Seth Harris

Movie Review – Fast Five

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Fast Five (2011)
Written by Chris Morgan
Directed by Justin Lin

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Dominic Toretto is on his way to prison when Brian O’Conner and Mia show up to bust him out. Months later, Brian and Mia show up in Rio de Janeiro to meet up with Vince, from The Fast & The Furious. Dom is on his way, and Vince has a job involving hijacking a train for cars belonging to local crime kingpin Reyes. Turns out one of these cars actually holds vital information to Reyes’ drug empire and Dom uses this as an opportunity to get rich. The DEA was transporting the cars on the train and want their evidence back. They dispatch Agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and his team to recover the car and take down Toretto and crew. To pull off the heist of Reyes’ fortune, Dom is going to need help and calls in Gisele, Han, Tej, Roman Pearce, Leo, and Santos. All of these people come together to make an insanely crazy action movie.

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The Revisit – Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko (2001)
Written & Directed by Richard Kelly

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Donnie Darko is a troubled teenage boy living in Middlesex, Virginia. He has bouts of chronic sleepwalking and sees a psychiatrist for his many emotional problems. His parents constantly worry about him while trying to raise his two sisters, his mother especially has Donnie on her mind at all times. Then a strange twist of fate occurs. An airplane jet engine crashes down on the house, right on top of Donnie’s room. However, he has been pulled from sleep, wandering to the local golf course where he encounters Frank, a man wearing a ghoulish bunny rabbit suit. Donnie is told the world will end by the close of October and from there he is encouraged to commit acts of vandalism that are seemingly random. However, there is a pattern to all the things Frank has Donnie doing and only, in the end, will the truth be revealed.

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Movie Review – Fast & Furious

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Fast & Furious (2009)
Written by Chris Morgan
Directed by Justin Lin

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Five years have passed since The Fast & The Furious, and Dominic Toretto has set up shop in the Dominican Republic. His girlfriend Letty and partners, including Han from Tokyo Drift, are hijacking fuel tankers for money. The heat has increased too much, so the crew disbands and Dominic decides he will leave Letty to draw the heat off of her. Months later, while working Panama City, he learns that Letty has been killed and returns to Los Angeles to attend her funeral in secret. At the same time, Brian O’Connor has inexplicably been allowed to become an FBI Agent despite a continued pattern of lawbreaking. He is pursuing an arms dealer named Braga who wouldn’t you know it, is connected to Letty’s death. Plus, Brian and Mia rekindle their relationship from the first film, because he super serious didn’t mean to betray them all and really loves her.

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Comic Book Review – Justice Society of America (1992)

Justice Society of America (1992-93)
Written by Len Strazewski
Art by Mike Parobeck & Mike Machlan

jsa Comics about youth are very popular at the moment. There are your old standards like Teen Titans and newer titles like Runaways, Generation X, Champions, and more. As a kid, I felt myself drawn more to the past titles and characters. I loved the books that introduced me characters that have been around for decades but never got the spotlight. It was no surprise that when I saw issue 2 of this short run on the racks at Kroger, I snatched it up without a second thought. Not until now have I been able to go back and re-read the all 10 issues of the run and fall back in love with these classic characters.

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Twin Peaks: The Return – Episode 9 Breakdown, Thoughts, and Analysis

Part 9
Written by Mark Frost & David Lynch
Directed by David Lynch

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After Part 8, it was hard to know where we would be going next in Twin Peaks: The Return. We are seemingly transitioning right back into the story, but I find myself wondering what elements of Part 8 will reverberate through the second half of the series. This episode opens on the Doppelganger Cooper stumbling down a country road somewhere in South Dakota. He stops to take a red handkerchief waiting for him on a fencepost, a signal.

On the jet headed back to Philadelphia, Gordon Cole receives a call from Colonel Davis from the Pentagon. Davis informs Cole briefly about the murder in Buckhorn and how this falls into the purview of Cole’s Blue Rose cases.

