Category: 2017

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

american gods

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 – Baby Driver

Baby Driver
Written & Directed by Edgar Wright

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In the Southern metropolis of Atlanta lives Baby, the best wheelman your heist could hire. He’s under the thumb of Doc (Kevin Spacey), a man who makes the jobs happen. The rest of the crews may change, but Baby is the one constant, Doc’s lucky charm. What makes Baby different than all the rest is that he’s always cranking the tunes, using the rhythm of his music to drive the car, life his life, and fall in love. Everything changes when Baby meets Deborah (Lily James), a waitress who wants to leave town and just drive while the radio blares on the speakers. Baby struggles to extricate himself from the mire of crime he’s drowning in, surrounded by lowlifes and sociopaths (Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, etc.). Will he get free and ride into the sunset with Deborah or will this be the day the music dies?

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Movie Review – Okja

Okja (2017)
Written by Jon Ronson & Bong Joon Ho
Directed by Bong Joon-Ho

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In 2007, Lucy Mirando, heir to the problematic Mirando Corporation announced the discovery of a new animal, superpigs. These miracle animals appear to be the world’s answer to the problem of hunger, and the 26 best are sent around the world to be raised by varying farming cultures in a bid to figure out how best to raise them. One of these superpigs, Okja ends up in South Korea raised by an old man and his granddaughter Mija. Jump to ten years later, and Mirando is calling in all the pigs for a contest that will kick off superpig meat coming to a store near you. These means Okja will be taken away, sent off to New York for “processing.” Mija is having none of this and sets off to reclaim Okja, unaware she is about to uncover the dark secret behind the Mirando corporation.

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Movie Review – Kong: Skull Island

Kong: Skull Island (2017)
Written by Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, Derek Connolly, and John Gatins
Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts

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It’s 1973, and the United States is withdrawing from the war in Vietnam. Lt. Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) isn’t happy about what he sees as an admission of defeat and a mark of shame for his helicopter squadron. His crew is assigned as escorts for a science expedition to an uncharted island in the Pacific, led by a government contractor, Bill Randa (John Goodman). British tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) and photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) round out the crew. They arrive on the island and immediately being dropping explosive to map out the density and structure beneath, but they awaken something ancient and furious, Kong.

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Movie Review – Power Rangers

Power Rangers (2017)
Written by John Gatins
Directed by Dean Israelite

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In the Pacific Northwest town of Angel Grove, five disparate teenagers are brought together when multicolored stones are unearthed. These coins imbue them with superhuman powers and lead the quintet to a subterranean alien craft buried millions of years prior. The inhabitants of this vessel, Alpha 5 and Zordon, inform the youths of an impending attack on their planet. The only way to stop this growing force of evil is to somehow unlock the power within their coins and become the Power Rangers, defenders of life.

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Movie Review – It Comes At Night

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It Comes At Night (2017)
Written & Directed by Trey Edward Shults

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Something terrible is happening. A virus is killing people, and no one seems to know quite where it comes from how exactly how you contract it. Travis (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) is living under the strict rules of his father, Paul (Joel Edgerton) and mother, Sarah (Carmen Ejogo). Doors are kept locked up and tight and venturing outside is planned for only short bursts. Into their life comes another group of survivors and out of this develops the central conflict of the film. Told from the perspective of Travis we get overhear conversations muffled by floorboards and see the horrific nightmares that keep the young man awake at night.

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Movie Review – The Red Turtle

The Red Turtle (2017)
Written Michaël Dudok de Wit & Pascale Ferran
Directed by Michaël Dudok de Wit

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An unnamed man is struggling to stay afloat during a violent storm on the ocean. He wakes up on the shores of a deserted island. After finding a source of fresh water and fruit, the man decides to use the bamboo that grows on the island to build a raft. His first attempt fails when an unseen force from beneath breaks the raft apart. After two more attempts, he finally spots the culprit, a giant red sea turtle. From there the relationship between the man and this turtle takes some unexpected turns and becomes a film about the stages of human life.

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TV Review – The Leftovers Season 3

The Leftovers Season 3 (2017)
Written by Damon Lindelof, Patrick Somerville, Tom Perrotta, Tom Spezialy, Tamara Carter, Lila Byock, Carly Wray
Directed by Mimi Leder, Keith Gordon, Daniel Sackheim, Nicole Kassell, Carl Franklin, Craig Zobel

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Seven years ago while people were going about their day to day lives, the Sudden Departure occurred. 140 million people, 2% of the population, vanished. No trace of them could be found, and the rest of humanity was left wondered what happened, why did it happen, and where did they go? For three seasons, The Leftovers followed Sheriff Kevin Garvey, Jr., Nora Durst, and the extended families that surrounded them. The series began in New York state, wandered to just outside of Austin, Texas, and concluded its run in Australia. With the eighth episode of season 3 the series ended and assured its place as one of the greatest television series of this current golden age.

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Movie Review – Buster’s Mal Heart

Buster’s Mal Heart (2017)
Written and Directed by Sarah Adina Smith

busters

Jonah (Rami Malek) is adrift in the sea in a rickety boat. He’s also been given the nickname Buster and is pillage the mountain home retreats of millionaires in Montana. Yet in another life, he was the concierge at a dead end hotel on the outskirts of those Montana mountains. He had a wife and a young daughter, with plans to save up and buy a piece of land where they could be “free.” Into Jonah’s life comes a strange, nameless drifter (DJ Qualls) who claims to be the Prophet of the Second Inversion and starts talking up Y2K conspiracies theories. Something is happening to Jonah that will lead him down a strange path and result in even the very notion of identity coming into question.

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