4 Razors

Black Cat #6

/ / Comics

Black Cat #6 comic reviewThe theme of Black Cat #6 is deals with the devil, so to speak. After the Black Fox‘s deal with the Guilded Saint, the Black Cat finds herself immortal but also watches as all of Manhattan begins being pulled into the Saint’s lair as payment. Needing help, Felicia goes to the last person anyone would expect: Odessa Drake, the head of the New York branch of the Thieves Guild who Felicia was robbing to set-up the chain of events.

The issue includes a cameo of Spider-Man seeing Black Cat in the chaos. The cameo fits well into the story as it showcases another loss for Felicia whose heart breaks when lying to her former lover (and seeing him not question her word). That, along with her violent reaction to the Fox’s betrayal (yikes, remind me never to double-cross Felicia Hardy), leaves Felicia in emotional turmoil.

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Justice Society: World War II

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Justice Society: World War II
  • IMDb: link

Justice Society: World War II Blu-ray reviewAfter some lean years where DC Animated had decided to explore the clusterfuck that was the New 52, things appear to be getting back on track. It’s amazing how easily and well DC can do when they make the Flash (Matt Bomer) the heart of the story (see Justice League: The New Frontier and Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox). And, thank god, the creators of the film knew enough to keep the character’s gorgeous simplistic design rather than the eyesore DC has been pushing on readers for nearly a decade now.

While fighting Brainiac (Darin De Paul) with Superman (Darren Criss), the Flash accidentally races so fast he enters the Speed Force and winds up in Germany. During World War II. On an alternate Earth. On this world, alongside the Allied troops, a group of heroes is fighting off the Nazis including another Flash (Armen Taylor), Wonder Woman (Stana Katic), Hawkman (Omid Abtahi), Steve Trevor (Chris Diamantopoulos), Hourman (Matthew Mercer), and Black Canary (Elysia Rotaru).

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Supergirl – Fear Knot

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Supergirl – Fear Knot
  • wiki: link

Supergirl - Fear Knot television review

The final episode before a three-month hiatus sees the team head into the Phantom Zone to rescue Kara (Melissa Benoist), over and over again. The concept is easy to guess during the first vignette, but basically it boils down into each member of the team becoming trapped in a prison of their own fear and living out a series of events in their mind while only a handful of minutes actually pass aboard the Martian’s flying library ship (seriously, where did this come from?). While each mini-episode offers a look at how a certain character sees things going wrong, it does quickly fill up the running time so that the actual rescue of Supergirl is a mere afterthought (the team doesn’t even get a proper introduction to Kara’s not-so-dead father). Still, despite the awkwardness of its conclusion, the episode works fairly well by shining the spotlight on the various characters including letting us know what kind of helium-filled monstrosities haunt Brainy‘s (Jesse Rath) dreams.

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The Host

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Host (2006)
  • IMDb: link

The Host movie reviewThrowback Thursday takes us back to 2006 and a South Korean horror film from one of today’s best directors. Although writer/director Bong Joon Ho has reached greater heights with Memories of Murder and Parasite, his 2006 horror film Gwoemul, or The Host, about a mutated creature running amok along the Han River is still quite entertaining. We see the cause of the creature in the movie’s first scene when an American scientist (Scott Wilson) orders dangerous chemicals destroyed and flushed into the river (in reference to U.S. Military’s actions in Seoul in 2000).

The plot mostly revolves around a single dysfunctional family made up of snack bar owner Park Gang-du (Kang-ho Song) his father (Byun Hee-bong), his daughter Hyun-seo (Ko Asung), his sister (Bae Doona), and his brother (Park Hae-il). Present during the first attack, Hyun-seo is presumed dead although she was actually only taken deep into the sewers by the creature as the family, when not fighting each other or running from inept police and health officials, mounts a search.

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The Human Factor

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Human Factor
  • IMDb: link

The Human Factor movie reviewFor decades the world has looked at the tension in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbors and wished for a peaceful solution. In the new documentary featuring interviews from the American negotiators involved, The Human Factor takes us back to the 1990s and the closest America came to brokering peace between Israel and its neighbors Palestine and Syria.

With access to members of the team who dealt directly with Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, and others, director Dror Moreh‘s film offers a behind-the-scenes look at obstacles, struggles, and small victories (such as the Oslo Accords) that offered the hope of lasting peace only to ultimately come up short. Although Syria feels a bit short-changed here given the strong focus on Israeli’s relationship to Palestine, and the film could do better in expanding on the last 20 years of after the 90s peace proposals finally fizzled out at Camp David, The Human Factor is an informative and engaging documentary from the perspective of those who lived through events with the added benefit of decades of hindsight to look back on what went wrong.

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