, depending on the scene in question, they are highly intelligent and skilled. For the plot of this film, both premises will need to be equally true. Feeling very much a straight-to-video sequel, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget features the return of Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi) and their friends who have carved out a safe community for their daughter Molly (Bella Ramsey). Telling her nothing of the horrors of the outside world, any of which could have prevented all the events which follow, a curious and rebellious Molly sets out to discover a world where chickens seem happy in buckets (did I mention chickens are stupid?).

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