Cinema Dispatch: The Crow

The Crow and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate

Directed by Rupert Sanders

It’s been almost twenty years since the last Crow movie, and about thirty years since the only one anybody cared about. The production history on this is as tortured and unkillable as Eric Draven himself, and yet the box office proved to be the one thing that could put it down for good, as this reboot tanked as hard as Borderlands did just a few weeks ago. Still, something like the Crow would also be niche outside its one moment of pop culture relevance, so very few people going to see it doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t hit for the right kind of audience. Was the decade of false-starts and production woes worth suffering through to finally get us here, or should this have stayed dead, buried, and plowed over with concrete? Let’s find out!!

Eric Draven (Bill Skarsgård) isn’t great at a lot of things, but he is a solid boyfriend to Shelly (FKA Twigs) who’s escaped from a bad situation and is looking for a fresh start. Sadly for the both of them, her past catches up to her and the two are murdered by the hired goons of Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston). With such a horrible fate befalling them, a mysterious strange in the place in between life and death (Sami Bouajila) offers Eric the chance to come back to life and get his revenge against the monsters that did this to him as well as save Shelly’s soul because Vincent has some sort of demon thing going on that sends people straight to Hell. With nothing else to live for, or die for I guess, Eric takes the offer and becomes an angel of vengeance and begins his quest for the soul of his dearly departed girlfriend. Does this new lease on undead life restore balance to a world that has been corrupted by dark forces? Why did Vincent go after Shelly in the first place, and will Eric like the answers he finds along the way? Will he fight with all the strength and speed of the mighty crow!?

“CA-CAW!!”
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Cinema Dispatch: Ghost in the Shell

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Ghost in the Shell and all the images you see in this review are owned by Paramount Pictures

Directed by Rupert Sanders

Honestly?  I’ve been looking forward to this movie for months!  Now that’s not to say I thought it would be GOOD as the trailers didn’t seem to have much going for them, but there’s always hope that a property this primed for a big budgeted thrust into the mainstream will bring something interesting to the cinematic landscape, and even if that fails it will at least create a renewed interest in the original franchise and possibly some interest in making more movies like it.  I’m not the only one hoping for another live Action Dragon Ball, right?  As bad as Evolution is, it’s at least ENTERTAININGLY horrible!  So does this manage to subvert expectations and ACTUALLY be a solid entry in the Ghost in the Shell franchise, or was this project doomed from the start?  Let’s find out!!

In the near future where this movie takes place, we’ve successfully been able to recreate Deus Ex as the human population is becoming increasingly more mechanized through robotic augmentations and cybernetic implants.  However, now that every Average Joe can have a bazooka grafted onto their arm, Future Tokyo (at least I think that’s where this is set) has created a new Government Security Force known simply as Section 9 which deals with terrorist threats raised by Bionic Bad Guys!  One such Bad Guy is Kuze (Michael Pitt) who’s been offing several robotic scientists who work for the Hanka Robotics corporations, and it’s up to The Major (Scarlett Johansson) along with her team of Section 9 bad asses to stop him!  At least that seems to be the idea, but as the investigation goes on, The Major starts to question if she’s been told everything or if secrets are being kept from her.  You see, she’s basically just a brain in a metal casing which means she’s the most augmented-est person in the whole world, but that might not be ENTIRELY the truth.  Can The Major uncover the truth behind these mysterious killings and the motivations of the terrorist behind them?  What will she find once she digs a bit deeper into her past!?  Most importantly… how did they manage to make this feel so uninspired!?

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“BANG!  I guess…”

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