Posts by Brent Lorentson

"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.

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.

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).

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.

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

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!

When a movie claims to be based on a true story, I tend to take this with a grain of salt.  In some form or another, any movie can have some basis in reality; the writer simply puts their own spin on it.  With a movie like The Cottage, I’m not too sure what part is supposed to be the true story.  Is it the creepy tenant that kills anyone who gets in his way?  Or perhaps it is the fact that the creepy killer stalks families to try and have a relationship with their young daughter?

When you’re the son of an iconic director, it can’t be helped that viewers will tend to expect a little more out of you.  Case in point with Sean Stone (son of Oliver Stone); expectations were in place, especially since dad actually plays a role in the film.  With Greystone Park , it would be safe to assume Stone was looking to remove himself far from his father’s shadow and show he has a vision all his own.  The problem is we get a film that is a bit hit-or-miss throughout.