1.5 Razors

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
  • IMDb: link

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel2011’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel boasted a cast that was able to elevate its source material to create a likable, if lightweight, film about a group of elderly travelers finding a second home in India by choosing to stay in “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the the Elderly and Beautiful.”

The sequel returns most of the cast, and director John Madden, but almost none of the charm of the first film. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel wastes it cast and beautiful backdrop with enough romcom cliches, misunderstandings, overreactions, and poor judgement to fill half-a-dozen Three’s Company‘s episodes or three Kate Hudson movies.

The drama surrounding the hotel this time around centers around Sonny Kapoor’s (Dev Patel) impending marriage to Sunaina (Tina Desai) and plans to grow his brand with the acquisition of a second hotel. Neither is going as smoothly as Sonny would like leading to the script slowly turning the charming young man into an intensely dislikable character and his bride into a woman too dense to understand the basic nature of the man she’s about to marry.

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Gotham – Rogues’ Gallery

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Gotham – Rogues’ Gallery
  • wiki: link

Gotham - Rogues' Gallery

After being disappointed by the first couple episodes of Gotham I decided to give the Batman-ish show a wide berth. News that Morena Baccarin was joining the cast as Dr. Leslie Thompkins and recommendations of others who thought the show had improved over the first-half of the season brought me back. Catching up on a few episodes I missed, and still quite concerned with a number of characters and plot points, I sat down to watch the mid-season premiere “Rogues’ Gallery.” The episode begins with Detective Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) stationed at the recently reopened Arkham Asylum as punishment where inmate outbursts and attacks on (and possibly by) patients have begun to concern the asylum’s director (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) who holds Gordon responsible for each breach in security.

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Gotham – Selina Kyle

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Gotham – Selina Kyle
  • wiki: link

Gotham - Selina Kyle

Did you ever think there would be a Batman television show so bad you’d rather be watching The WB’s universally derided Birds of Prey? Most of the issues I had with the “Pilot” return here including its inconsistent tone, ridiculous soap opera dialogue, and storylines which do no justice to beloved characters of the GCPD. The episode even includes a bizarre cameo by Carol Kane which seemingly was written and directed by Tim Burton on mescaline.

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Gotham – Pilot

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Gotham – Pilot
  • wiki: link

Gotham - Pilot

Opening on the worst night of Bruce Wayne‘s (David Mazouz) life, Detective Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) and his new partner Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) catch the murder case involving the deaths of Gotham’s most prominent citizens and the frightened young boy who was one of two witnesses to the crime. Desperately trying to create the grim feel of Christopher Nolan‘s recent films while featuring writing, acting, and dialogue better fitting a lazy afternoon soap opera than a much ballyhooed new primetime series, the “Pilot” of Gotham is sadly far, far removed from the far more interesting award-winning comic book tales of the GCPD by Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, and Michael Lark.

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Rage

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

RageIf you expect anything more from Rage than yet another throwaway B-movie from Nicolas Cage you are bound to be disappointed. Set around the life of a former mobster turned businessman, the film follows the decent of Paul Maguire (Cage) when his teenage daughter (Aubrey Peeples) is kidnapped and later found dead.

After her body turns up shot by a Tokarev traced back to the Russian mob, Maguire believes it must tie back into a hit from the old days involving a dead Russian mobster. Rounding up his old crew (Max Ryan, Michael McGrady) for answers and payback, Maguire’s actions threaten to start a gang war across the entire city.

Starting out like Taken, Rage turns into a revenge flick when the body of Maguire’s daughter is found. The trouble is the script by Jim Agnew and Sean Keller relies far too much on twists and coincidences to be compelling. And despite the number of long-held shots by Paco Cabezas Rage isn’t nearly as deep or dramatic as it aspires to be.

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