5 Razors

Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Chinatown
  • IMDb: link

I don’t know if 1974’s Chinatown is without doubt the best film for everyone involved, both in front and behind the camera, but one could certainly make the case. Director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne come together with a neo-noir staple which provided Jack Nicholson one of his most famous roles as private investigator J. J. Gittes who struggles to find the truth surrounding the death of chief engineer at the Department of Water and Power (Darrell Zwerling), who Gittes was hired to surveil by a woman (Diane Ladd) pretending to be his wife (Faye Dunaway), and uncover how that death plays into a larger conspiracy of the Los Angeles draught and a land scheme which allows 30s Los Angeles to become a major character in the film.

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Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown. Read More »

Jenny Sparks #6

/ / Comics

As the war of words continues between Jenny Sparks and Captain Atom, Jenny Sparks #6 continues to explore what it means to be a hero. We get references to not one but two pandemics Jenny lived through, first in 1918 and then in 2020 where her frustration boiled over that not even Superman could help. There’s a really nice moment between the pair in a flashback driving home the point of mask mandates and social distancing that far, far too many Americans missed.

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Jenny Sparks #6 Read More »

Flow

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

Sometimes you search an entire year in vain for the film which will allow you to fall in love with cinema, and what it can be, all over again. Flow is that perfect film. Springing from the mind of writer/director Gints Zilbalodis and co-writer Matiss Kaza, Flow follows a nameless black cat, and the various other animals he will meet along the way, in the mostly abandoned woodland setting where a flood will displace everything. Featuring no humans, nor narration or dialogue of any language, Flow is a survival story told through its use of real animal sounds, and the sounds of the surroundings, helping to bring the characters and their world to life.

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The Great Films – Galaxy Quest

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Galaxy Quest
  • IMDb: link

Galaxy Quest

Far from a flop, but not the box office family comedy smash the fledging DreamWorks Pictures was hoping for, Galaxy Quest came and went in the winter of 1999 and early 2000 with marginal success. Those lucky enough to see the film in the theaters were in for a treat that stayed around the top 10 of the box office for several weeks earning positive reviews from critics and earning back double its production costs.  Without really knowing what they had on their hands, bungling the marketing of the film and hamstringing its release, DreamWorks had nevertheless produced the best Star Trek movie ever made.

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Seven Samurai

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Seven Samurai
  • IMDb: link

Seven Samurai

Widely regarded as on of the finest, and most influential, films in the history of cinema, the Criterion Collection releases this new 4K/Blu-ray combo featuring the extras of previous releases and the film available in 4K for the first time. Akira Kurosawa‘s classic about a group of ronin hired to protect a village provided a template that would be reused, repurposed, and remade countless times over the years from The Magnificent Seven to Three Amigos to “The Magnificent Ferengi” while specific scenes from the film have inspired sequences in everything from Blade Runner to Mad Max: Fury Road.

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