Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 5th, 2005
Posted by Kim Lee
This unauthorized biography by New Line Home Entertainment covers the life of Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. The documentary describes 50 Cent’s expedition of dealing drugs at the corner of Jamaica and Queens, to boxing, to becoming a gangster rapper, and in the end a music industry icon.
I was a little disappointed to find out that 50 Cent did not participate in the making of this film as this was revealed during the introduction. The documentary is produced using a combination of still images, animation, video...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005
Synopsis
Wesley Snipes (Major League) and straight to video really provide for several comedic moments. I don’t really know that much about Snipes, aside from some anonymous reports about just how nice he was on the set of the third Blade movie, along with the “cataract problem” he has. Nevertheless, his role in this film of the strong, silent type who is some Army special forces member provides him the chance to say a small amount of dialogue for what is presumably a lot of cash.
Th...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005
Written by Clayton Self
Long Way Round is a reality show/documentary in which two actors, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, trekked 20,000 miles around the world on their motorcycles. They started in London, and headed east through Russia and other countries, caught a short flight to Alaska, continued down through Canada and all the way to New York. It was an idea originally conceived by McGregor as a best friend road trip, but turned into an international spectacle, as millions of people shared their experience via television. A...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005
Synopsis
I haven’t seen The Hours. And I haven’t seen Chicago. And while all the Oscar talk seemed to revolve around either Kidman or Zellweger, after seeing Far From Heaven, I’ve gotta think that the wrong woman got the brass ring. Or gold little guy, whatever. Julianne Moore (who was also nominated in The Hours) does an outstanding job in this movie, set in 1957 Hartford. Moore plays Kathy Whitaker, the wife of a man (Dennis Quaid, Innerspace) who she surprises at work w...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005
Old Yeller is a hard film to take if you're a child. I thought the same would be true as an adult, so needless to say, revisiting this family classic for the first time through an adult's eyes promised to be a harrowing experience. In fact, for the longest time, I hated Old Yeller and berrated its merits as a film. I realize now after years of maturity and a second visit to the Coates family ranch my belittling of this film masterpiece was a defense mechanism to build up my own sense of machismo. The re...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005
Synopsis
Dag Yngvesson sets out to the San Fenando Valley to investigate the way the porn filmmaking world works. His first contact is with veteran actor Bill Marigold, who now sees himself as a sort of den father (to coin a phrase) to other performers. With help from Marigold, our documentarist lands one contact after another, some plenty disturbing, and before he knows it, he is being asked to be cameraman on a porn feature himself. The emotional climax follows returning star Jenna Fine’s struggle ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005
Hondo is something of an oddity among John Wayne films. For starters, it was a western not directed by Howard Hawks or John Ford, but by John Farrow, a director Wayne only teamed up with one other time in his career (a WWII film called The Sea Chase). This is also a very tightly edited film, clocking in at just 83 minutes, including an intermission! Though he had certainly performed in his fair share of westerns by this time, Hondo came a couple of years before the release of the long series of w...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005
Synopsis
On its surface, Almost You is potentially interesting. Considering the mid-‘80s production, you have Griffin Dunne, about to appear in Scorsese’s After Hours, but had already appeared in An American Werewolf in London. In this film, he is married to Brooke Adams, a.k.a. Mrs. Tony Shalhoub (Monk), but before that, had appeared in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, and had her own experiences in horror, appearing in The Dead Zone. As husband and wife, Dunne’s ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 4th, 2005
Synopsis
Anchor Bay, holding all (or most) of the keys in George Romero’s zombie film trilogy, released a four disc Ultimate Edition to capitalize on the theatrical release of the remake, done in grainy, handheld, 28 Days Later style by director Zack Snyder. There isn’t too much here plotwise that you need to be aware of. 4 people decide to seek shelter at an abandoned mall, a continuation of Romero’s first film Night of the Living Dead. I don’t really know of an underlying moral tale in this...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 3rd, 2005
Phillip Noyce's critically acclaimed Newsfront comes to DVD from Blue Underground in a quite impressive package. While not always exciting, Newsfront does manage to attract attention, and is pieced together very well. It's also a film covering unique material I am not sure has ever been covered in the realm of cinema.
The plot centers around Len, a newsreel photographer, who manages to keep audiences apprised of world events long before the nightly news ever exists. Len shoots films of any newsworthy item his employers at Cinetone can find for him.
