Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 20th, 2021
"My name is Lt. Aldo Raine, and I'm putting together a special team, and I need me eight soldiers. Eight Jewish-American soldiers. Now, y'all might've heard rumors about the armada happening soon. Well, we'll be leaving a little earlier. We're gonna be dropped into France, dressed as civilians. And once we're in enemy territory, as a bushwhackin' guerrilla army, we're gonna be doin' one thing and one thing only ... killin' Nazis. We will be cruel to the German, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. And they will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us. And the German won't be able to help themselves but to imagine the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the Germans will be sickened by us, and the German will talk about us, and the German will fear us. And when the German closes their eyes at night and they're tortured by their subconscious for the evil they have done, it will be with thoughts of us they are tortured with. Sound good?"
All right, so I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but I wanted to toss in my two bits anyway.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 4th, 2021
By David Annandale
It is 1979. While filming a Super 8 horror movie, a group of young friends on the cusp of adolescence witness a spectacular train wreck. They later discover that they accidentally captured evidence that there was an alien creature on the train, and it is now loose in their small town. But if the mysterious disappearance of dogs, engines, and (increasingly) people wasn’t trouble enough, the military descends upon the community with an agenda far more merciless and inhuman than that of the alien itself. I was 12 in 1979, and I was shooting Super 8 monster movies, so I get the nostalgia that writer/director J.J. Abrams is going for here, and this is an utterly unapologetic exercise in nostalgia. Abrams is out to recreate the experience of a Spielberg movie from that era, and with the man himself acting as producer, the mission is accomplished
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 25th, 2021
By John Ceballos
“She’s quite a common girl, very common indeed.”
Of course, we don’t need 50 years of hindsight — or more than 100 years, if you want to go all the way back to the original 1913 staging of George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” — to know that there’s nothing common about cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle. And there’s nothing ordinary about 1964’s My Fair Lady, the beloved Oscar-winning musical that now gets an uncommonly (but appropriately) lavish ultra-high-resolution release. Chances are you know the story. But even if you don’t, its rags-to-riches DNA can be found in everything from Cinderella to Pretty Woman. In early 20th century London, Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) is a brilliant and unbearably arrogant phonetics scholar who can spot a person’s place of origin simply by hearing them utter a few words. Higgins is fascinated by the English language
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on May 25th, 2021
Ah, good old 1990's, such important years in our history. The Soviet Union was in a state of social and political upheaval, David Robinson had just taken the professional basketball world by storm, and I was hatching plans for my first double-digits birthday. Oh yeah, and Beverly Hills, 90210 hit the airwaves for its inaugural season. Obviously, at the time I was a bit young to have been interested in this teen soap opera, so watching the DVD set has not be full of reminiscence for me. Instead, it's been like discovering for the first time what 1990 could have been like, had I been a beautiful, spoiled-rich teen living in Beverly Hills. My three biggest regrets about missing out on 90210? I could have looked back now and laughed about the bad hair, bad clothes and bad music that I thought were so cool back in the day. Actually, I did laugh at that stuff, but surely not as heartily as I would have, had I been an old-school 90210 fan.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 27th, 2020
"On March 3, 1969 the United States Navy established an elite school for the top one percent of its pilots. Its purpose was to teach the lost art of aerial combat and to insure that the handful of men who graduated were the best fighter pilots in the world. They succeeded. Today, the Navy calls it Fighter Weapons School. The flyers call it: TOP GUN."
Back around the time I was born, when Tom Cruise had an ounce of sanity, a little movie called Top Gun swept across the globe, raking in over $350,000,000 worldwide, as well as sparking an interest in the US Navy and everything Tomcat, Skyhawk, and MiG related. Ever since its original release, Top Gun has kept a hold on its audience, being played almost weekly, and now it makes its way into the world of ultra high definition with its release on UHD Blu-ray.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on June 9th, 2020
Written by J. C.
“Welcome! Everything is fine.”
One of my favorite bits from the dearly departed Inside the Actors Studio involved host James Lipton administering a questionnaire that concluded with “If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?” It’s a momentous question that often drew a humorous response. The Good Place opens with its main character waking up in the afterlife and being greeted with bright green lettering that says “Welcome! Everything is fine.” It’s a reassuring sentiment, to be sure, but let’s be clear: there is nothing just “fine” about The Good Place. This sharp, hilarious, and goodhearted fantasy/comedy is spectacular!
