Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 29th, 2010
The original Batman: The Animated Series is one of my favorite cartoon shows of all time. Depending on which day you ask me, I might go ahead and say it is my favorite (the other times, I’ll probably mention X-Men or Johnny Bravo). It was the perfect blend of cartoon super-hero drama, with a dose of dark and foreboding circumstances. Enter 2008, Batman: the Brave and the Bold, another Batman cartoon but on the lighter side of the equation. Would this show hold up as much as the historic original?
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Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on August 22nd, 2010
A renowned street fighter’s brother is murdered, so he flees to a small town where his crippled father lives. While there he discovers an underground circuit of Mixed Martial Arts competitions and raw, street fighting prize matches. With the help of a former MMA champ (played by real-life UFC contender Michael Bisping), our hero fights his way up to the top of the underground action in order to pay off the gangster who slayed his brother, earn the respect he deserves, and what the heck…win a new love interest too.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 18th, 2010
Some of you are aware of this but my favorite movie of all time is Escape from New York. To me, John Carpenter and Kurt Russell represent the perfect director/actor combination. The director knows how to play the actor’s strengths (and minimize weaknesses) and the actor knows how to bring out the best in the direction. It is my sincere pleasure to cover this film on its first trip to the Blu-ray format.
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 28th, 2010
Woody Harrelson is Arthur Poppington, a child-like adult who fights crime by night in the guise of Defendor. His costume and weapons are DIY: a helmet that records his adventures on VHS, a duct tape “D” on his black turtleneck, a trench club, a slingshot, marbles, lime juice. He is obsessed with tracking down “Captain Industry,” a mythical figure whom he blames for the death of his drug-addicted mother. He runs afoul of corrupt cop Dooney (Elias Koteas at his scuzziest best), beating him and “rescuing” prostitute Kat (Kat Dennings), and the latter convinces him that the crime boss Dooney works for is, in fact, Captain Industry. Arthur sets out on his crusade, and the question is whether his naiveté will triumph, or get him killed.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 27th, 2010
“This is Hell, and I’m going to give you the guided tour.”
There have been a lot of great prison and prison break films over the years. Who can forget Dustin Hoffman in Papillon or Clint Eastwood in Escape From Alcatraz? Of course, more recently we had The Shawshank Redemption. Lock Up won’t ever taste the rare air of those classic films. In fact, it’s not really a prison break film at all. There is an attempted break, but it’s not quite the focus of the film. I almost felt like I was watching the sequel to a break film.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 19th, 2010
G.I. Joe the Movie was originally supposed to be a real box office movie. It was to be the first of three animated motion pictures put out by Hasbro Toys. The other two were based on Transformers and My Little Pony. However, production delays caused the other two to go first. When Transformers and My Little Pony did poorly (gee, never would have guessed that a talking magical pony failed to grab box office sales), it was decided that G.I. Joe would go the direct video route. Years later, it still proved to be arguably the best of the three.
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Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on July 14th, 2010
Street Hawk is an adventure series about a young cop named Jesse Mach, played by one-time 80s pop idol Rex Smith, who gets injured on the job and is selected to be a part of an experimental motorcycle / vigilante program (funded by the government), that is helmed by computer genius Norman Tuttle, played by a pre-Murphy Brown Joe Regalbuto.
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 24th, 2010
Bill Williamson (Brendan Fletcher) is an angry young man. His boss treats him badly, he can’t get good service at the local coffee shop, and his parents are trying, none too subtly or smartly, to get him to move out. He hangs out with a friend who talks a big talk about changing the world, but does nothing. Bill, by contrast, is about to do something: gearing up with so much body armor he becomes a walking tank, he begins a gigantic massacre in town, beginning by blowing up a police station, and going on to gun down anyone who crosses his path. There is, however, rather more method to his madness than might appear.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 8th, 2010
“You may think this silly, but ever since I can remember I had this urge to be a knight. Not in armor or anything like that. Just in spirit. You know, to help the helpless. To find a wrong and right it. Then somewhere around 13 or 14 it sort of all became an urge to save beautiful damsels in distress. I just wish that somewhere in all of those books I read about knights and dragons they’d have warned me about damsels wearing little straw hats.”
Donald P. Bellisario has made quite a name for himself in television drama.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 13th, 2010
Many of you probably read my review for Iron Man 1994 Animated Adventures on DVD earlier this week. In that review, I told a story of two very different seasons of Iron Man. Well, Iron Man Armored Adventures is even more different because it deals with Tony Stark as a teenager. There is no telling whether this teenage Tony will be like a younger version of the suave and sophisticated playboy or play out like a mechanized version of Peter Parker from the most recent Spectacular Spider-Man show.
