Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 9th, 2018
"The Secretary is dead. The President has invoked Ghost Protocol. We're shut down. No satellite, safe house, support, or extraction. The four of us and the contents of this car are all that remains of the IMF."
The fourth Mission: Impossible entry exchanges digits for a subtitle, and brings in Brad Bird to direct his first live-action feature. So the man whose The Incredibles made fun of the sort of thing that is the bread-and-butter of the M:I franchise is brought in to revitalize said franchise. Result? Job done. Gotcha. You thought I was going to say, “Mission accomplished,” didn’t you?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 16th, 2012
The “Patch of Heaven” farm is about to be seized by the bank, unless $750.00 can be raised, and raised quickly. By lucky coincidence, that is precisely the reward being offered for the capture of cattle rustler Alameda Slim. Three plucky cows (voiced by Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench and Jennifer Tilly) decide to capture Slim and win the reward, thus saving their home.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by David Annandale on May 29th, 2012
Gilbert (Gilbert John) is a film student with a radical idea: make a documentary about someone who is going to commit suicide. Get to know why, get to know the person, follow the whole process, right up to the very end. Collaborators Valerie (Valerie Hurt) and Michael (Michael Traynor) have deep misgivings about the project, but sign on when the apparently ideal subject is found. This is Matt (Matthew Tilley), who suffers from a brain tumour and simply wants to choose his moment to bow out with dignity before the pain becomes too severe.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 28th, 2012
Steven Spielberg’s very-long-in-gestation adaptation of Hergé’s Tintin finally came into being over Christmas. The story, very much in keeping with the globe-trotting adventures of the comic books (drawing heavily, in fact, upon The Secret of the Unicorn), has Tintin (voiced by Jaime Bell) become embroiled in a treasure quest after buying a model ship that has one third of the secret concealed in its mast. Captured by nefarious evil-doers who will stop at nothing to find the treasure, he encounters Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), and a legendary friendship is formed.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 1st, 2012
Samantha Newly (Christina Applegate) was hit by a car, fell into a coma, and woke up with retrograde amnesia. She discovers that prior to her coma, she was a mean piece of work, and the show revolves around her reactions to what she discovers about her past, as well as the relationships she now has with friends (Melissa McCarthy – the good one – and Jennifer Esposito – the bad one, basically channeling Kim Cattrall), family, and ex-boyfriend (a generic Barry Watson). Season Two picks up with Samantha returning to her apartment, discovering she used to be able to dance, getting herself a new guy (again), and so on.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 21st, 2012
The fourth Mission: Impossible entry exchanges digits for a subtitle, and brings in Brad Bird to direct his first live-action feature. So the man whose The Incredibles made fun of the sort of thing that is the bread-and-butter of the M:I franchise is brought in to revitalize said franchise. Result? Job done.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 6th, 2012
Roman Polanski's seminal neo-noir finally makes it to Blu-ray. Gino has already handled the previous DVD release, so I'm going to turn the reins over to him for a while, then jump back in.
"Jake Gittes is a Chandler style detective with all of the trappings. From the office to the secretary and the cop friend, Gittes is a cliché. He appears to specialize in tracking down extramarital affairs. When he’s hired to keep an eye on a rich millionaire, the subject turns up dead, and maybe it wasn’t his wife at all who hired him. Gittes now must investigate to save his own hide. His investigation leads him to a corrupt water department taking advantage of a manufactured drought. His client has a dark secret that only complicates Gittes’ efforts.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 17th, 2012
In the 1930’s, the orphaned Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) lives in the access tunnels of the Gare Montparnasse in Paris, winding the clocks, making sure that no one knows his guardian uncle has long-since gone AWOL, and filching bits and pieces of mechanisms that will allow him, he hopes, to repair the automaton he keeps in his living quarters. This is his last connection to his deceased father, and his dream is that the repaired machine will grant him a message from the beyond.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 8th, 2012
A group of high school girls heads off into the woods to make a movie for their film club. What only the two organizers know is that they are heading for the site of a previous film club’s massacre. Their shoot descended into madness, with a participant in a deigan mask killing all the others, and the whole thing was recorded on tape. It isn’t long after the girls arrive that things start to go wrong, and it seems that history might be repeating itself.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 24th, 2012
One of the more popular characters from the Shrek franchise steps into the starring spotlight here, in an adventure whose locale is rather different from the familiar swamp-forest-castle fairy-tale settings of the parent films. Seeking to steel magic beans from the husband-and-wife thugs Jack and Jill, Puss (Antonio Banderas) and rival Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) become caught up in a wild scheme masterminded by the duplicitous Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis).
