3 Razors

The Eel and the Cave

  • Title: Memoirs of a Geisha
  • IMDb: link

Memoirs of a Geisha wants to be a grand and epic story; it’s not.  Beautifully shot the film lacks the story and the emotion to tell the tale worthy of the performances it wastes.  Though incomplete and somewhat shallow the film does give some worthy moments to compliment its magnificent look and is worth viewing, but I wanted a little more than the film was willing to give.

The story tells of a young girl Chiyo (Suzuka Ohgo) who is sold by her father (Mako) to become a geisha.  She grows up the house as a slave and eventually realizes her dream of being trained and reborn as Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang) a true geisha before all is taken away by the war and she must then decide how to put her life back together.

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Quite Elementary Dear Holmes

  • Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking
  • IMDB: link

sherlock-holmes-case-of-silk-stalkingRupert Everett brings a certain savior fair to the role of Sherlock Holmes in The Case of the Silk Stocking.  Like Simon Brett, Everett doesn’t shy away from presenting Holmes as boorish and snobbish.  If only the writing and the mystery had lived up to his performance.

Dr. Watson (Ian Hart) has left Baker Street and is preparing for his wedding.  Sherlock Holmes (Rupert Everett) has removed himself from the mundane crime of London only finding solace in the prick of a syringe.  Lured out of his despondency by Lestrade (Neil Dudgeon) and Watson, Holmes tackles a case involving a serial killer who preys on the young daughters of the London elite.  Each victim is found dressed in clothes not her own, strangled to death, and with a silk stocking buried in her throat.

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Zorro Part Deux

  • Title: The Legend of Zorro
  • IMDb: link

Way back in 1998 Zorro, the sword wielding, bullwhip snappin’, hero to the downtrodden of California, returned to the big screen in The Mask of Zorro.  Now 7 years later a sequel has finally been made.  So how is it?  Well if you liked the first one you’ll probably enjoy this one as well.

Zorro (Antonio Banderas) has been swashbuckling his way through California as the champion of the people.  California is in the final stages of joining the United States of America, and as promised Zorro is looking to retire.  But wait, there is still evil afoot; despite the insistence of his wife Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) our hero cannot bring himself to hang up the mask.

The villains looking to stop California’s induction into the Union include a duke who is also a knight of a forgotten order and former flame of Elena’s Armand (Rufus Sewell), and dirty rotten good fer nuthin’ killer McGivens (Nick Chinlund) and his seemingly never ending posse of nameless thugs with guns and swords.  There’s also a Confederate officer and a plot to help the South win the Civil War, the Pinkertons, Elena as a spy….(yawn) um, never mind.

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Quake 4

  • Title: Quake 4
  • wiki: link

There was a time when the idea of a new Quake game would be enough to send me into paroxysms of spastic nerd ecstasy. The first Quake was seriously that cool. How could it not be?  It was Doom times a 1000, and it even had Trent Reznor (from Nine Inch Nails) doing the music and sound effects.  Whether ID has lost there way (or I’ve just outgrown that style of game) remains to be seen, but in regards to the just released Quake 4 the fact remains that it’s just a ‘meh’ experience.

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Welcome to Fantasy Island

  • Title: The Island
  • IMDB: link

So…how much for a clone of Scarlett Johansson?
There are two ways to review a film:  The first is to judge it on whether it met your expectations going in and the second is to look at the film and ask if it still works despite its flaws.  Under the first category The Island fails early on, but under the second it succeeds spectacularly.  I went to see what I thought was going to be a big budget high-thinking moral sci-fi tale about cloning, but what I got was a huge summer action adventure chase movie inside a sci-fi structure that just blew me away for two hours.  Does it deal with the moral issues?  Kinda’.  Would I have liked to see them develop the philosophical and ethical implications more deeply?  Probably.  But did I enjoy the movie?  You better damn believe I did.  I had a blast.

Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) is unhappy.  He’s one of the lucky ones; he survived the cataclysm and radiation that devastated the earth and lives in relative comfort with the other survivors who hope every night that they can win a chance to live outside on the island, the last free uncontaminated zone on the planet.

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