Posts by Brent Lorentson

In the caverns beneath the planet’s surface there exists a place like no other, a place where duels are settled not with bullets but with slugs.  But these are not the kind of slugs that ooze their way across your driveway; instead they each have their own personalities and skills that are to be used in battle.  In the land of Slugterra, El is the quickest slugslinger out there, but there are a lot of baddies out there looking to take control over Slugterra, and thankfully he has the Shane gang (Trixie, Kord, Pronto and Burpy) to help him out.

Knowing very little about Thailand’s gangster history, I jumped into The Gangster with no expectations and was left breathless by the time the final credits rolled.  With the energy and violence on display here, I can’t help but feel this is the intensity Scorsese intended in his underwhelming film Gangs of New York; there he had over a hundred million and the street fights, though they had epic buildups, seemed to just fall flat.  The Gangster, on the other hand, is on a micro-budget by comparison and delivers street fights that hurt, that leave scars and stay with you.

There are so many vampire films, it’s hard to get excited any time a trailer for one comes along.  The Twilight series as well as shows like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries have managed to take everything I once enjoyed about the menacing creature and turned it into a joke.  Let the Right One In and the American remake Let Me In are the last vampire films that had any substance that went for more than cheap thrills and gore and delivered a solid story.  That is until Kiss of the Damned came along.  It’s a film that keeps things simple, yet brings back the beautiful elegance of the creature we loved to fear.

First let me come out and say I know very little about Anime; aside from a few episodes of Speed Racer when I was growing up, Anime just never really caught my interest.  But I’m willing to give anything a shot; after all, it’s never too late to discover a new genre in entertainment.  Unfortunately the Shout Factory release of Starzinger was a bad first experience that made for a long cringe-worthy experience.  Films like Howl’s Moving Castle and Grave of the Fireflies are beautiful pieces of animation as well as touching stories.

With films like Sharknado it’s clear that that Hollywood can’t say no to a disaster movie no matter how bad it may sound.  It’s almost as though everyone has given up on the idea that a disaster movie can be good; The Towering Inferno holds up after all these years, yet you can almost guarantee if they attempted to remake it, awfulness would certainly follow.  Heck, the Poseidon Adventure was amazing to watch growing up, and even on the heels of Titanic and with “better” special effects at their fingertips, the remake, Poseidon, was a failure.  What I find all the more odd is that with these straight-to-DVD or SYFY-made movies

The surf culture and those involved are like a tribe separate from everyone else.  Those who are hardcore into the scene seem to care very little about money or material things, all that seems to matter to this group of outsiders are the onslaught of waves that’ll soon be theirs to ride.  Several movies have been made about the sport/lifestyle, Point Break and Chasing Mavericks are the two that stand out the most for me at this time (not sure if admitting my secret love for Back to the Beach is good idea).

Ever since I’ve had a little girl in my life, the amount of kids’ programming I’ve gotten to review has mushroomed.  This is by no means a complaint; if anything it has helped me bond with her.  Granted, at times all the kids’ shows can quickly grow to be as grating as nails to a chalkboard, but when shows like Dragons and The Amazing World of Gumball come along I’m not sure who gets more excited, her or myself. When I reviewed The Mystery DVD I wasn’t sure what I was getting into, but quickly I found myself pleasantly obsessed with Gumball Watterson and the trouble he would get himself into.

The moment I see the words “inspired by true events”, I simply accept the fact that most likely everything that follows should be taken with a grain of salt.  I understand films are not meant to be reference materials to be seen as fact, but simply as a tool to entertain and hopefully motivate you to learn more about the subject matter.  When it comes to Emperor, I know going in this isn’t going to be a history lesson, so I could allow myself to simply enjoy the show.