The series begins with Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) sitting in an exceedingly pleasant waiting room. Eleanor soon meets Michael (Ted Danson), who cheerily informs her that she has died and arrived in the afterlife. The reason Michael is in such good spirits is because he gets to inform Eleanor that she has arrived in The Good Place, a highly-exclusive, neighborhood utopia. Michael is also the architect of The Good Place —the first such neighborhood he has designed — so he gives Eleanor a tour and introduces her to pre-determined soulmate Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper). But as Michael recounts Eleanor’s many humanitarian exploits, there is one nagging problem … Eleanor didn’t do any of the stuff Michael is talking about. She has arrived in The Good Place by mistake!
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 23rd, 2020
"On March 3, 1969 the United States Navy established an elite school for the top one percent of its pilots. Its purpose was to teach the lost art of aerial combat and to insure that the handful of men who graduated were the best fighter pilots in the world. They succeeded. Today, the Navy calls it Fighter Weapons School. The flyers call it: TOP GUN."
Back around the time I was born, when Tom Cruise had an ounce of sanity, a little movie called Top Gun swept across the globe, raking in over $350,000,000 worldwide, as well as sparking an interest in the US Navy and everything Tomcat, Skyhawk, and MiG related. Ever since its original release, Top Gun has kept a hold on its audience, being played almost weekly, and now it makes its way into the world of ultra high definition with its release on UHD Blu-ray. The timing couldn't be any more obvious. The long-anticipated sequel has been in production, and while delayed by the global circumstances, the film will be arriving soon (at least in release terms). This is a pretty good way to get you up to speed, pun intended. The film isn't alone in cashing in on the Tom Cruise upcoming slate of both the Top Gun sequel and two Mission Impossible films being shot at the same time. This is one of three Cruise films getting the 4K release treatment along with Days Of Thunder and the Spielberg remake of the War Of The Worlds George Pal film. Once the box office returns you're going to be getting a lot of Tommy, so these films are intended to put you in the mood and get the party started a little early.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 20th, 2020
"No one would have believed in the early years of the 21st century that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, *they* observed and studied, the way a man with a microscope might scrutinize the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, men went to and fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes and slowly, and surely, drew their plans against us."
Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is a middle-aged divorcee with a blue-collar job and a rundown home in the New Jersey suburbs. When his ex-wife unexpectedly drops his estranged kids—ten-year-old Rachel (Dakota Fanning) and sixteen-year-old Robbie (Justin Chatwin)—off for the weekend, Ray is less than pleased. He’s always struggled with his parental duties, but now finds it increasingly difficult to communicate with his children. However, events beyond his control are about to force Ray to come to terms with his responsibilities. Bizarre lighting storms herald the arrival of alien tripods, which explode from beneath the Earth’s surface and begin dispensing death and destruction on the surrounding countryside. Narrowly avoiding the first attack, Ray returns home, grabs his kids, and embarks on a frantic journey across country to find their mother in Boston.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on March 13th, 2020
A sure sign that Easter is just around the corner is yet another home video release of perennial seasonal favorite The Ten Commandments. In years past, we got the multi-disc edition, complete with original silent version of the film. This particular version is rather more stripped down, as far as features go, but it does mark the film’s re-release on Blu-ray. It's a collector's item kind of package with the discs arriving in a book form that isn't quite that full of info but looks kind of nice. The set includes the exact same discs and extras as the original Blu-ray release offered. On the surface this looks like one to avoid if you already have the previous release. But they baited the hook with more than fancy packaging. You get the original DeMille 1923 version of the film, and that's quite a good reason to pick this up. I'm disappointed that there's no 4K version of the film. It was originally shot in 70mm, and a restored 4K disc could look incredible. Maybe next Easter.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on March 13th, 2020
The notion that there are two sides to every story is at the center of The Affair. Almost every episode depicts the same events related to the titular adulterous relationship from two different perspectives. It’s an ingenious and inclusive storytelling tool, because TV viewers are encouraged to spot the differences in each character’s account of events. (Along with inconsistencies in hairstyles, wardrobe, wallpaper, etc.) That’s why I was somewhat disheartened by the latter portion of the season veering away from what made the show great.
– “Marriage means different things to different people.”
– “What does it mean to you?”
We first meet schoolteacher/struggling author Noah Solloway (Dominic West) as he prepares to head to Montauk, Long Island
