3.5 Razors

Son of Rambow

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Son of Rambow
  • IMDB: link

““I am the son of Rambo!””

Son of Rambow is a nice little independent film, quirky and with a good heart.  It’s main problem is it’s not sure just who its audience is.  My main problem is I’m not sure either.  Still, indie film fans should check out the local art houses to see if it’s playing in a theater near you.

The film is built around the meeting and unlikely friendship between the school’s trouble child Lee Carter (Will Poulter) and outsider Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), a member of the strict religous sect, the Plymouth Brethren.

Although an unlikely pair, the two are brought together by the Lee Carter’s bootleg tape of First Blood which inspires the two to create an entry in a local filmmaking contest for Screen Test featuring the adventures of the son of the famous Rambo.

The story, and the friendship of the pair, is complicated by their vastly different lives and the arrival of a instantly popular foreign exchange student (Jules Sitruk) who brings his own ideas, and his large following, onto the project.

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The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Vol. 2

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones Vol. 2
  • tv.com: link

young-indiana-jones-vol-twoVolume Two takes young Indiana Jones (Sean Patrick Flanery) into the ranks of the Belgium Army.  He enlists under the name Henri Defense (because he is underage at the time of his enlistment), and joins the war effort to do his part.

The adventures this time around begin with Indy’s role on the front lines in the trenches with his friend Remy (Ronny Coutteure).  Over the course of this volume he will fight on the front lines both on the Western Front and in Africa, work as a runner for the French, escape from a German P.O.W. camp with the help of Charles De Gaulle (Herve Pauchon), be drafted into a suicide mission by a company of old soldiers, and spend a stint as a photographer with the famous flyboys of the Lafayette Escadrille which will bring him face-to-face with the Red Baron (Marc Warren).

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The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Vol. 1

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones Vol. 1
  • tv.com: link

young-indiana-jones-vol-oneVolume One, as well as the second and third volumes of the series, chronologically collects the series in sets of television movies (rather than in the order the original hour-long episodes aired).

The first five chapters of the series involve the adventures of young Henry Jones Jr. (Corey Carrier) traveling around the country with his father Professor Henry Jones (Lloyd Owen, doing an acceptable Sean Connery impression), his mother Anna (Ruth de Sosa), and his tutor Miss Seymour (Margaret Tyzack).

Most of the adventures fall into the same basic story structure, which (somewhat unbelievably) doesn’t get old.  The family arrives in a new location where Prof. Jones has been asked to lecture and Indy finds a way to get out of studying and ultimately, whether meaning to or not, finds himself involved in mischief, often with historical characters.  An over the course of the episode young Indy learns an important lesson.

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The Man with No Name

/ / Comics
  • Title: The Man with No Name #1
  • Comic Vine: link

“Goddam it.”

“Saints and Sinners” begins the new series by Christos Gage and Wellington Dias with our hero walking into town only to find an ambush waiting for him.

Of course such a thing isn’t going to keep our hero down for long, and he takes care of business with his usual flourish.  But news that not only the Union Army but also the Confederacy are both after his head (the first for blowing up a bridge, the second for the small matter of the gold he’s currently carrying – from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) leads the Man with No Name to hit the road and journey out into the desert.

Our hero’s flight is interrupted however by an attack and a dying priest who makes a last request which will only further complicate our protagonist’s life.

The art of Wellington Dias and colors of Bruno Hang give the comic a somber, slightly dirty yet still vibrant look which works quite well.  I was also impressed with the use of light and shadow throughout the issue including several stand-out panels.

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Stop-Loss

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Stop-Loss
  • IMDB: link

stop-loss-poster

Stop-loss – the involuntary extension of a service member’s enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond the normal end of service.  The film tells us more than 650,000 troops have been sent to Iraq and roughly one-eighth of that number have been stop-lossed, or forced to return to duty past the time of their enlistment.

We begin in Iraq with the unit under the command of Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) which includes his boyhood best friend Steve (Channing Tatum) and the somewhat unstable Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).

Just before shipping home the unit is caught in an ambush which takes the lives of their friends.  On returning home the threesome are regarded as heroes, but Tommy and and Steve struggle with the readjustment.  Brandon is just happy to be home and free of the army, that is until his C.O. (Timothy Olyphant) informs him he has been stop-lossed and will be returning to Iraq for another tour.

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