Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 27th, 2006
Huff – The Complete First Season, the Emmy Award-winning series from Showtime, comes to DVD from Sony Home Entertainment, and I have to say I couldn’t be more pleased with discovering it. The one thing I miss about premium channels in my cable package is getting to take part in the onslaught of superior original programming channels such as Showtime and HBO have to offer. Needless to say, Huff is a fitting inclusion to my reasons for jealousy towards all you subscribers out there. It follows the life of...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 26th, 2006
Dr. Dolittle 3 is yet another unnecessary direct-to-DVD sequel of a film, whose glory has long since passed. Young actress Kyla Pratt takes center stage as the next generation of Dolittle to inherit the gift – or curse – of hearing animals speak. At the outset of the film, she is ashamed of her gift, and her lineage. But when she is sent to an old family friend’s ranch for the summer, she begins to see that a talent is what you make of it. Along with telegraphed comedy, lightweight rivalries, and a budding rom...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 25th, 2006
Clint Eastwood’s film Million Dollar Baby tells the story of an aging fighter trainer named Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) who eventually decides to train a hillbilly girl (Swank) who thinks she can be a boxer. Dunn runs a gym in the Los Angeles area. One day a girl named Maggie Fitzgerald, from Missouri, approaches Dunn informing him that she has been working at a waitress job since the age of 13. She tells Dunn that boxing for her is the only way she can escape this type of job her life has thrown at her.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 25th, 2006
Dawson’s Creek follows the lives of Dawson Leery (James Van Der Beek) and his friends, as they struggle through their formative years and – in this final season – search for their places in the adult world. The first episode pulls a cruel tease in finally putting Joey (Katie Holmes) and Dawson together before the rug is pulled out from under their love affair the very next episode. Some might say it’s a decision from which the season never recovers – I say the show never had its footing to begin with. Plagued ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 24th, 2006
Steven Spielberg has always been a surefire type of director to go to if you want a high quality film. I was first introduced to Spielberg’s work via his groundbreaking film Jaws. Since then, Spielberg has continued to churn out hit after hit from 1993’s Schindler’s List which was awarded a Best Picture Oscar to his most recent film 2005’s Munich. Both of these particular films have gained numerous political and critical praise for the messages and raw power they both contained via the film’s int...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 24th, 2006
Say what you want about Robert Crumb, and his controversial cartoon funnies, but at least he’s found a healthy way of expressing not-so-healthy ideas – more than what can be said for his brothers, Maxon and Charles. Sony’s classic documentary Crumb (directed by Terry Zwigoff) demonstrates this in a beautifully ugly piece of filmmaking, now available in a new special edition to celebrate (albeit, a bit late) the film’s tenth anniversary. Maxon is the “molester” of the Crumb kids, and I say that hoping it’s an e...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 23rd, 2006
When I received Bachelor Party Vegas in for review, I took a quick glance at the cover and the basic plot and thought to myself ‘Oh, I haven’t seen something like this before.’ I suppose a film like this is a guaranteed profit maker since these films are usually pretty cheap to make and don’t need to involve much big talent or production.
The film beings with the apparent 10 Commandments of the Bachelor World. Some of them are amusing barely cracking a smile, while others are down right bordering st...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 22nd, 2006
A critically acclaimed Adam Sandler film? I’d never would I have thought I’d see the day. I guess if The Truman Show is one of Jim Carrey’s dramatic stabs, then the star of Big Daddy can give a romantic comedy a try. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia), using a story from the “Strange But True” category, combined with adding a touching tenderness to his characters, wrapped up with Sandler, playing a quiet, soft spoken man prone to fits of blind rage.
Sander is Barry ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 22nd, 2006
Synopsis
After hearing a lot of good things about a sleepy film from Denmark called Brothers, I was curious to see what all the fuss was about. After all, we are talking about a country that has produced a visionary director in Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves), but whose films have been a little bit on the polarizing side.
Produced as part of the Danish Dogme productions and written and directed by Susanne Bier (who created the underrated Open Hearts), Brothers is ab...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 21st, 2006
With HD-DVD gaining a lot of press and discussion over the past few months, many wondered what would be the initial title for release that would help showcase the power that Toshiba wanted to showcase. Some figured a big blockbuster like The Star Wars Trilogy could be released. (wouldn’t that be nice?) But with Fox being exclusive to Blu-Ray, HD-DVD’s main competition, no one could figure that a moderately successful film like 2003’s The Last Samurai would ever be thought of as a player seller. Well, af...