Alan Rapp

Maria

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

Maria explores the final days of renown opera singer Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie) looking back on her life in a self-medicated haze that blurs fantasy and reality in her quest to rediscover the voice she lost years ago. The standouts here are Jolie’s performance, for which she trained 7 months to learn to sing opera (a mix of both Jolie and Callas’ voices are used throughout the film), and the film’s amazing look courtesy of cinematographer Edward Lachman, set decoration by Sandro Piccarozzi, and costumes by Massimo Cantini Parrini.

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Kraven the Hunter

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Kraven the Hunter
  • IMDb: link

Following the lackluster Morbius and the disastrous Madame Web, and limping into theaters as the news breaks that Sony is abandoning it’s wider Spider-Man Universe comes Kraven the Hunter starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as super-villain Sergei Kravinoff reimagined here as something closer to the Punisher targeting, hunting down, and murdering criminals like his father (Russell Crowe). If there’s praise to be levelled at Kraven, it’s that the film is better than either Morbius or Web. However, that’s a dubious distinction.

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Black Doves – A Little Black Dove

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Black Doves – A Little Black Dove
  • IMDb: link

There’s an awful lot to like in “A Little Black Dove” which gives us a terrific kitchen confrontation between Helen Webb (Keira Knightley) and the hired assassin (Paapa Essiedu) who killer her lover but also flashbacks to Helen’s recruitment into the Black Doves, her first meetings with both Sam (Ben Whishaw) and Mrs. Reed (Sarah Lancashire), and the first assignment which went a little too well and ended up changing her life forever. By the end of the episode we not only have far more context for Helen’s career as a spy but also a measure of victory in her besting the assassin. 

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Red Sonja #16

/ / Comics

As both Kulan Garth and Erlick separately search for her leaving valleys of bodies in their wake, Red Sonja heads through the wetlands into the mountains with Unnar, and with the warrior Atali on her heels. Despite death taking a grip on her, Sonja continues along fighting her own visions (which she discovers the ability to alter), Kulan Garth’s shadows, and giant monsters standing in the way of her path to the Afterworld.

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Arcane – Finally Got the Name Right

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Arcane: League of Legends – Finally Got the Name Right
  • IMDb: link

Despite promising Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) that the quest to take down Jinx (Ella Purnell) wouldn’t change her, events in the undercity lead Caitlyn (Katie Leung) to putting the life of a child at risk to get her revenge. Unwilling to let her go that far, Jinx escapes, the bombs she placed around the city go off leading the to the toxic gas Piltover has been pumping underground for years to reach the surface, and playing right into the hands of the now quite desperate Ambessa (Ellen Thomas) as the episode teases more of the Black Rose and suggests that Ambessa is after something in the undercity that might offer her a chance to fight back.

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