Released in 1991, Backdraft may be director Ron Howard‘s most underrated film. Starring William Baldwin and Kurt Russell as estranged brothers and firefighters, the script by Gregory Widen (mostly known for his ties to the Highlander and Prophecy franchises) deals with several themes including family dysfunction, a mystery concerning a rash of unexplained arson, and the younger McCaffrey brother’s (Baldwin) quest to prove himself in the line of work that killed his father and consumes his older brother to the point it cost him his marriage.
Despite featuring Howard’s weakest leading man, Backdraft has held up well over two decades and the scenes of characters both fighting fire and discussing it remain its biggest strengths. Russell and Baldwin sell the contentious older/younger brother dynamic and the backstory of Brian’s historic lack of direction also explains his older brother’s attitude towards his new career.
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Getting you caught up on all the weekend reviews over on RazorFine Review here are the links for Escape Plan, DVD reviews of Embrace of the Vampire and The Third Season of Hawaii Five-0, comic reviews for the latest issue of The Shadow and first issue of Batman ’66, and the latest episodes of Covert Affairs, Elementary, White Collar, The Crazy Ones, and The Big Bang Theory.
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As an epilogue to the show which went of the year earlier this year, Transformers Prime: Beast Hunters – Predacons Rising returns the Autobots and Decepticons to the restored planet of Cybertron to face the new threat of Unicron (John Noble) who has assumed control of Megatron‘s (Frank Welker) fallen body and returned to Cybertron to destroy the planet once and for all. Sadly, like the series which proceeded it, the Beast Hunters movie closes without and appearance (or mention) of Grimlock and the Dinobots.
For a TV-movie with a running time of just over an hour, Predacons Rising includes quite a few storylines including Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and Wheeljack (James Horan) heading into deep space to recover the AllSpark, Predaking (John Noble) meeting two more of Shockwave‘s (David Sobolov) Predacon clones who nearly kill Ultra Mangus (Michael Ironside), Unicron creating a zombie army of Terrorcons out of the fossils of the original Predacons, and Autobots, Decepticons, and Predacons coming together to save Cybertron.
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The search for Red John heats up in the Fifth Season with the return of Emmanuelle Chriqui as Lorelei Martin as one of the serial killer’s most loyal disciples. First a prisoner of the CBI before being whisked away into seclusion by the FBI, Jane (Simon Baker) would eventually arrange for the woman’s escape, and help her search for the truth before seeing Lorelei meet a tragic end.
Highlights of the season include a flashback episode to Jane’s first case with the CBI, Jane’s hallucinatory meeting with his long-dead daughter (Dove Cameron), Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) and Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti) going undercover on the air with a radio love doctor, Rigsby’s father (William Forsythe) getting shot in the middle of a simmering gang war, Jane linking Red John to Visualize when discovering the site one of his early crimes, an unusual kidnapping, the cut-throat world of doctoral science, the mysterious death of a wealthy heiress, murder at the theater, and the search for the mysterious contents of LaRoche‘s (Pruitt Taylor Vince) Tupperware.
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Sometimes bad guys really did make the best good guys. Nine months after Leverage went off the air for the final time the show’s Fifth Season finally arrives on DVD. The final season offers a new home for the team, Parker (Beth Riesgraf) and Hardison (Aldis Hodge) as a couple, Nate (Timothy Hutton) making big plans, and the return of Sterling (Mark Sheppard) for the series finale.
Highlights of the season include insanely huge cons involving the theft of the Spruce Goose, faking first contact to drive their mark crazy, performing the impossible White Rabbit, solving the real-life mystery of D.B. Cooper, conning Capital Hill, stopping a terrorist plot, stealing Christmas from an evil toy manufacturer, and an injured Parker taking down a gang of thieves on her own.
Other episodes involve the team helping out a minor league hockey team and small winery, taking down a Wall Street swindler in Witness Protection, and Elliot (Christian Kane) enlisting the team to help out an old friend.
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After four seasons Beckett (Stana Katic) and Castle (Nathan Fillion) are finally together as a couple both in the police station and in the bedroom. Although the pair have to keep their relationship a secret for most of the season, various characters will discover on their own what the two are getting up to in the Fifth Season of Castle.
Highlights from the season include a two-parter involving the abduction of Alexis (Molly C. Quinn) and Castle meeting his father (James Brolin) during his Taken-esqe trip to Paris to find his daughter, Beckett tripping a bomb, murder by phaser at a sci-fi convention, a Bigfoot murder mystery, Ryan (Seamus Dever) going undercover to save an old flame (Cara Buono), Fillion reuniting with one of his Firefly co-stars (Gina Torres) for murder on reality-TV, Beckett returning to work to take down Maddox (Tahmoh Penikett) and discover the identity of the man who ordered her mother’s murder, the murder of a pop star, and the Rear Window style murder mystery created to celebrate the show’s 100th episode.
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The two-disc Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Ultimate Showdown set collects the final dozen First Season episodes of the current Nickelodeon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon including more of the Turtles battling 
The CW’s take on 
