A question to ponder before we head into this review. What do you get when you mix anime or japanese animation with a healthy dose of John Woo? Besides a ton of falling gun shell casing and cute characters performing acrobatics in the air while taking down a dozen bad guys? You get a movie that goes full speed for over a hundred minutes and makes you realize that this is truly the perfect avenue for John Woo and style of films. However, just don’t expect there to be a completely solid story behind it.

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The World Cup is unquestionably the greatest sporting event in the world. No other event, sporting or otherwise, pulls nations together like the World Cup does. Once every four years, the whole of the world (save for the majority of the United States) takes a month off to focus their eyes on the efforts of a group of young men to put a white ball into a white net. This film is the story of the 1996 edition of the famed tournament.

This film does a great job of capturing the story of the tournament, while not …

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Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden return for more hokiness in the complete second season of I Dream of Jeannie, which features 31 not-so-fantastic episodes with the most juvenile humor and situations. I suppose the possibilities for fun are there, but none are fully realized, perhaps because censors just wouldn’t let the series be all it could be. For goodness sake, they wouldn’t even allow the display of the lovely Eden’s belly button in her mid-riff outfit. Leave it to censors to find sex in the most ludicrous o…

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Mel Gibson stars as reluctant guerilla fighter Benjamin Martin in this story of courage, passion, and war, which dramatizes elements from the American Revolution into a gripping fictional narrative that will manipulate every emotion you have until its rousing finale. Martin endures great personal tragedies at the hands of the British - in particular, the despicable Colonel William Tavington (played with the vile gusto of a demon from Hell by Jason Isaacs). Tavington has already killed one of Martin’s sons, and it is …

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Synopsis

Roy Scheider is the police helicopter pilot and Vietnam war vet (cue flashbacks) who is tapped to test Blue Thunder, a new helicopter equipped with every conceivable weapon and means of surveillance. He discovers that the machine is at the heart of a conspiracy to undermine all that is good and free, and chief bad guy here is Malcolm McDowell, for whom Scheider has a more than cordial dislike thanks to what happened back in ‘Nam. The stage is set for high-tech showdown in the skies over LA….

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Synopsis

Five years after saving New York City from supernatural destruction, the Ghostbusters have fallen on hard times. Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver have broken up, and he is now the host of a dubious psychic TV show. Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson have been reduced to performing a children’s parties, what with the anti-spook outfit having been sued into non-existence. And so it goes. But then weird goop, powered by New York’s anger, rises from the ground to create havoc anew.

Can anyon…

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Synopsis

These are the adventures of the Legacy (whose front is the Luna Foundation), a secret society dedicated to protecting humanity from the forces of darkness. And wouldn’t you know it, those pesky forces are present around every corner in the form of somewhat ramshackle special effects. The leader of the group lost his father to demons as a child, and now carries on the good fight. Every episode sees the group up against another nasty ghost or other supernatural force. Points must be given for …

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Stargate Atlantis took a little getting used to. I wasn’t sure the characters had enough chemistry or were even dynamic enough to carry the high expectations for a Stargate series. When the show was first introduced it was likely that Atlantis would soon take over for the original series. Anderson had wanted to leave for years and it seemed the end was near for SG-1. Since that time SG-1 is about to enter a tenth season and the new format is working quite well. Now I can view Atlantis more as the companion show it really excels at being.

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The Mask of Zorro was the Pirates of the Caribbean of its day. A classic swashbuckling story packed with action and romance, yet still presented in a family-friendly style that hearkened back to the days of the old Saturday afternoon matinée. Indiana Jones was conceived in this style, as was Disney’s National Treasure, in a way. There is a ton of room in the marketplace for PG and PG-13 rated films like this, as it provides something that the whole family can not only attend at the theater, but t…

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Synopsis

For the audience this film is aimed at, a synopsis should be superfluous. At any rate, this isthe tale of March family, consiting of mother Marmee (Susan Sarandon) and her four daughters:protagonist Jo (Winona Ryder), proper Meg (Trini Alvarado), delicate Beth (Claire Danes) andyoungest Amy (first Kirsten Dunst, cute as a button, then Samantha Mathis). We begin during theCivil War, with the father absent, and the family dealing with the privations of that time, andthen move…

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Synopsis

Nine more SpongeBob episodes, including the double-length “Christmas Who?” Not all theepisodes are Christmas, or even winter, related. “Procrastination,” for instance, showsSpongeBob desperately trying to write an essay (amusing enough, but not a patch on RichardCondie’s animated short “Getting Started”). All in all good-humoured fun, though I keep beingreminded of Ren and Stimpy with the edge removed.

Audio

The sound is much the same as that on the…

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Synopsis

The Justice League is Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Hawkgirl, Green Lantern,Martian Manhunter and the Flash. The first story, “In Blackest Night,” sees Green Lanternaccused of destroying an entire planet. “The Enemy Below” introduces Aquaman (a verydifferent one from the version older viewers might remember from their youth). The animation isa slight notch above the usual Saturday morning fare, and the look of the characters isinterestingly stylized, in the vein of the Ba…

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Synopsis

Colin Farrell plays the Hart of the title, a callow youth kept from the front lines of WWII by his senator father. Fate puts him in a prison camp, however, where he meets McNamara (Bruce Willis), who is determined to continue to fight (echoes here of William Holden in The Bridge On the River Kwai).

Audio

The sound is spectacular. You Are There, be it in the war or in the prison camp. Footsteps, wind, horses hooves — everything resounds on all sides. The music, bea…

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Series

This is a fun little animated series that takes me back to my childhood. The story line for the first five episodes can be expected… Batman must battle The Joker, The Scarecrow, Poison Ivy and more to protect Gotham City.

Audio

Equipped with a 2.0 Dolby Digital audio track, this disc sound alright, but not stellar. The surrounds are not touched, and the sound is very mono sounding. This is not a big surprise considering it is a television cartoon series, but some …

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