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Human Target – Sanctuary

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Human Target – Sanctuary
  • wiki: link

Human Target - Sanctuary

Although still quite enjoyable, and better than several episodes of the show’s Second Season, “Sanctuary” is the weakest episode of Human Target‘s opening season with a bit too much of Indiana Jones (mercenaries, hidden art, a secret monastery) for its own good. Always a sucker for the ladies, “Sanctuary” begins with Christopher Chance (Mark Valley) being hired by the girlfriend (Sarah Smyth) of a reformed thief (Sam Huntington) who turned on his crew rather than see the woman he loves get hurt. Now hiding out in a monastery on top of a mountain the thief is unaware the criminals he helped put away have escaped and are coming for revenge (and a priceless artifact hidden for decades somewhere in the monastery).

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San Andreas

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: San Andreas
  • IMDb: link

San AndreasIt’s hard to make either a great or truly awful disaster movie. Even setting out to craft memorable disaster porn (unless it’s centered around a completely ridiculous premise like sending oil riggers into space) is a challenge. Bucking the trend of world-ending disaster films where characters are fighting asteroids, a new Ice Age, or the core of the Earth disrupting all life on the planet, San Andreas is a bit of a throwback focusing just on California, and, for the most part, San Fransisco. A more localized disaster doesn’t have the doomsday cache of something like 2012 but San Andreas turns out to be a far better film.

Our main characters are fire and rescue expert Ray (Dwayne “It’s Okay to Call Me The Rock Again” Johnson), his estranged wife Emma (Carla Gugino), and their college-age daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) who are separated when California begins experiencing a series of increasingly harsh earthquakes and spend the film working back to each other as, once again, a huge disaster seems to magically fix all relationship issues over two hours. Disaster couples counseling has been used so often in movies it has become its own cliche.

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Samurai Jack – Episode I: The Beginning

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Samurai Jack – Episode I: The Beginning
  • wiki: link

Samurai Jack - Episode I: The Beginning

Genndy Tartakovsky‘s vision of a time-displaced samurai warrior lost in a dystopian future ruled over by an all-powerful evil shape-shifting demon might be both the most unlikely and ingenious animated series ever to air on Cartoon Network. Episode I, which ends with Samurai Jack (Phil LaMarr) being sent into the future, is the only episode of the series to take place completely in the warrior’s own timeline. Introducing us to the evil that is Aku (Mako) and the young warrior who will grow into his greatest nemesis, “The Beginning” offers us glimpses of the samurai’s training around the globe following Aku’s return to power and enslavement over Jack’s home. To refer to these sequences as a montage would not do them justice as Tartakovsky transforms the young boy into the warrior fans will come to know and love with a collection visuals without the need for narration or a single word of dialogue.

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Human Target – Embassy Row

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Human Target – Embassy Row
  • wiki: link

Human Target - Embassy Row

In an episode that finds our hero poisoned and forced to break into a Russian Embassy to find a cure for both himself and an old friend’s dying brother “Embassy Row” introduces Emmanuelle Vaugier as my favorite recurring character of the entire series: FBI Agent Emma Barnes. The episode begins when Aaron Cooper (Firefly‘s Sean Maher) is given Christopher Chance’s (Mark Valley) number by his dying brother who knows Chance is the one man who may be able to save Aaron from a similar fate.

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Tomorrowland

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

TomorrowlandIn tone, message, and design Tomorrowland feels very much like an old school Disney live-action film albeit with far better special effects. With a hopeful message, and heart penned to its sleeve, the screenplay by Damon Lindelof and director Brad Bird offers a look at the wonders and dangerous of technology which will bring two strangers together to a place where imagination is the only limitation of what is possible.

Presented with dueling narration by Frank Walker (George Clooney, played as a child by Thomas Robinson) and Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), Tomorrowland informs the audience of how each first learned of a scientific wonderland just outside our dimension before throwing the pair together to save the city and all of Earth from a mistake that continues to haunt the older scientist.

Clooney’s charm helps soften Frank’ rougher edges and Robertson plays well off of him. The real star, however, is Raffey Cassidy as the android who brings the pair together in an effort to put right what went wrong more than two decades before which got Frank expelled from Tomorrowland forever.

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