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Movie Review – Spider-Man: Homecoming

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Written by Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley, Jon Watts & Christopher Ford, and Chris McKenna & Erik Sommers
Directed by Jon Watts

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Peter Parker is riding the high from helping out Iron Man during the events of Captain America: Civil War. With his new Stark designed Spidey suit, he patrols Queens every afternoon after school and awaits the call for his next mission with the Avengers. However, he quickly learns that the primary focus of Tony Stark is for Peter to continue with his education and stay safe. Meanwhile, former salvage worker Adrian Toomes and his crew have had their livelihood taken from them by the newly formed Department of Damage Control, feds who come in and take over the recovery of tech from Avengers-related battles. Seeing that they are living in a new world, Toomes leads his men to steal and harvest this tech as weapons for ordinary criminals. Toomes himself wears a pair of vulture wings that allow him to swoop in and hijack shipments of technology. Peter and Toomes’ paths begin crossing, and our teenage hero has balance life as a high school student with the impending danger of these new weapons.

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Movie Review – The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift

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The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)
Written by Chris Morgan
Directed by Justin Lin

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Sean Boswell is a kid who just can’t stay in one place for too long. His penchant for getting into trouble at school, particularly through illegal racing, leaves him getting sent by his mother from Los Angeles to live with his father in Tokyo. Sean quickly befriends military brat Twinkie who introduces his new friend to the drift racing scene. After a disastrous first race against the obvious villain, DK, Sean is taken under the wing of Han, an associate of DK’s. Han teaches Sean how to adapt to a new style of racing while DK is pressured by his uncle in the Yakuza to flex his muscle. Like all these films, it wraps up with a high-speed race where…surprise! The protagonist wins!

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TV Review – American Gods

American Gods Season 1 (Starz)
Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman
Written by Bryan Fuller, Neil Gaiman, Michael Green, Maria Melnik, Bekah Brunstetter, Seamus Kevin Fahey, and David Graziano
Directed by David Slade, Adam Kane, Vincenzo Natali, Floria Sigismondi, and Craig Zobel

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Shadow Moon is a convict about to be released from prison following a failed robbery. He finds himself in the midst of personal tragedy as soon as he re-enters the outside world. However, a strange man named Mr. Wednesday crosses paths with Shadow and offers him a job to drive him around the country. Shadow beings to learn about the growing tensions between the transplanted gods of the Old World and the increasingly powerful new American Gods. With each stop, Shadow’s fundamental understanding of the universe begins to change.

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Movie Review – The Belko Experiment

The Belko Experiment (2017)
Written by James Gunn
Directed by Greg McLean

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The employees of Belko Industries’ Bogota, Columbia office, are off to another day of work. The company is a non-profit specializing in getting Americans jobs in other countries around the world, so a very high-end staffing agency. Mike Milch is put off by the newly hired and overly aggressive new security outside the building but shrugs it off. As the day begins, everything goes south, when an external presence takes over the building, locking it down in every way possible. The P.A. system is used to inform the employees that they have to kill two of their co-workers or there will be consequences. Of course, the employees call the voice’s bluff, and an example is made by detonating what they thought were innocuous tracking chips used in the case of kidnapping. Now human nature begins to reveal its true face when it becomes every man and woman for themselves.

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Movie Review – Better Luck Tomorrow

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Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)
Written Ernesto Foronda, Justin Lin, and Fabian Marquez
Directed by Justin Lin

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Ben and Virgil are two Asian-American high school students following the stereotypical honor roll/high achiever path. They participate in extracurricular clubs and sports to pad their applications for college, but there is a hidden side to their lives. At night they pull dumb childish pranks and make petty cash on a computer equipment scam with Virgil’s cousin Han. This changes when the trio become involved with Daric Loo, the golden boy of their high school who pushes them to get involved in drugs and larger scale crime. During this Ben has a major crush on Stephanie, his lab partner. However, Stephanie has a boyfriend, Steve (John Cho). Ben’s activities lead to a violent end and a cell phone ringing from underneath the sod laid across Virgil’s back yard

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