Posts by Brent Lorentson

"Everywhere you’ll go you’ll hear that slavery is a thing of the past.  Don’t believe it."

When I got handed this disc to review I didn’t pay it much attention till I noticed it had Michael Caine in it.  Then after a search on IMDB well I started to get more and more excited.  Filling out the rest of cast there’s Peter Ustinov (Spartacus), Omar Sharif (Lawrence of Arabia), and William Holden (The Wild Bunch) all together in an African adventure film directed by Richard Fleischer (Tora! Tora! Tora! and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) I couldn’t believe I had never seen, much less even heard of this film.  When we first meet Dr. David Linderby (Caine) and his wife Dr. Anansa Underby (Beverly Johnson) they have just arrived in a tiny African village where they have travelled to inoculate the villagers.  With their work done, David takes in a celebration that the tribe is performing; instead of staying to enjoy the ceremony Anansa (who happens to be a former native to an Ashanti tribe) decides to go for a swim.  It’s this fateful decision that leads to Anansa’s capture by a group of slave traders lead by Suleiman (Ustinov).  The film wastes no time putting Caine in pursuit of the slave traders.

Who doesn’t get a little creeped out any time they see an old van cruising slowly through their neighborhood?  Now, I’m not talking about the soccer mom mini-van you see plenty of, but I’m talking about those vans from the 80s and beyond that seemed to be the vehicle of choice in films where kidnapping is involved.  Creep Van takes the idea of the sleazy van and uses it to its fullest, transforming this white metal beast into the ultimate death trap on wheels.  Unfortunately the van and the gore are pretty much all the film has going for it.

Cambell (Brian Kolodziej) is a little down on his luck; with a new job working at a car wash and having to take the bus, things are far from easy.  To make matters worse, his living situation isn’t much better with a roommate with a few fetishes and the roommate’s girlfriend who has an unexplained hatred for Cambell and enjoys kicking him down when she gets the chance.  Just about the only good thing going for Cambell is his cute co-worker Amy (Amy Wehrell).  Things begin to look all the more promising after Cambell comes across a white van that’s for sale and in his price range.

"Meet the Robertsons clan. They turned duck calls into a multi-million dollar empire.  But running a family business is tough when the family just wants to run wild."

I have to admit when I got handed this to review my expectations were not just low, but part of me just wasn’t looking forward to this.  I’m just not a fan of reality television with the exception of every ghost hunting show out there.  I have no shame in admitting I want to believe. So a show about good ol’ boys that are millionaires for making duck calls, it simply sounded painful.  But by the time I got a couple episodes in, I couldn’t believe it; I was actually looking forward to what shenanigans the Robertsons were going to get into next.

It’s hard to imagine where horror would be right now if George A. Romero never directed Night of the Living Dead.  Just look at the past decade and the slew of zombie releases…if not for Night of the Living Dead none of those movies would have ever been made.  For those of you who can’t miss a single episode of The Walking Dead, yet another thing that never would have been if not for Romero.  It’s not that he created the zombie; he simply created the zombie that we know and relate to today.  He’s the man who set the rules for the zombie and paved the way for the onslaught of gore-filled colloid that splashed across the screen.

For me if asked what my favorite horror film is, without hesitation I would say Dawn of the Dead.  When I first saw this nothing could have been scarier or more awesome than having to be holed up inside a shopping mall while surrounded by the undead.  And since I grew up living across the street from a graveyard, following the movie I was always cautiously on the lookout for any movement around the graves.  To this day one of my favorite pictures is of me with Romero at the premiere for Survival of the Dead.  I just wanted to say this to explain my affection for the Dead series and that when doing this review it’s about a topic a have a deep-rooted respect for.

If it was within your power to heal others’ sickness and injuries, would you? Most people’s answer to that question would undoubtedly be yes, but what if the price of healing someone else was to take their sickness on yourself? What would your answer be then? In Heaven’s Door, twelve-year-old Riley Taylor’s life is in shambles. After her mother suffered a miscarriage, her mother lost her faith and has filed for divorce from her father. Her little brother has been diagnosed with asthma, and she witness her grandfather suffer a heart attack and die before her very eyes (wow, that’s a lot to take; I’d crawl up in the fetal position).

Events in her life change after an accident where she slips out of a tree in her back yard while trying to retrieve her soccer ball. The fall from the tree should have killed her; however, on her way down Riley slipped through a portal (that’s right, I said portal); a portal to heaven. As if that wasn’t enough, Riley’s trip through the portal has bestowed her with extraordinary healing powers. Being a girl with a pure and caring heart, Riley decides that the best avenue for her powers is to help the suffering. She starts off small, healing neighborhood animals, and before long she heals her brother’s asthma. It doesn’t take long before she is the talk of the town of Vineyard. Her mother struggles the most with her daughter’s newfound reputation, given her choice to renounce anything to do with angels or Heaven since the loss of her unborn child.

Like many others I love a good gangster film.  Not every film has to be epic like Once Upon a Time in America or The Godfather; the simple ones are just as good like Snatch and Sexy Beast.  In fact there are so many good gangster films out there I could almost argue is there really a need for any more entries into an already bloated genre?  Okay, silly question, because we’ll always want more of a good thing, but unfortunately with the good we have to take the bad.

When we first meet Jack (Julien Courbey) he’s running a little scam in a basement where he has high rollers playing a form of kneecap Russian roulette.  The concept I like, but there’s simply no suspense. We don’t know who these people are who are putting guns to their legs.  For those who have seen The Deer Hunter you know how intense these kinds of scenes can get, but instead all we have is a guy trying to look cool while two high-rolling thugs play this insane game of chance.

Whether it comes in the form of a mid-life crisis or simply a crisis comes along and changes your life, at some point we all reach a moment in our lives where we reflect on the choices we’ve made for better or worse.  Not every decision we make is one we’ll be proud of, whether it concerns those we have relationships with or choices we make in our careers.  With age people have been known to act out to try and recapture their youth, whether it is in the form of a sports car or perhaps dating someone much younger than our friends and family would find suitable.  Sugar Mommas tackles the mid-life crisis with a balance of humor and compassion that I have to admit surprised me with the execution of its message.

This isn’t a big-budget Hollywood movie, and to be honest had I seen this on the shelf at the store, there would be no chance of me ever giving this title more than a cursory glance.  But I would have passed up something that actually I had to pinch myself for believing I enjoyed this movie.  A little movie about three women who own a bakery. During the week leading up to a tasting for a potential big money client, all three of the women have to come to terms with personal crises that have come to a head at the same time.  There’s Sheila (Terri J. Vaughn) who has become obsessed with the urge to have a baby, Lynn (Vanessa Williams) who is a middle aged woman currently dating a 22-year-old up-and-coming rapper, and Tommi (Rachel True), who is in a crumbling marriage.  Each of these women is likeable and relatable, but none of them can seem to see the damage they are bringing into their lives.

What do you get when you mix Jackass with stunt master Evil Knievel?  Well, you end up with the Nitro Circus.  This group of guys (and one girl) is made up from a variety of extreme sports athletes and guys that simply enjoy pushing the limits of safety and sanity all for the sake of the ultimate adrenaline rush.  Is this something that really needed to be a movie?  Does anyone really want to see grown men (and one woman) doing bike jumps 400 feet in the air?  Hell yeah we do!

I’m no stranger to these types of films.  One of my all time favorite movies to kick back and have a couple of drinks with is Stunt Rock.  Stunt Rock is the holy grail of stunt movies with a mix of glam rock.  What Grant Page (Stunt Rock) and Knievel did was pave the way for Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, and Travis Pastrana.