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.
The opening moments, with a series of Tex Avery-style catastrophes befalling an unfortunate rabbit, are very promising. Here and there are other patches of inspiration, such as when Slim reveals that his foolproof secret for stealing cattle is to hypnotize them by yodeling (leading into one of the stronger musical numbers). Unfortunately, in between are long stretches of flat storytelling and dull jokes. Roseanne Barr is as annoying a presence as a voice artist as she is an actor, and Cuba Gooding Jr.’s horse character is a pale imitation of Eddie Murphy’s work on Mulan and Shrek. There aren’t enough bones tossed to adults, and the two kids I was screening this with were bored out of the room in five minutes flat.
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.
Filming the filming (as it were) is Gilbert’s roommate Daniel, played by the film’s actual director, Daniel Stamm. This metafilmic bit of casting is no mere conceit, but is central to the movie’s thematic concerns. We’ve seen a flood of found-footage movies in the last few years (such as Stamm’s own The Last Exorcism), but this 2008 effort is one of the few (along with the likes Incident at Loch Ness and Man Bites Dog, and, in a somewhat more dubious ethical position, Cannibal Holocaust itself) that makes the found-footage aspect crucial, rather than simply just another narrative convention.
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.
Spielberg’s affection for the character is present in every frame of the film, and the story hurtles along from location to location, our heroes making one hair’s breadth escape after another. The characters are all very recognizable versions of their 2D comic book incarnations, and the animation is stunning in its meticulous detail.
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.
Christina Applegate is a talented comic performer. So is Kevin Dunn, who plays her father. The other people here might well be, too. But there's nothing they can do to salvage the hoary, predictable gags. Forced, painful, irritating, we can be glad that this second season is also the last one, but must shakes our heads in wonder that the show made it this far.
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.
Gotcha. You thought I was going to say, “Mission accomplished,” didn’t you?
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.
But there are obstacles to his quest. Foremost is the tyrannical station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), who likes nothing better than rounding up street urchins and packing them off to the orphanage. Hugo also runs afoul of the bitter, disappointed old man (Ben Kingsley) whose toy store has been the source of much of his material. This encounter proves fateful for them both. The old man is none other than Georges Méliès, whose films are the ground zero of all fantasy in cinema, but who has since been forgotten by the industry he helped create. Hugo and Méliès’ granddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Moretz) become allies, determined to give Méliès back the sense of joy and wonder he once gave to so many.
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.
I do like the footage we see of the earlier film – it has a genuinely disturbing quality, and when it arrives, it raises one’s hopes that the perhaps the terminally pedestrian set-up is going to give way to something livelier. No such luck. Much in the way of squabbling, wandering around on one’s own, and off-screen murders transpires. The characters are caricatures when they can be distinguished at all, the cinematography is dishwater dull, and the plot, by the end, makes little sense, though it is very unlikely that most viewers will care one way or the other by then.
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).
The plot is really more of a premise, serving as the means to set up a grab bag of set pieces (an extended flashback showing Puss and Humpty’s past, and how the latter betrayed the former; the spectacular sprouting of the beanstalk; the dance-off between Puss and Kitty and the Glitter Box). There is a lot going on here, and the jokes come a fast clip. Younger viewers will likely get the most out of this, but there are plenty of bones thrown to the adults in the crowd, including such touches as the in-joke casting of Banderas and Hayek bringing in a whiff of Desperado to the antics. The animation is stunning, and while I can’t speak to the 3D theatrical incarnation of the film, it looks simply stunning in 2D.