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 9th, 2010
Having accidentally blinded a singer during a contract killing, hit man extraordinaire Chow Yun-Fat, consumed with guilt, becomes the woman’s protector, and seeks redemption by finding some way to restore her sight. Meanwhile, Danny Lee is the plays-by-his-own-rules cop on his trail, and inevitably the two men will find themselves as unlikely allies in gigantically operatic gunfights.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 8th, 2010
Volume Five of the Animated Series known as X-Men is now upon us. Included here are the last fourteen episodes that haven’t been put on disc for the masses. There is a lot going on in these twenty one minute chunks. There are some good things, bad things, funny things and more confusing things than probably should be in a children’s animated show. So let us spend some time, the final time with our beloved mutant friendly superhero group.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 6th, 2010
Iron Man 2 comes out this week and is set to do fantastic business. Usually I’m a person who waits for movies to hit dvd and blu-ray and I’m already planning to when I can go see this movie. But one of the things I’ve come to appreciate over the years is when a big movie such as Iron Man 2 comes out, there are disc releases that dip into yesteryear and help to get you in the mood. Imagine my surprise when I was asked to review Iron Man: The Complete 1994 Animated Series.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 26th, 2010
The first District 13 movie was considered a modern day cult classic. It featured a number of meticulous and daring stunt scenes that were worked without the use of wires or computer generated effects. It was written and produced by Luc Besson famous for Fifth Element & Leon. But would the sequel set in the future 3 years later be able to hold the same interest?
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Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on April 7th, 2010
A young criminal (I assume he’s a criminal of some sort) owes a major debt to a Columbian kingpin and he enlists his brother, K, for help. K bumps up a planned armoured car heist by a month in order to help, and the adventure starts there as we see a rag-tag gang pull of said heist and then plan their final moves in a rented warehouse.
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 7th, 2010
A spaceship crashes. From it emerge a monstrous creature called the Moorwen, and a man, Kainan (Jim Caviezel in Buff Action Mode), who is determined to hunt it down. However, he is promptly captured by vikings and taken to their village, at which point he must convince them of the terrible danger they are in. As it turns out, they don’t take much convincing, once the Moorwen attacks.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 28th, 2010
Around Thanksgiving of last year, I started to see trailers of a particular movie that quite literally made me laugh out loud. The reason behind it is because I knew with the title of the movie and the obvious plot, there was no way I was not going to review it when it came to dvd & blu-ray. I have a reputation for certain movies, I guess you could say. That movie was Ninja Assassin. Several months later, I am reviewing it for a mass audience. Funny how that works.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 17th, 2010
“There’s two kinds of people in this world when you boil it all down. You’ve got your talkers and you’ve got your doers. Most people are just talkers. All they got is talk. But, when all is said and done, it’s the doers who change the world. And, when they do that, they change us. And, that’s why we never forget them.”
And while The Boondock Saints never did bring in box office gold (heck, it didn’t even bring in Box Office aluminum) like the characters in the film, they were not forgotten.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 11th, 2010
There was a new Cowboy in Dallas, and he wasn’t throwing touchdown passes. But Walker was almost gone before he could really get started. After just four episodes the show’s production company suffered financial collapse, and the show was rescued at the last minute by CBS Productions, who would continue to run the show for its nearly decade-long run. For nine years Chuck Norris brought us the ultimate Texas Ranger in a formula cops and robbers show. The show often became a parody of itself, but maintained a solid viewer ship throughout
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Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on March 1st, 2010
The ice caps have melted, leaving only 10% of the world livable, according to the opening narration of this adventure/disaster film. Salvaging relics from “lost” cities is a means of making money for our heroes, a boat crew that comprises of James Brolin as a Captain with a secret connection to the Vatican, and his two sons. As they pick up goodies to trade or sell they also search for clues towards a grand solution to the global flooding problem that the Vatican is housing.
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 26th, 2010
Every seven years, thirty assassins descend on an unsuspecting city and slaughter each other, all the while being observed by hijacked security cameras for the benefit of the high rollers who are betting on the outcome. The previous winner was Ving Rhames, and he thought he had walked away from the life after that tournament. But then his wife was murdered, and he learns that the killer is in the new contest (taking place this time in England). Also taking part is the fatalistic Kelly Hu, who winds up being the reluctant protector of drunken priest Robert Carlyle, who even more reluctantly has become a long-shot competitor in the tournament after accidentally swallowing a tracking device that paints him as a legitimate target.
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Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on February 20th, 2010
Steven Seagal plays an LA cop who is forced into early retirement after being betrayed and shot by his partner. After an astounding recovery, which included blasting his partners brains all over the hospital walls (I’m assuming it was part of his rehabilitative therapy), he is hired by an old friend to be the head of security for his friend’s daughter. This family is linked to some bad dudes who are keen on uranium and kidnapping, so Seagal is forced to slowly shoot everyone near him while mumbling something about being a tough guy or whatever.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 15th, 2010
“The Man Who Cannot Die”, better known as the Phantom was created by Lee Falk in 1936. The comic strip runs until this day, despite the creator dieing more than ten years ago. The Phantom was a costumed crimefighter that lived in the country of Bengalla. Bengalla was fictional but located in Africa. In 1996, they finally decided to create a movie based on the comic strip to find out what the “Ghost Who Walks” would do on the big screen.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 3rd, 2010
Planet Hulk started out as a storyline from Incredible Hulk #88-#95 (2006). The Hulk was too strong for the planet Earth and so the Illuminati under the direction of Iron Man and Doctor Strange sent him to a planet where he can cause harm to nobody except himself. Of course, things don’t go exactly as the Illuminati probably hoped for. The direct to video movie deals with Hulk’s stay on planet known as Sakaar.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 1st, 2010
As the resident video game expert for the site, certain movies will always fall into my lap. Any movie that includes something about video games, good or bad I will get the chance to review. Sometimes, I’m not so thrilled and sometimes I’m simply elated to take on the task. But then every once in a while, I get a movie where I’m not sure what to expect. The movie Gamer seems to take that tone. But perhaps the journey will lead to some rather unexpected but pleasant surprises.
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