Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 10th, 2015
I’m starting to wonder if it is time we officially made a sub-genre for kidnapping films. It’s a storyline that has been played out for decades but continues to offer up some engaging and oftentimes heart-wrenching tales that for the most part have happy endings but that seems to be a far stretch from reality, though I doubt audiences are looking for these bleak realistic endings and mostly prefer the Hollywood ending where everyone is rescued in just the nick of time. When Prisoners came out, I had hopes that it would be a film that wouldn’t shy away from the harsh realities, and for the most part it succeeded, but I still felt it held back.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 8th, 2015
I’m going to come right out and say that before I got season 3 to review, all I had previously seen of Longmire was through advertisements I would catch every now and again. It was a show that seemed to have a lot of promise, but with the amount of DVD watching that comes with writing for the site, you have to be a bit picky about what you want to watch in your “spare time”. Thanks to the help of the internet I was able to watch some season 1 and 2 recaps and surprisingly when I started up season 3 there wasn’t much difficulty in catching up and getting into the groove of the show.
Posted in: The Reel World by Brent Lorentson on March 6th, 2015
Despite the twinge of disappointment I felt as I exited the theater after seeing Elysium, I still believed writer/director Neill Blomkamp was more than a one-trick pony with District 9. Now two years after the release of Elysium, Blomkamp is set to release Chappie, a sentient-robot film that from the trailers evokes comparisons to Robocop and Short Circuit, which could mean either that could be a hit or another disappointment. A disappointment could be trouble for Blomkamp. After all, his concept images and storyline for an Alien sequel has relit excitement for a franchise that many had felt died after the third entry.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on February 26th, 2015
Despite being a fan of just about everyone involved with Horrible Bosses, I was more than a little disappointed by the first film. It wasn’t awful or unwatchable by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt with a cast like Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis, it just should have been better. But the movie gods have spoken and decided that the first film performed well enough that it deserved a sequel. What worked for the first film was the idea behind finally having enough of your bosses and being pushed to the point where murder seems like a viable option.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on February 23rd, 2015
Sometimes in film the drama behind the scenes can be more interesting than the actual film we see up on the big screen. For writer/director Paul Schrader, having drama behind the scenes that effects the final project that we get to see is something he is more familiar with than he’d care to admit to. The firestorm that occurred with the release of 2005’s Dominion: The Prequel to the Exorcist became so intense that the studio insisted upon a new director to come in and do extensive reshoots that subsequently led to the release of a separate film directed by Renny Harlin
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on February 20th, 2015
When it comes to haunted house films, despite how often the plots seem to be retold time after time, it is still hard for me to say no to giving them a shot. After all, you never know when you may stumble upon a gem. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Altar is a gem or a groundbreaking entry in the genre, but for some late-night thrills the film has all the ingredients to deliver a case of the late-night creepy crawlies. The Hamilton family arrives at a large country house in Yorkshire, where Meg (Olivia Williams) is tasked with restoring the home to its original condition.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on February 18th, 2015
For as long as I can remember I’ve been in love with film. Growing up in the 80’s, getting to understand the process of how films were made wasn’t very accessible unless you were lucky to catch a behind-the-scenes special on HBO or Showtime for some big new release. It wasn’t till laserdisc and eventually DVD where the fans would be able to look beyond the magical curtain of cinema and get to see the process of how a film was made. I still get giddy with excitement watching some of my favorite directors getting to work their magic behind the scenes.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on February 16th, 2015
Imagine if in the not too distant future you could have the opportunity to be young again, and for the right price you could possibly never have to worry about ever growing old ever again. RPG looks into this possibility and the chances people are willing to take for this chance to indulge their youth once again. But like with anything that seems too good to be true, there is a catch, and in this game there are actually two catches. First you need to have the millions of dollars in your bank account to even play the game, and the second catch is that you have to be the lone survivor of the game to receive the award of lasting youth.
Posted in: The Reel World by Brent Lorentson on February 13th, 2015
I hope you have your fuzzy cuffs ready. Not only is this weekend Valentine’s Day, but it is also the release of the highly anticipated film Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s just about impossible to have not heard of the enormously successful book series that women across the globe have devoured and obsessed over since the books first hit the shelves. It’s a phenomenon that has sparked interest in women to think of new and creative ways to spice things up in the bedroom. On the other hand, since the announcement of the book being made for the big screen, men across the globe have dreaded the day that their wives and girlfriends would drag them to the theaters.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on February 12th, 2015
The days of Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff are long gone, but Hollywood refuses to give up on the classic monsters these men and others once brought to live on the big screen. Despite how many years have passed since these monsters of the night first terrified audiences, filmgoers continue to fork over their cash to see these stories rehashed again and again. In the new release of Frankenstein vs The Mumny, we see the revival of two classic monsters and the opportunity to see them battle head to head. Without the big budget to support this monster smackdown, is it still worth watching, or is this a battle that should have remained dead?
