1.5 Razors

Still Craptastic

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Fantastic Four (2015)
  • IMDb: link

Fantastic FourThe first pre-screening I ever attended as a critic was 2005’s Fantastic Four. It was, in retrospect, a brutal rite of passage. One would hope that after a decade full of comic book films (the good, the bad, and everything in-between) 20th Century Fox would have learned their lesson and seen fit not to unleash such a travesty onto an unsuspecting movie-going audience yet again. One would be wrong.

Fantastic? After three movies somebody really needs to sue Fox for false advertising. The series made substantial improvements with 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer but still could only squeeze mediocrity out of one the best stories Marvel Comics has ever published.

Choosing to wipe the slate clean by adapting the Ultimate Marvel versions of the characters (an alternate timeline of the Marvel Universe I had little interest in going into this screening and even less on exiting), screenwriters Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater, and Josh Trank weave a tale of boy geniuses, alternate dimensions, and maniacal villains who are evil solely because the plot is dependent on them to be.

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Beauty and the Beast – The Beast of Wall Street

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Beauty and the Beast – The Beast of Wall Street
  • wiki: link

Beauty and the Beast - The Beast of Wall Street

I gave up on The CW’s misguided Beauty and the Beast remake early in the show’s First Season. I simply was unable to buy into the idea of Kristin Kreuk as a New York cop or accept a version of Vincent (Jay Ryan) who is closer to a male model than anything resembling a beast. Checking in on the show’s Third Season premiere not much has changed.

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Stitchers – Friends in Low Places

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Stitchers – A Stitch in Time
  • wiki: link

Stitchers - Friends in Low Places

Wow, is this show stupid. The second episode of Stitchers finds Kirsten (Emma Ishta) betrayed multiple times by her new teammates inside the Stitcher program, completely misdiagnose and ignore the fact that she has all the leverage in the relationship, and then (totally against every aspect of her character presented over the two episodes) forgive the betrayal that nullifies the only incentive she had to join the program to begin with. And in the course of a murder investigation she’d rather not be involved with she will reveal the existence of the program to another outsider and put her new tech friends in danger yet again without even realizing the possible consequences of her actions. You know for a smart girl she can be remarkably dim at times, but given the level of writing on the show it seems she is in good company.

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Everly

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

EverlyEverly is a gritty revenge drama that fails because it refuses to embrace how ridiculous its premise is while delivering hard-boiled action verging on torture porn which would have been far more palatable as a more straightforward shoot ’em up.

Salma Hayek stars in the title role as a sex slave who, after four years, has finally had enough and starts to fight back. Taking place entirely in the apartment where Everly has been kept for years, the body count continues to grow as the the woman with no hand-to-hand combat or weapons training coninues to kill the odd range of prostitutes and killers who show up to collect the bounty on her head.

Written by Yale Hannon and directed by Joe Lynch, the movie also includes a subplot involving Everly’s daughter (Aisha Ayamah) and mother (Laura Cepeda) whose safety is her primary concern now that the shit has hit the fan. Available on DVD and Blu-ray, extras include two separate commentary tracks and a music video. Notable only for Hayek’s involvement and its bizarre assortment of characters, Everly is a misfire that never finds its target.

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Convergence: Batgirl #1

/ / Comics

Convergence: Batgirl #1DC Comics sure isn’t wasting much time to turn me off of Convergence. Despite being the exact target audience for this particular issue (It has Stephanie Brown as Batgirl! It has Red Robin in his Dr. Midnight pre-New 52 costume! It has Black Bat! And it even has Catman! CATMAN!) I still walked away disappointed.

First off the reveal of Convergence being nothing more than the unimaginative DC equivalent of Capcom Vs. doesn’t inspire much confidence in the storyline. Yes, it was fun seeing Stephanie back where she belongs, and I like the trio of Steph, Tim, and Cass together but none rang true to me as Steph’s giddy introspection is replaced with mopey narration (and what world is this exactly where Stephanie has never heard of Catman?).

It also doesn’t help that Convergence: Batgirl #1 might be the worst drawn mainstream super-hero comic I’ve ever read. The characters are ill-defined looking more lack slap-dashed artist sketches than a finished product, and the inking and coloring is haphazard resulting in numerous panels that appear out of focus. What the hell, DC? Pass.

[DC, $3.99]

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