Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on July 3rd, 2018
Sometimes a movie comes along that has everything going for it: a great cast, a great cinematographer, and a decent plot, but when you watch it, you just scratch your head wondering why it ended up so bad. That in a nutshell is Terminal. It stars Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg, and Mike Myers, and for each of them I believe this is a film they quickly want to move past. The tagline for the film is Revenge Never Looked So Good, which is a big part of the problem with the film. I absolutely love the look of the film. It’s beautiful and to a point creates its own style I’d call neon-noir, but unfortunately no matter how good something may look, it doesn’t always mean it will be good.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 28th, 2018
When we first meet the Pierce family it is at the Freeland jail, where Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams) is there to bail out his oldest daughter, Anissa (Nafessa Williams). The show doesn’t waste time in tackling social issues as we see them have an encounter with the Freeland police force as they are pulled over for a traffic stop. The reason for the stop turns out to be they are looking for a suspect who just robbed a liquor store, and because Jefferson is black, he of course is a potential suspect. Having this scene early on, not just in the season but in the pilot episode, is a bold and important move by the writers. This shows us that despite being a superhero show, Black Lightning is going to show us a superhero tale unlike anything we’ve seen before on the CW.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 19th, 2018
When Pacific Rim first came out, I had a blast with the film. It was the ultimate giant-monster-versus-giant-robot film that my inner ten-year-old has wanted to see for so long. Sure, the film had some dialog issues, but the world that Guillermo del Toro created with the film was so over-the-top and beautiful that the bad dialog was easy to forget. It knew what it was, brainless eye candy, and it delivered in a big way. Now we have the sequel coming out; del Toro is no longer at the helm, and in his place we have Steven S. DeKnight whose previous directorial efforts have been episodes from Daredevil and Dollhouse. Does the sequel hold up? Well, to put it bluntly, not even close.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 19th, 2018
It’s been eleven years since that cast and crew took their final bow on the show Will and Grace. In those eleven years so much has occurred such as gay marriage and the rise of the social justice warrior. Just one glance at our political climate these days you can imagine there is plenty of material for comedy gold, heck there was even the revival of Roseanne that attempted to seize the moment. But of all the shows that are on the reboot and revival trend train Will and Grace is the one sit-com I feel is the most suited to take the airwaves. A lot of time has passed, a decade in Hollywood is a few eternities and would seem to be an overwhelming task to reunite the cast and crew but it would seem the stars have aligned for this show but will it actually work?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 17th, 2018
Despite falling into the “coming of age genre”, Love, Simon is actually so much more than your typical mainstream teenage film. In the 80’s John Hughes ruled the box office with his films, everything from Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink and of course The Breakfast Club were the films that spoke to the kids of the era. It’s been a while since a film has come along that has fit into the genre that has managed to handle the awkwardness of being a teenager while also toeing the line of being heartfelt and humorous. Over the years there have been attempts to capture the essence of the 80’s John Hughes films, but these seem to always fail by either going to raunchy or attempting to make the lead characters cool and popular.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 17th, 2018
When it comes to the Italian western aka the spaghetti western, the first director who comes to mind is Sergio Leone (The Good The Bad And The Ugly); and then there is Sergio Corbucci. While Leone was blazing a successful career, Corbucci first came onto the scene with his film Django. The film was dirty, violent, and mean. For those who are only familiar with the Quentin Tarantino version of Django, well, you’ll definitely see the films are drastically different aside from them both being revenge films. Much later on Corbucci got the chance to follow up his first big hit with another western, The Great Silence. I had gotten to see this dark western before, though it was in the form of a bootleg copy.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 14th, 2018
For some reason, adapting video games into good films has been the nut Hollywood just can’t seem to crack. The Resident Evil series has been successful, but I wouldn’t say it really holds up to the game. Personally, Silent Hill has been the only adaption I’ve really enjoyed, and that film has divided fans as well. As for the Tomb Raider franchise that kicked off in 2001, sure, it had some fun sequences. And with Angelina Jolie becoming a hot commodity at the time, it’s not too much of a surprise that it did well at the box office. Now 17 years later, the time has come for Tomb Raider to get a makeover and work its way through the reboot machine.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 11th, 2018
“Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analyzed using techniques which are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of the treatments.” Forbes
This is the quote that opens up the film Altered Perception. It lets us know right out of the gate that we are about to watch a film that involves drug testing.
Posted in: The Reel World by Brent Lorentson on June 9th, 2018
There has been so much hype around Hereditary since its debut at Sundance that by the time I got to watch it, I didn’t believe it was possible to live up to this hype. For months I’ve followed this film, hearing it being compared to The Exorcist and being proclaimed the scariest film of all time. I read these things and all I can think is they are simply setting this film up for disaster at the box office, because it’s hard to believe a film could ever be this good. Personally, The Exorcist is my favorite horror film. It’s stood the test of time, and while for audiences of today the film may not seem so scary, for me it was the notion of how it could all really happen that got under my skin.
Posted in: The Reel World by Brent Lorentson on June 7th, 2018
When it comes to Paul Schrader, I feel the argument can be made that he is the greatest American screenwriter. I know it’s a bold statement, but when you look over his credits that include Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder, Hardcore, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and so many others, I feel there just isn’t anyone out there who can compete. Lately, though, he’s seemed to have had a difficult time recapturing that greatness. There has even been a part of me that has felt that perhaps I should give up on hoping he’ll crank out one more great film and simply appreciate the filmography he’s delivered us cinema fans over the years.
