4 Razors

Totally Under Control

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  • Title: Totally Under Control
  • IMDb: link

Totally Under Control movie reviewTotally Under Control is an indictment of President Donald Trump and the national mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s both a chilling and enraging experience to have the months of inaction, series of missteps, casual disinterest, politicization of a health crisis, and frightening ineptitude chronicled with such precision. Interviewing medical professionals, scientists, and whistleblowers from within the CDC to Jared Kushner‘s volunteers, Totally Under Control highlights the many, many places where the United States went wrong in its policies towards COVID while comparing them to South Korea’s far more aggressive early measures which avoided the large death tolls continuing to rise in the United States.

One idea shared by directors Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger is that every health crisis could have been handled better. However, the staggering failure of the United States with COVID runs the gamut from a President not willing to hear the truth, experts fired for telling the truth, and policies put in place making it harder to get life saving masks and drugs to medical professionals until Trump was able to personally profit.

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A Call to Spy

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  • Title: A Call to Spy
  • IMDb: link

A Call to Spy movie reviewSet during WWII, Stana Katic stars as Vera Atkins charged with finding and recruiting women to be spies for the Special Operations Executive in order to obtain vital information in Nazi-controlled Europe. Trained in sabotage and subversion, the SOE’s agents are sent in to build spy networks and relay information back about the enemy.

Based on true events, A Call to Spy focuses on two of Vera’s recruits Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas), who would become known to the Germans as “the most dangerous of all Allied spies,” and Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte) who became the first female wireless operator sent into occupied France.

A Call to Spy is an old school spy thriller about normal people standing up to do the extraordinary when called upon to serve a country that doesn’t value them as much as it should. Director Lydia Dean Pilcher and screenwriter Sarah Megan Thomas not only shed light on the women’s accomplishments but also highlight the sexism and racism they fought both abroad and at home by those questioning their loyalty and usefulness as part of the war effort.

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Usagi Yojimbo #14

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Usagi Yojimbo #14 comic review“The Return” concludes with Miyamoto Usagi and Kenichi fighting off a horde of misguided former Mifune supporters hoping to damage the honor of Lord Hikiji with an attack on the shogun’s agent. Usagi Yojimbo #14 offers a couple of more surprise guest-appearances as Mariko arrives with the help of her son Jotaro and Usagi’s old master Katsuichi.

There’s plenty of action in this final issue as the warriors hold off the assassination. However, discovery of the plot by Mifune supporters does Usagi no favors as he is forced to leave his home once more. Before exiting, however, he does get to spend a little time with the son no one knows is his and his former sensei, offering some joy to a trip home that was scarred in violence and death. And now, once again, the rabbit ronin’s travels continue.

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Once and Future #13

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Once and Future #13 comic reviewWith the Beowulf misadventures now complete, Duncan, Rose, and Bridgette prepare for the next move by Merlin and Zombie Arthur. They don’t have to wait long as a murder of crows show up to deliver dark warnings to Bridgette, which she doesn’t take kindly to.

Unwilling to sit still and wait for trouble to find them, the trio goes in search of the next Lancelot, believing him to be the key to Zombie Arthur’s next move. What they find instead is a gang of Nazis and something else entirely as the Green Knight has entered their tale. His sudden appearance does help Duncan with the Nazis. Is he foe? Or just another pawn in Merlin’s larger design?

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Zappa

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  • Title: Zappa
  • IMDb: link

Zappa movie reviewAlex Winter (Bill of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure fame) helms the new documentary on musician Frank Zappa. The aptly titled Zappa is most notable for Winter’s level of access to Zappa’s extensive vaults of video and musical recordings (he apparently recorded everything) along with interviews from those who knew him best. A mix of celebration of a genius and portrait of a self-indulgent individual catered to by a small but fiercely supporting base, Zappa explores the musician’s driving force to translate and recreate the music heard in his mind into reality.

What Winter delivers is an unapologetic portrait of a man who would likely have been interesting to meet but impossible to live with. While Zappa loved his wife and children, the documentary shows a man who didn’t necessarily believe in the idea of friendship while being largely obsessed in using people to manifest his own dreams into existence. The documentary also touches on Zappa’s experimental style, his celebrity within the music business, his aversion to making hit records, working as an ambassador for Czechoslovakia, and his growing role against censorship of music.

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