Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 16th, 2015
Here it is, Brittany Murphy’s swan song performance before her untimely death. Though I may not have been her biggest fan, I could still appreciate growing up and watching her from films like Clueless and Girl, Interrupted, but for many she will always be the girl who said “I’ll never tell” in Don’t Say A Word. The DVD promo art on the cover is banking on those loyal fans, and it does seem like an insensitive cash grab by the studio, especially since Murphy isn’t even the star. Instead she does nothing more than fill in a co-starring role in an unfortunate, forgettable performance. So if you were looking for something more, I want to warn you from the start this is not her movie.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 16th, 2015
For your safety you should keep him away from the booze and doughnuts.”
Wolf Cop wasn’t a film haphazardly thrown together; instead its path to being made was epic in its own right as the filmmakers entered their concept into a Canadian online competition where people voted week after week on what potential film would be lucky enough to get made. Wolf Cop slayed the competition, and as they say, the rest is history.
Posted in: The Reel World by Brent Lorentson on March 12th, 2015
“Tell everyone to get ready. Jimmy is coming.”
If someone were to tell me while walking out of Schindler’s List that 20 years later Liam Neeson would be an action star, I would have thought they were out of their mind. Between the trio of Taken films and numerous films that seem to be cut from the same ilk, Liam Neeson seems to be walking in the same footsteps as Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood as being the go-to everyman that just so happens to be a badass with or without a gun.
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.
