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Samurai Jack #9

/ / Comics

Samurai Jack #9“Villainous Vortex” pits Samurai Jack against a gravity-manipulating machine which, not surprisingly, turns out to be controlled by the evil that is Aku. Samurai Jack #9 delivers a fun story featuring Jack in action against one of Aku’s mechanical soldiers, but for the second straight issue the comic gives us no character interaction between Jack and anyone else. It’s not a bad thing, but I think it would be very easy to see the comic fall into that template that ignores one of the strengths of the television show which spawned it.

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Transformers: Age of Extinction

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Transformers: Age of Extinction
  • IMDb: link

Transformers: Age of ExtinctionI’m not a fan of Michael Bay‘s Transformers movies. In fact I’ve hated every single one. Transformers: Age of Extinction is not an exception, but on the sliding scale of horrific awfulness that is the Bay Transformers franchise it’s the least objectionable of the lot. Lazy, inane, and almost completely without merit, the latest Transformers film didn’t so much anger me as leave me increasingly confused and apathetic to the “storytelling” that was unfolding before my eyes.

The first film ruined a beloved childhood toy and cartoon franchise by centering the film not on the transforming robots themselves but a lazy 80s teenage sex comedy between Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox and lots of (pointless) robot porn. The sequel lowered the bar with a plot that makes Highlander 2: The Quickening sound plausible involving Transformer reincarnation and various inanity including a sexbot, racist robots, more American flag waving, and even more (pointless) robot porn.

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How to Train Your Dragon 2

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: How to Train Your Dragon 2
  • IMDb: link

How to Train Your Dragon 2Picking up five years after the events of the first film, How to Train Your Dragon 2 finds Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) dealing with new challenges including his father‘s (Gerard Butler) plans to hand over the kingdom of Birk to his son, an enemy (Djimon Hounsou) creating his own army of dragons to conquer the world, and the unexpected return of Hiccup’s mother Valka (Cate Blanchett) who disappeared and has been presumed dead since Hiccup was a baby.

Returning the original cast of characters including Astrid (America Ferrera), Gobber (Craig Ferguson), Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), Snotlout (Jonah Hill), Tuffnut (T.J. Miller), and Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig), the sequel leaves time for the events of the the television show to take place without forcing the viewer to have seen the series to make sense of the current state of events. Blanchett’s addition of Valka, a woman more at home with dragons than her own son, and that of Hounsou as the film’s new villain Drago Bludvist prove to be excellent choices, but the heart of the film remains Hiccup and Toothless.

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Samurai Jack #8

/ / Comics

Samurai Jack #8In an issue without dialogue the focus of Samurai Jack #8 becomes the art as Samurai Jack‘s attempt to hide from the noise of the future city leads him to a sleeping pod. Thanks to the maneuvering of his old enemy Aku, Jack awakes in a mirrored cave where his reflection creates distorted doubles of the samurai out for blood.

I like the idea of doing a Samurai Jack storyline without any dialogue, something “Jack Renumbers the Past” put to tremendious use for most of the episode, but a throwaway one-issue adventure doesn’t have the same impact of Jack returning home for the first time.

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X-Men: Days of Future Past

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: X-Men: Days of Future Past
  • IMDB: link

X-Men: Days of Future PastHoping to bridge the gap between the success of X-Men: First Class and the more star-studded original X-Men films, and wash the taste of how horrifically that series ended, 20th Century Fox brought back director Bryan Singer and decided on adapting one of the long-running comic’s most popular stories for the big screen. The task set before Singer was no small one but the director steps up with X-Men: Days of Future Past and, in a Geoff Johns-ian effort of making disparate (and often inane) pieces fit, finds a way to deliver the best X-Men movie to date.

Opening in a dystopian not-too-far future the film sets up its basic premise of the time travel of a character’s mental consciousness in an opening action sequence involving Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) and Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) along with several mutants we haven’t seen before: Bishop (Omar Sy), Warpath (Booboo Stewart), Blink (Bingbing Fan), and Sunspot (Adan Canto). What we learn is that Kitty can send a X-Men’s mind back in time to his younger self to warn of coming dangers and change the outcome.

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